Old Bill Holt

A carrier by trade, William Holt was a well-known character in Victorian Hebden Bridge. His job took him all over the country and he is known to have visited the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. In 1850 Holt was at the centre of the investigations into the (unsolved) murder of James Smith, the tollkeeper in King Street, because he was the last known person to pass through the ‘bar’ on the night of the murder. A colourful and opinionated individual it was perhaps predictable that this photographic studio portrait, believed to be of him, would not be of the conventional type. This text is taken from Looking Back at Hebden Bridge by Frank Horsfall & Terry Wyke