William Dockwra
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
merchant who along with his partner Robert Murry created the first Penny Post
London Penny Post
The London Penny Post was a premier postal system whose function was to deliver mail within London and its immediate suburbs for the modest sum of one penny. The Penny Post was established in 1680 by William Dockwra and his business partner, Robert Murray...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1680. In latter 17th century London there was no official postal system for mail delivery within the city of London and its suburbs. Dockwra's London Penny Post was a mail delivery system that fulfilled this need. His system worked so well that it compromised the interests of private couriers and porters and royal officials alike.
Early life
Dockwra was born in the City of LondonCity of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
, the son of an armourer, and died in 1716. His date of birth is uncertain; however, records show him to have been baptised in 1635. He was the uncle of Mary Davies, whose dowry of Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...
and other lands near London would make the Grosvenor family the richest family in England by the 19th century, and this connection was to prove beneficial to Dockwra's own fortunes.
Dockwra was apprenticed to one of his father's fellows in the Armourers' Company, but his career subsequently took a variety of turns. In the 1660s he obtained a position at the Custom House
Custom House, London
Custom House is an area in the London Borough of Newham in London, England.The area is named after the custom house of Royal Victoria Dock.The first Custom House in London was built in 1275 and was located near Billingsgate Market in the City of London....
. By the 1670s he was a merchant in the African slave trade, but he suffered major losses when a ship in which he had a large share was seized for breaching the Royal African Company
Royal African Company
The Royal African Company was a slaving company set up by the Stuart family and London merchants once the former retook the English throne in the English Restoration of 1660...
's licensed monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
, and in the 1680s he was involved in the development of Jersey in the United States, being appointed to the board of the East Jersey Board of Proprietors in 1683.
The Penny Post
On 1 April 1680, Dockwra established the first penny postLondon Penny Post
The London Penny Post was a premier postal system whose function was to deliver mail within London and its immediate suburbs for the modest sum of one penny. The Penny Post was established in 1680 by William Dockwra and his business partner, Robert Murray...
, which served London and the surrounding area to a distance of ten miles. The service worked on the basis that the one penny postage was paid when the letter was accepted (a key element of Rowland Hill
Rowland Hill (postal reformer)
Sir Rowland Hill KCB, FRS was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of penny postage and his solution of prepayment, facilitating the safe, speedy and cheap transfer of letters...
's 1839 reforms of the British postal system). Dockwra obtained a patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
for his service, but unfortunately for him the profits from the government operated General Post Office had been granted to the King's brother the Duke of York
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
. Dockwra was required to surrender his patent and pay £2,000 in compensation. His fortunes improved after the Duke, by then King James II
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
, was expelled from the country in 1688. In 1690 Dockwra was granted a pension of £500 a year; then in 1697 he was appointed as comptroller
Comptroller
A comptroller is a management level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization.In British government, the Comptroller General or Comptroller and Auditor General is in most countries the external auditor of the budget execution of the...
of the penny post. However in 1700 he was dismissed after an investigation into his conduct of the business, including complaints that he had moved the central office from Cornhill to a less convenient location and had opened and detained correspondence.
Later life
Dockwra was appointed as the London agent for the sale of leadLead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
from the Grosvenor family's lead mines in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, and had become the senior partner in a brass
Brass
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...
smelting
Smelting
Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...
business based in Esher
Esher
Esher is a town in the Surrey borough of Elmbridge in South East England near the River Mole. It is a very prosperous part of the Greater London Urban Area, largely suburban in character, and is situated 14.1 miles south west of Charing Cross....
. This project introduced some technical innovations and helped to reduce England's dependence on imports, but it was not a financial success for Dockwra, who lost control of the business. He is believed to have been poor at his death.
Publications
- A Penny Well Beftowed. Or a Brief Account of the New Defign contrived for the great Increafe of Trade, and Eafe of Correfpondence, to the great Advantage of the Inhabitants of all forts, by Conveying of LETTERS or PACQUETS under a Pound Weight, to and from all parts within the Cities of London and Weftminfter; and the Out Parifhes within the Weekly Bills of Mortality. Broadsheet published April 1680.
- The practical method of the penny-post. Being a sheet very necessary for all persons to have by them with an explaination of the following stamps for the marking of all letters. Pamphlet printed by George Larkin, London, 1681.
Further reading
- The Penny Post 1680-1918, Frank Staff, Lutterworth Press, Cambridge, 1993. ISBN 071882878X. http://www.lutterworth.com/lp/titles/penny.htm
- Her Majesty's Mail, William Lewins, Sampson Low Son & Marston, London, 1864.
- The History of the British Post Office, J. Hemmeon, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1912.
- William Dockra and the rest of the Undertakers: The story of the London penny post, 1680-2, Thomas Todd, Edinburgh, Cousland, 1952.