Remembering John Cockburn Loraine

John died on the 11th of December 1918 at the Naval Hospital, South Queensferry aged nineteen. “Influenzal pneumonia” was cited as the cause of death. He rests in the Sextus section of Glasgow Necropolis. The original familial headstone has toppled and since replaced, by the Commonwealth War Grave Commission, with a small granite plague exclusively for him.

John was born at 35 Allas Street, Dennistoun, Glagow on the twenty-second of November 1899 to telegraph linesman Robert and Mary. (nee Kinlayside) At the 1901 census, John was the youngest of the couple’s eight children. The family still resided in Allas Street. Ten years later they had relocated to 93 Firkpark Street, by which time John aged eleven was attending school.

John would have been too young to enlist for military service when Britain entered the First World War in 1914. He enlisted in March 1917 in the Royal Marine Light Infantry and would serve onboard the HMS Vincent, which was a participant in the Battle of Jutland.

John would survive war only to succumb to the influenza pandemic; a tragic irony but one I have encountered many times.

John’s mother Mary survived her youngest son by nearly twenty years. She died in January 1938 followed by Robert in August 1943. Both joined John, and their eldest son Adam who died in November 1936, in Glasgow Necropolis. Adam’s widow Maria would join them later.

Sources: Friends of Glasgow Necropolis, ScotlandsPeople, Ancestry