William Hill was not a filial son, but rather a runaway that turned to gambling in his young life. He had to enter military service, but the minute he was released from his duties he started bookmaking. Hill was mostly interested in the races and knew he could earn money from gamblers. He tended to take on large gamers so that he could make money, but that did not work out as planned. Rather, he lost too much and had to go towards the smaller areas of gambling. He made a killing in the London races typically using Northolt Park for his bookmaking. The track was for trotting and the only one of its kind. During the first war it was shut down and did not reopen until much later as a dog track. Given the closure of the park he did have to move on to a new location, which helped him to eventually start breeding horses.
Hill’s gaming options were the first to use credit since there was a small loophole that he found. He didn’t typically deal in cash, but rather credit to make his money off of racing. Eventually William Hill turned away from the races to sports betting. In fact he created the first fixed-odds football coupon. He still had racing though his focus was on beginning a football company for betting. With the horse breeding, racing, and sport betting that he had his hands in Hill was certainly a man to make money.
Hill decided to partner up with Lionel Barber in the 50s in order to get Holder’s Investment Trust, which was a shell company and the first of its kind to be on the stock exchange. There was one area that William Hill did not get into during his life which was the betting shops. He avoided these and went with credit betting which is how he managed to get the name William Hill known throughout all of the UK, but unfortunately his miss on the betting shops made him lose out to Ladbrokes.
William Hill is still a well known name in London because of the genius of the man who didn’t care much for university, but loved gambling on horses and sports. There were plenty of days he would make 20,000 to 100,000 pounds on his bookmaking and especially after he started breeding race horses for the win. In his later years he decided to concentrate more on the breeding and stud farms, making certain to create more than one throughout England. In 1971 at the age of 68 he had a heart attack, ending the run of the stud farms.
His legacy lives on with the casinos he formed. He was certainly one of the most influential gamblers of the times. Although he did not play cards or sit at gaming tables he always gambled on his own business successfully.