Miss Hill at the same time left the Church of England for the unitarians.
On 5 Dec. 1879 she was elected as a progressive member to the London school board for the City of London, being second on the poll. She retained her seat till 1897, fighting successfully six triennial elections. As a member of the board, she showed an administrative capacity which was acknowledged by all parties to be of the first rank. At the outset she joined the industrial school committee and school management committee. She also acted as chairman of the managers of the Greystoke Place school in Fetter Lane, when it was the only board-school in the City of London, and there social or domestic economy was first made a school subject. In 1882 she became with admirable results chairman of the cookery committee, contributing a valuable article, 'Cookery Teaching under the London School Board,' to 'Macmillan's Magazine' (June 1884; reprinted in 'Lessons on Cookery,' 1885).
In 1886 she opposed the board's pension scheme for teachers, which in 1895 was abolished as actuarially unsound. She visited, in 1888, at Naas, Herr Abrahamson, the inventor of the Slöyd system of hand and eye training by means of woodwork, and described the system in the 'Contemporary Review' (May 1888). In the autumn of the same year she visited schools in the United States and Canada, and as a result she secured, in the face of much hostility, the introduction of pianos (for the purpose of marching and drill) into the London schools. With characteristic independence she resisted the provision by the board of meals for children, and in 1893 she opposed the denominational tendency of the board, though she was an ardent advocate of daily religious teaching. In 1896 she gave evidence before the departmental committee on reformatory and industrial schools and wrote a paper on 'How to deal with Children pronounced by the Authorities to be imfitted for Industrial Training' (Memoir, p. 132).
On her retirement from the board, owing to failing health, in 1897, she settled with her sister at a house near Oxford named Hillstow by Professor Skeat. The Brentwood industrial school was on her retirement re-named 'The Davenport-Hill Home for Boys.' She died at Hillstow after a long illness on 6 Aug. 1902.
To the end she was interested in the prevention of crime by education as well as in reformatories and industrial schools, which had first excited her philanthropic instincts, and she contributed two letters on these subjects to 'The Times' in her last days (24 Dec. 1900 and 16 April 1901). She was long a member of the Froebel Society, and was in 1894 made a governor of University College, London. She wrote in 1893 'Elementary Education in England,' at the request of the women's education sub-committee at the Chicago exhibition.
[Memoir of Rosamond Davenport-Hill, by Ethel E. Metcalfe (with three photographic portraits and a reproduction from miniature as a child); The Times, 7 Aug. 1902.]
HILLS, Sir JOHN (1834–1902), major-general, royal (Bombay) engineers, born at Neechindipore, Bengal, on 19 August 1834, was the third son in a family of six sons and four daughters of James Halls of Neechindipore, one of the largest land-owner and indigo planters in Bengal. His mother was Charlotte Mary, daughter of John Angelo Savi of Elba, and grand-daughter of General Corderan, commanding the French forces at Pondicherry. The second son is Lieutenant-general Sir James Hills-Johnes.
Educated at the Edinburgh Academy and at the Edinburgh University, where he won the Straton gold medal, Hills entered the East India Company's College at Addiscombe on 6 Aug. 1852, and was made second lieutenant in the Bombay engineers on 8 June 1854. After instruction at Chatham, Hills arrived at Bombay in August 1856, was posted to the Bombay sappers and miners, and having passed in Hindustani was appointed, on 14 Jan. 1857, assistant field engineer with the 2nd division of the Persian expeditionary force under major-general Sir James Outram [q. v.]. He was present at the capture of Mohumra, and for his services with the expedition received the medal with clasp. He was promoted lieutenant on 5 Nov. 1857. While at home on furlough he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on 21 March 1859.
Returning to India, Hills was for a time garrison engineer at Fort William, Calcutta, and in January 1862 became assistant to the chief engineer in Oude in the public works department at Lucknow. Promoted captain on 1 Sept. 1863, he was appointed executive engineer in Rajputana in 1865. In 1867 he joined the Abyssinian expedition under major-general Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) [q. v.]. He was at first employed as field engineer at Kumeyli camp, at the foot
