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THE POST OFFICE & ITS STORY

Heaving Overboard the Mails.

Fernando Noronha is a little island in the South Atlantic Ocean, and when a vessel does not call there the letters are enclosed in a cask, to which a flag is attached; this is cast into the sea and there left floating until a boat from the island picks it up. The island is sighted by perhaps more ships and visited by fewer than any other spot on the globe.

THE POST OFFICE

AND ITS STORY

AN INTERESTING ACCOUNT OF

THE ACTIVITIES OF A GREAT GOVERNMENT

DEPARTMENT

BY

EDWARD BENNETT

With 31 Illustrations

LONDON

SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LTD.

38 Great Russell Street

1912

THE SCIENCE OF TO-DAY SERIES

With many illustrations. Extra Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

BOTANY OF TO-DAY. A Popular Account of the Evolution of Modern Botany. By Prof. G. F. Scott Elliot, M.A., B.Sc., Author of “The Romance of Plant Life,” &c. &c.

“One of the books that turn botany from a dryasdust into a fascinating study.”—Evening Standard.

AERIAL NAVIGATION OF TO-DAY. A Popular Account of the Evolution of Aeronautics. By Charles C. Turner.

“Mr. Turner is well qualified to write with authority on the subject. The book sets forth the principles of flight in plain non-technical language. One is impressed by the complete thoroughness with which the subject is treated.”—Daily Graphic.

SCIENTIFIC IDEAS OF TO-DAY. A Popular Account, in Non-technical Language, of the Nature of Matter, Electricity, Light, Heat, Electrons, &c. &c. By Charles R. Gibson, F.R.S.E., Author of “Electricity of To-Day,” &c.

“Supplies a real need.... Mr. Gibson has a fine gift of exposition.”—Birmingham Post.

ASTRONOMY OF TO-DAY. A Popular Introduction in Non-technical Language. By Cecil G. Dolmage, LL.D., F.R.A.S. With frontispiece in colours, & 45 other illustrations.

“Dr. Dolmage has absolutely kept to his promise to introduce the reader to an acquaintance with the astronomy of to-day in non-technical language.”—Saturday Review.

ELECTRICITY OF TO-DAY. Its Work and Mysteries Explained. By Charles R. Gibson, F.R.S.E.

“Mr. Gibson has given us one of the best examples of popular scientific exposition that we remember seeing. His book may be strongly commended to all who wish to realise what electricity means and does in our daily life.”—The Tribune.

ENGINEERING OF TO-DAY. A Popular Account of the Present State of the Science, with many interesting Examples, described in Non-technical Language. By Thomas W. Corbin. With 73 illustrations & diagrams.

“Most attractive and instructive.”—Record.

“The descriptions which are given of various types of engineering structures and work are excellent.”—Yorkshire Observer.

“Altogether a most delightful book.”—Literary World.

MEDICAL SCIENCE OF TO-DAY. A Popular Account of the more recent Developments in Medicine & Surgery. By Willmott Evans, M.D., B.S., B.Sc. (Lond.), F.R.C.S. (Eng.), Surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

A great deal has been written about the General Post Office in newspapers and magazines, but the books on the subject are comparatively few. And these volumes are either exhaustive historical treatises, such as Mr. Herbert Joyce's History of the Post Office, or more popularly written descriptions of Post Office life and work of the character of Lewin's His Majesty's Mails or J. W. Heyde's Royal Mail. Mr. Joyce's work, however, carries us no farther than the eve of penny postage, while the other books were written too long ago to be a guide to the Post Office of to-day. It is within the last twenty years that the Department has made the most rapid strides in the extension of its activities, and it is this period especially which is without an historian.

What I have attempted to do is to tell the story of the Department, briefly in its early beginnings, more fully in its modern developments, and in such a way as to give the reader the impression that the Post Office is alive, that it is in close touch with the needs of the nation, and is in less danger of being strangled with red-tape methods than at any time of its existence.

A book on the Post Office written for the student should contain abundant references to authorities and exhaustive tables of figures and estimates, but in the interest of the general reader I have omitted these aids to reflection. Mark Twain, when he published one of his novels, said he had omitted all descriptions of scenery in the story, but those who liked that sort of thing would find it in the appendix. I have dispensed even with an appendix, and those who really want figures and estimates must be referred to the Postmaster-General's Annual Reports.

Of course I am largely indebted to the volumes I have mentioned and to others for the historical portions of my book. To Sir Rowland Hill's Life, written by his daughter, I owe many of the facts contained in my chapter on “The Penny Post.”

The staff of the General Post Office have during the last twenty-one years conducted a magazine entitled St. Martin's le Grand, the volumes of which have been of great assistance to me, as they will be in the future to a more serious historian of the Post Office than I can claim to be. Among the writers to this magazine whose contributions I have found of great use are A. M. Ogilvie, J. A. J. Housden, C. H. Denver, R. C. Tombs, I.S.O., and R. W. Johnston. Mr. Johnston, who had held during a long life several important posts in the Department, took a keen interest in this book in its early stages, but, to my great regret, died before it was completed. Articles by J. G. Hendry and W. C. Waller helped me considerably in my chapter on “The Travelling Post Office.” Mr. E. Wells and Mr. A. Davey gave me their kind help on the subject of “Motor Mails” and “The Parcel Post,” and to my friend Mr. A. W. Edwards I am indebted for most valuable assistance in the writing of my chapters on “The Telegraph.” I have also to thank another friend, Mr. R. W. Hatswell, for advice and help in many directions.

My acknowledgments are due to Messrs Jarrold and Sons of Norwich and Warwick Lane, E.C., for their kind permission to include a schoolboy's essay on the postman in my chapter dealing with that official. The essay is to be found in a book entitled The Comic Side of School Life, by H. J. Barker.

The Post Office has many critics, friendly and unfriendly, but it counts its[counts its] friends in millions, and I have written this book with the belief that a closer knowledge of the Department with which we all have dealings will be acceptable.

EDWARD BENNETT.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE POST OFFICE

& ITS STORY

CHAPTER I
POSTBOYS AND MAIL COACHES

A schoolboy who was given the task of writing an essay on the Post Office used these words: “The Post Office contains the whole world's circumstances, or welfare, day after day, as a mother shuts all her chickens under her wings. A man would not reveal his very secreate words to his wife or to any one, but he trusts them to a weak envelope in the Post Office.” This boy was perhaps wiser than he knew. For there is no institution existing in the country which comes so near to the hearts and homes of the British people as the General Post Office. Created primarily for the despatch and delivery of letters, it has developed into a vast organisation which is at once the carrier of the people's correspondence and parcels, the people's bank, and the agency by which all communications by telegraph and telephone are conducted. To tell the story of that organisation, how from the smallest beginnings in the Middle Ages it developed into the Post Office of the present day, would be a delightful task, but my intention is rather to relate its modern triumphs and to deal with its history so far as it helps us to understand the position of things to-day.

It is usual, in telling the story of the Post Office, to go as far back as Greek, Roman, and Jewish times. In almost every book and article on the subject we are reminded that Ahasuerus sent letters into all provinces concerning his wife Vashti, and that Queen Jezebel has at least one urbane action to her credit in that she despatched the first recorded circular letter. Then we are reminded that Cicero and Pliny were accomplished correspondents, and that St. Paul wrote letters which have had a wide circulation. But these instances usually belong to the history of letter-writing and have little relation to our subject. It is obvious that so soon as letters began to be written in any nation they must have been despatched by some means or other to the persons for whom the communications were intended. Ancient history has many instances of posts specially created for the delivery of perhaps only one letter. The story of the Post Office can only properly begin at the time when the first efforts were made to systematise what was already a prevailing habit of the people.

The history of the British Post Office as a system can be divided into three periods. There was the age of the post-horses and postboys, extending from the time of the Tudors far into the eighteenth century. There was the age of the mail coaches, the romantic age of the General Post Office, full of stirring deeds and adventures. Indeed the title “His Majesty's Mails” would have accurately described the whole of the business transacted by the British Post Office during these centuries. Lastly there is the age in which we are living, the age of the mail train, which has produced a wide extension of the duties of the Department, and the despatch and delivery of letters is now only one of its activities. There is possibly another age in the near future of which we can already distinguish the dawn, that of the airship and aeroplane, but we are dealing in these pages with only accomplished facts.

There is little doubt that the first posts organised in this country were simply for the transmission of public despatches, and though from time to time attempts were made by private individuals to organise posts of their own, these efforts met with but little success, and in 1637 it was ordered by proclamation that no other messengers or foot posts were to carry letters except those employed by the King's Postmaster-General, unless to places untouched by the King's posts. This order marked the beginning of the monopoly which ever since has been in the hands of the Government.

The word “post” comes to us from the French; in early English records the carrier of the post is called a runner or a messenger. We assimilated the word under the Tudors, and the first man to be described as Master of the Posts was Brian Tuke, appointed by Henry VIII. in 1509. In this reign there was a service more or less regular between London and Berwick and between London and Calais. The Dover road is probably the oldest mail route in the kingdom. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries services were gradually extended to Scotland, Ireland, and the West of England.

The posts were slow and unreliable. The roads of this country were for several centuries in a wretched condition, and travelling was difficult and dangerous. The causeway or bridle-track ran down the middle of the road, while “the margin on either side was little better than a ditch, and being lower than the adjoining soil and at the same time soft and unmade, received and retained the sludge.” The authorities were chiefly concerned to preserve the causeway, for the mails were carried by runners or postboys on horseback. The maximum speed for the postboys allowed by the Master of the Posts was seven miles an hour: there was no authorised minimum, and the speed, including stoppages, rarely exceeded four miles an hour. Moreover the postboys were undisciplined and a source of infinite trouble to their employers. The postmaster on the other hand frequently considered that any horse was good enough to carry the mails, and the animals he supplied were a disgrace to the service. The temptations of the wayside inn often also explained the long delays. An official in the early part of the eighteenth century complained that “the gentry doe give much money to the riders whereby they be very subject to get in liquor which stops the males.”

The words, “Haste, Post, haste,” have been found on the backs of private letters written at the close of the fifteenth century, and this was no formal endorsement but an urgent appeal to the lazy postboy to hurry up. “Ride, villain, ride,—for thy life—for thy life—for thy life,” appeared also on letters with sketches of a skull and cross-bones or of a man hanging from a cross-bar. It was thought desirable to frighten the servant of the Government into the performance of his duties.

The towns on the route were bound to supply the horses for the King's posts. The postmasters in each town were the persons immediately responsible for this business, and it is interesting to know that one of the qualifications for the situation was the ability of the candidate to furnish a certificate under the hand and seal of the Bishop of the diocese that he was conformable to the discipline of the Church of England, and he was required to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper three months after admittance to office. The postmaster was frequently the innkeeper: he was the person best able to supply horses; and though his salary was small, the position was probably remunerative, as travellers were drawn to his house.

The Mail Coaches Leaving London.

In the early part of the nineteenth century one of the sights of London was the departure from St. Martin's le Grand every evening of the mail coaches bound for all parts of England.

But we must not forget the foot posts in the old days, or runners as they are usually called. In the year 1715 there was not a single horse post in Scotland, all the mails being conveyed by runners on foot. Cross posts were frequently undertaken by runners, and the runners were not extravagantly paid for their services. A post-runner travelled from Inverness to Lochcarron—a distance, across country, of about fifty miles—making the journey once a week, for which he was paid five shillings. Naturally there was much difficulty with them, and they were continually at the mercy of highwaymen. Moreover, in spite of the penalty of capital punishment being visited on those who robbed his Majesty's mails, the postman himself was a frequent offender.

The difficulties of travelling in the seventeenth century are illustrated by the fact that in 1626 nearly £60 was spent in setting up wooden posts along the highway and causeway, near Bristol, for the guidance of travellers and runners. A Government running post then existed from London to Bristol. There is a spirited description in Cowper's Task of the arrival of the mail which would have been applicable during the whole of the postboy period:—

“Hark, 'tis the twanging horn! O'er yonder bridge,

That with its wearisome but needful length

Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon

Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,

He comes the herald of a noisy world,

With spattered boots, strapped waist and frozen locks,

News from all nations lumbering at his back.

True to his charge, the close packed load behind,

Yet careless what he brings, his one concern

Is to conduct it to the destined inn,

And having dropped the expected bag, pass on.”

Such was the service with which our forefathers were more or less contented during the greater part of two centuries. At the end of the seventeenth century there were weekly posts to many parts of the country: there was a mail six days a week along the Kent road: at any place where the Court happened to be in residence a daily post was at once created, and during the season at Bath and Tunbridge Wells the visitors enjoyed the privilege of a daily despatch and delivery of letters.

It was not until late in the eighteenth century that any radical alteration in the system took place. For many years it had become a reproach against the Post Office that it had not kept pace with the travelling capacities and requirements of the time. What were called “Flying Coaches” had been established in the seventeenth century to many towns in the Kingdom, and while these conveyances were increasing in speed and comfort the Post Office was still satisfied with its four or five miles an hour. The slowness of the posts was in fact becoming intolerable to the people. The General Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland called the attention of the Postmasters-General to the slowness of the posts on the Great North Road. “Every common traveller,” they wrote, “passed the King's mail on the first road in the kingdom,” and complaints were made, generally by traders and professional men, that business was hampered by the backwardness of the Post Office.

To John Palmer, proprietor of the theatre at Bath, belongs the credit of the proposal to use the coach for the carriage of the mails. He was remorseless in his description of the system he wished to abolish. The correspondence, he said, “was entrusted to some idle boy without character mounted on a worn-out hack, who so far from being able to defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with one.” Palmer's duties carried him into many parts of the country, and he thought letters should be conveyed at the same pace at which it was possible to travel in a chaise. He submitted his plan to Pitt, who was Prime Minister, and this statesman gave his warm approval to a trial of the scheme. On the 2nd August 1784 the first mail coach started from Bristol, and so successful was the experiment that in the following year there were coaches running to all parts of the Kingdom. Then ensued a period of great activity on the part of the General Post Office. There was competition with the private coaches, and year after year there were attempts to make records and to accelerate the mails.

The mail-coaching period extended a little over fifty years, and it marked as great an advance on the service of the past as the mail train has since shown compared with the mail coach. For instance, in 1715 the time allowed for the mail between London and Edinburgh was six days. Eighty years later a great advance had taken place. In 1798 Lord Campbell relates: “I was to perform the journey by mail coach to Edinburgh, and was supposed to travel with marvellous velocity, taking only three nights and two days for the whole distance from London. But this speed was thought to be highly dangerous to the head, independently of all the perils of an overturn, and stories were told of men and women who, having reached London with such celerity, died suddenly of an affection of the brain. My family and friends were seriously alarmed for me and advised me at all events to stay a day at York to recruit myself.” The fares he mentions were £10 from Edinburgh to London; to York, £4, 15s.; and from York to London, £5.

In 1836 the speed of some of the mail coaches was nearly ten miles an hour including stoppages, and this was kept up over very long distances. From Edinburgh to London, a distance of 400 miles, the time allowed was forty-five and a half hours; from London to York, 197 miles, twenty hours; from London to Holyhead, 259 miles, twenty-seven hours. The time-bills of the old mail coaches are most interesting, and they show how complete was the organisation of the service. There was a column for the distance between each place, another column for the time allowed, and another column for the actual arrival and starting times. The numbers of the coach and the timepiece which it carried were recorded, and the delivery of the timepiece “safe” was always signed for at the conclusion of the journey.

The coachman, though not a Post Office servant—he was employed by the contractors—always wore a brilliant uniform; and the mail guard, an officer of the Postmaster-General, also arrayed in bright uniform, carried firearms. The mail guard had to see that time was kept, and especially that there was no delay in the time allowed for refreshments. The instructions to guards bring home to us the ways of the road a hundred years ago. At the beginning of the last century the chief superintendent of mail coaches was Thomas Hasker, an official of the Post Office. His instructions, written in homely language, seem to be instinct with a vitalising influence which was speeding up the whole system. What to him was the safety of mere passengers compared with the punctual delivery of his Majesty's mails? To the postmaster of Ipswich he wrote: “Tell Mr. Foster to get fresh horses immediately, and that I must see him in town next Monday. Shameful work—three hours and twenty minutes coming over his eighteen miles!” On the Exeter road the mail guards were instructed by him as follows: “You are not to stop at any place whatever to leave any letters at, but to blow your horn to give the people notice that you have got letters for them. Therefore if they do not choose to come out to receive them don't you get down from your dicky, but take them on to Exeter and bring them back with you on your next journey.” Again an instruction to the mail guards reads: “If the coachman go into a public-house to drink, don't you go with him and make the stop longer, but hurry him out.”

The halt for refreshments was always an annoying necessity to Hasker. A guard had attempted to hurry out the passengers as well as the driver. And the passengers had complained. “Sir,” wrote Hasker, “stick to your bill and never mind what passengers say respecting waiting overtime. Is it not the fault of the landlord to keep them so long? Some day when you have waited a considerable time (suppose five or eight minutes longer than is allowed by the bill), drive away and leave them behind.” We can imagine a guard acting on this instruction and losing his tips!

The guards were expected to be as regular as clock-pieces, but even Mr. Hasker had sometimes to reckon with them as human beings. “The superintendents,” he writes in another memorandum, “will please to observe that Mr. Hasker does not wish to be too hard on the guards. Such a thing as a joint of meat or a couple of fowls or any other article for their own family in moderation he does not wish to debar them from the privilige of carrying.” But he was against the guards assisting the poachers.

Even in those days Post Office servants were obliged to give written explanation of their misdeeds, and they occasionally scored against their fault-finders. A mail guard had been reported for impertinence by certain contractors who were notorious for the indifferent lights with which they supplied their coaches. The mail guard admitted his offence, “but,” he slyly added, “perhaps something may be said for the feelings of a guard that hears the continual complaints of passengers against bad lights and the disagreeable smell of stinking oil, especially when through such things the passengers withhold the gratuity which the guard expects.” There is some dignity in this way of putting the matter.

The mails were of course the first consideration on the coaches. The available room after the loading of the mails was given to passengers' luggage, and this had frequently to be reduced by the passenger himself before starting. The great trouble with the guards was the temptation to overload the coaches. A contributor to the Quarterly Review in 1837 said: “Yet notwithstanding the moral improvement of the drivers, the improved state of the high roads throughout the kingdom, stage-coach travelling is more dangerous than it was before owing to the unmerciful speed of the swift coaches and the unmerciful loads which are piled upon the others like Pelion upon Ossa, or suspended from them, wherever they can be hung on. 'Coachman,' said an outside passenger who was being driven at a furious rate over one of the most mountainous roads in England, 'have you no consideration for our lives and limbs?' 'What are your lives and limbs to me?' was the reply, 'I'm behind my time.'” Sometimes the driver himself suffered after a spell of bad weather which had rutted the roads. Mr. Hasker reported that “the York coachman and guard were both chucked from their seats going down to Huntingdon last journey, and coming up the guard is lost this morning, supposed from the same cause, as the passengers say he was blowing his horn just before they missed him.” These were strenuous days, and weather conditions, especially after a fall of snow, were formidable enemies to the timekeeping of the guards. Robberies of the mail were far less frequent than in the days of the post-horses, and the roads, thanks to the splendid efforts of the great engineers Telford and Macadam, were immensely improved, but snow and flood were still to be reckoned with. It was one of the sights of London to see the mail coaches start at night from the Swan with Two Necks and the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate Street. A small crowd was usually to be seen at Hyde Park Corner watching the westward-bound coaches go by on their night journey.

The great coaching event of the year was the procession of mail coaches which took place in London on the King's Birthday, and heading the procession was usually the oldest established mail, the Bristol coach. In 1834 there were twenty-seven coaches in the procession. At the start from Millbank “the bells of the churches rang out merrily, continuing their rejoicing peals till the coaches arrived at the General Post Office.” I quote from a book, Annals of the Road: “In the cramped interior of the vehicle were closely packed buxom dames and blooming lassies, the wives, daughters, or sweethearts of the coachmen or guards, the fair passengers arrayed in coal-scuttle bonnets and in canary-coloured or scarlet silk. But the great feature after all was that stirring note so clearly blown and well drawn out, and every now and again sounded by the guards and alternated with such airs as 'The Days when we went Gipsying,' capitally played on a key-bugle. Should a mail come late, the tune from a passing one would be, “Oh dear! what can the matter be?”

I have already spoken of the mail-coach era as the romantic age of the General Post Office. English literature and English art have drawn upon the real and legendary history of the period for much of their inspiration. Nobody has revealed to us with more vivacity the humours of the mail coach than Charles Dickens—did not Mr. Tony Weller drive a coach?—nobody has written of the glories of the mail coach with greater power than Thomas de Quincey. De Quincey has described one journey in particular which lives in our literature. The mail was carrying with it into the country districts the news of a great victory. “From eight P.M. to fifteen or twenty minutes later, imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard Street, where at that time and not at St. Martin's le Grand was seated the General Post Office. In what exact strength we mustered I do not remember, but from the length of each separate attelage we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On any night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicity—but more than all, the royal magnificence of the horses—were what might first have fixed the attention. Every carriage on every morning in the year was taken down to an official inspector for examination, wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps were all critically probed and tested.... But the night before us was a night of victory, and behold! to the ordinary display what a heart-shaking addition!—horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons.” Then De Quincey describes how in every village they pass through there are people waiting for the news; how the cheers are taken up all along the road, as the mail coach in the days before the telegraph carried the good tidings through the Kingdom. The coach bore not only letters but newspapers, and these were increasing every year. What a change from the time of the old postboys! Sir Walter Scott said that a friend of his remembered the letter-bag arriving in Edinburgh during the year 1745 with but one letter in it!

There is something quite tragic in the fact that at the very time when travelling by road had reached its perfection in this country as regards speed and punctuality, a new force was at work which was to overthrow the mail coach not gradually, but within a few years. On the introduction of the railway in any district the coach service collapsed almost immediately as a medium for carrying the mails. And the great main roads of the country were for thirty years or more almost abandoned except by the local traffic in the districts which they passed through. Telford, the great engineer, had only recently reconstructed the magnificent road which runs from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, which was to be the means of beating all records in the speeding up of the Irish mail, but the railway gave it the appearance of a white elephant. For a long time grass could be seen growing in places in the centre of the road. “The calamity of railways has fallen upon us,” said Macadam, the great engineer of the main roads.

There was undoubtedly an appeal to the spirit of romance and adventure in early Post Office methods. De Quincey tells us that when travelling by train to York he was not personally aware that he had been going forty or fifty miles an hour. But on a coach he knew he was going at a rollicking speed: “the sensibility of the horse uttering itself in the maniac light in his eye: we heard our speed: we saw it: we felt it as a thrilling, and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies.”

Then there was the fascination of the great high-way—the thin white line, sometimes straight, sometimes winding—which was human and alive in a way that a railway track can never be. Men were not then simply driven or shot into places; they drove through places; and they touched life at every point of the road.

The Post Office is, however, not administered by poets and artists, but by men of the type of Thomas Hasker. And to men like him the coming of the mail train was a matter for official rejoicing. For it meant the speeding up still further of his Majesty's mails.

CHAPTER II
THE PENNY POST

It would be unjust to the memory of a great postal reformer to say that George Stephenson was the real author of Penny Postage, but it is quite fair to submit that it was the coming of the mail train which made Sir Rowland Hill's reform the great success which it ultimately became. It is true Sir Rowland Hill worked out his scheme when the mail coaches were still running, and it was a part of his case that the reform could be carried through with existing methods of carrying the mails, but it is open to serious doubt whether he could have succeeded had not the vast possibilities of the railway as an agent of the Post Office been before the minds of the people of this country when the plan was being discussed in Parliament and in the country. That the coming of the mail train was a probability in Sir Rowland Hill's own mind and was an incentive to his efforts while he was working out his scheme, is suggested by a comparison of dates. Sir Rowland Hill's plan was published in 1837. In September 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened: in 1833 the London and Birmingham, now the London and North-Western, opened its first section, and by the year 1837 there were in existence the beginnings of the South-Eastern, the London and South-Western, the Great Western, and the Great Eastern Railways, all known at that date under much less ambitious titles. Mr. F. E. Baines, C.B., in his vivid and entertaining book, Forty Years at the Post Office, has described the death of the old and the birth of the new system on the Great North Road. As late as April 1838 the high-road held its traffic, but from the date of the opening from London of the first considerable section of the Birmingham railway the fate of the highway was settled, “for then began this fell opponent to sap the long traffic of the Great North Road.”

It is curious now to know that one of the objections raised to the mails going by railway was the doubt that trains could journey by night. No less a person than the President of the Society of Engineers at that time said, “If mails and passengers were conveyed, policemen would be required along the line during the night.” Policemen, indeed, were stationed on the Leeds and Selby line until the night train had passed. Other authorities were of opinion that the lines would have to be lit up throughout with gas or other lights.

The agitation for Penny Postage arose out of the excessive and unequal charges and the abuses which had grown up in order to evade the charges. The Post Office had achieved wonders during the early years of the nineteenth century in speeding up the mails and in the organisation of the service. But there had been no attempt during that time to change materially the system of charging letters and newspapers sent by post. The root idea at the back of the old system was payment by distance and on delivery of the posted packet. It is unnecessary to give a table of the different charges which were in existence; it is enough to supply only two illustrations. A single letter between London and Edinburgh or Glasgow cost 1s. 3½d. The average produce of a letter in 1837 was about 7d.

To a large proportion of the poorer people of this country the charges were an almost prohibitive burden. Weight, of course, was also a considerable factor in determining the rate, and there is an instance of a packet weighing 32 ounces which was sent from Deal to London and the postage was £6, four times as much as the charge for an inside place by the coach. A large amount of irregular carriage of letters was continually going on; and there were other means of evading the charges. There is the familiar instance of Coleridge, who, when wandering through the Lake District one day, saw a poor woman refuse a letter which the postman offered her. Coleridge, out of sympathy for the poor woman, paid the money she could not raise, but the letter when opened proved to be a blank sheet of paper not intended for acceptance but sent by her son, according to preconcerted agreement, as a sign that he was well. Smuggling in letters was practised almost openly, not only by private individuals but by large firms. A publisher and school agent openly boasted that he adopted evasions of the postal laws which enabled him to receive letters from Glasgow for 2d. on which the Post Office would have levied at least 1s. 1d. Out of every 236 private letters which he received, 169 came to him otherwise than by post. A man starting on a tour in Scotland arranged with his family a plan for informing them of his progress and state of health without putting them to the expense of postage. It was managed in this way. He carried with him a number of old newspapers, one of which he put into the post daily. The postmark with the date showed his progress, and the state of his health was shown by the selection of the names from a list previously agreed upon with which the newspaper was franked. Sir Rowland Hill told the story, and he said he remembered that the name of Sir Francis Burdett denoted “Vigorous health.”

Then there was the franking privilege, by means of which all letters franked by peers and members of Parliament went free. Members of Parliament sometimes signed franks by the packet and gave them to constituents and friends. A trade was actually carried on in franks by the servants of members of Parliament, and their practice was to ask their masters to sign the franks in great numbers at a time. Forgery of franks was a frequent offence. About seventy years ago an old Irish lady informed a Post Office servant that she seldom paid any postage for letters, and that her correspondence never cost her friends anything. The official asked her how she managed this. “Oh,” she said, “I just wrote 'Fred. Suttie' in the corner of the cover of the letter and then, sure, nothing more was charged for it.” She was asked, “Were you not afraid of being hanged for forgery?” “Oh, dear, no,” she replied, “nobody ever heard of a lady being hanged in Ireland, and troth I did just what everybody else did.”

The system of payment on delivery of a letter was the cause of perpetual delays and numerous frauds. When a postman was obliged to collect at every house the necessary postage, it was extremely difficult to regulate his rounds. The temptation to defraud the Post Office, his master, was also frequently yielded to by him.

A large amount of money was every year obviously being lost to the Post Office in these different ways. A public opinion was in existence that the charges of the Post Office were unjust and excessive, and the moral sense of the community was not always alive enough to recognise any wrong in dodging the Government.

Mail Coach and Train.

When railways were in their infancy part of the journey of a mail was sometimes performed by coach and part by train. At the point where the railway began the coach was placed on a truck, which was coupled to the train.

To put the matter briefly, the rate for a single inland letter in 1837 was 4d. for 15 miles, 6d. for 30 miles, 7d. for 50 miles, and so on up to 1s. for each additional hundred miles: in certain places only was there a local penny post, and in London there were twopenny and threepenny posts. Each person in the United Kingdom received on an average only five posted packets a year. This was the year when the change from mail coach to mail train was most marked. A mail was conveyed from London to Liverpool and Manchester in 16½ hours: the secret of the speed was that the mail was carried by coach from London to Birmingham, and there put on the railway which was open to Liverpool and Manchester. The last of the mail coaches, that from Norwich and Newmarket, arrived in London on the 6th January 1846.

The Reform Bill had been passed, a reforming Government was in power, and measures of social amelioration were being discussed in all quarters. Trade and commerce were making strides, the habit of travel was growing with the people, and the need for simpler and easier methods of communicating with one another was urgent. There was a grand opportunity for a postal reformer. And the need of the time brought forth the man.

There had been postal reformers before Rowland Hill. First of all in time and distinction was Witherings, who lived in the middle of the seventeenth century. He became Master of the Posts in 1637, and he introduced a far-reaching system of postal rates, which before had been extremely casual and excessive. He made the Post Office a paying concern. He created the Post Office as we know it to-day. Then there was Dockwra, who established a penny post for the London district which existed 120 years. Only in the price had this reform any relation to Sir Rowland Hill's scheme, which was based on the idea that a uniform charge should cover any distance travelled. Dockwra's system was of course limited to short distances. Another great name in Post Office history is Ralph Allen, the Postmaster of Bath in 1719, who organised a system of cross posts all over the country. And in the first chapter I mentioned the achievements of Palmer, who established the mail-coach service.

Rowland Hill was born in 1795 at Kidderminster, and he began life as a schoolmaster. Very early he showed great talents as an organiser: his bent was towards mathematics, and he became secretary of Gibbon Wakefield's scheme for colonising South Australia. In this capacity his attention was specially directed to the abuses of our postal system. He approached the study of the system as an outsider: indeed until after his reform had been carried he had not been inside the walls of the General Post Office. He collected statistics, and it was the discovery that the length of a letter's journey made no appreciable difference to the cost of that journey which led him to think of uniformity of rates. He showed, for instance, that the cost of the mail-coach service for one journey between London and Edinburgh was about £5 a day. He then worked out the average load of the mail at six hundredweight, the cost of each hundredweight being therefore 16s. 8d. Taking the average weight of a letter at a quarter of an ounce, the cost of carriage over the 400 miles was 1/36 part of a penny. Yet the actual postal charge was 1s. 3½d.

From the first the plan of Rowland Hill gained the support of the people, but he had to face a long and bitter opposition from the official chiefs of the Post Office and from the vested interests which were threatened by his action. Lord Lichfield, the Postmaster-General at the time, said, as an argument against the idea, that the mails would have to carry twelve times as much in weight as before, and therefore the cost would be twelve times the amount they paid. “The walls of the Post Office,” he exclaimed, “would burst, the whole area in which the building stands would not be large enough to receive the clerks and letters.” Increase of business would mean a loss, not a gain, and Lord Lichfield had not the optimism of the old Irishwoman who, when endeavouring to sell her fowls, exclaimed, “I lose on every fowl I sell, but thank the Lord I sell a lot.”

Sir Rowland Hill asked Lord Lichfield very pertinently whether the size of the building should be regulated by the amount of correspondence or the amount of correspondence by the size of the building.

One of the most curious arguments was that the British public would object to prepayment, that it was contrary to their habits and customs. There was no doubt something to be said for the idea that when you wrote a letter you had all the trouble, and you were conferring a benefit on your friend, who ought to be prepared to pay for it.

The plan triumphed. The Committee appointed to consider it recommended its adoption, and it was incorporated in the Budget of 1839. Lord Melbourne was the Prime Minister, and though not enthusiastic, was favourable. The strong feelings aroused in official circles are suggested by Lord Melbourne's remark after interviewing the Postmaster-General the day before the Bill was introduced into the House of Lords. “Lichfield has been here,” said Lord Melbourne. “Why a man cannot talk of penny postage without getting into a passion, passes my understanding.”

The Bill received the royal assent on the 17th August 1839, and after a preliminary experiment had been tried of a uniform rate of 1d. for London and 4d. for the rest of the country, in order to accustom the clerks to the system, a uniform rate of 1d. for letters not exceeding half an ounce was introduced on the 10th January. This was a busy day at post offices all over the country, and the opportunity was seized by hundreds of people to write letters to one another in honour of the occasion. About 112,000 packets were posted in London. A large number of letters were also written to Rowland Hill himself from all parts of the country, congratulating him and thanking him for his efforts. Tradesmen and business men were especially grateful for the Bill. Moreover the reform opened the doors of the Post Office to the poorer classes. The postman after 1840 was, it was said, “making long rounds through humble districts where heretofore his knock was rarely heard.”

Rowland Hill was appointed to a post at the Treasury in 1840, in order to superintend the introduction of his scheme. He retired, however, in 1842, after Lord Melbourne's Ministry went out of office. On the return of the Liberals to power in 1846 he was appointed one of the Secretaries to the Postmaster-General, and in the same year he was presented by the public with £13,360 in gratitude for his services. In 1854 he was made Chief Secretary of the Post Office, and in 1862 he received the honour of knighthood. When he retired from the Post Office in 1864 he received from Parliament a grant of £20,000, and he was also allowed to retain his full salary of £2000 a year as retiring pension. In 1864 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, and in 1879 he was granted the freedom of the City of London. He died in August of the same year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Many and great were the reforms introduced into the Post Office during Sir Rowland Hill's period of service as Secretary. In his letter of retirement addressed to the Lords of the Treasury in 1864, he gave an account of his stewardship in a statement entitled “Results of Post Office Reform.” If we quote largely from this document it will be to show what Sir Rowland Hill claimed to have done, and it will also help the reader to understand from his own experience how far the Post Office has advanced since Sir Rowland Hill's day. First of all, Sir Rowland claimed “a very large reduction in the rates of postage on all correspondence, whether inland, foreign, or colonial. As instances in point it may be stated that letters are now conveyed from any part of the United Kingdom to any other part—even from the Channel Islands to the Shetland Isles—at one-fourth of the charge previously levied on letters passing between post towns only a few miles apart, and that the rate formerly charged for the slight distance—viz. fourpence—now suffices to carry a letter from any part of the United Kingdom to any part of France, Algeria included.”

Then Sir Rowland claimed “the almost universal resort to prepayment of correspondence, and that by means of stamps,” the establishment of the book post, the reduction in the fee for registered letters from 1s. to 4d., a reduction in the price of money orders combined with a great extension and improvement of the system, a more frequent and more rapid communication between the Metropolis and the larger provincial towns, as also between one provincial town and another, a vast extension of the rural distribution, and many other facilities for the public, including the establishment of Post Office Savings Banks. He goes on to say: “The expectations I held out before the change were that eventually under the operation of my plans the number of letters would increase fivefold, the gross revenue would be the same as before, while the net revenue would sustain a loss of about £300,000. The actual figures show that the letters have increased not fivefold but nearly eight and a half fold, that the gross revenue, instead of remaining the same, has increased by about £1,500,000; while the net revenue, instead of falling £300,000, has risen more than £100,000.”

This was written more than twenty years after the introduction of penny postage, but it must not be supposed that the reform was an immediate financial success. The last complete year (1839) of the old system of high rates yielded a profit of £1,659,000. The first complete year of the new system produced only £500,789. But in two years the number of chargeable letters passing through the post had increased from 72,000,000 per annum to 208,000,000, and in a few years the profit of 1839 had been passed.

Sir Rowland was a fighter and reformer to the last. Like all men who accomplish great things, he was exceedingly self-confident and impatient of opposition. The official mind works from precedent to precedent, and Sir Rowland proposed to make all things new. Effort after effort was made to push him aside without any lasting success. He was dismissed from the Treasury in the second year of penny postage, at a time when its very success seemed to depend on friends, not foes, directing the organisation. Thomas Hood wrote to him: “I have seen so many instances of folly and ingratitude similar to those you have met with that it would never surprise me to hear of the railway people, some day, finding their trains running on so well, proposing to discharge the engines.” It was more in obedience to the feeling of the country than to any liking for the reformer that the Government of the day appointed him to the Post Office four years after his dismissal from the Treasury.

Sir Rowland was always perhaps a little uncomfortable as a Post Office chief. He was in the midst of men against whom he had been working for years, and there are many stories in existence of his caustic way of dealing with his staff. Anthony Trollope, who was in the service of the Post Office at the time, ventured one day to point out to Sir Rowland that the language in a certain report, if literally construed, might be held to mean what was not intended. Sir Rowland replied: “You must be aware, Mr. Trollope, that a phrase is not always intended to bear a literal construction. For instance, when I write to one of you gentlemen, I end my letter with the words, 'I am, Sir, your obedient servant,' whereas you know I am nothing of the sort.” Indeed nobody could have used this official phrase with less sincerity than Sir Rowland Hill.

But I like best this story of Rowland Hill in the evening of his days, after he had retired from the Post Office. It is pleasant to think of him still absorbed in the subject which had made his name a household word. His daughter, in her biography of him, tells us that whenever he met any foreign visitors, he was bound sooner or later to ask them about postal matters in their own country. He met Garibaldi at a banquet, and the inevitable question was put to him, but Sir Rowland could not work up any interest on the part of the Italian statesman in the matter. Sir Rowland complained to his brother of his disappointment in Garibaldi; he evidently thought him an over-rated man, especially in the matter of intelligence, and the brother replied, “When you go to heaven I foresee that you will stop at the gate to inquire of St. Peter how many deliveries they have a day, and how the expense of postal communication between heaven and the other place is defrayed.”

It was of course this absorption in his subject which gave him the victory. Penny Postage was probably inevitable, even if there had been no Rowland Hill in this country. Railways alone made a change in the postal service necessary, but it is to the lasting credit of Sir Rowland that he obtained the reform years before it would otherwise have been achieved. He carried the reform by assault, and the nation might have waited long years before the vested interests in the old system had given way to the needs of the nation. “Loss to the revenue” was the argument chiefly directed against Sir Rowland Hill's scheme: it is the argument still used when further concessions are asked for by the public. The reply that the Post Office exists for the convenience of the public is not always appreciated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being. He looks to the Post Office to provide him annually with a substantial sum of money. Perhaps the complete vindication of Sir Rowland Hill lies in the fact that roughly speaking the whole of the annual surplus from the Post Office at the present day is derived from the writer of the penny inland letter.

CHAPTER III
LOMBARD STREET AND ST. MARTIN'S
LE GRAND

Nothing will give the reader a better idea of the advances made by the Post Office during the last two hundred years than a comparison of the various buildings which have from time to time been the home of the General Post Office in London. The story of the buildings is one of continued growth and expansion right down to the present day. The General Post Office is always becoming too small and inconvenient for its work. And there has scarcely been any period when it was not necessary to rent overflow premises to meet the growing needs of the times.

As I have already pointed out, the system of posts in the time of the Tudors was used chiefly for the conveyance of Government despatches. The Master of the Posts was a Court official, and there was no need for a public office in London. The extension of postal business, especially between London and the Continent, required, however, in the later years of the sixteenth century, an office in the City of London, and according to Stow's Survey a post office was first established in Cloak Lane, near Dowgate Hill. This is the hill on which Cannon Street Station now stands, and it was also the centre of Roman London. The necessity of the foreign post was one of the reasons for the creation of the office, and it is a link between this time and our own that the continental mail train now starts from Cannon Street Station. Scarcely anything is known of this post office except the bare fact of its existence.

From Dowgate Hill the General Post Office was removed, at some date in the first half of the seventeenth century, to the sign of the Black Swan in Bishopsgate. These were most probably what we now call licensed premises: at any rate Pepys has recorded that on one occasion he went “to the musique-meeting at the Post Office.” Then happened the Great Plague of 1664-1665, and we have the benefit of a report from the senior officer as to the way in which the visitation affected the Post Office. “That dureing the late dreadfull sickness when many of the members of the office desert the same and that betweene 20 and 30 of the members dyed thereof, your petitioner, considering rather the dispatch of your Majesty's service than the preservation of himself and family, did hazard them all, and continued all that woefull tyme in the said office to give dispatch and conveyance to your Majesty's letters and pacquetts, and to preserve your revenue arising from the same.” The writer was evidently a pushful official who expected recognition of his services, and in yet a fuller petition for a reward for keeping the Post Office open during the Plague he begs that he may have an order to the Commissioners of Prizes to deliver to him some brown and white sugar granted to him by His Majesty from the ship Espérance of Nantes, condemned as a prize at Plymouth. I hope he obtained his sugar: in our days we should have made him a K.C.B. Then came the Great Fire of 1666, and the Post Office was burnt out. In an old newspaper of 1666 may be seen this advertisement: “The General Post Office is for the present held at the Two Black Pillars in Bridges Street over against the Fleece Tavern, Covent Garden, till a more convenient Place can be found in London.”

As soon as the City was rebuilt “the more convenient Place” was found in a house in Lombard Street, and by the year 1680, if not earlier, the General Post Office moved into its new premises. The house had been the private residence of Sir Robert Viner, a city dignitary who had been Lord Mayor of London, and it was rented from him. This was the home of the Head Office for nearly 150 years. Comparatively little is known of the history of this office, and a writer to whom I am indebted for much of my information writes justly “that one cannot escape a feeling half of wonder and half of shame that so few records should remain of an office where possibly Milton and certainly Dryden posted their letters.” But what we do know about this office is exceedingly interesting.

There were officials occupying positions which go by the same name as at the present day. There were the Postmasters-General, a dual office which in the early part of the eighteenth century was non-political, and the Postmasters-General were entitled to live at the General Post Office and to have free coals, candles, and tinware. There was a Receiver-General with a salary of £150, an Accountant-General with a salary of £200, a Comptroller of the Inland Office, six Clerks of the Roads, a Secretary to the Postmaster-General, and a Postmaster-General's Clerk. Positions which are not known in these days were Windowman and Alphabet Keeper—this man handed out letters to callers, and his other title probably referred to the pigeon-holes in which the letters were kept. There was a “Mail Maker”—a maker of leather bags for letters—the Stores Department in its early beginnings—and there were three Letter Bringers. One official known as the Ratcatcher received £1 a year for his useful services, another man described as a “Scavenger” received £3, 6s. a year and was in charge of the drainage, which was probably below suspicion.

But perhaps the difference between these times and our own is most directly marked by two entries in the accounts of the period. There were two allowances of £30 each for beer for clerks and sorters, and once a year at least £20 was allowed for a feast for the resident clerks. This was usually held on the King's Birthday, and “the musique-meeting” at the Post Office which Pepys attended may have been one of these feasts. In an old newspaper of 1708 there is an account of one of the feasts, and the text of one of the songs is given. The writer says: “Some of the songs were made up as letters, and the Postboy blowing his horn rode into the Hall to the surprise of all that were present and distributed his letters from Parnassus. Indeed the people might very well be surprised, it being a country where hardly any one could think we held any correspondence. At the same time that the boy sounded his horn, Mr. —— rose up and sung the song.” The author of the particular song, extracts from which we give, was stated to hold “a very genteel place in the General Post Office relating to the Foreign letters, being master of several languages.” Truth, however, compels us to state his salary was only £40 a year. Here are two verses of “A Song Performed at the Post Office Feast on Her Majesty's Birthday 1708. Written by Mr. Motteux, set by Mr. Leveridge:”—

“Room, room for the Post, who with zeal for the Queen

Like Pegasus flies, tho' his scrub is but lean,

Tho' dirty or dusty,

Tho' thirsty yet trusty,

The restless knight-errant,

While Anna's his warrant,

(True knight of the road) of high honours can boast,

The greatest of subjects give way to the post.

Chorus

With a twee-we-we, twee-we-we think it no scorn,

Cits, soldiers, and courtiers give way to the horn.

The secrets we hand, of the fair and the great,

And join, spite of distance, each region and state,

All nations and quarters,

Dutch, Irish, and Tartars,

The bonny North Briton,

And more I can't hit on.

Of all our Queen's subjects none serve her so fast,

For still in her service we're all in post haste.

Chorus

With a twee-we-we, twee we-we, &c.”

In a little book entitled A Picture of London in 1808 I have found the following delightful passage relating to the London Post Office: “It is the most important spot on the surface of the globe. It receives information from the Poles.” This is rather wide of the mark, seeing that both Poles were then undiscovered. The next statement may have been nearer the truth: “It distributes instructions to the Antipodes.” And we seem to get out of our depth farther on: “It is in the highest degree hitherto realised the seat of terrestrial perceptions and volition. It is the brain of the whole earth.” But all this tall language was used for a purpose. The object was to draw attention to a public scandal and to bring before the notice of people the miserable accommodation which the State provided for her wise and brainy servants. For the writer asks us to look on the other side of the picture. “The building is hidden in a narrow alley, misshapen even to deformity, and scarcely accessible to the very mail coaches which collect there for their nightly freights.”

It was indeed the introduction of the mail coach which made the Lombard Street office unsuitable for its purpose. The coaches were obliged to stand in the street itself, and only two or three could be in place at the same time. Various sites were suggested for the new office, and as increased space was the great necessity, it was decided to clear away the rookeries which existed in the liberty of St. Martin's and to build there. The district had deteriorated lamentably since the days of the College of St. Martin's le Grand which stood there for several centuries, and which has an interesting and distinguished history. The district has older associations still, and during the clearing of the sites for the Post Office buildings many interesting remains of the Roman occupation of London were found. In 1818 a very ancient vaulted chamber, built in part of Roman materials, which had been previously concealed beneath the more modern houses, was exposed to view. Sections of the Roman wall have also been discovered, and many other remains, probably of a later date, built out of Roman materials. The College of St. Martin's le Grand possessed the privilege of sanctuary, and this fact may have explained the evil repute of the neighbourhood. It became a rogues' quarter, and great must have been the relief of Londoners when a statute of James I. abolished all privileges of sanctuary. Yet the inhabitants seem to have been able to retain many privileges. They retained their own court for the trial of minor offences: they could keep the place as filthy as they liked until it became a breeding-place for the plague, which regularly broke out at intervals during the seventeenth century, and they appointed their own police or watchmen.

St. Martin's le Grand

A street at St. Martin's le Grand before the clearances were made for the General Post Office. The district originally possessed the privilege of sanctuary, and was, in the early part of the nineteenth century, one of the most disreputable localities in London.

The site was purchased by the City with duties levied on coals brought into London. And the Government obtained the property from the City at a cost of £240,000.

It is amusing to notice, in the report of the Committee which considered the question of the new building, how afraid its members were that in the desire for beauty of style the question of utility would be neglected. Post Office architects have seldom needed this caution. “Ornamental decorations introduced for the mere purpose of embellishment, and unconcerned with utility, while they prodigiously enhance the cost, rarely produce an effect in point of elegance and grandeur which can compensate for it.” And yet again, “an office for the receiving and delivery of letters which should be concealed behind a front fit for a palace, and flanked by triumphal arches, would present an incongruity no less offensive to good taste than inconsistent with rational economy.” Here speaks the voice which in the early years of the nineteenth century produced so many evil results in street architecture.

The architect of the new building was Mr. Smirke, and it is certainly to his credit that he was not unduly influenced by the recommendations of the Committee. The site covered two acres, and the clearance displaced a thousand inhabitants. It swept away numbers of alleys and courts, and when the building itself was opened in 1829 it at once took its place as a great addition to the architectural beauty of the City of London. Everybody who has visited London must be familiar with at least the exterior of the building. It was designed to meet the needs of the mail coach service, yet no sooner was the building opened than the sound of railways began to be heard in the land. But for nearly ten years the mail coaches started from St. Martin's le Grand, and traces of this era can be seen in the drive which goes round the building with an open courtyard at the north end. The Bull and Mouth Yard where the coaches were made up was opposite.

One of the features of the building was a lofty central hall, and through it was a public thoroughfare to Foster Lane. The letters were posted in this hall, and the scene at six o'clock was always one of great animation. Little by little as the needs of the service became different and more pressing, the internal architecture of St. Martin's le Grand was altered almost beyond recognition. The great hall was closed, and the space thrown into the Sorting Office. “No indignity that can possibly be heaped on the poor old thing can add to its disfigurement,” wrote Mr. R. W. Johnston, an admirer of the original building. And he added: “The place has been practically disembowelled, and what has been taken out of the bottom has been placed on the top, with the result that an absolutely pure design has been converted into a nondescript of the most extraordinary character.” This was inevitable from the point of view of utility, but the constant patching up could not go on indefinitely. In later years the letter and newspaper branches of the service monopolised the whole of the old building, but in its early days it took in practically the whole of the Head Office. Here worked Colonel Maberley, who had been Sir Rowland Hill's chief official opponent; here worked later the two men together rather uncomfortably, and with little in common.

Just as in the case of Lombard Street, the story of St. Martin's le Grand would be incomplete without some attempt to realise the human elements which went to make up its life during the years of its prime. The Post Office has always suffered in reputation both in the eyes of the public and of the Treasury from the accepted idea that its duties are mainly confined to sorting letters. Gentlemen high up in the Secretarial Department have sometimes been asked seriously by their friends whether they had noticed some particular letter in the course of its transmission through the post. The public scarcely realise the amount of financial and technical knowledge required on the part of men who have to organise the service, to enter into contracts with railways and steamship companies, or to preserve the discipline of the vast staff in town and country. This was the kind of work done at St. Martin's le Grand, and the men of the early and mid-Victorian period were workers in the full sense of the word.

The old riddle, “Why are Civil Servants like the fountains in Trafalgar Square?” with the answer, “Because they play from ten to four,” has never applied to the Post Office. The needs of the service forbade any slackness, and punctuality has always been a realised ideal. West End offices have frequently looked on aghast at the zeal and industry of St. Martin's le Grand. I remember a post office clerk telling me one day of an official call he had to make at the Colonial Office in the days before Mr. Chamberlain put new life into that Department. “I arrived there at a quarter to eleven, and found the door shut, and as I was hunting around to find the visitors' bell, a milkman bore towards me and said, 'I don't think they're up yet, sir,' so I took a turn round the Park and at ten minutes past eleven I went back again, and finding the charwoman had just started work, I explained to her my errand, and asked her to tell the Secretary of State that I was on the mat. ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I don’t[‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I don’t] think anybody's come yet. We don't begin till eleven.’[eleven.’] But I merely ventured to point out that the Horse Guards’ clock was nearly a quarter past eleven. Then this pampered menial drew herself up, and with a look of scorn, replied, daresay[daresay] you are right, young man, but the gentlemen in this orfis don’t bind theirselves to be ’ere on the stroke of the hour.’[hour.’] That was the difference between the City and the West End; the gentlemen of the Post Office bound themselves to be at their posts at the hour, and to come early and to stay late.

Officials have worked at St. Martin's le Grand who were men of letters in two senses of the word. Anthony Trollope began his career as a post office clerk here, and the insistence on punctuality was his chief difficulty. He could not be punctual, and though he said he could write official letters rapidly, correctly, and to the purpose, the steady, young, punctual but much less efficient clerk was usually preferred before him. But Trollope was a very difficult official to deal with. He says in his Autobiography: “I have no doubt that I made myself disagreeable. I know that I sometimes tried to be so.” And yet for many years he was an exceedingly useful public servant, and was frequently engaged on special work for the department. An old colleague of his has described Trollope's method of doing his official work. “I have seen him slogging away at papers at a stand-up desk with his handkerchief stuffed into his mouth and his hair on end, as though he could barely contain himself.” He was very overbearing and intolerant in his manner, and was certainly not popular at the Post Office. There is on record, however, one occasion when he must have been unusually pleasant. He was the clerk in waiting one evening, and a message came to him that the Queen of Saxony wanted to see the night mails sent out by the mail coaches. This was one of the sights of London at the time, and Trollope acted the part of showman. When he had finished he was handed half-a-crown by one of the suite. This, he said, was a bad moment for him.

“Why don't you pay an old woman sixpence a week to fret for you?” he said to a postmaster who came to him with grievances. The postmaster left his presence with an additional grievance that Mr. Trollope was a brute.

Sir Rowland Hill might have agreed with this postmaster, for he could never get on with Trollope. We can scarcely be surprised. In his Autobiography, Trollope says of Sir Rowland that “it was a pleasure to me to differ from Sir Rowland Hill on all occasions, and looking back now, I think that in all such differences I was right.” Such a confession explains much of Trollope's unpopularity. There is no place where omniscience is less appreciated than in a Government office. Mr. O'Connor Morris, who was the Postmaster-General of Jamaica when Trollope visited the island in 1858, has left on record this judgment on the novelist's official conduct to him. “I believe Mr. Trollope had a thousand good qualities of head and heart, which were disguised in a most unfortunate and repelling manner.”

Edmund Yates also worked at St. Martin's le Grand, and he has described very graphically the kind of scene which usually took place when Trollope was interviewing Sir Rowland Hill. “Trollope would bluster and rave and roar, blowing and spluttering like a grampus, while the pale old gentleman opposite him, sitting back in his arm-chair and regarding his antagonist furtively under his spectacles, would remain perfectly quiet until he saw his chance, and then deliver himself of the most unpleasant speech he could frame in the hardest possible tone.”

There is a good story told of Yates himself. The Post Office Library was founded in 1858. There were many unredressed grievances among the clerical staff in those days, and when Mr. Rowland Hill undertook to give a lecture on astronomy to the Library subscribers, a practical if somewhat unfair opportunity seemed given to the clerks to bring their necessities before the chief. Mr. Hill asked for a shilling from his audience in order to illustrate an eclipse. He wished to pass it between the eye and a lamp. Busy fingers went diving into purses and pockets for moons. After two or three minutes waiting Mr. Hill beheld an array of blank faces and shaking heads, and he naturally looked puzzled. Then Edmund Yates arose. “I beg to explain, sir, that we are all very anxious to try the experiment which you suggest, but unfortunately we cannot find a shilling among us.” On the whole we may wonder what type of man Sir Rowland Hill found the most trying to deal with at the Post Office, the man of genius or the hidebound official.

In the days before competitive examinations and the abolition of patronage, there were more “characters” and “individualities” in the Post Office service than in these degenerate days. St. Martin's le Grand has had its share of officials who were men of the world, men of letters, and eccentric men. Frank Ives Scudamore, the author of Day Dreams of a Sleepless Man and much light verse, will always be remembered at the Post Office as a chief who did everything magnificently and on the grand scale: even in his failures he was great. And everybody who worked under him seemed to catch his enthusiasm for work.

But we must leave these personal matters and get back to the buildings. With the acquirement of the telegraphs by the State, and the necessity for devoting an entire building to the London Postal Service, the erection of another big office became imperative. The building known as G.P.O. West was completed in 1873, and for a long time it provided accommodation for the Secretary's, Solicitor's, Engineer-in-chief's, and Central Telegraph Offices, together with a portion of the Receiver and Accountant Generals' Department.

In twenty years the need for extension became again pressing, and in 1895 the huge building known as G.P.O. North was opened. G.P.O. West was then given up to the Telegraph Service, and all the administrative offices were transferred to G.P.O. North. But these three immense buildings even in 1894 were by no means large enough to hold all the activities of the Post Office. The Parcel Post, the Money and Postal Order Departments, and the Post Office Savings Bank Department were all housed in other parts of the City of London, and there were overflow premises in streets near St. Martin's le Grand.

In this chapter we are only concerned with St. Martin's le Grand, and it is not without regret for the severance of old ties that Londoners witnessed in 1910 the closing of Smirke's fine post office, and the migration of the staff to King Edward's Building, henceforth to be the home of the London Postal Service. Not a hundred years had passed since the move from Lombard Street, and the Post Office had become a small nation of itself. And this body of men and women has for years regarded St Martin's le Grand as the metropolis of their nation, and when they have stood under the big clock which has seen so many mails arrive and depart, they have felt that they were citizens of no mean city.

CHAPTER IV
KING EDWARD'S BUILDING

In every big town the post office is now one of the most important, while in some cases it is the most imposing of all the local public buildings. Here the head postmaster is to be found, and here all the post office business of the district is administered. People have often asked me, “Who is the postmaster of London?” They understand that the Postmaster-General and the Secretary have their offices at St. Martin's le Grand, but it is evident that these gentlemen are the supreme heads of the whole Post Office system, and are not specially concerned with London. “Is there not a postmaster of London, just as there is one of Birmingham and of Liverpool?” The answer is that there is a London head postmaster, but his official title is Controller of the London Postal Service. Until a comparatively recent period he shared a building with the Postmaster-General and Secretary, and the dignity of his office was perhaps a little obscured by the presence of the greater luminaries. Latterly, however, the old building at St. Martin's le Grand became practically the chief London post office, and all the big administrative departments moved to the other side of the road. But old associations take long to die, and I do not think that even Post Office servants have ever looked upon the old building as belonging specially to London; they have thought of it still as a portion of the big administrative department which has monopolised so much of the district of St. Martin's le Grand.

It is not therefore merely a fancy of my own that for the first time London possesses in King Edward's Building a head post office which is worthy of her, and which bears the same relations to the London district as the post office in Liverpool does to the Liverpool district. London is the biggest city in the world; it now possesses the biggest post office in the world. That is as it should be. It is London's chief office in a way that the old building never was. It has been built for London, and is fitted up entirely to meet the needs of London. Nobody who knows the old building could have said this of the inconvenient and out-of-date structure which was built for other times and other purposes.

The site of the new building covers ground which up to the beginning of the thirteenth century was one of the numerous vacant spaces in the north-west portion of the area enclosed by the Roman wall which went round the City of London. This wall, it is conjectured, was built between A.D. 350 and A.D. 369, only about half a century before Rome withdrew her legions from Britain. It belongs, therefore, to the later period of the Roman occupation of this country. A large section of this wall was discovered by the workmen when digging the foundations for King Edward's building, and it extended for about 400 feet. Most of this had to be destroyed and carried away, but a fine bastion at the western angle has been preserved, and can be inspected by visitors. The wall is built in the usual Roman method, and is composed of Kentish ragstone from the Maidstone district. In the ditch which ran outside the wall were discovered a number of Norman and mediæval relics, and within the wall many Roman remains. The section of wall laid bare by the workmen was found underneath the playground and dining-hall of Christ's Hospital, known to us all as the Bluecoat School. The school removed from the building some years ago into the country, and the site was then sold and divided between Bartholomew's Hospital and the General Post Office.

The foundation stone of the new post office was laid by King Edward VII. on the 10th October 1905, and it was opened for public business on the 7th November 1910. The building is constructed of Portland cement concrete, strengthened by bars of steel, on what is known as the Hennibique reinforced concrete system, and it is the largest building that has yet been erected on this plan. It is an all-in-one-piece building, fashioned out of Thames ballast and cement. Not a single steel joist has been used in the centre construction. Barge after barge from Rotherhithe landed at Blackfriars the mud chalk and gravel which dredgers had scooped up in the lower reaches of the Thames. This ballast was carted direct to King Edward Street, passed through a machine which sorts the stones into various sizes, and then turned into liquid concrete by another wonderful machine which mixes sand, cement, and stones together at a rapid rate. The steel rods and bars interlacing one another extend in a network throughout the building like the skeleton of an animal, while the entire system is embedded in a perfectly connected sheath of concrete. The great feature in this system is the immense reduction in wall thickness. The effect is seen in the lightness and airy nature of the building; one's first impression is that it is certainly not built for eternity, as somebody said the granite structures of Aberdeen are.

But this is an illusion: the concrete increases in strength as time goes on, and the passing years only make the building stronger and more capable of resisting weather and the strain of the loads which it has daily to carry.

Wattles and mud were the building materials of our remote ancestors, and it has been said that we are reverting to the old method, only British mud has given place to British concrete, concrete of Thames ballast and Portland cement. The outer walls are only 7 inches thick, but the frontages to King Edward Street and Newgate Street are faced with Portland stone with granite plinths. To see fully the effect of the reinforced concrete in building one has to examine the back elevations, where there are no stone facings. But even with its false but ornamental front the building has nothing of “the solemn and spacious Greek charm of the delightful old front in St. Martin's le Grand.” The Post Office gains in spaciousness and utility what it loses in architectural beauty.

The building consists at present of two parts, a block facing King Edward Street which contains, on the ground floor, the new Public Office, and on the four upper floors the offices of the Controller of the London Postal Service. The other is a much larger block containing the main sorting offices both for foreign and colonial correspondence, and for the E.C. or City district.

The actual foundation is only 3 feet in depth, and not one of the floors is more than 3½ inches in thickness.

Between the two blocks is a loading and unloading yard for the mails, and on the west side of the second block is a large yard and unoccupied space left for such future additions as may be required for growth of work. The Post Office is learning from experience the value of the margin, and that there is no finality in its advances. It is in this open space below the level of the ground where is to be found the section of the Roman wall which I have described.

The public office is the central office in London for the transaction by the public of all classes of postal and telegraphic business. It is the largest public post office in the country, and measures 152 feet by 52 feet, with a counter running the whole length. The inside walls are lined throughout with marble; a green Irish marble being used for the dado, pilasters, panels, door architraves, and the front of the counter, and a light Italian marble for the remainder. The pilasters and piers have bases and capitals of bronze, and bronze is also used for the counter edges, table edges, and electric light fittings.

All this is unaccustomed magnificence for a London post office, and he must be a man singularly deficient in a sense of the fitness of things who can enter these marble halls and boldly go up to the bronze-edged counter and ask for a halfpenny stamp.

Under the public office is the posting room, into which falls the correspondence posted in the big letter-boxes by the public. It is interesting to stand in this room and watch the postal packets pouring down the shoot from the letter-boxes. There begins the first stage of the travels of a letter. Everything that machinery and science can do to economise labour and to facilitate delivery and despatch is brought into play. Sorting is simply continual subdivision, and it is interesting to watch the journeyings of the letters from the moment of posting in the big letter-box. There is very little carriage from one place to another by hand. Cable conveyors and band conveyors, worked much on the same principle as the moving platforms we have all seen at exhibitions and great emporiums, carry the letters from point to point until each letter finds its appointed bag, and is either taken out of the building by the City postman or deposited in a mail cart which takes it to the railway station or district office.

A band conveyor takes the letters from the posting room which are addressed to places in London or abroad, to the ground floor of the building in baskets, and the empty baskets are sent down by a return band. The correspondence for the provinces, which is dealt with at a large sorting office at Mount Pleasant, nearly a mile away, is put into bags, and another band conveyor takes these bags to the departure platform at the west end of the sorting office. There is a third band conveyor suspended from the ceiling of the same floor, which is for the conveyance of bags of mails from the east to the west of the sorting office.

The London letters and those for abroad are conveyed to the ground floor, which is occupied by the E.C. district sorting office. The letters are brought to the eastern end of the immense room and with them are bags of letters which have arrived from provincial offices and abroad, amounting altogether to upwards of five millions weekly.

The posted letters are arranged in order for stamping on what are called facing tables, on which running bands are placed, and at the end of these tables are electric stamping machines which can obliterate the stamps on the letters up to a rate of 700 or 800 per minute. Then the letters pass into two main divisions. On the northern[northern] side correspondence for all parts of London, except the E.C. district, is dealt with, and direct despatches are made to every chief district and sub-district delivery office in London for every delivery during the day. On the southern side the postmen prepare the correspondence for the twelve daily deliveries in the E.C. district. Upwards of 1400 postmen are attached to this office. A noticeable feature of the work of sorting is that the letters travel from east to west always, and at the west end is the platform from which bags for other offices are despatched.

The first floor is entirely devoted to the treatment of correspondence for the Colonies and abroad. About 900 officers of all grades are employed upon the work and about 400,000 articles are despatched weekly. The work is brought up by lifts from the eastern platform.

The principle here is also continual subdivision, and there are upwards of 1000 different post offices for which direct bags are made up nightly in the Foreign Section. A striking feature of this section to the visitor is the varied colouring of the big mail bags intended for over-sea mails. If the foreign sailor cannot read he can appreciate colour, and he will know the destination of a mail bag by its colour.

A band conveyor from east to west conveys the bags from the Foreign Section to the top of a special shoot at the west end of the building, whence they are shot down to the departure platform on the ground floor.

All the letters everywhere are “stepping westward,” and everything goes even on the busiest night with something like the regularity of clock work.

Photo

Clarke & Hyde

The Blind Section.

These men are dealing with badly and insufficiently addressed letters. They have directories in front of them, and every effort is made to put the letters into circulation again.

An interesting feature of the Sorting Office is the Blind Section. Here at all hours of the day you will find a row of men sitting at a long table over which is a bookshelf full of up-to-date directories, guides, and other manuals of topographical information. These men are doing their best to put in the way of delivery the imperfectly and indistinctly written packets. If they fail the letter goes to the Returned Letter Office to submit to more expert treatment. Experience counts for much with these men. The badly spelt addresses are perhaps the easiest of these puzzles. “Saintlings, Hilewite,” is at once decided to be “St. Helens, Isle of Wight” “Has bedallar—such” even a schoolboy would recognise as Ashby-de-la-Zouch; but it requires the specialist in puzzles addresses to arrange for the delivery of a letter addressed simply as 25th March to Lady Day, the wife of the judge of that name.

Whenever we speak of the activities of London we have to deal with big figures, and comparative tables of growth and development are a little wearisome to the modern reader, simply because they have lost all the charm of unexpectedness. We know there must be a huge staff employed at the Head Office in London; the statement that 20,000 is the actual number leaves us unaffected: perhaps even we guessed it was 40,000. We are fully prepared to hear that billions of letters are delivered in the City of London weekly; we are even a little disappointed when we know that up to the present the average is about 5½ millions. If we have been interested in the new building itself and what it is expected to bear in the way of work, we may at least like to know that the total weight of the weekly correspondence passing through its walls is about 366 tons.

I expect that if we were asked in a newspaper competition to state how many post offices and posting receptacles there were in London, we should make a wild guess and say perhaps 15,000 or even 20,000. The actual number is 4650. The fact is the average human mind is incapable of realising facts when stated in thousands. Only very experienced men can tell the approximate numbers at a Hyde Park meeting or a royal procession. Post office numbers are bewildering; we simply cannot realise that they are human life expressed in terms of figures. In order to help our limited human faculties, Mr. J. Holt Schooling has estimated that if one man were given the task of sorting all the postal packets delivered in the United Kingdom in one year—and supposing him to work at the rate of sixty a minute—he would have had to begin nearly one hundred and sixty years ago, in the reign of George II., before the conquest of India began under Lord Clive, in order to complete his task by the year 1910. Mr. Schooling gives him no time for sleep or meals; he goes on without stopping. This is indeed harder to realise than the actual number of the postal packets, which is something over 5,000,000,000.

It is perhaps interesting to know that 32 per 100 of all letters delivered in England and Wales are proper to the London district, nearly one-third. The outgoing letters from the London district also show somewhat similar results. A City firm has posted as many as 132,000 letters at one time.

It is also an interesting fact that we send out of this country a great many more letters than we receive from all the five continents. Even in the case of America, the excess is something like 80,000, but one portion of America, viz., the United States, sends us more letters than we send to that country.

The following estimate will not perhaps test severely the brains which rebel at large sums. According to Mr. Schooling, whom we have quoted before, the number of letters, post cards, halfpenny packets, and newspapers delivered during a year in this country works out for each individual as 65 letters, 19 post cards, 21 halfpenny packets, and 4 newspapers. A moment's consideration of these figures will convince us of the vast number of folk still living with whom the receipt of a letter must be an event in the year.

It is only a little over eighty years since the comparatively small office at Lombard Street housed the whole staff of the London chief office. The change has been tremendous, but no more in proportion to the population than other activities of life. Post Office servants often point with pride to what their Department has achieved, but the truth must be told, and it is that the credit cannot be claimed by the officials. We might almost say that, as far as the Department is concerned, the increase is mostly unearned increment. The increase in population, and especially the advance in the means of communication, are the two chief causes; it is the people who have made the Post Office, not the officials. A retiring postmaster, or even a retiring Postmaster-General, will sometimes tell us in round figures what has been accomplished under his rule. “Alone I did it” is sometimes the burden of these valedictory speeches. But the true explanation lies often in the birth-rate or in the opening of a new railway, and the Post Office reaps what others have sown. And there have been times when the Post Office administrator, proud of what he has done and what his Department is doing, has tried to say “Thus far shalt thou go and no further” to the reformers. “Why not remain satisfied with the perfection I have been the humble means of securing?” The official mind usually requires some driving force from outside before it can see the necessity for another advance.

Still, do not let us forget the huge army which serves the nation in postal matters. The counter-clerk who sells the stamp and the postman who delivers the letter are the two officials who are known to the public, and the different officers who conduct the operations which come between the buying of the stamp and the delivery of the letter are almost unknown outside the walls of their own offices. And it is a matter for congratulation that in King Edward's Building the health and bodily needs of the staff have been considered in a way which twenty or thirty years ago would have been regarded as quixotic and as grandmotherly administration.

Ducts have been provided in the main building for mechanically ventilating the three lower floors, and uptakes are led from these into fan-houses situated on the roof. The fans which have been installed are directly coupled to motors of variable speed, and are designed to move large quantities of air. Fresh air is admitted through windows and ventilating radiators, and the vitiated air is discharged on the roof. The ventilation of the Bag Room has been separately treated; here a considerable quantity of dust is liberated by the handling of mail bags, and dust, we are beginning to learn, is the great enemy to health. Arrangements have been made for concentrating this at one point near a collecting hopper, through which the dust-laden air passes and is discharged on the roof.

The third floor is entirely devoted to kitchen and refreshment-room accommodation and retiring-rooms for the various classes of the staff. Each officer has a long locker for his belongings. As the work goes on during the whole of the twenty-four hours, the refreshment branch is practically always open. A very large business is done here. Three thousand dinners can be prepared every day.

The roof is flat, and on it two miniature rifle ranges, one of 25 yards and one of 50 yards, have been constructed. Here are to be seen the large ventilating fans for securing a constant supply of fresh air to the rooms below.

The new-comer into the service speedily takes all these conveniences and comforts for granted, and perhaps is aggrieved because arm-chairs and lounges are not yet provided; but the middle-aged official, who remembers times when nothing apart from his work was ever considered by his chiefs, rubs his eyes sometimes and wonders whether it is all a dream.

King Edward's Building is in keeping with all the traditions of the City of London. Charlotte Brontë in Villette says: “I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares: but I love the City far better. The City seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar are such serious things, sights, sounds. The City is getting its living—the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West End you may be amused, but in the City you are deeply excited.” That is the mood which will possess the visitor as he leaves the new building.

Here is a list of the huge buildings which now make up the London General Post Office:—

1. G.P.O. North. For the Postmaster-General and the offices of the Secretary, Accountant-General, and Solicitor.

2. G.P.O. West. For the Central Telegraph Office and Engineering Staff.

3. G.P.O. South (Queen Victoria Street). For the Telephone Department.

4. King Edward's Building. For the Controller of the London Postal Service and his staff and for the E.C. and Foreign Sections of the Sorting Office.

5. Mount Pleasant. For the Inland Letter and Parcel Sections of the Sorting Office, Returned Letter Office, Telegraph Factories, &c.

6. West Kensington. For the Post Office Savings Bank.

7. Studd Street, N. For the Stores Department.

8. Holloway, N. For Money Order and Postal Order Departments.

The staff working in these eight buildings is about 20,000, of whom 4300 are in King Edward's Building.

CHAPTER V
THE TRAVELLING POST OFFICE

Something of the old romance of the service lingers about the Travelling Post Office. To those who work it there is always a possibility of adventure, not to mention the risk to life and limb, while to those who watch its operations there is that indefinable element which makes an appeal to the imagination. Moreover, in more than one of its features it links up our time with the old mail coach days. There are pictures in existence of the mail coach passing through a village or hamlet, and the mail bag is being handed out from the upper windows of the local post office to the guard of the coach. The driver is reducing his speed while the exchange is taking place, and the suggestion of the picture is that no time is to be lost. The same idea is carried out to-day by means of mechanical appliances. Indeed, so soon as the mail train came into being, the minds of officials were at once exercised how to maintain the old system of exchange under altered conditions. The early effects were scarcely ingenious, and were obviously dangerous. The experiment was tried of hoisting up the bags towards the railway guards on long poles, but after one guard had had his eye poked out, and others had suffered from severe falls while endeavouring to secure the bags, it was felt that the business placed too severe a strain on human endeavour. Under this clumsy arrangement it was necessary for the train to reduce its speed, and it was not only, I am afraid, to preserve the guards from injury, but also to prevent delay during the process of exchange, that the efforts of inventors were directed. But before I proceed to describe the ingenious apparatus which is in operation to-day, and which is on practically the same lines as that invented more than seventy years ago, I must deal with the Travelling Post Office itself.

As early as 1837, when railways were yet in their infancy, it was suggested to the Post Office by Frederick Karstadt, a son of one of the surveyors of the Department, that much time would be saved if some of the necessary business of sorting and preparation for delivery of letters were performed on the train. On the 6th January 1838, a carriage was run as an experiment on the railway between Birmingham and Liverpool. The carriage used for the purpose was simply a horse-box temporarily fitted up as a sorting office. The experiment was decided to be a success, not only by officials, but by the press and the public. In the words of an enthusiastic writer at the time, “Here is a specimen of the exhaustless ingenuity which bids fair to annihilate time and space, an improvement which enables the Post Office to work practically double tides—in other words, to duplicate time by travelling and working at the same instant.” We smile at writing of this kind in these days, when the familiarity of the operations has robbed us of all sense of wonder, but the language is not very different from what we frequently hear to-day when the achievements of the aeroplane or wireless telegraphy are recorded. To our grandfathers the Travelling Post Office was a miracle of the day, and it is not difficult, if we know the social life of that time, to understand the way in which they must have speculated on its possibilities.

Photo

Herbert Lazenby.

The Travelling Post Office.

This is the interior of the most recently constructed Great Northern Railway travelling post office. Notice the exchange apparatus fittings behind the sorters.

It was the idea of being able to carry on the ordinary business of life while travelling from one place to another which appealed to the imaginations of men whose experiences of travel had been limited to the cramped conditions of the mail coach. But I doubt whether they could have conceived of a time when we should breakfast, lunch, dine, and have comfortable beds on trains running at fifty miles an hour. And one of the latest developments of all, the providing of lady typists on trains for the benefit of business men travelling to and from London, would certainly have justified the enthusiastic prose of an earlier day. We take these things in a more complacent fashion; we talk of the increased economy and convenience as meeting a public demand, and we grumble at the railway which withholds luxuries from us.

There is no doubt, however, that the success of the Travelling Post Office was the first revelation to the railway companies, and to the public, of what could be done on a train while in motion, but much was needed in the direction of improving the permanent way and the springs and general make-up of the rolling stock before any further advances could take place. Perhaps on this ground alone we can spare a little sympathy for the Post Office servants, who during the long years when railway travelling was neither smooth nor comfortable, had to keep their heads and their feet while the train raced across country.

The first permanent sorting carriage was built by the Grand Junction Railway Company, and this carriage was fitted with an apparatus for exchanging mail bags en route. The appliance consisted of an iron frame covered with netting, and was fixed to the near side of the carriage. It was made to open out for the purpose of receiving a bag suspended from the arm of a standard erected beside the railway line. Simultaneously with the delivery of a bag into the carriage net, a bag was dropped on to the bare ground by another mechanical contrivance, guard boards being fixed by the side of the permanent way to prevent the bag from getting under the wheels of the carriage. This apparatus was first tried in 1838 on the London and Birmingham Railway at Boxmoor. On the 17th September 1838, the London and Birmingham Railway was opened throughout its entire length, and the Travelling Post Office was permanently established on that line. Two mails were despatched from Euston daily, the first a day mail at 11 A.M. and the night mail at 8.30 P.M.

The immediate effect of the introduction of the Travelling Post Office was to render unnecessary the making up of some 800 or 900 bags. Each town now made up one bag for the train, instead of the fourteen or fifteen which had to be made up for the mail coach, and the Travelling Post Office re-sorted the letters and made up bags for the various towns which it served. In the year 1843 the number of bags made up in the London and Preston Travelling Post Office down mail was 51 and in the up mail 44. The number of bags at present made up in the same Travelling Post Office, which now runs from London to Aberdeen, is nearly 400 on the down journey and about 300 on the up journey. In 1910 there were in Great Britain no less than 73 separate Travelling Post Offices, composed of 150 specially constructed carriages.

In 1848 the apparatus for exchanging letters was considerably altered and simplified. For the first time nets were fixed by the side of the permanent way in which were caught the bags delivered from the Travelling Post Office, and a new variety of winged carriage net was provided with detaching lines, which were used to grip and detach the pouch from the arm in which it was held. Many alterations have since been made in the working of this apparatus, but the principle of the thing remains the same.

In 1859 as a further means of accelerating the mails “the limited mail” train was started. Many people have doubtless wondered at this definition of an express train: they have probably connected it in some way with the idea of speed, but in reality it was nothing more than the application of the old regulation of the mail coach days to railway traffic. That is to say, the mails were to be the first consideration, and the passenger traffic was to be limited on these trains to the point where the speed or the availability of the train for mail purposes would not be interfered with. The first limited mail to run was the night train to Scotland.

An advance on the idea of the limited mail was made in 1885, when a special mail train was established on the London and North-Western and Caledonian Railways. This is a train devoted entirely to the mail service, and it runs in both directions between London and Aberdeen. Similar special trains run on the Great Western Railway between London and Penzance. One of the latest developments of the system is the provision of a late-fee box on the side of the carriage. The letter-box on the side of the carriage next to the platform is kept open while the train is standing in a station. The up-to-date sorting carriages are an immense improvement on those of the old pattern in the matter of easy movement. They are constructed with a view to reduce vibration to a minimum. All projections and angles are well padded, and this precaution is at all times necessary, as turning a curve at high speed frequently takes the sorters off their feet and sends them flying into corners or against the sides of the carriage.

In the new sorting carriages plate-glass bottoms are provided for the letter-sorting frames to enable the sorters to see at a glance that they have removed all the correspondence from each box at the time of despatch. This prevents letters being carried beyond their destination or left in the carriage at the journey's end.

The duty of each officer is laid down in detail in the “duty book,” as is also “the plan” or “alphabet” he is to use in sorting the correspondence, and the order in which the bags are to be hung. Every man knows exactly what he has to do, and that he must depend upon his own exertions for the completion of his duty over every stage of the journey. Space is necessarily limited. Along one side of the letter-vans are pigeon-holes for sorting purposes, while the opposite side is fitted with pegs for holding the bags and with the machinery used for the exchange apparatus.

Upwards of 3,000,000 miles are run annually by Travelling Post Offices in this country. The largest number are run on the London and North-Western and Caledonian Railways, amounting in all to 1,800,000 miles. The London night mail is the heaviest mail in the course of the twenty-four hours. Day mails and mid-day mails are merely subsidiaries to the larger service. It has been said that “the principal mail train in the kingdom, perhaps in the whole world, is the Down Postal Express which leaves Euston every night at 8.30.” It consists entirely of postal vehicles, and carries thirty Post Office officials, the only representatives of the railway company being the driver, fireman, and guard. At Tamworth connection is made with the Midland Travelling Post Office going north and south and with the Lincoln sorting carriage. At Carlisle the Caledonian Railway takes on the running. The London officers are relieved here, and Glasgow and Edinburgh sorters take over the carriages journeying to these cities. At Perth the train is on the Highland Railway system, and has a direct run to Aberdeen. At most important points on the road it connects with cross-country routes.

The Great Western Railway has a similar train which leaves Paddington at 9.5 P.M. and is due at Penzance at 6.45 A.M. The mail is divided for sorting purposes into five divisions, the fifth being known as the Cornwall Section. At Reading a large number of bags are exchanged for the South and Midlands. The London and South-Western Travelling Post Office is connected here with the Paddington mail.

Travelling Post Offices are attached to the night trains on other lines from London, and these trains also carry passengers. At 9.13 P.M. there is a carriage from London Bridge for Brighton and south coast towns. The Great Eastern trains leaving Liverpool Street for Ipswich and Norwich at 8.50 P.M. and 10.7 P.M. have sorting carriages attached to them. The continental night mail leaves Cannon Street at 9.5 P.M., and is followed at 10 P.M. by the South-Eastern Travelling Post Office. There is also a night mail between Holborn Viaduct and Folkestone in connection with the Flushing route to the Continent.

The working of the mail bag exchange apparatus is perhaps to the public the most interesting feature in the Travelling Post Office. I make no apology, therefore, in giving a detailed description of the contrivance. The net is made of hemp, the end of which is strengthened by stout manilla rope in order to enable it better to withstand the shock subsequent upon the receipt of the pouches. The iron frame of the net is hinged in two pieces, called the bed and the wing. When extended for use the net is about two feet seven inches from the panel of the carriage, and the apex of the wing some nine feet eight inches above rail level. When not in use the net pulls up nearly flat against the side of the carriage, and it is lowered into position and raised again by the action of a lever inside the carriage. The delivery arms are fitted in the doorways of the carriage, and are hinged to strong iron tubes containing spiral springs which, when the arms are not required for use, retain them in an upright position by the door pillars. When a despatch has to be made the arm is drawn into the carriage, a sort of convex shield, technically called “a sweep,” determining the angle to which it must be brought before it can be drawn from its perpendicular position. The mail bags for delivery are enclosed in a leather pouch for protection against concussion, and to keep them in a fairly square position when suspended. Affixed to the pouch is a thick strap about ten inches long, known as a “drop strap,” and at one end of this there is an eyelet which, when the arm is drawn into the carriage, is passed on to a pin forming a portion of the head or box of the arm, which is protected by a spring cover. The carriage net has to be lowered and the pouches put out for delivery some distance before the roadside apparatus is reached, and in order to perform these operations properly an officer has to be well acquainted with the different landmarks along the permanent way. All sorts of immovable marks serve for this purpose—houses, churches, bridges, gates, and clumps of trees. There is a tale told of a white horse which was seen so regularly every day in a field beside the railway that the animal became a mark for the official working the apparatus. One day the horse died, and there were then several bag failures at the particular station.

Photos by

Herbert Lazenby.

The Travelling Post Office.

(1) The official placing the suspended pouch in position to be taken up by the passing train.

(2) The pouch suspended and the net open to receive the pouch from the approaching train.

(3) The pouch has been received into the travelling post office by means of the net attached to it, while the one received from the train is seen in the wayside net.

The work of the officer in charge has to be done in less than twenty seconds, when the train is going fifty or sixty miles an hour; in this time he has to lower two pouches, extend the net, and raise it again after the receipt of the pouch.

The roadside receiving apparatus is made up of a net of stout manilla rope attached to a framing which consists of a fixed wooden upright and a hinged iron frame. Both stand up some four feet above the rail level, and when in position are kept apart by a cross-bar. To this bar the angle end of a double piece of rope is fastened by means of straps, and the other ends of the rope are attached, one to the top of the fixed wooden framing and one to the top of the iron frame, forming a V. This is struck by the drop strap of the pouch suspended from the delivery arm of the carriage, and the pouch itself is released, not the net. The weight of a single pouch, including the bags which it protects, must not exceed 50 lbs. when despatched from a roadside standard, or 60 lbs. when despatched from a carriage arm. The man stationed at the roadside apparatus has to be as alert and careful as the man on the train, and considering the delicate nature of the work it is wonderful how few misses or accidents occur. Parcels are, of course, never exchanged in this way.

The blow sustained by the pouch containing the mail bags at the moment of delivery when the train is travelling at high speed is exceedingly severe, and sometimes causes danger to postal packets of a fragile nature. This explains the following complaint from a member of the public: “I am sorry to return the bracelet to be repaired. It came this morning with the box smashed, the bracelet bent, and one of the cairngorms forced out. Among the modern improvements of the Post Office appears to be the introduction of sledgehammers to stamp with.” But this sort of thing seldom happens. Occasionally, however, the pouches miss the nets and are sent bounding over hedges. Bags have been found at the end of a journey hanging on to a buffer or on the carriage roof. On one occasion, at least, the apparatus has been the means of perhaps saving life. A lamplighter was carried away on the roof of a compartment, and after he had travelled twenty miles in this uncomfortable fashion it occurred to him to knock on the roof-light of the Travelling Post Office. The net was at once lowered, and the man obtained access to the interior of the carriage.

One of the most curious accidents recorded was that which happened to an engine driver who climbed out on to his foot-plate on a dark night to oil his engine. He had forgotten he was near an apparatus station, and was struck violently against the net. He was in a second hurled into it, and the mail bag from his own train came banging in on top of him. He was badly hurt, while the man at the apparatus station must have received a severe mental shock at the delivery of a male which he had not expected that night.

The Travelling Post Office.

The pouch which has been discharged from the wayside standard into the net attached to the train.

The Travelling Post Office.

The apparatus on the exterior of a mail carriage. Two pouches are extended for despatch and the net lowered into position for the receipt of incoming pouches.

The history of the Travelling Post Office is not without its stories of more serious disasters. One of the most awful railway accidents which have happened in this country was the collision of the Irish mail train with some runaway waggons at Abergele on the 20th August 1868. There were barrels of petroleum on the waggons, and these became ignited, setting fire to the train. Among the burning carriages was the Travelling Post Office, and the two officers working in it were seriously injured. The conduct of Woodroffe, one of the two, whose injuries were not so severe as those of his colleague, was in accordance with the best traditions of the postal service. Woodroffe, though badly hurt, carried his brother officer, who was insensible from the collision, to the side of the railway line, and after laying him there proceeded himself to save the mails so far as it was possible.

Another railway tragedy which will long be remembered in the postal service was that which took place outside Shrewsbury Station on the 15th October 1907. This was the severest accident that has occurred in the whole history of the Travelling Post Office. No less than three Post Office men were killed while on duty, and others were injured.

It will be perhaps interesting at this stage to trace the travels of a letter to the furthest point in the British Isles. On this route we can bring out clearly the fact that in many parts of Great Britain and Ireland the Post Office, in spite of mail trains and ingenious mechanical contrivances, is still dependent on quite primitive means for conducting its business. Moreover, directly we get away from the main lines of traffic, considerations of weather still affect postal operations almost as much as they used to do in the old coaching days. Let us address a letter to the Muckle Flugga Lighthouse, which is situated to the north of the island of Unst in Shetland. Let us post the letter at King Edward's Building on a Sunday night at 6 P.M., and given favourable conditions of weather it will be delivered at the Muckle Flugga Lighthouse on Thursday morning. The letter is sorted into the Scottish division, is subsorted into a pigeon hole, and afterwards into a bundle labelled “Aberdeen forward.” The bundle is dropped into a bag inscribed with the words “London to Aberdeen,” and one of the familiar red vans conveys the bag to the London terminus. On Sunday nights this would be Euston. The bag is handed over to the sorters in charge of the Travelling Post Office, on which there is a mail carriage which runs direct to Aberdeen. Aberdeen is reached at 7.35 on Monday morning. So far the process of the letter has been simple and rapid.

The bag containing the letters is conveyed to the Aberdeen Post Office, where it is opened, and the letters are again subsorted. The letter for Muckle Flugga is placed in a pigeon hole labelled “Lerwick,” and a sorter then checks all the postal packets very carefully, because, in consequence of the remoteness of the islands, serious delay would happen if any were mis-sent. Then they are tied in separate bundles and are placed in a strong waterproof sack labelled “Lerwick.” The Monday steamer goes to Scalloway on the west side of Shetland, other steamers during the week go to Lerwick via Orkney, the steamer on Thursdays from Aberdeen sailing to Lerwick direct. But our letter is going to Scalloway, and it can arrive there about 2 P.M. on the Tuesday. The mails are then placed on a mail cart for conveyance to Lerwick on the east side of the island, six miles distant. At Lerwick the letter is again subsorted, and placed in another bag labelled “Lerwick to Haroldswick.” This place is on the island of Unst. The bag is conveyed by mail car leaving Lerwick at 9.15 P.M. on Tuesday, and this stage means a long drive of many miles north, with a break of a few hours at Voe. Mossbank, which is on Yell Sound, the dangerous channel which separates the island of Yell from the Shetland mainland, is reached at 7.30 A.M. on Wednesday. The bag for Haroldswick is here placed in a ferry-boat which starts at 8 A.M. and is due to reach the other side in an hour, the distance being three miles. The tide in Yell Sound has a speed of nine miles an hour, and in a gale of wind is the worst crossing in the British Isles. Ulsta is the landing-place on the other side, and a mail car takes the letter for the lighthouse five and a half miles to Burravoe, then another car takes it to Cullivoe, twenty miles further on, and the letter is opposite the island of Unst at 3 P.M. on Wednesday. Here is another ferry between the islands of Yell and Unst, across a channel one mile in width, and the ferryman should arrive at Tranavoe in Unst about 3.30 P.M. There a mail car takes the letter, and carries it eleven and a half miles across the island, and it arrives at Haroldswick the same evening at 6.30. Here the letter rests until the following morning, when a foot-postman starts for the shore station of the Muckle Flugga Lighthouse. But it may be here for weeks before the people on the shore can communicate with those on the lighthouse. The British Isles in these northern latitudes end in magnificent and dangerous rocks, and it is upon one of these, rising to a height of 200 feet, that the Muckle Flugga lighthouse is erected.

The letter has travelled practically the length of the British Isles from south to north, and in less than the same time another letter might have travelled from London to Athens, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Madeira or Tangiers. The Mauretania will probably reach New York on most of her voyages sooner than a passenger will travel the length of the British Isles. And that is simply because we use the old means of conveyance over a considerable portion of the distance. The Post Office owes much to the railway companies for the advances made in the quality of the rolling stock and in the condition of the permanent way. It was always possible to sort letters after a fashion while the train was in motion. But it is now possible to write and to type letters on the train, and we have come to this, that all the stages of a letter can be completed during a single journey. Yet directly we get away from the railway system in any part of the country we are back again in the eighteenth century, dependent on postboys, mail carts, the weather, and the state of the roads. The country is still full of samples of the travelling arrangements of all the centuries. There is no Travelling Post Office in the Hebrides or the Shetlands.

CHAPTER VI
THE PARCEL POST

Out of very small beginnings many great commercial enterprises have arisen, and the Parcel Post is not the only big business which sprang into being in a cellar. In the basement of the old General Post Office at St. Martin's le Grand in the year 1883 the Parcel Post began its work, and though it speedily outgrew this limited accommodation, not even the most optimistic of its supporters could have dreamed that in less than thirty years the General Post Office would be dealing annually with 118 million parcels, and that instead of a basement, many great buildings would be required in which to transact the business.

In 1880 a Postal Conference was held at Paris with the view of creating an International Parcel Post, and at that Conference the British Post Office was represented, although, having then no Inland Parcel Post, it was unable to enter into any international agreement. But the example of foreign nations undoubtedly stimulated the energies of English officials, and in the two following years negotiations were carried on with the railway companies which finally resulted in an arrangement, to which legal effect was given by an Act of Parliament passed on the 18th August 1882, that the companies should receive eleven-twentieths of the postage collected upon all parcels carried by railway. It was from the outset intended to link the Inland to the International Parcel Post as soon as might be possible.

In the early days no parcel weighing over 7 lbs. could be sent by Parcel Post, and the charge for a parcel of this weight was 1s. To-day a 7 lb. parcel can be sent for 7d., and parcels weighing up to 11 lbs. are accepted. The charge for 11 lbs. is now 11d. The reduction in charges was a part of the Diamond Jubilee Reforms of 1897. The minimum charge of 3d. for a parcel not weighing over 1 lb. has remained unchanged since 1883.

The dimensions of a parcel must not exceed 3 feet 6 inches in length nor a total of 6 feet in length and girth combined. Ladies' hats are sent by the Parcel Post in large numbers, and grave fears were at one time entertained, when the hats were growing larger week by week, that the General Post Office would have to close its doors to these enormities. They were approaching perilously near the limit of 6 feet length and girth combined. It is difficult at all times to find out what determines a change of fashion; it is possible in this instance that the Parcel Post regulations may have influenced those mysterious individuals who decide what ladies are to wear; anyhow, the situation was saved by the introduction of “the pudding basin” hat, and though the large hat did not disappear, high tide in size had been reached.

In its early beginnings the Parcel Post was confined to the United Kingdom, but in 1885 it was extended to some of the Colonies and British dependencies, to India, Gibraltar and Egypt, to Malta, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, some of the West Indies, and South Africa. In the following year business was begun with Germany. Belgium, and Constantinople, and other continental countries were soon added to those we exchanged parcels with. Canada joined the system also in 1886, These foreign extensions were not always considered successes by the public. An indignant business man, complaining of the loss of parcels sent by him to Persia, wrote: “The Parcel Post Service was evidently established in Persia with the object of providing the officials of that country with food and clothing. The only articles which appear to reach their destination are the publications of the Religious Tract Society.”

We are accustomed to see in the windows of suburban houses cards bearing the letters C.P. or L.P.D., indicating that the carts of certain carrying agencies are required to call, but we should probably experience something in the nature of a shock if we saw in the windows a card lettered P.P. or G.R. to indicate that the Parcel Postman was to call. There is an accepted tradition with the public as well as with officials that the Post Office does not advertise. Mr. Fawcett was Postmaster-General when the Parcel Post was organised, and he broke through that tradition not only as regards the Parcel Post but also in dealing with the Post Office Savings Bank; and in the early days of the Parcel Post, cards were distributed to householders with the request that they should be placed in the windows when the Parcel Post cart was required to call. The cards were coloured with the Post Office red, and the lettering was white.

The chief Parcel Office is at Mount Pleasant, Clerkenwell. It is a district rich in historical associations. Here was the famous Bagnigge Wells, where Londoners used to stroll on summer evenings to drink a dish of tea and to enjoy the humours and fashions of the town. Here also stood the Coldbath Fields Prison, and gradually, as buildings surrounded the jail, the district lost prestige as a health resort. The prison authorities doubtless realised this, and decided to seek purer air for their 2000 visitors, and they removed their headquarters further into the country. The prison was thus thrown on the market, and after a period of negotiations the General Post Office took possession with the intention of erecting a pile of Government buildings on the site. The Parcel Post had rapidly outgrown its cramped quarters at St. Martin's le Grand, and in 1887 the business was transferred to the prison buildings. For some years the chief Parcel Sorting Office in Great Britain was located in the old prison treadwheel house behind massive and gloomy walls. The khaki-clad, barefaced gentry had departed to their country residence, and the huge treadwheels had been removed to make way for the Parcel Post.

But the prison was very quickly demolished and gave way to a handsome Sorting Office, the floor space of which when completed was to cover two acres. The Parcel Post took possession of the new building in October 1892. It is always difficult to transact any business in a building constructed for quite another purpose, and the conditions of service in the prison buildings had not been exactly comfortable. Spacious yards surround the Post Office buildings, and in these yards platforms have been built giving direct access to the Sorting Office. Post Office vans arrive in one yard loaded with receptacles containing parcels collected from post offices in the City and other parts of London, or sent up from the provinces and brought here from the railway termini. The loads are discharged on to the platform and conveyed by porters into the Sorting Office. In another yard on the opposite side of the building other vans arrive empty, and back up to the platform to receive their loads of parcels for conveyance to other parts of London or to railway stations for despatch to provincial towns.

In the early days the parcels were chiefly packed in wicker hampers with heavy fastenings, but the weight and cost of these receptacles rendered it necessary to find something lighter. Many experiments were made, and at last a receptacle was adopted with a wicker body and a canvas top, which required no metal fastenings, as the canvas top was tied with string and sealed with wax. The latest improvement on this is the substitution of a leaden seal for the old wax sealing. Even this much lighter receptacle is considered too heavy and costly for the conveyance of ordinary parcels, and canvas sacks of extra durability are now being generally used for the conveyance of parcels across London and to and from provincial towns. Parcels of a fragile nature when sent by railway are still packed in wicker receptacles for greater security.

The public are advised to affix a label marked “Fragile” to any parcel which requires more than ordinary care in handling, and from time to time wonderful examples of fragile parcels have been met with. A pair of boots wrapped in brown paper has been so described, so have a plum pudding in a cloth, a basket of fish, a box of butter, a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a York ham, an iron bolt wrapped in corrugated paper, and a roll of blankets.

Wicker receptacles are not suitable for the service with the Colonies: the parcels would not be sufficiently protected during the long voyage and railway journey. For this traffic parcels are packed in tightly fitting boxes unless the contents can safely be sent in sacks made of double canvas.

As the practice increased of packing parcels in canvas sacks rather than in wicker baskets, difficulties were experienced in finding supports for the sacks during the process of packing. Every schoolboy knows that a basket stands on its own bottom, but an empty sack falls flat. Officials with a mechanical turn of mind vied with one another in suggesting how to evade or to get round this natural law—in other words, how to support the sacks—and eventually the Dockree support was chosen. This consists of four iron arms extended at right angles from a pedestal, each arm being constructed to support a sack at full length and with the mouth open. An improved pattern of this holder, capable of supporting eight open-mouthed sacks at one time, has recently been introduced. A sorter is thus able to sort into eight mouths at once without any of the stooping which was unavoidable when the sacks lay limp on the floor.

Let me now explain the system of sorting. The majority of people probably never give a thought as to the happenings of a parcel which they have posted: they leave it in faith on the counter and the wonderful Post Office sends it direct to its destination. That is probably their idea. Supposing you have left your parcel on the public counter of King Edward's Building, what happens next? The parcel is taken to the despatching room to wait the arrival of the van which will convey it in a sack to the Parcel Office at Mount Pleasant. It will there be turned out on a long sorting-table which has a sunken surface, after the fashion of a scullery sink, the well of which is lined with zinc. Your parcel is in the company of others, intended for all parts of the world, and the first step is to get the parcels to the various parts of the office from which they will be despatched to other destinations. Along the whole length of one side of the table is a wooden framework or sack holding the empty baskets. These ten baskets are labelled Scotch, Irish, Paddington, Foreign and Colonial, Delivery, Liverpool Street, Euston, King's Cross, Waterloo and London Bridge, Town, and the sorters stand between these baskets and the table laden with parcels. They pick up the parcels from the table and place them in the respective baskets. Full baskets are carried by a porter to another part of the office, where the second stage of the sorting is to be gone through. Here the parcels are turned out on to another table similar to the one already described. Let us suppose that your parcel is in the basket labelled “Euston.” There are twelve baskets on the sorting rack at the Euston division table, and they are labelled to the large centres known as “Roads” and also to the “Aylesbury Coach” and to “Blind” as follows: Chester, Carlisle, Preston, Rugby, Stafford, Blind, Watford, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Shrewsbury, Aylesbury Branch.

Each of these centres or “Roads” contains a group of towns, and the Aylesbury Coach “Road” covers all places served by the coach. The basket labelled “Blind” is to receive all parcels which have reached the Euston division table in error, through having been mis-sorted at the first stage, and also any parcels which bear insufficient or doubtful addresses. The business of the sorter at this stage is to put the parcels on to the proper “Road,” and unless he has thoroughly learnt not only the groups of towns on each “Road” but also the numerous smaller places subordinate to these towns, he will cause trouble at the third or final stage of the sorting. When these baskets are filled with parcels they are taken to their respective “Roads,” and then the final process of making up the mails takes place. The sorter at “the Road” receives the basket of parcels proper to his centre, and then he sorts the parcels for the various towns included in his district. He may have as many as a dozen mails to prepare for despatch within a few minutes of each other, and this means that he has to sort his parcels into twelve different receptacles. These are close round him, and the advantage to the sorter of having his sacks supported at full length will now be understood.

Any parcels which have been mis-sorted to the officer on “the Road” have to be placed on a shelf, and are subsequently returned to the sorting-table to be put into their proper channel. This means that they may miss their proper mail, and the importance of obtaining reliable men for the sorting of the second stage is great.

The sorter at “the Road,” having packed his sacks or hampers, has to prepare a bill for each receptacle, and this bill, when filled up, is put in a pocket provided in the receptacle. The receptacle is then tied, sealed, and sent off. The bill gives particulars of the number of the receptacle, the offices of despatch and destination, the time of despatch, and also an account of any registered or valuable parcels which there may be in the mail. Registered parcels are not placed on the ordinary sorting-tables, but are treated individually from the moment they enter the Sorting Office to the time when they are packed ready for despatch. They are passed from hand to hand, and signed for at each transfer.

“Blind” parcels are those which are incorrectly or incompletely addressed. All such parcels have to be examined at comparative leisure, and the public would be surprised to learn what a large amount of time is spent by the Post Office in making good the many defects and shortcomings in addresses on parcels and other postal packets. The Parcel Post comes in for many kicks from the public, but in justice it must be said that the officials spare no pains to trace the proper addresses of parcels. They exercise, too, great ingenuity in the task, and books of reference are in constant use. Bad spelling in addresses was formerly a very common source of trouble to sorters, but it is less noticeable now, and possibly this may be one of the results of universal education. I will give some instances of addresses of this kind which have been successfully dealt with by the Post Office staff:—