Born at Penpol, Hayle, Cornwall on 18 September 1875, the sixth son and seventh child of Christopher Ellis, brewer, and Barbara Curnow, his wife. He was educated at Newton College, began his medical studies at King's College Hospital, and qualified MRCS and FRCS at the June examination in 1905. He was then elected resident house surgeon at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, matriculated in the University and graduated with distinction in arts and medicine, receiving the MD with commendation in 1907, after acting as house surgeon to the Aberdeen Hospital for Sick Children. In 1904 he was appointed assistant medical officer at the Highgate Infirmary, and after a term at the Southwark Infirmary he went to Birmingham in 1909 as superintendent of the Selly Oak Hospital. In 1913 he was appointed chief medical officer to the Birmingham Union, with charge of the Dudley Road Hospital and Birmingham Infirmary; at that time the Dudley Road Hospital was known as the Birmingham Workhouse Infirmary. It was taken over for military use during the war, as the 21st Southern General Hospital RAMC(T) Birmingham, Ellis acting as the administrator, 1915-19, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. The hospital returning to its original status at the end of the war, Ellis resumed control and introduced a scheme for training the chronic sick and providing for the accommodation of those who were poor and acutely ill. It was a part of his scheme to utilize the services of physicians and surgeons of consulting rank and to obtain a better class of trained nurses for what had been known previously as the workhouse infirmaries. The Dudley Road Hospital became a model on which municipal hospitals were established in many other parts of the country in 1929. Ellis was president of the Medical Superintendents Society and filled the chair of the clinical and pathological section of the Birmingham branch of the British Medical Association. He married Constance Maude Frances Sanders on 19 October 1909. She survived him with four children, three sons and a daughter. Two of his sons entered the medical profession and the third held a commission in the Indian Army. He died at 68 Hagley Road, Birmingham, on 27 May 1939. It was well said of Frederick Ellis that he was an outstanding personality in the municipal hospital and public assistance medical service. He attained his ends by sympathy, courage, and determination. His artistic temperament and wide outlook made him a good companion, but heavy responsibility left him little time to pursue his hobby of painting, though more than once he exhibited at the Birmingham Royal Water Colour Society.