Backstory
Jack Sugden was born in 1947 at Emmerdale Farm in Beckindale. He left the village in the spring of 1964 after a row with father Jacob over intensive farming, wanting to see more of the world than Beckindale, and went to London. He had unknowingly got his childhood sweetheart Ruth Harker pregnant. She married local thug Tom Merrick that year and tricked him into thinking that the baby was his. In October 1972, Jack heard his father had died and this brought him back to Beckindale for the show's opening episode.
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