At the Carmelite Church at Kensington yesterday (Thursday), a requiem Mass was offered for the soul of Major the Right Hon. John Walter Hills, P.C.. M.P., who died on Christmas Eve in London, after some days' illness, at the age of seventy-one.
Since 1925 Major Hills had been M.P. for Ripon, sitting in the Conservative intereet, Earlier in his political career he represented Durham City, a constituency which failed, however, to reelect him at an election after his appointment, by Mr Boner Law, as Financial Secretary to the Treasury. On finance he was an authority, a man with a number of commercial interests and the author of studies of Finance of Government and Managed Money. He served on various departmental committees examining into housing and other industrial questions.
In 1931 Major Hills married, as his second wife, Mary brace Ashton, the novelist, His first wife, Stella, daughter of the late Herbert Duckworth, died in 1897. Mrs Hills, as a Catholic, has had the consolation of seeing her husband also in the Household of the Faith. Following the requiem Mass, the interment took place in St. Mary's Catholic cemetery, Kensal Green.