Long before the last quarter of the eighteenth century dawned, the time was ripe for Post Office reform in the carrying of the mails; but, as a matter of course, no one within that department saw any necessity for change, and although the Post Office revenue was suffering severely from correspondence being sent in a clandestine manner by stage-coach, the slow and uncertain old methods had been retained. Reform had, as always, to come from without, just as when Ralph Allen of Bath planned his service of postboys in 1719. He had, against much opposition, introduced his system of messengers riding with the mails at a speed of “not less than five miles an hour,” then considered great expedition, and comparing very favourably with the average stage-coach speed of something less than four miles, including stops. Allen’s postboys were at that time the fastest travellers on the road, with the exception of the highwaymen, whose blood mares, according to tradition, were faster still. No one could grumble at the course of post in those days on the score of comparison with the journeys made by other travellers; but, like many other reforms, Allen’s postboys, excellent at the beginning, did not wholly succeed in keeping abreast of the times. Roads improved: everyone and everything went at a much greater rate of progression, save the Post Office postboys, who for forty-six years continued to go at the same speed as that of their predecessors of an earlier generation. They were, indeed, sent out more frequently on certain routes on which business had increased, and on the more frequented roads the mails were, from June 1741, despatched six days in the week, instead of twice and thrice, as had formerly been the case; but up to the time of Allen’s death, in 1764, speed remained what it had always been, and it was not until the following year that the postboys’ regulation rate of travelling was raised by Act of Parliament from five to six miles an hour, inclusive of stops. The post-horses were, however, of the same inferior kind as of old. The best animals were, very naturally, kept back by the postmasters—who were generally the innkeepers also—for their customers, and for the Post Office the worst nags in the stable were invariably reserved. An Act of Parliament, backed by the power of the executive, is a very dread thing, but it has not the power of compelling a horse incapable of going more than a certain number of miles an hour to add another mile to his speed. The improvement could thus have been only nominal.
The Post Office officials in Lombard Street, where the General Post Office was then situated, were very well content for the public service to be continued as of old. It would be idle to speculate how long the department would have lagged behind the times and seen the Post Office revenues being gradually eaten away by the growing practice of secretly sending letters by the stage-coaches, which had by this time attained a speed of about seven miles an hour, and in addition set out more frequently and at more convenient hours than the postboys. It would be idle thus to speculate, because, when the scandal was growing to noticeable proportions—when it was asserted that the Post Office lost not less than £80,000 a year by letters being conveyed by unauthorised persons, and when people grew indignant that “every common traveller passed the King’s Mail”—there came to the front a man with a plan to remedy what surely was the very absurd paradox that the Government strenuously reserved to itself the monopoly of letter-carrying, and yet provided no reasonable facilities for those letters to be conveyed, and idly watched thousands of pounds of that cherished revenue being annually diverted from their proper destination. This man with a well-matured scheme of reform was John Palmer, a native of Bath, born at No. 1, Galloway’s Buildings (now North Parade Buildings), in 1742. His father was a brewer and spermaceti-merchant, and proprietor of two highly prosperous theatres at Bath and another at Bristol. Intended by his father for the Church, his own inclinations were for the Army; but he was not suffered to follow his bent, and so was taken from school and placed in the counting-house of his father’s brewery. Wearying of that commercial routine, and still without success disputing the question of entering the Army, he set about learning the practical side of brewing, and worked among the vats and mash-tubs of his father’s establishment. Then his health gave way, and signs of consumption rendered a rest and change of air necessary. Recovering at last and returning to Bath, he entered into the conduct of his father’s theatrical enterprises, and at the time when he conceived his plan was the very busy and successful manager of all these theatres, for which his energy had secured Royal patents—a license then necessary for the presentation of stage-plays. These patents were then the only ones enjoyed by theatres out of London.
JOHN PALMER AT THE AGE OF 17. Attributed to Gainsborough, R.A.
Palmer was, therefore, no impecunious adventurer, but a theatrical proprietor and manager, accustomed to secure the highest talent for his houses in this resort of fashion. His native energy, that brought him success in beating up for talented actors and actresses all over the country, stood him in good stead when the idea of entirely remodelling the carrying of the mails occurred to his active mind. Nothing, indeed, short of the utmost persistence and determination could have surmounted the obstacles to reform that were placed in his way by the Post Office officials.
The mails he had perceived to be the slowest travelling in the kingdom, and he decided that they ought to be, and should be, the quickest. His own frequent journeys had shown him the possibilities, and long observation at Bath had displayed how far short of these the postboys’ journeys always fell. Thirty-eight hours were generally taken to perform the 109 miles between the General Post Office and Bath, at a time when travellers posted down in post-chaises in one day.
Other objections to postboys existed than on the score of insufficient speed. It was, he declared, in the last degree hazardous to entrust the mail-bags—as inevitably was often done—to some idle boy, without character, and mounted on a worn-out hack, who, so far from being able to defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with one.
Post Office postboys, it should here be said, were, like the postboys who drove the post-chaises, by no means necessarily boys or youths. They included, it is true, in their ranks all ages, but the great majority of them were grown-up, not to say aged, men. Some people, indeed, recognising the absurdity of calling a decrepit old man a “postboy,” preferred to give him the title of “mailman,” by which name a postal servant who got drunk and delayed the Bath mail in 1770 is styled in a contemporary newspaper, which says, “The mail did not arrive so soon by several hours as usual on Monday, owing to the mailman getting a little intoxicated on his way between Newbury and Marlborough and falling from his horse into a hedge, where he was found asleep by means of his dog.”
JOHN PALMER.
From the painting by Gainsborough, R.A.