Sir Rowland Hill, KCB, FRS (3 December 1795 – 27 August 1879) was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer.

[1] He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of Uniform Penny Post and his solution of pre-payment, facilitating the safe, speedy and cheap transfer of letters.

Rowland's father, Thomas Wright Hill, was an innovator in education and politics, including among his friends Joseph Priestley, Tom Paine and Richard Price.

[9] The school, which Hill designed, included innovations such as a science laboratory, a swimming pool, and forced air heating.

In his Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers Drawn from Experience (1822, often cited as Public Education) he argued that kindness, instead of caning, and moral influence, rather than fear, should be the predominant forces in school discipline.

[5][10] Hazelwood gained international attention when French education leader and editor Marc Antoine Jullien, former secretary to Maximilien de Robespierre, visited and wrote about the school in the June 1823 issue of his journal Revue encyclopédique.

[citation needed] The colonisation of South Australia was a project of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who believed that many of the social problems in Britain were caused by overcrowding and overpopulation.

In 1832 Rowland Hill published a tract called Home colonies: sketch of a plan for the gradual extinction of pauperism, and for the diminution of crime, based on a Dutch model.

[11][2] Hill then served from 1833 until 1839 as secretary of the South Australian Colonization Commission, which worked successfully to establish a settlement without convicts at what is today Adelaide.

[12] Under the South Australia Act 1834, the colony was to embody the ideals and best qualities of British society, shaped by religious freedom and a commitment to social progress and civil liberties.

"[13] Rowland Hill's sister, Caroline Clark, her husband Francis, and their large family migrated to South Australia in 1850.

[16] Hill commenced a detailed study of these documents and this led him to publish, in early 1837, a pamphlet called Post Office Reform its Importance and Practicability.

[18] In the 1830s at least 12.5% of all British mail was conveyed under the personal frank of peers, dignitaries and members of parliament, while censorship and political espionage were conducted by postal officials.

[19] There is a well-known story, probably apocryphal, about how Hill gained an interest in reforming the postal system; he apparently noticed a young woman too poor to claim a letter sent to her by her fiancé.

[20] Richard Cobden and John Ramsey McCulloch, both advocates of free trade, attacked the policies of privilege and protection of the Tory government.

Hill's study reported his findings and those of Charles Babbage that most of the costs in the postal system were not for transport, but rather for laborious handling procedures at the origins and the destinations.

William Leader Maberly, Secretary to the Post Office, also a Whig, denounced Hill's study: "This plan appears to be a preposterous one, utterly unsupported by facts and resting entirely on assumption".

With an elegant engraving of the young Queen Victoria (whose 21st birthday was celebrated that month), the Penny Black was an instant success.

He lowered the fares from London to Brighton, expanded the routes, offered special excursion trains, and made the commute comfortable for passengers.

[26] In 1846, the Conservative Party split over the repeal of the Corn Laws and was replaced by a Whig government led by Lord John Russell.

For twenty years his next-door neighbour on Hampstead Green was the Gothic revival architect Samuel Sanders Teulon, who designed St Stephen's Church, Rosslyn Hill, facing their houses.

There are streets named after him in Hampstead (off Haverstock Hill, down the side of the Royal Free Hospital) and Tottenham (off White Hart Lane).

[33] In this, he not only changed postal services around the world, but also made commerce more efficient and profitable, even though it took 30 years before the British Post Office's revenue recovered to its 1839 level.

[37] There is a large sculpture in Dalton Square, Lancaster, The Victoria Monument, depicting eminent Victorians and Rowland Hill is included.

[citation needed] At Tottenham, north London, there is now[update] a local history museum at Bruce Castle (where Hill lived during the 1840s) including some relevant exhibits.