THE ADHESIVE POSTAGE STAMP.
DECISION OF THE
"ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA":
James Chalmers was the Inventor of the Adhesive Stamp—"Mr. Pearson Hillhas not weakened the Evidence" to that effect.
ALSO
Papers on the Penny Postage Reform,
BEQUEATHED BY THE LATE
SIR HENRY COLE.
James Chalmers first proposed the adoption of the Adhesive
Postage Stamp,
of which he was the Inventor.
BY
PATRICK CHALMERS,
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
LONDON:
EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.
1886.
Price Sixpence.
PREFACE.
When a man of note dies, the journalist of the day can only reproduce inan obituary notice the accepted position of his life and works—it is nopart of that writer's duty to examine, so as fully to certify, all thestatements at hand, or to ransack old volumes dealing with the timeswhen such reputation was established. That is the duty and the task ofthe later historian, or of some one specially interested. Such has beenmy duty, my task, as respects that public benefactor, the late SirRowland Hill, with the result arrived at in this and formerpublications.
Upon the death of Sir Rowland Hill in August, 1879, a series of letterswith comments thereon appeared in the Dundee press, recalling the nameand services of a townsman who, in his day, had taken an active interestin post-office improvement, and had worked in that field to somepurpose. Mr. James Chalmers, bookseller, Dundee, who died in 1853, hadbeen an earnest postal [Pg 4]reformer. Through his efforts, and after a longcorrespondence with the Post Office in London, he brought about such anacceleration of the mail as to lessen the time necessary for the replyto a letter from Dundee to London, or betwixt the chief commercial townsof the north and south, by two days—a day each way. Subsequently heconceived the idea of an adhesive stamp for postage purposes; and it wasthis invention, made known to such post-office reformers as Mr. Hume andMr. Wallace—with both of whom, as with others, he was incommunication—that formed the origin of the adoption of the adhesivestamp in the reformed Penny Postage system of 1840, the plan proposed byMr. Rowland Hill in 1837 having been that of the impressed stamp.
These letters in the Dundee press from old townsmen and friends of Mr.Chalmers, personally unknown to me as I was to them (I having leftDundee while a youth, over fifty years ago, and passed much of theinterval abroad), with the consequent attention drawn to the subject,naturally called upon me to make an endeavour to vindicate my father'sclaim to the merit of such an important feature in the success of thePenny Postage scheme as was, and is, the adhesive [Pg 5]stamp. These letters,moreover, acquainted me with what I was previously unaware of—that onthe 1st January, 1846, a public testimonial had been presented in theTown Hall of Dundee to Mr. Chalmers, in recognition of his postalservices, and of his having been the originator of the adhesive postagestamp; thus all the more calling upon me to investigate a subject ofwhich hitherto I had only a dim and partial idea. This investigation wasfurther facilitated by my withdrawal just before the same period of 1879from active business, thus enabling me to examine at the library