James Hill
James Hill, the son of James Hill (born 11th August 1771 - died 25th December 1825) and Elizabeth Judkins (1775-1853) was born in 1798. His siblings included, Mary (1796-1884), Anne (1808-1886), Thomas (1810-1892) and Henry (1814-1873). (1)
The family moved to Wisbech around 1818 and James and his father built up a business dealing in corn, wool and coal. James Hill and Son owned a fleet of steam barges plying between Wisbech and Peterborough. The Hill family also established the Wisbech Bank. (2)
According to one source: "In his bachelor days he allowed himself £10 a week for housekeeping and as he was at that time a vegetarian there was a large surplus which he regularly devoted to the purchase of books... He had genius and immense business talent - industry and energy almost superhuman." By the age of 21 he had a personal fortune of £30,000. (3)
Hill married Ann Jecks of Norwich on 1st June 1818. He purchased a large house in Wisbech. Anne gave birth to three children: Julia (1821-1861), Louisa (1822-1842) and Frederick (1822). (4)
James Hill became very interested in politics and in 1819 he was elected as a Capital Burgess, standing as a radical Liberal. At his swearing in he refused to take his oath on the Bible and was forced to stand down in favour of his Tory opponent. (5)
Hill was totally opposed to the Lord Liverpool government. In 8th December, 1820, he issued a statement drawing attention George IV's attention to "the misrule of your present Ministers... they have betrayed their King - insulted their Queen - despised the People - violated the Constitution - exhausted the Treasury - impoverished the Nation - disgraced the Church - demoralized the Land - scandalized Christianity and cast a Stain upon their Country which time cannot easily efface." (6)
Anne Jecks Hill suffered from poor health and died in December 1823. The Cambridge Chronicle reported: "On Saturday last, at Wisbech, aged 26 years, Mrs Ann Hill, wife of Mr James Hill jnr, merchant of that place, and fourth daughter of Mr Isaac Jecks. She bore her illness, which was severe and protracted, with a fortitude seldom equalled, and she met death with a composure corresponding with the whole tenour of her life, which, though short, was an exemplification of all personal and social virtues." (7)
Banking Crisis
James Hill senior died on 25th December 1825. At the sametime James Hill and Son suffered a financial crisis because of the "temporary suspension of our payments occasioned by the inability of our London Bankers to meet their engagements" and thanked the creditors for their "handsome and liberal conduct... and their unshaken confidence." (8) The Hills had been brought down in a nationwide banking crash. In April 1826, the Wisbech Bank agreed to pay the creditors six shillings in the pound - subject to their ability to prove the debt. (9)
James Hill married Eliza Jecks Hill in Hastings on 1 June, 1825. As Eliza was the sister of his previous wife, Anne, the marriage, under the tables of affinity, was illegal in ecclesiastical law. (10) Eliza gave birth to Margaret (1827-1924), Arthur (1829-1909), Ida (1830-1899) and Catherine (1831-1854). (11)
James Hill and Son recovered from the banking crash but it was to prove an invaluable weapon in the armoury of his enemies. Although a successful businessman, he espoused radical causes which might benefit the working class. He became a friend and supporter of Robert Owen, the socialist campaigner against child labour and Richard Cobden of the Anti-Corn Law. According to his son, Arthur Hill: "History speaks of him (James Hill) as a judicious friend of the working classes, in the education of whose children he took the warmest interest." (12)
James Hill's second wife, Eliza Jecks Hill died on 28th October, 1832. In 1834 Hill read an article on the radical educational theories of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in the The Monthly Repository by Caroline Southwood Hill. Pestalozzi who believed that every aspect of the child's life contributed to the formation of the child's personality, character, and capacity to reason. His educational methods were child-centered and based on individual differences, sense perception, and the student's self-activity. (13)
Caroline Southwood Hill
Hill requested a meeting with Southwood Hill and he offered her the post as governess of his five daughters and a son. In 1835 Hill married Southwood Hill at St Botolphs, Bishopgate. (14) The family lived at 7-8 South Brink, Wisbech. In addition to caring for her six stepchildren she gave birth to five daughters, Miranda (1836), Gertrude (1837), Octavia Hill (1838), Emily (1840) and Florence (1843). "Southwood Hill's unorthodox child-rearing methods became well known in radical circles: she shunned conventional discipline, seeking to instill in the children an ability to reason and a love of learning." (15)
Despite the birth of her children, Caroline Southwood Hill was instrumental in the setting up of James Hill's pioneering infant school which was based upon Robert Owen's New Lanark school, run on Pestalozzian principles. It was housed in the Hall of the People. The school was open in the evenings as a community centre for adult education and recreation. (16)
Margaret Cole has carried out a special study of Robert Owen's educational ideas: "He (Owen) thought education should be natural and spontaneous and the children should enjoy it. He set little store, in the early stage, by learning out of books, but believed that children should learn by means of free discussion, question and answer, by exploration and study of the countryside, and by extensive provision of pictures, maps and charts, and what we should now call Visual Aids... He did not believe in seating children in tidy rows, but letting them roam about freely, in learning to sing and to dance the dances of all countries... He forbade any sort of punishment or even 'harsh critical words', and the strength of his personality, coupled with his love for all children and gift for managing them, secured that neither he nor the teachers who eventually he employed had any trouble with discipline." (17)
James Hill and Robert Owen
In 1836 James Hill launched the radical newspaper, the Star in the East. Hill explained in its first editorial the objectives of the newspaper: "To advocate these principles, to help forward the cause of humanity - to vindicate the claim of the oppressed, and to place in their true light the influencing causes of social suffering and social enjoyment, shall be the grand aim of all our labours as journalists, and in this arduous but satisfactory undertaking, we anticipate the full sympathy and aid of all good men and true." (18)
Hill used his newspaper to promote the United Advancement Society. Members could buy their groceries wholesale; items offered included green and black tea, flour, coffee and soap. (19) It was a co-operative system based on the ideas of Robert Owen. Hill wanted to turn Wisbech into an Owenite town. John F. Harrison, the author of The Common People (1984) points out that "Owenism" was the main British variety of what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels called utopian socialism. "The Owenites believed that society could be radically transformed by means of experimental communities, in which property was held in common, and social and economic activity was organized on a cooperative basis. This was a method of effecting social change which was radical, peaceful and immediate." (20)
Hill's newspaper chronicled the socialist movement in the country and included scientifically reports and literary reviews. It reported sympathetically the riots that took place in Birmingham in July 1839 following the Chartist petition presented to Parliament by Thomas Attwood. Often the leading article took the form of a letter, usually from one of his opponents, followed by a signed reply from Hill. In his newspaper he attacked the aristocracy and the privileged, local or national figures. (21)
Hill wanted to buy a 700-acre estate at Wretten in Norfolk for his own agricultural colony. He visited it in the autumn of 1838 on behalf of the the United Advancement Society (UAS). In a letter to The Stamford Mercury he explained his plans for the UAS. "The Society is an association of the Working Classes for bettering their condition. It consists of a weekly contribution of sixpence from each member, to enable them by their united means to obtain collectively what individually would be impossible. The first great object which it proposes is to enable them to become landowners... If it is good for the Squire to have land, we do not see that it can be a great disadvantage to the Cottager: the latter possesses the bone and sinew to cultivate it in at least as great a degree as the Squire. The land is then to be cultivated, and the crop, whether wheat or potatoes, either shared amongst the members in equal proportions, or sold at a cheap rate." At this time Hill claimed that 400 people had joined the United Advancement Society. (22)
Hill was unable to raise the money to buy the estate in Wretten and instead, in March 1839 the UAS purchased a mere ten acres just outside Wisbech, on the river. On 13th April the members celebrated, at tables laid out in the orchard, "an event which, though small in its commencement, shall ultimately, be found to have been the beginning of an important change in society." However, the venture was not a success and by November members had begun to withdraw their money from the Society. (23)
James Hill was also suffering from financial problems and the last issue of Star in the East was published on 11th April 1840. However, The Times published details of the bankruptcy of James Hill and his partner, Thomas Hill. (24) On 3rd June 1840 an auction was held at the Saracen's Head Inn, Peterborough "by order of the Commissioners in a Fiat of Bankruptcy against James and Thomas Hill, merchants, brewers, and co-partners, and under the direction of the Assignees of the said bankrupts." The sum raised was £12,941. (25)
Bankruptcy
After the bankruptcy Caroline Southwood Hill and her children were greatly assisted by her father Thomas Southwood Smith and their close friends the radical writer Mary Gillies and her sister Margaret Gillies, with whom Thomas Southwood Smith lived. The family moved from Essex to Hampstead, then to Gloucestershire, and on to Leeds, where in 1845 James Hill bought the Owenite publication the New Moral World. (26)
This was a controversial decision and George Fleming, who was living in Harmony Hill, an Owenite community, attempted to relaunch the paper as Moral World. However, this was not a success and both newspapers stopped publication by the end of the year. (27)
James Hill suffered a nervous breakdown when this venture failed and he went to live with his widowed daughter, Margaret Whelpdale, from his first marriage. Caroline Southwood Hill later wrote: "By the advice of Dr Connolly and other physicians after his recovery he continued to live apart from his wife and her children, and although in this particular instance it may have been an over corrective yet it was grounded on a too little observed fact in human nature, that persons who will be perfectly sound in mind under some conditions, give way if exposed to exciting causes of disease. How many a tragedy might never happen if care were taken to avoid these - if the pressure of pecumiary anxiety for children's sake were lifted off a man for instance or he were kept away from the object of hopeless love or groundless jealousy." (28)
James Hill died on 20th July 1871.
Primary Sources
(1) The Cambridge Chronicle (12th December 1823)
On Saturday last, at Wisbech, aged 26 years, Mrs Ann Hill, wife of Mr James Hill jnr, merchant of that place, and fourth daughter of Mr Isaac Jecks. She bore her illness, which was severe and protracted, with a fortitude seldom equalled, and she met death with a composure corresponding with the whole tenour of her life, which, though short, was an exemplification of all personal and social virtues.
(2) James Hill, Star in the East (17th September, 1836)
To advocate these principles, to help forward the cause of humanity - to vindicate the claim of the oppressed, and to place in their true light the influencing causes of social suffering and social enjoyment, shall be the grand aim of all our labours as journalists, and in this arduous but satisfactory undertaking, we anticipate the full sympathy and aid of all good men and true.
(3) James Hill, The Stamford Mercury (7th September 1838)
The Society is an association of the Working Classes for bettering their condition. It consists of a weekly contribution of sixpence from each member, to enable them by their united means to obtain collectively what individually would be impossible. The first great object which it proposes is to enable them to become landowners. The idea of becoming landowners for sixpence per week, may at first sight appear chimerical, but is it really so? The weekly sixpences of four hundred members for one year only, amount to 520 l .; those of four thousand persons amount to 5000 l .; and carrying it out to a similar organisation of the working classes throughout the island, four million persons would have a revenue of more than five million pounds sterling per annum!...
If it is good for the Squire to have land, we do not see that it can be a great disadvantage to the Cottager: the latter possesses the bone and sinew to cultivate it in at least as great a degree as the Squire. The land is then to be cultivated, and the crop, whether wheat or potatoes, either shared amongst the members in equal proportions, or sold at a cheap rate.
(4) Arthur Hill, The Reading Standard (23 February 1907)
The late Mr James Hill – an able banker – was a warm friend and supporter of Richard Cobden, whom he greatly assisted in the anti-Corn Law agitation, and was a persistent thorn in the side of the Bishop of Ely, with whom, it may be said, he was on terms of almost perpetual quarrel. History speaks of him as a judicious friend of the working classes, in the education of whose children he took the warmest interest."