R. Austin Freeman, the son of Richard Freeman and Ann Maria Dunn, was born in Soho on 11 April 1862. His father was a journeyman tailor. Freeman, the youngest of four sons, had been named for his father, but (apparently in his teens) he assumed Austin as his given name in compliance with the wishes of the tailor who employed his father and eventually left him the business. In later years Freeman would put off interviewers who wanted to know something of his private life with the observation, "I have no desire for personal publicity." The fact is, he wished his progenitors were people of greater distinction. Thus, at fifty-three, he wrote to Constance Freeman, his brother Robert's daughter, whom his son Lawrence was about to visit: "Do not be expansive ... on the subject of our rather complicated family history ... very little has been said to him by me ...
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