Sir Rowland Hill KCB,The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the medieval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
FRS (December 3, 1795 - August 27, 1879) was an
EnglishThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
teacherIn education, a teacher is a person who educates others. A teacher who educates an individual student may also be described as a personal tutor....
,
inventorAn inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find...
and
social reformerA reform movement is a kind of social movement that aims to make gradual change, or change in certain aspects of society rather than rapid or fundamental changes. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary movements.Reformists' ideas are often...
. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of penny postage, and his solution of pre payment, and later served as a government postal official. He is usually credited with originating the basic concepts of the modern postal service, including the invention of the
postage stampA postage stamp is adhesive paper evidence of a fee paid for postal services. Usually a small rectangle attached to an envelope, the stamp signifies the person sending it has fully or partly paid for delivery...
.
Earlier life
Hill was born in Blackwell Street,
KidderminsterKidderminster is a town in the Wyre Forest district of Worcestershire, England. It is located approximately seventeen miles south-west of Birmingham city centre. The 2001 census recorded a population of 55,182 in the town...
,
WorcestershireWorcestershire or ; abbreviated Worcs) is a historic and administrative county located in the West Midlands region of central England. In 1974 it was merged with the county of Herefordshire to form the single administrative county of Hereford and Worcester; which was divided in 1998,...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Rowland's father,
Thomas Wright HillThomas Wright Hill was a schoolmaster and steganographer. He is credited as inventing the single transferable vote in 1821...
, was an innovator in education and politics, including among his friends
Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
, Tom Paine and
Richard PriceRichard Price , was a Welsh moral philosopher and preacher in the tradition of English Dissenters, and a political pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the American Revolution. He fostered connections between a large number of people, including writers of the...
. At the age of 11, Rowland became a student-teacher in his father's school. He taught astronomy and earned extra money fixing scientific instruments. He also worked at the
Assay OfficeThe Birmingham Assay Office is one of the four remaining assay offices in the United Kingdom.The development of a silver industry in 18th century Birmingham was hampered by the legal requirement that items of solid silver be assayed, and the nearest Assay Offices were in Chester and London...
in Birmingham and painted landscapes in his spare time.
Educational reform
In 1819, he moved his father's school
Hill Top from central Birmingham, establishing the Hazelwood School at
EdgbastonEdgbaston is an area in the city of Birmingham in England. It is also a formal district, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the smaller Edgbaston ward and the wards of Bartley Green, Harborne and Quinton....
, an affluent neighbourhood of
BirminghamBirmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands county of England. Birmingham is the second-most populous British city, with a population of 1,006,500 ....
, as an “educational refraction of Priestley's ideas”. Hazelwood was to provide a model for
public educationPublic education is schooling mandated for or offered to all children by the government, whether national, regional, or local, provided by an institution of civil government, and paid for, in whole or in part, by taxes. The term is generally applied to basic education, including kindergarten to...
for the emerging middle classes, aiming for useful, pupil-centred education which would give sufficient knowledge, skills and understanding to allow a student to continue self-education through a life “most useful to society and most happy to himself”. The school, which Hill designed, included such marvels (for its time) as a science lab, a swimming pool, and forced air heating. In his
Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers Drawn from Experience (1822, often cited as
Public Education) he argued that kindness, instead of caning, and moral influence, rather than fear, should be the predominant forces in school discipline. Science was to be a compulsory subject, and students were to be self-governing.
Hazelwood gained international attention when French education leader and editor Marc Antoine Jullien, former secretary to Robespierre, visited and wrote about the school in the June 1823 issue of his journal
Revue. Jullien even transferred his son there. Hazelwood so impressed
Jeremy BenthamJeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was the brother of Samuel Bentham. He was a political radical, and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law...
that the school was moved to
Bruce CastleBruce Castle is a Grade I listed 16th-century manor house in Lordship Lane, Tottenham, London. It is named after the House of Bruce who formerly owned the land on which it is built. Believed to stand on the site of an earlier building, about which little is known, the current house is one of the...
in
TottenhamTottenham is an urban area of North London, England in the London Borough of Haringey, situated north-east of Charing Cross.-History:There has been a settlement at Tottenham for over a thousand years...
, London in 1827.
Colonization of South Australia
The colonization of
South AustraliaSouth Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories....
was a project of
Edward Gibbon WakefieldEdward Gibbon Wakefield was a British politician, the driving force behind much of the early colonization of South Australia, and later New Zealand. Wakefield, who in 1816 married Eliza Pattle , was the eldest son of Edward Wakefield and Susanna Crash...
, who believed that many of the social problems in Britain were caused by overcrowding and overpopulation. In 1832 Rowland Hill published a tract, entitled
Home colonies : sketch of a plan for the gradual extinction of pauperism, and for the diminution of crime, based on a Dutch model. Hill then served from 1833 until 1839 as secretary of the South Australian Colonization Commission, which worked successfully to establish a settlement without convicts at what is today
AdelaideAdelaide is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of South Australia, and is the fifth-largest city in Australia, with a population of more than 1.1 million. It is a coastal city situated on the eastern shores of Gulf St. Vincent, on the Adelaide Plains, north of the Fleurieu...
. The political economist,
Robert TorrensColonel Robert Torrens was a British army officer, political economist, MP and owner of the influential Globe newspaper....
was chairman of the Commission. Under the
South Australia Act 1834The South Australia Colonisation Act 1834 is the short title of an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the long title...
, the colony was to embody the ideals and best qualities of British society, shaped by religious freedom and a commitment to
social progressSocial progress is defined as the changing of society toward the ideal. The concept of social progress was introduced in the early, 19th century social theories, especially those of social evolutionists like August Comte and Herbert Spencer...
and
civil libertiesCivil liberties are rights in Freedom that protect an individual from the government of the nation in which they reside. Civil liberties set limits on government so that its members cannot abuse their power and interfere unduly with the lives of private citizens.Common civil liberties include the...
.
Postal reform
Hill interested himself in a reform of the postal system, as well. In the 1830s at least 12½% of all British mail was conveyed under the personal frank of Peers, dignitaries and Members of Parliament, while censorship and political espionage were conducted by postal officials. Fundamentally, the postal system was mismanaged, wasteful, expensive and slow. It had become inadequate for the needs of an expanding commercial and industrial nation. There is a well-known story, probably apocryphal, about how Hill gained an interest in reforming the postal system—that he noticed a young woman too poor to redeem a letter sent to her by her fiancé. At that time, letters were normally paid for by the recipient, not the sender. The recipient could simply refuse delivery. Frauds were commonplace; for example, coded information could appear on the cover of the letter; the recipient would examine the cover to gain the information, and then refuse delivery to avoid payment. Each individual letter had to be logged. In addition, postal rates were complex, depending on the distance and the number of sheets in the letter.
Richard CobdenRichard Cobden was a British manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with John Bright in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League as well as with the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty.-Early years:...
and John Ramsey McCulloch, both advocates of free trade, attacked the policies of privilege and protection of the Tory government. McCulloch, in 1833, advanced the view that "nothing contributes more to facilitate commerce than the safe, speedy and cheap conveyance of letters."
Hill's famous pamphlet,
Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability, was privately circulated in 1837. The report called for "low and uniform rates" according to weight, rather than distance. Hill's study showed that most of the costs in the postal system were not for transport, but rather for laborious handling procedures at the origins and the destinations. Costs could be reduced dramatically if postage were prepaid by the sender, the prepayment to be proven by the use of prepaid letter sheets or adhesive stamps (adhesive stamps had long been used to show payment of taxes, on documents for example). Letter sheets were to be used because envelopes were not yet common; they were not yet mass-produced, and in an era when postage was calculated partly on the basis of the number of sheets of paper used, the same sheet of paper would be folded and serve for both the message and the address. In addition, Hill proposed to lower the postage rate to a penny per half ounce, without regard to distance. He presented his proposal to the Government in 1838.
In the House of Lords the Postmaster,
Lord LichfieldThomas William Anson, 1st Earl of Lichfield PC , known as The Viscount Anson from 1818 to 1831, was a British Whig politician. He served under Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne as Master of the Buckhounds between 1830 and 1834 and under Melbourne Postmaster General between 1835 and 1841...
, thundered about Hill's "wild and visionary schemes."
William Leader MaberlyWilliam Leader Maberly spent most of his life as a British army officer and politician. In 1836, Maberly was appointed as joint secretary to the General Post Office, where he strongly opposed the introduction of the penny post, a plan championed by Rowland Hill to charge a fixed price for postage...
, Secretary to the Post Office, denounced Hill's study: "This plan appears to be a preposterous one, utterly unsupported by facts and resting entirely on assumption". But merchants, traders and bankers viewed the existing system as corrupt and a restraint of trade. They formed a "Mercantile Committee" to advocate for Hill's plan and pushed for its adoption. In 1839, Hill was given a two-year contract to run the new system.
Postal service rates were lowered almost immediately, to fourpence from the 5 December 1839, then to the penny rate on the 10 January 1840, even before stamps or letter sheets could be printed. The volume of paid internal correspondence increased dramatically, by 120%, between November 1839 and February 1840. This initial increase resulted from the elimination of "free franking" privileges and smuggling.
Prepaid letter sheets, with a design by
William MulreadyWilliam Mulready was an Irish genre painter living in London. He is best known for his romanticizing depictions of rural scenes.William Mulready was born in Ennis, County Clare...
, were distributed in early 1840. These
Mulready envelopesMulready stationery describes the postal stationery lettersheets and pre-gummed envelopes that were introduced as part of the British Post Office postal reforms of 1840. They went on sale on 1 May, 1840, and were valid for use from 6 May...
were not popular and were widely satirized. According to a brochure distributed by the National Postal Museum (now the British Postal Museum & Archive), the Mulready envelopes threatened the livelihoods of stationery manufacturers, who encouraged the satires. They became so unpopular that the government used them on official mail and destroyed many others.
However, as a niche commercial publishing industry for machine-printed illustrated envelopes subsequently developed in Britain and elsewhere it is likely that it was the sentiment of the illustration that provoked the ridicule and led to their withdrawal. Indeed in the absence of examples of machine-printed illustrated envelopes prior to this it may be appropriate to recognize the Mulready envelope as a significant innovation in its own right. Machine-printed illustrated envelopes are a mainstay of the
direct mailAdvertising mail, also known as direct mail, junk mail, or admail, is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. The delivery of advertising mail forms a large and growing service for many postal services, and direct-mail marketing forms a significant portion of the direct...
industry.
In May 1840, the world's first adhesive postage stamps were distributed. With an elegant engraving of the young Queen Victoria, the
Penny BlackThe Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 May, 1840, for use from 6 May of that year...
was an immediate success. Refinements, such as perforations to ease the separating of the stamps, would be instituted with later issues.
Later life
Rowland Hill continued at the Post Office until the
Conservative PartyThe Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, the Conservative Party, or Tory Party is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom...
won re-election. Sir
Robert PeelSir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
returned to office between 30 August 1841 and 29 June 1846. Amid rancorous controversy, Hill was dismissed in July 1842. However, the
London and Brighton RailwayThe London and Brighton Railway was a railway in England which was incorporated in 1837 and survived until 1846. It ran from a junction with the London & Croydon Railway at Norwood - which gave it access from London Bridge, just south of the River Thames in central London...
named him a director and later chairman of the board, from 1843 to 1846. He lowered the fares from London to Brighton, expanded the routes, offered special excursion trains, and made the commute comfortable for passengers. In 1844
Edwin ChadwickSir Edwin Chadwick KCB was an English social reformer, noted for his work to reform the Poor Laws and improve sanitary conditions and public health. One of the reasons why Chadwick believed in improvement to public health was because he believed it would save money. He was born in Longsight,...
, Rowland Hill,
John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill , English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control...
, Lyon Playfair, Dr. Neill Arnott, and other friends formed a society called "Friends in Council," which met at each other's houses to discuss questions of political economy. Hill also became a member of the influential
Political Economy ClubThe Political Economy Club was founded by James Mill and a circle of friends in 1821 in London, for the purpose of coming to an agreement on the fundamental principles of political economy...
, founded by
David RicardoDavid Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited systematizing economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator, who amassed a considerable...
and other classical economists, but now including many powerful businessmen and political figures.
In 1846, when the Conservatives left office, Hill became Secretary to the
Postmaster GeneralThe Postmaster General of the United Kingdom is a defunct Cabinet-level ministerial position in HM Government. Aside from maintaining the postal system, the Telegraph Act of 1868 established the Postmaster General's right to exclusively maintain electric telegraphs...
, and then Secretary to the Post Office from 1854 until 1864. For his services Hill was knighted as a
Knight Commander of the Order of the BathThe Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the medieval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
in 1860. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society and was given an honorary degree from Oxford.
He died in
HampsteadHampstead is an area of London, England, located north-west of Charing Cross. It is located within Inner London. It is part of the London Borough of Camden. It is known for its intellectual, artistic, musical and literary associations and for the large and hilly parkland Hampstead Heath...
, London in 1879. Sir Rowland Hill is buried in
Westminster AbbeyThe Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to popularly and informally as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster...
; there is a memorial to him on his family grave in
Highgate CemeteryHighgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in Highgate, London, England. It is designated Grade II* on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.-History and setting:...
. There are streets named after him in Hampstead (running off Haverstock Hill, down the side of The
Royal Free HospitalThe Royal Free Hospital is a large teaching hospital in London, England. It is an NHS hospital trust and is part of the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust. It is located in Hampstead, just northwest of central London. The nearest Tube stop is Belsize Park, on the Northern Line...
), and Tottenham (off
White Hart LaneWhite Hart Lane is an all-seater football stadium in Tottenham, England. Built in 1899, it is the home of Tottenham Hotspur and, after numerous renovations, the stadium has a capacity of 36,310....
).
Legacy
Hill's legacies are two-fold: the first was his model for education of the emerging middle classes. The second was his model for an efficient postal system to serve business and the public, including the
postage stampA postage stamp is adhesive paper evidence of a fee paid for postal services. Usually a small rectangle attached to an envelope, the stamp signifies the person sending it has fully or partly paid for delivery...
and the system of low and uniform postal rates, which is often take for granted in the modern world. In this, he not only changed the postal services around the world, but also made commerce more efficient and profitable, notwithstanding the fact that it took 30 years before the British Post Office's revenue recovered to the level it had been at in 1839. In fact the Uniform Penny Post continued in the United Kingdom into the 20th century, and at one point, one penny paid for up to four ounces.
There are three public statues of him. The first, sculpted by
Sir Thomas BrockSir Thomas Brock KCB RA was an English sculptor.- Life :Brock was born in Worcester, attended the School of Design in Worcester and then undertook an apprenticeship in modelling at the Worcester Royal Porcelain Works. In 1866 he became a pupil of the sculptor John Henry Foley. He married in 1869,...
and unveiled in 1881, stands in the town of his birthplace, Kidderminster. The second, by
Edward Onslow FordEdward Onslow Ford , English sculptor, was born in London. He received some education as a painter in Antwerp and as a sculptor in Munich under Professor Wagmuller, but was mainly self-taught....
stands at King Edward Street, London The third, less known, by
Peter HollinsPeter Hollins was an English sculptor.Born in Birmingham, the son of the architect and sculptor William Hollins, Hollins studied drawing under Vincent Barber and sculpture in his father's studio before moving to London to work for Francis Chantrey in 1822...
, used to stand in
Hurst StreetHurst Street is a street located in the Chinese Quarter of Birmingham, England.Hurst Street is the location of the Birmingham Hippodrome, a theatre specialising in ballet, opera, and musicals. It is the home of the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Adjacent to the Hippodrome are the restored Inge Street...
,
BirminghamBirmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands county of England. Birmingham is the second-most populous British city, with a population of 1,006,500 ....
but it is currently in the
Birmingham Museum & Art GalleryBirmingham Museum & Art Gallery is an art gallery in Birmingham, England. Opened in 1885, it has a collection of international importance covering fine art, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, archaeology, ethnography, local history and industrial history.-Paintings:The Art Gallery is most noted for...
store. A life size white marble bust by W. D. Keyworth, Jr. may be viewed in St. Paul's Chapel, Westminster Abbey.
At
TottenhamTottenham is an urban area of North London, England in the London Borough of Haringey, situated north-east of Charing Cross.-History:There has been a settlement at Tottenham for over a thousand years...
there is a local History Museum at
Bruce CastleBruce Castle is a Grade I listed 16th-century manor house in Lordship Lane, Tottenham, London. It is named after the House of Bruce who formerly owned the land on which it is built. Believed to stand on the site of an earlier building, about which little is known, the current house is one of the...
(where Hill lived during the 1840s) including some relevant exhibits.
The
Rowland Hill AwardsThe Rowland Hill Awards were established in 1997 as a joint venture between Britain's Royal Mail, the British Philatelic Trust and the Association of British Philatelic Societies....
, started by the
Royal MailRoyal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. Royal Mail Holdings plc owns Royal Mail Group Limited, which in turn operates the brands Royal Mail , Parcelforce Worldwide and General Logistics Systems...
and the
British Philatelic TrustThe British Philatelic Trust was established in 1981 by the British Post Office. The governing deed was executed on 26 September 1983. The Trust is independent and was registered as an educational charity on 21 November 1983. - Origins :...
in 1997, are annual awards for philatelic "innovation, initiative and enterprise."
In 1882, the Post Office instituted the Rowland Hill Fund for postal workers, pensioners and dependants in need.
External links