OBITUARY

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23478, 5 November 1941, Page 8

OBITUARY

— * — SIR ARTHUR WILLIAM HILL

(Received November 4, 7 p.m.) (U.P.A.) LONDON. November 3. The death has occurred of Sir Arthur William Hill, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, since 1922. He was killed in a fall from a horse. He was 36 years of age. Sir Arthur Hill was assistant director of the Royal Botanic Gardens from 1907 to 1922. He visited New Zealand in 1927-28. He was an honorary member of the Royal Society of New Zealand and of the New York Academy of Sciences. VISCOUNT D’ABERNON (8.0. W.) RUGBY, November 2. Viscount D’Abernon, the distinguished diplomat who was British Ambassador in Berlin during the critical period following the last war, died at Hove, in Sussex, yesterday, aged 83.

Edgar Vincent, first Viscount D’Abernon, youngest son of Sir Frederick Vincent, was educated at Eton and passed an examination for a Government appointment at Constantinople in 1877, but entered the Coldstream Guards instead. He resigned five years later and became Secretary to Lord E. Fitzmaurice, Commissioner for Eastern Roumelia. In 1881, he was an assistant to the British Commissioner for the evacuation of territory ceded to Greece by Turkey, and later .was British, Belgian, and Dutch representative on the Council of the Ottoman Public Debt at Constantinople. In 1883 he became President of the Council.

For six years he was financial adviser to the Egyptian Government, and then, in 1889, became governor of the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Constantinople. In 1899 he entered the House of Commons as Conservative member for Exeter. He was appointed Ambassador to Berlin in 1920, and remained there for six years. He was chairman of various Government-appointed committees. and headed a British economic mission to the Argentine and Brazil in 1929. He was knighted in 1887 and in 1914 became first Baron of Esher. The viscountcy dates from 1926. when he also succeeded his brother as the sixteenth baronet. His publications range from a modern Greek grammar to a paper in a collection on the effect of alcohol on the human organism, and his most widely read book has been his memoirs, “An Ambassador of Peace.” Lord D’Abernon was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1934.