Thomas Holmes

Thomas Holmes (1846–1918) worked as an iron-moulder like his father from the age of twelve until an accident in 1877 forced him into other employment; on his friends' advice he applied in 1885 for the post of police-court missionary at Lambeth, transferring to the North London police court in 1889, and spent twenty years dealing directly with the thieves, drunkards, prostitutes and vagrants who came before the magistrates. He drew on that casework in a series of books on crime and poverty, among them Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts, Known to the Police (1908) and London's Underworld (1912). Retiring from mission work in 1905, he became secretary of the Howard Association, the penal-reform society, a post he held for the rest of his working life, advising successive Home Secretaries on prison policy. He died in 1918.