Edwin Hill (25 November 1793 - 6 November 1876)
[I.D. Hill, "Hill, Edwin (1793–1876)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, January 2008. Retrieved 13 October 2009.] was a Victorian postal official, the older brother of
Rowland Hill
Sir Rowland Hill, KCB, FRS (3 December 1795 – 27 August 1879) was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of Uniform Penny Post and his soluti ...
, who invented a mechanical system to make envelopes and who campaigned for legal and political change.
Early life
Hill was born in
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
,
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Av ...
and educated at a school run by his father Thomas Wright Hill where he also taught when older. Later he worked at the Assay Office in Birmingham and then at a Birmingham brass-rolling mill where he became the manager.
In 1819 he married Anne Bucknall and they had ten children.
In 1827 he moved to
Tottenham
Tottenham () is a town in North London, England, within the London Borough of Haringey. It is located in the ceremonial county of Greater London. Tottenham is centred north-northeast of Charing Cross, bordering Edmonton to the north, Wal ...
, London, where he managed a branch of the family school business while Rowland taught.
[
]
Stamp Office
In 1840 Hill became the first British Controller of Stamps
Controller may refer to:
Occupations
* Controller or financial controller, or in government accounting comptroller, a senior accounting position
* Controller, someone who performs agent handling in espionage
* Air traffic controller, a person ...
and he remained in that position until 1872.[
]
Inventions
Hill was an inveterate inventor of equipment to help the stamp department. He invented a mechanical system to make envelopes which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the patent for which was bought by Warren de la Rue to whom the machine was attributed. On his retirement a Treasury minute praised Hill's "...resourcefulness and considerable mechanical ability which had contributed so much to the success of the new postage scheme".[
]
Campaigns
Hill was one of the signatories to the notice calling a meeting on 22 January 1817 to petition for parliamentary reform and he campaigned for changes to the law relating to the handling of stolen property.[
]
Death
Hill died at home in London on 6 November 1876 and is buried at Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...
.[
]
References
Further reading
*Hill, W.E. ''An account of the Julian Hill family''. London, 1938. (privately printed)
*''Edwin Hill's Diary 1840'', edited by Roger Johnson and Frank L. Walton, Royal Philatelic Society London
The Royal Philatelic Society London (RPSL) is the oldest philatelic society in the world. It was founded on 10 April 1869 as ''The Philatelic Society, London''. The society runs a postal museum, the Spear Museum of Philatelic History, at its he ...
Archive No. 1, 2016.
External links
*
1793 births
1876 deaths
18th-century English people
19th-century English people
English inventors
People from Birmingham, West Midlands
Postal history
Committee members of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
{{postal-stub