Tolkien's father died when he was only three years old, leaving his mother without an income and two boys to raise. She moved in with her parents in Birmingham (where he would visit his Aunt Jane's farm, familiarly named Bag End) and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1900. At 12, his mother died of acute diabetes. This was twenty years before insulin was discovered, so her death at 34 year old was about as old as someone could live without treatment. She assigned guardianship of her sons to her close friend, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, who brought them up as good Catholics.
