Born in 1888, the son of an Irish Catholic father and an English Baptist mother, John Thomas Murphy was brought up with an older and a younger sister in a ‘back-to-back’ terraced house in Wincobank, a small village on the outskirts of Sheffield. The family was poor, not least because of his father's drinking bouts and habit of leaving his work as a blacksmith's striker to take an alcoholic tramping holiday for several weeks each spring. To supplement the family income, Murphy's mother took in lodgers and baked and sold bread and cakes, which, from the age of seven, young Jack was given the task of hawking from door to door before and after school. He also worked for a local farmer on a milk round each morning and evening throughout the week, which enabled him to buy clothes which the family could otherwise not afford. It seems to have been a relatively happy childhood despite the fact his various jobs and strict Methodist upbringing meant he was only able to snatch half an hour here or there to play with his friends. Sundays were a particularly busy day: