Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

children until she could look to her two sons to take over as the main breadwinners. (To add to Ellen’s pain, a fifth child had died in infancy just six months before Hubert’s death.) No doubt life was hard for a time. But we do know that at some point after the death of her husband, Ellen moved with her children to a house in Brocco Bank Road in the Hunters Bar district, to the west of Sheffield town centre. Hunters Bar was a more attractive suburb than the now increasingly grimy Pitsmoor. The family’s new home was a substantial stone-built house, facing the entrance to Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens. It was much nearer to the Grammar School than was the Burngreave Road house. This might even have been one of the reasons for the move. There is no doubt that Hubert and Ellen Sugg wished their sons to follow their father into the legal profession. On leaving school Walter and Frank were articled to a Mr K.E.Binns, a Sheffield solicitor, situations no doubt arranged by their father. Articled clerks had to undergo several years of ‘on-the-job’ training and study in preparing for the professional examinations. The brothers did not find the life of an articled clerk very congenial. Sport was their main interest in life and they were already well-known performers locally in a number of sports. They were keen to play as much as possible. Eventually, the brothers’ absences from the office to play cricket or football became so frequent and irritating to Mr Binns that he required them to make up their minds to devote themselves to the law or to sport: they could not have both, he declared. 16 This ultimatum must have given Frank and Walter serious cause for thought. They knew from personal and family experience that qualification as a solicitor would give them security and a good prospect of a comfortable income. On the other hand, even if they were to prove good enough to play cricket professionally, the brothers would have known that cricketers were paid very little and that a cricketer’s career was short, even if not cut off by injury, loss of form or just bad luck. We 18 Family Background and Early Days The Sugg family lived in this house in Brocco Bank Road, Sheffield in the 1870s. 16 Obituary of Frank Sugg, The Daily Independent , 31 May 1933.