The amalgamation of the general post and what were called the London district carriers did not take place till 1855, when the Duke of Argyll was postmaster-general. For this amalgamation Mr. Hill had been striving from the commencement. It avoided the waste of time, trouble, and expense consequent on two bodies of men—the one being paid at a much higher rate of wages—going over the same ground.
A more important step than this was the division of London into ten districts. Under the new arrangement, instead of district letters being carried from the receiving houses to the chief office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to be there sorted and redistributed, they were sorted and distributed at the district office according to their address. An important part of the new scheme was that London should be considered in the principal post-offices as ten different towns, each with its own centre of operations, and that the letters should be assorted and despatched on this principle. A new and special service was brought into operation between England and Ireland on the 1st of October, 1860. Night and day mail-trains have from that date been run from Euston Square to Holyhead, and special steamers have been employed at an enormous expense to cross the channel. Letter-sorting is now carried on not only in the trains but on board the packets, nearly all the post-office work for immediate delivery being accomplished between London and Dublin and Dublin and London respectively.[19]
The first letter penny post was established in Edinburgh by one Peter Williamson, a native of Aberdeen. He kept a coffee-shop in the Parliament House, and as he was frequently employed, by gentlemen attending the courts, in sending letters to different parts of the city, and as he had doubtless heard something of the English penny post, he began a regular post with hourly deliveries, and established agents at different parts of the city to collect.
Posts for letters, mode of carrying, invented in Paris, 1470; post-horses by stages, 1483. Louis XI. first established them in France. In England, 1581; Germany, 1641; in the Turkish dominions, 1740. Offices erected, 1643, and in 1657; made general in England, 1656; in Scotland, 1695; as at present formed, 12 Charles II., December 27, 1660. Penny posts began in London, 1681; taken in hand by the government, 1711; the penny post made twopence, 1801. Mails first conveyed by coaches, August 2, 1784; the first mail by railway, November 11, 1830, between Manchester and Liverpool.