Postal Orders of Great Britain

The United Kingdom was the first country in the world to issue postal orders on 1 January 1881. They were the brainchild of the President of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, John Skirrow Wright which was to enable poorer people to buy goods and services by post, as they were unlikely to have bank accounts. The rich had bank accounts and could write cheques. A delegation of the Birmingham Chamber went to the annual meeting of Chambers of Commerce in London and John Skirrow Wright presented the idea, complete with all the details on how it would work including all the Postal Order values proposed. At first London bankers were against the idea, thinking it would affect their businesses, and the idea was rejected. However, eventually the bankers realised that the people who would use postal orders were not their customers and therefore no threat to their business. Consequently, at the Annual Meeting a year later John Skirrow Wright presented the idea again and this time it was accepted and the Postal Order system was started exactly as Skirrow Wright and Birmingham Chamber had proposed.

In 1881, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland included Ireland but in 1922, three-quarters of the island became independent as the Irish Free State and began its own independent issues of postal orders. Since 1922, British postal orders have been issued in the four parts of the UK (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales). In the 1880s and 1890s, the issue of British postal orders spread to most parts of what was then the British Empire. As time went on, the issue of British postal orders declined in most parts of the British Empire, later the British Commonwealth. There are still a number of countries that are issuing British postal orders.

During World War I and World War II, the government declared British postal orders legal tender as cash to save paper and labour.

Since 1945, the use of postal orders has been declining, as postal orders were a popular form of payment for lottery tickets, in events such as the football pools and for payment for bets on horse racing. The postal orders that were issued from a football pools machine have a perfinned series of numbers and letters. Occasionally, these turn up from time to time. These are sought after by postal order collectors.

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