[2] He later earned his living as a prolific writer of detective novels written under several pseudonyms including John Rhode, Miles Burton and Cecil Waye.

[5] Street remained "modestly circumspect" about his privileged background in later life and valued "a man's personal accomplishments over his family heritage".

Before the First World War, he lived at Summerhill, a regency country mansion outside Lyme Regis (later owned by the Scottish educator A. S. Neill and run as a school, the name being subsequently used for his school at Leiston, Suffolk), where he was a shareholder in, and chief engineer for, the Lyme Regis Electric Light & Power Company.

The Dr. Priestley novels were among the first mysteries after R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke books to feature scientific detection of crimes,[10] such as analysing the mud on suspects' shoes.

[13] The only detailed account of Street's life and works was written by the crime fiction historian Curtis Evans in his 2012 book Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery who wrote the book "in part to give a long overdue reappraisal of these purportedly "humdrum" detection writers as accomplished literary artists.

Not only did they produce a goodly number of fine fair play puzzles, but their clever tales have more intrinsic interest as social documents and even sometimes as literary novels than they have been credited with having.