Albert Henry Hime

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Albert Henry Hime, KCMG, PC (29 August 1842 – 13 September 1919) was a Royal Engineers officer and later a prominent politician in the Colony of Natal.

Biography

Hime was born in County Wicklow, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. In May 1866 he married Josephine Searle in Plymouth, and three months later moved to Bermuda to work on a causeway there. Lieutenant Hime began drafting up his plan for the Causeway in 1867, and it would take four years before the project was finished. When it was finished, Hime delivered a report to Governor Lefroy in front of some 6,000 residents (approximately half of the population), describing his accomplishment as "solid and substantial...without any attempt at ornament" which would have increased the project's cost (the cost of construction, £27,000, was £2,000 more than the colonial government raised in total revenues that year). Lefroy responded that Hime's name would become part of Bermuda's history, and that the young lieutenant would have a promising career. Hime was awarded a service of plate from the colonial government.

In 1878, Hime designed and built the Natal Mounted Police Headquarters on Alexandra Road.^[1] On 9 June 1899, he was appointed as the Premier of Natal, a position which he held until 17 August 1903. As Premier, he attended the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1902 and the conference of Colonial Premiers in London.

He received the honorary degree LL.D. from the University of Cambridge in May 1902,^[2] and from the University of Dublin later the same year.^[3] By the end of 1902, Hime had also been appointed a Privy Counsellor, and had been awarded both an honorary Doctorate of Law by the University of Edinburgh^[4] and the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, Scotland.

The hamlet of Himeville, in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands is named after him as part of his legacy as Premier of Natal.

References