Slow Post and  Messenger Service The Postal Service Comes to Canada

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Slow Post and Messenger Service

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After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the highly developed postal system employed by the Romans eventually fell into disuse throughout much of Europe. The later Middle Ages would see a re-emergence of postal delivery that paralleled the rise of the merchant class in Europe. The evolution of international trade demanded a system of business correspondence. Various merchant guilds developed commercial courier services to handle communications.

By the late 1400s, several political, social, and technological developments contributed to a change in the mail delivery system in Europe. The invention of the Gutenberg printing press around 1450 was a significant development that made the mass publication of literature possible, and helped foster an age of greater education and literacy among the general population. This, in turn, increased the amount of private correspondence, and made the idea of delivering mail for private individuals much more palatable—and potentially profitable—to those who provided courier services.

Meanwhile, the emergence of strong European nation-states began to usher in the concept of nationalized—as compared to private commercial—postal services. At first, such nationalized services were strictly for government use, but gradually, the delivery of private mail was legalized and expanded. Off the continent in England, for example, King Charles I opened the mail delivery service to the public in 1635.

Despite aggressive attempts by governments to control the mail delivery service, some private mail operations managed to persist for a time. Such privately run operations introduced new concepts in mail delivery that persist to this day.

In London, England in 1680, William Dockwra succeeded in developing a private Penny Post with over 400 receiving stations. Mail carriers collected letters from these stations every hour, and processed them in a branch office where they were marked with the time and the place where they were collected. These time stamps helped prevent disputes from clients over delays in delivery, and may have been the first postmarks.

Unfortunately for Dockwra, the English government took issue with a private individual infringing on the state monopoly in mail delivery. His operation was shut down in 1682 and his service, with all of its innovations, was reopened later as a government agency.

During the 1700s, England was in a period of economic growth and expansion. The postal service also began to expand and improve in response to greater public demand. Starting in 1765, new roads were built to improve transportation. By 1784, stagecoaches were employed to carry mail between English cities and towns. The first such route linked London to the City of Bath. By the 1830s, next-day mail delivery was the norm throughout most of England.

During that time, between the years of 1775 and 1815, England was in a state of war, both with the United States and France. One consequence of war and its aftermath was a rise in postal rates, which proved vastly unpopular with the public. In response to this, an English educator, Sir Rowland Hill, helped develop the idea of a postage stamp to streamline the process of sending paid letters. The stamp was significant in that it created a standard rate of mail delivery regardless of distance. The rate was affected only by the weight of letters or parcels sent. This reform helped usher postal services into the modern age.

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