AN EARLY TRAVELLING POST OFFICE WITH MAIL BAGS EXCHANGE APPARATUS.
By permission of the Proprietors of the “City Press.”
The invention was not altogether a success, very heavy bags—especially when the trains were running at great speed—being sometimes held responsible for the occurrence of rather serious accidents. It even became necessary to cease using the apparatus till the defect, whatever it might be, could be put right. Several remedies were suggested, but none proved effectual till my brother, then only twenty-one years of age, hit upon a simple contrivance which removed all difficulties, and thenceforth the exchange-bag apparatus worked well. Sir William Cubitt, who had unsuccessfully striven to rectify matters, generously eulogised his youthful rival's work.
The stamp-obliterating machines which superseded the old practice of obliteration by hand were also my brother's invention. In former days the man who could stamp the greatest number of letters in a given time was usually invited to exhibit his prowess when visitors were shown over the office. The old process had never turned out impressions conspicuous for legibility, and means of improvement had been for some time under consideration. But it was a trial presided over by Lord Campbell in 1856 which precipitated matters. An important question turned upon the exact date at which a letter had been posted, but the obliterating stamp on the envelope was too indistinct to furnish the necessary evidence. Lord Campbell sharply animadverted upon the failure, and his strictures caused the Duke of Argyll—then Postmaster-General—to write to Rowland Hill upon the subject. The use of inferior ink was supposed to be responsible for the trouble, and various experiments were tried, without effecting any marked beneficial result. Objection was made to abolition of the human hand as stamper on the ground that thus far it had proved to be the fastest worker. Then my brother's mechanical skill came to the rescue, and complaints as to clearness and legibility soon became rare.[198] By the machines the obliterations were made faster than by the best hand-work, the increase of speed being at least 50 per cent. About the year 1903 my brother's machines began, I am told, to be superseded by others which are said to do the work faster even than his. Judging by some of the obliterations lately made, presumably by these later machines, it is evident that, so far as clearness and legibility are concerned, the newer process is not superior to the older.
My brother was a born mechanician, and, like our uncle Edwin Hill, could, out of an active brain, evolve almost any machine for which, in some emergency, there seemed to be need. To give free scope to Pearson's obvious bent, our father had, in his son's early youth, caused a large four-stalled stable adjoining our house at Hampstead to be altered into a well-equipped workshop; and in this many a long evening was spent, the window being often lighted up some hours after the rest of the family had retired to bed, and my brother being occasionally obliged to sing out, through the one open pane, a cheery “good-night” to the passing policeman, who paused to see if a burglarious conspiracy was being devised during the nocturnal small hours, from the convenient vantage-ground of the outhouse.
The dream of my brother's life was to become a civil engineer, for which profession, indeed, few young men could have been better fitted; and the dream seemed to approach accomplishment when, during a visit to our father, Sir William (afterwards first Lord) Armstrong spoke most highly of Pearson's achievements—he had just put into completed form two long-projected small inventions—and offered to take the youth into his own works at Newcastle-on-Tyne. But the dream was never destined to find realisation. Sir William's visit and proposal made a fitting opportunity for the putting to my brother of a serious question which had been in our father's head for some time. In his son's integrity, ability, and affection, Rowland Hill had absolute trust. Were the younger man but working with him at the Post Office, the elder knew he could rely on unswerving support, on unwavering fidelity. The choice of callings was laid before my brother: life as a civil engineer—a profession in which his abilities could not fail to command success—or the less ambitious career of a clerk at St Martin's-le-Grand. Our father would not dwell upon his own strong leaning towards the latter course, but with the ever-present mental image of harassing official intrigues against himself and his hard-won reform, it is not difficult to picture with what conflicting emotions he must have waited his son's decision. This was left entirely in the young man's hands; and he chose the part which he knew would best serve his father. The cherished dream was allowed to melt into nothingness, and my brother began his postal career not as a favoured, but as an ordinary clerk, though one always near at hand, and always in the complete confidence of his immediate chief. Whatever regrets for the more congenial life Pearson may have harboured, he never, to my knowledge, gave them audible expression, nor could any father have had a more loyal son. When, many years later, it seemed desirable that some official should be appointed to report on the value of the mechanical inventions periodically offered to the Post Office, and to supervise those already in operation, it seemed when my brother was selected for that post as if he had only received his due, and that merely in part.
He had also administrative ability of no mean order; and when only twenty-eight years of age was selected by the Postmaster-General to go to Mauritius to reorganise the post office there, which through mismanagement had gradually drifted into a state of confusion, apparently beyond rectification by the island authorities. He speedily brought the office into good working order; but perhaps his Mauritian labours will be best remembered by his substitution of certain civilised stamps—like those then used in some of the West Indian isles—in place of the trumpery red and blue, penny and twopenny, productions which were the handiwork of some local artist, and which are now so rare that they command amazingly large sums of money in the philatelist world.
PEARSON HILL.
By permission of the Proprietor of Flett's Studios, late London School of Photography.