His father, also Frederick Rogers, was variously a dock labourer, sailor, and linen drapers assistant; his mother Susan Bartrup a laundress.

He was also greatly interested in English literature and was considered to be extremely well-read - "the most scholarly man I know in the Labour movement", according to an anonymous writer in a 1909 Railway Review article.

Direct involvement in the English literature teaching at Toynbee Hall facilitated Rogers' introduction to many socially concerned literary figures of the period.

[6] In 1892 he assumed the presidency of the Vellum (Account Book) Trade Society, it having been damaged by failed industrial action, and held the post for the next 6 years.

Stead and Rogers dedicated a decade of work, writing pamphlets and books, lobbying parliament and religious leaders, and travelling the length of the country to speak for the cause.

[11] He parted company from his liberal and socialist colleagues in the 1901-6 period over disagreements about the future of education, and later served as a Conservative Alderman on London County Council from 1910 to 1911.

An obituary noted the contrast between his outside form - "strange and blurred" - and his character - "sound-hearted, sound-tempered, straight, clear, simple, good ... the most companionable of fellow workers, so reliable, so steady, so right.