England's First Postage Stamp

This year is the 167th anniversary of the introduction of the Penny Black, England's first pre-paid postage stamp.

Before 1840, mail correspondence was a complicated and costly affair. The postage was paid by the recipient, and was determined by the number of sheets mailed, and the distance it had to travel.

Roland Hill had worked out what he thought was a new, better plan for the British postal system, and explained it in his privately printed pamphlet, Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability, which he published in 1837. The plan called for pre-paid postage and standardized and inexpensive rates. In 1839, Hill was given a 2-year contract to give his new plan a try, and in 1840, the new rates were put into use.

It was a smashing success. Inexpensive postage was rapidly becoming a necessity, as more and more sons and daughters were leaving the farm and village and moving to the cities to work in the new factories. Penny postage put correspondence within the reach of practically everyone.

The new system was so efficient that it was also an economic success. Under the previous system, each letter was logged by at the post office, a task that was unnecessary under the new system. The funds had to be collected when the letter was delivered, and the postman had to wait a minimum of 5 minutes at each household. Hill discovered that, under the old system, it took an hour and a half to deliver 67 letters. Under the new penny post, 570 letters could be delivered in a half hour. The distance that a letter had to travel was irrelevant to the cost of delivery -- almost all the expense was in the manpower necessary to log and deliver it. And, unfortunately, some individuals were too poor to accept delivery of the letter when it got to them.