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Author Topic: From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - Charles Edward Sutcliffe (1864–1939)  (Read 114 times)

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Timbo

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We now have more from From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. My error on this was searching for "referee" in the title, rather than in the complete text. Having sifted the the football referees therein, I now have a handful of further posts for you !

Sutcliffe, Charles Edward

(1864–1939)

by Matthew Taylor

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/64559

Published in print: 23 September 2004
Published online: 23 September 2004

Sutcliffe, Charles Edward (1864–1939), football administrator, was born at 38 Parsonage Street, Burnley, Lancashire, on 8 July 1864, the second of the four sons of John Sutcliffe, solicitor's clerk and later solicitor, and his wife, Jane Pollard Brown. He followed his father and elder brother into the legal profession by joining the family firm in Burnley as a clerk at the beginning of the 1880s and qualified as a solicitor in July 1886. At about this time he married Annie (1867–1924), with whom he had two sons and a daughter. He became involved with organized football in his home town, first as a rugby half-back before changing along with the Burnley club to the more spectacular association game. He gave up playing around the mid-1880s but continued his involvement with the game as a member of Burnley's committee and then directorate.

After joining the Football League's list of referees in 1891 Sutcliffe, known as C. E. or Charlie, to his friends, quickly earned a reputation as an obstinate and controversial official. His actions often made him unpopular with spectators and club officials alike, as during a league match between Blackburn Rovers and Liverpool in 1896, when he disallowed six goals in succession, or on another occasion when he was alleged to have escaped from an angry crowd of spectators by leaving Sunderland's Roker Park dressed as a policeman. Notwithstanding his controversial reputation he was appointed to officiate in numerous international matches in the British Isles in addition to his league and cup appointments, although he was never chosen to referee the FA cup final.

Sutcliffe, however, earned his real reputation after he had finished refereeing, as an administrator associated closely with the development of the Football League. He was elected to the management committee of the league in 1898 and, with the exception of the 1902–3 season, stayed there for the rest of his life, becoming a vice-president in 1927, president in 1936, and a life member in 1938. He was the main architect of the league's rapid growth from a parochial clique of thirty-two clubs drawn mainly from the north and midlands of England at the turn of the century to a truly national body of eighty-eight clubs in four divisions by 1923, and worked tirelessly devising new legislative schemes in every area of the league's activities. One of his major legacies was his method for constructing the league's fixture list based on a complex system of charts and maps, which he bequeathed to his son Harold on his death.

As a stout defender of league interests in the committee room, the law court, and the press, Sutcliffe was the main advocate of the philosophy of mutual support, whereby the richer clubs within the league ‘family’ supported the poorer ones. For this reason he stood firm in the 1890s against the leaders of football's governing body, the Football Association, who wanted to remove the league's retain-and-transfer system and later established the legality of the system by representing the Aston Villa club during the Kingaby case of 1912. In addition, he almost single-handedly kept the league functioning during the First World War by persuading clubs, players, and officials to contribute to a central financial pool for the preservation of those in distress. Sutcliffe's legal expertise, allied to powerful oratorial skills, was instrumental to his success. However, he was not without his critics, many of whom found themselves the victim of his tongue or his pen. In particular, he waged a long battle through his weekly newspaper columns with the Players' Union and those professional footballers who he believed were intent on bankrupting clubs through lavish financial demands. Despite being a member of the FA council for many years, he also crossed swords regularly with the gentlemen amateurs of the governing body with whom he had little in common. He was blunt and uncompromising, a characteristic shared by many of the league administrators from 'the harder, Northern school' (Sharpe, 157).

A small, frail man, Sutcliffe's physical appearance belied his strong character and ceaseless energy. Alongside his numerous football activities, he was a practising solicitor in Rawtenstall and the Rossendale valley, Lancashire, whither he moved in 1901, and a regular at the local courts in criminal and industrial cases. He was also prominent in the public life of the area: he became a Liberal councillor in 1903 and an alderman two years later. He inherited from his parents a commitment to Methodism and was involved throughout his life as a worshipper and sometime preacher and Sunday school teacher. He was also a prominent member of the Burnley temperance movement in his early years. These moral values undoubtedly informed his attempts to keep the reputation of professional football ‘clean’ and free from the corrupt influence of drink and gambling. His abhorrence of gambling on football also led to his biggest miscalculation, when in February and March 1936 he devised a scheme on behalf of league clubs intended to ruin the pools companies by altering the published fixture list and revealing the rearranged fixtures only at the last minute. The scheme generated widespread opposition, forcing a quick league climb-down and leaving Sutcliffe to endure both private and public criticism from which he never properly recovered.

Following the death of his first wife Sutcliffe married Sarah Pickup (1862–1931), his former housekeeper, on 12 June 1926. He died at his home, 76 Burnley Road, Rawtenstall, Lancashire, on 11 January 1939 and was buried three days later at Rawtenstall cemetery.

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