Private Jack White of the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment won the Victoria Cross on 7 March 1917 in Mesopotamia, tying a copper telephone wire around himself to tow wounded soldiers and their weapons across the Diyala river under heavy fire after his pontoon boat was shot through. He returned to Manchester after the war and apprenticed as a pattern cutter at a local raincoat factory, working his way up to general manager and eventually sole owner by the 1930s. His family still runs the business today, named Private White V.C. in his honor, still hand-cutting and sewing every coat at Cottenham House, a factory founded in 1853 on the River Irwell that's now Manchester's last standalone clothing factory from the Industrial Revolution, holding an archive of 25,000 patterns and 15,000 garments.