The Victorian Era

What Was the Impact of Penny Postage

Article · Science & Invention · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Penny postage, the cheap, uniform, prepaid letter post introduced in the United Kingdom by the Postage Act of 1839 and brought into effect on 10 January 1840, was the work of the schoolmaster and social reformer Rowland Hill. It transformed the British postal service from a luxury available only to the rich into a universal service used by every class of the population, and it raised the volume of letters carried by the post office from about 76 million in 1839 to over 1.1 billion in 1865 and over 2.8 billion by 1900. The new system was founded on three principles: uniform postage regardless of distance, prepayment by the sender, and the use of the new prepayment device, the postage stamp, to indicate that the postage had been paid. The penny post is part of the wider history of Victorian Science, Invention, and Technology and of the Victorian Economy and Industrialization of the period.

The Old Post and Its Problems

Before the penny post, the British postal system was a luxury. Letters were charged by distance and by the number of sheets of paper, the rates were high, the post office was inefficient, and the typical letter cost sixpence or a shilling, a substantial sum for a working man. The recipient rather than the sender paid the postage, and the system was open to abuse, with the post office refusing to deliver the letter until the recipient had paid. The result was that working-class families and small businesses often could not afford to use the post, and the system was dominated by the Who were the Victorian upper class? and by the established commercial houses of the Victorian Cities, Transport, and Entertainment. The system was also widely evaded, with private postbags, franks, and the practice of sending letters as separate enclosures on the mail coach to avoid the postage.

The reform of the post was the cause of a long campaign by the radical and utilitarian reformers of the early nineteenth century. The reform was urged by Charles Knight, the publisher and reformer, by Robert Wallace, the radical MP, by Thomas Hodgkin, the physician and reformer, and by John Warburton, the radical MP for Manchester. The case for reform was also argued by the social reformers of the period, who saw cheap postage as a means of spreading literacy, of promoting the diffusion of knowledge, and of binding the new industrial nation together. The cause of the penny post was taken up by Rowland Hill, who was then a secretary of the South Australia Commission in London and who had been a professor of political economy at University College London. Hill’s pamphlet, Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability, published in 1837 under the auspices of the postmaster Robert Wallace, set out the case for the new system, and it became the founding document of the penny post.

The New Post and the Penny Black

Hill’s case for the penny post was based on a careful study of the cost of the existing postal system. Hill argued that the high rates were not a fair reflection of the cost of the service, that the cost of handling the mail was almost independent of the distance, that the existing system was wasteful, and that the new system could be self-financing. Hill proposed three reforms: a uniform rate of one penny regardless of distance, prepayment by the sender, and the use of the new prepayment device, the postage stamp, to indicate that the postage had been paid. The scheme was adopted by the government of Lord Melbourne in 1839, and the Postage Act of 1839 authorised the new system, which came into effect on 10 January 1840. The first stamps, the Penny Black and the Twopenny Blue, were issued on 1 May 1840, and they were the world’s first adhesive postage stamps.

The first year of the new system was chaotic. The number of letters carried by the post office doubled in the first year of the penny post, and it continued to grow rapidly throughout the 1840s and 1850s. The introduction of the Penny Black led to the invention of the Mulready letter sheet, a pre-paid envelope designed by the artist William Mulready and issued at the same time, but the public rejected the Mulready sheet as fussy and ugly and it was withdrawn within a year. The Penny Black was replaced in 1841 by the Penny Red, and the stamp was used in successive printings until 1879. Rowland Hill, who had been paid £17,000 in 1839 for his services, was appointed secretary to the Postmaster General in 1846, and he served the post office for twenty years, being made a KCB in 1846, a baronet in 1851, and a Knight of the Order of the Bath in 1860. The new system was also extended in a long series of further reforms. The rowland hill act of 1847 reduced the rate to a halfpenny for printed matter, the book post of 1848 allowed cheap postage of books, the money order system was extended, the post office savings bank was established in 1861, the parcel post was introduced in 1883, the express delivery service was introduced in 1891, the registered letter service was introduced in 1891, and the postal order was introduced in 1880.

The Penny Post and the Social Life of the Victorians

The penny post transformed the social life of the Victorian period. The new system made it possible for working-class families to keep in touch with relatives who had moved to the new industrial cities, for the Victorian wife to correspond with her husband when he was away on business, and for the Victorian family to keep in touch with the absent members of the household. The new system also made possible the spread of the new popular press, the What was the impact of penny postage?, and the new advertising industry, all of which relied on the cheap and efficient distribution of printed matter.

The penny post also had important cultural effects. The volume of letters sent through the post office grew so rapidly that the Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word of the day, the long sequence of Victorian novelists from Charles Dickens to George Eliot, the long sequence of Victorian poets from Tennyson to Christina Rossetti, all wrote in a culture in which the letter was a routine feature of daily life. The letter is a major form in Victorian fiction, and the post office is a recurring setting. The Victorian Novel of the 1840s and 1850s is full of letters, and the post office became one of the great Victorian Buildings and Landmarks of the period. The General Post Office in St Martin’s le Grand, designed by Robert Smirke and opened in 1829, was one of the great classical buildings of London, and the Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the post office set the standard for the architecture of public service.

The Imperial Post and the Universal Service

The penny post was the model for the imperial post, and the British Empire in the Victorian Era was the first empire in history to be bound together by a universal postal system. The Uniform Penny Post, the standard letter rate of one penny for the whole of the United Kingdom, was extended to the colonies in 1849, and the Imperial Penny Post of 1898 extended the rate to the whole of the British Empire, from Canada to Australia, from India to South Africa. The post office became one of the great imperial institutions, and the new Victorian Architecture and Interior Design of the post office, the new post offices in every colonial capital, the new post office boxes, the new postal vans, all contributed to the integration of the empire. The Post Office took over the inland telegraph system in 1870 and the trunk telephone system in 1884, and the General Post Office in London became one of the largest engineering enterprises of the age.

The post office also became one of the great employers of women. The introduction of the penny post had created a flood of letters that needed to be sorted, and the General Post Office, which was one of the largest employers in the country, began to employ women as clerks, sorters, and telegraphists from 1870 onwards. The Telegraph Act of 1868 had authorised the post office to acquire the inland telegraph companies, and the subsequent Telegraph Act of 1870 completed the acquisition, and the new staff of women was recruited to handle the new traffic. The women of the post office were paid less than the men they replaced, but they were the first large group of women in white-collar work, and they were the forerunners of the female workforce of the twentieth century. The post office also introduced rural postmen in 1852-53, and the post office savings bank, established in 1861, was the first of the modern savings institutions, and the Twopenny Tax Post of 1871 allowed letters to be redirected for a small fee. The penny post is a monument to the practical achievements of the period, and Rowland Hill is one of the great reformers of the Victorian era.