If any of Hill's assistants had spare time, whether during normal working hours or in frequent voluntary after-hours working, it was used to promote tenants' associations and after-work and children's after-school clubs and societies. In 1859, Hill created the Southwark detachment of the Army Cadet Force, its first independent unit, which gave training along military lines for local boys. Hill considered that such an organisation would be more like the "real thing" than such existing outfits as the Church Lads' Brigade and therefore more attractive to young men "who had passed the age of make-believe". She invited a serving officer of the Derbyshire Regiment to set up the company, and such was its popularity that its numbers had to be capped at 160 cadets.