Cheap Postage Took Thirty-Four Years to Pay Off | History for Sleep

Cheap Postage Took Thirty-Four Years to Pay Off In 1840 Britain made every letter cost one penny, whatever the distance, and paid in advance by a small black stamp. The letters doubled in the first year. The money fell by seventy per cent, and the Post Office's own books show it did not recover its 1839 profit until 1874. With Rowland Hill's one-thirty-sixth-of-a-penny calculation, the Postmaster-General who was right about the money, where the famous story of the blank letter really comes from, and what the penny actually bought. CHAPTERS 00:00 A Letter Cost a Day’s Wages 04:03 The Blank Letter Was Coleridge’s 08:03 Seven Million Letters Went Free 09:40 Twenty Years Standing Still 13:04 One Thirty-Sixth of a Penny 18:11 Twelve Times the Letters 23:55 Thirty-Six Days at Fourpence 25:23 A Bit of Paper and Some Glue 29:05 The Letters Doubled. The Money Did Not. 32:31 Thirty-Four Years 35:02 Dismissed, Then Recalled 37:31 What a Penny Bought MUSIC Concentration by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... IMAGE CREDITS - Creative Commons Attribution These images require attribution under their licence: John Stevens Henslow. Lithograph by T. H. Maguire, 1849. Wellcome V0002695.jpg by unknown - CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... John Stevens Henslow. Wood engraving, 1861, after Maull & Po Wellcome V0002696.jpg by unknown - CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... The General Post Office, St Martin's-le-Grand, London. Wood Wellcome V0025508.jpg by unknown - CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... PUBLIC DOMAIN / CC0 (36 images, no attribution required) Unused block of forty-two "Penny Red-Brown" postage stamps of Queen Victoria MET SF2002 399 11 img2.jpg · Exterieur van huis Townend aan de Troutbeck in het Lake District, RP-F-F01135-F.jpg · "Two Penny Blue" postage stamps MET SF2002 236 4 img2.jpg · Gezicht op de General Post Office, te Londen Post Office London Le Bureau des Postes à Londres (titel op object), RP-P-2018-2035.jpg · Pillar Box,Queen's Square.jpg · Rowland Hill - Project Gutenberg etext 13103.jpg · Rowland Hill.jpg · Rowland Hill photo cleaned.jpg · Penny black.jpg · Penny Black, world's first postage stamp, 1840.jpg · Stamp GB Penny Black plate reconstruction.jpg · Mulready envelope.jpg · Fores's Racing Envelope. (BM 1890,0602.4).jpg · Great Britain 1840 1d Mulready envelope postmarked Leicester 4 May 1840.jpg · Charles Cooper Henderson - Mail Coaches on the Road- the Louth-London Royal Mail progressing at Speed - Google Art Project.jpg · Mail Coach in a Thunder Storm on Newmarket Heath.jpg · Samuel Taylor Coleridge at age 42.jpg · Harriet Martineau by Richard Evans.jpg · Miss Harriet Martineau - AUTHOR OF ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.png · Sir Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington.jpg · William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer.jpg · William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.jpg · Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Bt by John Linnell.jpg · Robert Peel by RR Scanlan detail.jpg · Robert Peel by RR Scanlan.jpg · A Prospective View of the House of Commons (1835) (BM 2004,0430.12).jpg · The Burning of the Houses of Parliament - Google Art Project.jpg · Anthony Trollope by Samuel Laurence.jpg · Picture of Anthony Trollope.jpg · John Stevens Henslow.jpg · John Frederick Herring - The Royal Mail Coach on the Road - Google Art Project.jpg · The Young Queen Victoria.jpg · "Penny Black" postage stamps MET DP328201.jpg · Penny Black and Penny Red RA.jpg · Two pence blue on letter (1861).jpg · LONDON ILLUSTR(1873) p2.114 THE GENERAL POST OFFICE (OLD BUILDING).jpg This video uses a synthetic voice. The "altered or synthetic content" disclosure has been ticked in YouTube Studio.