Chambers’s Cyclopaedia. His personal and scurrilous writings involved him in many quarrels. Henry Fielding attacked him in the Covent Garden Journal, Christopher Smart wrote a mock-epic, The Hilliad, against him, and David Garrick replied to his strictures against him by two epigrams, one of which runs:—
“For physics and farces, his equal there scarce is;
His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.”
He had other literary passages-at-arms with John Rich, who accused him of plagiarizing his Orpheus, also with Samuel Foote and Henry Woodward. From 1759 to 1775 he was engaged on a huge botanical work—The Vegetable System (26 vols. fol.)—adorned by 1600 copperplate engravings. Hill’s botanical labours were undertaken at the request of his patron, Lord Bute, and he was rewarded by the order of Vasa from the king of Sweden in 1774. He had a medical degree from Edinburgh, and he now practised as a quack doctor, making considerable sums by the preparation of vegetable medicines. He died in London on the 21st of November 1775.
Of the seventy-six separate works with which he is credited in the Dictionary of National Biography, the most valuable are those that deal with botany. He is said to have been the author of the second part of The Oeconomy of Human Life (1751), the first part of which is by Lord Chesterfield, and Hannah Glasse’s famous manual of cookery was generally ascribed to him (see Boswell, ed. Hill, iii. 285). Dr Johnson said of him that he was “an ingenious man, but had no veracity.”
See a Short Account of the Life, Writings and Character of the late Sir John Hill (1779), which is chiefly occupied with a descriptive catalogue of his works; also Temple Bar (1872, xxxv. 261-266).
HILL, MATTHEW DAVENPORT (1792–1872), English lawyer and penologist, was born on the 6th of August 1792, at Birmingham, where his father, T. W. Hill, for long conducted a private school. He was a brother of Sir Rowland Hill. He early acted as assistant in his father’s school, but in 1819 was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn. He went the midland circuit. In 1832 he was elected one of the Liberal members for Kingston-upon-Hull, but he lost his seat at the next election in 1834. On the incorporation of Birmingham in 1839 he was chosen recorder; and in 1851 he was appointed commissioner in bankruptcy for the Bristol district. Having had his interest excited in questions relating to the treatment of criminal offenders, he ventilated in his charges to the grand juries, as well as in special pamphlets, opinions which were the means of introducing many important reforms in the methods of dealing with crime. One of his principal coadjutors in these reforms was his brother
Frederick Hill (1803–1896), whose Amount, Causes and Remedies of Crime, the result of his experience as inspector of prisons for Scotland, marked an era in the methods of prison discipline. Hill was one of the chief promoters of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and the originator of the Penny Magazine. He died at Stapleton, near Bristol, on the 7th of June 1872.
His principal works are Practical Suggestions to the Founders of Reformatory Schools (1855); Suggestions for the Repression of Crime (1857), consisting of charges addressed to the grand juries of Birmingham; Mettray (1855); Papers on the Penal Servitude Acts (1864); Journal of a Third Visit to the Convict Gaols, Refuges and Reformatories of Dublin (1865); Addresses delivered at the Birmingham and Midland Institute (1867). See Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill, by his daughters Rosamond and Florence Davenport Hill (1878).
HILL, OCTAVIA (1838–) and MIRANDA (1836–1910), English philanthropic workers, were born in London, being daughters of Mr James Hill and granddaughters of Dr Southwood Smith, the pioneer of sanitary reform. Miss Octavia Hill’s attention was early drawn to the evils of London housing, and the habits of indolence and lethargy induced in many of the lower classes by their degrading surroundings. She conceived the idea of trying to free a few poor people from such influences, and Mr Ruskin, who sympathized with her plans, supplied the money for starting the work. For £750 Miss Hill purchased the 56 years’ lease of three houses in one of the poorest courts of Marylebone. Another £78 was spent in building a large room at the back of her own house where she could meet the tenants. The houses were put in repair, and let out in sets of two rooms. At the end of eighteen months it was possible to pay 5% interest, to repay £48 of the capital, as well as meet all expenses for taxes, ground rent and insurance. What specially distinguished this scheme was that Miss Hill herself collected the rents, thus coming into contact with the tenants and helping to enforce regular and self-respecting habits. The success of her first attempt encouraged her to continue. Six more houses were bought and treated in a similar manner. A yearly sum was set aside for the repairs of each house, and whatever remained over was spent on such additional appliances as the tenants themselves desired. This encouraged them to keep their tenements in good repair. By the help of friends Miss Hill was now enabled to enlarge the scope of her work. In 1869 eleven more houses were bought. The plan was to set a visitor over a small court or block of buildings to do whatever work in the way of rent-collecting, visiting for the School Board, &c., was required. As years went on Miss Octavia Hill’s work was largely increased. Numbers of her friends bought and placed under her care small groups of houses, over which she fulfilled the duties of a conscientious landlord. Several large owners of tenement houses, notably the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, entrusted to her the management of such property, and consulted her about plans of rebuilding; and a number of fellow-workers were trained by her in the management of houses for the poor. The results in Southwark (where Red Cross Hall was established) and elsewhere were very beneficial. Both Miss Miranda and Miss Octavia Hill took an interest in the movement for bringing beauty into the homes of the poor, and the former was practically the founder of the Kyrle Society, the first suggestion of which was contained in a paper read to a small circle of friends. Both sisters worked for the preservation of open spaces, and helped to promote the work of the Charity Organization Society, and for several years Miss Miranda Hill (who died on the 31st of May 1910) did admirable work in Marylebone as a member of the Board of Guardians.
HILL, ROWLAND (1744–1833), English preacher, sixth son of Sir Rowland Hill, Bart. (d. 1783), was born at Hawkstone, Shropshire, on the 23rd of August 1744. He was educated at Shrewsbury, Eton and St John’s College, Cambridge. Stimulated by George Whitefield’s example, he scandalized the university authorities and his own friends by preaching and visiting the sick before he had taken orders. In 1773 he was appointed to the parish of Kingston, Somersetshire, where he soon attracted great crowds to his open-air services. Having inherited considerable property, he built for his own use Surrey Chapel, in the Blackfriars Road, London (1783). Hill conducted his services in accordance with the forms of the Church of England, in whose communion he always remained. Both at Surrey Chapel and in his provincial “gospel tours” he had great success. His oratory was specially adapted for rude and uncultivated audiences. He possessed a voice of great power, and according to Southey “his manner” was “that of a performer as great in his own line as Kean or Kemble.” His earnest and pure purposes more than made up for his occasional lapses from good taste and the eccentricity of his wit. He helped to found the Religious Tract Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the London Missionary Society, and was a stout advocate of vaccination. His best-known work is the Village Dialogues, which first appeared in 1810, and reached a 34th edition in 1839. He died on the 11th of April 1833.
See Life by E. Sidney (1833); Memoirs, by William Jones (1834); and Memorials, by Jas. Sherman (1857).
HILL, SIR ROWLAND (1795–1879), English administrator, author of the penny postal system, a younger brother of Matthew Davenport Hill, and third son of T. W. Hill, who named him after Rowland Hill the preacher, was born on the 3rd of December 1795 at Kidderminster. As a young child he had, on account of an affection of the spine, to maintain a recumbent position, and his principal method of relieving the irksomeness of his situation was to repeat figures aloud consecutively until he had reached very high totals. A similar bent of mind was manifested when he entered school in 1802, his aptitude for mathematics
