Faces and Places: John Suffield

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As the oldest son John became the director of the family drapery and hosiery business. However in 1886 Old Lamb House was demolished as part of council improvements. The centre of Birmingham, between New Street and Bull Street, had been knocked down both because the housing was poor, and because the town council wanted to build a new shopping centre – or shopping street – in Birmingham. This was Corporation Street. Old Lamb House was demolished to give space for a new street to improve traffic between Corporation Street and High Street; Martineau Street – it vanished later itself in further redevelopments. The Suffields moved into one of the new shops in Corporation Street, but the business then collapsed; probably in May 1889. There is a family story that this was because the sprinklers had accidentally been left on overnight, ruining the stock.

For a couple of years John Suffield ran a business as a brassfounder, but by 1895 he had become a commercial traveller for Jeyes Fluid. He spoke in praise of travel, and indeed worked as a commercial traveller to the age of eighty-six. He was a lively character to the end of his days. The reporter from the Evening Despatch, R. J. Buckley, who interviewed him on his ninety-fifth birthday was impressed by John Suffield: ‘… his insuppressible vivacity, his merry humour, his geniality and his boyish playfulness, his exuberant vitality… with his varied gifts as tenor singer, expert reciter, inexhaustible and dramatic raconteur…’

The report also mentions that he would entertain his friends: ‘… with his wonderful feat of writing the Lord’s Prayer on the size of a sixpence and [with] pen-and-ink sketches…’ [2] He was displaying these skills when he was in his eighties and nineties. Each year he designed a Christmas card with a poem of his own, and a sketch of a landscape; he would then send a copy to his many relatives. One of his grandsons was J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.


[Image Reference: Old Lamb House, Central Literary Magazine, January 1887]