This article was first published 26th February 2021, but bumping it to our front page following the article in the Sunderland AFC match programme on New Year's Day, 2025.

Robert Singleton was born in July of 1852 in Garstang, Lancashire, to Robert Clifton Singleton and his wife Susannah (nee Dickinson).  He was the second of six children, having four brothers and a sister.  On the 1861 census his mother is listed as an Innkeeper’s widow, so she was left with a very young family to tend to.