Postcrossing Blog

218 years ago today, the great Rowland Hill was born! If his name does not ring a bell, read on – we have tales of postal corruption and innovation to share with you today!

Once upon a time, the British postal system was… a mess. Expensive, complex and widely corrupt, it was seen as wasteful and inadequate for the needs of a growing industrial nation. For instance, did you know that correspondence at the time was paid by the recipient and it depended on the distance travelled and number of paper sheets it contained? As a result, people often cross-wrote letters to save space or encoded messages on the cover of the letter – which could be analyzed and then discarded without payment. A significant percentage of letter-writers would also abuse the system by sending their correspondence under the personal frank of members of the parliament (who could send them without paying).

Rowland Hill, a teacher from Worcestershire, studied the state of the postal service for several years, before producing a pamphlet called “Post Office Reform; its Importance and Practicability”, in early 1837. In in, Hill called for “low and uniform rates” according to weight, rather than distance:

“The postage on all letters received in a post-town, and delivered in the same, or any other post-town in the British Isles, shall be at the uniform rate of one penny per half ounce”.

He also showed that most of the costs incurred in mail delivery were not for transport but rather handling at the origins and destinations – and these could be greatly reduced if pre-payment of postage by the sender was implemented. In order to achieve this, Rowland Hill proposed official pre-printed lettersheets and adhesive stamps – a piece of paper “covered at the back with a glutinous wash”.

The plan was met with resistance from the part of Royal Mail, but also with plenty of support from traders, merchants and bankers, fed up with the high costs and the corruption of the system in place. With a lot of pressure from these groups, Rowland Hill was appointed to the Treasury, in order to put his plan into operation: the Postal Reform was born!

A design competition was held to figure out how to implement the prepaid postage, and after a few false starts, the Penny Black made its debut in May 1840. It featured an engraving of a very young Queen Victoria, based on a commemorative medal sculpted by William Wyon.

The success of Rowland Hill’s reforms were mixed. One one hand, the financial cost of the Uniform Penny Post was disastrous and it would take over 30 years for Royal Mail to reach once more the revenue levels they had before 1840. On the other hand, postal traffic was greatly increased, since the lower cost made postal communications more affordable and accessible to the masses – paving the way to the development of many sectors of the economy.

Rowland Hill was knighted in 1860 for his many services to the United Kingdom. His legacy lives on in the form of the modern postal service.

Mail can be moved in many different ways, as the newest series of Europa stamps shows… but did you know that this process was once done with the help of wagons that whizzed by in a metal tunnel, deep underneath the bustling streets of London?

We’re talking about the UK's Post Office Underground Railway, charmingly later referred to as Mail Rail, a driverless electric underground railway system used to move post between sorting offices in London. It was constructed throughout the 1910s and 1920s with combined efforts of the Post Office and the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, inspired by the Chicago Tunnel Company’s underground railway freight tunnel network.

Rail Mail tunnel, by Richard Pope, on Flickr.

The railway began its operations on December 3rd, 1927. It ran from east to west and stretched six and a half miles between the East End and Paddington. Consisting of eight stations, the largest existed below Mount Pleasant. At its peak, a new train of mail arrived at the station every six minutes. Employees had to work very quickly in order to remove all the mail whose destination was Mount Pleasant and load any mail destined for other offices. There was a great camaraderie between staff members, who generally spent their entire careers working on the system. You can see evidence of this from the relics left behind on walls near major mailbag chutes: a dartboard, finished paintings, and a collection of stamps.

Only three other cities attempted an underground postal railway: Munich, Germany in 1910, Lucerne, Switzerland in 1927, and Zurich, Switzerland in 1937. All closed their operations in the 80’s. The Chicago Tunnel Company sometimes delivered parcels, but its main function was not associated with the Post Office.

By 2003, only three stations of London’s Post Office Underground Railway remained. Royal Mail had reported that using Mail Rail cost five times more than using road transport for the same task, and so, after 75 years of operation, the railway shut down on May 31st, 2003. Today, the British Postal Museum and Archive (BPMA) has been undertaking efforts to conserve parts of the Mail Rail.

Rail Mail wagons, by Yuriy Akopov on Flickr.

You can learn more about their endeavors and about the railway itself at the BPMA Museum’s Mail Rail page and fantastic Flickr gallery. If you’re in the area, they currently have a free photography exhibition about the Mail Rail that you can visit!

If you’ve ever been to the U.K., you may have seen bright red cylindrical objects around town. These pillar boxes are the U.S. equivalent of the free-standing blue arch-like mailboxes (and should not be confused with pillarboxes, which are the black bars that appear to the sides of a movie image that wasn’t formatted for widescreen). Although they’re more common in the U.K. or in former nations of the British empire, versions of this special red post box can also be found in other countries, such as Japan or Portugal.

Pillar boxes started to appear in 1852, twelve years after the first adhesive postage stamp was introduced. Before then, citizens would have to take their outgoing mail to the nearest letter receiving house or post office and personally deliver it to the postmaster after purchasing a stamp. Although they were initially proposed in 1840 by Sir Rowland Hill (who thought they would “add greatly to the public convenience”), it wasn’t until 1852 that the first pillar boxes were erected in the Channel Islands. It was a successful trial, which later spread with their implementation accross the mainland.

The boxes varied slightly from one area to the next, as each District Surveyor gave their own specifications for the design. You can find the most unique-looking ones that were made early on, when they included things like octagonal pillars, fluted columns, vertical slits instead of horizontal ones, and different coloring. The construction of pillar boxes was standardized in 1905, generally made of cast iron and in a cylindrical shape.

There are three distinct parts of a pillar box: the cap, which sits on the carcass and is bolted down from the inside, the door, which is hinged and displays the Royal Cypher of the reigning monarch, and the carcass, the main body that produced down below ground level, giving stability to the pillar box. Over 150 designs and varieties of pillar boxes, and their cousins, wall boxes (mail receptacles that are set into a walls), have emerged, though not all have survived.

Next time you’re in the UK, or any other country that sports these postal beauties, look a little closer and see if you can guess what time period it was erected (check out this page for some clues on the Royal cyphers)!

For a more in depth look into the history of these boxes, check out “Well adapted for a purpose…”, a really neat post from the British Postal Museum’s blog.

Happy pillar box spotting! :)

Some weeks ago, we took the Little Mail Carrier’s cousin along for a trip to the United Kingdom! It was his first time outside of Germany, and he loved going to all the touristic places and discovering the land of Her Majesty! On May 4th, there was a big meetup in Oxford, which we couldn’t miss, of course! Here’s his account of the day :)

Hi everyone!

The day started on the wrong foot… we left home in London with plenty of time to spare, but I got distracted riding this cute red cart…

… and just missed the bus to Oxford! Luckily, there were plenty more, and half an hour later we were zooming past the rolling hills of the English countryside. When we arrived in Oxford, postcrossers from all over Europe were having breakfast at a café near the bus station, already digging into their stashes of postcards – and they had brought sweets!

The day started with the obligatory trip to the post office, to stock on stamps. Did you know they have Doctor Who stamps here? They’re brilliant! They also had very neat posting boxes!

The day was beautiful, and we took the opportunity to stroll around the city center, to admire its history and architecture.

Oxford is known for its University, the oldest in the English-speaking world, dating back to the late 11th century! There were a lot of happy students zooming by in their graduation garments, and many proud parents as well – it almost made me want to go back to school, but for now a trip to the university’s shop would have to do. :)

We also visited the Alice in Wonderland shop for postcards…

… and many other stationery shops, including the delightful Paperchase!

During the tour, we had the opportunity to check out some British classics, like shortbread biscuits and all kinds of fun souvenirs!

After all the walking and postcard shopping, we had all worked up quite an appetite, and so it was time to sit down to eat, chat, swap presents…

… and write some postcards! There was much laughter and conversations in different languages between friends, old and new. :)

It was a lovely day, the kind that makes your cheeks hurt from so much smiling! A big thank you to Andy (aka Duplevista) for organising such a wonderful meetup! If you’re curious, check out more photos on some of the participant’s galleries: here, here, here or here.

What are you waiting to attend a meetup near you? Check this forum thread for updated dates and locations – and if there’s nothing near you, consider organising your own!

Some months ago, while touring an underground bunker in Berlin, I was treated to a rare sight: a mini-demonstration of Berlin’s old pneumatic dispatch system! And that got me thinking… were there other pneumatic mail delivery systems in the world? What could we find out about them? If you’re curious too, keep reading!

The story of pneumatic tubes starts with William Murdoch, a Scottish engineer, who invented them in the 19th century. Developed later by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company, these tubes used pressurised air to propel cylindrical containers throughout systems set up in certain buildings or sometimes, entire cities. During the second half of the 19th century, the pneumatic post system was implemented in post offices and telegraph offices of several large cities to quickly deliver letters and telegrams between themselves, banks, stock exchanges, and ministries. This method was found to be much more convenient and quicker than transporting letters in horse-drawn carriages or depending on human messengers.

Control Panel of Prague’s Pneumatic Post system

In 1853 the first system was built, linking the London Stock Exchange to the city’s main telegraph station; in 1861 it transported mail from the Euston railway station to the General Post Office and Holborn; in 1865 the Rohrpost was developed in Berlin, spanning 400km; in 1866 Paris created their system, a total length of 467km. Other cities like Vienna, Prague, New York City, Munich, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Hamburg, Naples, Rome, Milan, Melbourne, Marseilles, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, and Chicago soon followed.

Some systems became rather complex and effective, but were eventually surpassed by more modern methods of communication and transport, and were mostly abandoned during the 20th century. The Paris network was in use until 1984, finally replaced by computers and fax machines. One lasting pneumatic post network still exists in the Czech Republic, known as the Old Lady of Czech telecommunications. Prague’s network of tubes extends 55km and was still used for delivering letters and parcels until 2002, when a flood rendered it inoperative. The current owner is gradually repairing and preserving the system, in hopes of using it as an educational experience and tourist attraction. Today, hospitals, banks, nuclear reactors, and some airports still have uses for these systems, and have updated and refined its technological ability.

Check out the blog pneumaticpost.blogspot.com to learn more interesting facts about these tubes and about the subculture of “steampunks” who cherish it so. The blog also features a many tube maps, like this one of Prague.