Luthier and thief

The Hill family holds an illustrious place in English violin making history that dates back at least as far as the 1750s. But a shadow has fallen from across the centuries with the discovery that one of the family’s number committed a crime for which he paid the ultimate price. Lockey Hill was an early member of the dynasty and, unlike some of his successors and his father Joseph, made most of his instruments for the trade, rather than for the expensive end of the market. Born in 1756, Lockey Hill is generally considered to have died in 1810. But new research using a range of archives challenges this date, and prompts a re-examination of the Hill family’s activities between 1795 and 1807.

Records of trials at the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, were made available online for the first time in 2003, and buried among the hundreds of thousands of proceedings is one that concerns Lockey Hill. He appeared before the Old Bailey in 1795 together with his servant Edward Bowtell, accused of stealing horses. To be more precise, Hill was ‘indicted for feloniously stealing one gelding, value £10 the property of Richard Kirby’.

To read the full article subscribe to The Strad Click here to subscribe