George Birkbeck Norman Hill

“ The high charges led to all kinds of illicit conveyance. Five-sixths of the letters from Manchester to London did not pass through the post office. The natural result was a steady falling off in the revenue. Hill from his childhood had seen the burden on the poor of the high charges, and had often been witness of his mother's dread lest a letter should come with heavy postage to pay—for very few letters were prepaid—at a time when she had not a shilling in the house. ”

“ By the right enjoyed by every member of both houses of parliament and every high official of sending letters free if the direction were in his own handwriting and attested by his signature, the wealthier classes were to a great extent freed from this burden, which pressed all the more heavily on the poor. ”

“ W. L. Sargant, in his ‘Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer’ (ii. 187) , thus describes the working of this strange system: ‘By juries and committees, by marks and by appeals to a sense of honour discipline was maintained. But this was done at too great a sacrifice. The thoughtlessness, the spring, the elation of childhood were taken from us; we were premature men.’ Six years before Dr. Arnold went to Rugby ‘the Hazelwood System’ was exciting a lively public interest. It can scarcely be doubted that it had an influence on his mind.
Rowland Hill's eldest brother, Matthew Davenport Hill [q. v.] ”

“ Sir James Stephen, under-secretary of state for the colonies, complained that he spent as much time in the year in addressing letters as would have kept him at work six hours a day for the whole month of February. To the great mass of the people the post office was practically closed. For the thousands upon thousands of Irish who were in England to send a letter to Ireland and get an answer back would each time have cost (Daniel O'Connell complained) considerably more than one-fifth of their week's wages. ”

“ A prisoner whose conduct had been good was to be released before the expiration of his sentence on a ticket of leave, the chief condition of which was that he would be sent back to prison on proof being given that he was associating with persons of evil repute, and was not in possession of any visible means of earning an honest livelihood. ”

“ He made himself many ingenious machines. He learnt mathematics by teaching others, and became a good astronomer and an expert trigonometrical land-surveyor. In mental arithmetic he was wonderfully skilful, and he trained his pupils till they could rival ‘the Calculating Boy.’ His knowledge and ignorance were strangely mixed. ”

“ His father had often maintained that postage was too high even for the sake of the revenue. As early as 1826 Hill had devised, but had not published, a scheme for a travelling post office, by which the letters could be sorted on the road. In 1835 the large surplus in the revenue set him and his brothers speculating on the best way of applying it in the reduction of duties. It was then that his thoughts were first turned earnestly to the post office. ”

“ Over the post office he was not to exercise any direct authority. The officials there were left with great powers, which they exerted to the utmost in order to ruin a plan whose success they had foretold was impossible. They threw every obstacle in Hill's path, and multiplied expenses, so that the scheme might prove a financial failure. On 10 Jan. 1840 penny postage was at last established. The difficulties Rowland Hill met with in getting the machinery of the department into working order were vast, but in the next two years a great deal was done. ”

“ The cost of the maintenance of the child was as far as possible to be thrown on the parents. These views Hill supported not only in his charges, but in large conferences held from time to time of those interested in these questions. The result of improved legislation was seen in the rapid lessening of the number of known criminals, which fell from 155,000 in 1861 to 77,000 in 1871, and 32,910 in 1887–8. In 1851 Hill was appointed commissioner of bankrupts for the Bristol district, which post he held till the abolition of the provincial courts by the act of 1869. ”

“ He had to take his pupils to the established church and to read daily prayers in the schoolroom. Yet he had ceased even to be a unitarian. On religious matters he thought with Grote and the two Mills. Robert Owen offered to him the management of one of his communities, but he declined it on account of Owen's rashness. With some of his brothers he formed a scheme for ‘a social community.’ A farm was to be taken on which they were all to live in great simplicity and freedom, supporting themselves by the work of their own hands. ”

“ Peel, in September 1842, at the end of Hill's third year, dismissed him from office, without any reward for his great services, leaving his scheme to be worked by men who would delight in its ruin. The folly of the ministry roused a strong feeling of public indignation. On 10 April 1843 Hill petitioned the House of Commons for an inquiry into the state of the post office, and on 27 June a select committee of inquiry was granted. ”

“ In the following November, on the return of the whig ministry to power under Lord John Russell, he was offered the post of secretary to the postmaster-general, at a salary of 1,200l. a year, Colonel Maberley, who was hostile both to him and the penny postage, being retained as permanent secretary to the post office at a higher salary, and with full command of the staff. With great hesitation Hill accepted the inferior post. ”

“ Convicts, however bad their conduct had been, were discharged on the expiration of a certain portion of their sentence, and scarcely a single license was revoked except on the commission of a fresh crime. Crimes of violence increased, and the public laid the blame on the system. ”

“ In the years 1887–8 the number of letters, postcards, book packets, circulars, newspapers, parcels, and telegrams amounted to 2,332 millions, the gross revenue to 11,064,000l., and the net revenue to 2,851,000l. His great reform, to use Mr. Gladstone's words, ‘had run like wildfire through the civilised world; never perhaps was a local invention (for such it was) and improvement applied in the lifetime of its author to the advantages of such vast multitudes of his fellow-creatures.’ Hill retired on full pension, and received in addition a parliamentary grant of 20,000l. ”

“ A bust of him has been placed by the town council of Birmingham in the public library of the town. He married in 1819 Margaret Bucknall, the elder daughter of a Kidderminster brewer. She died in 1868. By her he had six children, five of whom survived him—Alfred Hill, late registrar in the Birmingham court of bankruptcy; Matthew Berkeley Hill, professor of clinical surgery in University College, London; Rosamond Davenport Hill, member of the London School Board; Florence Davenport Hill and Joanna Margaret Hill, who have both been active in poor law reform, especially in the boarding-out system. ”

“ Statues have been erected at Kidderminster, Birmingham, and at the Royal Exchange, London. The Rowland Hill Memorial and Benevolent Fund was raised shortly after his death to commemorate his memory, and to provide relief for distressed persons connected with the post office for whom no provision is made under the Superannuation Act. The invested property amounts to more than 16,000l., producing a yearly income of about 650l. ”

“ HILL, EDWIN (1793–1876) , mechanical inventor and writer on currency, second son of Thomas Wright Hill [q. v.] , by Sarah Lea his wife, was born at Birmingham on 25 Nov. 1793. He was an elder brother of Sir Rowland Hill [q. v.] , the inventor of penny postage. He showed great mechanical ingenuity in his youth, and entering the Fazeley Street Rolling Mills in Birmingham, rose to be manager. This post he threw up in 1827 to join his brother, Rowland Hill, in establishing a school at Bruce Castle, Tottenham. ”