In January 1840 – just 175 years ago – the penny post was established throughout the UK and, as we know from Dickens and other novelists, letters flowed freely to and fro several times a day. It was a golden age of communication.
Sadly, this facility has now disappeared: recently the Royal Mail reported that it is struggling to deliver to every house just once a day for a price of 62p ¬– over 150 times more than in 1840 (1p = 2½ old pennies). That’s not quite as bad as it seems, of course: a penny in 1840 would be equivalent to about 35p now.
Never mind; we now have another golden age of communication, featuring the mobile phone. Mobiles are as ubiquitous nowadays as the penny post was in 1840, and it is hard to believe that it was only 30 years ago that the first mobile phone call was made in the UK – by comedian Ernie Wise, who called Vodafone’s head office in Newbury from St Katharine Docks in London on New Year’s Day, 1985.
Quick off the mark as always, it was in the same month (just over a fortnight later) that British Telecom officially retired the much-missed iconic red telephone box. Maybe a bit too quick off the mark, because there are still vast tracts of Britain without a reliable mobile phone signal. Not so golden after all.
In 2015 we celebrate 175 years of the Penny Post