Frederick George Hollis
1860 - 1946
Frederick Hollis was Doris Amos's Grandfather on her mother's side. He came from a family of four children in London, born in Kentish Town on 28th May 1860.
He married Ann Osborne in 1882, by then living in Islington. He had some odd jobs in his early years (pawnbroker's assistant, labourer in a mustard factory), but in December 1887 he started work in what was to be his regular employment for the rest of his working life. He became a guard on the North London Railway.
By then he had four children. Ultimately he and Ann had thirteen children, one of whom was Minnie, Doris's mother.
The North London Railway
This map shows the extent of the NLR when Fred Hollis started with them in 1887. Originally the line ran from Poplar in the east to Chalk Farm in the west. The line didn't make much money and the directors realised they needed to provide a link into the City to increase passenger number. So they built the extension from Dalston Junction to Broad Street, which is where Fred Hollis was based.
Broad Street station no longer exists, but the map below shows where it was - alongside Liverpool Street station. And here's a good picture of the station in about 1900 with horse drawn buses outside.
Here's a picture taken in about 1900 of guards on the NLR. Fred Hollis would have been aged about 40 at the time, and he could be in this picture.
Fred lived with his family in Poplar. This is his local station where he would probably have signed on at the start of his shifts. When he retired from the railway he was living at 69 Teviot Street, Poplar, sharing his house with his daughter Minnie and her husband Arthur Amos. Doris Amos remembered going with her grandfather Fred Hollis to Poplar station every week to pick up his pension.
The family moved to 18 York Street, Mitcham Junction in 1940 after 69 Teviot Street was destroyed.
Fred Hollis died there in 1946.