The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-08-30 00:00:00

DEATa OF SIR ROWLAND HILL.

Sir Rowland Hill died at his residence at HaMD•
stead at half-past four on Wednesday morning. He
had been in failing health for some time past, and his
condition became critical about a week ago. Sir Row-
land was the son of Mr. Thomas W. Hill, a school-
master, near Birmingham, and was born in 1795. He
was consequently in his eighty-fourth year. Sir Row-
land is best known as the author of the penny postal
i
system. He first advocated his plan n a pamphlet
published in 1837, and the system was recommended
for adoption by a Committee of the House of Corn.
mons in the following year. The penny post was
put into effect in 1840, when Sir Rowland received
an appointment in the Treasury to enable him to
afford the authorities his assistance in carrying it
out. On a change of Government in 1842 he
was removed from his post, on the ground that his
serviles—the value of which was fully acknowledged
by the Government—were no longer required. A
public testimonial of the value of £13,360 was pre-
sented to him in 1816. From 1813 to 1845 Sir Rowland
Hill was engaged in the management of the London
and Brighton Railway, and in 1846 he was appointed
secretary to the Postmaster-General and became chief
secretary in 1854. He was made a K.C.B. in 1860,
and retired in 1864 on account of failing health. The
Treasury issued a minute acknowledging the full
success of his plans, and awarded him for life his full
salary of £2,000 a year. In the same year he received
a parliamentary grant of £20,000, the First Albert
Gold Medal of the Society of Arts, and the honorary
degree of D.C.L. (Oxford). Quite recently he was
presented with the freedom of the City of London in a
gold casket in recognition of the valuable services
which he had rendered to his country."

The Globe, in noticing the death of Sir Rowland Hill, re-
marks :

It is always difficult to avoid the feeling that a sort
of gap has been opened when death removes from
among us the inventor of a great existing organisa-
tion. Sir Rowland Hill, whose death we announce
elsewhere, was to all intents and purposes the creator
of our postal system—a system which, with all its
faults and shortcomings, is still one of the most mar-
vellous efforts of human industry that the world has
ever seen or imagined. He found the post a cumbrous,
costly, dilatory, and unsafe means of conveying
private letters, which, in those days more nearly
resembled despatches, so infrequent were they and
so expensive in their transport, even from one
part of the kingdom to another. When he handed
over the office to his successor, it was a completely,
organized department of the public service, extend-
ing its branches into every nook and corner cf
Great Britain, employing a perfect army of
couriers, clerks, porters, and other servants,
whose honesty, though often exposed to temp-
tations of a severe kind, has, on the whole, been
such as to deserve the highest commendation. Be-
sides the mere conveyance of the mails, inland and
foreign, the Post Office has assumed to itself func-
tions to which, perhaps, Sir Rowland Hill at first
never even contemplated making a claim. To
receive and heep at interest the savings of very
small capitalists, to send sums of money from
place to place for the convenience of private
persons, to afford special guapantees for safety in the
transmission of valuables by registration—all these,
like the working of the telegraphs throughout the
the country, are duties which have been engrafted by
slow degrees on the original programme. But
that original programme remains still at the
head of the triumphs achieved by the Poet
Office. It was the first step in a great attempt to
perfect written communications between one place
and another; and the fact that the plan has lately
been enlarged and extended in new directions, instead
of detracting from the merit of its originator, ought
to be held to confer the greater honour on a project
which has succeeded not only in its first and main
object, but in many others also.