Robie Holliday
Entrepreneur
Robert (known as Robie) was born in 1855 in Genoa, Italy, the son of Thomas Holliday and Ann Jeal. Thomas had moved the family to Italy from England due to his work as an Engineer. He died at Greenwich in 1862 leaving Ann with ten children.
Ann travelled with her daughters Fanny (22), Mary (19) and Annie (9), and son Robie (17) on the ship ‘Glenmark’ to Lyttelton in 1871. Robie described himself as a labourer and his sisters general servants. Daughter Clara (16) and son William (11) followed on the ship ‘Halcione’ in 1873. All were assisted immigrants. Three sons remained in England.
The Holliday family settled on the west coast where Miss Holliday opened the Greymouth Academy for Young Ladies. Mary married Henry Lewis in 1872. Fanny married George Mee in 1873 (see George’s story here https://www.wellingtonboots.co.nz/blog/george-mee). In 1875 the family sold up and together with the Mee and Lewis families, moved to Timaru for a few years where Robie gained experience working in a furniture store.
In 1878, the family made the move to Wellington where Robie and his brother William acquired Mr Jackson’s business at Stationers’ Hall, Lambton Quay and began trading as R. Holliday & Co: Importers pf Books, Stationery and Fancy Goods. He claimed considerable experience in the business and began immediately with a large clearing sale in preparation for new goods specially ordered for Christmas.
His first advertisement was for ‘the most beautiful variety ever imported to Wellington in cloth, raised wood and beaded cushions, chair-backs, banner screens, tea coseys and slippers’. His following consignment was of ‘fancy goods of an unusually attractive description’.
Robie’s shop windows were a novelty too. In 1881 his windows were illuminated and a solitary lady sat in one of them working the newly introduced Davis’ sewing machines. He also drew customers in with exhibitions of oleograph portraits received from overseas including that of Lord Beaconsfield and Mr Gladstone. The shop also served as the ‘box office’ for the Opera House, Theatre Royal and other places. Another reason to draw people in.
In 1900 his widowed sister Annie Parker and her son Randall came to live with Robie in his house on Clifton Terrace. The Mee family lived on the same street.
Robie sold his business to Messrs Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd in 1912. He made his third trip to England in 1914 where he had intended taking a tour of the continent with a Cook’s touring party ‘but on account of the ugly rumours about war, decided not to go’. He returned to New Zealand in March 1915 and in December he had a serious nervous breakdown from which he never recovered.
Robie died on the 30th August 1918 aged 63 at Porirua Hospital and was interred at Karori with his mother. His death was ‘regretted by a wide circle of friends’.
His sister Annie received the proceeds from his life insurance policy. His nephew Randall and Mrs Constance Twinem of Freemantle received £1000 and £500 respectively. His total estate was worth £34,000 or £987,000 in today’s money.
Robie’s sisters Fanny Mee and Mary Lewis are also interred at Karori.
Karori Cemetery Plot: *Ch Eng/#/89
Shops on Lambton Quay, Wellington. Gibbs, James Joseph, fl 1963 :Photographs of New Zealand towns and cities. Ref: PAColl-4374-05. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23007886
Detail of the above image.
Free Lance, 30 January 1915.