CHAPTER XVII.
HOW LETTERS ARE LOST.
In dealing with the vast numbers of letters and other post articles which daily flow through the capacious veins of the British Post-office, the officials of the department come to learn many strange things connected with the wanderings of letters from their proper courses; they learn much in regard to the blunders made by the senders of letters in writing their addresses, and of the supreme folly frequently shown by individuals in transmitting valuables in carelessly-made-up packets; and this experience not only has the effect of causing complaints made by the public to be sometimes met by doubts and misgivings on the part of the Post-office, but is of great use in tracing home the blame to the right quarter, which is found to be, not infrequently, where the complainer had least reason to suspect it. The following facts will probably establish what is here advanced, besides proving of interest to the reader.
It is quite a common occurrence for letters—especially letters of a small size—which are dropped into a letter-box, to slip inside newspapers or book-packets, and to be carried, not only out of their proper course, but to places abroad, thus getting into the hands of the wrong persons. Such letters are returned from time to time from every quarter of the globe, but what proportion of those which go astray are duly returned it is impossible to say; for there are persons who, on receiving letters in this way not intended for them, proceed to open the envelopes through sheer curiosity, and having thus violated the letters, do not hesitate to destroy them. Others again, through dishonest motives, open letters of this class in the hope of gain. But there are others who, through no such interest, but merely from the want of a neighbourly spirit, refuse to take any trouble to put an errant letter in its proper course. This spirit was displayed in the case of a letter which had been misdelivered by the postman at a given address on the first floor of a tenement (it being intended for a person occupying the ground floor), the person who had received it stating, when questioned, that he had torn up the letter because he would not be troubled to send it downstairs! Letters are sometimes, too, carried away to wrong addresses by sticking to the backs of other letters.
Again, through a great want of sense, or perhaps a redundancy of stupidity, letters are deposited occasionally in the most extraordinary places, in the idea that they are being posted. A servant-girl being sent out to post a letter, drops it into the letter-box of an empty shop, where it is found when an intending tenant goes to look at the premises. In a town in the north of Scotland a person was observed to deposit a letter in a disused street hydrant, and on the cover of the box being removed, three other letters were found, the senders of which had similarly mistaken the water-pillar for a letter-box. The letters had been passed into the box through the space formerly occupied by the tap-lever. A somewhat similarly absurd thing happened some time ago in Liverpool, where two letters were observed to have been forced behind the plate indicating the hours of collection on a pillar letter-box—the person who had placed them there no doubt thinking he was doing the correct thing.
It must be that many individuals entertain the greatest confidence in the servants of the Post-office, or they would not send money and valuables as they do. They also, perhaps, regard the Department as a fit subject on which to perpetrate petty frauds, by sending things of intrinsic value enclosed in books and newspapers. Instances of this kind are frequent.
Within the folds of a newspaper addressed to a person in Ireland were found two sovereigns, yet there was no writing to show who the sender was.
A brown-paper parcel, merely tied with string, unsealed, and not even registered, was found to contain six sovereigns, one half-crown, two sixpences, and three halfpenny-pieces, wrapped up in small articles of ladies' dress.
In the chief office in London, two gold watches were found inside an unregistered book-packet addressed to New Zealand, the middle portions of the leaves having been cut out so as to admit of the watches being concealed within. On another occasion, but in a Scotch Post-office, a packet containing a book bound in morocco, was on examination discovered to have the inner portion of the leaves hollowed out, while still retaining the appearance of an ordinary book, and inside this hollow were found secreted a gold watch and a silver locket. At another time, a £20 Bank of England note was observed pinned to one of the pages of a book addressed to the initials of a lady at a receiving-house in the London Metropolitan District.
A packet done up in a piece of brown paper, unsealed, but tied with string, was found to contain a small quantity of trimming, a collar-box with a few paper-collars, and inside the box were two £1 notes and 10s. in silver. A halfpenny wrapper was used to serve as a covering for the transmission of a letter, a bill of sale, and four £5 Bank of England notes. In a newspaper which reached the Dead-letter Office were found four sovereigns, and in another a gold locket. A packet carelessly rolled up was seen to contain a sovereign, two half-sovereigns, and a savings-bank book. In several instances coins have been found imbedded in cake and pieces of toast; and on one occasion gold coins of the value of £1, 10s. were discovered in a large seal at the back of a letter, the gold pieces having come to light through the wax getting slightly chipped. But the most flattering act of confidence in the probity of the Post-office fell to be performed by a person at Leeds, who, desiring to send a remittance to a friend, folded a five-pound note in two, wrote the address on the back of it, and, without cover or registration, consigned it to the letter-box. Petty frauds are committed on the Post-office to a large extent by the senders of newspapers, who infringe the rules by enclosing all sorts of things between the leaves—such as cigars and tobacco, collars, sea-weed, ferns and flowers, gloves, handkerchiefs, music, patterns, sermons, stockings, postage-stamps, and so on. People in the United States and Canada are much given to these practices, as shown by the fact that in one-half of the year 1874, more than 14,000 newspapers were detected with such articles secreted in them.
Occasionally letters of great value are very carelessly treated after delivery, through misconception as to what they really are. A person alleging that a registered letter containing a number of Suez Canal coupons had not reached him, the Post-office was able to prove its delivery; and on search being then made in the premises of the addressee, the coupons were found in the waste-paper basket, where they had been thrown under the idea that they were circulars. In another instance a registered letter, containing Turkish bonds with coupons payable to bearer, was misdirected to and delivered at an address in the west end of London, though it was really intended for a firm in the city. The value of the enclosures was more than £4000. When inquiry came to be made at the place of delivery, it was found that the bonds had been mistaken for foreign lottery-tickets of no value, and were put aside for the children of the family to play with.
Cases come to light, too, involving a history—or at least suggesting a history without affording particulars—or leaving us entirely in the dark as to the circumstances of the matter. Thus, two packets which had been addressed to Australia, and had been forwarded thither, were returned to England with the mark upon them, "unclaimed." On being opened, one of them was found to contain 100 sovereigns, and the other 50 sovereigns; yet there was no communication whatever in either to show who had sent them. It was supposed, by way of explanation, that a person proceeding to Australia had directed the packets to himself, intending to reach the colony by means of another ship; and that, having died upon the passage, or his ship having been lost, no application was ever made for them at the office to which they had been directed.
On one occasion a cheque for £9, 15s. was found loose in a pillar letter-box in Birmingham. The owner was traced through the bank upon which the cheque was drawn, but he was unable to give any explanation of the circumstances under which it had passed from his possession.
The following are a series of instances in which letters have got out of their proper bearings,—chiefly in the hands of the senders or the persons addressed, or through the carelessness of the servants of those persons; and the cases show how prone the public are to lay blame upon the Post-office when anything goes wrong with their letters, before making proper search in their own premises. A number of cases are added, in which the servants of the senders or of the persons addressed have been proved dishonest, when the blame had first been laid upon Post-office servants; and one or two cases are given where the Department has been held up as the delinquent, merely to afford certain individuals an excuse for not paying money due by them, or otherwise to shirk their obligations.
"A person applied at the Leeds Post-office, and stated that two letters (one of which contained the half of a bank-note) which he had himself posted at that office had not reached their destination—mentioning at the same time some circumstances associated with the alleged posting of the letters. After some conversation, he was requested to produce the letter which had informed him of the non-receipt of the letters in question; but instead of producing it, he, to his own great astonishment, took from his pocket the very letters which he believed he had himself posted."
"Inquiry having been made respecting a letter sent to a person residing at Kirkcudbright, it appeared that it had been duly delivered, but that the addressee having left the letter on a table during the night, it had been devoured by rats." Another case of the depredation of rats upon letters is as follows:—
Certain letters which ought to have reached a bookseller in a country town not having been received, it was concluded, after inquiry, that they had been duly delivered, but had subsequently been withdrawn from under the street door, which was furnished with a slit to receive letters, but without a box to retain them. During subsequent alterations in the shop, however, when it was necessary to remove the flooring under the window, the discovery was made of thirty-one letters, six post-cards, and three newspapers which had been carried thither by rats! The corners of the letters, &c., bearing the stamps, were nibbled away, leaving no doubt that the gum upon the labels was the inducement to the theft. Several of the letters contained cheques and money-orders.
But rats are old enemies to letters, as is known in the Post-office; for in the olden times, when sailing-ships were in use as mail-packets, sad complaints were made of the havoc caused by "ratts" to the mails conveyed in these ships.
Nor are rats the only dumb creatures which have shown a "literary" turn, in getting possession of post-letters. Some years ago a postman was going his rounds delivering letters in Kelvedon, in Essex, carrying a registered letter in his hand ready to deliver it at the next house, when a tame raven—a worthy compeer, if not a contemporary, of the Jackdaw of Rheims—suddenly darted down, snatched it from his grasp, and flew off with it. The bewildered postman could only watch the bird while it made a circuit over the town, which it did before alighting; and so soon as it got to a suitable place, it set to work to analyse the composition of the missive by tearing the letter to pieces. The fragments were shortly afterwards collected and put together, when it was found that part of them were the remains of a cheque for £30, which was afterwards renewed when the singular affair was made known.
Another curious incident in which birds are concerned occurred in the spring of 1884 at Shewbridge Hall, near Nantwich, in Cheshire. For the convenience of the people at the Hall, a letter-box is placed by the gate at the roadside, into which the post-runner drops the correspondence addressed to Shewbridge Hall. Mr Lockett, the occupier of the house, expecting a letter from Liverpool, containing a cheque for £10, went to the box, where, as it happened, he found the letter, but in a mutilated state, and the cheque gone. Believing that a robbery of his box had been committed, or that the letter had been violated before being deposited therein, he forthwith rode into Nantwich to report the matter at the Post-office and to the police. Returning later on, he examined the box more closely, and discovered tomtits inside; and further investigation led to the discovery of the cheque lying twenty yards away on the turnpike road, whither it had evidently been carried for examination. The cheque was folded small, and could therefore be easily carried by these small birds.
Letter-box taken possession of by Tomtits.
The tomtits had taken possession of the box for nesting purposes, and perhaps they found the letter to be in the way, and accordingly made an effort to remove it. In the spring of the previous year a pair of tomtits built their nest in this letter-box (possibly the same pair), and reared a brood of young, though letters were being dropped into the box every day.
A very similar circumstance occurred in the same season at a place near Lockerbie, where a letter-box is affixed to the trunk of a tree bordering on the main road, for the convenience of the people living at Daltonhook farm, which occupies a site some distance from the highway. The letter-box is about fifteen inches square, with the usual slit to admit of letters being dropped in, and a door to the front the full size of the box, to allow the postman to clear it or to place larger packets within. A pair of tomtits, considering the box an eligible place for bringing up a family, built their nest in it, obtaining ingress and egress by the letter-slit, and choosing that portion of the interior farthest from the door for their purpose. In contrast to the ruthlessness and cruelty of many who show no love to God's creatures unless they contribute in some way to their comfort or profit, the post-runner and the family who use the box, in a kind-hearted way took every care to disturb these objects of interest as little as possible, and in due time the nest was complete, and eight tiny eggs were deposited therein. While the female was sitting on the eggs during the term of incubation, she did not rise from the nest when the post-runner opened the door, but would make a peculiar noise and peck at his hand as he put it forward to take out or deposit letters. But after a time the two became more friendly, and kindness on the one side begetting confidence on the other, the bird at length became so familiar, that while it continued to sit on the nest it would peck crumbs from the man's hand, instead of showing displeasure, as it formerly had done. At length seven young birds became the joy of the parents. These, however, did not find the box altogether free from drawbacks; for letters, in being deposited through the slit, sometimes fell on the top of the youngsters, and so excited the wrath of the old birds. This was proved on one occasion when a servant dropped a letter into the box, for when the post-runner next visited the receptacle, he found the letter so mutilated, either through sheer rage on the part of the tomtits, or in their endeavours to eject it by the slit, that he took it back to the farmhouse rather than send it forward in its badly damaged state. However, the brood at length got through the troubles of their infantile days; and we may indulge the hope that they have since lived to join in the antiphonies of the grove, or to adorn the roadside spray with their neat figures and glowing colours.
It may be added that these little birds are very eccentric in the choice of their nesting-places. In one case they selected the inside of a weathercock on the top of a steeple for their breeding-place, and in another the interior of a beehive in full work. Here they set up house and reared their young, neither injuring the bees, nor being molested by them in return.
"A gentleman at Archerstown, county Westmeath, complained of a letter, containing half bank-notes and post-bills amounting to £400, addressed to Dublin, not having come to hand; but when the matter came to be fully examined, it was ascertained that the letter was in a drawer in the house of the very person to whom it had been directed, but by whom it had been entirely overlooked."
A banker residing in a country town in Scotland reported that a letter containing two £20 notes and two £1 notes, addressed to him by another banker, and posted at a town ten miles distant, had not come to hand. On inquiry, the sender could not state either the numbers or the dates of the notes. He had, moreover, allowed upwards of two months to elapse before taking any steps to ascertain whether his letter had reached its destination. "As this valuable letter had been posted without the precaution of registration, and had the words 'county rates' on the envelope, it was supposed to have excited the cupidity of some one connected with one or other of the two Post-offices concerned, and an officer was immediately despatched to investigate the case. The complainant reiterated the statement that the letter had not reached him; but within half an hour of the officer's departure, an inmate of the house having made a fresh search, found the letter among some papers in a press, where it had apparently been placed unopened when received."
"A bank agent sent a letter containing valuable enclosures to another bank agent. The letter was presumed to have been lost by the Post-office; but no trace of it could be obtained there, and the applicant was informed accordingly. It subsequently appeared that the son of the person to whom the letter had been addressed had called at the Post-office and received the letter, and that he had afterwards left the town for the holidays, carrying the letter away with him in his pocket, where it had remained."
"A letter supposed to contain a £10 note was registered at Moffat, and in due course delivered to the addressee, who, however, declined to sign a receipt for it, as the £10 note was missing. The sender was written to, but he asserted that the note had been enclosed. The postmaster chiefly concerned (who had been more than fifty years in the service) was greatly distressed at the doubt thus cast upon his honesty; but on further inquiry, the sender admitted that he had obtained a trace of the £10 note, and stated that the fault had not been with the Post-office. On being pressed for fuller information, he stated that when writing his letter he had placed the £10 note in an envelope and affixed a postage-stamp thereon, when a lady came hurriedly into his shop, also to write a letter, and he had assisted her by getting an envelope and placing a postage-stamp on it; that he had placed this envelope beside that which contained the bank-note; and that when the lady had finished her letter, he gave her by mistake the envelope with the £10 note in it, and put his own letter into the empty envelope. He had carried the two letters to the Post-office; and his own, which he supposed contained the £10, he had registered. Both letters were safely delivered; and the £10 having been returned as evidently sent in error, the lady who had forwarded it brought it to the complainant, and thus the mystery was cleared up."
During a snowstorm which occurred a year or two ago, a London firm put up for posting, among others, a letter to a Glasgow firm containing a cheque for a sum little short of £1000. The cheque not reaching its destination in due course, payment was stopped at the bank, and notwithstanding that every inquiry was made, nothing was heard of the letter at the time. Eventually, however, the cheque was brought to the firm who had drawn it, together with the letter, by a police-inspector, who had found the letter adhering to a block of ice floating in the Thames off Deptford. The supposition is, that when the letters of the day were being carried to the Lombard Street Post-office, this letter was dropped in the street, that it was carted off in the snow to the Thames, and there, after a week's immersion in the river, got affixed to the block of ice, as already stated.
On the 27th February 1885, a medical gentleman residing at Richmond, Surrey, when going his usual round of visits, found on the carriage floor two letters, one addressed to a person in Edinburgh, the other to a lady residing near Castle-Douglas. The letters had been duly prepared for the post, each bearing an undefaced postage-stamp, but nothing in their appearance indicated that they had ever been posted. The finder was at first puzzled at the discovery, but on reflection, he remembered having a few minutes previously opened a large newspaper, the 'Queen,' which had reached him from Edinburgh two or three days before, but had till then remained unopened in his carriage. It occurred to him that the letters might have come concealed within the folds of the newspaper, and he was good enough to forward a note with each to the persons addressed, explaining the circumstances under which he had found them. Subsequent investigation by the Post-office brought to light the fact that one of the two letters, and the copy of the 'Queen' from which they were supposed to have dropped, had been deposited in different pillar-boxes in Edinburgh, but in the same collector's district; and there can be no doubt that this letter, and probably also the other letter, were shaken inside the folds of the newspaper during their conveyance to the head-office in the collector's bag. In one of the notes which the doctor sent with the letters, he made this remark:—"I cannot help feeling that the postal authorities and the public should both have their eyes opened to what a serious danger such a letter-trap as a large newspaper might prove." He omitted to add, however, that the sender of the 'Queen' had tied it up very carelessly without a wrapper, and in a way that could hardly fail to render it a dangerous travelling companion for letters. Had the letters fallen into dishonest hands, their loss would certainly have been attributed to the Post-office, and the case is one which aptly illustrates a means by which letters sometimes get out of their proper course, or are lost altogether.
A firm of solicitors in Leith wrote a letter to a client in the same town, enclosing a cheque for £102; and this letter, although it was alleged to have been duly posted, failed to reach the person for whom it was intended. The usual inquiries were made, but unsuccessfully, no trace being discovered of the letter. Some days afterwards the firm received the letter and cheque, minus the envelope, from a farmer near Tranent, in one of whose fields a ploughman had picked them up. This man was engaged spreading town-refuse upon the field when he found the letter, which he opened, and thereupon threw away the cover. For the purposes of investigation, it was very essential that this should be produced; but it happened that meanwhile the field had been gone over with a grubbing machine, and the chances of the recovery of the discarded envelope were thereby greatly lessened. The ploughman's son was set to work, however, to make a search, and after toiling a whole day, he found the envelope. On examination, it was seen that the postage-stamp affixed was still undefaced, and the envelope bore nothing to show that it had ever been in the Post-office. The whole circumstances left no doubt that the letter had either got into the waste-paper basket of the senders, or had been dropped on the way to the Post-office, and that it had been carried ten miles into the country amongst street rubbish, with which, as manure, the farm in question was supplied from the town of Leith.
A registered letter posted at Newcastle, and addressed to a banker in Edinburgh, not having reached the addressee's hands, a telegram was forwarded to the sender intimating the fact, and requesting explanation of the failure. The banker supposed that the letter had been lost or purloined in the Post-office; but it was afterwards proved to have been duly delivered to the bank porter, who having locked it up in his desk, had quite forgotten it.
A lady residing in Jersey applied to the Post-office respecting a letter which had been sent by her to a clergyman at Oxford. Inquiry was made for it at all the offices through which it would pass, but unsuccessfully, no trace whatever of it being found. Subsequently the clergyman informed the secretary of the Post-office that he had found the letter between the cushions of his own arm-chair, where it had been placed, no doubt, at the time of delivery.
"A person complained of delay in the receipt of a letter which appeared to have passed through the Post-office twice. It transpired that the letter had, in the first instance, been duly delivered at a shop, where it was to remain till called for, but that it had accidentally been taken away with some music by a customer, who had afterwards dropped it in the street. Subsequently the letter must have been picked up and again posted, and hence its double passage through the Post-office."
"A barrister complained of the non-delivery of a letter containing the halves of two £10 Bank of England notes, stating that he had posted the letter himself; but he shortly afterwards wrote to say that the letter had reached its destination. It appeared that, instead of putting it into the letter-box, he had dropped the letter in the street, where, fortunately, it was picked up by some honest person, who posted it."
A business firm having frequently failed to receive letters which had been addressed to them, made complaint on the subject from time to time; but the inquiries which were instituted resulted in nothing. After much trouble, however, it was at length discovered that a defect existed in the letter-box in the firm's office-door, and fifteen letters were found lodged between the box and the door, some of which had been in that situation more than nine years.
A letter said to contain a cheque for £12, 4s., addressed to a London firm, not having reached its destination, inquiries were made with respect to it. At the end of three months it turned up at a papier-mâché factory, whither it had, no doubt, been carried among waste-paper from the office at which it had been delivered.
In 1883, a registered letter sent from Dunkeld on a given date was duly received in Edinburgh, and delivered at its address, which was a bank, the postman obtaining a signature to the receipt-form in the usual way. Some little time afterwards complaint was made by the manager of the bank that the letter had not been received; but the Post-office was able to prove the contrary by the receipt, the signature to which, on being submitted to the manager, was acknowledged to be that of the wife of the housekeeper of the establishment. Yet this person could give no account of the letter, nor had any one else seen it; and as the letter was stated to have contained four £1 notes and a bank deposit-book, the fact of its disappearance gave rise to a state of things which can be better imagined than described. The Post-office, in the circumstances, offered the suggestion that the bank's waste-paper should be carefully examined. As it happened, however, a quantity of this material had just been cleared out, having been purchased by a waste-paper dealer; and the fact made the chances of recovery in that direction all the more remote. Yet the housekeeper was set to work: he traced the bags first to the store of the dealer, then to the premises of a waste-paper merchant in another part of the city. With assistance he carefully examined the contents of the bags filled at the bank, and his efforts were rewarded by the discovery of the registered letter, which was in precisely the same state as when delivered, never having been opened. It had very likely fallen from a desk in the bank on to the floor, and by a careless person been brushed aside with used envelopes and scraps of paper, thus finding its way into the waste-paper basket.
In April 1873, a letter was posted in a certain village in Ayrshire, addressed by a wife to her husband, who was in command of a vessel bound for New York. The letter was properly directed to the captain by name, it bore the name of his ship, and was addressed to the care of the British Consul, New York. The captain never received the letter, and this circumstance gave rise, upon his return from sea, to what is described as a "feud" between him and his wife,—he, reposing perhaps greater faith in the Post-office than in the dutiful attentions of his wife, believing that his better-half had not written to him, since he failed to receive the letter on application at its place of address in New York. Time, with its incessant changes, hopes, fears, joys, and disappointments, winged its hurried flight for a period of eleven years ere the matter which had caused the feud came to be fully understood. At the end of that time the same letter was returned to the writer through the Dead-letter Office, having (according to the stamp upon it) been unclaimed at New York. It was stated that the return of the letter had "put all to rights" between the couple concerned, though it is to be hoped that the healing hand of Time had already done much in this direction, and that the return of the long-lost letter did nothing more than put the finishing touch to restored confidence. In connection with this matter, it was afterwards ascertained that the letter was one of over 4000 similar letters returned to the New York Post-office from the offices of the British Consul in that city, upon a new appointment being made to the Consulate,—the "new broom," as one of his first acts, having made a clean sweep of this accumulation of letters, some of which had been lying there no less than seventeen years. How far the failure of these letters to reach the persons addressed was due to their not having been called for, or to the negligence of clerks at the Consulate, is not known, nor will it ever be ascertained what heart-burnings and misery may have been occasioned by this wholesale miscarriage of correspondence.
In March 1880, a letter plainly addressed to an individual by name, and bearing the name and number of a street in a certain district of London, reached the Dead-letter Office, whither it had been sent by the postman of the district, owing to the person to whom it was directed not being known at the address given. When opened, with a view to its return to the writer, the letter was discovered to contain a Bank of England note for £100, together with a short memorandum suggesting the return of the note to some person, but in such vague and general terms that no one who had not had previous information on the subject could have fully understood the purport of the message.
The memorandum was, moreover, without head or tail—it had no superscription to indicate whence it had come, nor had it a signature to show by whom it had been written. The circumstance being one of an exceptional character, special steps were taken with a view to trace the owner, and an advertisement was inserted in several of the metropolitan newspapers—bringing up, it is true, a responsive crop of claimants for lost notes, but without eliciting any such claims as would warrant the surrender of the note in question. From the terms of the memorandum in the letter, and the fact that it was anonymous, the suggestion readily arose that whoever had had the note last had not come by it in the regular way of business; and this idea was strengthened by the discovery that the note had been paid over by a bank about eight years previously to a person whose name and address were endorsed upon it; and from that period the note had evidently not been in circulation. It was thought probable that the endorser had lost the note in some way shortly after receiving it, and that coming into the hands of some individual who feared to put it in circulation, it had been kept up during these eight years. Meanwhile, the right to receive the note not having been established by any one, the amount was paid in to the Revenue.
In the Postmaster-General's report for 1881, further mention was made of the finding of the note in the Dead-letter Office, and several claims again reached headquarters, one of which proved to be so far good, that, when the facts had been fully investigated, the amount was paid over to the claimant.
It appeared that the person whose name was endorsed on the note received it in part payment of a cheque cashed by him in 1872, when he was bought out of the business in which he had till then been a partner. Two years afterwards—viz., in 1874—he died, and his widow was unaware at the time that the note had been lost. From circumstances which this lady was able to prove, however, there seemed to be every reason to believe that her husband (whose practice it was to endorse notes when he had received them) had by some means lost the note, or that it had been carelessly left by him in some old book or other papers which were sold as waste-paper after her husband's death; and thus the Post-office was made the means of restoring a considerable sum of money to the rightful owner, while the person who had without title possessed it in the interval dared not claim it.
"A letter said to have been posted by a person at Fochabers, enclosing a letter of credit for £50, was supposed to have been appropriated by an officer of the Post-office; but on inquiry it was ascertained that, instead of posting the letter himself, as he asserted, the writer had intrusted it to a servant, who had destroyed the letter, and had attempted to negotiate the order."
"A person complained repeatedly of letters addressed to him having been intercepted and tampered with, and of drafts having been stolen from them and negotiated. There being ground to suspect that the thief was in the complainant's own office, he reluctantly consented to test the honesty of his clerks; and the result showed that one of them was the guilty party, the man being subsequently tried and convicted. The thefts had been committed by means of a duplicate key, which gave the clerk access to the letter-box."
"Several complaints were made of the non-delivery of letters addressed to the editor of a newspaper; but this gentleman afterwards intimated that he had discovered that the delinquent was his own errand-boy, who confessed to having pilfered his letter-box."
"A similar case occurred at Romsey, where, on an investigation by the surveyor, it was discovered that the applicant's errand-boy had abstracted the letters from his private bag, which it was found could be done even when the bag was locked."
"Application was made respecting a letter containing a cheque for £79, 12s. 11d., which had been presented and cashed. The letter had not been registered, and no trace of it could be discovered. The applicants, however, ultimately withdrew their complaint against the Post-office, stating their belief that the missing letter had not been posted, but had been stolen by one of their clerks, who had absconded."
"A merchant sent his errand-boy to post a letter, and to purchase a stamp to put upon it. The letter contained negotiable bills amounting to £1200; and as the merchant did not receive an acknowledgment from his correspondent, he cast the blame on the Post-office. An inquiry followed, which resulted in showing that the errand-boy had met another boy on a similar mission, who undertook to post the letter in question. On further reflection, however, the latter resolved to convert the penny intended for a postage-stamp into sweetmeats, which he did, and then destroyed the letter with its contents, carrying the fragments into a field near the Post-office, where they were found hidden."
A sailor applied for a missing letter containing a money-order for 30s., which he said had been sent, but had not reached him; but when he found that the matter was under strict investigation, he confessed that the money had been paid to him, and that he had denied having received it, in order to excuse himself from not paying a debt to the person with whom he lodged.
"A person having applied for a missing letter, said to contain two £10 and one £5 Bank of England notes, and which he stated had been sent to him by his father, it appeared on inquiry that no such letter had been written; and he afterwards confessed that his object in asking for the letter was a device to keep in abeyance a pecuniary demand upon him by his landlady."
Some years ago a person complained that twelve sovereigns had been abstracted from a letter received by him while it was in transit through the post, but he was told in reply that the envelope bore evidence that it had not contained coin to that amount. This person then communicated with the sender of the letter, who persisted in declaring that she had put therein the amount stated. At this stage of the inquiry an officer was despatched to investigate the matter; and upon his requiring the woman who had sent the envelope to accompany him before a magistrate to attest the truth of her statement upon oath, she confessed that the statement was false, and explained her conduct by saying that she had promised to lend the person to whom the envelope had been addressed £12, but that she had been unwilling to do so, as she felt sure that she should never get her money back again; and that she determined, therefore, to keep her money, and throw the blame on the Post-office.
"A bank in Glasgow some years ago complained that a letter had been delivered there without its contents—halves of bank-notes for £75; and on a strict investigation, it appeared that the letter had been intrusted to a boy to post, who confessed that, being aware the letter contained money, and finding that the wafer with which it was fastened was wet, he had been tempted to steal the contents, which, at the time, he believed to be whole notes; but who added that when, on afterwards examining them, he found them to be halves only, he enclosed them in an unfastened sheet of paper, which he directed according, as he believed, to the address of the letter from which he had taken them. The halves of the notes and sheet of paper were subsequently discovered in the Glasgow Post-office, the address on the paper being, however, very different from that of the letter in which the notes had been enclosed."
"Complaint was made that a letter containing the halves of Bank of England notes for £65, sent to a firm in Liverpool, had failed to reach its destination. On inquiry, it appeared that the letter had been duly delivered, and subsequently stolen by a well-known thief, who had the audacity to go and claim the corresponding half-notes from another firm in Liverpool, to whose care the stolen letter showed they had been sent by the same post; and in this object the scoundrel succeeded."
An unregistered letter containing a £10 Bank of England note, posted at Macclesfield and addressed to Manchester, was stated not to have reached its destination. Full inquiry was made, but the letter could not be found. Subsequently, however, the note was presented at the Bank of England, and on being traced, it was discovered that the letter had been stolen after its delivery.
"A letter containing two £5 Bank of England notes was stated to have been posted at Leeds, addressed to a lady at Leamington, without reaching its destination; but the inquiry that was instituted by the Post-office caused the sender to withdraw his complaint, and to prefer against the clerk whom he had intrusted with the letter, a charge of having purloined it before it reached the Post-office."
"The secretary of a charitable institution in London gave directions for posting a large number of 'election papers,' and supposed that these directions had been duly acted upon. Shortly, however, he received complaints of the non-receipt of many of the papers, and in other cases of delay. He at once made a complaint at the Post-office; but, on examination, circumstances soon came to light which cast suspicion on the person employed to post the notices, although this man had been many years in the service of the society, and was supposed to be of strict integrity. Ultimately, the man confessed that he had embezzled the postage, amounting to £3, 15s. 6d., and had endeavoured to deliver the election papers himself."
"Complaint having been made by a dealer in foreign postage-stamps that several letters containing such stamps had not reached him, a careful investigation was made, but for some time without any result. The letters should have been dropped by the letter-carrier into the addressee's letter-box; but to this box no one, the dealer asserted, had access but himself. Some time afterwards, however, a cover addressed to the complainant was picked up in the street, and on inquiry being made whether the letter to which it belonged had been delivered, the complainant stated that it had not. But it so happened that the letter-carrier had a clear recollection of dropping this letter into the letter-box, and, moreover, remembered to have observed a young girl who was at the window move, as he thought, towards the box. This led to the girl being closely questioned, when she admitted the theft, confessing also that she had committed other similar thefts previously. Thus, by a mere chance, a suspicion which had been cast on the Post-office was dispelled."
"The publisher of one of the London papers complained of the repeated loss in the Post-office of copies of his journal addressed to persons abroad. An investigation showed that the abstraction was made by the publisher's clerk, his object apparently being to appropriate the stamps required to defray the foreign postage. In another case a general complaint having arisen as to the loss of newspapers sent to the chief office in St Martin's-le-Grand, inquiry led to the discovery of a regular mart held near the office, and supplied with newspapers by the private messengers employed to convey them to the post. On another occasion a man was detected in the act of robbing a newsvendor's cart, by volunteering on its arrival at the General Post-office to assist the drivers in posting the newspapers: instead of doing so, he walked through the hall with those intrusted to him, and, upon his being stopped, three quires of a weekly paper were found in his possession."
In the spring of 1855, a young lady, fifteen years of age, whose parents resided in a small English town, which shall be nameless, was sent to a boarding-school at some distance therefrom to pursue her education. The mother of the young lady was in a delicate state of health, and, as was most proper in the circumstances, letters were written from time to time and forwarded to the daughter at school, giving particulars of her mother's progress. So far this is all plain and straightforward. The young lady, however, one day declared that though on a particular date mentioned by her she had written home to inquire how her mother was, that letter had not been delivered; and that on the second day thereafter a brown-paper parcel was placed in a very mysterious manner in the hall of the house where she was at school. In this parcel was found a letter for the young lady intimating her mother's death, and explaining that the parcel had been brought by a friend—thus accounting for the absence from it of all post-marks. Other circumstances were related by the girl—that she had seen a man galloping along the road, and that he had left the parcel in question. Two days after this event, a letter was posted from her parents' residence to inform the young lady that her mother was much better; but when the letter arrived and was opened, she produced another letter requiring her immediate return, in order to attend her mother's funeral. The case was very puzzling, and naturally excited great interest,—the more so, as some suspicion arose that a conspiracy existed to carry off the young lady, in which some person in the Post-office was aiding and abetting. The matter formed the subject of two separate investigations, ending in failure, and the mystery still remained. It was only after a third attempt at elucidation—when an officer specially skilled in prosecuting inquiries of a difficult kind had visited the school—that the truth began to appear. This officer reported that, in his opinion, the whole proceedings were but a plot of a school-girl to get home; and the young lady afterwards confessed this to be the case.
It is not probable that the petty fraud of again using stamps which have already passed through the post is perpetrated with any great frequency upon the Post-office. Still, cases no doubt do occur, and may at any time lead to criminal proceedings, like those which took place at Hull some years ago. A person in that town having posted a letter with an old stamp affixed, the stamper who had to deface the stamp in the usual way, detected the irregularity, and brought the matter under notice. Proceedings were taken against the offender, and the case being established against him, and the fact being stated that this person had previously been warned by the Post-office against committing like frauds, he was mulcted in a fine of £5 and costs, with the alternative punishment of three-months' imprisonment.
The accidents and misfortunes which are the lot of letters in this country, seem also to attend post-letters in their progress through the Post-offices of other countries. A curious case was noticed some years ago in the French capital. Some alterations were being carried out in the General Post-office in Paris, when there was found, in a panel situated near a letter-box, a letter which had been posted just fifty years before. There it had remained concealed half a century. The letter was forwarded to the person whose address it bore, and who, strange to say, was still alive; but the writer, it transpired, had been dead many years.
On one occasion notice was given to the Post-office by a clergyman residing in a country town in the south of England, that a packet sent by him containing a watch had been tampered with in the post, the packet having reached the person addressed, not with the watch that had been despatched, but containing a stone, which, it was alleged, must have been substituted in course of transit. As is usual in cases of this kind, very particular inquiries were necessary to establish whether the Post-office was really in fault, because experience has shown that very often obloquy is laid upon the Department which ought to rest elsewhere; and accordingly, a shrewd and practised officer in such matters was sent to the town in question to make investigations. Arrived at the clergyman's residence, the officer found that that gentleman was from home; but introducing himself to the sender's wife, he explained his mission, and in a general way learned from her what she was able to communicate with regard to the violated packet. While the interview was thus proceeding, the officer, with professional habit, made the best use of his eyes, which, lighting upon a rough causeway of small stones somewhere on the premises, afforded him a hint, if not as yet a suspicion, as to the locality of the fraud. In fact, he remarked a striking resemblance between the stone which had been received in the packet and the stones forming the causeway. In the most delicate way he insinuated the inquiry whether the lady might not possibly entertain some shadow of a suspicion of her own servants.
"Oh dear, no," was the reply; "they are all most respectable, and have the highest characters."
The lady had the utmost confidence in them, and to admit such a thought was to do them grave injustice. The officer was not to be satisfied with such an assurance, however, and by using tact and patience he brought the lady to see that, if there was no dishonesty with her own servants, they would come safely out of the inquiry, and it might be well to allow him to question them. It was further permitted, after some objection on the lady's part and persuasion on that of the officer, that the latter should ask each of the servants separately whether they would allow their boxes to be examined. If they had nothing to conceal, the ordeal could not, of course, hurt them. The female servants were called up one by one and closely questioned, and on the proposed examination of the boxes being suggested, the girls at once assented. This was so far satisfactory, but there was still the butler to deal with. In due turn the presence of this household ornament was summoned to the room, when, up to a certain point, everything went well; but it being put to him to have his boxes searched, injured virtue cried out, and indignation and scorn were vented upon the obtrusive inquirer. The officer had, however, gained a point, for he was now in a position to say that if the butler continued to object, the suspicion would arise that he might possibly be the culprit, and it might even be concluded that he and not the Post-office ought to account for the watch. At length the man-servant gave way, and he and the officer proceeded to the butler's quarters. Upon the trunk being opened, the first thing to attract notice was three bottles of wine.
"Holloa!" says the officer, "what have we here? A strange wine-cellar this!"
"Oh," observed the butler, "these are three bottles of ginger-wine which were given me by my father, a grocer in the town."
"Indeed!" says the officer, who had meanwhile been noting the colour as he held a bottle between himself and the light; "it looks a queer colour for ginger-wine. You won't mind letting me taste your wine, will you?"
Overborne by the assurance of the officer perhaps, or thinking him quite chatty and chummy, a cork was withdrawn, and the officer was sipping capital old crusted port. The wine was pronounced very good, but the missing watch was not forthcoming.
The scene of inquiry was now changed. The officer proceeded to the shop of the grocer, made some trifling purchase, put on his most affable ways, and he soon had the grocer talking, first on general topics, then on personal matters, and at last on the theme of his own family.
"How many have you?" says the officer.
"So-and-so," responds the grocer.
"All doing for themselves by this time, I suppose?" continues the officer.
This flung the door open for a full statement of the position of the family, which was given without reserve, as if to an old friend, until the butler with the clergyman was mentioned, when the officer interrupted him with the remark—
"Ah, to be sure; I know something of him. That was capital ginger-wine you gave him lately."
"Ginger-wine!" quoth the grocer; "I never had wine in my house in my life, and I certainly never gave my son any."
This was enough for the officer, who remarked that there might be a mistake; and soon thereafter he found means to bring the conversation to a close.
Returning immediately to the clergyman's house, he again saw the lady, and told her what had occurred. He made bold to say, moreover, that her butler was a thief, that he was stealing her husband's wine, that he in all probability had made away with the watch, and that she ought to give him into custody, and to prosecute him. At this point the butler was called in, and in presence of his mistress plainly taxed with the theft of the wine. Finding it useless to stand out, he confessed that he had taken it, but protested that he had not stolen the watch.
The lady, however, had no longer any doubt in the matter; and deeply distressed at finding how greatly she had been deceived in her estimate of his character for integrity, exclaimed—"Oh John! to think that after all the pains your master and I have taken to make you a good man, you should have done this wicked thing! Oh John, John!"
The officer saw that in the lady's view all suspicion was removed from the Post-office, and prepared to leave; but feeling anxious about the lady in the absence of her husband, said he should go to the police-station and fetch a couple of constables to attend to the matter. On this hint the butler became greatly excited and alarmed, and earnestly begged that only one policeman might be sent.
"Oh no," said the officer, "you are a big man, and we must have two;" and beckoning Mrs —— to leave the room, he turned the key in the door, and went for the police.
During his absence, the household was in a state of wild excitement, the lady of the house being in a high state of nervousness, while below-stairs the servants were in no better condition. Meanwhile, one of the females, either through sympathy for the idol of the kitchen, or in pursuance of womanly curiosity, which is not less likely, sought the vantage-ground of a water-butt at the rear of the premises, in order to make a reconnaissance through the window, and ascertain how the butler was comporting himself in the new and extraordinary situation where he was. But one glance into the room was enough; she sprang to the ground, and ran to her mistress screaming that John was cutting his throat. Sure enough he had been engaged in this operation, using a pocket-knife for the purpose; and the officers of justice, on opening the door, found him streaming with blood from the self-inflicted wound.
At this juncture the Post-office official left the matter to be dealt with by the clergyman as he might see fit. He felt sufficient interest in the case, however, to make inquiry subsequently as to the fate of the culprit, and learnt that he had recovered from his injury; that his kind master and mistress had forgiven him; and although they did not receive him back into their service, they helped him in other ways, and were assiduous in their endeavours to keep him in the paths of rectitude and honesty.
The following anecdote, borrowed from a French source,[4] will illustrate how serious the consequences may be when letters are not clearly and intelligibly addressed, and by what slight accidents such missives sometimes go far from their right course.
About the year 1837 there was garrisoned at a small town in the Department of the Pas-de-Calais an honest soldier named Goraud, who had served with the colours a term of seven years. Though he had conducted himself well, and was favourably thought of by his superiors, he had never been able to rise above the grade of full private. He liked his profession, but being unable either to read or write, the avenues to promotion remained closed against him.
Goraud came from an obscure village in Provence, where his poor old mother, a woman of over sixty, lived, and where also resided a married brother, younger than himself, who was surrounded by a rising family of children. The soldier received from time to time letters from his mother, which, on being read to him, affected him deeply, sometimes even to tears. There were, besides, other friends in his native place of whom he entertained kindly recollections, and with whom he kept up intercourse through his family; especially a young woman towards whom he had formerly had very tender feelings, which, though not now so strong, time and distance had not as yet effaced.
Becoming home-sick, and having no bright prospect before him in the army, Goraud yearned to be set free, so that he might spend the rest of his days "in the midst of those he so much loved," as is expressed on the tomb of the great Napoleon. He had already, as has been before stated, served seven years; he had been of good conduct; and now he had but to demand his discharge in order to accomplish his fondest wish.
But just as he was about to make the necessary request, and to realise the dream which he had been cherishing, a letter from his brother changed all his plans. His joy was turned to sorrow. This letter informed him that his mother was seriously ill, and, moreover, that some distemper had assailed his brother's stock, carrying many of them off; in fact, misery stared in the face those among whom he had hoped to live happily, and to eke out the remainder of his days in comfort. The poor fellow was sadly cast down; the phantom of pleasure had passed from his view; he shed bitter tears of disappointment, and was at his wits' end. Dejection and irresolution did not, however, last. He soon regained command of himself, and filial affection suggested to him the course which he should pursue.
Next day he proceeded to the office of an agent whose business it was to procure substitutes for individuals desirous of avoiding service in the army; and in a few days thereafter he engaged to serve his country for seven years more, receiving in return a payment down of 1500 francs. It may be guessed what was the next step taken by the worthy soldier. He remitted the 1500 francs to his mother, in a letter directed to the care of his brother; and at the same time he intimated that he was to start at once for Algeria, there to join the new regiment to which he had been posted.
Three months passed, and as yet no acknowledgment for the money came to hand. This to Goraud, after the sacrifice he had made, was sadly disappointing; but he did not at first feel alarmed. The idea occurred to him that his mother might be a trifle worse, or that something might have delayed the reply. He decided to write again. He related what he had done, explained the cause he had for uneasiness, and begged that an early answer might be sent to him. This was not long in coming. It stated that the old mother was again well, that the brother had had a hard struggle, and that though he hoped to pull through, it might prove necessary for him to quit the place. In regard to the alleged remittance, it was briefly added that no money had been received.
This latter statement created a most painful impression upon the soldier. His brother's letter appeared to breathe a tone which was not usual; he imagined that, under the guise of calculated frigidity, was to be perceived an insinuation that no money had been sent: and, smarting under the sting of such reflections, the blush of offended virtue rose to his cheek. His feelings ran over the whole gamut of wounded sentiment. He saw himself an injured man, and felt deeply hurt; his money had gone unacknowledged, and he became roused to anger; and then, revolving the whole circumstances in his mind, suspicion took possession of him. Recollecting that the money-letter had been sent as an ordinary letter by post, and that the reply had not seemed quite right, he now suspected that his brother had received the remittance, appropriated it to his own use, and denied the receipt of his letter. In this frame of mind, he had a communication penned to his brother full of denunciations and reproaches, and couched in such terms of violence, that he would not allow the epistle when written to be read over to him. Next day he started with a distant expedition on active service.
Gloomy, cast down, and above all irate, he was ready to fight with the wind or his own shadow. In the first brush with the enemy he threw himself into their midst with fury, and fought desperately for several hours, as if to provoke the end which he now longed for. Instead of meeting his death, however, he gained the hero's prize—the cross of honour. One month previously he would have hailed this distinction with delight; now everything was dull and indifferent to him—even glory!
About a year after this event Goraud accompanied his regiment to Paris. As he was leaving the barracks one day a voice hailed him with the question, "Is not your name Goraud?" "Yes, major," was the soldier's reply. "Very good," says the other, "here is a letter for you. There are several Gorauds in the regiment, and the letter has already been opened. I see you are wanted at the Dead-letter office of the Post-office about some business which concerns you."
He took the letter, and at once hastened to the Post-office. There an explanation awaited him of the miscarriage of his remittance, and the mystery which had clouded his spirits and embittered his life for a whole year. The same letter that he had despatched lay before him with its contents intact. It had been written and addressed for him by a comrade in the regiment, the superscription, turned into English, being something in this form—
"To M. Jacques Goraud,
for Widow Goraud,
at La Bastide,
Canton
of Marseilles."
As it happened, the obliging comrade was a poor scribe, and was without any great experience in letter-writing, or in the art of addressing letters. The only word in the direction which had been plainly written, and stood out in a way to catch the eye, was the word "Canton." This was the key to the mystery; the letter had been sent to China!
At the period in question the sailing-ships conveying the mails took about six months to reach that distant country, and the same time for the return voyage. The soldier's letter had made the double journey; and the blunder being discovered when the letter came back to France, it was sent to the village in Provence to which it was really addressed. But, alas! adversity had overtaken the family in the old home. They had left the place, and gone no one knew whither; and, so far as the Post-office was concerned, it only remained to return the letter to the writer through the Dead-letter Office.
The moral of this anecdote is, that letters ought to be plainly addressed. Some examples of the rambling style in which addresses are often written are given in another chapter. It would be a useful work were the school boards to give some instruction in this matter to the children under their care. The copy-books might be headed with specimen addresses for the purpose, and the teachers could point out how desirable it is, in addition to plain writing, that the addresses should be well arranged—the name of the person occupying one line, the street and number another, and the name of the town a conspicuous place to the right, in a line by itself. In this particular "they do things better in France," for in that country instruction of the kind in question was introduced into the primary schools more than twenty years ago.