Arthur Todd Holroyd (1 December 1806 – 15 June 1887) was an Australian lawyer and politician. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council between 1851 and 1856. He was also a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for two periods between 1856 and 1857 and again between 1861 and 1864.
Biography
Early life
Arthur Todd Holroyd was born in London on 1 December 1806, the youngest child of the merchant Stephen Holroyd and Elizabeth (née Lofthouse). His father died in January 1810 when Arthur was aged three years.
After a preliminary education in private schools, Arthur Holroyd was sent to Ripon Grammar School, North Yorkshire, "for a couple of years". In 1824 he began to study medicine in Winchester. Shortly afterwards Holroyd became a pupil at the Webb-street School of Anatomy at Southwark, London. In May 1827 he went to Christ's College at the University of Cambridge and then to Edinburgh University, from where attained the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1830.
Arthur Holroyd married Sophia Abbs on 6 June 1830 at Whitburn, county Durham. In May 1831 a daughter, Emily, was born to the couple.
In 1831 Holroyd commenced practice as a physician in London, “but not finding the prospects of the medical profession as lucrative or satisfactory as he had anticipated”, he decided to give up medicine and study as a lawyer. He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in January 1835. After the first year of his admission, however, Holroyd decided to suspend his legal studies, having "determined to quit England for a time, and travel".
Travels on the Upper Nile
Holroyd left England in June 1836 and proceeded to Rome, from where, after a short time, he travelled to Alexandria in Egypt. Leaving Alexandria, he travelled up the Nile as far as the Second Cataract (near the border of modern Egypt and Sudan), arriving there in early December 1836 with his interpreter, Hajji Soliman, and Ali, "an inferior domestic". Holroyd took frequent opportunities to inscribe his surname and the year into the ancient monuments he visited. At the rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel, for instance, alongside the Second Nile Cataract (now relocated to the western bank of Lake Nasser), Holroyd inscribed his surname and "1836", enclosed in a rectangular border, at the entrance to the great hall. Beneath Holroyd's graffito at this location is also etched the name "Hajji Soliman" (Holroyd's interpreter). At Wadi Halfa at the Second Cataract, Holroyd decided to continue further south into the region then known in Arabic as Beled-es-Sudan (Land of the Blacks). Holroyd hired camels and travelled along the west bank of the Nile, frequently stopping along the road "to examine all the antiquarian remains".
In late December 1836 Holroyd and his party arrived at Dongola, an Egyptian outpost with a population of about six thousand (including 800 troops and their wives and families). After procuring a boat Holroyd travelled further up the river, 50 miles south to Old Dongola, once an important city of Nubia but now largely abandoned to the shifting sands. Holroyd recorded that Old Dongola had about 300 inhabitants and "the most striking object here is a mosque on rather an elevated site, from the top of which there is an extensive prospect of the arid Desert and meandering Nile". He then travelled further up the river as it turned towards the east, to Ambukol (near Korti), arriving there on 8 January 1837. At Ambukol Holroyd had “a severe attack of fever” requiring him to rest for several weeks.
Holroyd decided to cross the Bayuda Desert rather than follow the great bend of the Nile, where the route of the river turns to the east and then north-east, before inclining back to the south at Abu Hamad. With hired camels Holroyd and his men crossed the desert in seven days, travelling south-south-east from Ambukol. At the wells of Bayuda, about half-way across, they replenished their water supply. Holroyd commented: "The water which we had brought from the Nile was putrid and nauseous, and we were glad to avail ourselves of the opportunity of procuring a fresh supply". They arrived at El Hajir on Nile (just above the Sixth Cataract) on January 31. Following the course of the river, the next day Holroyd and his men arrived at Khartoum at the confluence of the White Nile, flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile, flowing west from Lake Tana in Ethiopia.