Queen Victoria: Postal Reform, the Penny Black, and the Natural History of Her Age

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Queen Victoria (1819–1901) ascended the British throne in 1837 at just 18 years old and reigned for 63 years, until 1901.

The wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on stamp of Great Britain 2019, MiNr.: 4395, Scott: 3850.

The Penny Black, the first postage stamp of the world - MiNr.: 1, Scott: 1

Her era quickly became synonymous with technological innovation, cultural transformation, and the expansion of public knowledge.
This period is also often regarded as a golden age for museums in Britain. Numerous metropolitan, provincial, and university institutions were established or significantly expanded to house and display collections of art, natural history, science, and antiquities. Among the major museums whose development occurred during the Victorian era are the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum in London.

In February 1840, she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, whose strong interest in science, education, and the arts helped define the intellectual tone of the early Victorian period. Their partnership fostered a climate in which scientific progress, museum culture, and modern communication systems flourished.

One of the earliest major reforms implemented during Queen Victoria’s reign was the Postal Reform. Before this reform, Britain’s postal system was inefficient, expensive, and cumbersome. Postage was charged according to the number of sheets and the distance travelled, and letters were usually paid for by the recipient.
The reform, initiated by Rowland Hill with the support of Robert Wallace, member of Parliament, and the Mercantile Committee on Postage in the mid-1830s, culminated in 1840 with the uniform postal rate, the requirement to prepay postage, and the introduction of the world’s first adhesive postage stamp — the Penny Black, featuring Victoria’s youthful profile.

This reform revolutionised communication across Britain and throughout the expanding empire. It also played a crucial role in scientific exchange: naturalists, explorers, and museum curators could now correspond more quickly and reliably, sharing letters, observations, and specimens through the efficient postal networks that helped drive Victorian science.

The same prerequisites that enabled the postal reform led to the foundations of modern geology. As Britain began its transformation into an industrial power in the 1760s, what is now known as the Industrial Revolution, the growing demand for iron, coal, and other minerals elevated the importance of the mining industry. This, in turn, created an urgent need for reliable information about mineral deposits and the natural distribution of rock formations.

Gideon Mantell and William Buckland two scientists who described the first three "giant reptiles", later grouped by Richard Owen to new genus - "Dinosaurs", on meter-franking of South Korea 2001 and 1995 respectively.

The deeper miners dug, the stranger the stones they extracted. Some of stones were thought to be the “sports of nature”, but many were unmistakably the fossilised bones and teeth of animals unlike any living species.
The first prehistoric reptiles, Megalosaurus, was described in 1824 by William Buckland, Professor of Geology at the University of Oxford and Dean of Christ Church. Two more followed: Iguanodon in 1825 and Hylaeosaurus in 1833, both described by the Sussex physician and amateur paleontologist Gideon Mantell.
In 1841, Richard Owen, then Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons and later superintendent the British Museum, recognised that these three reptiles formed a distinct natural group. He named them “Dinosauria”, meaning “terrible lizards”, characterised by upright limbs and strongly built vertebrae. The term "Dinosauria" was formally published in 1842 in Owen’s Report on British Fossil Reptiles, prepared for the British Association for the Advancement of Science.



FDC with 150^th Anniversary of Dinosaurs' Identification by Sir Richard Owens stamps of Great Britain 1991

Owen’s was not an explorer, his work relied primarily on the extensive collections of the Hunterian and the British Museums, where he worked between 1827-1856 and 1856-1883 respectively . He also corresponded with officials and governors across the British colonies, colonial officers and explorers, who assisted him in obtaining fossils and other specimens from remote parts of the British Empire.
For example

Diprotodon on stamp of Australia 2008, MiNr.: 3103, Scott: 2976.

Dwarf elephant (Palaeoloxodon falconeri) on stamp of Malta 2011 MiNr.: 1612, Scott: 1383.

• Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt (1811–1888), a Royal Navy officer and hydrographer, explored caves in Malta, collecting Pleistocene mammal fossils, including dwarf elephants (Palaeoloxodon falconeri).
  His specimens were deposited in the British Museum (Natural History), forming part of the Mediterranean fossil record.
• Owen’s first major source of Australian fossils was Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792-1855), the Surveyor General of New South Wales from 1828 to 1855. Thomas Livingstone Mitchell played a pivotal role in the earliest scientific discovery of Australian megafauna. During his 1830–1831 exploration of the Wellington Caves, he oversaw the excavation of the distinctive red-earth breccia rich in Pleistocene vertebrate remains. Mitchell sent these fossils, including bones of Diprotodon, Nototherium, giant kangaroos, and other extinct marsupials, to London, where they were studied by Richard Owen. In a series of papers from 1838 to 1842, Owen repeatedly credited Mitchell as the collector and used his material to establish some of the first scientifically recognized species of Australia’s extinct megafauna. These shipments represent the earliest systematic fossil collection exported from Australia for scientific analysis.
  In recognition of their mutual respect, Mitchell named a peak in Queensland Mount Owen, while Owen honoured Mitchell by giving the name Nototherium mitchelli to a large, Diprotodon-like extinct marsupial.
• In southern Africa, Andrew Geddes Bain (1797–1864), renowned as the father of South African geology, and his son Thomas Charles John Bain, collected numerous fossils from the Karoo region, including reptilian and mammal-like forms.
  They sent many of these specimens to Richard Owen, who described them in details, naming species such as the dicynodont Oudenodon bainii in their honour and analyzing the so-called “Blinkwater Monster”.
  Bain’s 1846 fossil catalogue, now preserved in the British Museum, confirms the scope and significance of his contributions.

Mammal-like reptiles from Karoo formation on stamps of South Africa Karoo Fossils, MiNr: 622-625, Scott: 606-609.

The postal reform made the communicated much easier, cheaper and faster.

Megatherium on stamp of Argentina 2001, MiNr.: 2642, Scott: 2144a.

Queen Victoria on stamp of Great Britain 2019, MiNr.: 4396, Scott: 3851.

Owen also maintained contact with many of the most prominent naturalists of his time, including the leading French anatomist Georges Cuvier, often regarded as the father of paleontology, along with Charles Lyell, the geologist and proponent of uniformitarianism, and Charles Darwin, who sent him fossil mammals collected during the voyage of HMS Beagle, including remains of Megatherium, the giant ground sloth.

Owen's meticulous anatomical analyses, detailed publications, and public lectures introduced prehistoric life to both scholarly audiences and the general public, establishing him as one of the leading figures in Victorian natural history.
Beyond his museum and research work, Richard Owen played a direct role in educating Queen Victoria’s children in natural history. He provided lessons in zoology, anatomy, and fossil studies to Victoria’s sons and daughters, reflecting the Victorian emphasis on scientific education for elite children and reinforcing the monarchy’s symbolic connection to science.
By arranging for Owen’s instruction, Victoria promoted natural history as a respected field and part of cultural upbringing, bridging academic expertise and Royal patronage.
Owen’s educational role helped instil an appreciation for scientific observation and critical thinking in the royal household, complementing his broader public efforts in museum curation and lectures.

In addition to his scientific work, Owen became a central driving force behind the Victorian movement to expand, reorganise, and properly house Britain’s museum collections. Nearly his entire professional life was spent within museum walls, and those institutions were in turn profoundly shaped by his influence. One of Owen’s principal ambitions was the creation of a separate national museum devoted specifically to natural history. To secure support for his plan to separate the natural history collections from the British Museum and establish an independent institution, Owen needed to appeal to a wide audience including prominent scientists, influential politicians, and the broader public whose opinions could sway political decisions.
Beginning in 1837, Owen launched a long, running programme of public lectures and presentations, not only in London but also in regional centres such as Ipswich, aimed at general audiences. These lectures, which continued until 1864, were intended to popularise natural science and build public enthusiasm for his vision.
He also introduced guided tours of the Hunterian Museum, during which a conservator explained the significance of the specimens on display, thereby making the collections more accessible and engaging to the public.


The first international "Expo", officially called the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, took in place in temporary built Crystal Palace - the first building made out of glass, between May and October 1851, as a celebration of modern industrial technology and design.

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