Frederick was born at Tennant Street, Stockton in 1869; the eleventh child of John Hunton and his wife, Mary Ann. He was educated at Bishop Auckland Grammar School before going on to study Medicine at the Medical College in Newcastle upon Tyne, from where he graduated with an M.B. and B.S. in September 1891.
Frederick went on to earn his medical doctorate in September 1893. By 1895 Frederick was a general practitioner in Norton, and in early 1898 he was living in Stockton where he married Maude Mary Laing Young. They had three children. A year later they moved to nearby Sedgefield. Maude died, aged 26 in 1902, and five years later Frederick married her sister, Eleanor, with whom he had a further two children. Frederick acted as the Sedgefield Medical Officer, and in 1910 was elected to sit on the County Council. He was subsequently re-elected unopposed in 1913.
In 1914, Frederick, at the age of 45, volunteered to join the Army, and was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps as a Lieutenant. He was initially attached to the Northumberland Hussars Yeomanry, a Territorial Force cavalry unit, and was promoted to the rank of Captain on 17 June 1915.
In April 1916, Frederick broke his leg after falling from a horse while visiting the Territorial hospital based at Armstrong College, and subsequently spent six weeks recuperating. Sometime between June and December 1916, Frederick departed Britain for France, before sailing to Egypt from Marseilles on 20th of December.
From January 1917, he was attached to 15th Military Hospital at Abbassieh, Alexandria. Less than a month later, Frederick was seconded to the East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry, and two weeks later to the Casualty Clearing Station attached to the 53rd (Welsh) Division at Ismailia. Frederick was killed during an enemy bombing run on the British-Ottoman front in Gaza, in May 1917 at the age of 47.