After education at Sir Thomas Rich's Blue Coat Hospital, he worked for a Gloucester corn and seed merchant.
In 1879 he filled a temporary vacancy as lecturer and demonstrator in botany at Guy's Hospital Medical School.
The following winter he studied botany and zoology at the Royal School of Mines in London, also taking up writing for the agricultural press.
Early in 1880 he joined John Wrightson in establishing and developing the College of Agriculture at Downton, Wiltshire.
In 1890 Eleanor Anne Ormerod chose Fream to be the first Steven lecturer at Edinburgh University on agricultural entomology; he had included the first course on the subject in Great Britain in his curriculum at Downton, and remained Steven lecturer for the rest of his life.
He was a chief examiner in the principles of agriculture under the Science and Art Department, South Kensington.