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In the 1860s Britain was prosperous but many of those who lived there lived in squalor, poverty and little hope. Many believed the future was far away from the British Isles. In the 1860s alone 1.7million people emigrated.

Sir Rowland Hill

SIR ROWLAND HILL (1795-1879)

• Invented the Penny Post
• Mother died at birth, raised by his schoolteacher father
• Taught alongside his father and brothers - their new school in North London was progressive - new teaching methods and philosophies, no corporal punishment but reward systems and strong honour and behaviour codes
• Ill health led Hill away from teaching
• Interested in inventing, from 1835 he began planning a postal service
• The Penny Post was introduced in 1840 and Hill became Secretary to the Postmaster-General in 1846. Continued to reform the Post Office until 1864 when he retired.

In 1861 agricultural and domestic workers were still the two commonest occupations.

EXTRACT FROM A REPORT ON THE EFFECT OF THE THAMES FREEZING

"For five weeks, the pauperism was raised from the average of 96,752 to 135,389.

"Mr Howard, Chairman of the Bethnal-green Board of Guardians, is of the opinion that but for charitable subscriptions, 'there would have been fearful loss of life from starvation'.

"Mr Selfe, the police magistrate, adds, 'I think the distress was terrible; the amount to which the pawnshops were filled with absolute necessities of the home, and the way in which it was stripped to support bare life, was terrible'...

"The workhouse test, or the labour test, which no doubt was properly applied in the case of the sturdy vagrant or the idle, was wholly unfit to be applied to a vast number of those who are destitute.

"In the eastern district of the Metropolis there were numbers of the most deserving poor who would never go near the poorhouse; they would sooner die.