R. Austin Freeman


Dr. Richard Austin Freeman was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke. He invented the inverted detective story. Roberts said that this invention was Freeman's most noticeable contribution to detective fiction. Freeman used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels. Many of the Dr. Thorndyke stories involve genuine, but sometimes arcane, points of scientific knowledge, from areas such as tropical medicine, metallurgy and toxicology.

Early life

Austin Freeman was the youngest of the five children of tailor Richard Freeman and Ann Maria Dunn. At the age of 18 he entered the medical school of the Middlesex Hospital and qualified in 1886.
After qualifying, Freeman spent a year as a house physician at the hospital. He married his childhood sweetheart Annie Elizabeth Edwards in London on 15 April 1887, and the couple later had two sons. He then entered the Colonial Service in 1887 as an assistant surgeon. He served for a time in Keta, Ghana, in 1887 during which time he dealt with an epidemic of black water fever which killed forty percent of the European population at that port. He had six months of leave from mid 1888 and returned to Accra on the Gold Coast just in time to volunteer for the post of medical officer on the planned expedition to Ashanti and Jaman.
Freeman was the doctor, naturalist and surveyor for an expedition to Ashanti and Jaman, two independent states in the Gold Coast. The expedition set out from Accra on 8 December 1888, with a band consisting of a band-master and six boys playing two side drums and five fifes, three European officers, one Native officer, 100 Hausa constables, a gunners' party with a rocket trough, an apothecary, apothecary's assistant, a hospital orderly, and 200 bearers. The expedition went first to Kumasi, the capital of the then independent kingdom of Ashanti. Their second port of call was Bondoukou, Ivory Coast, where they arrived only to find that the king had just signed a protectorate treaty with the French.
However, the expedition was a political failure as the British spokesman blurted out in front of the chiefs the British were willing to supply the loan of £400 which the king had requested. However the King had requested this loan with the proviso that it be kept secret from his chiefs. He therefore denied any knowledge of the loan and the expedition moved on to Bontúku, the capital of Jaman. Here they were left cooling their heels while the King there finalised a treaty with the French, who had been quicker off the mark. The expedition was recalled after five months. Bleiler asserts, without any supporting evidence, that It was mostly through Freeman's intelligence and tact that the expedition was not massacred. Although the mission overall was a failure, the collection of data by Freeman was a success, and his future in the colonial service seemed assured. Unfortunately, he became ill with blackwater fever and was invalided home in 1891, being discharged from the service two months before the minimum qualification period for a pension.

Career

Thus, he returned to London in 1891, and in c. 1892 served as temporary Acting Surgeon in Charge of the Throat and Ear Department at Middlesex Hospital. He was in general practice in London for about five years. He was appointed acting Deputy Medical Officer of Holloway Prison in c. 1901, and Acting Assistant Medical Officer of the Port of London in 1904. A year later he suffered a complete breakdown in his health and gave up medicine for authorship.
His first successful stories were the Romney Pringle rogue stories published in Cassell's Magazine in 1902 and 1903, written in collaboration with John James Pitcairn, medical officer at Holloway Prison, and published under the nom de plume "Clifford Ashdown".
In 1905 Freeman published his first solo novel, The Golden Pool, with the background drawn from his own time in West Africa. The hero is a young Englishman who steals a fetish treasure. Barzun and Taylor make the point that while this is a crime, the book is not regarded as crime fiction as according to old notions stealing things from African natives is no crime. Bleiler says it is a colorful, thrilling story, all the more unusual in being ethnographically accurate... and that ... it used to be required reading for members of the British colonial services in Africa.
His first Thorndyke story, The Red Thumb Mark, was published in 1907, and shortly afterwards he pioneered the inverted detective story, in which the identity of the criminal is shown from the beginning. Some short stories with this feature were collected in The Singing Bone in 1912. During the First World War he served as an induction physician and a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and afterwards produced a Thorndyke novel almost every year until his death in 1943.

Later life

Freeman briefly stopped writing at the outbreak of the Second World War, but then resumed writing in an air-raid shelter he had built in his garden. Freeman was plagued by Parkinson's disease in his later years. This makes his achievement all the more remarkable, as in his declining years he wrote both Mr. Polton explains, which Bleiler says ... is in some ways his best novel, and the Jacob Street Mystery in which Roberts considers that Thorndyke ... is at his analytical best... He was living at 94, Windmill Street, Gravesend, Kent when he died on 28 September 1943. His estate was valued at £6,471 5s 11d. Thorndyke was buried in the old Gravesend and Milton Cemetery at Gravesend. The Thorndyke File started a funding drive to erect a granite marker for Freeman's grave, and this was erected in September 1979, with the text: Richard Austin Freeman, 18621943, Physician and Author, Erected by the friends of "Dr. Thorndyke", 1979.

Political views

Freeman held conservative political views. As early as 1914 in his novel The Uttermost Farthing, the main character espouses views unacceptable today, referring to the "criminal class" as vermin that needed to be exterminated—which the character, Humphrey Challoner, proceeds to do. The motivating factor was Challoner's wife was killed by a burglar whom she caught in the act. Challoner sets himself on the path of revenge. Before he finally happens on the actual perpetrator, he acts as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill 24 other men. He then displays their skeletons in his "museum" and processes their heads to shrunken heads, which he keeps hidden.
In his 1921 book Social Decay and Regeneration Freeman put forth the view that mechanization had flooded Britain with poor-quality goods and created a "homogenized, restless, unionized working class". Freeman supported the eugenics movement and argued that people with "undesirable" biological traits should be prevented from breeding through "segregation, marriage restriction, and
sterilization". The book also attacked the British Labour movement and criticised the British government for permitting immigrants to settle in Britain. Social Decay and Regeneration referred to the Russian Revolution as "the Russian catastrophe" and argued society needed to protected from " degenerates of the destructive or " Bolshevik " type." Sections of Social Decay and Regeneration were reprinted in Eugenics Review, the journal of the British Eugenics Society.

Anti-Semitism

Freeman's views on Jews were complex stereotypes. They are clearly set out in his eugenicist book Social Decay and Regeneration. Here Freeman states that of vulgarity the only ancient peoples who exhibited it on an appreciable scale were the Jews and especially the Phoenician. Freeman notes that a large proportion of the Alien Unfit crowding the East End of London, largely natives of Easter Europe are Jews. However, the criticism is of the poor rather than of Jews overall as these unfit aliens were far from being the elect of their respective races. Freeman regards that, through restricting marriage with non-Jews, Jews as having practised racial segregation for thousands of years with the greatest success and with very evident benefit to the race. Not surprisingly, some of these views spill over into his fiction.
Grost states that Helen Vardon's Confession is another bad Freeman novel suffering from offensive racial stereotypes, Helen Vardon is blackmailed into marrying the fat, old, moneylender Otway, who was distinctly Semitic in appearance, and is surrounded by Jews, to save her father from prison. Otway acts in bad faith, and is grasping, keeping only one servant despite his great wealth. The whole plot is a gratuitously offensive anti-Semitic stereotype. Grost also states that the use of racial stereotypes in The D'Arblay Mystery marks it as a low point in Freeman's fiction. However, the villain is not Jewish at all, and the only question of stereotypes comes up in the questions about whether the villains hooked nose is a curved Jewish type or, or a squarer Roman nose? There are no anti-Semitic tropes in the book, no grasping money-lender etc. Grost describes Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke, as degenerating into another of Freeman's anti-Semitic diatribes. In this novel the villains are largely Jewish, and come from the community of unfit aliens that Freeman lambastes in Social Decay and Regeneration.
Such offensive representations of Jews in fiction were typical of the time. Rubinstein and Jolles note that while the work of many of the leading detective story writers, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Freeman, featured many gratuitously negative depictions of stereotyped Jewish characters, this ended with the rise of Hitler, and they then portrayed Jews and Jewish refugees in a sympathetic light. Thus with Freeman, the later novels no longer present such gratuitously offensive racial stereotypes, put present Jews much more positively.
In When Rogues Fall Out Mr. Toke describes the Jewish cabinetmaker Levy as A most excellent workman and a thoroughly honest man, high praise from Freeman's pen. The counsel for Dolby the burglar, a good-looking Jew named Lyon executes a particularly brilliant defence of his client which Thorndyke admires. In Felo de Se; or Death at the Inn the croupier is described as: a pleasant faced Jew, calm, impassive and courteous, though obviously very much "on the spot". In The Stoneware Monkey Thorndyke is using a young Jewish man as his messenger. In Mr Polton Explains Polton is assisted first by the Jewish watchmaker Abraham and then by the Jewish solicitor Cohen comes to Polton's aid not once but twice, not only representing him without cost, but feeding him and loaning him money without interest or term.

Critical assessment

Freeman was a significant author of detective fiction in his day. He was most famous for his creation of Dr. Thorndyke, and many of the obituaries recording his death refer to this in the obituary headline. Thus the Birmingham Daily Gazette announced "Dr. Thorndyke" Creator Dead, the Belfast News-Letter announced Obituary Dr. R. A. Freeman, Creator of “Dr. Thorndyke", and the Evening Star announced Obituary: Creator of Dr. Thorndyke.
Critical comment has tended to concentrate on four aspects of Thorndyke: Freeman's quality as a writer; the close attention to logic, scientific accuracy and methods in his stories; the invention of the inverted detective story, and comparisons with Sherlock Holmes. The Times considered that the second and third of these were what singled Freeman out from the ruck.

Writing

In Bloody Murder, Julian Symons wrote that Freeman's ... talents as a writer were negligible. Reading a Freeman story is very much like chewing dry straw. Symons then went on to criticise the way in which Thorndyke spoke. De Blacam also noted Thorndyke's ponderous legal phraseology. However, that pedantic ponderousness is the nature of Thorndyke's character. He is a Barrister and used to weighing his words carefully. He never discusses his analysis until he has built the whole picture. Others do not agree with his assessment of Freeman's writing skills. Raymond Chandler, in a 13 December 1949 letter to Hamish Hamilton said: This man Austin Freeman is a wonderful performer. He has no equal in his genre and he is also a much better writer than you might think, if you were superficially inclined, because in spite of the immense leisure of his writing he accomplishes an even suspense which is quite unexpected.
Binyon's also rates Freeman's writing as inferior to Doyle saying Thorndyke might be the superior detective, Conan Doyle is undeniably the better writer. The Birmingham Daily Post considered that Mr. Austin Freeman was not, perhaps, among the finer artists of the short story, and his longer stories could limp, sometimes but that his approach was very effective.
However, de Blacam makes the point that, quite apart from the description of the investigation, each of the descriptions of the crimes in the inverted stories was a fine piece of descriptive writing. Grost agrees that Freeman's descriptive writing is excellent Adey finds that: Freeman’s writing, though lacking Doyle’s atmospheric touch, was clear and concise, with dry humor and a keen eye for deductive detail. Adams agreed that Freeman had considerable powers of narrative description when he stated that Nothing but the author’s remarkable skill in character delineation and graphic narrative could save his stories from being regarded as technical studies for a course on forensic medicine.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Bleiler noted in 1973 that Freeman ... is one of the very few Edwardian detective story writers who are still read.

The inverted story

Nowadays, the inverted detective story, where we first witness the crime and then watch the attempt to solve it, is commonplace. After all, this is the format of every episode of the television detective series Columbo starring Peter Falk. However, this approach was an innovation in November 1910 when Freeman's Oscar Brodski appeared in Pearson's Magazine. and immediately attracted attention. The Northern Whig said that Oscar Brodski was one of the most powerful detective stories we have ever read. Bleiler said that this story has always been considered one of the landmarks in the history of the detective story.
In his essay The Art of the Detective Story Freeman wrote that in the inverted story: The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell, but I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter. However, Binyon notes that Freeman is being too modest here, and that it was Freeman's art that kept the reader's attention in the second part.

Reviewers approved of Freeman's inverted tales. The Scotsman said that Freeman had ... proved that a tale which tells the story of the crime first, leaving us to follow the sleuth as he tracks the criminal down, may be at least as absorbing as the old yarns which left us in the dark until the end. Rodgers noted that Great narrative skill is needed in order to keep the reader's interest in a story where the crime if revealed at that start and that there have been imitators Freeman alone stands as not only the originator, but as the most successful proponent of this form of detective fiction.

Precision of logic, facts, and method

Freeman paid a great deal of attention to details, and carried out the experiments described in his books to ensure that they worked and would give the expected results. He also went to the trouble of visiting the places he wrote about so that the details in his descriptions were correct. De Balcam says that Freeman displays a mastery of craftsmanship in every story, and that he always used the language of the trade concerned. Freeman is a man who writes of things that he has seen, handled and understood, and not of things that he has met only in print, or in a hazy, inattentive observation. This is a critical aspect of Freeman - he tested the methods the methods he used. The top floor of his house was a workshop and laboratory, and his books sometimes included drawings or micrographs illustrating the evidence.
One instance that shows that the methods and approaches described by Freeman were practicable lies in the prosecution of an apprentice from Barrow for coining. The apprentice had followed a method described in one of the Danby Croker stories by Freeman, and had produced a number of sovereigns that he had successfully passed.
The Birmingham Post noted that his attention to forensic science was fuller and certainly more systematically than any other writer of detective stories and that the accuracy of his stories gained him an exceptionally large proportion of readers of the more exacting and less easily satisfied type.
On logic Adams stated that to read Freemans cases intelligently ... implies a definite exercise in the use of "Mill's Canons of Inductive Logic" and the books offered a very practical means of testing students' understanding of the canons. Herbert notes that Thorndyke's reasoning ... is distinguished by its rigorous logic Thorndyke, like his creator, was a medical man, he was also a barrister, and combined his legal and medical training into a personage of willful dominance, impeccable logic, and scholarly and comprehensive inductive reasoning.

Comparisons with Sherlock Holmes

Inevitably, commentators compared Thorndyke with Holmes. Binyon says that Thorndyke stands out from the other late Victorian and early Edwardian detectives in being a rival to Sherlock Holmes, rather than just owing their existence to him success. Thorndyke is the most impressive and the most intellectually powerful of fictional detectives. Poupard notes that In critical comparisons with Holmes, Dr. Thorndyke is deemed the more accurate thinker and ranked superior as a scientific authority, whereas Holmes is considered the superior literary creation. One immediate clue to the difference between Thorndyke and Holmes, is that Holmes calls his inductive reasoning deduction, a mistake that Thorndyke would never make. Binyon notes that Holmes often makes factual errors, referring to the clue carbuncle as crystallised charcoal, when it contains no carbon, and referring to non-existent species or martial arts.
Ward compares how Holmes deals with a hat as a clue in Doyle's short story The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle with how Thorndyke treats a similar clue in Freeman's short story The Anthropologist at Large. After examining the hat, Holmes declares that:
  1. The man is intellectualas he has a large head size.
  2. That he was once well to do, but is no longeras the hat was an expensive style from three years ago that is now shabby.
  3. That he was a man of foresight, but has suffered moral retrogression, probably due to drinkas the had has had a safety guard fitted to it, but the owner has failed to renew the elastic.
  4. That he is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which had recently been cut and that he used lime creamfrom an examination of the lining
  5. That his wife has ceased to love himas the hat has not been brushed for weeks.
  6. That he probably does not have town-gas in his houseas there are several tallow stains, presumably from guttering candles, on the hat.
For his part, the first observation that Thorndyke makes is that hats often change owners over their lives, so one needs to interpret the evidence with caution. This immediately explodes at least the second and third of Holmes's conclusions. Thorndyke then induces that:
  1. The man is Japanesefrom the shape of the head, as the had has clearly been steamed to fit a particular head, and from a hair sample, which matches Japanese rather than European or African hair.
  2. That he works at a mother of pearl factorydue to the large amount of pearl shell dust inside the hat. At the time, this business was largely carried out by Japanese and Chinese immigrants.
  3. That he is a decent orderly manas there is no accumulation of dust on the outside of his hat.
Ward notes that Thornduke's conclusions are sound, less capricious, and more practical, and allow Thorndyke to track his man down, whereas Holmes has to advertise to find his.
Herbert notes that in comparison to Holmes, Thorndyke has no eccentricities, and his reasoning, unlike that of his contemporary, is distinguished by its rigorous logic — considered purely as a detective, he is perhaps the most impressive of all fictional sleuths.

Longer works by Freeman including collaborations

The following list is based on:
SerUK PubThorndykeOther AuthorPagesFirst publicationOther PublicationNotes
11893A journey to Bontúku : in the interior of West Africap. -146, illus., fold. Map, 25 cm.Lon: Royal Geographical Society
21898Travels and life in Ashanti and Jamanxx, 559p., fs., ill., maps, 24 cm.Lon: ConstableNY: Stokes
31902The Adventures of Romney Pringle, etc.J. J. Pitcairn198 p, 1pl., 8ºLon: Ward LockPhil.: Train
41905The golden pool: a story of a forgotten minevii, 341, 8, 8 p., 8ºLon: CassellNY: Cassell
51907The Red Thumb Mark232 p., 8ºLon: CollingwoodNY: Newton
61909John Thorndyke's Cases 246p., ill., plan, 8vo.Lon: Chatto & WindusNY: Dodd, Mead
71911The eye of Osiris viii, 304, 8 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
81912The mystery of 31, New Innxii, 311 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonPhil.: Winston
91912The singing bone312 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Hodder and Stoughton
101913The Unwilling Adventurer389 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Hodder and Stoughton
111914The uttermost farthing: a savant's vendetta296 p., 8ºPhil.: WinstonLon: Pearson
121914A silent witness, 316 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonPhil.: Winston Being Extracts from a Somewhat Disreputable Autobiography
131916The exploits of Danby Croker307 p., 8ºLon: Duckworth
141918The great portrait mystery318 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & Stoughton
151921Social decay and regenerationxx, 345 p ; 24 cm.Lon: ConstableBoston & NY: Houghton Mifflin
161922Helen Vardon's confession335 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & Stoughton
171923Dr. Thorndyke's case-book 317 p., 8ºNY: Dodd Mead,
181923The cat's eye304 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
191924The mystery of Angelina Frood320 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
201925The puzzle lock320 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
211925The Shadow of the Wolf320 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
221926The D'Arblay mystery312 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
231927The magic casket309 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
241927A certain Dr. Thorndyke310 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
251927The surprising experiences of Mr. Shuttlebury Cobb281 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & Stoughton
261928As a thief in the night320 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
271928Flighty Phyllis315 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & Stoughton<
281929The famous cases of Dr. Thorndykeviii, 1080 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & Stoughton
291930Dr. Thorndyke investigates159 p., 8ºLon: Univ. of Lon. Press
301930Mr. Pottermack's oversight319 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
311931Pontifex, son and Thorndyke320 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
321932When rogues fall out 320 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
331933Dr. Thorndyke intervenes317 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & Stoughton
341934For the defence: Dr. Thorndyke319 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
351936The Penrose mystery317 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
361937Felo de se? 315 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
371938The stoneware monkey288 p., 2pl.: ill., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
381940Mr. Polton explains285 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
391941Dr. Thorndyke's Crime File: a selection of his most celebrated cases xv p., 344 p., 16 p., 312 p., 18 p., 338 p., 8ºNY: Dodd, Mead
401942The Jacob Street mystery 286 p., 8ºLon: Hodder & StoughtonNY: Dodd, Mead
411969The Further Adventures of Romney PringleJ. J. Pitcairn216 p., 8ºPhil.: Train
421973The Best Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories, with an introduction by E. F. Bleilerix, 274 p., 8ºNY: Dover
431973The Stoneware Monkey & The Penrose Mystery: Two Dr.Thorndyke Novels by R. Austin Freeman, with a new Introduction by E. F. Bleilerviii, 440, 15, 8ºNY: Dover
441975From a surgeons diaryJ. J. Pitcairn56 p., 8ºLon: Ferret FantasyPhil.: Train
451975The queen's treasureJ. J. Pitcairn238 p., 8ºPhil.: Train
461999The other eye of Osirisx, 253 p. : ill., 1 port., 8ºShelburne: Battered Box

Details content of short-story collections

  1. The Man with the Nailed Shoes
  2. The Stranger's Latchkey
  3. The Anthropologist at Large
  4. The Blue Sequin
  5. The Moabite Cipher
  6. The Mandarin's Pearl
  7. The Aluminum Dagger
  8. A Message from the Deep Sea
  1. The Case of Oscar Brodski
  2. #Part I. The Mechanism of Crime
  3. #Part II. The Mechanism of Detection
  4. A Case of Premeditation
  5. #Part I. The Elimination of Mr. Pratt
  6. #Part II. Rival Sleuth-Hounds
  7. The Echo of a Mutiny
  8. #Part I. Death on the Girdler
  9. #Part II. "The Singing Bone"
  10. A Wastrel's Romance
  11. #Part I. The Spinster's Guest
  12. #Part II. Munera Pulveris
  13. The Old Lag
  14. #Part I. The Changed Immutable
  15. #Part II. The Ship of the Desert
  1. The Great Portrait Mystery
  2. The Bronze Parrot
  3. The Missing Mortgagee
  4. Powder Blue and Hawthorne
  5. Percival Bland's Proxy
  6. The Attorney's Conscience
  7. The Luck of Barnabas Mudge
  1. The Case of the White Footprints
  2. The Blue Scarab
  3. The New Jersey Sphinx
  4. The Touchstone
  5. A Fisher of Men
  6. The Stolen Ingots
  7. The Funeral Pyre
  1. The Puzzle Lock
  2. The Green Check Jacket
  3. The Seal of Nebuchadnezzar
  4. Phyllis Annesley's Peril
  5. A Sower of Pestilence
  6. Rex v. Burnaby
  7. A Mystery of the Sand-hills
  8. The Apparition of Burling Court
  9. The Mysterious Visitor
  1. The Magic Casket
  2. The Contents of a Mare's Nest
  3. The Stalking Horse
  4. The Naturalist at Law
  5. Mr. Ponting's Alibi
  6. Pandora's Box
  7. The Trail of Behemoth
  8. The Pathologist to the Rescue
  9. Gleanings from the Wreckage
  1. The Case of Oscar Brodski
  2. #Part I. The Mechanism of Crime
  3. #Part II. The Mechanism of Detection
  4. A Case of Premeditation
  5. #Part I. The Elimination of Mr. Pratt
  6. #Part II. Rival Sleuth-Hounds
  7. The Echo of a Mutiny
  8. #Part I. Death on the Sirdler
  9. #Part II. "The Singing Bone"
  10. A Wastrel's Romance
  11. #Part I. The Spinster's Guest
  12. #Part II. Munera Pulveris
  13. The Missing Mortgagee
  14. Percival Bland's Proxy
  15. The Old Lag
  16. #Part I. The Changed Immutable
  17. #Part II. The Ship of the Desert
  18. Stranger's Latchkey
  19. The Anthropologist at Large
  20. The Blue Sequin
  21. The Moabite Cipher
  22. The Aluminum Dagger
  23. The Magic Casket
  24. The Contents of a Mare's Nest
  25. The Stalking Horse
  26. The Naturalist at Law
  27. Mr. Ponting's Alibi
  28. Pandora's Box
  29. The Trail of Behemoth
  30. The Pathologist to the Rescue
  31. Gleanings from the Wreckage
  32. The Puzzle Lock
  33. The Green Check Jacket
  34. The Seal of Nebuchadnezzar
  35. Phyllis Annesley's Peril
  36. A Sower of Pestilence
  37. Rex v. Burnaby
  38. A Mystery of the Sand-hills
  39. The Apparition of Burling Court
  40. The Mysterious Visitor
  41. The Case of the White Footprints
  42. The Blue Scarab
  43. The New Jersey Sphinx
  44. The Touchstone
  45. A Fisher of Men
  46. The Stolen Ingots
  47. The Funeral Pyre
The American edition of this is R. Austin Freeman, The Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus: 38 of His Criminal Investigations as set down by R. Austin Freeman. The American edition includes one story, "The Mandarin's Pearl," printed in the first Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, but omitted from the British omnibus. Two other stories, though also appearing in the first Dr. Thorndyke short-story collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, were omitted from the British and American editions of the omnibus collection: "The Man with the Nailed Shoes" and "A Message from the Deep Sea."
  1. The Case of Oscar Broski
  2. #Part I. The Mechanism of Crime
  3. #Part II. The Mechanism of Detection
  4. A Case of Premeditation
  5. #Part I. The Elimination of Mr. Pratt
  6. #Part II. Rival Sleuth-Hounds
  7. The Echo of a Mutiny
  8. #Part I. Death on the Sirdler
  9. #Part II. "The Singing Bone"
  10. The Mandarin's Pearl
  11. The Blue Sequin
  12. The Moabite Cipher
  13. The Aluminum Dagger
  14. 31 New Inn, which was also published in volume I of the Freeman omnibus, published by Battered Silicon Dispatch Box
  1. The Dead Hand..
  2. The Sign of the Ram
  3. The Mystery of Hoo Marsh
  4. The Mystery of the Seven Banana Skins
  5. Caveat Emptor: The Story of a Pram
  6. Victims of Circumstance
  7. The Great Tobacco "Plant"
  8. Beyond the Dreams of Avarice
  9. A Bird of Passage: A Story of the Thames
  10. The Sleuth-Hounds
  11. The Free Trip
  12. The Comedy of the Artemis
  13. The Resurrection of Matthew Jephson
  14. A Signal Success
  15. The Ebb Tide
  16. By the Black Deep
  17. A Question of Salvage
  18. Under the Clock
  19. The Costume Model
  20. Ye Olde Spotted Dogge
  21. A Suburban Autolycus
  22. A Woman's Vengeance
  23. Ruth
  24. The Great Slump
  25. The Art of the Detective Story
  26. The Cleverest Murder - In Fact or Fiction
  27. The Peasenhall Mystery
  28. Meet Dr Thorndyke

    Short stories written with John James Pitcairn as Clifford Ashdown

The short stories from Cassell's Family Magazine are from the index of fiction prepared for the Victorian Fiction Research Unit, Department of English, University of Queensland by Sue Thomas."

Television Adaptations

A short series featuring Dr Thorndyke was produced by the BBC in 1964, entitled Thorndyke. The title character was played by veteran British actor Peter Copley.
Based on the stories written by R Austin Freeman, the episodes, all of which except the pilot are missing from the BBC archive, were as follows:
Three stories were also adapted as part of the Thames TV series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes in 1971–3. These were:
Both series are available on DVD — in the UK from Network Video and in the United States from Acornmedia.

Radio adaptation

Starting in 2011 the BBC aired radio adaptations of some of the Thorndyke short stories, Thorndyke: Forensic Investigator on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Series 1

November 2011 read by Jim Norton
  1. A Mysterious Visitor
  2. The Puzzle Lock
  3. A Mystery of the Sand Hills
  4. Pathologist to the Rescue
  5. The Secret of the Urn
  6. Pandora's Box

    Series 2

March 2013 read by William Gaminara
  1. The Stolen Ingots
  2. Rex v Burnaby
  3. The Stalking Horse

    In popular culture

Literature