Stamp Collecting with GS

Sir Rowland Hill and The Penny Black

Stamps were a reformer's idea to help better the world, and after 159 years it's impossible to imagine a world without them or imagine what the world was before them.

The man behind the first stamps was an Englishman named Rowland Hill, a reformer who followed the ideas of utilitarian reformer Jeremey Bentham, who argued that the purpose of government was to provide the greatest happiness of the greater number of people and that the more democractic government was the better off people would be.

Rowland Hill

Rowland Hill was born in 1795 in Kidderminster, a small town in west England. His father was a teacher, and 1807 Rowland Hill became a student-teacher at his father's school in Birmingham. There he taught astronomy and earned extra money fixing scientific instruments.

In 1819 Rowland established the Hazlewood school in Edgbaston, complete with a science lab, swimming pool, stage, library, gas-powered lights and central heating, at a time when other schools were like poor houses.

In 1822 he and a brother published "Public Education," based on Hazelwood's reforms, in which they proposed making science as a required subject, ending corporal punishment and having a gym class once a week.

Hazlewood soon attracted students from around the globe and prospered. Then five years later Rowland moved the school to London, where he became interested in other reform causes and the government.

Here, Hill served as Secretary for the South Australian Commission from '34 - '39, which was involved in Australian colonization. He still had a keen interest in science and mechanics and worked to develope a rotary press --- whereby paper is fed to the printing plates from rolls. But the government was only interested in the old-fashioned, one sheet at a time process.

Postal Reform

In Britain at this time, sending letters was expensive, and postage fees were based on weight and distance involved. Postage had to be calculated for each piece of mail and involved laborious record keeping.

Letters were paid for by the addresses, not the senders, and to make matters even worse recipients could refuse delivery and not pay the post office. The postal system was in dire need of reform, at the same time as the Industrial Revolution was transforming the country and Empire.

Then around this time, or so the story goes, the reform-minded Hill with his sterling reputation and access to the government, happened to witness a distressing event that spurred him into action.

A postman brought a letter to a young woman, but she refused to accept it. The postman left with the letter, and she cried at the sight of him leaving.

Hill asked her what had happened, and she explained that she simply didn't have enough money to pay for the letter that had come so far. Hill didn't think that was any reason for so many tears, until she explained that the letter was from her fiance who she hadn't see in months.

Hill wrote "Postal Reform; its Importance and Practibility" in 1837 and gave it to Lord Melbourne. The plan called for the use of pre-printed envelopes and adhesive postage stamps.

"Perhaps this difficulty (of using stamped envelopes in certain cases) might be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp and covered at the back with a glutinous wash, which the bringer might, by the application of a little moisture, attach to the back of the letter so as to avoid the necessity of re-directing it."

The Reform also called for a uniform low rate of one penny per half-ounce a letter, and this system immediately did two things. It made letters affordable for everyone, which was very important now that children were leaving farms and villages for work in the city's factories, and secondly, it dramtically cut the accounting costs of the Royal Mail, who until then were logging each individual letter. And let's not forget the money lost on all those unclaimed, unpaid letters.

A poster of the Postal Reform Committee urged "Mothers and fathers who wish to have news of your absent children; Friends who are separated and wish to write to each other; Emigrants who do not want to forget your motherland; Farmers who want to know the best place to sell your produce; Workers and labourers who want to find the best work and the highest wages" to support their postal reform measure.

Hill went before the government, and his postal reform plan --- penny post, stamps and printed envelopes --- was adopted in the Parliamentary budget in August 1839.

Hill worked feverously to impliment his postal reform for the government. The Treasury received over 2600 suggestions and 250 design entires for "stamped covers and adhesive postage labels... for the security of such items against forgery, and convenience of their use" were received, while Hill worked with the printers.

The Penny Black

None of the designs were accepted though they gave prizes to five of the better ones. Queen Victoria's portrait was taken from a medal designed by William Wyon. Henry Corbould made the drawings for the engraver Charles Heath, though Heath's son Frederick may actually have done the work.

The intricate background was a guard against forgeries as were the letters found on the lower corners of each stamp.

The printers were Perkins, Bacon & Co. Printing started on 11 April 1840 and they went on sale on 1 May, though they didn't become valid for postage until the sixth. In all over the life of the issue 68 million were printed.

The Penny Black paid postage for letter up to a half ounce. Doubleweight letters carried the Twopenny Blue, and these went on sale 8 May 1840.

In a recent auction papers revealed that if the Penny Black were coated with egg white and used, the postmark could be washed off with the egg white and easily reused. Authorities knew of this at the time, but word never leaked out.

No holes

Curiously, the sheets of Penny Blacks were distributed without any perforation holes. Clerks used scissors, rulers or sometimes carefully tore the stamps from the sheets. Hill was closed minded on the matter and said that if an idea wasn't in his Postal Reform pamphlet it probably wasn't useful.

Later

Hill served at the Post Office from 1840-1842, was made Secretary to the Postmaster General in 1846, and became Secretary to the Post Office for ten years starting in 1854. He also served as chairman of a railway company and brought about the development of the telegraph in the UK.

Queen Victoria knighted Hill as Knight Commander of the Bath for his service to the Empire in 1860, and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and received an honorary degree from Oxford.

Hill the reformer retired in 1864 in poor health, and passed away at his home in Hampstead in 1879. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Hill's portrait has appeared on numerous stamps in England and around the world. His statue stands outside the General Post Office in London, and in 1997 the British Royal Mail, awarded their first annual Royal Mail Rowland Hill Awards for innovations and achievements in stamp collecting.

But his reformist legacy lives on. The Rowland Hill Fund set up in 1882 by the Post Office to help "needy Post Office employees, pensioners and dependants," is still in operation today.