Winifred Lisle Starley nee Barrett was born on 23 February 1886, one of the three children of Charles and Emma Elizabeth nee Byatt. Her father was a sports journalist and the family lived in London's Fleet Street. On 16 February 1919 she married, at the journalists' church of St Bride's, John Percy Starley, a distant relation of the bicycle-manufacturing Starleys and they came to live in Eagle Street, Coventry, going on to have three sons and a daughter. Just the previous year John Percy (or J.P. as he was known) had joined the firm Radenite, in Coventry, which made accumulators for the car industry. He became a director of the company in 1924 and it was later known as Radenite Batteries. The company prospered and J.P. and Winifred moved to Crossways, a large house in Finham.
Winifred died on 24 October 1941 when she was just 55 years old. J.P. re-married in 1952, to Lydia Elizabeth Aiken, and died in Coventry, residing at Cannon House, Cannon Close, in 1961, Lydia surviving him by 15 years.