The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

by James Wilson Hyde

CHAPTER XI.

SORTERS AND CIRCULATION.

Post-office sorters, unlike men who follow other avocations, are a race unsung, and a people unknown to fame. The soldier of adventure, the mariner on the high seas, the village blacksmith, the tiller of the soil, the woodman in the forest—nay, even the tailor on his bench,—all of these have formed the theme of song, and have claimed the notice of writers of verse. It is otherwise with the men who sort our letters. This may possibly be due to two causes—that sorters are comparatively a modern institution, and that their work is carried on practically under seal. In times which are little beyond the recollection of persons now living, the lines of post were so few, and the division and distribution of letters so simple, that the clerks who examined and taxed the correspondence also sorted it: and the time taken over the work would seem to show much deliberation in the process; for we find that in 1796, when correspondence was very limited, it took above an hour at Edinburgh "to tell up, examine, and retax" the letters received by the mail from England for places in the north; and that, when foreign mails arrived, two hours were required; and further time was necessary for taxing and sorting letters posted in Edinburgh for the same district of country—the staff employed in the business being two clerks. In those days there were really no sorters, unless such as were employed in the chief office in London. As to the work being carried on under seal, it is not going beyond the truth to say that, to the great majority of persons, the interior of the Post-office is a terra incognita, their sole knowledge of the institution being derived from the pillar and the postman.

Yet the sorters of the present age, forming a very large body, are ever engaged in doing an important and by no means simple duty. As letters arrive in the morning, and are handed in at the breakfast-table, speculation arises as to their origin; a well-known hand is recognised, interest is excited by the contents, or the well-springs of emotion are opened—joy is brought with the silvered note, or sorrow with the black insignia of death; and thus, absorbed in the matter of the letters themselves, no passing thought is spared to the operators whose diligent hands have given them wings or directed their line of flight.

When most men are enjoying the refreshment of nature's sweet restorer, which it is the privilege of the night-hours to give, the sorters in a large number of Post-offices throughout the country are hard at work, and on nearly all the great lines of railway the travelling Post-offices are speeding their wakeful flight in every direction, carrying not only immense quantities of correspondence, but a large staff of men who arrange and sort it in transit. Unconsciously though it may be, these men by their work are really a most powerful agency in binding society together, and promoting the commercial enterprise of the country. It lies in the nature of things that sorters' duties should largely fall into the night. Like a skilful mariner who bends to his use every wind that blows, the Post-office avails itself of every opportunity to send forward its letters. To lay aside till morning, correspondence arriving at an intermediate stage at night, would not consort with the demands of the age we live in; despatch is of the first consequence, and hence it is that to deal with through correspondence, many offices are open during the night. Some offices are never closed: at all hours the round of duty goes on without intermission; but in these, as also in many other cases where the periods of duty are long, relays of sorters are necessarily employed. Much might be said of the broken hours of attendance, the early risings, the discomforts and cold of the travelling Post-offices in winter, and the like, which sorters have to endure; and something might also be said of their loyalty to duty, punctuality in attendance, and readiness to strain every nerve under the pressure of occasions like Christmas. But these things would not, perhaps, be of general interest, and our object here is rather to show what a sorter's work really is.

Does it ever occur to an ordinary member of the community how letters are sorted? And if so, what has the thinking member made of it? We fear the idea would wear a somewhat hazy complexion. This is how it is done in Edinburgh, for example. The letters when posted are of course found all mixed together, and bearing addresses of every kind. They are first arranged with the postage-stamps all in one direction, then they are stamped (the labels being defaced in the process), and thereafter the letters are ready to be sorted. They are conveyed to sorting frames, where a first division is carried out, the letters being divided into about twenty lots, representing roads or despatching divisions, and a few large towns. Then at these divisions the final sortation takes place, to accord with the bags in which the letters will be enclosed when the proper hour of despatch arrives. This seems a very simple process, does it not?

But before a sorter is competent to do this work, he must learn "circulation," which is the technical name for the system under which correspondence flows to its destination, as the blood courses through the body by means of the arteries and veins. By way of contrast to what will be stated hereafter, it may be convenient to see how letters circulated less than a hundred years ago. In 1793 the London mail arrived at Glasgow at 6 o'clock in the morning, but the letters for Paisley did not reach the latter place till 11 a.m.—that is, five hours after their arrival in Glasgow, though the distance between the places is only seven miles. A couple of years before that, letters arriving at Edinburgh on Sunday morning for Stirling, Alloa, and other places north thereof, which went by way of Falkirk, were not despatched till Sunday night; they reached Falkirk the same night or early on Monday morning, and there they remained till Tuesday morning, when they went on with the North mail—so that between Edinburgh and Falkirk two whole days were consumed. In the year 1794 the London mail reached Edinburgh at 6 a.m., unless when detained by bad weather or breakdowns. The letters which it brought for Perth, Aberdeen, and places on that line, lay in Edinburgh fourteen hours—viz., till 8 p.m.—before being sent on. The people of Aberdeen were not satisfied with the arrangement, and as the result of agitation, the hour was altered to 1 p.m. This placed them, however, in no better position, for the arrival at Aberdeen was so late at night, that the letters could only be dealt with next day. It was not easy to accommodate all parties, and there was a good deal of trouble over this matter. The Edinburgh newspapers required an interval, after the arrival of the London mail, for the printing of their journals and preparing them for the North despatch. The Aberdeen people thought that an interval of three hours was sufficient for all purposes, and urged that the North mail should start at 9 a.m. In one of their memorials they write thus:—"They think that the institution of posts was, in the first place, to facilitate commerce by the conveyance of letters with the quickest possible despatch from one end of the kingdom to the other, and, in the next place, to raise a revenue for Government; and they cannot conceive that either of those ends will be promoted by the letters of two-thirds of the kingdom of Scotland lying dormant for many hours at Edinburgh."

In another of the petitions from the people of Aberdeen, they strangely introduce their loyalty as a lever in pressing their claims:—"Were we of this city," say they, "to lay claim to any peculiar merit, it might perhaps be that of a sincere attachment to order and good government, which places us, in this respect at least, equal to the most dignified city in Britain."

From a Post-office point of view, the memorialists appeared to be under some mistake as to the gain to be derived from the change desired, for there was something connected with the return mails which did not fall in with the plan, and the surveyor made some opposition to it. In one of his reports he makes this curious observation:—"I am persuaded that some of them, as now appears to be the case, may be very well pleased to get free from the obligation of answering their letters in course—and particularly in money matters"!