Simultaneous Development of Philately, Geology, and Palaeontology as a Result of the British Industrial Revolution

Part 3: Design of the first adhesive postage stamp in the world

Postal System of Great Britain at the beginning of the 19^th century

The invention of the postage stamp in 1840 was part of an attempt to improve the postal system in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as requested by the growing business community who needed to exchange more communications due to the industrialization process beginning in the 1760s which we now call the British Industrial Revolution. Before the introduction of adhesive stamps, the British postal system was slow, with high and complex rates.

Although business and science moved forward and the transformation of Great Britain from a rural to an industrial country was in full force, the Postal System of the country was stuck in the past.
The postal service was slow, inefficient, expensive, and its rates were so complex that they were difficult to understand. This was partly because the government used postal charges as a source of revenue, particularly in the years following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Most letters passed through London, where the postage due was assessed and the amount to be paid was written on the cover before the letter continued to its destination.

An example of a cross-written letter: the letter was posted from Leominster to Bristol (9d rate) in 1838.

An example of a "Returned" letter posted in 1833 from Plymouth. Addressed to Captain Cuming of the Mermaid in Dartmouth, this letter demanded repayment of a debt. Suspecting its contents, the Captain refused delivery — a common tactic to avoid legal notice. The letter was sent back to London via the Plymouth GPO, opened in London “Returned Letter/Dead Letter Office” to identify the sender, and the postage increased from 8d to 1s 3d for the redirection.

Letters could be sent prepaid by the sender (red "PAID" mark means the postage paid by the sender) or unpaid , due to the common opinion the delivery was more reliable if the postman had to collect money from the recipient, most of the letters were sent unpaid.

Red PAID mark from 1833. Most PAID handstamps were applied in red and followed the general style shown above.	An example of an "Unpaid" letter, posted in 1828. The "Unpaid" handstamp does not mean the letter was returned, rather, it indicates that the sender did not prepay the postage. Instead, the recipient was required to pay the postage (2 pence) upon delivery.

Circular and rectangular PAID handstamps in black and other colours were also used, though they are encountered less frequently.	In most cases, unpaid letters did not receive a special Unpaid marking. Instead, they typically bore only a hand‑stamped indication of the postage due.

The charge was determined by the number of sheets of the letter and distance travelled, and might include some extra charges or taxes, such as passing through a turnpike toll between England and Scotland ("Add 1/2" Penny), but the recipient could simply refuse delivery after examining the cover.
To save costs, people often used the "cross-writing" technique to save the number of sheets in the letter (see example on the right).
On the other hand, the postman spent considerable time knocking on doors, waiting for answers, arguing with the recipient on whether or not the letter was properly charged, and the finding of the correct money and counting change.

Dead Letter Office

In 1784, the Dead Letter Office (DLO) was established in London to examine letters that could neither be delivered to the addressee nor returned to the sender because no return address had been provided. Its principal function was to support the accounting system of the General Post Office by verifying the reasons for non-delivery and ensuring that local Postmasters were properly credited for the postage due on undeliverable letters. The DLO also investigated claims that letters had been incorrectly charged or overcharged.
At a Dead Letter Office, undeliverable mail was usually opened in an attempt to find a forwarding address. If an address was found, the letter was wrapped in protective paper, marked "Dead Letter Office", later renamed to "Returned Letter Office" (RLO), before delivery. If the letter or parcel remained completely undeliverable, if any valuable items were enclosed, they were typically auctioned, while the remaining correspondence was destroyed. Consequently, the postal service absorbed all processing and handling costs, erasing any revenue gained from the original postage

Frauds and abuse

Frauds and abuse of the postal system was common.
Some senders and recipients devised simple codes to avoid postage costs — for example, a letter addressed to John Brown might mean the sender was doing well, while Mr. John Brown signalled a request for help. The recipient could read the message from the address alone and refuse delivery, avoiding payment.

Another form of postal abuse was practiced by impostors such as Joseph Ady (or Adey, 1775–1852), who exploited the early postal system by sending thousands of unpaid letters promising recipients "something to their advantage" in exchange for a fee over a period of more than three decades, from the 1810s into the late 1840s. A large number of these letters were refused by their addressees and sent to the Dead Letter Office, causing significant financial losses to the Post Office because Ady obstinately refused to accept their return.
His circular letters were distributed mainly throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland, making him one of the most prolific users of the mail in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century.
However, some of Ady's circulars reached far beyond Britain. According to the Observer (29 October 1832), George Thompson, a shoemaker from St. Kitts in the West Indies, received one of Ady's letters and travelled to London believing that he was entitled to money or property. The promised opportunity proved illusory, and Thompson ultimately required charitable assistance to return home. His case illustrates both the wide reach of Ady's correspondence and the hardship it could cause to those who trusted his claims.

An example of Ady's letters The handwritten letter was dated 30 August 1840 but was not posted until 24 July 1841. It was retained by Ady for nearly eleven months before being addressed to Mr. Wm. Hawkes, solicitor in Norwich, prepaid with a Penny Red (Plate No. 11), and mailed from Whitechapel (London). The letter is a typical example of the circulars by which Ady offered to reveal "something to your advantage" in return for a fee of twenty shillings. The undersigned is able to inform you of something he believes to your advantage on receipt of twenty shillings for his trouble by Post Office Order or otherwise. Respectfully, Jos. Ady, Accountant 7 York St., Commercial Road 30 Aug. 1840 The use of prepaid postage is noteworthy, as Ady had previously accumulated substantial charges on undelivered letters and had promised the Post Office that future correspondence would be prepaid. The handwriting of the message differs noticeably from that of the address, suggesting that the two were written by different individuals. Contemporary accounts indicate that Ady employed assistants in his large-scale mailing business, and it is possible that the text was copied by a schoolboy for that purpose. The eleven month interval between the date of the letter and its mailing further suggests that Ady maintained stocks of pre-written circulars which could be addressed and dispatched as required.

Ady’s scheme involved consulting lists of unclaimed dividends and funds held at the Bank of England and then searching town directories for people with matching surnames. He would write to these individuals claiming to possess valuable information concerning money or property to which they might be entitled. In return for revealing the information, he demanded a fee — initially five shillings, later increased to ten and eventually twenty shillings.
Many recipients evidently paid Ady's fee, enabling him to continue the scheme for more than three decades. Contemporary newspapers and Post Office records show that his activities generated numerous complaints, while the large volume of undelivered letters accumulated substantial postage charges against him.

An Act passed by Parliament in 1837 established that:
"every letter or packet which is rejected unopened by the person to whom it is directed, shall be returned by post to the sender, and that the said sender shall be bound to pay the return postage thereon unless direct postage has already been paid thereon".

The following year, Ady was summoned before Bow Street Police Court. According to The Sun (London, 21 July 1838), the Post Office solicitor informed the court that hundreds of Ady's letters had accumulated because the intended recipients were dead, could not be traced, or refused delivery.
By pleading poverty and poor health, denying his signature, and promising not to offend again, Ady successfully frustrated the Post Office's attempts to prosecute him for many years. Despite repeated warnings and considerable leniency from officials, Ady continued his activities for decades.
However, some letters prepaid by Ady have survived, one of which is illustrated above, was mailed in July 1841.

By 1841, Ady had become widely known for his circular-letter operations, and several newspapers had warned the public about his activities. Prepaying postage increased the likelihood that a letter would be delivered and read rather than refused by the recipient, thereby improving the effectiveness of his scheme.

His promise to reform, however, proved short-lived. New act gradually strengthened the Post Office's powers to recover these charges. Rowland Hill, the architect of the postal reforms of the 1830s and 1840s and the driving force behind the introduction of the first postage stamp, spent much of his time strengthening postal regulations and pursuing legal action against Joseph Ady and other impostors. Following the introduction of adhesive postage stamps, Ady went so far as to imitate the impression left by a removed stamp in order to lend credibility to his claims against the Post Office.
In 1848, Ady was convicted and imprisoned. Because of his advanced age and failing health, he was released in 1852, only a few months before his death later that year.

The case of Joseph Ady became one of the best-known examples of abuse of the pre-reform postal system and was frequently cited in debates on postal administration. It demonstrated the practical difficulties created by unpaid and undeliverable correspondence and helped justify tighter controls on postal traffic.

Postal Charges

This letter was posted in 1838 from London to Oxford, a distance of approximately 92 km, and was charged 8 pence, prepaid by the sender. The expense was of little concern to the sender, Alexander Nasmyth (1789–1848), a Fellow of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and later dentist to Queen Victoria, having been appointed to that position in 1845. The recipient of the letter was the renowned Dr. William Buckland, the first Professor of Geology at the University of Oxford. In 1824, he published the first scientific description of Megalosaurus, the earliest dinosaur to be formally recognized by science.

While the average rate of sending a small letter ranged from 4 to 6 pence, there was no upper limit on postal charges. A letter sent from London to Edinburgh (around 400 km apart) could cost a shilling (12 pence) or even more, and delivery often took several days. As a result, most correspondence was business-related or legal in nature, since sending a letter was expensive and the process inconvenient. Ordinary people seldom wrote personal letters.

The money system of Great Britain until 1971 was very different from today - the smallest unit was the Farthing.
1d - One Penny made up of four Farthings.
1s or 1/ - One Shilling made up of 12 Pence (Pence is plural of Penny).
£1 - One Pound made up of 20 Shillings (20s) or 240 Pence (240d).
There are also Guinea (£1 + 1s), Half Crown (2s 6d) and Florin (2s).

On the other hand, a large number of the noble people, members of Parliament, bishops, highest ranks of army and navy, etc., used the post service for free. Newspapers were taxed, but carried for free too. It is estimated at least 12.5% of the correspondence delivered by the Post in the 1820s-1830s was "FREE".
Due to the very high postage rate many private persons and merchants tried to use alternative postage services. Even though the government tried to monopolize the postage system by acquiring some private postal companies and defining most of the private postal services as illegal, it was estimated that as many as half of all letters sent in Great Britain in the 1830s were not sent through the government's postal system.

8d-paid (by sender) letter, posted in 1833. The letter was sent from Faversham, a market town in Kent, England, located approximately 77 kilometres (48 miles) southeast of London. The region is known for its chalk formations, which are rich in fossils such as ammonites and echinoids. It was addressed to "Maurice Thomas Esq" at "6 New Bosmere Court, Lincoln's Inn, London." The use of "Esq." (Esquire) suggests the recipient was a gentleman, likely a lawyer or other professional. The address at Lincoln's Inn, one of the four Inns of Court in London, further supports this assumption, as the area is historically associated with the legal profession.

Free-postage privilege letter, posted in 1838. The letter was sent by Edward John Stanley (1802–1869), Member of Parliament (MP) for North Cheshire (1832–1841), who was entitled to send mail without charge under the franking privilege, a benefit granted to members of Parliament prior to the introduction of the Uniform Penny Post in 1840. The letter was addressed to Peter Ainsworth (1790–1870) from Bolton, Lancashire who was MP and represented Bolton in the House of Commons.

Two letters below illustrate the complexity of the postal rate and how expensive it was.
The letter on the bottom-left was posted from Melrose to Edinburgh (35-38 miles apart) in October 1813 and was charged "1/2/./2"(1 Shilling + 2 Pence + Half-Penny or two Farthings) or 14.50 Pence . One Shilling and 2 Pence was the postal rate for a double sheet letter (a letter sheet wrapped in another sheet - a kind of envelope) for the distance between 30 and 50 miles. 1/2 Penny was the Scottish tax which came into effect on June 7^th, 1813, for letters, regardless of weight, carried within Scotland by Post Office vehicles with “more than 2 wheels” (horses, small carts and pedestrians did not pay the high tolls).

The rectangular mark on the left is not the mileages from Melrose to Edinburgh, but the distance from Melrose to London (377 miles), and B means the letters from Melrose to London were delivered via Berwick (one of the closest ports). The distance between the post office and London was added on the cover because the postage rates were charged by distance from or through London. To help postmasters calculate or check the rates the mileage of post towns was added to some postal marks in 1784.

Skilled man-labour daily wages in 1813 were approx. 2 Shillings (2 Shillings = 24 Pence). The woman-labour earned half and the kid-labour a quarter of the man-labour wages. 14.50 Pence in 1813 in today's money equivalent to approx. €60 - €70.
The second letter posted from Leeds to Aberdeen (350 miles apart) in July 1833 is almost twice as expensive - 2s-2d-1/2d (2 Shilling + 2 Pence + Half-Penny or two Farthings) or 26.50 Pence in today's money equivalent to approx. €100 - €130.

Examples of expensive letters, posted in Scotland in 1813 and 1833 respectively.
The letter was sent to: "The Treasurer for the Bank of Scotland, Bank Office, Edinburgh". The sender is unknown.	The letter was sent from Leeds, England, on July 27, 1833, to Peter Duguid Esq. in Aberdeen, Scotland. The "PAID" handstamp indicates the sender paid the postage upfront.

The postal rate for letters to overseas was even more expensive, making communication impossible between families who lived in North America or other colonial territories, because the only way to keep in contact with those family members would have been the mail - the telephone and even the telegraph were not invented yet.

The highest prestamp Transatlantic Postal rate known to date, is £26-8s-10d. This rate included £11-2s-8d ship letter rate and £15-6s-2d inland rate (both rates holds records for the highest prestamp Ship Letter rate and the highest inland postage charge). This package weighing 83.5 oz (approx. 2.4 kg ) was posted from New York to England. This amount was comparable with the half-annual wages of a skilled labour.
The package contained the documents signed by the sender in America who inherited about £500.000 (equivalent to approx. £65.0000.000 today) from a remote cousin who had died in India, to confirm that he was to inherit the estate.

The first well-known Ichthyosaurus skeleton (skull and torso), discovered in 1811-1812 by Mary Anning and her elder brother Joseph, was purchased by lord of the manor of Colway, near Lyme Regis for £23.

Postal Reform of Rowland Hill

One of "Mercantile Papers" propaganda circulars created by Henry Cole in April 1839.

"Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability", by Rowland Hill, published in London in 1837

The Post Office Regulation published on January 7th, 1840 in London

The Postal Reform was needed not only to increase revenue, but also due to the growing business communications, as result of the British Industrial Revolution, businessmen requested quick and cheap postal service. The business increasingly saw the high rates and slow correspondence delivery as an obstacle to further growth.
The first discussion in the Parliament about the need to reform the Postal System started in 1833. In 1835 the campaign for cheap postage was initiated to investigate the problems by a governmental commission.

In January 1837, Sir Rowland Hill (1795-1879), who was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer (knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1860), with support of Robert Wallace who was a Member of Parliament, wrote a leaflet called "Post Office Reform", where he presented his ideas to simplify the postal system.
The first edition was intended for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a few friends of Hill. The second edition included various comments made by the Chancellor, was published and sold to the public at the end of February 1837. Hill's leaflets created widespread interest and discussions, leading to publication of another two editions.

Main objectives of Hill's reform were:

• reduce the cost of postage by replacing the collection of money on delivery with prepayment by sender by means of adhesive stamps or prepaid covers sold by the post office.
• simplify the rate, by charging per weight instead of the number of sheets and the distance travelled
• create proportional rates for increased weight
• remove the Franking Privilege

To prove that postage had been paid, Hill suggested using either prepaid envelopes and letter sheets or a printed label:
"a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash."

Hill also argued, prepaid post will significantly reduce delivery costs of the Post Office, by reducing the postman’s effort:
it would soon be unnecessary even to await the opening of the door, as every house might be provided with a box into which the Letter Carrier would drop the letters, and having knocked, he would pass on as fast as he could walk.
Today every house, flat, and office has a front-door letterbox, but it was an innovative proposal in the 1830s.

The first letter-boxes were installed on a wall in one of the biggest churches of Florence, Italy at the beginning of the 16^th century. They were closed wooden boxes with an opening for letters to allow anonymous complaints against evildoers.

However, many years after the introduction of postage stamps, not every household, even in London, had a letterbox. In 1848, Rowland Hill persuaded the Postmaster General to issue a circular encouraging residents to install letterboxes in their doors to improve postal delivery. The message, however, was not well received by everyone. Some found it intrusive, and one indignant gentleman reportedly asked whether the Postmaster General truly expected him “to cut a slit in his mahogany door”.

In 1838 Hill made a proposal to the Parliament in which he suggested that
"the postage on all letters received in a post-town, and delivered in the same, or any other post-town in the British Isles, shall be at the uniform rate of one penny per half ounce [14g.]".
The price of one penny was proposed by Hill following his calculation, based on documentation provided by Mr. Wallace, which showed that the cost for the Post Office to deliver a letter to any part of the kingdom, including Ireland, was less than a farthing (four farthings made a penny).
In his proposal, Hill also called for official pre-printed envelopes and adhesive postage stamps as alternative ways of getting the sender to pay for postage.
Hill argued, that if letters were cheaper to send, people, including the poorer classes, would send more of them, thus eventually profits would go up and it would reduce the cost of business communication too.

Most of Hill's proposals were based on existing solutions and ideas proposed, but not accepted before.

• The concept of the reform was an extension of local "Penny Posts" to the entire country. The local "Penny Posts" was started by William Dockwra in 1680 as an independent local London postal service. In 1765 the service was monopolized by the General Post Office and later spread all over the kingdom. By 1838, the number of local "Penny Posts" reached 520. Only the English and Welsh, local "Penny Posts" served over 1550 towns and villages.
  The post delivery within a city or a town, sometimes including the neighbourhood villages, was based on a single postage rate calculated by weight, rather than number of sheets. The covers were stamped with markings such as "PP", "Py Post", or "Penny Post" along with the name of the town.
• One Penny (1d) rate for single letters sent prepaid by or to non-commissioned officers and private soldiers and ordinary sailors, was introduced in Great Britain in 1795 and was known as "Soldiers' Penny Concession Rate" (it was the first British "Uniform Penny Postage"). The letter of one sheet and with weight under one ounce could be sent anywhere in the world, when carried by British vessels, for One Penny.
• The idea of prepayment was proposed by Charles Whiting in 1830, who proposed to prepay postage of printed matter with no restriction on distance, by using security-printed envelopes, based on compound-printed banknotes.
• Prepaid “stamps” existed in Great Britain since as early as 1694, but were used for tax rather than postage purpose. The embossed tax stamps were either embossed directly onto a sheet of paper or small paper stamp were glued onto the reverse side of taxed document in the Stamp Office premises in London.
  Since 1702 they were printed in black on white paper sheets and have a comparable size to the Penny Black and Two Pence Blue stamps, introduced by Hill in 1840.

Rowland Hill drew upon these various pre-existing ideas, utilizing extensive postal statistics provided by Robert Wallace, Member of Parliament, to synthesize them into a totally new concept: uniform cheap postage for everyone.

In February 1838 the "Mercantile Committee on Postage" was setup in London, with Henry Cole as its Secretary.

Sir Henry Cole (1808 – 1882) was an English civil servant and inventor who facilitated many innovations in commerce and education in the 19^th century in the United Kingdom. Cole is credited with devising the concept of sending greetings cards at Christmas time, introducing the world's first commercial Christmas card in 1843. From 1837 to 1840, he worked as an assistant to Rowland Hill and played a key role in the introduction of the Penny Post.

The Committee contained a group of merchants who lobbied Parliament to enact the reforms desired, to increase business correspondence and commerce through postal communication.
Rowland Hill was joined by Henry Cole with whom he pushed Hill's Postal Reform and designed the first adhesive postage stamp.
Henry Cole created and edited "The Post Circular" newspaper where he advocated for cheap postage and removal of the "FREE" postage privilege. A lot of petitions to the Parliament were organized by the "Mercantile Committee on Postage".

Even though many people supported the reform the government was worried about the loss of revenue and the noble people who had the privilege of free postage were reluctant to pay for it. However, the joint effort of Rowland Hill, Henry Cole and the "Mercantile Committee on Postage" created too much pressure on the Parliament and was rewarded by an Act of Parliament that created the "Uniform Fourpenny Post" and Rowland Hill was given a two-year contract to run the new system.



From December 5^th, 1839, until January 9^th, 1840, a uniform charge of 4d was levied for pre-paid letters up to half an ounce [14g.] in weight instead of postage being calculated by distance and number of sheets of paper. One-ounce letters were charged double. Unpaid was charged double the pre-paid rates.
The trial period was a success - the quantity of letters carried increased significantly, therefore the second trial called "The Uniform Penny Post" went into effect on 10 January 1840.
The "FREE" postage privilege was abolished. Special, prepaid envelopes were introduced for mail posted from the Houses of Parliament, House of Lords and House of Commons in the same month and these remained in use until the introduction of the first adhesive postage stamps and postal stationery in May 1840. These envelopes were inscribed in different font on the top side with the following text:

• "To be posted at the Houses of Parliament only. Post Paid - One Penny. - Weight not to exceed 1/2 oz."
• "To be posted at the House of Lords only. Post Paid - One Penny. - Weight not to exceed 1/2 oz."
• "To be posted at the House of Commons only. Post Paid - One Penny. - Weight not to exceed 1/2 oz."

There are also prepaid envelopes with the "Two Pence. - Weight not to exceed 1 oz." rate.

Anchors

#intro, #dlo, #fraud, #ady, #charges, #reform, #hill_reform.