Martin John Sutton, scientific horticulturalist, was born on the 25th October 1850 in Reading and was the son of Martin Hope Sutton (1815-1901). Martin John went into the business of his father and by the 1870s the firm boasted that it was the largest seed company in Europe. This is likely to have been created by the fact that both Martin John and his father used experimental methods to improve particular varieties; potato and agricultural grasses were the subject of his father's trials. Sutton joined the Royal Agricultural Society as well as a number of other agriculturally related bodies. He died on th 14th December 1913 at the Picadilly Hotel, Regent Street, London.