Matthew Davenport Hill

Matthew Davenport Hill (6 August 1792 – 7 June 1872) was an English lawyer and prison reform campaigner and MP.

Life Hill was born at Birmingham. His father, Thomas Wright Hill, ran the private schools Hazelwood and Bruce Castle. He was a brother of the postal reformer Sir Rowland Hill and the prison inspector Frederic Hill. He acted as assistant in his father's school, but in 1819 was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. In 1832 he was elected one of the Liberal Members of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull, but he lost his seat at the next election in 1834. On the incorporation of Birmingham in 1839 he was appointed as the town's recorder (judge); and in 1851 he was appointed commissioner in bankruptcy for the Bristol 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, drawing notably upon the theories of the Scottish penal reformer, Alexander Maconochie. His book Mettray (1855) describes the Mettray Penal Colony with its then new approach to dealing with young delinquents.

One of his principal coadjutors in these reforms was his brother Frederic Hill (1803–1896), whose Amount, Causes and Remedies of Crime, the result of his experience as inspector of prisons for Scotland. 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 Magazine. He died at Stapleton, near Bristol.

Two of his daughters wrote a biography of their father in 1878.

Family Hill married Margaret Bucknall on 3 November 1819.

Works 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 (1867).