Thomas Hollis (1634-1718) was born in Rotherham (baptised on 4 September 1634), the son of Thomas, a blacksmith.  His mother was sister to John Ramskar (or Ramscar), a cutler in Barker Pool, whose business was extensive enough to have a London sales outlet in the Minories.  In 1648, Hollis became Ramskar’s apprentice, after his father paid Ramskar £5 premium.  Leader (1905-06)¹ noted – as an illustration of the Spartan lives of apprentices – that Hollis had served his apprenticeship without receiving a penny from Ramskar. Nevertheless, six years later Hollis left Sheffield for London to manage his uncle’s shop.  He was already a nonconformist (Baptist).  Hollis established a flourishing trade (despite occasional opposition from London cutlers) and used his wealth, beginning in 1703, to establish an almshouse (Hollis’s Hospital) in Sheffield at the bottom of Snig Hill (Manning, 1900²).   Known as the Brown Hospital, because of the colour of the dress of the inmates, it was originally for sixteen poor people (Leader, 1905³).  According to Hunter (1875)⁴: ‘The widows in the hospital were to be and still are of cutlers, scissor-makers, file-cutters, box-makers, and sheathers in Sheffield, and within two miles of the town, not absolutely rejecting others if proper subjects’.  

Hollis became Freeman of the City of London and a member of the Drapers’ Company.  He was also a benefactor to St Thomas’s Hospital, London, and Harvard College, Massachusetts (Hester, 1890⁵).   He became blind later in life and died in London on 4 September 1718.  His sons, Thomas and John, continued to endow Hollis’s Hospital, which remained standing until its demolition in 1901.  The street name Hollis Croft is a reminder of the family.  So, too, is Solly Street (which recalls the Solly family, with whom Thomas Hollis was linked).

^1. Leader, R. E., History of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire in the County of York (Sheffield, 1905-6)
^2. Manning, John E., A History of Upper Chapel (Sheffield, 1900)
^3. Leader, R. E., Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century (Sheffield, 2nd edn., 1905)
^4. Hunter, J., Hallamshire:  The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York.  Revised edn. by Alfred Gatty (Sheffield, 1869, 3rd edition, 1875)
^5. Hester, Giles, Some Memorials of the Hollis Family. Benefactors of Yorkshire, London, and Harvard College, America (London, 1890)