From the Mercantile Committee, 1839- propaganda cartoon leaflet by Henry Col
THE DEVELOPMENT O F THE PENNY BLACK & TH
TREASURY COMPETIT ION, 183
The Penny Black is kno wn the world over
On July 5th, following the delivery of his annual budget,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Thomas Spring-Rice introduced
a resolution: “That it is expedient to reduce the postage on
letters to one uniform rate of one penny, charged upon every
letter of a weight to be hereafter fixed by law.”
Sir Robert
Peel and the Tories objected on the grounds that the loss of
revenue would add to the national deficit the country was now
facing.
It was a well-delivered and persuasive argument but
public opinion was now settled.
During the 1839 session of
Parliament over 2,000 petitions containing over a quarter of
a million signatures had been received in support of cheaper
postage.
On July 12th the House voted 184 to 125 to accept
the resolution and on the 29th the House of Commons passed
the Postage Duties Bill.
The final step, the passage of the
Bill through the House of Lords was completed on August
8th at the very end of that year’s session.
It was helped
significantly when none other than the grand old Tory the Duke
of Wellington begrudgingly rose and announced his support.
Queen Victoria gave her Royal assent on August 17th which
vested the Treasury with complete power to overhaul and
reform the General Post Office of Great Britain and Ireland.
Its design is simple:
a small and now iconic portrait of Queen Victoria’s head in
profile with the words P ostage One Penny and a pair of check
letters on handmade w atermarked paper with gum on the
back.
It is the progenito r of tens of thousands of other stamps
from numerous countr ies around the globe.
It is the world’s
first stamp yet in early 1837 it was just a revolutionary idea:
“A bit of paper just larg e enough to bear the stamp, and
covered at the back wit h a glutinous wash.”
Rowland Hill’s first reco rded mention of an adhesive postage
label came during testi mony to the Duncannon Committee
on February 13th 1837.
This was one of four ideas for the
prepayment of the pro posed penny postage, the others
being stamped envelop es and wrappers whose design would
eventually fall to Willia m Mulready, and embossed stationery
which would end up be ing delayed until 1841.
There is no question as to the priority of these methods.
Hill’s
reform not only require d the prepayment of mail but also
the complete re-design of the whole postal system including
collection, sorting, tran sportation, and delivery.
Envelopes
and wrappers of unifor m size would have been seen as vital in
the streamlining of the new service.
The purpose of the labels
would be for those who still wished to write, fold, and seal
letters in the traditiona l way, or as a convenient way to pay
excess weight charges on the envelopes and wrappers whose
maximum allowed weig ht was one ounce.
Francis Baring, 1st Baron Northbrook, by Sir George Hayter
would have assured destruction of the stamp upon opening less
but it would also mean every letter having to be turned and record
cancelled in the sorting office.
Following the end of the Parliamentary session, Spring-Rice
was elevated to the peerage and Francis Baring became the
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Born to privilege as a scion of
the famous banking family, he was a notably brilliant and hard-
working man who had previously held the position of Secretary Following
to the Treasury.
It was Baring who immediately employed
Rowland Hill to implement his plan for the penny postage and the
creation of the new methods for pre-payment.
During his tenure
he would introduce the reduction of the postal rates, firstly to 4d.
on December 5th 1839, then to 1d.
on January 10th 1840.
More
importantly, Baring would oversee the conception, development
and implementation of the Penny stamps and Mulready
stationery that would come (came?)
into use in May 1840.
In September 1839 the Treasury announced to the general increase
public an invitation to submit “any suggestions or proposals December
as to the manner in which the stamp may best be brought into winners
use.”
Two prizes were offered: £200 for the best proposal and Cheverton,
£100 for the second.
Proposals had to arrive by October 15th
Charles
and were to be judged by the Treasury with the assistance
of the newly appointed assistant, Rowland Hill.
than half were considered practical.No
Some 2,600
entries were received though only 49 pertained to the adhesive
Chalmers’ son Patrick would from
fight a prolonged but unsuccessful battle in the 1870s for the drawn
title “inventor of the postage stamp.”
He is still regarded by descriptions
many, especially in Scotland, as a worthy claimant.
exists of all the entries many have survived –
these we know that they varied between simple hand-
sketches to elaborate designs complete with detailed
how new system be implemented.
close competition, Treasury decided
prize and when results were on
26th, four prizes of £100 each were announced.
Charles Fenton Whiting, Henry Cole, Benjamin
James Bogardus Francis Coffin jointly.
Fenton Whiting was an established printer of smaller
including Excise labels government.Based
at
Beaufort House in the Strand, London, Whiting had use of the
three-colour printing press devised by William Congreve in the
The first essays for wh at we now recognize as postage
stamps were produced by James Chalmers, a papermaker
of Dundee in Scotland i n December 1837 and February 1838.
Among the suggestion s we see rectangular printed designs of
approximately one inch, 1d
and 2d.
Chalmers’ idea was for
these “slips” to be use d as seals on the back of the letter.
values for the half and one- items
ounce rates, and dated town cancels.
This
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