Robert Sutcliff was the son of Abraham Sutcliff (d. 1799), a well-known physician of Settle and Paradise Square.  Robert was born and educated a Quaker.  In 1772, he was apprenticed as a cutler to Robert Trickett, of Pack Horse Hill, and was granted his Freedom in 1781.  He registered silver marks with Anthony Sporle in Smithfield.  Sporle, the son of a woolcomber from Norwich, had also been apprenticed to Trickett.

In 1786, Sutcliff, Sporle & Co registered a trade mark ‘SS & Co’ at King Street.  Silver and plated table knives were manufactured.  By 1797, Robert was in partnership with his brother, Joshua (another Trickett apprentice), as a merchant and table knife manufacturer in the Wicker (with a residence in Allen Street).  Their trade mark was the word ‘PUNCTUAL’.   In 1804, Sutcliff sailed from Liverpool to New York – a sea voyage that took eight weeks.  America was a favoured destination for Quakers, but Sutcliff (who had already been to America in the 1790s) undertook the trip ‘solely with commercial views’ (Sutcliff, 1815)¹.  He returned to Sheffield in 1806, only to sail again for New York in June 1811.  He took his family with him, intending to settle permanently in Philadelphia as a merchant.   However, he caught a chill and died there on 11 November 1811.  In that year, his Travels in Some Parts of North America was published – a publication used by Armytage (1950)² to provide a brief account of Sutcliff’s life.

^1. Sutcliff, Robert, Travels in Some Parts of North America in the Years 1804, 1805, and 1806 (1811; London, 2nd edition, 1815

^2. Armytage, W H G, ‘A Sheffield Quaker in Philadelphia’, Pennsylvania History 17 (July 1950)