Mulready envelopes are now rare and valuable philatelic collectibles.
They were Rowland Hill's folly. A rare misstep from the man whose British postal reforms of 1840 changed the world.
The Penny Black (and virtually concurrently released 2d blue) pioneered a simple, comprehensive postal service using a device - the adhesive stamp - that is still with us today.
But every innovation is a process. And every successful process also produces failures.
This is one.
The Penny Black was the big winner of the 1840 reforms, it was well used, though it too was quickly withdrawn at around the same time. Click the image to explore Penny Black collections.
What was Mulready stationery?
Mulready envelopes were pre-paid letters.
Victorian consumers could buy either letter sheets or envelopes. They wrote their message on the sheet before folding it into the closed shape for posting. Envelopes were also self-folded by the user, who popped their own sheets of paper inside.
Simple enough.
Letter sheets were an established product. Envelopes were discouraged by the existing structure of postal charges, but we all use them today.
Hand coloured and sent on the first day of use, this Mulready is a unique, historic treasure. Click or tap the image to find out more.
The function of the new adhesive stamps was as proof of payment for the postal service. Their “cancellation” with a handstamp ended their life.
In their place on the envelopes was a large illustration by William Mulready that served as the proof of payment.
Why were Mulready envelopes and letters introduced?
The 1840 postal reforms are embodied in their physical relics: adhesive stamps.
But, at the time, they were more impactfully a rate reform.
There were postal services before May 1840. But they were complicated, expensive, and unpopular.
A 1904 Postman's uniform. The end result of Hill's reforms to a system that was anything but uniform and not fit for purpose in industrial Britain.
There were many local postal services, often city-wide, and often charging their own locally determined rates.
Charges were complex and counterproductive.
Envelopes were almost never used because letters were charged by the sheet and, usually, at a rate determined by the distance the letter would travel.
Incredibly, fees were usually paid by the recipient on receipt of the item.
The charges had been used as a revenue tax to pay Napoleonic War debts. They were consequently very high.
In 1840, a labourer might be earning around 10 shillings a week, but would be expected to pay a full eighth of that to send a single-sheet letter to Dublin. And you can add that fee again for every extra sheet of writing.
MPs and some other office holders enjoyed immunity from some charges. A system that was widely abused.
Britain was in the midst of a transformational industrial revolution and was the preeminent global power.
It needed a postal system that worked in that context.
In 1840, Britain was the world's first and biggest industrialised economy and at the heart of a global empire. This image shows the 1879 Battle of Isandhlwana in Natal, South Africa.
Rowland Hill’s reforms (which built on work by many others) simplified the system drastically.
The Penny Post was a flat rate for letters weighing up to half-an-ounce (14 grammes) within the UK. the 2d rate paid for heavier items.
Hill apparently believed that the Mulready stationery would be the most-used form of pre-paid post.
So when the system was unveiled to the public from May 6, 1840, there was a good stock of Mulready stationery ready to go.
Who was William Mulready?
William Mulready is celebrated on a stamp, but not for his postal work and not in the UK.
He’s on a 1986 issue in the country of his birth, Ireland.
Mulready's paintings were sentimental and very popular with Victorian audiences.
Back in 1840 he was a successful genre painter, based in London.
The genre in which he found that success was romantic. He painted idealised, idyllic images of rural life.
Rowland Hill must have been a fan.
What was the Mulready Design?
The image on the Mulready stationery is called Britannia sending letters to the world.
And that’s what it shows.
The central figure at the top is Britannia, though in an unusual pose.
A very clear example of Mulready's design, which the public, even in 1840, reportedly found patronising and overly didactic. Click the image to discover this fascinating item.
To her right, the viewer’s left, are figures representing the continent of Asia. And on her right a similar grouping to show North America - they look like the Pilgrim Fathers.
In the bottom corners are families reading and giving thanks for mail.
I’m not an art critic, but the design looks cluttered and confusing and - robbed of the colour Mulready would have used in paint - sketchy and incomplete.
Some Mulreadys were hand-coloured after printing, and these - in my view - do look better.
But the public hated it.
While some of the parodies that were produced to mock the Mulready designs were the work of rival producers of letter sheets, it does seem that the picture was genuinely unpopular with the people expected to buy it.
Hill himself wrote, after only a week of issue: “I fear we will be obligated to substitute some other stamp for that designed by Mulready, which is abused and ridiculed on all sides, the public have shown their disregard and even distaste for beauty.”
What happened to the Mulready stationery?
The Penny Post was an experiment in mass communication and a large quantity of Mulready envelopes and letter sheets were produced.
I have seen one source saying 3,500,000 were printed.
That doesn’t seem to be generally agreed. However, the stationery was designed to carry revenue-generating advertisements and around 300 different ads have been identified in surviving copies. They can’t have been individually printed - the sheets and envelopes were sold in packs of 12 called formes - so this suggests a very large print run.
Pre-paid letters survived, but in this much more elegant form, known as the Penny Pink for its embossed stamp.
Penny black and 2d blue stamps were a huge hit.
After two months the Mulready experiment was ended.
A simple letter sheet was designed to replace it with an embossed stamp of Victoria’s head. It was named the Penny Pink in honour of the colour of that stamp.
Penny Pinks were sold from February 1841, but Mulreadys remained in circulation - but largely unloved, unsold and unused - until an official withdrawal process began in November 1842.
The number of Mulreadys coming back meant the process had to be phased over several years and - after burning them nearly caused a disaster - a special machine was invented to destroy them by pushing out a portion of the design.
Mulready envelopes and Mulready letters for collectors
Whatever their view of the aesthetic virtues of the Mulready design, stamp collectors love a curiosity and withdrawals create rarities.
So, today Mulreadys, and the parodies they inspired, are very sought-after collector’s items.
Those that were sold were designed to be folded and sent. Survival is a rarity and condition important to value. They were cancelled, like stamped envelopes, with a handstamp and the position and quality of this stamp can also affect value.
And, although, ultimately they failed in one respect, the Mulready envelope was a first. And it was the precursor of generations of more successful pre-paid envelopes, lettersheets, aerograms and so on.
Early date stamps and interesting content are bonuses that attract good prices.
Buying Mulready stationery today
We have a large collection of extremely desirable Mulready envelopes and letters.
Explore the Mulready collection, a unique philatelic treasure:
