George was born on 24 August 1895 in Old Stratford, England. Aged 13, he emigrated to Canada under the British Home Child scheme, sponsored by the Fegan Organisation, and was adopted by Richard & Mary Ann Coltman. 

Age 19, he joins the 4^th Canadian Infantry Battalion as Private 10740 in Valcartier (Quebec). According to his papers, he is an Express Messenger, single and living at Peter Street, Orillia. Standing out perhaps the most is his name. He enlists under an alias, George Bradbury. 

On 24 September 1914, he left Canada back to England and by February 1915, he’s in the trenches. During the next two years, George sees actions at some notorious places on the Somme & Flanders (The Bluff amongst others). Sometime between December 1915 and May 1916, he took communion at Talbot House. He must have been close to Padre Tubby Clayton as a photo of George was put in the Chaplain’s Room at the House. 

But the war did not go well at all for George. He was in hospital four times for a gunshot wound, pyrexia caused by being buried by a shell twice, measles and eventually shell shock. In April 1917, he was evacuated first to England and eventually Canada where he was admitted into a series of hospitals for further treatment. In June 1918, he attested his real name was George Bradbury Coltman. Just after his discharge, on medical reasons, he returned to England in May 1919. 

Back in the UK, Tubby managed to find out George’s address at St John’s Hospital, Lewisham. Immediately Tubby arranged for loads of Talbotousians to visit him. He was moved to Pensions Hospital for one more fruitless operations before he went back to St John’s. 

Tubby knew as no other how to lift spirits. On 15 December 1921 George was taken by ambulance to Grosvenor House, where he attended the Toc H Birthday Festival from a hospital bed. Tubby was called to Lewisham on 6 October 1922, as George was dying. At that time there must have been a rally of the scouts attended by the Prince of Wales. George told Tubby that he had hoped to see the Prince. He had seen him “once as we were going into the line; he was so close I might have touched him. I wish I had a photograph of him.” By the next day Tubby had managed to get a signed photograph from the Prince of Wales. He took it to George, who died later that day.

Just a few weeks later, the George Coltman Lamp - Birmingham Branch was lit at The Guildhall, London, by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. "In memory of George Coltman, died 7.10.1922, of wounds received on the Somme, 1916.". George’s name also appears in the 1923 ‘The Book of Remembrance’ and was put on display at All Hallows by the Tower, Tubby’s parish. 

Today, the original photos of George, which was on display in Tubby’s room (see bottom blog), is now kept in the archives. But a copy still sits on mantlepiece. George Coltman is remembered at Talbot House still. 

Based on research by Peter Beckett and Jan Louagie, much appreciated. 

“George Coltman” by P.B.C. Tubby in the Toc H Journal of Nov. 1922

We speak so cavalierly of “a lasting cure,” when all we really mean is that poor Christian’s path has twisted back for a few steps from the margin of the Great River. Perhaps he has reached it before his time, and (so considerate is the hand that leads him) he is allowed to have it his own way for a while with death itself. Meanwhile, we others halt where we may, and forget the River if we can. Yet, not to be denied, its murmur mingles with our laughter always. We may elude its sight, and defer its study; but to him comes the clear compulsion to go forward.

* * * *

George—the name of his adoption was Coltman, but his true parentage was untraced—was brought up in an Orphanage, ruled by “Uncle Bill.” I may not speak more freely of this“Uncle Bill,” but it is good to know that he is now a candidate (under his proper name) for membership of Toc H. The old House has held true men in its time, but I doubt whether one more fitting has ever crossed its threshold.

After his first boyhood, George arrived in Canada. Ten years later, I met some staunch friends of his in Toronto last March. From Canada in 1914, he, with twenty thousand others, most of them English born, found Flanders in time for the first gas cloud at St. Julien. Early in 1916, George came in out of the darkness, and made friends with Talbot House, becoming as true a son as any. Then in the summer that tidal-wave of war, the Somme, swept him southwards, and left him on his twenty-second birthday with no chance of “permanent” recovery.

In the old House, through the remaining years, we treasured his photograph, but had no news of him whatever. In 1919, this picture postcard was sent to the Canadian Record Office, who amazed us by achieving its identification, and giving his address at St. John’s Hospital, Lewisham. Here, lying practically motionless on an ever-deepening plaster bed, he was visited in turn by many members. In 1921 he was moved to a Pensions Hospital, for one more operation, wholly unsuccessful, but he returned anon to the small ward at St. John’s, where, as he moved Riverwards, he set up more wholeheartedly than ever his Master’s court of love. I have known hospitals and hospitals, but never one that more deserved the gratitude of the faithful beyond the generosity of the charitable.

On December 15th, 1921, George came in triumph (and an ambulance) to Grosvenor House. The Toc H member who accomplished this is known to few, but from that time onwards made George his special province, and when on Friday night, October 6th, I was called to Lewisham, I found both him and “Uncle Bill” sleeplessly on guard.

We prayed awhile, all four of us, and then fell to talking; and as the time dragged on, George asked news of the night, explaining that he was concerned that the Scouts should have a fine Rally in every sense. They would see the Prince, and he would not. He had not seen him since one night when “once, as we were going into the line, he was so close I might have touched him. He’s always been the boy for me. I wish I had a photograph of him.”

On the table was a little flag on a pin, thousands of which had been afloat that day in the buttonholes of healthy Londoners. It bore a tiny picture, but it was not enough. The dying man was discontent. Then the fiercest pain broke out once more, and the merciful needle pricked his arm, and the worn-out body slept. I left him thus, his two friends still on guard. Meanwhile work was waiting at the office, and a faithful ally, himself no stranger to the pain of wounds. At night there are neither Committees, nor interviews, nor telephones. Night is therefore a good time to remember that it now costs £100 a week to keep Toc H upon its course. So the hours passed in the presentation of our case to all and sundry. Appeals are tedious things to receive, but tedious also to deliver; and the pity of it is that none need be if each man did his share towards the things that Governments can never do.

By daylight I could stand it no longer. George was still alive; and I went out to Vauxhall, and found a cab making homewards. The driver shook his head, but a few minutes later had turned and come back to me as to one in trouble. We went up through St. James’s Park, as the early sun was shining. The House from which the Park is named was still asleep; but a sentry and a policeman heard my story, and we dived below for a very small boy, who was brought successfully to the surface.

No. It was hopeless after all. The friend I sought had gone on leave the day before. But another friend had replaced him. I left a note, and went away happily to celebrate at Mark III across the Bridges.

Thereafter the telephone rang and all was well. An hour later I took the signed photograph to Lewisham, and George received it gladly, though his hands could no longer hold it. A little later the pains came on again, and with them a fit of suppressed perplexity. He kept on saying, “I want to fix it up.” What was it? At long last we knew. “I wanted to say it was awfully decent of him.” Soon after, by a later train, I went to Middlesbrough. And George? Here are some words from a letter waiting for me on my return: “I relinquished my charge last night at 10.40. George called for me and said he was dying. He put his arms about me, and asked if they were coming to take him away. I remembered something I had read that morning … As I said this to him, he became wonder-fully calm, and so went to his Master with a smile on his lips. It was a long journey, but never once did he lose faith or complain.”

Let us finally overhear the conversing of Mr. Valiant and Mr. Greatheart:—

“Val.—Yea, about Christian himself. After all his adventures for a celestial crown, the deceivers said that he was certainly drowned in the black river, and never went a foot farther; however, it was smothered up.

“Great H.—And did none of these things discourage you?

“Val.—No; they seemed but as so many nothings to me.

“Great H.—How came that about?

“Val.—Why, I still believed what Mr. Tell-true had said; and that carried me beyond them all.”