The Children's Book of London

by G. E. Mitton

On other days silver and copper are made in the same way, but gold is much the most impressive to see.

After leaving the Mint we might pay a visit to the Bank, which stands at the meeting of many streets in the very midst of the City. It is a strong place built round a courtyard, with all the windows inward so that burglars cannot get in. In the vaults below the Bank are many bars of gleaming gold, like those we have seen at the Mint; these are sent here for safety, and in time will go to the Mint to be coined. The Bank of England is very strong and safe, and anyone who keeps his money there has no fear that he will lose it. The Bank is allowed by law to make notes of its own, which are as good as money, and are received instead of money, but it cannot make more than a certain number of these notes in any one year. You have heard of bank-notes, perhaps? Have you ever seen one—a crisp, crackly bit of paper, with some printing on it, that could be burnt up any minute? These seem very unsafe to keep, but they are convenient. If a man wants to go away for some time he could not carry with him a great many gold sovereigns, for they would be so heavy; but if he takes a number of bank-notes they are quite light and easy to carry, and are just as good as money. The most common is a five-pound note. Of course, accidents do happen sometimes when people are careless. I heard of a man who lit his pipe with a five-pound note, thinking it was just an ordinary bit of paper, but this was very careless; it was an expensive pipe-light to cost five pounds.

In the Bank you are shown many interesting things, and one of the chief of these is a book where are kept all the imitation bank-notes, called forgeries, that men have made and tried to persuade people were real ones. In some cases these are so cleverly done that even the bankers themselves hardly knew the difference, and many, many people had been cheated by them.

The great machines for printing bank-notes are inside the bank, and each note has a different number. Let us follow one throughout its life. It is printed on special paper made for the bank, and not sold to anyone else, and it is printed in the Bank's own machine. It goes in at one end of the machine, just a blank bit of paper, and comes out at the other worth five pounds. This seems almost more wonderful than making gold coins. Downstairs, in the office of the Bank, a man comes in who has an account with the Bank—that is to say, he has given the Bank people a large sum of money to keep for him—and he takes out some of it when he likes. He comes this morning to ask for twenty pounds, and it is given to him in four five-pound notes, which he folds up and puts in his pocket-book and then he goes away. He has just got outside the Bank, when a friend comes up, and says: 'I say, old man, what about that five pounds you owe me?'

So the first man gives him one five-pound note. The second man has to pay his landlady's rent, and he owes her three pounds; so he gives her the five-pound note, and she gives him two pounds in gold back again. From the landlady the note passes to a shopkeeper, and from him to another man; and so it goes on, wandering and wandering through the hands of hundreds of people. It started a very nice clean new note; but it gets crumpled and dirty, and at last one day it comes to a man who has had some money given to him which he wants to put into the Bank, and he pays this five-pound note in with the rest. So after its life it has rest. It never goes out again into the world; but when once it comes back to the Bank it is torn up and destroyed. A great many men are kept at work only tearing up bank-notes; so every day, while many new ones are being made, many old ones are being torn up, and the number keeps about the same.

An old woman bought a mattress at a sale, and she thought she would undo it and shake up the stuff inside and make it softer, and when she cut it up she found among the stuffing some bits of paper that looked like bank-notes; but they were little tiny bits not bigger than a sixpence. She took them to the Bank, which examined them, and saw that, though a great deal was missing, there was enough left to show that there had been twelve five-pound notes sewn up inside the mattress. They gave the old woman sixty pounds for them, saying that a bank-note meant a promise on the part of the Bank to pay, and they would keep their promise, however long ago it had been made. So the old woman did a good day's work when she bought that mattress.

From the Bank we might pass on to the General Post-Office, and see how London's letters are dealt with. You may say that there cannot be anything interesting in that—that it is quite simple to sort out letters and send them to the right persons. Yes, if you or I had perhaps six letters we could do it easily; but if we had six thousand it would be rather more difficult. The business of the General Post Office grows and increases every year, and the buildings are frequently enlarged. Even now they form the whole of a street to themselves. On one side is the telegraphic department, where all the telegrams are received. We can understand very little about this, because it requires a long training; but we can see something of the enormous number of people whose whole work in life it is to take and send telegrams. If we get there about five o'clock in the afternoon, we shall see some girls and little telegraph-boys hurrying about with trays, on which are piles of cut bread-and-butter, and with great tin cans, like the cans in which hot water is carried up for your bath. These cans are full of strong, hot tea. Then we enter one room, so big that it almost startles you, and see, seated at rows and rows of tables, many men, and nearly all of them are working away at the telegraph instrument before them—tick, tick, tick, tack; they cannot hear what you say, even though you talk quite close to them, for all their attention is taken up by their work. For eight hours every day they sit here and take and send telegrams. Here comes the tea; it is poured out into the large cup waiting for it, and the man takes a drink or a bite as he works. Some of the workers buy jam to spread on their bread. In one place we see a tray with a large pile of cakes and biscuits; but these are being sold, though the tea and bread-and-butter are supplied by the Post-Office to its workers free. It must be a big business to make tea for about fifteen hundred persons every day. No wonder cans are used to carry it about, for teapots would be of very little use. In one room there are men doing all the telegrams for the daily papers—accounts of great speeches, or races, or anything important that people expect to hear about—and by means of one instrument one man can send the same news to five different places at the same time. This sounds like a miracle to us, who do not understand how it is done. In another room there are many girls who do just the same work, and keep the same hours as the men, but are not paid so much simply because they are women; they are having tea too. They seem to be very fond of shrimp-paste, which they spread on their bread-and-butter instead of jam. In every room there is always a loud noise like the wash of waves; that is made up of hundreds of busy little instruments ticking away hard all at once. It seems wonderfully quiet when we leave it behind, and step out into the street again where the lamps are being lit.

It is nearly six o'clock now, and opposite is the large building of the Post-Office where the letters are dealt with. Up the steps in front we see the huge letter-box, with a great gaping slit of a mouth into which boys and men are pouring letters as fast as they can; for at six o'clock the country letters are sent off, and any posted after that will not be delivered first thing next morning in the country, but will arrive later.

Come inside; we have a special order so that we can be admitted without any difficulty. Now we see from the inside what we saw from the outside a minute ago. It is like looking at the inside of a piece of machinery. We see now only the big slit and the eager hands thrusting letters into it, more letters and more, which fly down inside like a snowstorm of enormous flakes. They drop into great clothes baskets, which are filled up every minute, and when full are dragged away by the postmen inside, who thrust others into their places, others which, incredibly quickly, are filled up, too, and dragged away. Rattle, rattle; down come the letters. One boy outside has a bag, which he empties by tipping it up so that a stream of letters runs down; he must be from an office. Here is another, and another; but at last six o'clock strikes, the great baskets have been dragged away, and no more letters for the country go until much later. The basketfuls have been emptied into sacks; these sacks are tied up with string and sealed with a piece of sealing-wax a good deal thicker than your wrist, and then they are flung down into the bright scarlet carts, which belong to the Post-Office, and which stand waiting outside. Each driver starts off punctually with his load, and drives to another great office in London where the country letters are sorted out and sent off. All this business used to be done here where we are, but in the last year or two it has been found better to keep the London and the country letters separate.

Now we turn to look at the London ones. There is a separate box for them to be posted in. Perhaps you who live in the country have never seen that. At every large London office there are two boxes side by side, and into one the people put their letters meant for the country, and into the other those for London. The London letters are gathered from the box and thrown out upon large tables, and down each side a row of boys and men stand and sort them out like a pack of cards, putting them all together, face up, and with the stamp in the same position. When they are arranged the boys carry a great bundle to another man who has to stamp them, so as to mark the stamp in case it should be used again. There is a very clever contrivance for this. A little round wheel spins at a tremendous pace, and on it are dark lines covered with wet ink. A man holds the letters and pushes them one by one up to the wheel, which, when it touches them, drags them through a narrow space in front, and as they pass the wheel the ink-lines run across the stamp and mark it so that it cannot be used again. So quickly does the little wheel whirr and the letters spin past that five hundred are done in a minute. Think of that; it means nearly nine a second. Nine letters stamped while you say 'One—two,' which is a second. Some letters are too thick and others too big to go through the little space by the wheel, so the man who is looking after them picks out those and throws them up on to a tray, from which they are gathered up and carried to another man, who stamps each by hand, a much slower process.