Why Did It Matter Who Paid for the Letter? A Reform That Changed Writing

Postage was paid by the recipient on delivery, calculated from the distance carried and the number of sheets, with a separate charge for each sheet, which meant the cost of a letter was unknown to the sender and frequently unaffordable to the receiver. People wrote across a page and then turned it and wrote across their own writing to avoid a second sheet. Recipients refused letters they could not pay for. Elaborate systems of coded marks on the outside conveyed information so that the letter could be examined and refused without ever being paid for, which defeated the charge entirely. Members of parliament could send mail free, and that privilege was abused on an industrial scale.

The changes introduced in Britain in 1840 were few and radical:

• •Payment by the sender rather than the recipient
• •A single low rate regardless of distance within the country
• •Charging by weight rather than by the number of sheets
• •An adhesive label as proof of prepayment
• •Prepaid envelopes and wrappers offered alongside the labels
• •The rate set at one penny, low enough for ordinary people to use routinely

Charging the same regardless of distance looks like a subsidy and was argued for on the opposite basis. Rowland Hill, who proposed the reform, analysed the actual costs and found that the expensive parts of carrying a letter were collection, sorting and delivery, all of which happen regardless of distance, while the marginal cost of carrying it further along a route the mail coach was travelling anyway was almost nothing. Distance-based pricing therefore imposed enormous administrative cost to recover a charge that did not reflect any real expense. Removing the calculation removed the accounting, the disputes and the refusals at the door, and the volume of letters increased so sharply that the revenue lost per item was recovered many times over.

The features of the modern label were not obvious in advance and each was arrived at by trial. The first issue carried a portrait of the reigning monarch and no country name, on the reasoning that the originating country needed no stating at home, and Britain has never printed one since, which is a privilege recognised internationally and unique. Perforations did not exist at first, so early labels were cut apart with scissors, and a machine to perforate sheets was patented and adopted in the 1850s. Gum on the reverse was present from the beginning. Cancellation marks were introduced immediately to prevent reuse, and the earliest were in red ink that proved removable, prompting a change to black. Denominations were distinguished by colour, which is why collectors describe issues by colour rather than by number.

The consequences went well beyond convenience and are visible in what survives from the period. Letter volumes in Britain roughly doubled within a year and rose many times over within a decade. Ordinary people began writing routinely to family who had moved away, which had previously been prohibitively expensive, so the correspondence of working people survives from after this point and barely at all from before it. Business correspondence expanded enormously. Other countries adopted the system within a few years and an international body was established in 1874 to handle mail crossing borders, which is among the oldest international organisations still operating. Collecting the labels began almost immediately and became a substantial hobby within twenty years.

Recipients formerly paid on delivery, at a price set by distance and sheet count, which produced refusals, evasion and enormous administrative cost. The 1840 reform shifted payment to the sender, charged one low rate by weight regardless of distance, and used an adhesive label as proof. Hill argued that collection and delivery were the real costs, and volumes doubled within a year, putting correspondence within reach of ordinary people.