Frederick and his parents and grandparents lived in Newmarket, in Northampton, and in or south of Birmingham. Most of their recorded occupations are connected with the different activities and industries specific to those areas: horse racing (Newmarket), shoes (Northampton), and needles (south of Birmingham).
These results are based on readily-available Internet sources, including census results from 1841 to 1901. I have also obtained a small number of birth, death and marriage certificates.
Fred's father John Smith Pinfield was born in Birmingham about 1859. In the 1881 census he is recorded working as a groom in Newmarket, Suffolk. By 1891 he had become a racing correspondent and remained in Newmarket for the rest of his life. It was then and still is the centre of English horse racing and training.
Fred's grandfather John Pinfield, and his brothers and sisters, were employed in needle manufacture in and around Redditch, south of Birmingham. Entaco (the English Needle and Tackle Company) still manufactures needles in the area, and is the only remaining manufacturer of hand sewing needles in the UK. It can be traced back to 1730. The Forge Mill Needle Museum preserves much of the water-powered machinery that was originally involved.
Needle manufacture shared most of the characteristics of pin manufacture, in particular the multiple skills involved. Adam Smith (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776) described the spectacular effects on that industry of the division of labour:
One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands ..
I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them .. upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day .. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day.
It appears that Fred moved to Cambridge from Newmarket after 1901, where he met Hilda French. He may have worked as a grocer's assistant in Trinity Street. He married Hilda in Brentford, Middlesex, in 1908. At the time of the 1911 Census Fred was in Wembley, and Hilda was with her mother-in-law (Eliza Pinfield) and eldest child in Newmarket.
Fred served in the Royal Field Artillery in WWI. He was included in the National Roll of the Great War, a summary of the war service of some 100,000 men and women that was compiled after the end of hostilities:
Pinfield, F.J., Corporal, R.F.A.
Volunteering in 1915. he was drafted in the same year to the Western Front, where he took part in several important engagements, including those of Ypres, Arras and the Somme. He was present also in the Retreat and Advance of 1918. He holds the 1914-15 Star, General Service and Victory Medals, and was demobilised in May 1919.
Some of this is confirmed by the index card that records Fred's campaign medals.
Fred and Hilda lived in the London area for a while after WWI (Peter Pinfield was born in Acton, Middlesex in 1920) and later moved to Eastbourne.
John Pinfield (Frederick's grandfather) is recorded in the 1861 census as living at Webheath (Worcestershire) with his parents William (b 1809) and Jane (b 1807). William and Jane were probably the William Pinfield and Jane Toley who were married nearby in 1832: the children's names and ages match. That William's parents were John Pinfield and Esther Abel who were married nearby in 1793 (source: Edward Hands - I have been unable to contact him).
The earlier John Pinfield may perhaps be the John Pinfield accused at the Worcestershire Quarter Sessions of Midsummer 1798:
Examination of William Birch, Tardebigg, needlemaker: at 4 am one morning he saw John Pinfield, Tardebigg, needlemaker, go from his house to the foldyard of Mr Heming, Tardebigg, & fill a scuttle with muck & dung from the cow stall & in all took 3 scuttlefulls, afterwards putting straw over where he had taken the dung.
John Pinfield denied the charge. However at the Easter 1802 Quarter Sessions:
John Pinfield, Tardebigg, needlemaker, was convicted of neglecting for 8 days to make needles from a bundle of wire & meanwhile took in material from another master.
Frederick's other grandfather was William Johnson (b abt 1844). Several of his relations emigrated to New Zealand in the 1870s:
The links below contain relevant images; a tree of Frederick Pinfield's direct ancestors, as I have been able to establish them back in time; family trees of his great-grandfather John Johnson and great-great-grandfather John Pinfield as I have been able to follow them forwards; and a summary of census results from 1841 to 1901.
Fred's Direct Ancestors A Pinfield Family Tree A Johnson Family Tree
Text revised February 2009