Mr Joseph Loughran was born at 27 Old Lodge Road in Belfast, Ireland on 5 March 1883. Hailing from a Roman Catholic family, he was the son of John Loughran, a butcher, and Ellen Campbell. 

Described as a “ship’s trimmer,” Loughran was married to an English-born Presbyterian woman, Martha May Fraser (b. 13 March 1885) in St Anne’s Church, Belfast on 2 June 1904. The couple went on to have four children: Violet, William, Joseph and Henry and the family appear on the 1911 census as residents of 78 Hanover Street in Belfast. 

Loughran’s ship prior to Titanic had been the Olympic. He joined Titanic at Belfast for the delivery trip to Southampton where he then disembarked.

In years after the sinking, and perhaps to escape the escalating sectarian tension growing in Belfast—especially as Joseph was in a blended marriage—the family left Ireland and settled in Birkenhead, Cheshire where Joseph worked as a fitter in the shipyards. He died in Birkenhead in 1950 aged 66. 

Joseph Loughran is buried in Flatbrick cemetery Wirral, Merseyside, Liverpool, section RC 6, plot 361