all other prisoners he adopted the principles laid down by Captain Maconochie, formerly governor of Norfolk Island, which Hill thus summed up: ‘Begin to reform the criminal the moment you get hold of him, and keep hold of him until you have reformed him.’ By good conduct and work alone the prisoner was to earn indulgences and liberation. By the Penal Servitude Act of 1853 this principle was in part adopted. A prisoner whose conduct had been good was to be released before the expiration of his sentence on a ticket of leave, the chief condition of which was that he would be sent back to prison on proof being given that he was associating with persons of evil repute, and was not in possession of any visible means of earning an honest livelihood. This measure was almost wrecked at the outset by the folly of the home office. Convicts, however bad their conduct had been, were discharged on the expiration of a certain portion of their sentence, and scarcely a single license was revoked except on the commission of a fresh crime. Crimes of violence increased, and the public laid the blame on the system. Fortunately it was worked with great efficiency in Ireland by Captain Crofton, the head of the convict prisons there. By the reduction of convicts in that country in eight years from 4,278 to 1,314, its merits were vindicated. It was not till the Penal Servitude Act of 1864 that tickets of leave ceased to be granted in England as a matter of course, but were rigidly earned by good conduct.
The juvenile criminals, who in 1844 amounted to one in 304 of the population between the ages of ten and twenty, engaged much of Hill's attention. He joined with Mary Carpenter [q. v.] and other philanthropists in advocating the establishment of reformatories, which should be worked not as barracks, but on the family principle, as at Mettray in France; and of industrial schools for those who, not yet convicted, were hovering on the brink of a criminal life, and of free day- or ragged-schools for neglected children. The cost of the maintenance of the child was as far as possible to be thrown on the parents. These views Hill supported not only in his charges, but in large conferences held from time to time of those interested in these questions. The result of improved legislation was seen in the rapid lessening of the number of known criminals, which fell from 155,000 in 1861 to 77,000 in 1871, and 32,910 in 1887–8. In 1851 Hill was appointed commissioner of bankrupts for the Bristol district, which post he held till the abolition of the provincial courts by the act of 1869. His judgments were unusually sound. ‘I don't know how it is, Hill,’ remarked Lord-justice Knight Bruce, ‘but we can't manage to upset any of your decisions.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ answered the commissioner, ‘I do my best to give you a chance—I always try to be right.’ While commissioner of bankrupts he continued his efforts at reforming criminal jurisprudence, and took an active part in the work of the Social Science Association and in the co-operative movement. One of the last schemes which occupied his attention was the boarding-out of pauper children. He died on 7 June 1872, at his residence at Heath House, Stapleton, near Bristol, and was buried by the side of his wife in the cemetery of Arno's Vale. A bust of him has been placed by the town council of Birmingham in the public library of the town. He married in 1819 Margaret Bucknall, the elder daughter of a Kidderminster brewer. She died in 1868. By her he had six children, five of whom survived him—Alfred Hill, late registrar in the Birmingham court of bankruptcy; Matthew Berkeley Hill, professor of clinical surgery in University College, London; Rosamond Davenport Hill, member of the London School Board; Florence Davenport Hill and Joanna Margaret Hill, who have both been active in poor law reform, especially in the boarding-out system.
[Remains of T. W. Hill, ed. M. D. Hill, privately printed, 1859; obituary notice in the Times and Daily News, 10 June 1872; Memoir of M. D. Hill, by his Daughters, 1878; Public Education, by M. D. Hill 1822; Suggestions for the Repression of Crime, by M. D. Hill, 1857; Life of Sir Rowland Hill, by G. B. Hill, 1880; Knight's Quarterly Magazine, 1823–4; The Bench and the Bar, 1837; Transactions of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science; Co-operator, July and Aug. 1863, Jan. 1864.]
HILL, NICHOLAS (1570?–1610), philosopher, born in London about 1570, entered Merchant Taylors' School about 1578, and in 1587 was elected scholar of St. John's College, Oxford, where he matriculated 21 July 1587, when he was aged 17. He graduated B.A. 27 May 1592, and became fellow of his college. He was for some time secretary to Edward de Vere, ‘the poetical and prodigal earl of Oxford’ (Wood), and afterwards lived under the patronage of Henry, earl of Northumberland, and shared in his philosophic studies. Wood mentions a gossiping story to the effect that he was concerned in a plot against James I, and being obliged to flee the country, settled at Rotterdam, where, through grief at the death of his son Laurence, he poisoned himself about 1610. His death abroad seems well established, although
