He was also a pioneer of the spy story, and in 2003, his series The Romance of the Secret Service Fund (written in 1899) was edited by Douglas G. Greene and published by Battered Silicon Dispatch Box.
His second name, "Merrick", was the maiden name of his mother, Helen, who married his father, Joseph, in West Bromwich in the September quarter of 1858.
In 1891 White was working full-time as a journalist and author, presumably earning enough to support himself and his mother, Helen, who, in the census record for that year figures as the head of the household in the Barton Road villa.
In the 1911 census, Fred M. White, aged 52, and his wife Clara were living at Uckfield, a town in East Sussex.
His novel 'The Seed of Empire' (1916) describes some of the early trench warfare in great detail and the places and events are historically accurate.
A number of novels published in the 1920s concern the social changes caused by the war and the difficulties of ex-soldiers in fitting back into normal civilian life.
Fred and Clara spent their final years in Barnstaple in the County of Devon, an area which provided the backdrop for his novels The Mystery of Crocksands, The Riddle of the Rail and The Shadow of the Dead Hand.