Walter Freeman

Personal life

Freeman was born in 1884 in Handsworth, which was then in Staffordshire. His father, Thomas Holte Freeman, was a jeweller, and his mother, Sarah, was a draper. At the time of the 1891 census, he was the eighth of ten children living in the parental home. The ninth, Bert, became a prolific goalscorer for Woolwich Arsenal, Everton, Burnley and Wigan Borough, and played five times for England.

Before taking up football full-time, Freeman had trained and worked as an electrician, and described himself as such when he married Catherine Harriett Whiteman in 1907; by the time of the 1911 Census, the couple had three children. The 1939 Register finds Freeman still working as an electrician. He, his wife, and two daughters of working age were living in Moor Park Road, Northfield, Birmingham. Freeman was still resident at that address when he died in December 1971 at the age of 87.

Football career

Freeman attended Gower Street School in Aston, whose football team won the district schools' title in both of the two years that Freeman was a member. He played youth football for Aston ManorAston Villa's nursery club where his brother Bert was already on the books. Freeman played for the reserves, but never broke through to the first team, and when Bert joined Woolwich Arsenal that November, Freeman followed him to London a few weeks later when he signed for Fulham of the Southern League. He scored 10 goals from 28 matches to help Fulham win the 1906–07 Southern League title, after which they were elected to the Football League Second Division. Freeman made his Football League debut on the opening day of Fulham's first season at that level, and in the next match, a 1–0 win away to Derby County on 7 September 1907, he scored both his and Fulham's first ever Football League goal. He played five matches in September, and did not return to the league side until January 1909, when a run of seven goals in six matches earned him a regular place in the team until the end of the season. and was then transferred to another Second Division club, Birmingham, against whom he had scored twice the previous season. He helped them win that division, after which he and they spent two seasons in the Central League, although the second half of his 1913–14 season was affected by injury.

Career statistics