page_title: Holloway Sanatorium
section_title: The founder
hierarchical_section_title: Holloway Sanatorium / History / The founder
caption_attribution_description: Thomas Holloway, 19th century philanthropist
context_page_description: Holloway Sanatorium was an institution for the treatment of those suffering temporary mental illness, situated on 22 acres of aesthetically landscaped grounds near Virginia Water, Surrey, England, about 22 miles south-west of Charing Cross. Its largest buildings, including one listed at Grade I, have been restored and supplemented as Virginia Park, chiefly comprising Crossland House, The Grange, Gillespie House and Connolly Court. It has a spa complex, gymnasium, multi-purpose sports hall and an all-weather tennis court.
  Construction was conceived by the wealthy philanthropist Thomas Holloway, which entailed an elaborate Franco-Gothic style by W. H. Crossland, and took place between 1873 and 1885. The imposing exteriors and interiors have a sister building, the Royal Holloway College about a mile north; Sir Nikolaus Pevsner regarded the two as the "summit of High Victorian design". In 1948 the site was transferred to the National Health Service. In the year 2000, after more than a decade of neglect, the buildings were restored and some of the grounds converted to houses which led to the site's renaming.
context_section_description: Thomas Holloway was a Victorian entrepreneur who made a fortune from the sale of his patent medicines, pills and ointments, designed to cure all ills.
  Looking for ways in which to spend his fortune, Holloway turned to philanthropy, and became a champion of progressive mental health care. George III's madness had excited public opinion about the correct and humane treatment for the insane. Therefore, on 19 April 1861 Holloway attended a public meeting at the London Freemasons’ Hall in which Lord Shaftesbury, sincerely concerned with mental health, made a magnificent speech, calling for funds for the foundation of an asylum for the middle-class insane.  Lord Shaftesbury appealed for £5,000 and received immediately contributions totaling £760, though none from Holloway. Holloway was impressed, and Shaftesbury received a letter from Holloway’s solicitor three years later announcing "a gentleman who is possessed of nearly a quarter of a million" and wished to see him with a view to disposing of that sum "for charitable uses".
  The meeting took place on 25 May 1864 at which Holloway resolved to spend some of his fortune on the establishment of a sanatorium for the mentally sick of the middle classes "the professional breadwinner whose income ceases when he is unable to work". Pauper asylums gave refuge for the insane of the poorer classes, and care at private establishments could be bought by the rich, the middle classes neither deserved the former nor could afford the latter.  Charity for the poor demeaned its recipients: as far as possible people should be assisted to help themselves. The proposed asylum was not intended for the permanently insane, but as a refuge in which the temporarily deranged should be assisted to resume their working lives. At that meeting Holloway told Shaftesbury that he intended to spend his fortune on a single building and in a single benefaction.
caption: Contemporary wood-engraving from a photograph by Elliott & Fry
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