Victorian Innovations

The Victorians were great innovators, developing many new objects and ideas.

There were a number of inventions connected with the postal reform of the nineteenth century. These were designed to speed up the processing of the mail as well as the production of stamps. The inventions included stamp perforation, cancellation and envelope folding machines.

Postcodes

Simple postcodes were also invented as a result of the Penny Black. London was rapidly growing in size in the 19th century and needed special systems to cope with all the people sending letters. Because London was made up of lots of little villages all growing into each other, there were often several streets with the same name. There had to be a simple way of knowing which 'High Street' in London a letter was meant to go to.

Rowland Hill divided London into 10 separate postal districts in 1857. They were named by compass points and an office was established for each district.

These districts included W, WC, E, EC, SW – just like the London postcodes today. The public were asked to add the district’s initial to the end of an address.

Pillar Boxes

Pillar boxes were developed so that people would not have far to walk to post their letters and already existed in Europe. They had been used in Paris as early as 1653. 

The novelist Anthony Trollope introduced pillarboxes to Britain in 1852. The first pillar boxes were introduced in St Helier, Jersey. The pillar boxes proved to be very popular and the first six were introduced in London in 1855.

People often think of all British pillar boxes as bright red, with a standard shape and size, but this was not true to begin with. When they were first introduced the Post Office District Surveyor for each region chose the design of the pillar box. Many were green but they blended in with the landscape too much and were difficult to see. Pillar boxes were then changed to red so that they were more visible.

Lamp and wall boxes were also introduced in places where it was not possible to put up a large pillar box.