Early Life
Sutcliffe was born in Bingley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire to a working-class Catholic family. His parents were John Sutcliffe (11 December 1922 - June 2004) and Kathleen Frances Sutcliffe (née Coonan, 22 January 1919 - 1978). Reportedly a loner, he left school at the age of 15 and took a series of menial jobs, including two stints as a gravedigger in the 1960s. Between November 1971 and April 1973 Sutcliffe worked at the factory of Baird Television Ltd, on the packaging line. He left when he was asked to go on the road as a salesman.
After leaving Baird, he worked nightshifts at the Britannia Works of Anderton International from April 1973. In February 1975 he took redundancy, used the pay-off to gain an HGV licence on 4 June 1975 and began work as a driver for a tyre firm on 29 September. On 5 March 1976 he was dismissed for the theft of used tyres. He was unemployed until October 1976, when he found a job as an HGV driver for T & WH Clark (Holdings Ltd.) on the Canal Road Industrial Estate in Bradford.
Sutcliffe used prostitutes as a young man and it has been speculated that a bad experience during which he was believed to have been conned out of money, helped fuel his violent hatred of women.
He met Sonia Szurma (who was of Czech and Ukrainian parentage) on 14 February 1967; they married on 10 August 1974. His wife suffered several miscarriages and the couple were informed that she would not be able to have children. She resumed a teacher training course. When she completed the course in 1977 and began teaching, they used her salary to buy their house in Heaton, Bradford, where they moved on 26 September 1977, and where they lived at the time of Sutcliffe's arrest.
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