PENNY POSTAGE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 388, 20 March 1937, Page 3

PENNY POSTAGE

100 YEARS OLD This Year Is Actually Its Centenary. (Written by W.L.K.) This year may be claimed as the centenary of the birth of the penny post, for although not actually started until 1840, it was early in 1837 that Rowland Hill first suggested his revolutionary scheme to the public.

This he did in his pamphlet entitled “Post Office Reform” which set forth a system of cheap postage that he had been engaged on for the two previous years. At that time postal charges varied according to the distance the letter had to be carried and whether it consisted of one or two sheets of paper; thus a letter from London to Edinburgh, if single cost 1/1J but if double, the postage was 2/3, while if treble 3/4J and so on. Rowland Hill suggested that instead of all letters having to be handed over the counter, weighed, charged and taxed, a system of prepayment —means of labels, or stamps —■would prove more convenient to the public and save the Post Office considerable labour and organisation. In 1837 his proposals met with scant success, but in the next two years public opinion brought so much pressure on Parliament that the scheme was ratified and the Government gave Rowland Hill a Treasury appointment.

Results soon justified all his most sanguine expectations and also those of his supporters. Within two years the changeable letters delivered through Britain had increased at the rate of 75,000,000 a year to a total of 196,500,000. Seven years later it had risen to 329,000,000.