page_title: Bill Sutch
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Bill Sutch / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: William Ball Sutch (27 June 1907 – 28 September 1975) was a New Zealand economist, historian, writer, public servant, and public intellectual. In 1974, he was charged with trying to pass New Zealand Government information to the Soviet Union, of which he was acquitted.
context_page_description: William Ball Sutch was a New Zealand economist, historian, writer, public servant, and public intellectual. He was suspected of being a Soviet spy and in 1974, he was charged with trying to pass New Zealand Government information to the Soviet Union. He was acquitted, an outcome that was the subject of much debate since then. Although there were subsequent disclosures from the KGB which indicated that he may have been a spy, no definitive proof that he was has ever been uncovered.
context_section_description: Sutch was born in Southport, England in 1907, but his family moved to New Zealand when he was only eight months old. His father, Ebenezer (Ted) Sutch, was a journeyman carpenter, and his mother, Ellen Sutch (née Ball), a dressmaker. He grew up in the Methodist faith, which was to have a strong influence on him throughout his life.
  He went to Wellington College, then the Wellington College of Education and Victoria University College (later Victoria University of Wellington) where he gained a MA and B.Com. His field of interest at University, particularly, was in the English Poor Law, and it is this work that led to a fellowship being offered to Columbia University, the offer effectively a prize for his work up till then. Before taking this up he had taught at Nelson College (he did much of his degrees part-time, while teaching) and Wanganui Technical College. At Columbia he was awarded a PhD in Economics in 1932 on "Price fixing in New Zealand. After some travel he then returned to New Zealand which was experiencing the Great Depression. The Depression, and his family's position also, deeply affected his personal philosophy.
  In April 1933, Sutch was one of four people that included Morva Williams, his future wife, who were reported missing in the Tararua Range during an attempt to be the first people to follow a particular route during the winter season. Despite plans to complete the trip within two days, they were held up when two of the members suffered a fall and subsequent injuries, and were then forced to travel very slowly through some of the most persistently bad weather experienced in the range until that time, before finally making their way out more than two weeks later. Once noticed to be missing, the resulting search became the largest search and rescue operation within New Zealand up until that time, involving roughly 200 people.
caption: Sutch in 1931
exif: {}