Frederick was born in Islington in 1913. His mother Florence died in 1937 and his father Charles the year after, so in 1939 he moved into lodgings with the BERRY family at 15 Miranda Road which was only a few minutes' walk away from 11 Grovedale Road in Islington which had been his family home for over twenty years. Whether or not Frederick and Olive BERRY knew each other before he moved in is unclear but the following year, on 22 June 1940, they were married in the Garrison Church of St Martin, Catterick Camp.

At the start of World War 2 Frederick was training in the Army as a signalman in the Royal Signals. He lived in Kemmel Lines barracks at Catterick Camp in Yorkshire. Its name commemorated a battle in which British troops held Kemmel Hill (near Ypres in Flanders) against a determined German onslaught in 1918. There were about thirty brick huts, built in WW1 and heated by stoves with tall iron chimneys in the middle of each hut - an early but very inefficient form of 'central heating'!

Where Frederick saw service is not yet available but by May 1946, when Olive gave birth to twins David and Susan, they were living with his mother-in-law Annie at 5a Westbourne Drive, Lewisham. Before the war he had been a gas fitter; he spent the war as a signalman; and now he was an agricultural trainee on a one-year scheme run by the Ministry of Agriculture for returning servicemen. It's not clear where in Lewisham he used his new found agricultural skills but the family continued to live at Westbourne Drive until about 1950 when they moved to 2 Amblecote Road. By the late 1950s they had moved up the road to number 34.