The Lusk Herald

The Origin of the Postage Stamp.

Quite an interesting and curious story is connected with the origin of the postage stamp. One day a girl came forth from an inn located in the northern part of England, and received from a postman a letter which she turned over in her hand as she asked the price of the postage. The man asked a shilling, a sum too large for one poor as herself to pay, and so she returned the letter to the postman with sadness, although she knew that her brother had sent it. But a sympathetic traveller, named Rowland Hill, stood near, and at this moment interposed and insisted on paying the shilling himself, although the girl seemed strongly averse to his doing so. When the postman had departed, the kind-hearted Mr. Hill was surprised to find that there was no need for his pity; for the envelope, the girl explained to him, contained no written communication, but on its outside were certain marks agreed upon by herself and brother, from which, as she held the letter in her hands, she gathered all the information she desired. "We are so poor," she continued, "that we invented this mode of correspondence without paying for our letters." Such duplicity set Mr. Hill thinking that a postal system which incited people to commit petty fraud must be very defective. He argued that if the price of postage was lowered from an exorbitant rate to one that came easily within the means of the mass of the people, so many more letters would pass through the mails that the financial condition of the treasury would not be impaired, while society would derive much additional benefit. He became so much interested in the matter that he managed to bring his views to the notice of the British government, which gave them a favorable reception, and on January 10, 1840, which may be considered the birthday of the postage stamp, letters began to be circulated in every part of the United Kingdom at the postage rate of only a penny. Rowland Hill became secretary to the postmaster general, and during the next ten years so great a change had taken place that in 1850 the number of letters sent through the mails was 7,239,962 against 1,500,000 in 1840.