Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
He was one of the world’s richest men - she was a girl from Kent
In 1940 the body of a young woman was discovered buried beneath debris after an air raid on Canterbury. She could only be identified by the exquisite jewellery she wore - bought for her by the sultan she was set to marry - but just who was the girl beneat
Cissie Hill was 27, engaged to a sultan and had the world at her feet. Having grown up in Canterbury and Herne Bay, she shot to fame thanks to her controversial relationship with the “fabulously wealthy” Ibrahim of Johor.
Dubbed “the playboy of the East” by the press, he took Cissie on trips across Europe and to exotic locations like Colombo in Sri Lanka and Sumatra in Indonesia.
The infatuated Sultan even had a spectacular art deco mansion built for her in Herne Bay, which still stands today. The “glamour girl” had seen more in 27 years than most of her former schoolmates would experience in a lifetime. But one day while out shopping with friends in Canterbury, tragedy struck.
It was a sudden and shocking end to what had been a truly extraordinary life.
Humble beginnings Lydia Cecilia Hill, known as Cissie, was born in a terraced house off Sturry Road, Canterbury, in 1913.
She was not born into wealth though by 1915 her father George had risen through the ranks of the Royal Navy to become a lieutenant commander.
The family moved to 4 Kingsbury Villas in Herne Bay and Cissie attended Kings Road School - which is now Herne Bay Juniors. Standing out from the crowd
from an early age, she was crowned the school’s May Queen in 1923-24. Leaving education aged 14, Cissie trained as a dancer and later left her hometown with the bright lights of the West End in her sights.
She managed to secure a place dancing for the prestigious Grosvenor House Hotel cabaret in London.
Stunning the Sultan Around this time, Cissie is also said to have starred as an actress, with one reviewer describing her “platinum hair and blue eyes”.
But it was dancing during the floor show at the Grosvenor House Hotel in September 1934 that would change her life forever.
Because among the crowd was the most distinguished of guests, Sultan Ibrahim.
The 61-year-old sovereign ruler of the Malaysian state of Johor was spellbound by the 21-year-old dancer from Herne Bay.
Thanks to his immense wealth, the Sultan - who at the time was married to his fifth wife - was able to lavish Cissie with jewellery.
Over the years his extravagant spending also included purchasing a pair of Malayan tigers for Edinburgh Zoo and sending a huge cash present to King George V on his Jubilee. As well as handing over
£500,000 (about £35m today) to the British Government towards the defence of Singapore, the Sultan also donated a further £250,000 towards the cost of the Second World War. And he splashed yet more cash on having Mayfair Court built for Cissie in her hometown, along with two separate homes reportedly for other family members and servants. The reinforced concrete art deco house in Clifftown Gardens retains most of its original features, including an air raid shelter built in the garden at the
request of the worried sultan. It has now been lived in by the same family since the 1980s. Throughout the 1930s, Cissie and the sultan are said to have frequently travelled to Malaysia and around Europe.
But they had managed to keep their courtship fairly private. In Herne Bay, baffled locals struggled to comprehend how the Hills had funded the construction of their lavish new homes.
One rumour circulating in the town was that a mysterious Indian maharajah was responsible for their sudden rise in fortune.
But in 1937, the relationship of Cissie and the Sultan was finally thrust into the public eye.
Burglars broke into Mayfair Court and swiped £5,000 worth
In the public eye
of jewellery from Cissie’s bedroom. The stolen items had the inscription: “With all my love, S.I.”
S. I. was, of course, Sultan Ibrahim.
A somewhat scandalous engagement
In March 1938, the Sultan divorced his fifth wife and sailed to Singapore and Johor with Cissie and her mother Florence.
As she departed England, Cissie was seen to have a large diamond ring on her finger. But on reaching Singapore, the Sultan denied he was set to remarry already.
The Melbourne Argus reported: “His announcement was made in answer to rumours that he was likely to become engaged to Miss Lydia Cecilia Hill, a former ‘glamour girl’.” It has been suggested that the
‘Miss Hill brought an influence into my life which can never be replaced and which I never wish to forget’
public denial resulted from political pressure being applied by British colonial staff. “A cabaret-girl-sultana the sahibs considered quite impossible,” according to Time magazine.
But the sultan had his revenge when Singapore’s British society “behaved stuffily toward his show-girl fiancee”. He is reported to have fired all the Brits in his service and then planted shrubs on the fairways and greens of the golf course used by the sahibs, which was on his property. Yet in July 1938, with British colonial staff still grumbling about the relationship, Cissie and her mother were sent back to Southampton, and the sultan is said to have returned to his playboy lifestyle in Sumatra.
He issued another denial of their engagement - despite her sporting the eye-catching diamond ring around Herne Bay. But the relationship continued and Cissie and her mother travelled to Switzerland in 1939 to meet the sultan, who was visiting for health reasons. She is also said to have nursed him through a critical illness.
By this point, there were few people in Herne Bay who didn’t know Cissie, according to local newspaper reports.
She is said to have had many friends and been “good-natured”, giving support to charitable causes.
Tragic death aged 27
“She was the means of bringing happiness to people in straitened circumstances,” the report adds.
At about 10.15am on October 11, 1940, Cissie and her friend Peggy Clark set off from Herne Bay to go shopping in Canterbury.
They went to Courts furniture store together before Peggy went off to Lefevre’s - which would years later become the city’s Debenhams - and Cissie headed for a fur shop in Burgate Street. She is thought to have been looking for a fur rug as a wedding or birthday gift.
Yet as the friends were shopping, in the skies above the RAF fighter pilots were in hot pursuit of several Messerschmitts.
As they soared past Canterbury Cathedral, the Luftwaffe pilots dropped three bombs. The devastating explosives missed the Cathedral - and landed on six shops in Burgate. It took two days to dig out the dead from the debris. Nine people had been killed and several more injured.
Among those who tragically lost their lives was Cissie. The 27-year-old’s body was identified by her mother and the sultan only by the jewellery he had given her. Cissie’s death was announced in The Times and her funeral was held at what was St John’s Church in Brunswick Square, Herne Bay,
Cissie’s legacy
A wreath from the sultan was laid with the coffin in her grave. He also paid for an impressive marble monument, surrounded by an iron fence.
It bears an inscription which reads: “Somewhere back of the sunset / Where loveliness never dies / She dwells in the land of glory/ ‘Neath the blue and gold of the skies /
“And we who have lived with and loved her / Whose passing has caused us tears / Will cherish her memory for ever / Down through the passing years.” By all appearances, the sultan was heartbroken.
But just a month after Cissie’s death, he married a 25-year-old Romanian woman who had been selling Red Cross flags in London.
He declared it had been “love at first sight”.
In November 1940, he told the Sunday Pictorial: “I prefer to forget the past. It is for the future I want to live.” Cissie’s mother continued to live in Mayfair Court until she died in 1973.
Her death is recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The certificate is inscribed: “Remembered with honour”. Many have speculated that Cissie’s was the one true love of the sultan, who died in 1959. He told the Sunday Mirror after her death: “Miss Hill brought an influence into my life which can never be replaced and which I never wish to forget.”