Sir Rowland Hill

Sir Rowland Hill (December 3, 1795 - Aug ust 27, 1879) was a British teacher, pamphleteer and creator for penny postage, and subsequently a government postal official. He is usually credited in the UK with originating the basic concepts of modern postal service.

He was born at Kidderminster in Worcestershire and for a time he was a teacher.

He proposed his idea at a government inquiry on February 13, 1837.

Hill published his most famous pamphlet Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability in 1837, when he was 42. He saw the creation of the Penny Black stamp. He became Secretary to the Post Office.

Rowland Hill is buried in Highgate Cemetery located in Highgate, London.

A memorial bust of Hill is located in the Chapel of Saint Paul, Westminster Abbey.

A statue of him still stands at his birthplace of Kidderminster. There is now at Tottenham a local History Museum at Bruce Castle (where he lived during the 1840´s) including exhibits connected to him.

In 1837, he advocated prepayment of postage (under the old system the addressee paid the postage) and uniform domestic rates by weight (previously distance was a factor too). He devised a prepaid envelope (The Mulready envelope) and the adhesive postage stamp. The stamp picturing Queen Victoria was issued on MAY 1, 1840 and was in use from may 6.

Two years later were used by a private postal service in New York. Brazil and two Swiss cantons (Zurich & Geneva) were the next to issue stamps. The US used its first stamps on July 1, 1847: one (5 cents) had Benjamin Franklin on it and the other (10 cents) had George Washington.

The Rowland Hill Award is named after him.