Part 1 of our series on William Hills, founder of the City Times

Hills feared the story of his life might be found boring

The autobiography was “often rather boring”, Benoni City Times founder William Hills told a reader who asked him why he didn’t put on record some of his personal experiences of the early days of the Transvaal.

However, the same request had since been made from so many quarters that, “perhaps against my better judgement I have consented”, he wrote in the edition of July 19, 1940.

“If the result is not satisfactory, will kind and candid readers inform me so the pages of this paper may be more satisfactorily filled,” he continued.

What followed was “My Life as a Journalist; No1 Introductory; How I came to South Africa and why; The first pyjamas cause a sensation”.

“I suppose the reason to a certain extent was a desire to improve my position,” Hills wrote of joining a great band of immigrants to the Republic in the 1890s.

“But it was considerably more than that. “I was a journalist on the English County, or rather should I say Country Press. I saw before me nothing but an endless vista of routine reporting or sub-editing: concerts, flower shows, police courts, town councils.”

Every morning he and fellow pressmen sat listening to hour after hour of crimes; he knew all the habitual drunks; and that the great and good of the neighbourhood, who sat on the bench, were apt to make mistakes in their sentences.

“I wanted to see foreign lands and get away from too much respectability – we always carried kid gloves and walking sticks as ‘Gentlemen of the Press’. Surely life offered something more exciting and less formal.”

He started to save and “cast about” for the land of his choice.

“I concluded that South Africa must be more exciting than others for did it not boast missionaries, and lions, and gold mines and natives inadequately clad until the missionaries got to work on them,” he wrote.

“I was asked if I was going out as a missionary as if there was no other avocation in Africa.”

(Information compiled by: Carol Stier, great-granddaughter of William Hills).

Next time: A discussion in Hyde Park.