THE POST OFFICE OF FIFTY YEARS AGO.
the little seed which has now attained so gigantic a growth.[1]
Prepayment of postage by means of stamps has now become so universal a practice that to many persons it may seem incredible that, in 1839, Sir Francis Baring, and some other earnest advocates of Sir Rowland Hill's reforms, believed it would be almost impossible to induce the public to prepay their letters. This necessary change of habit was, indeed, regarded by them as a dangerous rock ahead, upon which the scheme might possibly be wrecked. To prepay a letter in those days (unless addressed to a person of very inferior social position) was considered quite as contrary to good manners as it would now be for one gentleman, when writing to another, to enclose a
- ↑ Postage stamps were first used in the United Kingdom on 6th May, 1840. They were manufactured by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon, and Petch, of 69, Fleet Street, who for forty years retained the contract for supplying the penny
FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL SKETCH FOR THE POSTAGE STAMP.and twopenny labels—these constituting more than nine-tenths of all the postage stamps employed. The number of stamps produced by them in the forty years amounted to the enormous total of nearly twenty-three thousand millions, sufficient, if placed in line, to encircle the world fifteen times over. In 1855, Messrs. Delarue & Co., of 110, Bunhill Row, also commenced the manufacture of postage stamps, having obtained the contract for the fourpenny labels. Gradually the whole work of making postage stamps for this country and most of its colonies has been entrusted to the latter firm.
address which make it his own."—Quarterly Review, No. 128, p. 555.
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