A band conveyor from east to west conveys the bags from the Foreign Section to the top of a special shoot at the west end of the building, whence they are shot down to the departure platform on the ground floor.
All the letters everywhere are “stepping westward,” and everything goes even on the busiest night with something like the regularity of clock work.
Photo
Clarke & Hyde
The Blind Section.
These men are dealing with badly and insufficiently addressed letters. They have directories in front of them, and every effort is made to put the letters into circulation again.
An interesting feature of the Sorting Office is the Blind Section. Here at all hours of the day you will find a row of men sitting at a long table over which is a bookshelf full of up-to-date directories, guides, and other manuals of topographical information. These men are doing their best to put in the way of delivery the imperfectly and indistinctly written packets. If they fail the letter goes to the Returned Letter Office to submit to more expert treatment. Experience counts for much with these men. The badly spelt addresses are perhaps the easiest of these puzzles. “Saintlings, Hilewite,” is at once decided to be “St. Helens, Isle of Wight” “Has bedallar—such” even a schoolboy would recognise as Ashby-de-la-Zouch; but it requires the specialist in puzzles addresses to arrange for the delivery of a letter addressed simply as 25th March to Lady Day, the wife of the judge of that name.