Lydia Cecilia Hill

32 Radigund St: her grandparents' home

Cissie's paternal grandfather was Joseph Hill, a 'gentleman', possibly of Portsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire.[2] Her maternal grandfather was George Henry Benge, a dairyman born around 1862 in Hastings,[3] Sussex, and retired by 1910.[2] Her maternal grandmother was Cecilia C. Benge born around 1866 in Aston Clinton; Cissie's grandparents married in the second quarter of 1886 in Blean.[4] In 1901 the Benge grandparents were living at 32 Radigund Street (now St Radigund Street) in Canterbury Northgate.[3] Living with them were their four sons, their daughter Florence Cecilia born in Canterbury in the first quarter of 1889,[5] and George's married sister.[6] Cissie's mother was Florence Cecilia Hill nee Benge, married at the age of 21 on 20 December 1910 at St Gregory's Church, Canterbury.[2] Cissie's father was George Hill, R.N., born 11 December 1882 in Portsea:[7] a leading seaman in 1910;[2] a petty officer in 1913;[8] made lieutenant commander in 1915;[7] retired in 1932.[8][9][10][11][12] He was called up from the Retired List in 1935 and served until 1946.[12] In 1911 Florence was twenty-two and living at 2 Kitchener Terrace, Sturry Road, Canterbury; her husband was absent, presumably on tour.[13] Cissie had an elder sister Etta Florence V. Hill, born 13 January 1912.[14]

Cissie lived here as a child

Cissie was born at 2 Kitchener Terrace in Canterbury on 20 July 1913.[8] Her family moved to Herne Bay by 1917 and lived at 4 Kingsbury Villas in Kings Road, Herne Bay, until 1927.[7][15] She attended Kings Road School which has now been replaced by Herne Bay Junior School.[16] She was crowned May Queen at the school around 1923–1924.[17] She would have left school in the summer of 1927, 14 years being the national school leaving age at the time.[18] Between 1927 and 1934 the family lived at Hyacinth, Queensbridge Drive, Herne Bay.[19] She trained as a dancer and joined the Grosvenor House cabaret,[20][21][22][23] but has also been described as a minor actress,[24] with platinum hair and blue eyes.[25] She was known as Cecily or Cissie.[26] The Herne Bay Press said:

"She had a talent for dancing, and linked with it was a charming personality, so that for some years she enjoyed much popularity locally, appearing in dancing displays at the old Pier Theatre and elsewhere. Her attractiveness won her success as a dancer in London, where she appeared for several seasons in the West End."[27]

Grosvenor House Hotel where she met the Sultan

On 25 June 1934, it was announced in the Court Circular that Ibrahim, Sultan of Johor had arrived at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane at the West End of London,[28] during part of his world tour that year.[22] He left for continental Europe, but returned to the Grosvenor House Hotel on 6 September.[29] Cissie was appearing as a dancer in the floor show at the same hotel, and first met him there.[21][22][26]

She became his favourite, and the Sultan was "fabulously wealthy":[30] in 1935 he gave £500,000 to the British Government for the defence of Singapore,[31] and in 1940 he gave £250,000 towards the cost of World War II.[32] He was also a six-foot-six-inch-tall playboy,[33] whose playgrounds included Sumatra and London, and the relationship with Cissie continued. The Sultan funded a new home for Cissie in Herne Bay in 1934 or 1935, and by 1935 she was living in the newly built Mayfair Court. She is recorded as living there in 1935; also in 1936 when her father, Lieutenant Hill, retired and came to live with her and her mother.[34] On 20 July 1936, Cissie and her mother Florence Cecilia Hill arrived at Southampton from Colombo on the ship Sibajak.[35] According to local historian Harold Gough, she and the Sultan travelled frequently to Johor and Europe in the 1930s.[36]

Cissie and Florence travelled on MS Sibajak in 1936

Sometime in 1937,[33] robbers broke into Mayfair Court and stole £5,000-worth of jewellery from Cissie's bedroom; this brought the affair with the Sultan into the public eye.[30] Descriptions of the stolen items were published, and it was disclosed that two of them were inscribed, "With all my love, S.I."[25] S.I. was Sultan Ibrahim, but Cissie's personal life had been private, and local rumour had invented an Indian maharajah to account for the Hill family's rise in fortune and for the building of Mayfair Court by a resting dancer in 1934. The publicity embarrassed the family, and Cissie's mother Florence Hill told a Press reporter that "Lydia" had gone into hiding under medical care due to shock at public attitudes, and that they knew no maharajah.[25] It is not known whether the pressure of this publicity incited the Sultan to announce an engagement in May, 1938.

Sultan Ibrahim, 1930s

On 12 May 1937 the Sultan attended the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in London, and is said to have renewed the relationship with Cissie then, divorced his Scottish wife Helen née Wilson in March 1938,[33] and sailed home in the same month to Singapore and Johor with his new companion and her mother.[33][37][38] As they left England it was observed that Cissie was wearing a large diamond engagement ring.[33] By May 1938 the young girl from Kent was back in Colombo where there were rumours of an announcement of an engagement before 9 September 1938 between the "platinum blonde" and "former glamour girl" Cissie and the 64-year-old divorcee Sultan,[21][33] but on reaching Singapore the Sultan promptly denied any engagement.[39] The Melbourne Argus quoted from the Daily Express that:

"After the Sultan had divorced his wife recently he went to Ceylon and renewed his acquaintance there with Miss Hill, who was spending a holiday there with her mother. Later the Sultan, Miss Hill and her mother toured Sumatra. Yesterday they went to Singapore by air, presumably on their way to Johore."[21]

The public denial of the engagement may have been associated with political pressure from the British colonial staff at Singapore:

"A cabaret-girl-Sultana the sahibs considered quite impossible. Social royalists, they ganged up and put moral pressure on the precedent-breaking Sultan by unanimously refusing his invitations, although Miss Hill was properly chaperoned at the palace by her mother. The Sultan had his revenge, by ordering the sahibs off his golf course, their children away from his bandstand"[22] ". . . When Singapore's British society behaved stuffily toward his show-girl fiancee, the Sultan struck back by firing all the Britons in his service and planting shrubs on the fairways and greens of the golf course used by the sahibs, which was on his property."[37]

Woodneuk Palace, Singapore

The British Colonial staff sent reports to England that the issue of marrying Miss Hill and a quarrel with the Governor of Straits Settlements had become problematic, and Cissie Hill (wearing a large diamond ring)[37] and her mother were given first class passage on the ship Indrapoera at Singapore to arrive at Southampton dock on 26 July 1938.[40] The Sultan stood publicly on the dock to wave goodbye, before returning to his playboy life in Sumatra.[22] The Press statement by the Sultan was telegraphed as follows:

"I have never suggested marrying Miss Hill (stop) Any suggestion of political implications is a lie (stop) Any suggestion of my not faithfully carrying out all agreements with the British Government is also a lie (stop)"[22]

Cissie wearing a cheongsam, 1937

By way of explanation for this, on 19 September 1938 a statement was given to the Daily Express by Roland St John Braddell (1880–1966), then legal adviser in Malaya. He said: "As far as I am concerned, I should love to see the Sultan of Johore married to this most charming lady, Miss Lydia Hill." He added that the Sultan could not marry at present because there was no mosque in Genoa where he was staying, because he could do nothing without the permission of the British Government, and because the Sultan was ill: "He nearly died recently in Johore",[1] having "become ill with heart trouble and gout".[36] The lawyer had been instructed to take his wife and daughter and accompany Cissie to Genoa, because she kept the Sultan "cheered and tranquil". She had performed an African dance for the Sultan, and accompanied him on a two-hour drive along the coast. Although the Sultan had previously announced an engagement in Malaya, the lawyer now said that he would inform the Press if and when any marriage were to occur.[1] Such an engagement was not unique in east Kent in the 1930s. George Henry Milles-Lade, 4th Earl Sondes who lived at Sheldwich, married Pamela McDougall on 17 October 1939; she was understood to have been previously a Bluebell Girl.[41]

The relationship continued, and in 1939 the Sultan was visiting Switzerland for his health, accompanied by Cissie and her mother Florence.[36] Cissie lived at Mayfair Court with her parents and sister, E.F.V. Allchin; she never married and was otherwise known as Cissie or Cecily Hill.[9] However she was seen to wear her engagement ring in Herne Bay, and she was known to have nursed the Sultan through a critical illness.[20] The Herne Bay Press said that there were "few people in Herne Bay to whom she was not known, at least by sight, and she had many friends . . . Good natured, she gave support to charitable objects and other causes, and she was the means of bringing happiness to people in straitened circumstances."[27]