Herbert Sutcliffe - Personal and Business Life

Personal and Business Life

Sutcliffe married Emily ("Emmie") Pease at Pudsey Parish Church in September 1921. She had been a personal secretary to Richard Ingham, a mill owner who had introduced Sutcliffe to Pudsey St Lawrence. They had three children, two sons called Billy and John; and a daughter called Barbara. Billy Sutcliffe, whose middle name was Hobbs, played for Yorkshire between 1948 and 1957, captaining the team in the last two seasons of his career.

At the end of the 1924–25 tour of Australia, Sutcliffe and his Yorkshire colleague George Macaulay went into business together as a sports outfitting company with shops in Leeds and Wakefield. However, Macaulay withdrew from the business after a year and it became a Sutcliffe family concern until it folded in the 1990s. The business thrived while Sutcliffe was playing cricket and established itself as one of the leading sports goods retailers in the north of England. Sutcliffe ceased to have an active role in 1948 when he handed over the management to his son Billy.

Sutcliffe became the northern area representative, and eventually a director, of a paper manufacturer called Thomas Owen which was later amalgamated into Wiggins Teape. This firm also employed Douglas Jardine as company secretary, while Maurice Leyland, Bill Edrich and Len Hutton were other area representatives.

Sutcliffe developed severe arthritis in his old age, the disease crippling him to the extent that he needed a wheelchair. He suffered personal tragedy in April 1974 when his wife Emmie, then aged 74, died as result of severe burns following a fire at the family home in Ilkley. He was finally admitted to a Cross Hills nursing home where he died in January 1978 at the age of 83.