WOULD you pay a full day’s earnings just to receive an e-mail message from me? On those terms, I bet you wouldn’t welcome hearing from me very often.

In England in 1830, postage for letters was calculated not only by the number of sheets of paper but also by the number of miles traversed, and the recipient was the one who had to pay. For a person of ordinary means, a letter of middling length could come to about a day’s wages, a fearsome cost for the unfortunate household that received a letter.

But a decade or so later, when Britain and the United States introduced cheap, flat postal rates, without regard to the number of sheets or distance traveled, correspondents enjoyed something like our unmetered broadband today. Communication became more frequent, and ties were strengthened among families and friends. But cheap rates also led to junk mail and postal scams.

In Victorian London, though service wasn’t 24/7, it was close to 12/6. Home delivery routes would go by every house 12 times a day  yes, 12. In 1889, for example, the first delivery began about 7:30 a.m. and the last one at about 7:30 p.m. In major cities like Birmingham by the end of the century, home routes were run six times a day.