Thomas Holmes

Born in Pelsall, Staffordshire, on January 25, 1846, he started work as an iron moulder when he was still a child. After a serious accident ended that trade, he trained for missionary work and later became closely associated with the Temperance Hospital in London.

He is best remembered as a police-court missionary in London, a role he held for about twenty years. Working directly with offenders, drunkards, and people living in deep poverty, he saw the justice system from the inside and turned those experiences into books such as Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts, Known to the Police, and London's Underworld.

Later in life he served as secretary of the Howard Association, a group devoted to prison and criminal-law reform. He died on March 26, 1918. No suitable confirmed portrait image was found from the sources checked during this search, so a profile image is not included.