as a permanent official. He held that office until the fall of the conservative government in 1892. In 1887 took place, upon his initiative and under his presidency, the first of those colonial conferences out of which has since developed the quadrennial imperial conference. It was held in connexion with the gathering to celebrate Queen Victoria's first jubilee. Otherwise no events took place in this period which much disturbed the calm of the Colonial Office.
In 1888 Holland was raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Knutsford, of Knutsford, Cheshire, and in 1895 he was created a viscount. He was made a privy councillor in 1885; he was also a G.C.M.G. (1888), an ecclesiastical commissioner, a knight of justice of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, a bencher of the Inner Temple, and he served on several important royal commissions. He was noted for his good looks, social charm, and the energy which he put into any work that he had to do. He was not an orator, and confined his speeches in parliament to subjects with which he had, or had had, some official connexion. He had a country residence for nearly forty years at Witley in Surrey, and, when not in office, took due part in local affairs. He died at his London house in Eaton Square 29 January 1914, in his eighty-ninth year.
Lord Knutsford married twice: first, in 1852 Elizabeth Margaret (died 1855), daughter of Nathaniel Hibbert, of Munden House, Hertfordshire, and granddaughter of the famous Canon Sydney Smith; by her he had twin sons, one of whom, Sydney Holland, succeeded him as second Viscount, and a daughter; secondly, in 1858 Margaret Jean, daughter of Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan [q.v.], and niece of Lord Macaulay, by whom he had three sons and one daughter.
A portrait of Lord Knutsford by Sir Arthur Cope, R.A., painted in 1887, is now in the possession of Lord Hambleden. There is also a Grillion Club drawing.
[Burke's Peerage; Bernard Holland, The Lancashire Hollands, 1917; W. Ferguson Irvine, The Family of Holland of Mobberley and Knutsford, privately printed, 1912. Portrait, Royal Academy Pictures, 1907.]
HOLMES, THOMAS (1846–1918), police-court missionary and philanthropist, was born at the small village of Pelsall near Walsall, Staffordshire, 25 January 1846, the son of William Holmes, iron-moulder, by his wife, Cecilia, daughter of Thomas Withington. At the age of twelve Thomas became an iron-moulder himself, working fourteen hours a day and earning three shillings a week. He was dependent for education upon bible readings with his father and on general instruction from an old-fashioned teacher at the church school of Rugeley. He continued to work as an iron-moulder until he was thirty-three. On his scanty earnings he married in 1872 Margaret, daughter of Ralph Brammer, carpenter, of Rugeley, and brought up a family of five sons. In the meantime he had cultivated his mind and earned a reputation for intelligent philanthropy by devoting himself after his hard day's work to the education of his fellow-workers in evening classes and at the Sunday school.
In 1877 Holmes met with a serious accident which eventually made it impossible for him to continue his work as an iron-moulder. His friends, who appreciated the trend of his character, advised him in 1885 to apply for the post, then vacant, of police-court missionary at Lambeth police-court. To his great surprise he was appointed, and there found his true vocation. In 1889 he was transferred to the North London police court. In the course of his twenty years' service as police-court missionary he dealt with thieves, drunkards, prostitutes, and outcasts of every description, devoting himself with characteristic zeal to every side of his work. He described his experiences in his book, Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts (1900), which had a large sale and was widely translated.
Holmes became known both in England and abroad as a criminologist of imagination and judgement, and gained both profit and reputation from his writings. He was thought at the police court to have some resemblance to Dickens, to whose memory he was sincerely devoted. He loved his work and, although not as optimistic as some missionaries of a more robust type of Christianity, he was always ready to receive unpromising cases as guests in his house, and was often surprised by the miraculous effect of practical sympathy upon the roughest characters.
In 1905 Holmes retired from the police courts in order to become secretary to the Howard Association for the reform of prisons and criminal law. In this capacity he worked for ten years, and earned the gratitude of one home secretary after another for his advice and assistance in the matter of prison reform. His efforts, owing to the public support which they received, have effected great improvements in the prison system during
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