The rewards paid out annually form no inconsiderable sum. Recently figures have not been published, but an idea can be obtained from those given a year or so ago. Then 32,238 drivers and conductors shared between them nearly £5,000. One lucky cabman got £100; six received between £20 and £100.
These rewards are mostly for articles claimed, which numbered 31,338 of the declared value of £31,560, out of 73,721. The rest, with a few exceptions, were returned to the finders after an interval of three months. This return to cabmen and conductors is an act of grace—not a right. In some cases where a thing is of value, and remains unclaimed, it is sold, and a percentage of the proceeds given to the finder.
While I was in the office a black cat strolled leisurely out from behind one of the crowded sacks, and rubbed itself against the knee of one of the officials. "Left in a tram car," he explained. "We had a tortoise, some gold fish, and a canary a few days ago, but they have been claimed. It was suggested that we might save space by having the cat look after the fish and the canary, but we did not think it advisable."
Almost any kind of a shop might be stocked with the loot of the Lost Property Office. There are false teeth, books, golf clubs, pickaxes, snuff-boxes, and ladies' stoles, stuffed fish, and wax flowers, petrol, and motor tyres, boots, and watch-chains, every conceivable kind of portable property that an absent-minded person might forget.
Each month's articles are kept separate, so that at the end of three months unclaimed things can be dealt with. A great safe swallows up all articles of jewellery or money of the value of £1 or more. I have seen a cabman hand over the counter an exquisite pearl worth several hundred pounds. It was examined, and then carefully sealed and placed in the safe. Constant handling of these things has made the officials quick and accurate judges of their value.
The authorities are not content to merely look after articles until they are claimed. Every effort is made to trace the losers, and a large clerical staff is constantly at work sending out letters where the property is marked or identifiable in any way, or where a cabman has remembered the address to which he has carried the supposed losers. More than 40,000 letters are sent out annually in such cases, and there are, in addition, something like 50,000 written enquiries to answer in a year.
This alone will show something of the monstrous business with which the officials have to deal. There is, of course, a constant stream of enquirers at the two offices, one at each side of the great red-brick building. One of these offices receives lost articles, the other restores them. Intermediately there are the vast store-rooms through which the accumulations progress every month, till in the third month all unclaimed things are ready to hand in the "outgoing" office.
Nothing but a well-organised system could avoid confusion, and confusion there is none. It is all part of a great business conducted on business principles. Every article, every farthing of money is recorded, with the circumstances under which it found its way to the Lost Property Office and its description, so that of the scores of thousands of things which pass through the hands of the officials, a ready history of each one can be quickly referred to.
There are queer visitors sometimes—persons who make preposterous claims for something they may have heard has been lost. These are firmly but effectively dealt with. On the other hand, sometimes articles of value are never claimed solely for the reason that their owners have no wish to make known their movements or whereabouts on a particular day.