The Bristol Royal Mail: Post, Telegraph, and Telephone

by Robert Charles Tombs

Uniform and boots are provided by the Department for the postmen and telegraph messengers, at an annual cost of about £2,000.

Good-conduct stripes are the reward to all full-time postmen, established or unestablished, of unblemished conduct. A stripe is awarded after each five years' meritorious service, and each man is eligible for six stripes, each of which carry one shilling a week extra pay. The value of the stripes is taken into account in calculation of pensions.

Of the 1,500 persons of all grades alluded to there are in the postal department a superintendent, 24 superintending officers, and 154 male and 8 female clerks.

The selection of candidates for situations in the Bristol Post Office as sorting clerks and telegraphists, both male and female, was for many years vested entirely in the postmaster, and persons were given temporary employment without passing any educational test as to their special fitness for Post Office employment. It so happened that not infrequently a clerk would be employed in a temporary capacity for some years, and finally be rejected by the Civil Service Commissioners on educational or medical grounds. In 1892, however, a special preliminary educational examination was instituted. All candidates of respectable parentage, of good health and character, were allowed to sit at this examination, the successful ones being taken into the office and trained for appointment to the Establishment. The Civil Service Examination had, of course, to be undergone before an appointment could be obtained. In 1896 a new system was introduced, whereby a Civil Service certificate had to be obtained before a person was taken into the office. This obviated the necessity of holding the preliminary educational examination, but the postmaster still exercised the privilege of

nominating candidates to the situations. The open competitive system of examination was commenced last year, and the appointments are now open to general competition.

There is a term of probation in the Post Office, and details of the duties devolving on postal clerks may not be without interest to the Bristol public. The business, with its multitudinous ramifications, takes a long time to learn thoroughly. To become a perfect all-round postal clerk a man must possess intelligence, must be cool, fertile in expedient, have a retentive memory, and withal be quick and active. He must know how to primarily sort, sub-divide, and despatch letters. He must have a good knowledge of Post Office circulation and be able to bear in mind the names of the smallest places—hamlets, etc.—in the kingdom, the varying circulations for different periods of the day, and the rates of postage of all articles sent through the post. Be must be able to detect the short-paid letter, and to deal with the ordinary letter, the large letter, the unpaid, the registered, the foreign, the "dead," insufficiently addressed, the official, the fragile, the insured, the postcard (single

and reply), the letter card, the newspaper, the book-packet, and the circular (the definition of which is very difficult). He is responsible for the correct sortation of every letter that he deals with, and he has to be expert in tying letters in bundles. He has to cast the unpaid postage and enter the correct account on the letter bill; take charge of registered letter bags and loose registered letters, and advise them on the letter bill; see to the correct labelling, tying, and sealing of the mail bags he makes up; check the despatch of mails on the bag list; dispose of his letters by a given time, the hours of the despatch of mails being fixed. In consequence, he often has to work under great pressure in order to finish in time. The postal clerk has to surcharge unpaid and insufficiently prepaid correspondence; to see that all postage stamps are carefully obliterated, that the rules of the different posts are not infringed; to attend to the regulations relating to official correspondence. He has to decipher imperfectly and insufficiently addressed correspondence, search official and other directories to trace proper addresses. In addition to all this he has in turn to serve at the public counter, and

there attend to money order, savings bank, postal order, and other items of business of the kind.

As an illustration of the perspicacity of officers of the Post Office in the Western Division of the Kingdom and of the postmen of Bristol, may be cited the circulation through the post and prompt and safe delivery of a letter from Plymouth bearing as its only address the magic letters "W. G.," with cricket hat, stumps, and ball, so dear to the individual who bears the initials.