Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

In 1839 there were no postage stamps. In 1855 the gross revenue of the Post Office was £2,716,420. Taking about a fourth of this amount, or, say £700,000 as the value of those sent through the post for distribution in every post town in the kingdom, their number (in penny stamps) 168,000,000; their dead weight (packed) would be about ten tons, not including the weight of materials in which they were packed, and excluding from the calculation the very considerable number of post office envelopes sent all over the empire, one of which envelopes would weigh as much as two dozen stamps[32].

At the commencement of the new postal system, the number of post offices throughout the United Kingdom was 4,028, of which about a fourteenth, or 300, were head post offices, that is offices sending bags to and receiving bags from London. In 1855 there were 10,498 post offices in the United Kingdom, of which “920[33] were head post offices and 9,578 sub post offices or receiving offices.” Therefore not only had the number of bags going from or coming to London from this one cause been trebled in number, but for the reasons just stated the weight in them had also trebled. In 1839 there were four or five day mails to and from London. In 1855 upwards of fifty, all of which required bags for working them, and their tributary cross posts in every part of the kingdom, but as Mr. Page’s arguments have reference principally to night mails, let them be excluded.

As London is the depôt from which the immense and unceasing supply of new bags for the whole postal system of England and Wales (as Dublin is for Ireland, and Edinburgh for Scotland) is furnished, every one of the bags for the night mails, the day mails, the railway mails, the mail coach mails, the mail cart mails, the horse mails, the foot mails, and the private bag mails, required, in no matter what part of the Kingdom, are considered by the Post Office as postal matters, and are sent post-free accordingly, and when bags are dilapidated or injured they find their way to London, just in the same inexpensive manner as new bags find their way from it. “The supply and repair of mail bags” in England and Wales involve an annual cost of nearly £6,000, exclusive of the cost of supplying and painting the 22,000 to 25,000 mail boxes per annum required for the despatch of our Eastern mails; and one man is borne on the books of the establishment for no other purpose than, as the estimates tell us, to label mail bags. In Ireland there is an annual outlay of £800, in Scotland of £900, for new bags and mendings. In short, empty mail bag transit must have been in 1855 a quarter of all that, whether filled or empty, of 1839.

In 1839 there was one departure a month of the East India mail viâ Marseilles and one viâ Southampton, yet the weight of the mails by the two routes was under five tons, in bulk about twelve tons. In 1855, with two departures a month viâ Marseilles, and two viâ Southampton, the Eastern mails were about twenty tons weight. In 1839 the West India and Brazilian mails were despatched once a month, in the notorious ten-gun “coffins”; yet although the letters were then always sent in triplicate, because the certainty then was that one in three would be lost, and the chances were it might be one in two, nevertheless the letters were only about 200,000 a year; in 1855 they had risen to 700,000. In 1839 letters between Great Britain, the United States, and Canada were conveyed by the American “Liners,” they were under a million per annum; in 1855 they had risen to about 2,500,000, besides letters “in transit” between the United States, Europe, India, China, and Australia.

In 1839 the community had not the benefit of a “British Postal Guide,[34] containing the Chief Public Regulations of the Post Office, with other information, published Quarterly by command of the Postmaster-General.” The first number was issued on the 1st of July, 1855, seven months before Mr. Page wrote his Report. The cost of each number for two or three years was Sixpence. As we learn by the cover that they are “Printed, Published, and Sold by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty,” and that they are “to be had also of all Booksellers and the Principal Postmasters in the United Kingdom.” It therefore follows that these Postal Guides were, from the date of their first appearance, transmitted by the Railways in the Post Office bags all over the Kingdom. We have seen them, from the earliest period of their publication, exhibited and advertised at the post offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Cork, and other places, and almost every postmaster receives one or more copies for the use of his office. Each number contains 234 pages at present, besides the pages devoted to advertisements, and they cost 2d. each for transmission if sent by book post. In 1858, the price per copy was raised to 1s.; but in 1864 it was reduced to 6d., and the sale has become very great.

But whatever their number or weight was in 1855, it escaped Mr. Page’s recollection to mention them in his comparison between the weights transmitted in that year, and those of 1839.

The foregoing items supply some of the omissions made by Mr. Page in his calculations, and furnish reasons for dissenting from his assertion, that whilst “in 1838 the gross weight of the night mails despatched from London was 4 tons 6 cwt. 1 qr., the total weight of the night mails despatched in a single evening at the present time, may be stated (the italics are ours) at about 12 tons 4 cwt. 3 qrs.”

Mr. Page estimates the gross weight of mails per annum for the entire Kingdom, including guards, clerks, &c., as being considerably under 20,000 tons, “a large portion of which was not conveyed by railway at all.” Mr. Page adds, “Assuming, however, that the whole of it had gone by the railways, it would appear that the Post Office paid 1/23 part of the total earnings for the conveyance of less than a 1/400 part of the total weight.” Mr. Page must excuse us for asserting that the total weight of mails in 1855 was nearer to 80,000 tons than to 20,000, and that by bulk it was nearly 200,000 tons, of which more than half was carried by railway.

Until September 1838, fifty-two horses started every evening from London, with thirteen mail coaches behind them, to convey the mails that are now carried by the Scotch Limited Mail. The weight of mails carried by the coaches was about four tons, their bulk about ten tons measurement. The horses travelled gallantly up hill and down dale over first-class roads at the rate of more than ten miles an hour, and at the end of six or seven miles they were replaced by others of the same mettle. They were guided by thirteen first-class “whips” of the olden time, and no matter what the weather was, or how rough any portion of the road might be temporarily, the great ambition was, not to be a second after time at appointed places. In charge of these four or ten tons, as the case may be, were thirteen guards, to whom the custody of the mails was entrusted. They were responsible for their safe and faithful transmission between St. Martin’s-le-Grand and their destinations.

Each mail coach was considered to require a horse a double mile, to maintain its contract time. As Stafford is 133 miles from London, 133 multiplied by 13 gives the number of horses required, 1,729. The average weight which each mail coach carried was 4 cwt., taken as bulk it was half a ton. The maximum weight that, by the terms of the contract, could be imposed upon it was 15 cwt., a total, for thirteen mails, of 195 cwt.—five less than five tons.