Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

are only illusions, Christian Scientists prefer cremation to burial as the means of disposing of the body. Could Frank Sugg have been cremated after the funeral at St Luke’s? A check of the records of crematoriums in the Liverpool drew a blank, providing no support for this possibility. However uncomfortable to family members, or surprising to anyone who has read of Frank Sugg, ‘a talented man’, the fact is that Frank is buried in an unmarked, public grave on the edge of St Luke’s churchyard in an area also occupied by numbers of Liverpool’s paupers. What were Frank Sugg’s financial circumstances at the time of his death? It is hard to say. For a start he left no will and his surviving family members have no information on the point. According to his granddaughter, the Suggs lived ‘the life of Riley’ in their heyday. Then Frank lost money as his sports business foundered after the First World War and also with the failure of a number of more speculative business ventures. If the suspicions of Walter Sugg’s side of the family are accepted, Frank’s estate might have been encumbered with accumulated gambling debts. It may be hard to believe that Frank was penniless when he died, but the possibility is that he had little or no money by that time. Even if that is the case, however, it hardly explains the absence of a headstone. 116 His son and daughters, one or more of whom (or their spouses) might then have paid for the funeral, could have been expected to pay also for a grave and headstone at St Luke’s. They were very fond of their father, they ‘revered’ him according to his granddaughter, and it is hard to think of a reason why they should not have wanted to erect a headstone to his memory. Bert Sugg, who had so recently buried his own father, Walter, was a wealthy man and one who would have been very aware of the proprieties of a family bereavement. Could his antipathy to Frank have been such that he was not prepared to contribute to a headstone on Frank’s grave? This may seem unlikely but family feuding can have unlikely consequences. I have to admit that the reason for Frank Sugg’s ‘sad end’ remains an intriguing mystery. 117 A Sad End 123 116 The church authorities say they have no knowledge of Frank’s circumstances at the time of his death or of why his grave has no headstone. 117 None of the many obituaries and tributes that were published after Frank Sugg’s death made any reference to financial difficulties or strained relations within the Sugg family. That of course is as would be expected.