Rowland Hill
Rowland Hill, whose statue stands here, is perhaps the most famous Victorian civil servant. His was an invention that truly changed the life of the country in the long term.
Hill was born in 1795, the third of eight children. His father, was an educator who counted men such as Tom Paine amongst his friends. He ran a school called the Hill Top School in Birmingham and his son Rowland assisted him from the age of twelve.
At 24 Rowland helped move the school to Edgbaston, where it was run along progressive lines, Called Hazelwood School, it aimed to teach practical and useful skills and involved such revolutionary concepts as a science lab, and self-government by the student body. At 32, Hill married and set up the Bruce Castle School in Tottenham. Teaching, however was far from his heart.
He tried many other ways to make a living, inventing a rotary printing press and a pneumatic post system. Finally, in 1833, he gained the post of secretary at the South Australia Colonisation Commission at £500, which enabled him to hand the school over to his brother and give up teaching altogether.
In 1837 Hill wrote a pamphlet called “Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability”, calling for a simpler system of postal charges.
At the time, letters were charged according to a complex system involving the number of sheets and the distance. Furthermore, there were a number of companies operating services. Payment was due from the recipient of a letter, rather than the sender, and this led to a number of systems for avoiding payment, such as sending empty envelopes to let loved ones know you were aright or including coded information of the cover of the letter. The recipient could then just hand the letter back to the carrier and refuse payment.
Hill suggested the use of prepaid labels (stamps) to be attached to letters by the sender, as well as a lower, standard rate. His suggested rate of 1 penny for a half ounce letter anywhere in the country was immensely popular. Unfortunately, his calculations of the volume of mail which would be generated were not entirely correct. The Post Office lost a fortune and it took 17 years for turnover to return to the level it was at before the introduction of the penny post.
Despite this, Hill was a national hero. He was knighted, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The public’s love for him was not, however, shared by the management of the Post Office – which refused to place his statue in front of the GPO building. It had to be put up outside the Royal Exchange instead.