Fred was the youngest child of Isaac Lester and Maria Chester who had married on Christmas Day 1875 at All Saints Church in Loughborough, they went on to have nine children although two died in childhood.
The 1881 Census shows the family living in Nottingham, Isaac was working as a Framework Knitter and the couple had three children, Edith, William H and Frank. Ten years later the family had moved to Leicester, they were living at 46 Connaught Street in the Highfields area and now had three more children, Arthur and William, who were born in Sheffield as well as Herbert born in Leicester. They had two more children before the 1901 Census, Albert born in 1892 and died in 1905 and finally Fred born in 1896.
By the time Fred was 15 he was living at 40 Ripon Street with his parents and older brother Frank aged 30 who was a Warehouse Man. When he was 21, he married Doris Winifred Sutcliffe on 20/11/1915 at St Mary Magdalen Church in Knighton. Doris gave birth to their son, Cecil Fred on 10/12/1915, who was baptised at St Michael & All Angels Church on 12th March 1916, they lived at 2 Oakland Road in Knighton. Sadly, later that year Fred’s father died.
Fred was Killed in Action on 22/6/1917 and is buried in Villers-Faucon Cemetery in France. His inscription reads ‘To My Dear Father With Love From Freddy Sometime We’ll Understand’. Freddy was only 6 months old when his father died.
As his family originally came from Loughborough Fred’s name is also on the Carillon Tower Memorial, in Queens Park, which was built as a memorial to the local men who gave their lives while serving their country.
