Blanche Hillyard

When she won her sixth singles title at Wimbledon in 1900, Blanche Hillyard (née Bingley) surpassed Lottie Dod’s record of five titles. Only five women have since won more titles (up to and including 2021): Dorothy Lambert Chambers (1903-14), Helen Wills Moody (1927-38), Martina Navratilova (1978-90), Steffi Graf (1988-96), and Serena Williams (2002-16).

Hillyard, as Blanche Bingley, played in the first women’s event at Wimbledon in 1884 and lost to Maud Watson in the semi-final. Bingley reached the first of her 13 singles finals the following year, only to lose again to Watson. Bingley beat Watson in 1886, however, to capture her first title.

Bingley married fellow tennis player George Hillyard one week after her third consecutive Wimbledon final appearance in 1887. Five days later the pair teamed up to win the mixed doubles at the Middlesex Championships. Blanche won her record sixth Wimbledon title at the expense of Charlotte Cooper (for the third time) in 1900, and the following year made her 13th and final appearance in a Wimbledon final, losing to Cooper, who was then known as Charlotte Sterry. In 1912, and 28 years after her Wimbledon début, Hillyard reached the semi-final, but lost to Ethel Larcombe 6-1, 6-0. Hillyard eventually bowed out in her 24th and final Wimbledon Championships the following year.

In total Hillyard won 22 titles and, in addition to her Wimbledon successes, won at the Welsh, Irish (three times), and North of England Championships, and between 1885-1905 won the South of England title 11 times. She also enjoyed notable victories abroad including the German Championship in 1897 and 1900, and also won in the South of France and Monaco. Hillyard entered the singles at the 1908 Olympics and, after receiving a bye in the first round, scratched from her quarter-final against the eventual silver medallist Dora Boothby. The 44-year-old Hillyard was conceding 18 years to her opponent.

Blanche Hillyard was one of four daughters of a wealthy London tailoring business proprietor, Charles Bentley Bingley. Such was the standing of the Bingley family, who lived in a fashionable London area, that they employed eight servants at their Portland Pace home in the 1880s.

When she won her third Wimbledon title in 1894, Hillyard made history as the first mother to win a Wimbledon singles title. As at 2021 this had only happened on three more occasions. Hillyard had given birth to her son Jack in 1891, and he went on to become a good tennis player. He competed at Wimbledon in the 1920s, and in 1924 reached the final of the All England Plate before losing in straight sets to the South African Jack Condon

Because of her popularity and fame, Hillyard was asked to contribute articles to such notable publications of the day as Herbert W.W. Wilberforce’s “Lawn Tennis” and Lady Greville’s edition of “The Gentlewoman’s Book of Sports”. When she lived at her Leicestershire home, which contained a tennis court and golf course, she regularly rode with the famous Quorn Hunt. Crippled with arthritis in her later life, Blanche Hillyard died at the age of 82. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.