Hill, Sir Rowland (1795-1879), was a British schoolteacher best known as the originator of the Penny Post. In the early 1800’s, the British postal system worked on a complicated scale of charges according to the weight of the letter and the distance it had to go. The person who received the letter paid the postage. In his pamphlet Post Office Reform (1837), Hill suggested that there should be a flat rate for sending letters, starting at one penny for any distance inside the United Kingdom. He suggested that the charge should be collected in the form of payment for a stamp. The Penny Post was introduced in 1840. As a result, many more people could afford to send letters, and the British Post Office made large profits out of the enormous increase in letter traffic.
Hill was born in Kidderminster, England, on Dec. 3, 1795. He taught mathematics at his father’s school in Birmingham and became head of the school. He held official positions in the Post Office from 1846 until 1864. He was knighted in 1860 and died on Aug. 27, 1879.
