Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

the growing demand for better education than the Royal Grammar School (as it became known) could provide, especially in more modern subjects than the classics, two new schools were established in Sheffield in the 1830s, the Anglican Collegiate School and the Wesleyan Wesley College. The Grammar School continued, but most of the boys were under 14 years of age and the level of educational attainment was not high. It was in this period that the Sugg brothers were pupils. The school’s premises were in St George’s Square. It was very Victorian, according to a contemporary description: It was a stone building which I think was in keeping with St George’s Church. From St George’s Square, you entered through a stone archway and there to the left was the small caretaker’s house, and then the pathway went round to the porch into which the main door opened to the large main room of the school. The floor was stone flagged and was very cold in winter. A stove stood in the centre of the room, cracked and worn. We had no gas, and water was turned into an old stone trough at play-hours outside the school. 13 Frank was an enthusiast for all sorts of games and we can be sure that he would have taken full advantage of anything that was on offer at the Grammar School, however rudimentary it may have been. There must have been some organised cricket. A newspaper reports that ‘whilst at school Frank was forbidden to play [cricket] by the headmaster, the reason being that he broke too many windows.’ 14 It is unlikely that this was an absolute ban. Frank tells us in an interview in 1896 that one of his schoolmasters, a Mr Hobbs, told him that he was a promising bowler and ‘should be in the first flight’. 15 Presumably Mr Hobbs was not the headmaster! Ironically, bowling was to prove one of the lesser of Sugg’s accomplishments in the first-class game. Even before Frank had started at the Grammar School, he had lost his father. Hubert Sugg died in 1871 when he was only 38 years old. Hubert’s death must have been a savage blow to Ellen. Hubert was a successful solicitor in the town with a practice that specialised in bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings. We do not know how the widowed Ellen supported herself and her four Family Background and Early Days 17 13 James A.Figorski, King Edward VII School, KES Magazine , July 1948. 14 Lorna Brown cutting. 15 Cricket , 23 April 1896.