The post office and its story

by Edward Bennett

During the processions which took place to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, one of the most interesting features was the prominence given to the soldiers of the Empire. If it were possible to collect together a similar representative gathering of men who have served their sovereign in a civil capacity, a selection of the postmen of the Empire would be quite as interesting and perhaps equally picturesque. And if, in addition to the men, there could also pass through the streets of London the various means by which the mails are carried to their destination, what an object-lesson it would be in the activities of the Post Office! In this country the horse, the motor van, and the railway train are the usual bearers of his Majesty's mails—in addition, of course, to the ubiquitous postman. But the letter-carriers from other parts of the Empire would include the dog from British Columbia, the elephant from India, the camel from the Cape, and the pigeon from New Zealand.

Great Britain was the pioneer of the Penny Post, and one of the benefits now associated with her Empire is that throughout practically its whole extent a penny is the minimum charge for a letter between any particular colony and the mother country. The United States has also been included in the countries sharing this privilege, and the term “Imperial Penny Postage,” which was for a long time the battle-cry of postal reformers, has therefore ceased to have any but a sentimental meaning. It is highly probable that before many years pass European countries will also join with Great Britain in reducing the charge for international postage. Meantime, at any rate, the English-speaking nations of the world are linked together by the Penny Post. Credit must be given to Mr. Henniker Heaton and other postal reformers for the way in which, during the later years of the nineteenth century, they kept this question to the front, and educated public opinion, both in the colonies and this country, to the point of demanding the reform from the respective governments. But the times were also favourable to the accomplishment of the idea. There will always probably be great differences of opinion on various phases of Mr. Chamberlain's career; but I think future generations will be unanimous as to the value of the services he rendered to the Empire, when as Secretary of State for the Colonies he brought home to his countrymen, in a way that had never been attempted before, their responsibility to our dependencies and colonies. The linking up of the Empire by means of the Penny Post was a portion of his policy.

Let me begin with India. There had been, previous to our occupation of that country, many attempts made at establishing postal organisations; but like those in our own land previous to the seventeenth century, they were maintained not for the public but for the use of the Government. Not until the East India Company ceased to be, and the English Government took over the whole business of administration, was a really efficient postal service organised. The broad lines of the British postal system are followed in India, though the postal and telegraph administrations are separated. In the annual report you will find elaborate tables of Post Office figures, and records which have been beaten, and until you come to the section dealing with the postal incidents during the year you might fancy you were reading a report of the British Postmaster-General. It is the table of incidents which reveals to us what service in India means to the postal servant. The figures and official language of the report do not hide from us the enormous difficulties in working the service in an immense country of over 150 separate languages, where railway journeys are reckoned by days, and where caste enters even into Post Office questions.

One of the special Indian conditions is the prevalence of plague; post offices are sometimes removed temporarily from this cause, and accommodation is found in tents. Money is given to officers who have displayed special courage in the face of exceptional risks, or it is given to the surviving representatives of men who died of plague while in the execution of their duty.

Then there are the daily risks of a service carried on in a country subject to great convulsions of Nature and where wild beasts abound. In one year this was the chapter of accidents. There were thirty-two highway robberies of the mail, of which twenty occurred in British territory and eight in native States. No life was lost, but in nineteen cases the mail carriers were more or less seriously injured. Other casualties in the same year were the loss of a mail steamer and all hands by a cyclone, the sinking of a steam launch in the Gulf of Cutch, and the wrecking of the mail train from Madras to Bombay owing to the destruction of a bridge by flood. The mail line at Gilgit was twice overwhelmed by avalanches, two runners were drowned while trying to cross flooded streams, an overseer in Assam was attacked by a wild buffalo and died of his wounds, and a village postman in Madras was mauled to death by two bears. In Eastern Bengal a postmaster was murdered and his postman was wounded by dacoits, and another postman was murdered in a hut. As many as twenty-three post offices were burnt down, three were blown down, and three were washed away by floods.

Truly there are perils connected with the Indian postal service of which we know nothing in Great Britain.

In the chapter of accidents for another year we read of a mail runner who was carried away in broad daylight by a man-eating tiger, another mail runner was attacked by a wolf described as “the terror of the country side,” but he succeeded in killing the animal after a severe struggle. “Slain by a tiger,” “badly mauled by a leopard,” are descriptions of the accidents to other postal servants.

Even that slow-moving animal the elephant is in some districts in India the carrier of his Majesty's mails. In the tea district may be seen post offices built on piles to get above the swamp, and the elephant is the carrier at the last stage of the journey of a letter which probably started in a limited mail train.

The typical postman of India is the runner or “harkara.” The railways in that country are mostly trunk lines, and runners are employed for the whole internal network of postal lines, mail carts being used only in very few places where the weight of the mails is particularly heavy. The pay of the runner is usually not more than Rs. 5 a month; in a few districts it is as much as Rs. 7; while in others it falls to Rs. 4. This is equivalent to 7s. or 8s. a month, and on this modest sum the Indian runner can live, and perhaps bring up a family. It is said of him that “he has no idea of luxuries,” and perhaps for his own sake this is fortunate.

The Department provides him with a mud stage hut, and the local landlord is often induced to give the runner a small piece of land, in cultivating which he spends most of his leisure time, and perhaps increases his salary by growing eatables which he can sell.