Her Majesty's Mails / An Historical and Descriptive Account of the British Post-Office

by William Lewins

A PROVINCIAL POST-OFFICE.

Thirty years ago the arrangements in the north country town of the district to which our imaginary letter was addressed, and which we are engaged to visit, were of the most primitive kind. It has always been an important town. Even anterior to the first establishment of the British Post-Office, it was the first town in the county in which it stands. Subsequently, it was on the direct line of one of the principal mail-routes in the kingdom, and now, in these days of railroads, it is a kind of junction for the district. Postally speaking, it was, and is, a place of importance, including within its boundaries nearly a hundred villages, all deriving their letter-sustenance from it. At the period of time in question the post-office was situated in the most central part of the town, the outside of the building partaking of the ugly and old-fashioned style of the shops of that day. It was then considered quite sufficient for the business of the place that there should be a small room of about twelve feet square devoted to postal purposes; that there should be a long counter, upon which the letters might be stamped and charged, and a small set of letter-boxes for the sorting processes. Added, however, to the proper business of the neighbourhood, there used to be a kind of work done here which was confined to a few towns only on the line of mails, selected for this supplementary business on account of their central positions. The mail-coaches, as they passed and repassed northwards and southwards, stopped here for half an hour until certain necessary sorting operations could be performed with a portion of the letters. In this way our particular town held the style and designation, and with it the prestige, of a "Forwarding Office."

The public required little attention, and got but little. Being prior to the time of postage-stamps, and we may almost add of money-orders, not to speak of savings' bank business, few applications were ever made to the officers—consisting of a postmaster, his wife, and another clerk—for anything but stray scraps of information relative to the despatch of mails. The communication with the public was anything but close, being conducted in this town—and, in fact, in all others of our acquaintance—through a trap-door in a wooden pane in the office-window. Near to it was a huge slit, being a passage to a basket, into which letters and newspapers were promiscuously thrown. The principal labour incident to the old style of postage was in regulating the amount to be paid on the different letters. Those posted in the town for the town itself were delivered for a penny; twopence was charged into the country places surrounding; letters for the metropolis cost a shilling; and Scotch letters eightpence-halfpenny at least, the odd halfpenny being the charge as a toll for the letter crossing the Tweed. The delivery of the letters in the town took place at any time during the day, according to the arrival of the mails, and it was effected by a single letter-carrier.[160] Private boxes for the principal merchants in the town, and private bags for the country gentlemen, were almost indispensable to those who cared for the proper despatch and security of their correspondence. Many gentlemen who did not arrange to have private bags (at a great yearly expense) were compelled to make frequent journeys to the town to ascertain if any letters had arrived for them. Some letters for places within a few miles of the town would be known to be at the office for days and weeks unguessed at, till perhaps some one would hear, through one of many channels, that a letter was lying at the post-office for persons of their acquaintance, and inform them of the fact. Letter-delivering in the rural districts was then a private concern, and, in consequence, those letters destined for one particular road were laid aside till a sufficient number were accumulated to make it worth while to convey them at a charge of a penny the letter.[161] Owing to the wretched system then in force, many country places round a post-office were, to all intents and purposes, more remote than most foreign countries are at this hour. One letter-carrier sufficing for the wants of the town, we need scarcely say that the number of letters received was exceedingly small. Not more than a hundred letters were posted or delivered, on an average, each day, though the town was the seat of many brisk manufactories, and was, besides, in the heart of the colliery districts. Now, a single firm in the same town will cause a greater amount of daily postal business.

Our purpose will not allow of our describing all the attendant circumstances of the state of things existing at this early period, or more fully than we have already done the postal arrangements of the past. But there were the "expresses," which ought not to be forgotten. Designed to supply some sudden emergency, they were of great use where quick intelligence was urgently required. For this purpose they might be had from the post-office people at any hour, and generally they were procured through the night. A special mounted messenger might be despatched, under this arrangement, with a single letter, marked "Haste! post haste!" carrying with him a way-bill, to account for the time it had taken him to perform the journey. The charge for expresses was at the rate of a shilling a mile, the speed at which they travelled averaging ten miles an hour.

Nor can we stay, much as we should like to do so, to picture the old mail-coach—its glittering appearance, its pawing horses; or to describe the royal-liveried guard, "grand and awful-looking in all the composure of a felt superiority." In the old times it used to pull up at the half-wooden inn near the post-office, and, during the half-hour allowed for postal business, was the observed of all observers. The half-hour was one of unusual bustle both at the office and at the inn; but, as soon as the time was up, the passengers would take their seats (the guard occupying a solitary one at the end of the coach), the mails were thrown as a small addition to the load of bags at the top, and off the cavalcade would start, to the tune, perhaps, of the "Blue Bells of Scotland," if the mail was going northwards, or, if southwards, may be "The Green Hills of Tyrol," from the clear silver key-bugle of his Majesty's mail-guard.

Now, this is changed, and almost all postal arrangements prior to the days of Sir Rowland Hill are as so many things of the past. And into what a grand establishment the Post-Office itself is metamorphosed! The part now dedicated to the public might be part of a first-class banking establishment. Entering by a spacious doorway, with a lofty vestibule, there is accommodation for a score of people to stand in the ante-room and leisurely transact their business. Then there runs along the whole length of the first or public room a substantial mahogany counter, behind which the clerks stand to answer inquiries and attend to the ordinary daily business. There is a desk for the money-order clerk, and drawers in which postage-stamps are kept. Close by we see one or two ranges of boxes; one for callers' letters—"the poste restante"—and another for those who prefer to engage private boxes to having their letters delivered by letter-carriers.

Outside things are changed also. The wooden pane—nay, the window itself—has disappeared to make way for a more modern structure; and instead of the single letterbox, there are several. Late letters are now provided for in a separate box, and so also are newspapers. The principal post-office work is accomplished in an interior apartment, from which the public are studiously excluded.[162] A large table stands in the centre of the room; a smaller one, well padded with leather, stands near, and is used specially for letter-stamping; a number of letter-benches—for boxes are not used much now—are arranged against three of the four walls and in the middle of the room, on which the letters and newspapers are sorted. Empty canvas bags of different sizes, with tin labels attached (if the name of the town is not painted on them), books, printed papers of different kinds, bundles of string, &c. make up the furniture of the apartment, and complete the appearance of it immediately prior to the receipt of the early-morning mail.

Long before the ordinary workmen in our towns are summoned from their repose, the Post-Office work in the provinces may be said to commence by the mail-cart clattering through the now silent streets to the railway station, there to await the arrival of the first and principal mail, and its first daily instalment of bags. At the given time, and only (even in the depth of winter) very occasionally late, the train emerges out of the darkness, its two shining lamps in front, into the silent and almost empty station. The process described in our account of the travelling post-office is here gone through; a rapid exchange of bags is made, and each interest goes its separate and hurried way. During the interval, and just before the mail-cart deposits its contents at the door of the post-office, the clerks and letter-carriers will have been roused from their beds, and somewhat sulkily, perhaps, have found their places in time. They look sleepy and dull, but this is excusable; the hour is a drowsy one, and half the world is dozing. The well-known sound of the mail-cart breaks the spell, however, and soon they are all thoroughly alive, nay, even interested, in the duties in which they are engaged. The bags just arrived are immediately seized by one of their number, who hurriedly cuts their throats, and then empties the contents upon the huge table in a great heap: somewhere in the heap our letter is safely deposited. The bundles of letters are quickly taken to the letter-stampers, through whose hands they must first pass. With a speed and accuracy which rivals machinery,[163] an agile letter-stamper will soon impress a copy of the dated stamp of the office upon the back of a hundred letters, and this done, they are passed over to the clerks and sorters to arrange them in the different boxes, the process being repeated till the whole are disposed of. The newspapers and book-packets are taken from the table without being stamped, and sorted by the letter-carriers. As soon as the first or preliminary sorting is over, each sorter will proceed upon distinctive duties; some will prepare the letters for the letter-carriers, by sorting each man's letters together, according to their different number. When this is done, the letters are handed to the carriers, who retire to a separate room, looking with its desks very like a small schoolroom, and there arrange them in order to deliver them from house to house. Other officers will prepare the letters for the sub-officers and rural messengers. When all the letters, &c. for a certain village are gathered up, they are counted and tied up in bundles; if any charged letters are sent, the amount is debited against the sub-postmaster of the place on a letter-bill—something like an invoice—which invariably accompanies every Post-Office letter-bag despatched from one post-town to another, or from one head office to a sub-office. If any registered letters are of the number to be sent, the name of each addressee is carefully written on the letter-bill. Private and locked bags for the country gentry still survive, and may be obtained for an annual fee of two guineas. They are attended to with some care, and are carried to their destination with the other made-up bags. When the mails are ready, they are sent from the Post-Office in various ways. Those for one or two country roads are sent to a local railway station, and taken in charge by the railway guard, who drops the bags at the different points on the line according to their address; others are carried by mail gigs under one or more private contractors, while the rest are taken by country-walking postmen, who make certain journeys during the day, returning in the evening with the letters and bags they have gathered during their travels. Of course the rural messengers take out loose letters as well; e. g. those for detached dwellings on their line of road. Our letter falls into the hands of one of those hard-working and deserving men.[164] The village, or rather hamlet, to which it is addressed is too small for a post-office, but a rural postman passes through it on his daily journeyings about ten o'clock each morning, delivering with scrupulous fidelity everything committed to his care. Thus, posted where we saw it last night, it passes from hand to hand all through the long night, and eventually reaches that hand for which it was intended 300 odd miles away, nearly as surely as if we had travelled to deliver it ourselves.

But to return. While some of the officers are attending in this way to the wants of the country, others are serving the interests of the town. A hundred or two gentlemen, bankers and manufacturers, pay an extra guinea yearly in order to secure certain special privileges at the Post-Office. These privileges consist, in brief, of having their letters arranged in private boxes, each labelled with their names, and delivered from these boxes by one of the clerks as soon as the office is opened, or the moment the letter-carriers emerge from it to enter upon any of the daily deliveries of letters. Of course these letters must be prepared previously.

The office is open to the public for money-orders and for the transaction of the business of the new savings' banks at nine o'clock, and continues open on every day, except Saturdays, until six, on which day two hours longer are allowed. It is not necessary to describe the arrangements in these branches, seeing that the public are familiar from daily experience with them. It will suffice to say that separate clerks are usually delegated to these duties in our large towns, and are answerable to the postmaster for the correctness of their accounts. The same clerk attends to the sale of postage-stamps, keeping an account with the postmaster of the quantity sold, and also of the stamps bought from the public under the recent arrangement. In larger towns where one clerk is specially retained for these duties, he is known as the "window clerk," as it devolves upon him to answer all applications and inquiries.

Throughout the day, the quietness of the post-office proper is broken in upon and varied by the arrival of some small mail. On one of these occasions, namely, on the receipt of the day-mail from London, the operations of the morning are gone over again on a small scale, and for a short time the office presents an appearance of some of its early bustle. Letters are delivered in the town, but those arriving for the country places remain at the office till the next morning.

The work of the Post-Office commences before "grey dawn," and long before the usual period of ordinary business in our towns; it lasts also far into the "dewy eve." When merchants lock up their desks and offices, and complete their last round of duties by posting their letters, the serious work of the Post-Office, for the second time during the day, may be said to begin. The hour before the despatch of the principal mail in any provincial Post-Office, thanks in great part to the dilatoriness of the public in general, is an hour of busy activity, seldom witnessed in any other branch of industry whatever. Almost at the same moment the country mail-gigs from their different rides, mail-carts from the local railway stations, the rural postmen from their walks, and the receiving-house keepers from the outskirts of the town, approach the post-office door, and speedily cause the office to groan as it were under the weight of letters and bags. All the force of the office is now engaged, and engaged with a will, if the bags are to be ready for the London night-mail due from Scotland at the railway station in sixty minutes. Again, the same round of bag-opening, checking, stamping (only now the stamps must be obliterated, as the letters are about to be despatched for the first time), and sorting, which we described in the morning, is again repeated. The sorted letters are examined, tied up in bundles of sixty or seventy each, and then despatched in the bags received at the beginning of the day from the London mail. The bags are tied, sealed, and hurried away to the station. Now, at length, the postmaster and his staff breathe freely. For a full hour they have been engaged as busily, yet as silently, as so many bees in a hive; but now that the work is finished, the thoughts of rogues, lovers, bankers, lawyers, clergymen, and shopkeepers; the loves and griefs, the weal and woes, of the town and country lie side by side, and for a few hours at least will enjoy the most complete and secret companionship. Every working day, and to some extent on Sunday, the same routine of work is prescribed and accomplished with little variation.

In all this consists the prose of Post-Office life; but who shall describe its poetry? Scarcely a day passes in any of our provincial post-offices without some incident occurring calculated to surprise, amuse, or sadden. Very probably within a few minutes one person will have come to make a complaint that a certain letter or letters ought to have arrived, and must have been kept back; another will make an equally unreasonable request, or propound some strange inquiry which the poor post-office clerk is supposed to be omniscient enough to answer. Most often, however, the cases of inquiry disclose sorrowful facts, and all the consolation which can be offered—supposing that the clerk has any of "the milk of human kindness" in him, a quality of mind or heart, much too rare, we confess, in the Post-Office service—will likely be the consolation of hope. The official sees now and then brief snatches of romance; perhaps the beginning or the end, though seldom the transaction throughout. Amusing circumstances are often brought out by requests tendered at the Post-Office, that letters which have been posted may be returned to the writers. A formal, but most essential rule, makes letters once posted the property of the Postmaster-General until they are delivered as addressed, and must not be given up to the writers on any pretence whatever. One or two requests of this kind related to us we are not likely soon to forget. On one occasion, a gentlemanly-looking commercial traveller called at an office and expressed a fear that he had inclosed two letters in wrong envelopes, the addresses of which he furnished. It appeared from the account which he reluctantly gave, after a refusal to grant his request, that his position and prospects depended upon his getting his letters, and correcting the mistakes, inasmuch as they revealed plans which he had adopted to serve two mercantile houses in the same line of business, whose interests clashed at every point. He failed to get his letters, but we hope he has retrieved himself, and is now serving one master faithfully.

Another case occurred in which a fast young gentleman confessed to carrying on a confidential correspondence with two young ladies at the same time, and that he had, or feared he had, crossed two letters which he had written at the same sitting. We heartily hope a full exposure followed. Writing of this, we are reminded of a case where a country postmaster had a letter put into his hand through the office window, together with the following message delivered with great emphasis: "Here's a letter; she wants it to go along as fast as it can, cause there's a feller wants to have her here, and she's courted by another feller that's not here, and she wants to know whether he is going to have her or not." If the letter was as explicit as the verbal message to which the postmaster involuntarily lent his ear, no doubt the writer would not be long in suspense. These cases, however, are uninteresting compared to one related by another postmaster. A tradesman's daughter who had been for some time engaged to a prosperous young draper in a neighbouring town, heard from one whom she and her parents considered a creditable authority, that he was on the verge of bankruptcy. "Not a day was to be lost in breaking the bond by which she and her small fortune were linked to penury." A letter, strong and conclusive in its language, was at once written and posted, when the same informant called upon the young lady's friends to contradict and explain his previous statement, which had arisen out of some misunderstanding. "They rushed at once to the Post-Office, and no words can describe the scene; the reiterated appeals, the tears, the wringing of hands, the united entreaties of father, mother, and daughter for the restoration of the fatal letter." But the rule admitted of no exception, and the young lady had to repent at leisure of her inordinate haste.

We have only space to close with a graphic extract from the reminiscences of a post-office official, in which the everyday life of a country post-office is admirably described: "For the poor we were often persuaded both to read and write their letters; and the Irish especially, with whom penmanship was a rare accomplishment, seldom failed to succeed in their eloquent petitions; though no one can realize the difficulty of writing from a Paddy's dictation, where 'the pratees, and the pig, and the praiste, God bless him!' become involved in one long, perplexed sentence, without any period from beginning to end of the letter. One such epistle, the main topic of which was an extravagant lamentation over the death of a wife, rose to the pathetic climax, 'and now I'm obleeged to wash meself, and bake meself!'" The officers of the Dead-Letter Office could a tale unfold, one would think, only an essential rule of the service binds them to honourable secresy. The Post-Office official often, however, and in spite of himself, learns more than he cares to know. "For," as the writer continues, "a great deal can be known from the outside of a letter, where there is no disposition to pry into the enclosure. Who would not be almost satisfied with knowing all the correspondence coming to or leaving the hands of the object of his interest? From our long training among the letters of our district, we knew the handwriting of most persons so intimately, that no attempt at disguise, however cunningly executed, could succeed with us. We noticed the ominous lawyers' letters addressed to tradesmen whose circumstances were growing embarrassed; and we saw the carefully ill-written direction to the street in Liverpool and London, where some poor fugitive debtor was in hiding. The evangelical curate, who wrote in a disguised hand and under an assumed name to the fascinating public singer, did not deceive us; the young man who posted a circular love-letter to three or four girls the same night, never escaped our notice; the wary maiden, prudently keeping two strings to her bow, unconsciously depended upon our good faith. The public never know how much they owe to official secresy and official honour, and how rarely this confidence is betrayed. Petty tricks and artifices, small dishonesties, histories of tyranny and suffering, exaggerations and disappointments were thrust upon our notice. As if we were the official confidants of the neighbourhood, we were acquainted with the leading events in the lives of most of the inhabitants."

Once more, "Never, surely, has any one a better chance of seeing himself as others see him than a country postmaster. Letters of complaint very securely enveloped and sealed passed through our hands, addressed to the Postmaster-General, and then came back to us for our own perusal and explanation. One of our neighbours informed the Postmaster-General, in confidence, that we were 'ignorant and stupid.' A clergyman wrote a pathetic remonstrance, stating that he was so often disappointed of his Morning Star and Dial, that he had come to the conclusion that we disapproved of that paper for the clergy,[165] and, from scruples of conscience, or political motives, prevented it—one of 400 passing daily through our office—from reaching his hands whenever there was anything we considered objectionable in it."