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Admin History:

Frederick Holmes was born in Hull in 1890. He was educated at Lincoln Street Council School, Central Higher Grade School and Ruskin College, Oxford. A life-long member of the Labour Party, he was elected to Hull City Council in November 1920 became an Alderman in 1935. He sat on many of the council’s committees and served as Lord Mayor of Hull for the year 1936-1937.

In his early life he worked as an engineer, but later he set up as an advertising and publicity consultant. Known as “Mr Humber Bridge”, he began his personal crusade in the 1920s for the bridge when the idea of a bridge was not taken seriously. He sustained his campaign for more than 30 years before the Humber Bridge Act went through Parliament in 1958, and he personally took charge of the scheme as chairman of the Bridge Board the following year.

Alderman Holmes took a special interest in welfare work and during his years as Lord Mayor he sponsored the building of a new home for old people, called the Ada Holmes Circle after his mother. He was a member of the Yorkshire Fishery Board and member of the Management Board Castle Howard School. A Governor of Hymers College and member of Court of Governors of University College. President of the Hull Publicity Club. Advertising and Publishing Contractor, of “Frederick Holmes Publications”. When Hull’s school for children with physical disabilities moved from Park Avenue to a site on Inglemire Lane in 1963, it was renamed the Frederick Holmes School in recognition of his contribution to the education of children in the city.

He was a member of Hull’s New Theatre management board, which he had helped purchase for the council and saved it from being turned into a bingo hall in 1961. He was awarded the OBE in 1957 and made an honorary freeman in 1968. Unfortunately Frederick Holmes did not live to see his dream of a bridge crossing the Humber fulfilled, as he died on 5 November 1978 aged 88 less than 3 years before the bridge was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 17 July 1981. His wife, Lily, a former teacher in Hull died in 1975.

Description:

Correspondence, invoices, essays, papers and reports, news cuttings and press reports and photographs. L DFH/4/12 is in Dutch