Hillhouse was the son of John Paton Hillhouse and was born in Bedford on 17 December 1850. He was educated at Bedford Modern School,[6][7] He became an Assistant Master at his old school where he started to take up botany in conjunction with Edward Mann Langley and Joseph Reynolds Green, both at that time resident in Bedford, under the informal tuition of Samuel Hoppus Adams.[4][8] He assisted in the creation of the Bedfordshire Natural History Society and was ‘instrumental in bringing together material of a new Floral History of Bedfordshire, although the material was never published.[4] In 1876, Hillhouse was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.[4]
Hillhouse was one of the first professors appointed to the Mason Science College in Birmingham in 1882.[4] During the first year of his tenure at Mason, Hillhouse spent some time in Bonn in the laboratory of Professor Strasburger who was then one of the most famous botanists of the time.[4] In 1887 he collaborated with Professor Strasburger on a translation of Strasburger'sPractical Botany.[4][5]
In 1888, Hillhouse was appointed Chairman of the Academic Board of Mason Science College.[4] It was ‘largely by his efforts a University Extension Movement was established in connection with Birmingham’ and Hillhouse held the first Chair of Botany at what was to become the University of Birmingham.[4]
Educational work
Hillhouse was active in advancing education in the Midlands.[4] He was President of the Birmingham Natural History Society and the King's Heath, Bearwood and Moseley Institutes.[4] He was Chairman of the Birmingham Botanical and Horticultural Society and assisted in making the Botanical Gardens, in Edgbaston, ‘one of the most delightful places in the Birmingham district, and the alpine garden, which he designed and assisted to construct, [as] one of the boldest pieces of rock work in any provincial garden’.[4] In that endeavour he was assisted by Neville Chamberlain with whom he kept a regular correspondence.[9]
Final years
Hillhouse died in Malvern on 27 January 1910, a place to which he had moved as his health had for some years been precarious.[4][10] His obituary in the Journal of Botany described his 'unfailing kindness and enthusiasm'.[4]