SULTAN’S FRIEND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 November 1940, Page 2

SULTAN’S FRIEND

MISS LYDIA HILL KILLED. BUYING GIFT IN SHOP. Once a council schoolgirl ,then a cabaret dancer who nursed the Sultan of Johore through a critical illness, Miss Lydia Hill was killed in Canterbury by a German bomb. She was 27. Miss Hill had motored from Herne Bay to buy a wedding present for a girl friend, and was in a fur shop when a bomb crashed on the building. She was killed instantly. A message was sent to the Sultan of Johore, who was living at Herne Bay. Lydia Hill was born in Canterbury, but lived in a great blue-and-white house, Mayfair Court, on Grand Drive, Herne Bay. It was in Herne Bay that she spent her childhood, going to the local council school each day from her parents' small bungalow in Quecnsbridge Drive. Her father, a chief pettyofl'icer in the Navy, retired with the rank of lieutenant. Her uncle was a postman. After leaving school, Lydia Hill trained as a dancer, went on tour in the provinces, and finally joined the cabaret at Grosvenor House, Park Lane. There she met the 6ft. 6in. Sultan. Several times Miss Hill and her mother were invited to the Sultan’s dinner par-

ties, and after he returned to Johore they were invited to visit him. There were persistent rumours that Miss Hill and the Sultan were to marry. (His marriage to his Scottish-born wife. Mrs Helen Wilson, was dissolved in 1938.) For a time Miss Hill wore a £lOOO diamong ring on her engagement finger. Two years ago the Sultan returned to Europe, critically ill. His sons sent for Miss Hill, hoping that she might help him. She travelled from England to Genoa, and helped to nurse the Sultan back to health. The Sultan of Johore, ruler of the 7600 square-mile State at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, gave £250,000 last June to help Britain win the war. In 1935 he gave £500.000 —onethird of his income—toward the cost of the Singapore defences. He is 67.