Early Life To 1877
Frederic Halford was born Frederic Michael Hyam into a wealthy Jewish family of German ancestry in 1844 in Birmingham, England. His parents, Samuel and Phoebe Hyam, moved to London when Frederic was 7. Samuel Hyam, and his brothers Lawrence and Benjamin, were very prosperous manufacturers of textiles and clothing in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. In 1875, all the Hyams changed their name to Halford.
At the age of 7, Halford began attending University College School (UCS) in London. When he left UCS in 1860 he went to work in one of the family businesses. Very little is known of his business career except that he retired from business at the age of 45 in 1889 to become a full-time angler. In February 1866, he became an officer in the 36th Middlesex Volunteers for a short period of time, during which he learned how to shoot.
His first experience of fishing was in a small London pond at the age of 6 and as a boy he fished the Serpentine and the Long Pool in Hyde Park. As a teenager, he regularly fished the Thames with conventional tackle for sea trout, bream, and pike. His largest fish was a Brown trout from the Thames that weighed 9.75 pounds (4.42 kg) in 1870.
Halford's first experiences in fly fishing were at the age of 24 in 1868 when, through the generosity of a family friend, he was given a free beat on the River Wandle, a pristine trout stream to the southwest of London.
In the late 1860s, the dry fly was in use to some extent on the Wandle, but as a fly-fishing technique it was in its infancy. Halford learned the basics of fly fishing on the Wandle, a river he fished regularly every summer until 1881.
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