Great-granddaughter of City Times founder lifts the lid on his intrepid past

Carol Stier (néé Hills), the great granddaughter of the founder of the City Times, William Hills, recently lifted the lid on a “trommel” her dad, William Edward Haigh Hills (known as Billy Hills Jnr), left her. The contents, so far, are riveting and we’re proud to be reproducing, as best we are able to, the footsteps of the “enterprising” Hills in a series of articles Carol is compiling. Carol was also a journalist at the City Times in the late ’80s.

Introduction, by Carol Stier

Using a paintbrush, I dusted away mould spores from the yellowed newsprint cuttings pasted onto the black pages of a book embossed with the word “album”. And it felt like finding gold.

There it was: “My Life as a Journalist”, in the words of William Hills, who founded the Benoni City Times 100 years ago.

I have had many years to travel through the treasures in my great-grandfather’s old chest (or the “trommel”, as it came to be known), but have I?

Nope. Things happen, life gets too busy and with every passing day that closed box is less easily opened.

But a centennial? Well, that’s a powerful crowbar and it was with excitement that I lifted the lid on the past – it wasn’t that heavy after all – to help the newspaper celebrate this important milestone.

The 100th anniversary of the newspaper is an achievement of which I am extremely proud, and I am grateful I had the chance to play a tiny role in its legacy.

It was as a cub reporter at the Benoni City Times in 1987 that I first heard the stories of colourful old Mr Hills, all five foot five of him, who refused to stop working until they had to lock the City Times to keep him out.

William Hills’s argument that day with my grandfather, Billie Hills snr, was one of his earliest recollections, my father, Billy Hills jnr, said 10 years ago at the City Times’s 90th birthday.

He described his grandfather as “enterprising”. Hills talked his way into Cecil John Rhodes’s cabin for an interview, swam across Durban Harbour to interview Winston Churchill and interviewed Paul Kruger and Jan Smuts. Born in the UK in 1869, William Hills came to South Africa in 1895 at the age of 26, accompanied by his 16-year-old brother George (who later established a political career).

Piecing the bits together it is clear that long before even thinking of establishing the Benoni City Times, Hills worked for several publications and even tried, unsuccessfully, to follow his brother into politics.

He started reporting in South Africa at the Port Elizabeth Advertiser and the Racing Calendar and Agricultural Journal before moving to the Krugersdorp Times and helped found the Pretoria News.

He reported for The Standard and Diggers News before becoming a special war correspondent for the Central News War Service, syndicated by Dalziel’s Cable Agency in England. He then joined the Boksburg Herald, the first newspaper in the East Rand, which was later incorporated into The East Rand Express with the Germiston News and the Benoni Advertiser.

During a visit to the Benoni Library’s archives way back when I discovered that by 1921 he also worked for at least two other East Rand newspapers: The Modern and The Latest.

I am sure there are many more discoveries to be made and shared, but I believe William Hills’s “No.1 Introductory” is the best place to start.

I’m going to let him tell it to you in his own words, as published in the Benoni City Times, starting on July 19, 1940, under the headline “How I came to South Africa and Why: the first pyjamas cause a sensation”.

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