THIS week will see the 240th anniversary of the birth of one of Scotland’s great inventors who is rarely recognised as such because an Englishman is usually given the credit.

James Chalmers was born on February 2, 1782, in Arbroath and to my mind he should be acknowledged as the inventor of the adhesive postage stamp. The accolade of stamp inventor is usually given, however, to Sir Rowland Hill, a teacher turned postal and social reformer.

To me there is absolutely no doubt that this Englishman of genius and commitment should be credited with the introduction and development in 1840 of the uniform penny post, forerunner of every such system in the world.

Many politicians and so-called economic experts predicted a tax-payers’ disaster for the penny post, but it was hugely popular from the outset, soon made a profit and revolutionised the way people communicated. And it was all thanks to the Penny Black, the first adhesive “people’s stamp”.

The story of the Penny Black is instructional. It is beyond doubt that in 1839 Hill at first wanted actual payment of one penny at a post office or that an “impressed” stamp should be used, with the postage fee stamped on a cover of the letter or package. That is where we get the word stamp from, even though the “stamp” we still use is actually a small adhesive piece of paper.

Hill was a johnny-come-lately to the cause of postal reform. The Rev Samuel Roberts had first campaigned for a uniform penny post in the early 1830s, for instance. Hill had influence, however and gave evidence to, and later joined, the Commission of Inquiry, at first a Committee of MPs, which had been suggested by Greenock MP Robert Wallace in 1836 to look into why the then current postal service was not working – corruption and incompetence were the main reasons as was expense, it costing a minimum of fourpence to post a letter which priced it well out of the range of most working people.

Wallace chaired the inquiry and we know that he sent a large number of writings on the issue to Hill who had not previously campaigned for reform before 1835. He was the right man for the job, however, and methodically and inventively devised a uniform penny post system that would work.

Hill’s main report in 1837 did contain a suggestion for adhesive stamps but he rejected that himself. The report was discussed at length and Thomas Spring Rice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the Commons on July 5, 1839 that he had tasked the Committee “simply to affirm the adoption of an uniform penny postage and taxation of that postage by weight”.

Now came the real decision – how would the penny be charged? Hill’s impressed covers or an adhesive stamp? Robert Wallace persuaded his fellow MPs that adhesive stamps would be the best system, as suggested to him in writing by James Chalmers in 1837 and again over the following two years. Hill accepted the decision and got to work to make the new system as foolproof as possible, devising and testing stamps until the Penny Black was chosen.

It was the affixing of adhesive postage stamps to letters that made the new system work. A Royal Mail Post Office regulations handbill survives which states: “On or after 10th January a Letter not exceeding HALF AN OUNCE IN WEIGHT may be sent from any part of the United Kingdom, to any other part, for ONE PENNY, if paid or posted, or for TWO PENCE if paid when delivered.”

So with the Penny Black, Hill brought in the successful penny post system, but to my mind he is erroneously given the sole credit for inventing adhesive postage stamps, when plenty testimony survives that Chalmers first demonstrated the use of adhesive stamps in Dundee in 1834.

His son Patrick would later amass screeds of evidence that his father had been short-changed by the British Government which gave Hill a knighthood and considerable payments. Chalmers got nothing, and indeed sought nothing, for his invention.

Trained as a weaver, Chalmers moved to Dundee in 1809 where he became a bookseller and printer, then publisher of a newspaper, The Caledonian, before serving as a burgh councillor. As a newspaper publisher he was aghast at tax on print and the cost of postage, and from 1825 he campaigned against the slow delivery of post from London to Scotland and vice-versa – it took him some years but he managed to get a day knocked off postal delivery times.

Those who refute Chalmers’ claim often cite the fact that the 1834 essay which he wrote about the matter was lost, but to my mind there is ample evidence in the columns of the Dundee press that Chalmers not only suggested the idea but demonstrated actual adhesive stamps in 1834.

In August, 1834, he demonstrated adhesive stamps to a meeting of local bigwigs, including the city’s postmaster. They were so incensed when Chalmers was not acknowledged as the inventor that they got up a testimonial and raised £100 for him in 1846.

In addition, the printer of the stamps and the man who applied the gum to the stamps all wrote letters to the press giving their accounts of the event, albeit some years later. Rev Samuel Roberts told Chalmers’ son Patrick that his father’s right to be called the inventor of the postage stamp was “unquestionable”.

James Chalmers died in Dundee in 1853 at the age of 71. Patrick Chalmers erected a memorial to him in 1888 which describes James as “originator of the adhesive postage stamp”. I believe that to be true.