54 JANUARY 2016http://www.stampandcoin.co.ukWhile the postal reforms of 1840 made correspondence hugely popular, the cost of sending
letters overseas remained prohibitive for many more years. Ed Fletcher examines the propaganda
campaigns that eventually prompted the introduction of the Imperial Penny PostImperial Penny Post
Post across the globe
I
n December 1839 it cost 4d to
send a letter of up to half an
ounce to any address in Great
Britain; and in that year total
deliveries amounted to 76 million
letters. Twelve months later, following
the successful introduction in May 1840
of the uniform 1d rate for inland letters
of up to half an ounce, total deliveries
stood at 168 million, with a figure of
347 million achieved by 1850. The
simplicity and utility of the gummed
label (we call it a postage stamp today);
not to mention the eye-catching appeal
of the Penny Black, soon persuaded
postal administrations of many other
nations to adopt the system.
Despite general satisfaction with the
inland-under-half-an-ounce market,
many Britons who engaged in colonial
correspondence continued to grumble
about the price of stamps for their
overseas letters. In 1841 it cost 8d to
send a letter of up to half an ounce
from London to Auckland, New
Zealand; and the rate remained the
same a decade later in 1851. It reduced
to a slightly more affordable 6d per half
ounce from 1859; though this rose to
9d for any letter marked via Marseilles
if the sender opted to speed the delivery
by two days and have the letter travel
by rail though France, then transfer to
a ship at Marseilles. In September 1863
the via Marseilles rate rose to 10d. To
take another example at random fromacross the Empire, 6d in stamps was
required in 1854 to send a letter up to
half an ounce from St Helena to Great
Britain, with the rate rising to 1s 0d for
the same weight in 1863.
By that time the arguments for and
against a uniform 1d rate for colonial
letters had been rehearsed time and
again in newspapers, pamphlets, lecture
halls and more. Extracts from a couple
of samples must suffice here:
An issue of the Morning Chronicle in
June 1859 reported vociferous complaints
by brokers, importers and forwarding
agents concerning postal rates to the
colonies. Their arguments were that largeValentine’s Ocean Penny
Postage envelope sent
from Scarborough to
Leeds with two three
margined 1841 1d.’s
(one placed upside-
down), each neatly
cancelled by the ‘693’
numeral of Scarborough.
Realised £450 in a 2015
Grosvenor auctionBradshaw and
Blacklock’s Ocean Penny
Postage envelope of
a type not recorded
by Bodily, Jarvis and
Hahn in British Pictorial
Envelopes of the 19th
Century, there being
no ‘THE’ on the upper
sail and the publisher’s
imprint in a curved line
below the sea. Sent from
London to Manchester
with an almost full
margined 1841 JD 1d.
Realised £450 at auction
in 2015sections of the British public who had
no need to send letters overseas failed
to appreciate that the cost of sending a
letter weighing under half an ounce to
Australia, Canada, Cape of Good Hope,
British Honduras, Jamaica and British
West Indies is six times the under half an
ounce rate now enjoyed across Britain.
Unless those punitive rates reduce some
of the costs must inevitably reflect in
prices of imported goods when they are
sold in home markets.
The campaign for an Imperial
Penny Postage rumbled on for several
decades as the numbers of Britons who
became ex-patriot colonists increased.
At the 1891 annual conference of
the Association of Chambers of
Commerce held in London figures
were quoted to highlight buoyant
trade, growing populations and
increasing postal communications
throughout the Empire. The statistics
on letters sent and received included:- Cape Colony: 861,000 in 1880 rising
to 1,600,000 in 1888 - New South Wales: 1,630,000 in 1880
rising to 3,888,000 in 1888 - New Zealand: 2,822,000 in 1880
rising to 3,605,000 in 1888 - India: 11,000,000 in 1880 rising to
17,000,000 in 1888
p54 Ocean.indd 54 23/11/2015 14:36