CHAPTER VIII.

GROWTH OF CERTAIN POST-OFFICES.

When the past history of the Post-office is looked into, at a period which cannot yet be said to be very remote, it is both curious and instructive to observe the contrast which presents itself, as between the unpretending institution of those other days, and the great and ubiquitous machine which is now the indispensable medium for the conveyance of news to every corner of the empire. To imagine what our country would be without the Post-office as it now is, would be attempting something quite beyond our powers; and if such an institution did not exist, and an endeavour were made to construct one at once by the conceits and imaginings of men's minds, failure would be the inevitable result, for the British Post-office is the child of long experience and never-ending improvement, having a complexity and yet simplicity in its fabric, which nothing but many years of growth and studied application to its aims could have produced.

But it is not the purpose here to go into the history of its improvements, or of its changes. It is merely proposed to show how rapidly it has grown, and from what small beginnings.

The staff of the Edinburgh Post-office in 1708 was composed of no more than seven persons, described as follows:—

Salary.
Manager for Scotland,£200 0 0
Accountant,50 0 0
Clerk,50 0 0
Clerk's Assistant,25 0 0
Three Letter-carriers, at 5s. a-week each.

In 1736 the number of persons employed had increased to eleven, whose several official positions were as follows:—

Postmaster-General for Scotland.
Accountant.
Secretary to the Postmaster.
Principal Clerk.
Second Clerk.
Clerk's Assistant.
Apprehender of Private Letter-carriers.
Clerk to the Irish Correspondents.
Three Letter-carriers.

The apprehender of private letter-carriers, as the name implies, was an officer whose duty it was to take up persons who infringed the Post-office work of carrying letters for money.

The work continued steadily to grow, for in 1781 we find there were 23 persons employed, of whom 6 were letter-carriers; and in 1791 the numbers had increased to 31. In 1828 there were 82; in 1840, when the penny post was set on foot, there were 136; and in 1860, 244.

In 1884 the total number of persons employed in all branches of the Post-office service in Edinburgh was 939.

The Post-office of Glasgow, which claims to be the second city of the kingdom, shows a similar rapidity of growth, if not a greater; and this growth may be taken as an index of the expansion of the city itself, though the former has to be referred to three several causes—namely, increase of population, spread of education, and development of trade.

In 1799 the staff of the Glasgow Post-office was as follows, viz.:—

Salary.
Postmaster,£200 0 0
First Clerk,30 0 0
Second Clerk,25 0 0
Four Letter-carriers, at 10s. 6d.a-week each,109 4 0
A Stamper or Sorter, at 10s. 6d. a-week,27 6 0

So that the whole expense for staff was no more than £391, 10s. per annum, and this had been the recognised establishment for several years. But it appears from official records, that though the postmaster was nominally receiving £200 a-year, he had in 1796 given £10 each to the clerks out of his salary, and expended besides, on office-rent, coal, and candles, £30, 2s. 8d. Somewhat similar deductions were made in 1797 and 1798, and thus the postmaster's salary was then less than £150 a-year in reality. It is worthy of note here that letters were at that time delivered in Glasgow only twice a-day.

Some ten years earlier—that is, in 1789—the indoor staff consisted of the postmaster and one clerk, the former receiving £140 a-year, and the latter £30.

A penny post, for local letters in Glasgow, was started in the year 1800, when, as part and parcel of the scheme, three receiving-offices were opened in the city. The revenue derived from the letters so carried for the first year was under £100, showing that there cannot have been so many as eighty letters posted per day for local delivery. After a time the experiment was considered not to have been quite a success, for one of the receiving-offices was closed, and a clerk's pay reduced £10 a-year, in order to bring the expense down to the level of the revenue earned. In 1803 matters improved, however, as in the first quarter of that year the revenue from penny letters was greater than the expense incurred.

At the present time, the staff of the Glasgow Post-office numbers 1267 persons, and the postmaster's salary is over a thousand pounds a-year.

To those who know Liverpool, with its expansive area, its vast shipping, its stir of commerce, and, in the present relation, its army of postmen, the following facts will exhibit a striking contrast between the past and the present. In 1792, when the population of that town stood at something like 60,000, the number of postmen employed was but three, whose wages were 7s. a-week each; but, to be quite correct, it should be added that one of the postmen, having heavier work than the others, was aided by his wife, and for this assistance the office allowed from £10 to £12 a-year. One of the postmen delivered the letters for the southern district, including Everton, St Ann's, Richmond, &c.; another served the northern portion, taking in part of the old dock, the dry dock, George's Dock, &c.; while the third disposed of the letters for the remaining portions of the town. The duties of these men seem to have been carried out with a good deal of deliberation. The postmen arranged the correspondence for distribution in the early morning, then they partook of breakfast, and set out upon their rounds about 9 a.m., completing their work of delivery about the middle of the afternoon. And thus it would appear that Liverpool at that time had only one delivery per day.

Upon all letters delivered by two of the postmen—the two first mentioned—a halfpenny per letter over and above the postage was charged for delivery; in the other case the ordinary postage only was levied.

The reason for the additional charge was no doubt this that the postmaster was allowed by the Department only one postman, and that consequently the wages of the other men who were necessarily employed had to be met by the special tax referred to. The following minute of the Postmaster-General, dated 28th October 1792, while in some sense affording an explanation of the matter, shows that somewhat peculiar notions prevailed with regard to providing force where such was required. It runs as follows:—

"There are only two instances in the kingdom where more than one letter-carrier is allowed, viz., Portsmouth and Bath. I understand it has been held as a general rule not to allow more than one to any other place, however extensive and populous it may be; in the two exceptions to this rule the inhabitants had been accustomed to pay the deputies a gratuity for delivering the letters, but having refused to continue the payment, these postmasters felt their income considerably reduced, and I believe it was not till after much discussion the rule was broke through."

The minute continues as follows:—"Mr Palmer had some ideas respecting such a modification of the rates of postage as might induce the inhabitants of every place in the kingdom to pay with cheerfulness an extra halfpenny or penny over and above the rates; this extra payment to be sanctioned by an Act of Parliament; and then the whole amount of the sums now paid for letter-carriers, being £1927, 8s. per year, would be saved to the Revenue." If this accurately represents Mr Palmer's ideas, Mr Palmer did not quite understand the British public.

At the same period to which we refer, there were only three letter-carriers in Manchester, four at Bristol, and three or four at Birmingham; but in each case only one was allowed by the Department, the others being employed as extras, and provided for, no doubt, by a special tax upon the letters delivered. This system of charging extra for delivery would seem to have been open to abuse, for we find that in 1791 the Postmaster-General called for explanation of an exceptional charge at Eton, in a Minute as follows:—"Let the Comptroller-General inquire who serves, and by whose authority, the parts of the country circumjacent to the Eton delivery, as they charge no less a sum than 3d. for each letter, in addition to the postage, for all letters delivered at Upton, which is not above a mile from the College." And the Postmaster-General makes this very wise observation on the practice—"This enormous expense for letters must check and ruin all correspondence, and essentially hurt the revenue."

At the end of last century and beginning of this—and indeed it may be said throughout the whole term of the existence of the Post-office—humble petitions were always coming up from postmasters for increase of pay, and from these we know the position in which postmasters then were.

The postmaster of Aberdeen showed that in 1763, when the revenue of his office was £717, 19s. 4d., with something for cross post-letters, probably about £400, his salary had been £93, 15s.; while in 1793, with a revenue of over £2500, his whole salary was only £89, 15s., and out of this he had to pay office-rent and to provide assistance, fire, wax, candles, books, and cord.

At Arbroath, now an important town, the revenue was, in 1763, £76, 12s. 8d., and the postmaster's salary, £20. At this figure the salary remained till 1794, though the revenue had increased to £367, 13s. 5d.; but now the postmaster appealed for higher pay, and brought up his supports of office-rent, coal, candles, wax, &c., to strengthen his case.

In Dundee, in the year 1800, the postmaster's salary was £50, and the revenue £3165, 9s. 5d.

At Paisley, the postmaster's salary was fixed at £33 in 1790 and remained at that figure till 1800 when a petition was sent forward for what was called in official language an augmentation. In the memorial it is stated that the revenue for 1799 was £1997, 1s. 11d., and that the deductions for rent, coal, candles, wax, paper, pens, and ink, reduced the postmaster's salary to from £15 to £20 a-year!

To show how these towns have grown up into importance within a period of little more than the allotted span of man, and as exhibiting perhaps the yet more bounding expansion of the Post-office system, the following particulars are added, and may prove of interest:—

At Aberdeen, at the present time, the annual value of postage-stamps sold, which may be taken as a rough measure of the revenue from the carriage of correspondence alone, is little short of £30,000; the staff of all sorts employed numbers 191; and the postmaster's salary exceeds £600 a-year. Arbroath is less pretentious, being a smaller town; but the letter revenue is over £4000 a-year; the persons employed, 14; and the postmaster's salary nearly £200. Dundee shows a postage revenue of over £35,000; 193 persons are employed there; and the postmaster's salary is little short of £600. While at Paisley the revenue from stamps is nearly £10,000; the persons employed, 43; and the postmaster's salary, £300. Notwithstanding the vast decrease in the rates of postage, these figures show, in three of the cases mentioned, that the revenue from letters is now about twelve times what it was less than a century ago.

It will probably be found that one of the most mushroom-like towns of the country is Barrow-in-Furness, now a place of considerable commerce, and an extensive shipping port. The following measurements, according to the Post-office standard, may repay consideration. Prior to 1847 there was nothing but a foot-postman, who served the town by walking thither from Ulverston one day, and back to Ulverston the next. Later on, he made the double journey daily, and delivered the letters on his arrival at Barrow. In 1869 the town had grown to such dimensions that the office was raised to the rank of a head-office, and three postmen were required for delivery. Now, in 1884, thirteen postmen are the necessary delivering force for the town.

About the year 1800 the Post-office had not as yet carried its civilising influence into the districts of Balquhidder, Lochearnhead, Killin, and Tyndrum, there being no regular Post-offices within twenty, thirty, or forty miles of certain places in these districts. The people being desirous of having the Post-office in their borders, the following scheme was proposed to be carried out about the time mentioned:—

A runner to travel from Callander to Lochearnhead—
fourteen miles—at 2s. a journey, three times a-week,		£15120
Salary to postmaster of Lochearnhead,500
A runner to travel from Lochearnhead to Killin—
eighteen miles—at 1s. a journey, three times a-week,		7160
Salary to postmaster of Killin,500
Receiving-house at Wester Lix,200
Runner thence to Luib—four or five miles—1s. 6d. per week,3180
Office at Luib,400
£4360

So that here a whole district of country was to be opened up to the beneficent operations of the Post at an annual cost of what would now be no more than sufficient to pay the wages of a single post-runner. It may be proper, however, to remark in this connection, that money then was of greater value than now; and since it has been shown that a messenger had formerly to travel as much as fourteen double miles for 2s., it is not surprising that Scotchmen, brought up in such a school, should like to cling to a sixpence when they can get it.

It were remiss to pass over London without remark, whose growth is a marvel, and whose Post-office has at least kept up in the running, if it has not outstripped, London itself. In 1796 the delivery of London extended from about Grosvenor Square and Mayfair in the west, to Shadwell, Mile End, and Blackwall in the east; and from Finsbury Square in the north, to the Borough and Rotherhithe in the south; and the number of postmen then employed for the general post-delivery was 126. London has since taken into its maternal embrace many places which were formerly quite separate from the metropolis, and nowadays the agglomeration is known, postally, as the Metropolitan district. In this district the number of men required to effect the delivery of letters in 1884 is no less than 4030. It may be mentioned that the general post-delivery above mentioned had reference to the delivery of ordinary letters coming from the country. Letters of the penny post—or local letters—and letters from foreign parts, were delivered by different sets of men, who all went over the same ground. In 1782 the number of men employed in these different branches of delivery work was as follows, viz.:—

Men.
For Foreign letters,12
" Inland letters,99
" Penny-post letters,44
——
Total,155

It was not till many years later that all kinds of letters came to be delivered by one set of postmen, and that thus needless repetition of work was got rid of.

At the same period—namely, in 1782—the other officers of all kinds employed in the London Post-office numbered 157. At the present time the officers of all kinds (exclusive of postmen, who have been referred to separately) employed in the Metropolitan district are nearly 16,000 in number.