Royal Holloway College

Royal Holloway College was founded by Thomas Holloway, who was born in Devonshire in 1800 and died in Sunninghill in Berkshire in 1883, having made enormous sums of money as a manufacturer of pills and ointment. The details of his early life are obscure and there are considerable discrepancies between the various accounts in print, which are based in the main on newspaper articles and obituaries. He left home in 1828 and went in the first place either to France or London. By 1836 he was established in London as a merchant and foreign agent and in this was came into contact with Felix Albinolo, the proprietor of an ointment known as 'Albinolo's Ointment' or 'The Saint Cosmas and St. Damian Ointment'. Thomas Holloway obtained testimonials for Albinolo from a London hospital and was later accused by him of using the same testimonials to promote his own ointment. Albinolo was subsequently committed to a debtor's prison and died in 1839. Holloway also spent a short spell in prison after a newspaper had pressed him for prompt payment for advertisements placed with them, and he emerged determined "never to lay his head on his pillow owing any man a penny". He was not, however, deterred from advertising and was in this respect a pioneer of modern business methods. Both he and his wife worked incredibly long hours to build up their business and for many years lived above their business premises at 244, The Strand. In 1867 this building was demolished to make way for the present Law Courts and the Holloways moved to 533, New Oxford Street (later renumbered as 78). Some years later they left London and settled eventually at Tittenhurst Park, Sunninghill.

Thomas Holloway's marriage to Jane Driver in 1839 had important consequences for him. They had no children, but he virtually adopted her relations in place of his own, with whom he lost touch with almost completely after the death of his mother in 1843. Jane Holloway had two sisters, Sarah Ann, who married George Martin (later Sir George Martin-Holloway) and Mary Ann, and one brother, Henry (later Henry Driver-Holloway), who stayed to manage the business at 533, New Oxford Street, while the rest of the family went to live at Tittenhurst, where George Martin became Thomas Holloway's right-hand man in his charitable enterprises.

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