HOLLAMS, Sir JOHN (1820–1910), solicitor, born at Loose, Kent, on 23 Sept. 1820, was son of John Hollams, curate in charge of Loose, by his wife Mary Pettit. His grandfather, Sir John Hollams (knighted in 1831), was five times mayor of Deal. After being educated privately Hollams was articled to a firm of solicitors in Maidstone, and in 1840 came to London. There he served his articles with the firm of Brown, Marten and Thomas. He was admitted a solicitor in 1844, and next year his firm took him into partnership. By hard work and integrity of character he obtained a foremost place in his profession. While still under forty he declined the offer of appointment as solicitor to the Admiralty, and on more than one occasion refused the office of chief clerk in chancery. In 1866 he was elected to the council of the Law Society, and in 1867 became a member of the Judicature Commission, upon which he did valuable work, but refused the knighthood offered in recognition of his services. He was president of the Law Society in 1878-9, and his portrait by the Hon. John Collier was placed in the society's hall. He was a generous supporter of the Solicitors' Benevolent Society. In 1902 he found his name included among the knights in the birthday list of honours. The crowning event in his career was the unique honour paid to him by the bench and bar in entertaining him at a dinner in the hall of the Inner Temple on 6 March 1903. He was made a deputy-lieutenant for the county of London in 1882, and was a J.P. for the county of Kent. He died at his country residence. Dene Park near Tonbridge, on 3 May 1910.
Hollams married in 1845 Rice (d. 1891), daughter of Edward Allfree, rector of Strood, Kent, by whom he left three sons. Under the title of 'Jottings of an Old Solicitor' (1906), he published a collection of reminiscences, useful for a description of the procedure of the courts before the passing of the Judicature Act.
[Jottings of an Old Solicitor, 1906; The Times, 4 May 1910; Dod's Peerage, 1909; private information.]
HOLLINGSHEAD, JOHN (1827–1904), journalist and theatrical manager, born in Union Street, Hoxton, London, on 9 Sept. 1827, was son (by his wife Elizabeth) of Henry Randall Hollingshead. The father failed in business, and was confined in the debtors' prison of Whitecross Street, but became in 1847 clerk to the secretary of the Irish society for administering the Irish estates of the London corporation, retiring on a pension in 1872 and dying next year. Miss Sarah Jones, great-aunt of John's mother, was long nurse to Charles Lamb's sister Mary, who lived for the last six years of her life (1841-7) under the care of Miss Jones's sister, Mrs. Parsons, at her house in Alpha Road, St. John's Wood (Lucas, Life of Lamb, ii. 285-6). Hollingshead as a child saw something of Lamb, and as a young man saw much of Mary Lamb and her literary circle. Educated at a Pestalozzian academy at Homerton, Hollingshead at an early age took a nondescript situation in a soft goods warehouse in Lawrence Lane, Cheapside. A taste for literature early manifested itself, and he read in his spare time at Dr. Williams's Library (then in Cripplegate), and at the London Institution. He quickly developed an ambition to write for the press; at nineteen he contributed to 'Lloyd's Entertaining Journal' an article called 'Saturday Night in London,' and soon sent miscellaneous verse to the 'Press,' a conservative newspaper inspired by Benjamin Disraeli. After some experience as a commercial traveller, he entered into partnership as a cloth merchant in Warwick Street, Golden Square; but the venture failed, and he turned to journalism for a livelihood. In 1856 he became a contributor to the 'Train,' a shilling magazine founded and edited by Edmund Yates [q. v.], and then joined his friend, William Moy Thomas [q. v. Suppl. II], as part proprietor and joint editor of the 'Weekly Mail.' In 1857 he sent to 'Household Words,' then edited by Charles Dickens, a sketch of city life, called 'Poor Tom, a City Weed.' The article pleased the editor, whose sentiment and style Hollingshead emulated, and he joined the staff. He was a voluminous contributor of graphic articles, chiefly descriptive of current incident and of out-of-the-way scenes of London life. 'On the Canal' was the title of several articles describing a journey in a canal boat from London to
