Frederick Seddon - Background

Background

Frederick Seddon was born in Liverpool to William Seddon and Mary Ann (née Kennen) on 21 January 1872. He married Margaret Ann (née Jones) (1878–1946) on 31 December 1893, and had five children with her: William James Seddon (1894–); Margaret Seddon (1896–); Frederick Henry Seddon Jr (1897–); Ada Seddon (1905–), and Lilian Louisa Agnes Emma Seddon (1911–). His father also lived with him.

At one time Seddon had been a Freemason, being initiated into Liverpool's Stanley Lodge No. 1325 in 1901. He resigned a year later to move south. In 1905 he is named as a founding petitioner of Stephens Lodge No. 3089 at Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. He resigned from both Lodges in 1906.

In 1909, Seddon bought a fourteen-room house at 63 Tollington Park, near London's Finsbury Park area and worked as a Superintendent of Collectors for a national insurance company. He had an obsession with making money; he ran a second-hand clothes business in his wife's name and also speculated in real estate. At some stage he had the idea of duping money out of another person, so he and his wife advertised to let out the second floor of their London home. A near-neighbour, Eliza Mary Barrow (born 1863), a 47-year-old eccentric spinster responded to this advertisement, moving in with her ward Ernest George Grant, the eight-year-old nephew of her friend, on 26 July 1910. Previously she had shared lodgings with her cousin, Frank Vonderahe, but she hoped the new arrangement with Seddon would be cheaper.