Note 165 — Chapter VI

“In the end there were selected from the whole number of competitors four whose suggestions appeared to evince most ingenuity,” wrote my father. “The reward that had been offered was divided amongst them in equal shares, each receiving £100” (“Life,” i. 388). Sir Henry Cole gives their names as follows:—“Mr Cheverton, Mr C. Whiting, myself, and, I believe, Messrs Perkins, Bacon & Co. After the labour,” he adds, “of reading the two thousand five” (?six) “hundred proposals sent to the Treasury, 'My Lords' obtained from them no other modes of applying the postage stamp than those suggested by Mr Hill himself—stamped covers or half sheets of paper, stamped envelopes, labels or adhesive stamps, and stamps struck on letter-paper itself.”—(“Fifty Years of Public Life,” i. 62, 65, 66.)