My great grandmother Susan Caroline Hill had seven siblings, but only four survived beyond their third birthdays. Research into the surviving four reveals stories of further loss and survival, changing circumstances, military and civilian war casualties and emigration. Some of them are told here.

Loss and survival

My 2xgreat grandparents, Elsted-born Labourer John Hill and his second wife, Elizabeth Sarah Windebank, from Slough, married in Lambeth in 1869 and had their first child, John Hill, in Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex in 1870. He died in London’s east end from Croup in 1872. My great grandmother Susan Caroline Hill was born in Bermondsey in 1875 and survived to old age. She was followed by sisters Emily Elizabeth Hill (b1877-1879) and Mary Ann Hill (1879-1882). The stories of their loss are told elsewhere. But what of the four others who survived?

1. George William Hill (1881-1930): Stoker to Potman, father of five

George was one year old when his sister Mary Ann died of Measles in 1882, but appears not to have caught the disease, or at least, not fatally. He was born at 94 Blue Anchor Lane, where he spent at least the first five years of his life, first attending nearby Roupell Road School and, from 1888, Mawbey Road School. The family moved to 25 Bowles Road/Herman Road some time between 1886 and 1891, and the 1901 census finds him there as a 19 year old General Labourer. By then, his widowed mother had married Thomas George Evans, and the household is a mix of children from their previous marriages, the youngest just six years old.

The following year, on Christmas Day 1902, he married Annie Maria Love.

Extract from St Philips, Camberwell, parish register (Ancestry)

His occupation is ‘Fireman’ – a stoker rather than someone who extinguishes fires. His bride is three years older than him, the daughter of a Carpenter. The witnesses are her brother and sister: George Henry Love and Ada Florence Love. Before her marriage, in 1901, she was ‘house keeper’ for her widowed father and younger siblings in Stoke Newington; she was born in nearby Walworth.

George and Annie lived at several addresses in Camberwell according to the 1911 census and the baptism records of their children, a boy and four girls. By 1914, they have settled at 34 Bowles Road. George’s occupation is variously described as Gas Stoker (Metal works) and Engineer. By the time the census is taken in 1921, his circumstances appear reduced, as he is working as a Potman at the Lord Wellington pub at 516 Old Kent Road. Close to the junction with Bowles Road, dating to about 1856, this may once have been a thriving pub, but is now in a sad state and closed.

By the time he died on 6 April 1930, aged just 48, he was working as a Stone Mason’s Labourer. He died at home at 34 Bowles Road.

Digital death certificate for George William Hill (GRO)

It is possible that his various occupations working with coal, gas and stone all contributed to his cause of death. This is described in lengthy terms by A D Cowburn, Coroner for Surrey and London, after a post mortem (although no inquest was held). His death was attributed to Syncope (coma) from Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema, with some myocardial degeneration accelerated by a heavy meal. His last months or years may not have seen him in very good health, and may be why he left the metal works for the pub for a while. The death was registered by his son ‘G W Hill’.

His full name was also George William Hill, born in 1904. He died, aged only 40, of Lung Cancer, on 6 April 1930 at an address in Dulwich. His mother registered his death, and died at the same address – 9 Frogley Road – four years later. By the 1960s, her widowed eldest daughter Annie Elizabeth Fordham (b.1906) had moved there with her daughter Patricia and son-in-law Derek Kingsnorth; the latter were still there in 2018. Google Street View shows it in a street of neat, two-storey, bay-windowed possibly Victorian terraced houses.

I have found little else about their lives and those of the three other Hill daughters. Emily Lilian (b.1912), was a paper mill worker before marrying Albert Alfred Hunt in 1940; Florence Susan Hill (b.1914), a Relief Stamper for Baddeley Brothers luxury stationers. A year after her brother’s death she married Jack Farnes, and moved to the Dorking area in Surrey. Newspapers at FindMyPast cover the marriage of a grandson in 1992, and engagement of a granddaughter, who married in 1997. The youngest daughter of George William Hill and his wife Annie Maria was Doris May Hill, born in 1920. She was only nine years old when her father died. She married Ivor Herbert Pusey in 1956 and lived the rest of her life, as far as I can tell, in Tadworth, Surrey; she died there in 2012.

2. Charlotte Sarah Hill (1883-1945): Victim of a V2 rocket

Part of Charlotte’s story, and her death with many other family members from a V2 rocket attack on London in 1945, is told in another post here. From further research, it appears that she and her husband Charles Clark suffered the loss of two babies in infancy, and a son who died young. The first, Elizabeth Isabella Clark, was born barely three weeks after the couple married, in February 1902 and died of Diptheria aged 12 months. Later in 1903, a second daughter, Charlotte Elizabeth Clark was born. Her death came seven months later, in May 1904, of Broncho Pneumonia. Their first son, Thomas George Clark, was born the following year and survived to adulthood, but died aged 25 of ‘myocardial degeneration, chronic Bronchitis and Asthma’. Of their seven children, only four survived until WW2, when Charlotte, her eldest daughter and many members of her extended family were killed. A sad repetition of history, when Charlotte was one of only four of her siblings to survive to adulthood too.

3. William Hill (1886-?): Printer, Wounded in WW1

Born on 16 May 1886, William Hill was baptised on 9 June that year at St Augustine’s Church, Lynton Road, Bermondsey. His parents were living at 4 Blue Anchor Lane at the time, his father working as a Labourer.

Extract from parish register of St Augustine’s church (Ancestry)

He makes his first census appearance aged 5 at 25 Bowles Road, Camberwell in 1891, with his parents and five siblings, including my 15 year old great grandmother. He would have been about nine years old when his mother married Thomas George Evans in 1895, and is living with them at 25 Herman Road at the time of the 1901 census. By then he was 14 years old and working as a Printer’s Labourer. The house must have been rather crowded with a total of nine children from his mother’s and stepfather’s previous marriages.

Six years later, on 29 September 1907, William Hill married Emily Harrington Groves at the ancient church of St Mary at Lambeth. Both bride and groom give their address as 6 Little Park Place, both are able to sign the register, and both their fathers are shown as deceased. The groom is working as a Printer; Emily’s father was a Floor Cloth Printer … I wonder if William was in a similar line of work, and that is how they met?

The witnesses are James Frederick Harrington Groves and Daisy Louisa Harrington Groves, both of whom also sign the register. These are the bride’s brother and sister-in-law, although the latter was actually born Louisa Agnes Chandler, but seems to have been known as Daisy. The couple had married in June the same year, when Emily H Groves was one of the witnesses, with Elizabeth Jordan. Elizabeth was Emily’s and James’ mother, who had remarried on the death of her husband. The latter is named on both marriage certificates as James Timothy Harrington Groves, although he was just simply James Groves on his children’s baptism records. When he married Elizabeth Chandler in 1871, he was James Addington Groves.

William is described as a Printer on the baptism record of their first son, William George Frederick Hill, who was born 2 ½ months after the wedding, and on the 1911 census, when the small family is living at 168 Rolls Road, Bermondsey.

On 29 November 1915, civilian William Hill, a printer of 44 Marlborough Road, Camberwell, signed up as Private 13371, East Kent (The Buffs) Regiment, giving details of his marriage to Emily and his son’s birth. On 16 April 1918 he was discharged as ‘no longer medically fit to be a soldier’, his home address the same as when he joined up three years earlier. He had received a gun shot wound to his right arm on 20 November 1917 and was repatriated on the hospital ship Stad Antwerpen, and was subsequently discharged to a weekly pension.

Extract from WW1 service record for G W Hill showing discharge details (Ancestry)

Marlborough Road, Old Kent Road, was adjacent to Rolls Road. The Bermondsey Boy blog has a photo which is said to show Marlborough Road as it was c.1900. William returned to his printing profession after the War; in the 1921 census we have a more detailed glimpse of his work, as he is described as a Printer (Machine Minder) for Vail & Co., Ogle St, Great Portland Street, London.

The Victoria & Albert Museum holds eight items printed by Vail & Co in its theatre collection, although most are dated several decades later, after WW2. I haven’t found anything else about the firm. Their son was just over 13 years old and still at school. Living with them are William’s 69 year old widowed stepfather Thomas George Evans. He is still working, a Fur and Skin Dyer for the firm of C W Martin & Sons, Fur and Skin Dressers and Dyers of 61 Grange Road, Bermondsey. The London Picture Archive has a photo of the company’s premises, albeit built in the 1930s, so not the buildings the Hills and Evans would have known. The buildings have since been turned into flats. Of the company, they say:

“The firm of C.W. Martin & Sons Ltd. owned the Alaska Factory, which was founded in 1869, for about a century. Its business was fur, above all sealskin fur, and eventually it employed around a tenth of all the fur workers in the United Kingdom. The present Alaska Factory was built in 1932 to the design of Wallis, Gilbert & Partners. “

A month after the census was taken, on 1 July 1921, the couple’s second son Frederick Joseph Thomas Hill was born. It must have been quite a shock for the family to have a young baby in the household 13 years after their first son was born. I wonder what young William George Frederick Hill thought about no longer being an only child.

The family seems to have settled into 44 Marlborough Road into the 1930s, appearing in electoral registers there in 1935. However, by 1938, they have moved to Selsey Crescent, Bexley. William Hill, his wife Emily and younger son Frederick are at number 42, their eldest son and his wife Lillian are next door at number 40. They are all still there when the 1939 Register was taken. William Hill is working as a Printers Platen Machine Minder, while son Frederick J T Hill is a Clerk, company and nature of its work unspecified. William George Frederick Hill is a senior Clerk for a Scrap Iron Metal Engineers. Perhaps his brother was also working there?

I know very little else about William Hill’s later life. As with earlier generations of Hills, with such common names, it has been difficult to identify his and his wife’s death records. There is an index entry for an Emily Hill, born in 1885, who died in the Woolwich district in the first quarter of 1961, when she would have been 75. Unfortunately, the GRO doesn’t have digitised images of death certificates for this period, so I haven’t been able to prove or rule it out.

There is a death index entry for William Hill, born 1886, who died in the second quarter of 1957 in the Southwark district. This is covered by the GRO’s digitisation programme. Unfortunately, the resulting digital certificate shows that this was a retired Cart Minder (Vegetable market), aged 71 of Henshaw Street, Walworth. His widow A E Hill was the informant; so I am no further forward finding his death record.

Of the couple’s two sons, born 13 years apart, the eldest, William, married Lillian Henrietta Gladwin in 1937, in Dartford, Kent. She was the daughter of a Soap Manufacturers’ Clerk and grew up in East Ham. They do not seem to have had children. I believe that, from death index records, William died in Feniton, Honiton, Devon on 28 February 1974. His widow Lilian Hill may have died there a few months later, on 13 April 1974.

The younger son, Frederick Joseph Thomas Hill, married in Woolwich after WW2, at the beginning of 1953. His bride was Mary Margaret Manning. By then, both were in their early 30s. They may have had two sons in the late 1950s, but I have no corroborations to prove this. Frederick Joseph Thomas Hill died on 25 November 1993, when he was 72, and was buried at Greenwich on 13 December that year.

4. John Charles Hill (1891-1948): Soldier and Guinness Foreman in Dublin

My great grandmother’s youngest brother was born when she was 15 years old, and their mother 42. . He makes his first census appearance in 1891, aged six weeks, and was baptised the day after census night, on 6 April 1891, at St Mark’s, Camberwell. His parents are living at 25 Bowles Road, Camberwell, his father working as a Labourer.

In the 1901 census, he is ten years old and living with his mother, her second husband Thomas George Evans, and the couple’s eight other children from their previous marriages. John would only have been about four years old when his mother married for a second time, and may have had little memory of his own father, John Hill. The constant in his life was the family home, now called 25 Herman Road, but the same house.

Ancestry has army attestation papers which show that, in civilian life, he was a harness maker. Aged 18 years and 7 months, in 1908, he joined the Royal West Kent Regiment at Maidstone. The papers show that he had previously been a member of the Royal West Kent Special Reserve. He was 5’9” tall, weighed 12 stone 3lbs, had a sallow complexion, brown eyes and black hair. The names and addresses of his (several) next of kin show this is the right man:

Extract from Army service record (Ancestry)

The record shows his mother, Elizabeth Mrs Evans; his sister Charlotte Sarah Clark, sister Susan Stocking (myngreat grandmother), and brothers George and William. In 1910, he obtained a Saddler’s Certificate. At the time of the 1911 census, John Charles Hill, Soldier, is enumerated with his widowed stepfather Thomas George Evans and four of his step siblings at 14 Beechfield Road, Catford. My great grandparents and other family members also lived at no.14 and no.16.

That year, the Regiment was posted to Dublin where his record shows he was fined several times for overstaying his pass and not returning to barracks, and two instances of being drunk on his return. Dublin counted as ‘home service’. During this time he met an Irish girl, Florence Emily Williams, and they married on 25 June 1914 in Dublin.

In July, he was mobilised with the British Expeditionary Force to France and received a gun shot wound to the head in August 1914, and was wounded in his right knee in September that year. Neither appeared to cause him to be evacuated back to the UK. On 8 April 1915, Florence gave birth to a daughter, Charlotte Frances Anne Hill in Dublin. A second child, son John Charles Hill junior followed in Dublin on 18 September 1917. Their father had been deployed with the Battalion to Italy in December 1917. On demobilisation in 1919, he gave his home address as 6 Pimlico Cottages, Pimlico, Dublin. His daughter would have been five years old, his son two years old. Although he was granted five days leave to the UK in 1918, he returned to the Battalion in France, so would have had little time to get to know his children; he and his wife had had little time together in five years of marriage. It may have taken them all a while to adjust.

Life after WW1

Did he return to England after the war, bringing his wife and children with him? Ancestry has a school record for daughter Charlotte Hill, with the correct birthdate, at St John’s United School, Dublin showing her admission on 10 September 1923. There is also a record of admission on 12 April 1926 to the same school for John Hill, whose date of birth is given as 18 August 1917 (not 18 September), but this may be a mistake or transcription error. Unfortunately, no other information is given on the school records to confirm eg parents or address. But it appears that the children were still in Dublin until at least 1926.

John Charles Hill and his Irish wife Florence Emily Hill may have had more children after 1917, but I haven’t searched the Irish birth indexes. However, a search of the Irish records on Ancestry revealed a record from the Guinness Archive for John Hill, born 17 February 1891, who joined the company aged 28 (ie in 1919, not long after his demobilisation from the Army). The record shows he was employed as a Foreman, and died on 20 March 1948. He would have been 57 years old. Another record for ‘widows and children’ shows his widow, Florence Emily Hill living at 241 Errigal Road, Drimnagh, in South Dublin. There is also a city directory for Dublin in 1939 that shows John Hill at the same address.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether John was employed by Guinness from 1919 until his death in 1948. It may be that he was owed a pension – or his widow was – from his service. However, an acknowledgement by the family for sympathies received after his death, published in the Dublin Evening Mail on 30 March 1948 suggests he stayed with Guinness:

Dublin Evening Mail, 30 March 1948, BNA at FindMyPast

There is mention here of “the managers and staff of the Traffic and Packing Departments of A.G.S”, with the initials standing for Arthur Guinness & Sons.

It is possible that their daughter Charlotte Frances Anne Hill did move to England at some point, as in the first quarter of 1942, FreeBMD shows a woman of that name marrying Benjamin W Herbert in the St Pancras district of London. At the time of The 1939 Register, he was working as a lift man for a department store, enumerated at 49 Grafton Way, St Pancras, together with many other employees of ‘department store’. The Store’s name isn’t given, and the building today looks like a mansion block (and is now student accommodation). Perhaps employees were billeted there. However, I only have the index record for the marriage, so no corroborating information on her father or other family members. I have not found Lottie, as she was known, in The 1939 Register, so she may have been in Dublin until after the outbreak of WW2.

There is a burial record for a Benjamin William Herbert with the same date of birth as in the 1939 Register, in Southwark, who died on 11 December 1986 and was buried on 18 December. There is also a death index and burial record for Charlotte Frances Herbert in Southwark, date of birth 15 April 1915, (not 8 April) who was buried on 22 March 2001. I have not found any likely records of children of the marriage.

I have also failed to find son John Charles Hill, born in 1917, in The 1939 Register, or any other records in the UK which are verifiable, so perhaps he remained in Ireland. He doesn’t appear to have followed in his father’s footsteps with employment at the Guinness Brewery – at least, there do not appear to be any records for him at Ancestry in that collection. With such a common name, and some ambiguity over his date of birth (August or September 1917), he remains a mystery.

There is a death index entry at Ancestry’s Irish records for an Emily Hill born about 1889, who died in Dublin South in the first quarter of 1955, but I have not been able to prove that this was her.

These short stories of the surviving siblings of my great grandmother Susan Caroline Hill bring to an end my research into this generation of the family, their parents and their descendants. I have already researched previous generations of the Hills and Winderbanks, and inter-connecting families, but it will be some time before I publish them here.