Ladies Circle
On Monday evening 28th April the Ladies Circle met for their monthly meeting.
Our speaker this month was Mr Coppock from Cambridge who came to tell us about
the history of the Letter Post. He brought along many samples of letters and
postcards many dating back to the 1800's.
The Japanese first introduced the letter when they used to write on clay. This was followed by the Egyptians who used the papyrus plant, followed by parchment. Finally the Chinese who used the bark from the Mulberry Tree invented paper.
Royalty were the only people who had their post delivered free - hence the name Royal Mail and people in high positions were also allowed to use the "Free Frank" stamp so their post also went free of charge.
A man called Roland Hill introduced the first cheap rate of postage. Before this post was delivered by stagecoach with the recipient paying on receipt of any letters. I am sure we would not be happy with this arrangement these days.
On 6th May 1840 the first penny black was introduced and the 2p blue for heavier letters. In 1841 the penny red (with a blue mark through to stop forgery) came along. In time more people were learning to write and hence more letters were being sent and in June 1918 the letter rate was put up to 3 ha' pence. Now the franking machine has been introduced and stamps are being used less and less.
It was a very interesting topic learning about our post and of course it made us realise just how much easier it is these days to write a letter, stamp it and pop it in the post box leaving the rest to the Royal Mail hoping it would arrive on the recipient's doorstep the next day!!
The evening ended with tea and coffee and a bring and buy stall.