At this juncture an ink invented by a Mr Parsons was favourably reported on as an obliterant, but it shortly yielded to the skill of Messrs Perkins & Co.; and the stamp-cleaning frauds continuing, several of our leading scientific men, including Faraday, were consulted. As a result, new obliterating inks, red and black, were successively produced, tested, and adopted, but only for a while. Some of the experiment-makers lived as far off as Dublin and Aberdeen; and Dr Clark, Professor of Chemistry at the University of the latter city, came forward on his own account, and showed his interest in the cause by making or suggesting a number of experiments. Many people, indeed, went to work voluntarily, for the interest taken in the matter was widespread, and letters offering suggestions poured in from many quarters. But apparently the chemically skilled among the rogues were abler than those employed by the officials, since the “infallible” recipes had an unlucky knack of turning out dismal failures. Therefore, after consultation with Faraday, it was resolved that, so soon as the stock of stamps on hand became exhausted, an aqueous ink should be used both for the stamps and for the obliteration, ordinary black printing ink being meanwhile employed for the latter process. Professor Phillips and Mr Bacon, of the firm of Perkins & Co., at the same time undertook to procure a destructive oleaginous ink to be used in the printing of the new stamp.
It was hoped that thoroughly good printer's ink would be found efficacious for obliterating purposes; but ere long a chemist named Watson completely removed the obliteration. He then proposed for use an obliterative ink of his own invention, which was tried, but proved to be inconveniently successful, since it both injured the paper and effaced the writing near the stamp. Its use had therefore to be abandoned.
The trouble did not slacken, for while Mr Watson was laboriously removing the black printing ink from the black pennies, and making progress so slowly that, at a like rate, the work could not have repaid any one, honest or the reverse, for the time spent upon it, Mr Ledingham, my father's clerk, who had throughout shown great enthusiasm in the cause, was cleaning stamps nine times as fast, or at the rate of one a minute—a process rapid enough to make the trick remunerative.
Ultimately, it occurred to Rowland Hill that “as the means which were successful in removing the printing ink obliterant were different from those which discharged Perkins' ink, a secure ink might perhaps be obtained by simply mixing the two.”[172] The device succeeded, the ink thus formed proving indestructible; and all seemed likely to go well, when a fresh and very disagreeable difficulty made its unwelcome appearance. To enable this ink to dry with sufficient rapidity, a little volatile oil had been introduced, and its odour was speedily pronounced by the postal officials to be intolerable. Happily, means were found for removing the offence; and at length, a little before the close of the year, all requirements seemed to be met.[173]
It had been a time of almost incessant anxiety. For more than six months there had been the earlier trouble of securing a suitable design for the stamps, and then, when selected, the long delay in effecting their issue; and now, during another six months, this later trouble had perplexed the officials and their many sympathisers. In the end, the colour of the black penny was changed to red, the twopenny stamp remaining blue. Thenceforth, oleaginous inks were used both for printing and for obliterating; the ink for the latter purpose being made so much more tenacious than that used to print the stamp that any attempt to remove the one from the other, even if the destruction of both did not follow, must at least secure the disappearance of the Queers head. A simple enough remedy for the evil, and, like many another simple remedy, efficacious; yet some of the cleverest men in the United Kingdom took half a year to find it out.
Before trial it was impossible to tell which of the two kinds of stamps would be preferred: the one impressed upon the envelope and so forming a part of it, or the other, the handy little adhesive. Rowland Hill expected the former to be the favourite on account of its being already in place, and therefore less time-consuming. Moreover, as a man gifted with a delicate sense of touch, the tiny label which, when wet, is apt to adhere unpleasantly to the fingers, attracted him less than the cleanlier embossed stamp on the envelope; and perhaps he thought it not unlikely that other people would be of like mind. But from the first the public showed a preference for the adhesive; and to this day the more convenient cover with the embossed head has been far seldomer in demand. It is not impossible that if the present life of feverish hurry and high pressure continues, and even intensifies, the reformer's expectations as regards the choice of stamps may yet be realised. It may have been the expression of this merely “pious opinion” on his part which gave rise to some absurd fables—as, for instance, that he recommended the adhesive stamp “very hesitatingly,” and only at the eleventh hour; that he sought to restrict the public to the use of the impressed stamp because he preferred it himself; and rubbish of like sort.
From the time that Rowland Hill first planned his reform till the day when his connection with the Post Office terminated, his aim ever was to make of that great Department a useful servant to the public; and all who knew what was his career there were well aware that when at length he had beaten down opposition, that object was attained. He was the last man likely to allow personal predilections or selfish or unworthy considerations of any kind to stand before the welfare of the service and of his country.
