Percival Thomas Holman was born in Devonport, Devon, England on 14 May 1887. He was the son of Thomas Abraham Holman, a Royal Navy mariner, and Emma Betts. 

Percival spent much of his childhood years in Stoke Damerel, Devon but after the death of his father in the late 1890s he, his mother and younger sister moved to be with his maternal grandmother in Devonport. By 1911 his mother was an inmate at a workhouse. 

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

Thomas Holman spent his later years living at 94 Solway Street in Belfast. He died in a sanitorium on 19 June 1937 and is buried in an unmarked common grave in Belfast’s City Cemetery.