The post office and its story

by Edward Bennett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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