section_path: Early life/Childhood
section_name: Childhood
paragraph_text: Childhood
  
  Frederick Walter Stephen West was born on 29 September 1941, at Bickerton Cottage, Much Marcle, Herefordshire, the first surviving child of Walter Stephen West (1914–1992) and Daisy Hannah Hill (1922–1968). Fred was from a poor family of farm workers, close-knit and mutually protective; his father was a disciplinarian and his mother overprotective.
  
  In 1946 the family moved to Moorcourt Cottage, a semi-detached building adjacent to Moorcourt Farm, on the outskirts of Much Marcle, where Fred's father worked as a milking herdsman and harvest hand. The cottage had no electricity and was heated by a log fire. By 1951 Fred's mother had given birth to eight children, six of whom survived; Fred was always his mother's favourite. He was seen as a mother's boy and relied mostly on his siblings for companionship.
  
  The West children were expected to perform assigned chores and all six did seasonal work, the three girls picking hops and strawberries, the three boys harvesting wheat and hunting rabbits. The necessity of working to earn a living and to survive instilled a strong work ethic in Fred, who also developed a lifelong habit of petty theft.
  
  Classmates later recalled Fred as being scruffy, dim, lethargic, and regularly in trouble. Although barely numerate and displaying the literacy level of a seven-year-old, he displayed an aptitude for woodwork and artwork. He left school with no qualifications in December 1956 at the age of 15, initially working alongside his father as a labourer both at Moorcourt Farm and a neighbouring farm.
  
  Fred later claimed that he had been sexually abused by his mother at age 12, that he had engaged in acts of bestiality in his early teens, and that his belief that incest was normal stemmed from his father's incest with Fred's sisters. Fred's youngest brother, Douglas, dismissed these claims as fantasy.
  
  Frederick Walter Stephen West was born on 29 September 1941, at Bickerton Cottage, Much Marcle, Herefordshire, the first surviving child of Walter Stephen West (1914–1992) and Daisy Hannah Hill (1922–1968). Fred was from a poor family of farm workers, close-knit and mutually protective; his father was a disciplinarian and his mother overprotective.
  
  In 1946 the family moved to Moorcourt Cottage, a semi-detached building adjacent to Moorcourt Farm, on the outskirts of Much Marcle, where Fred's father worked as a milking herdsman and harvest hand. The cottage had no electricity and was heated by a log fire. By 1951 Fred's mother had given birth to eight children, six of whom survived; Fred was always his mother's favourite. He was seen as a mother's boy and relied mostly on his siblings for companionship.
  
  The West children were expected to perform assigned chores and all six did seasonal work, the three girls picking hops and strawberries, the three boys harvesting wheat and hunting rabbits. The necessity of working to earn a living and to survive instilled a strong work ethic in Fred, who also developed a lifelong habit of petty theft.
  
  Classmates later recalled Fred as being scruffy, dim, lethargic, and regularly in trouble. Although barely numerate and displaying the literacy level of a seven-year-old, he displayed an aptitude for woodwork and artwork. He left school with no qualifications in December 1956 at the age of 15, initially working alongside his father as a labourer both at Moorcourt Farm and a neighbouring farm.
  
  Fred later claimed that he had been sexually abused by his mother at age 12, that he had engaged in acts of bestiality in his early teens, and that his belief that incest was normal stemmed from his father's incest with Fred's sisters. Fred's youngest brother, Douglas, dismissed these claims as fantasy.