Eva Esther Hill (nee Day)

Class of 1921

This biography is based on secondary literature written about Dr Eva Hill. The majority of the information comes from the biographies of Cynthia J Piper’s biography in Te Ara and  John Barrett’s book. Permission to use the above photo, taken in 1975, was given by the photographer Bill Lindberg. (1). Other secondary sources are listed in the bibliography. This biography was collated by Rennae Taylor.

Family History and Early Childhood

Eva Esther Hill (nee Day) was born on 19 September 1898 at Pārāwai, near Thames, to Victor Grace and Katherine Helen (nee Gifford) Day. (1)

Her father was born on 29 August 1858 in London, England and emigrated as a young man to New Zealand (NZ) in 1879 aboard the ship Pareora. He had three wives and seven children prior to his death in 1922 at the age of 64 years. He married Evelyn White in 1883, and they had four daughters between 1884 and 1891, prior to her death in 1893. He then married Katherine Helen Gifford in 1894, and between 1896 and 1901, they had one son and two daughters, including Eva. Little is known about Eva’s mother.

Katherine died in 1916 at the age of 52 years, and Victor married again in 1917. (2) Both Victor and Katherine are buried at Timaru Cemetery. (3)

Her father was a solicitor, and the family moved around frequently. (1) At the time of Eva’s graduation from Otago, he was the president of the Land Values Assessment Court. (4) Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Hokitika, then Dunedin, Christchurch, and in 1910 to Timaru. Eva attended Timaru Girls’ High School before going to the University of Otago (1, 5)

University and Early Years Following Graduation

Following her graduation from high school, Eva attended Otago Medical School, where she graduated with her MB, ChB in 1921 at the age of 23 years, one of the youngest to have qualified in NZ. (1) There were seven women who started out in her class, and Hazel Patterson was her best friend. In her last year of training, she received the Dominion Medical Scholarship, which had a bursary of £100, and the privilege of ‘living in’ the hospital for one year as a special student. She recalls the influenza epidemic, which occurred during her third year, being the most instructive event during her student years. (5)

Doctors and nurses at the hospital went down with it, so we students took over as general nursing staff. We were very green but we just got on with it; we had to. I learnt to do everything from changing soiled bed linen without disturbing a sick patient to laying out the dead.

Dunedin came almost to a standstill. The trams stopped running. Fourth and Fifth Year students were given a crash course in minor anaesthetics, hypodermic techniques, and drug prescriptions, so that they could take over from those town GPs who’d been laid low. It was like a dead town. Young people went down like flies. 

We had all the jobs to do including bedpan drill…I nursed right through the epidemic, the whole six weeks, usually twelve hours a day, and didn’t even catch a cold, but you’d never know from one day to the next whom you’d find had died.

Following graduation, she spent a short time as an assistant medical officer at Timaru Hospital before being appointed as a house surgeon, along with Marion A. Taylor, at Dunedin Hospital. Eva left this position on 12 December 1922.

She recalls the difficulties she experienced as a house surgeon from some male doctors who did not approve of ‘blondes with stethoscopes’. (5)

When I got the appointment, those in a position to make this male displeasure felt saw to it that I got what they thought were dirty jobs which would put a woman off.

She found herself in men’s surgical, applying catheters to prostatitis cases and being put in charge of skid row cases in the alcoholics ward.  (5)

The odours in that ward from such cases were quite horrible but when I became a GP I was very grateful for the experience. I was able to do things that even male GPs sometimes could not do. Same with alcoholics. I learned a lot about DTs.

At the end of 1923, she and Hazel Patterson’s sister travelled to Malaysia, where her brother Eru was the assistant adviser to the Sultan of the state of Kedah. She and her brother did not get on very well as he could not cope with his emancipated little sister, and she found his pompous manner annoying, so the months spent there were not the most enjoyable. (5)

By July 1924, she had been appointed superintendent of the Whangaroa Hospital in Northland (after doing a three-month locum and then having the doctor not return from his holiday) (8) and the following year had set up in general practice in Piopio, Waikato. As a country GP, Eva wrote that sometimes she had to act as the local vet, which included suturing and applying plasters to broken limbs of injured animals, including the occasional horse. While a house surgeon, she remembered the excellent training she received in orthopaedics, plastic surgery, and some dental work, including extractions from two surgeons who had recently returned from World War I, which prepared her for this isolated country practice. (9)

The hospital had a car allotted to it, which Eva would sometimes need to drive along pig tracks and then go on horseback to those very isolated areas. The hospital mainly dealt with accidents and maternities. She found it a very lonely job – just an English matron, a probationer nurse, a Māori cook, and a lame gardener on the hospital staff. She received £500 a year, but in the early months, she used to carry around her resignation until she “fell in love” for the first and only time in her life. (5)

Marriage and Family

While in Whangaroa, Eva met her future husband, Justly Charles William Hill. Justly was born in Southampton, England, in 1863 and emigrated with his parents and nine siblings to NZ in 1877, where they settled in Pahi in the Kaipara Harbour area. He was a drover on horseback in various areas north of Auckland as well as Tolaga Bay. (5) He fought for three years, from 1899 – 1902, in the South African War (Boer War) as part of the 4^th Contingent NZ Mounted Rifles. (10) When he met Eva, he was managing a large farm estate for Lane Bros, wealthy timber merchants of the north. He married Eva in Kaitaia on 28 December 1927, and afterwards, they lived in Piopio, where Eva set up practice, and he farmed for eight years before he had to walk off the farm like so many during the depression years. (5) He was 64, and Eva was 29 years of age at the time of their marriage.

They had two sons Justly Hildebrand (called Guy) born in 1928 in Piopio and West born in 1938 in the Bay of Islands. (5)

Justly died in Auckland on 9 June 1944, aged 80 years, and is buried at Russell Cemetery. (11)

Mid-Career Years

During the depression years, it was opportune that Eva was appointed a medical superintendent of the Public Works Department’s railway camps as both her and Justly’s livelihoods were affected by the slump in the economy. She made weekly return trips to the Wairoa and Gisborne areas, often visiting the camps on horseback over difficult outback terrain. She also saw patients during her visits to these remote areas. (5, 12)

In 1934, the family moved to the Bay of Islands, where Eva set up practice in Russell and devoted herself to caring for the local community. In addition to her GP responsibilities, she was also the Medical Officer of Health and the Port Health Officer. During World War II, there was an army base nearby, and she looked after their needs as well. (5)

In 1943, due to her husband’s ill health, the family moved to Auckland. The following article from the Northern Advocate indicates the esteem Eva was held in the local community. (13)

Eva set up her medical practice at 498 Dominion Road, Mount Eden, where Dr John Dreadon had previously practised. Their large family home was situated on a four-acre block of land in Mangere, and eventually, both boys became boarder students at King’s. (5) For the first two years, she also acted as Dr Dreadon’s anaesthetist at Green Lane Hospital, as he was also a surgeon. Over the next several years, the NZ Medical Gazette’s Registration shows several different locations for Eva’s practice, including Whangārei and Ruakākā in the early to mid-1950s, where she helped Guy set up on a farm at Matapōuri and later helped West get established in a forestry career. Later, she moved back to Auckland, living at Dominion Road, Māngere, Mission Bay, Hillsborough, and Oratia and then in 1978, her final move was to Hamilton. In 1953, Guy and his wife, Ruth, blessed her with a granddaughter, Rosemary. (5)

Other Interests

Eva was an early member of the NZ Medical Women’s Association. In the minutes of the 1926 annual general meeting, she had sent a letter stating she wanted to sell her practice in Piopio for £400, and in 1969, along with ten others, she was granted honorary membership. (14)

Eva was a founding member of the NZ Social Credit Party and stood for parliament in the Marsden electorate in 1954 and 1957 and the North Shore in 1963 and 1966. Her first campaign in Marsden cured her of her fear of public speaking. (5) She wrote articles for the party supporting their views on topics such as “Co-existence” published in 1955 and “Light behind the headlines: a simple guide to some causes of present world unrest” published in 1976. (15)

Following her first election, she read a report in December 1954 that Auckland City’s water supply was to be fluoridated for the sake of people’s teeth. The British Medical Association (BMA) supported the fluoridation of water, and she spoke out against it. She was then instructed by the association to seek their permission if she wished to speak against fluoridation in the future. Eva resigned from the BMA and shortly after wrote a publication, “Facts about fluoridation of water supplies.” (15)

Alternative Therapies

In her book “Why be Scared of Cancer?” published in 1979, Eva tells of how her interest in alternative cancer therapies grew. In 1955, she had an excision of a basal-cell carcinoma below her eye, which started growing again once the stitches were removed. She was recommended X-radiation therapy but distrusted this treatment (9)

As she was awaiting treatment, an unknown person sent her a newspaper from the USA with the headline “Cancer and Conspiracy”, which reported on a speech given by Senator John Haluska before the Pennsylvania Senate in 1955. He reported on the cures for cancer being achieved by the Hoxsey Clinic in Dallas, Texas. She wrote to the clinic and gave her history. They advised her that she would need to come to their clinic and gave her the names and addresses of some of their patients to check the credentials of the clinic. It took her a year to raise the funds, with financial support from a group in Christchurch that supported alternative cancer therapies. (5, 16)

In 1956, she went to the clinic with what she described as a “very ugly growth” below her eye and spent the next seven months receiving treatment. She lived in a boarding house for patients at the clinic and had regular outpatient visits. She received her cancer treatments free as she was considered an authorised investigator of the “herbal cancer treatments”. She responded well to the treatments, and Dr Hoxsey asked her to join him and his team, along with some of his other cured patients, to fly to Hollywood to be on TV. NZ did not have TV at this time, so she found this all quite exciting. (5)

Prior to going to the Hoxsey Clinic, it is understood that she warned the BMA that she was going public on cancer treatment after her return. By this time, she was already a seasoned NZ campaigner on the anti-fluoridation issue, as some cities and towns were starting to add fluoride to the water supply to combat dental caries. The following paragraph on page seventeen from her book, “Why be Scared of Cancer?” possibly gives some credibility to Eva’s ability as an effective communicator: (9)

During the last month of my stay in USA I was asked to go to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to give evidence at the trial of Senator Haluska, whose story had caused me to go to Dallas for treatment. In private life he was the business manager of an “orthodox” hospital and to anyone understanding the “Cancer Suppression of Truth” battle, it was obvious that after his Senate presentation of all those “living proofs” of his case, that he would lose his job at the hospital. Not only was he at once dismissed, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took him to court. Fancy being taken to court and losing one’s position just for telling the truth that everyone should have been allowed to learn!

She reports that she returned to NZ with no scar and no recurrence up to the time of publication of the book. Her ongoing treatment did not include any further surgery or radiation but relied on a raw fruit and vegetable diet and a mixture of Potassium Iodide and various herbal mixtures. (9)

On her return, Eva started to speak at public meetings, telling “her story” of recovery from cancer. After a public meeting in Christchurch on 20 February 1957, she was charged under Section 13 of the Medical Advertisements Regulations 1943 for making false statements. The BMA, through the medical officer of health, filed a complaint of false statement. She was taken to court and convicted, and her name was to be removed from the NZ Medical Register. Eva had no money, but her supportive lawyer, funded by a group of Christchurch people, possibly Social Credit supporters, took her case to the Supreme Court and won. The court found she had acted with sincerity in her belief that the treatment worked. (1) She received a lot of publicity, which generated patients seeking her help and advice. It was said that her patients were often seen at the early morning markets in Hamilton buying sacks of carrots to squeeze for their juice as part of her cure, which was fresh fruit and vegetables. (16) In the ensuing years, Eva continued to give public lectures and wrote two small books to encourage the use of natural alternative treatments for cancer. (9, 17) In addition, a former editor of the Waikato Times and the community newspaper, the Franklin Connection, wrote her biography, in which he goes into greater detail on the Hoxey Cancer Clinic. (5)

In her biography, she believed there was an apparent reluctance to cover up the news of cancer’s growing toll by the majority of the medical community and is quoted as saying: “When the medical profession decides to take off its blinkers and use some common sense they may then see that there is no mystery to the cancer problem. We are literally what we eat and drink and otherwise absorb”. (5)

Later Years

Eva, as a young woman, had always wanted to see the world. In 1960, her Ruakaka home, which she hadn’t sold when she moved back to Auckland, burnt to the ground. (19) She used the insurance to make a trip around the world. She travelled and met up with old friends along the way: to Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Ridgecrest in the California desert, and then on to the United Kingdom. She was a strong royalist and was delighted to see the queen drive through the gates of Buckingham Palace. (5) Eva semi-retired to Hamilton in 1978 to be near her sons and their families. She maintained her medical registration until 1980 and continued to give consultations in her home. (5)

She died on 17 April 1981 in Te Awamutu at the age of 82 and was buried in Russell Cemetery with her husband, Justly. (20) Eva had a strong Christian faith and felt there was something she was called to do for New Zealand and the Empire, and she believed she was fulfilling it up until her death. Getting her story in print in 1976 was one of the things she felt she was called to do. (5)

In her comments on the medical women graduates from the 1920s, Maxwell says of Eva: (14)

I will say only that she was a sincere and caring person, however, misguided in her treatments.

In her obituary in the NZ Medical Journal, Dr R Wright-St Clair wrote: (21)

She was always opposed to anything which she regarded as harmful to the body, including x-rays, diagnostic as well as radiotherapy. That made accurate diagnosis of many conditions impossible.

Those of us who regard ourselves as being in the “main-stream of medicine”, disagree strongly with most of her ideas, but Eva Hill was not a quack, she was a caring person who sincerely believed that she was acting in the best interests of her patients. Many of those patients adored her. Few of us can boast of such faithful followers who would travel from far and wide to consult her.

Bibliography

1. Piper CJ. Hill, Eva Esther’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography Wellington: Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand; 2000 [cited 2024 07.05.2024]. Available from: https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5h20/hill-eva-esther
2. Births, Deaths & Marriages Online Wellington: NZ Government Internal Affairs; [cited 2024 07.05.2024]. Available from: https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
3. Find a Grave: Victor Grace Day [07.05.2024]. Available from: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/193453373/victor-grace-day
4. Personal Items. New Zealand Herald. 1921 30.08.1921. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19210830.2.105
5. Barrett J. Cancer and Cure, A Doctor’s Story. London: Bachman & Turner; 1976.
6. Hospital Board Reports. Otago Daily Times. 1922 11.03.1922. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ODT19220311.2.112
7. Personal Items. New Zealand Herald. 1922 15.11.1922. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19221115.2.110
8. Personal. Bay of Plenty Times. 1924 16.07.1924. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19240716.2.21
9. Hill E. Why Be Scared of Cancer. Auckland: G.W. Moore; 1979.
10. Online Cenotaph: Justly Charles William Hill Auckland: Auckland Museum; [07.05.2024]. Available from: https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/record/C124391
11. Find A Grave: Justly Charles William Hill [07.05.2024]. Available from: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/109705347/justly-charles_william-hill
12. Women’s World. Poverty Bay Herald. 1932 13.01.1932. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19320113.2.118
13. Russell Farewells Esteemed Residents. Northern Advocate. 1943 02.06.1943. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NA19430602.2.80
14. Maxwell MD. Women Doctors in New Zealand: An Historical Perspective 1921-1986. Vol. 1. Auckland: IMS (N.Z.) Limited; 1990.
15. Eva Hill: Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia; [updated 21.02.2024; cited 2024 07.05.2024]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Hill
16. Cole D. Doctrinal deviance in New Zealand medical practice: some historical comments. New Zealand Medical Journal. 1985.
17. Hill E. A Simple Guide to Better Health. 1 ed. Auckland: G.W. Moore; 1975.
18. Public Notices. Press. 1960 13.06.1960. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19600613.2.4.4
19. Firefighter Saved. Press. 1960 04.04.1960. Available from: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19600404.2.87
20. Find a Grave: Eva Esther Day Hill. Available from: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/109705300/eva-esther-hill
21. Wright-St. Clair R. Obituary: Eva Esther Hill. New Zealand Medical Journal. 1981:1.