Matthew Davenport Hill was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 lawyer

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

 and penologist.

He was born at Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, where his father, Thomas Wright Hill

Thomas Wright Hill

Thomas Wright Hill was a mathematician and schoolmaster. He is credited as inventing the single transferable vote in 1819...

, for long conducted a private school. He was a brother of Sir Rowland Hill

Rowland Hill (postal reformer)

Sir Rowland Hill KCB, FRS was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of penny postage and his solution of prepayment, facilitating the safe, speedy and cheap transfer of letters...

. He acted as assistant in his father's school, but in 1819 was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn

Lincoln's Inn

The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...

. In 1832 he was elected one of the Liberal Members of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull

Kingston upon Hull (UK Parliament constituency)

Kingston upon Hull, often simply referred to as Hull, was a parliamentary constituency in Yorkshire, electing two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, from 1305 until 1885...

, but he lost his seat at the next election in 1834. On the incorporation of Birmingham in 1839 he was chosen recorder; and in 1851 he was appointed commissioner in bankruptcy for the Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 district. Taking an interest in questions relating to the treatment of criminal offenders, he publicly aired opinions which were the means of introducing many important reforms in the methods of dealing with crime

Crime

Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...

, drawing notably upon the theories of the Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 penal reformer, Alexander Maconochie

Alexander Maconochie (penal reformer)

Alexander Maconochie was a Scottish naval officer, geographer, and penal reformer.- Early life :Maconochie was born in Edinburgh on 11 February 1787. He joined the Royal Navy in 1803 and as a midshipman he saw active service in the Napoleonic Wars and was a prisoner of war from 1811 to 1814...

. His book Mettray (1855) describes the Mettray Penal Colony

Mettray Penal Colony

Mettray Penal Colony, situated in the small village of Mettray, in the French département of Indre-et-Loire, just north of the city of Tours, was a private reformatory, without walls, opened in 1840 for the rehabilitation of young male delinquents aged between 6 and 21. At that time children and...

 with its then new approach to dealing with young delinquents.

One of his principal coadjutors in these reforms was his brother Frederick Hill (1803–1896), whose Amount, Causes and Remedies of Crime, the result of his experience as inspector of prisons for Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. marked an era in the methods of prison discipline. Hill was one of the chief promoters of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and the originator of the Penny Magozine. He died at Stapleton, near Bristol.

His principal works are:

• Practical Suggestions to the Founders of Reformatory Schools (1855)
• Suggestions for the Repression of Crime (1857), consisting of charges addressed to the grand juries of Birmingham
• Mettray (1855)
• Papers on the Penal Servitude Acts (1864)
• Journal of a Third Visit to the Convict Gaols, Refuges and Reformatories of Dublin (1865)
• Addresses delivered at the Birmingham and Midland Institute
  Birmingham and Midland Institute
  The Birmingham and Midland Institute , now on Margaret Street in the city centre of Birmingham, England was a pioneer of adult scientific and technical education and today offers Arts and Science lectures, exhibitions and concerts. It is a registered charity...
  
  (1867).

See Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill, by his daughters Rosamond and Florence Davenport Hill (1878).

External links