[Sir John Henniker; 1st Bart.]. English postal reformer, born at Rochester, in Kent, on the 18th of May 1848, the son of Lt.-Col. Heaton. He was educated at Kent House grammar school and King’s College, London. In 1864 he went to Australia and became a landowner and newspaper proprietor in New South Wales. He returned to England and entered the House of Commons as M.P. for Canterbury in 1885, retaining the Seat until 1910. All his energies were devoted to postal reform. He advocated penny postage throughout the British Empire, and lived to see it achieved and extended to the United States. He also promoted cheaper oceanic telegraphy, and many other postal reforms. He died at Geneva on the 8th of September 1914.
See Life and Letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton, Bart., by his daughter, Mrs. Adrian Porter (1916).
