The King's Post / Being a volume of historical facts relating to the posts, mail coaches, coach roads, and railway mail services of and connected with the ancient city of Bristol from 1580 to the present time

by Robert Charles Tombs

CHAPTER V.

APPRECIATIONS OF RALPH ALLEN, JOHN PALMER, AND SIR FRANCIS FREELING, MAIL AND COACH ADMINISTRATORS.

On the 25th April, 1901, the day after a visit to Bristol to celebrate the establishment of the new steamship line to Jamaica, the Marquess of Londonderry, then Postmaster-General, visited Bath to take part in a ceremony in honour of Ralph Allen and John Palmer. These two great postal reformers were both citizens of Bath, and are greatly honoured in that city for their work in the Post Office, with the famous men of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By a happy thought there has lately been started a movement to keep alive associations with the past by placing tablets on the houses in which famous men lived. One of the tablets unveiled by Lord Londonderry was placed on the house in which Ralph Allen first conducted the business of the Bath Post Office, and of his cross post contracts, and the other on the house in which John Palmer was born.

Soon after noon on the eventful day, the Bath postmen's band, Mr. Kerans, the postmaster, and his lieutenants, the staff of postmen and messengers, marched on to the space between the Abbey and the Guildhall for inspection by the Head of the Post Office Department. After the inspection, a procession was formed, in which the Postmaster-General was accompanied by the Mayor, and followed by the Town Councillors, two by two. Before them went the city swordbearer, clad in striking robes, and the party proceeded to the North Parade, from which Allen's house is now reached by a passage way. The house is built of stone, and has a very handsome front in the style of the classical Renaissance. In drawing aside the curtain, which veiled the tablet, on which was inscribed "Here lived Ralph Allen, 1727-1764," Lord Londonderry said that there was probably not one of the great men who had been associated with Bath who was more of a benefactor to his town, as well as to the public service of his country, than Ralph Allen. The procession then moved on to Palmer's house, only a few yards away, where a similar ceremony took place. After another short speech by the Postmaster-General, in which he explained the share Palmer had borne in developing the modern Post Office system, the second tablet was unveiled. It bore the inscription, "Here lived John Palmer, born 1741, died 1818."

Afterwards at the Guildhall, where a bust of Allen in the Council Chamber looked down upon a large party assembled for luncheon, the Postmaster-General, in response to the toast of his health, discoursed more at large upon the topic of the day. He congratulated Bath upon having among its citizens two out of the four great men of Post Office history. It was Allen's task to provide a general postal system by opening up new lines of posts between the main roads, and through new lines of country. Between 1720, when he began his first contract, and 1764 when he died, he covered the country with a network of posts, giving easy communication between all important towns, and he also increased the number and speed of the mails on the post roads. While doing this he raised himself from being a humble clerk, and later, postmaster of Bath, to a position of great affluence, and of friendship with many of the great men of his time. Among those friends was Lord Chatham.

It was twenty years after Allen's death that Palmer's Mail Coach system was started. Its advantage soon made itself apparent, and the improvement of roads at the end of the 18th Century enabled the mail coach service to be brought to great perfection. It lasted less than 60 years, but in those years correspondence and the revenue of the Post Office multiplied many times, and when Rowland Hill turned his attention to postal questions he found a rapid and efficient service, which was at the same time so cheap that the cost of conveyance was only a small item in the expenses of the Post Office.

The Mayor of Bath proposed the toast of "the Visitors," and said that they had amongst them two representatives of the great men they were honouring. Ralph Allen was represented by Colonel Allen, a direct descendant, and the owner of Bathampton Manor, a part of Ralph Allen's estate. Colonel Allen had lately returned from South Africa. John Palmer was represented by his grandson, Colonel Palmer, R.E.

[From a block kindly lent by the Proprietors of the "Bath Chronicle."]