Stanley Holloway five children, including the actor Julian Holloway. Holloway was born in Manor Park, Essex (now in the London Borough of Newham), the younger child and only son of George Augustus Holloway (1860–1919), a lawyer's clerk, and Florence May "née" Bell (1862–1913), a housekeeper and dressmaker. He was named after Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and for his search for David Livingstone. There were theatrical connections in the Holloway family going back to Charles Bernard (1830–1894), an actor and theatre manager, who was the brother of Holloway's maternal grandmother. Holloway's paternal grandfather, Augustus
Henry Morton Stanley singled out for his supposed excesses in Africa, while other European explorers, often responsible for far more loss of life than Stanley, receive sympathetic treatment." For example, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who was revered in France, had shot Africans in self-defence but, unlike Stanley, never spoke of it. Samuel Baker killed far more Africans than Stanley did and, in 1873, was mauled in the press for "cold blooded murder". David Livingstone shot dead several African Yao slave traders in 1861, when they attacked the mission at Magomero. In "Through the Dark Continent", Stanley wrote that "the savage only respects force,