Anybody remember the Clegg twins?

I heard they were local characters with a colourful history. Who were they??

John & Albert were identical twins who owned quite a lot of property in Sheffield. [ For all I know, they or their family still do ? ]. I only knew one fairly vaguely and he always seemed a calm, quietly spoken, likeable man. I also knew one or two of the family a little better and they were all personable and friendly in my experience.

They originated from N.Ireland but I don't know when they settled in S. Yorks. Yes, John and Albert were certainly well-known characters so I'm sure someone on S.F. will know what happened to them and, I, too, would be interested ; anybody out there ?

I worked for the Clegg twins very briefly in the mid sixties.They had an iffy motor insurance firm (South Yorkshire Motor Insurance) that never paid out on a claim.At that time Albert was in South Africa in order to avoid an arrest warrant and John Henry was left in charge of the insurance firm.He was indeed a most kind and personable man who gave me a typewriter to take home in order to improve my typing skills.They were identical twins who drove identical Rover cars with identical number plates and just one bloody road tax between them.Their wives were Irish but I don't think the twins were,or if they were, they must have come to Sheff at a very young age as John Henry had a local accent albeit soft-spoken.During my short time there John Henry encouraged me to leave the occasional page of cover notes blank in case it should ever be necessary to issue a back dated cover note to someone who had caused an accident while uninsured .Anyone who knows anything about the motor insurance biz. knows that this is a complete no-no and very illegal.He must have thought I could be easily bamboozled as I was so young (only 16) but I had family in the legit side of the biz. and knew better.A few months after I'd left John Henry was fined 30 quid for backdating a cover note and a few months after that the No. 2 hit the fan when all the offices were raided and the office equipment confiscated,the whole lot having been stolen goods.John Henry got a couple of years in the nick for that and Albert had to come back and face the music in order to keep on running the insurance firm.Basically South Yorks Motor Insurance clients were people who were flat broke or uninsurable because of previous driving convictions and ,at that time,it was comparitively easy to start an insurance company;all you had to do was show the Board of Trade that you had fifty grand and Bob's your uncle.Anyway the press got it's teeth into all the dodgy insurance companies that were around and they were all closed down.John Henry stayed free for a couple of years after his release and then he got really hammered.He got five years in some fraud case and he didn't do the time well.He thought he'd been given a raw deal and his health suffered.The last I heard was about ten years ago.Some relative of theirs was mentioned in an insider trading scam and they were thought to be involved.It was alleged that the twins had benefitted to the tune of several million pounds and that they were living in the States.

Thanks for bringing us up-to-date as much as you have ! I'd completely forgotten about the motor insurance business. I guess you're right in saying that the twins weren't necessarily from N. Ireland. I may have wrongly assumed that because I knew one of the wives [ Kath ? ] slightly and she had quite a pronounced Irish accent.

It's nice to hear they're still ' operational ' as it were ! I suppose as we get older it's always good to hear something about people you knew as a youngster. I remember the ' two jags ' story, incidentally and once there was a report in the Star which began,

' During a police raid on the home of X Clegg, police discovered a gun....' ....which would be quite unusual in the 1960 's.

Yes, they were certainly characters and I'm mildly surprised there hasn't been a bigger response on S.F. about them.

Interesting story. I never knew of the Clegg twins but the name of their insurance firm rang a bell from my early days at the Midland Bank (fortunately, we didn't have their accounts...) A Google search came up with an Observer article of 10 September 2000, which confirms that South Yorkshire Motor Insurance was wound up by the DTI in 1967. The Clegg twins "born in Sheffield in 1919, the sons of a bookmaker turned property developer" evidently "skipped abroad" in the 1990s with their ill-gotten gains. The article is mainly about a DTI inquiry into the murky business dealings of John Henry’s son, who ran a photographic/design firm called Wace. His name was evidently John Michael Clegg (though he had been christened William, and the trio evidently used 29 other aliases, to say nothing of the involvement - unwittingly or otherwise - of "members of the extended Clegg family across three continents"…). When the share price of Wace collapsed, the Cleggs had already sold their stake for £7m and vanished. The article makes interesting reading - see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2000/sep/10/theobserver.observerbusiness8

The website http://www.findmypast.com confirms that the Clegg twins were born in Sheffield in the second quarter of 1919.

Thanks for your comments

I'm searching a long lost family member who used to work with the Clegg twins, Peter Ashforth does anyone remember working with him  or know anything about him please

On 28/09/2022 at 19:45, jeansmith said:

I'm searching a long lost family member who used to work with the Clegg twins, Peter Ashforth does anyone remember working with him  or know anything about him please

Yes!

Wonder if this was the same Clegg's who rented out really run down terraced houses on Bramhall lane?

1 hour ago, only_me said:

Wonder if this was the same Clegg's who rented out really run down terraced houses on Bramhall lane?

Very likely.  They had property all over the place.  Quite a lot in Heeley.

A bloke by the name of Tom Pass was their property repairer,  if that rings a bell