The Scotsman - Published Date: 13 July 2010
British featherweight champion boxer who inspired many Lanarkshire youths
Born: 20 June, 1930, in Flemington, Lanarkshire.
Died: 4 July, 2010, in Brisbane, Australia, aged 80.
When top Scottish boxing coach and 1962 Commonwealth Games featherweight gold medal
winner, John McDermott, received the MBE
McDermott and Hill's Flemington birthplace is a small hamlet near Cambuslang but it was a
hotbed for producing Scottish sports stars - among them 1960s Old Firm footballers, Davie
Wilson of Rangers and Celtic goalkeeper John Fallon - as well as both McDermott and his
ring mentor Charlie Hill.
Hill was born in the Depression year of 1930. His father was a steel worker in the nearby
Hallside Steelworks, where he toiled to support his wife and family while encouraging his
son to take up sport.
Hill - after obtaining an apprenticeship as an shipyard electrician aged just 14 at
Glasgow's Harland & Wolf yard on the Clyde - channelled the natural athletic abilities
he had discovered at school into amateur boxing as a bantamweight and featherweight with
Cambuslang's Halfway Miners club and, more significantly, with the Bridgeton-based
Scottish National club.
There, in Glasgow's East End, Hill established his outstanding ring credentials as a
simon- pure boxer, grabbing West and Scottish titles while beating outstanding ring
contemporaries such as Bertie Scott and Jim Murie of the Glasgow Transport club. In this
connection, John McDermott - who had followed his mentor Hill to the Scottish National
club - commented: "Hill was a tremendous body puncher and had a great left jab and
crushing right cross."
Given that Bridgeton's Scottish national club was also the power base of both Jim Gilmour
and his son Tommy Gilmour senior, it was no surprise when Hill turned pro under the latter
and celebrated his paid debut by outpointing one Art Belec at Glasgow's Firhill Park in
June 1953.
Thereafter, dapper dresser Hill became famous for his Tony Curtis hairstyle, his stylish
suits and the alacrity with which he defeated top-class contenders between 1953 and 1955
in places like the Kelvin Hall, Newcastle and Edinburgh - a sequence studded with stoppage
wins courtesy of Hill's ferocious body punching.
In this period Hill annexed the Scottish featherweight title by outpointing Clydebank's
Chic Brogan in December 1954 but, as John McDermott said: "Charlie was also great
teacher of boxing and I learned the skills that won me my Commonwealth gold medal in
Perth, Western Australia in 1962 from Hill."
Added McDermott: "Charlie Hill was as happy-go-lucky outside the ring as he was
intensively competitive within the ropes.
"He
idolised Afro-American singer Billy Eckstine who had a popular BBC radio show in the
1950s, but even when he got married he couldn't escape his boxing destiny as he wed
Margaret Stevenson, whose Dad, Jim, was a celebrated boxing coach with the Glasgow
Dennistoun club."
Again, the dawning of 1956 saw Hill matched in Belfast in January with Irish champion,
Billy "Spider" Kelly in the intimidating emotional cauldron of the Northern
Irish capital's King's Hall for the British featherweight title and Lonsdale Belt.
When Hill was judged to have outscored Irish hometowner Kelly all hell broke loose and one
of Britain's worst 20th-century ringside riots ensued. Hill escaped harm and returned as
Scotland's fourth British featherweight Lonsdale Belt winner.
1956 was to end as traumatically as it had begun for Hill, having beaten Arthur Donnachie
and Irishman Jimmy Brown, both of whom would defeat his December 1956 non-title fight
opponent from Edinburgh, Bobby Neill. Hill felt confident that the odds would be in his
favour against Edinburgh bookie's son, Neill. Instead, the blistering power punching of
Neill saw Hill beaten in the first round.
But despite a lean spell following the Neill stoppage Hill impressively re-established his
championship credentials by beating erstwhile conqueror, Neill's Belfast nemesis, Jimmy
Brown.
A 1958 British title win over former rival from Clydebank, Chic Brogan, saw Hill make the
Lonsdale Belt his own property but his old Edinburgh rival Bobby Neill was banging on the
championship door and eventually Hill agreed to met Neill for the British title in April
1959 at Nottingham Ice Rink.
Hill not only lost his British title and Lonsdale Belt to Neill but was knocked to the
canvas nine times before the bout was halted in Neill's favour.
Hill's former protege, John McDermott, opined that Hill had been suffering with
weight-making problems which saw him enter the ring in a weakened state.
Nevertheless, it proved to be Charlie Hill's last fight and after the birth of his son
Charles junior, he and his family went south for a time to work in Rugby, Warwickshire,
before finally emigrating to Queensland's Gold Coast where Hill, his wife, son and
daughter, who survive him, lived from the 1970s onwards.
With a record of 31 wins in 36 paid bouts, Cambuslang's Charlie Hill deserves to be
remembered for that and also for being a highly popular model for the Lanarkshire youths.
BRIAN DONALD