The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago

Front matter

THE POST OFFICE

OF

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Pearson Hill's pamphlet

THE POST OFFICE

OF

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

THE POST OFFICE OF FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Among the many beneficent measures for which the first fifty years of Her Majesty's reign will always be gratefully remembered, few, perhaps, have conferred greater blessings upon the public at large, especially upon the poorer classes, than the reforms effected during that period in our postal system—reforms which, commencing in the United Kingdom soon after Her Majesty's accession, have now been extended to every civilised country in the world.

It is just fifty years since Sir Rowland Hill, with whom the great reform originated, published (in February, 1837) his celebrated pamphlet, and in the belief that it will be interesting to many now rejoicing in Her Majesty's Jubilee to be enabled to glance for a moment at the condition in which the public found itself in postal matters at the commencement of her beneficent reign, we reprint the pamphlet, giving at the same time a brief description of the older state of things, so that our readers may the more readily judge of the magnitude of the change which has been effected.

In these days, when postal facilities have so enormously extended, and cheap and rapid communication by letter has become so completely a part of our everyday life, like the air we breathe or the water we drink, few persons ever trouble themselves to think how it would be possible to exist without them; and those who are not old enough to remember the former state of things, under a postal system which the authorities at St. Martin's-le-Grand of that day regarded as almost a marvel of perfection, can hardly picture to themselves the inconvenience to which the public had then to submit.

As Miss Martineau points out in her History of the Thirty Years' Peace (1815—1845), we look back now with a sort of amazed compassion to the old Crusading times, when warrior-husbands and their wives, grey-headed parents and their brave sons, parted with the knowledge that it must be months or years before they could hear even of one another's existence. We wonder how they bore the depth of silence, and we feel the same now about the families of polar voyagers, but, till the commencement of Her Majesty's reign, it did not occur to many of us how like this was the fate of the largest classes in our own country. The fact is, there was no full and free epistolary intercourse in the country, except for those who, like Members of Parliament, had the command of franks. There were few families in the wide middle class who did not feel the cost of postage a heavy item in their expenditure; and if the young people sent letters home only once a fortnight, the amount at the year's end was a rather serious matter. But it was the vast multitude of the lower orders who suffered like the Crusading families of old and the geographical discoverers of all time. When once their families parted off from home, it was a separation almost like that of death. The hundreds of thousands of apprentices, of shopmen, of governesses, of domestic servants, were cut off from family relations as if seas or deserts lay between them and home.

In those days, the visit of the postman, so far from being welcomed, was, as a rule, dreaded. Letters were almost always sent unpaid, and the heavy postage demanded for what might sometimes turn out to be merely trade circulars was a serious tax grudgingly paid, or, amongst the poorer classes, the letter had to be refused as too expensive a luxury.

The lowest postage on any letter, except those in the local town deliveries and their suburban posts, was 4d. This, however, would only suffice if the distance it was carried did not exceed 15 miles. The postage on Inland letters carried longer distances was regulated by the following scale:—

PER "SINGLE" LETTER.

From any Post Office to any place not exceeding 15 miles from such office | |d. 4

Above | 15 | and not exceeding | 20 | miles | 5

" | |20 | " " | |30 | |" | |6

" | |30 | " " | |50 | |" | |7

" | |50 | " " | |80 | |" | |8

" | |80 | " " | |120 | |" | |9

" | |120 | " " | |170 | |" | |10

" | |170 | " " | |230 | |" | |11

" | |230 | " " | |300 | |" | |12

Beyond that distance the postage increased at the rate of one penny per "single" letter for every additional 100 miles. One halfpenny was also charged on every letter crossing the Scottish border.

Under this scale the postage on any "single" letter from London to Brighton was 8d.; to Liverpool or Manchester, 11d.; to Edinburgh or Glasgow, 16½d.; and to Cork or Londonderry, 17d.

Only "single" letters, however—i.e., letters written on a single sheet of paper—could pass at these rates. If an envelope or cover were used, or if the letter consisted of two pieces of paper, or contained any enclosure, the postage was at once doubled. Two enclosures involved treble postage. If, however, the letter, with or without enclosures, weighed an ounce, the postage was fourfold, and each additional quarter of an ounce in weight led to an additional rate of postage.

Thus, a letter just under 2 ounces in weight, which now goes from Land's End to John o' Groat's for 1½d., would, fifty years ago, have been charged sevenfold the heavy rates given in the above table. Such a letter, even if sent only from London to Croydon, would have been charged a postage of 2s. 4d.; if sent from London to Manchester, it would have been charged 6s. 5d.; while from London to Cork the postage would have been 9s. 11d., or nearly 80 times the present rate.

In order to ascertain whether letters contained enclosures, they were held up against strong artificial lights, many post offices in those days being built without windows, the better to facilitate such examination; and many letters got stolen in the post office through its being thus discovered that they contained bank-notes or other valuables.

How seriously these high charges tended to suppress correspondence may be gathered from the fact that, except in the town and local "penny posts," where postage was comparatively low, the Post Office was but little used. Half the letters delivered in London fifty years ago were posted within 12 miles of St. Paul's, three-quarters within 100 miles, and only one-fourth in all the world besides.

As another illustration, which will perhaps bring this hindrance of correspondence more fully home to the present generation, it may be mentioned that when, in 1827, Sir Rowland Hill, then a young man, was engaged to the lady who afterwards became his wife, the high rates of postage compelled them to restrict their correspondence to a letter once a fortnight.

Newspapers, in consideration probably of the large contributions they then made to the public revenue—viz., a duty of 1s. 6d. on every advertisement, a paper duty at 1½d. a lb., and a newspaper stamp duty of 1d. or upwards on every copy printed—were allowed, as a rule, to circulate through the post without additional charge, though there were important exceptions to their enjoyment of this privilege. No newspaper could be posted in any provincial town for delivery within the same, nor anywhere within the London District (a circle of 12 miles radius from the General Post Office) for delivery within the same circle, unless a postage of one penny, in addition to the impressed newspaper stamp, were paid upon it—a regulation which, however, was constantly evaded by large numbers of newspapers, intended for delivery in London, being sent by newsagents down the river to be posted at Gravesend, the Post Office then having the trouble of bringing them back, and of delivering them without charge.

These restrictions have long been removed, the taxes levied on newspapers have all been abolished, a better daily paper is now to be had for a penny than that for which fivepence was charged fifty years ago, and newspapers can now be sent through the post anywhere within the United Kingdom for one halfpenny—i.e., for half the price then paid for the minimum stamp duty alone.

There was no "Book Post" in those days, printed matter, such as trade circulars, being charged the same as letters; and those persons who now declare it a "postal scandal" that they should be charged so extravagant a rate as one half-penny for the collection, conveyance, and delivery of two ounces of trade circulars sent from one end of the United Kingdom to the other—say from London to Cork or Londonderry—may find it profitable to reflect that the charge in 1837 for the same service would have been, in the instance we have given, nearly 240 times as much!—that is to say, somewhat distorting the meaning of the old proverb, they are now only "in for a penny" where formerly they would have been "in for a pound."

As an instance of the extraordinary charges sometimes made under the old system, we may mention that in 1839 Sir John Burgoyne wrote to complain that, for a packet of papers sent to him at Dublin, which had been forwarded from some other part of Ireland by mail-coach, as a letter, instead of a parcel, he had been charged a postage of £11. That is to say, for a packet which he could easily have carried in his pocket, he was charged a sum for which he could have engaged the whole mail-coach—i.e., places for four inside and three outside passengers, with their portmanteaus, carpet bags, &c.

Much evidence was produced before the Parliamentary Committee appointed in 1837 to inquire into Rowland Hill's scheme of postal reform, of the hardships which the high rates of postage caused to the poor.

Frauds, to evade postage, were daily practised upon the Post Office, and, where contraband conveyance was not available, letters were constantly refused on account of the heavy postage demanded, or remained many weeks in the postmaster's hands, when the persons to whom they were addressed were poor—mothers sometimes even pawning their clothes to pay for letters from their children, or having to wait till, little by little, they could save up the money necessary for that purpose.

Mr. Emery, Deputy-Lieutenant for Somersetshire, and a Commissioner of Taxes, stated, as evidence of the desire but inability of the poor to correspond, that—

"A person in my parish of the name of Rosser had a letter from a grand-daughter in London, and she could not take up the letter for want of the means. She was a pauper, receiving two-and-sixpence a week. * * * She told the post-office keeper that she must wait until she had received the money from the relieving officer; she could never spare enough; and at last a lady gave her a shilling to get the letter, but the letter had been returned to London by the post-office mistress. She never had the letter since. It came from her grand-daughter, who is in service in London."

Struck by this fact, Mr. Emery made further inquiries, and received the following statement from the postmaster of Banwell:—

"My father kept the post office many years; he is lately dead; he used to trust poor people very often with letters; they generally could not pay the whole charge. He told me—indeed, I know—he did lose many pounds by letting poor people have their letters. We sometimes return them to London in consequence of the inability of the persons to whom they are addressed raising the postage. We frequently keep them for weeks; and, where we know the parties, let them have them, taking the chance of getting our money. One poor woman once offered my sister a silver spoon to keep until she could raise the money; my sister did not take the spoon, and the woman came with the amount in a day or two and took up the letter. It came from her husband, who was confined for debt in prison; she had six children, and was very badly off."

The following was reported by the postmaster of Congresbury:—

"The price of a letter is a great tax on poor people. I sent one, charged eightpence, to a poor labouring man about a week ago; it came from his daughter; he first refused taking it, saying it would take a loaf of bread from his other children; but after hesitating a little time, he paid the money, and opened the letter. I seldom return letters of this kind to Bristol, because I let the poor people have them, and take the chance of being paid; sometimes I lose the postage, but generally the poor people pay me by degrees."

The postmaster of Yatton stated as follows:—

"I have had a letter waiting lately from the husband of a poor woman, who is at work in Wales; the charge was ninepence; it lay many days, in consequence of her not being able to pay the postage. I at last trusted her with it."

Mr. Cobden stated:—

"We have fifty thousand in Manchester who are Irish, or the immediate descendants of Irish; and all the large towns in the neighbourhood contain a great many Irish, or the descendants of Irish, who are almost as much precluded as though they lived in New South Wales from all correspondence or communication with their relatives in Ireland."

Mr. Henson, a working hosier of Nottingham, stated:—

"When a man goes on the tramp—i.e., when he travels in search of employment—he must either take his family with him, perhaps one child in arms, or else the wife must be left behind; and the misery I have known them to be in from not knowing what has become of the husband, because they could not hear from him, has been extreme. Perhaps the man, receiving only sixpence, has never had the means, upon the whole line, of paying tenpence for a letter, to let his wife know where he was."

The average postage on a letter in 1837, even including the penny letters which circulated by the local posts, was as high as 6¼d., a sum which in those days formed a far larger fraction of a working man's daily wages than it now does; and the difficulty the poor had in paying such a postage was well shown in the evidence of Mr. Brewin, of Cirencester, a member of the Society of Friends. "Sixpence," said he, "is a third of a poor man's daily income. If a gentleman, whose fortune is a thousand pounds a year, or three pounds a day, had to pay one-third of his daily income—that is to say, a sovereign—for a letter, how often would he write letters of friendship?"

Extravagant and almost prohibitive as were the postal charges in 1837, the service rendered by the Post Office in return was ludicrous for its slowness and inefficiency.

There was only one dispatch of mails from the country into London daily (the mail-coaches arriving at St. Martin's-le-Grand at about 6.30 a.m.), and there was only one dispatch from London in return;—this left at 8 p.m. All letters passing through London, as, for instance, those from Brighton to Birmingham, were detained, all day long, at St. Martin's-le-Grand, and when Sunday (blank-post day) intervened, the delay was of course far greater.

Between towns near to each other on opposite sides of London, this delay and infrequency of communication rendered the Post Office almost useless. Thus a letter posted in Uxbridge on Friday evening, after the office had closed, would not be delivered at Gravesend—a distance of little more than 40 miles—till Tuesday morning, and for this service the minimum postage was sixpence.

Even if blank-post day did not intervene, and a letter was posted at Uxbridge on Monday morning, it would not be delivered at Gravesend till Wednesday; and if the reply were immediately written and posted, it would not be received till Friday—four days being then required, under the most favourable circumstances, for an exchange of communication per post which can now be effected in twenty-four hours.

Scotland and Ireland were even less well served by the Post Office than England and Wales, but even in this, the most favoured portion of the United Kingdom, there were, at the date of Her Majesty's accession, districts larger than Middlesex into which the postman never entered.

Of the 2,100 Registrars' Districts into which England and Wales were then divided, 400 districts, each containing on the average about 20 square miles, and about 4,000 inhabitants (making in all a population of about a million and a half) had absolutely no post offices whatever. The chief places in these districts, containing about 1,400 inhabitants each, were, on the average, about 5 miles, and in some instances as much as 16 miles, from the nearest post office.

Even in the London District, where postal facilities were better than in any other part of the country, the service was singularly slow and costly. A letter posted at any Receiving Office in the city after 2 p.m. was not delivered, even in Brompton, till next morning, and the postage charged was 3d. per "single" letter.

As regards postal communications with places abroad, it may suffice to record the fact that the lowest postage on a single letter to Paris was 1s. 8d., to Gibraltar it was 2s. 10d., and to Egypt, 3s. 2d. Any letter not exceeding half an ounce in weight may now be sent to these places for 2½d.

A letter just weighing an ounce can now be sent to Canada or the United States for 5d., but in 1837 the postage on such a letter was 8s. 8d., with a further charge for delivery on arrival.

A packet of manuscript accounts, weighing, say, 2¾ lbs., can now be sent to Canada or the United States, by book post, for 11d., but in 1837 the "reduced postage" on such a packet was £5. Nothing heavier than 3 lbs. could be sent at this "reduced" rate. If the packet weighed, say, 3¼ lbs., it was charged full letter postage—viz., £22 10s. 8d., the present charge for such a packet being only thirteen pence.

The mails to North and South America, India, and other places beyond seas, were in 1837 conveyed by sailing vessels only, those to New York being conveyed by gun-brigs, starting from Falmouth, the voyage frequently occupying many weeks; and mails were made up in London for North and South America, the Cape of Good Hope, and India, only once a month.

The slow-sailing packets have long ago been superseded by swift steam vessels, and in place of the single monthly dispatch, the mails to India are now four a month, and to the United States four a week.

With such indifferent postal facilities, our readers will not be surprised to learn that in England and Wales, at the commencement of Her Majesty's reign, each person received, on the average, a letter only once in three months; in Scotland, only once in four months; and in Ireland, only once a year. The business of the Post Office, in those days, instead of keeping pace, as it does now, with the growth of population and trade, had become stationary, no increase whatever having taken place in either the gross or net revenue of the Post Office during the twenty years ending with 1835.

Such was the state of things when Mr. (afterwards Sir) Rowland Hill, rather more than fifty years ago, turned his attention seriously to the question of postal reform.

It is a remarkable fact that until Sir Rowland Hill had thoroughly imbued the Post Office with his own earnestness for improvement, nearly all the great reforms effected in the postal service originated with persons wholly unconnected with that department—Mr. Dockwra, who in the time of the Commonwealth instituted the town and local "penny posts," Mr. Allen, who about the year 1750 established cross posts, and Mr. Palmer, who in 1784 effected the substitution of mail coaches for horse and foot posts, having all been "outsiders;" and history again repeated itself in the case of Sir Rowland Hill, who, until his plan had been some time in operation, had never been inside the walls of any post office—a request of his, in 1836, while preparing his plans, to be permitted to see the working of the London Post Office having been politely refused.

Some two or three years before this date, Mr. Robert Wallace, M.P. for Greenock, had, in Parliament, commenced a series of bold attacks upon the postal administration, and had succeeded in breaking down the prestige which, ever since Palmer's great improvements, that department had enjoyed as a mysterious and almost perfect organisation. Mr. Wallace had compelled the Post Office to adopt many minor improvements, but the supposed necessity of protecting the Post Office revenue from any serious loss caused Postmasters-General and Chancellors of the Exchequer to set their faces firmly against all demands for a general reduction in the rates of postage.

Sir Rowland Hill had taken great interest in the question, and had come to the conclusion that the postage rates charged the public were far too high, even if revenue, and not public convenience, were the primary object for which the Post Office was maintained.

Fortunately, in the financial year ending March 31, 1836, there was a considerable excess of revenue of the country generally over the expenditure, thus leaving a good surplus at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, as is usual in such cases, there was much speculation as to what remissions of taxation might be granted. This seemed to Sir Rowland Hill to afford a good opportunity for pressing for a reduction in the rates of postage (the high rates then levied being, in fact, a heavy tax on all commercial and social communications), and in order to satisfy himself what reductions might be possible, he set to work carefully to ascertain the actual cost which the Post Office had to incur in the collection, conveyance, and delivery of letters, and it was in the course of this analysis that he discovered the startling and hitherto unsuspected fact that the actual cost of conveyance per letter, from one post town to another, was not, as had hitherto been supposed, a large fraction of the total cost incurred, and roughly proportionate to the distance the letters were carried, but was so exceedingly small that it might fairly be disregarded, and that a uniform rate of postage, with all its manifold advantages of simplicity, was not only practicable, but even fairer than one in any way dependent upon distance.

How Sir Rowland Hill arrived at this discovery, and demonstrated that by improved arrangements the lowest rate of postage then charged—viz., one penny—would suffice for all inland letters of moderate weight, even for those carried the longest distance, will be gathered from a perusal of his pamphlet.

Uniformity of postage, doubtless, at the present time, seems to most persons so completely in accordance with the fitness of things, that it may appear strange when we state that in 1837 it was so startling an innovation that, when publishing his pamphlet, Sir Rowland Hill thought it prudent to reject a suggestion to entitle it "Uniform Penny Postage," fearing lest the mere title should cause people to throw away the pamphlet unread, as something too ridiculous to deserve perusal. He, therefore, adopted the more modest heading of "Post Office Reform—Its Importance and Practicability," and it was not until the reader had been carefully led, step by step, to the point where no other conclusion would have been logical, that uniformity of postage was suggested.

So difficult, indeed, at that time, was it to convince even intelligent people that this was the true principle, that even after the pamphlet had been widely circulated, and a Parliamentary Committee had heard all the evidence in its favour, the adoption of uniformity of charge was only carried in Committee by the casting-vote of the chairman.

The difficulty the Committee had may perhaps be best understood by the present generation, if they bear in mind that Sir Rowland Hill's proposition to charge letters going long distances no more than those posted and delivered in the same town, was at least as great a departure from what was then believed to be the natural and proper arrangement, as a proposition would be now-a-days, to adopt the lowest railway passenger fare as a uniform charge for all distances.

To many of the present generation, especially to those who are afflicted with the mania for collecting postage-stamps, it will doubtless be interesting to read the earliest propositions for their adoption. Stamped envelopes, for prepayment of postage, are said to have been in use in Paris as far back as the year 1653, but they seem soon to have fallen into disuse, possibly because prepayment of postage was then, in France, as contrary to long-established custom as in 1837 it was in this country, and no advantage by way of reduced postage appears to have been offered to secure prepayment. At all events, their existence had long been forgotten, and was certainly unknown to Mr. Charles Knight, the eminent publisher, who about the year 1834 revived the idea, by proposing that stamped wrappers should be employed as a substitute for the impressed newspaper stamp, as is explained in Sir Rowland Hill's pamphlet.

Mr. Charles Knight's valuable idea, modified by Sir Rowland Hill's happy suggestion (given in his evidence before the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry on 13th of February, 1837 of making the stamp adhesive "by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash, which . . . by applying a little moisture," might be attached to the letter, was the little seed which has now attained so gigantic a growth.

Prepayment of postage by means of stamps has now become so universal a practice that to many persons it may seem incredible that, in 1839, Sir Francis Baring, and some other earnest advocates of Sir Rowland Hill's reforms, believed it would be almost impossible to induce the public to prepay their letters. This necessary change of habit was, indeed, regarded by them as a dangerous rock ahead, upon which the scheme might possibly be wrecked. To prepay a letter in those days (unless addressed to a person of very inferior social position) was considered quite as contrary to good manners as it would now be for one gentleman, when writing to another, to enclose a stamp for his reply. The fact that the postman had to collect the postage on delivery was also regarded as affording almost the only security that letters sent by post would ever reach their destination. In Sir R. Hill's pamphlet it was found necessary to deal with this supposed difficulty at considerable length. (See Appendix, p. 96.) The great reduction of postage, however, reconciled the public to the change.

Under the old postal system, to have attempted to secure prepayment, especially by means of stamps, would have been hopeless and objectless; yet many persons, trusting to their supposed recollection, have from time to time come forward to assert that they had suggested postage stamps long before Sir Rowland Hill's reforms gave the opening for them. Possibly they also believe they suggested first-class return tickets before railways were invented. Postage stamps, under the old system, when practically no one dreamed of prepaying his letters, would not only have been utterly useless, but if a stamp had been stuck upon an ordinary "single" letter, double postage would at once have become chargeable, as the letter would then have consisted of two separate pieces of paper.

THE RECEPTION OF THE PLAN AND ITS RESULTS.

Although, if strict chronological order were observed, Sir Rowland Hill's pamphlet should here be given, it will probably be more convenient to many readers if we first complete this narrative by a short account of the manner in which his proposals were received, and of the results which his reforms have now produced.

By the Post Office authorities the scheme was met with the most determined hostility, one high official stating that, in his opinion, there was no portion of the plan that could be adopted with advantage either to the revenue or to the public, while the Postmaster-General (Lord Lichfield) declared that "of all the wild and visionary schemes he had ever heard or read of, it was the most extraordinary." The Secretary of the Post Office did not believe the people would write more letters even if they were carried for nothing; the Postmaster-General, on the contrary, declared that the amount of correspondence would be so enormous as to be quite unmanageable, and that the walls of the Post Office would burst—an observation that laid his lordship open to Sir Rowland Hill's sarcastic rejoinder that he was sure the Postmaster-General, on reconsideration, would have no difficulty in deciding whether, in this great and commercial country, the size of the Post Office was to be regulated by the amount of correspondence, or the amount of correspondence by the size of the Post Office.

That the Government was opposed to his scheme was, however, no news to Sir Rowland Hill. Early in January, 1837, he had, through Mr. Charles P. Villiers, then and still Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton, privately submitted the plan to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Spring Rice)—offering, indeed, to let the Government have the whole credit of the reform, if they cared to take it up—a course, however, which they were too timid to adopt.