The third son of George William Mason JP, of Morton Hall, Retford, Nottinghamshire, by his marriage to Marianne Atherton Mitford (born 1821 in India), a daughter of Captain Joseph George Mitford (1791–1875), of the Madras Army, Mason was educated at Repton School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Lieutenant-General Sir George Cornish Whitlock (1798–1868) was a British Madras Army officer, who commanded the Madras Column (also called the Saugor and Nerbudda field force) during the Indian Mutiny.
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Sir Frederic, after completing his education in Paris, King's College School, and King's College London, entered the Madras army in the year 1839, when the first Afghan war was in progress, but he was not among those who fought in that campaign.
The Madras Army participated in the relief of Cawnpore in which Lieutenant-Colonel James George Smith Neill of the Madras Fusiliers indulged in indiscriminate massacre of Indians and was eventually killed.
James married secondly at Secunderabad, on 29 March 1832, to Sophia Ann, daughter of General Thomas Truman, of the Madras Army.