Private John Toulmin of the King’s Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment) was born on 8th March 1897 in Morecambe, Lancashire, the youngest son of John and Margaret Toulmin. His father, a plasterer, died when John was only two years old, leaving his mother to raise several children alone in their modest home on Beecham Street and later Euston Road, in the heart of Morecambe. By the age of fourteen, John was already working as an errand boy — one of countless working-class lads who carried their family’s