When the letter-carriers and the blind officers have expended all their skill upon certain letters in vain, the next step is to send them to
THE DEAD-LETTER OFFICE.
in order that they may be returned to the writers, provided any clue can be obtained from the contents as to their whereabouts. The branch in which this work is accomplished is now a very considerable establishment, employing at least a score more clerks, &c. than in the days of the old postage. In 1763, just a hundred years ago, the records show that two clerks only were engaged in opening "dead and insolvent letters." Now, nearly fifty officers are employed in the same duties. Nor are these duties by any means so only in name. Last year considerably over two millions of letters were returned to their writers through the Dead-Letter Office from failures in the attempts to deliver them. "Three-quarters of the non-deliveries," says the Postmaster-General, "were on account of the letters being insufficiently or incorrectly addressed, nearly 11,000 letters having been posted without any address at all."
In every provincial post-office in England and Wales a dead or returned letter-bag is now forwarded daily to London, containing all the letters which, from any cause, cannot be delivered. Each letter bears on its front, written prominently in red ink, the reason of its non-delivery. Thus, if the addressee cannot be found, or should have left the town, the words "Cannot be found," or "Gone—left no address," are written respectively. On the arrival of these bags in London, inclosed in the larger bags containing the general correspondence, they are at once passed to the "returned-letter branch," as the Dead-Letter Office is called, where no time is lost in opening them. Every letter received is first examined by an experienced and responsible officer, to make sure that it has been actually presented according to its address, and that the reasons assigned on the cover of the letter are sufficient to account for its non-delivery. In doubtful cases, before the letter is opened, the directories and other books of reference, of which there is a plentiful supply in this office, are consulted, and should it be found or thought that there has been any oversight or neglect, the letter is re-issued, with proper instructions, by the first post. About 300 letters are thus re-issued daily, many of which ultimately reach the persons for whom they are intended.
When it has been fully ascertained that nothing further can be done to effect the delivery of an imperfectly or improperly addressed letter, it only remains to have it sent back to the writer. This is done, if possible, without the letter being opened. By an arrangement of ten years' standing, if the returned letter has the writer's name and address embossed on the back of the envelope, impressed on the seal, or written or printed anywhere outside, it will not be opened, but forwarded back according to this address. We may point out here, however, that this arrangement, excellent and satisfactory as it is, has sometimes led to serious mistakes and confusion; so much so, in fact, that the Postmaster-General, in his report for 1861, appealed to the public on the subject. It would appear that the practice of using another person's embossed envelope is on the increase. When such a letter, according to the arrangement, is forwarded to the supposed writer, it has frequently fallen into the wrong hands (the master and merchant instead of the clerk or other servant), and grievous complaints have been made on the subject. The remedy, of course, lies with letter-writers themselves. If there are no outward marks to indicate the sender, the letter is then opened, and, if a suitable address can be found inside, the letter is inclosed in the well-known dead-letter envelope and forwarded according to that address. If a letter should be found to contain anything of value, such as bank-notes, drafts, postage-stamps, the precaution is taken of having a special record taken of it, and it is then sent back as a registered dead letter. Money to the value of 12,000l. or 14,000l. is annually found in these returned letters. Of this sum about 500l. per annum falls into the public exchequer, on account of no address being found inside, and no inquiry being made for the missing letters. A vast number of bank post-bills and bills of exchange are likewise found, amounting in all, and on the average, to something like 3,000,000l. a-year. These bills, however, as well as money-order advices, always afford some clue to the senders, even supposing no address should be given inside the letter, and inquiries are set on foot at the bankers and others whose names may be given in the paper transactions. Forty thousand letters reach the English returned branch each year containing property of different kinds. Many presents, such as rings, pins, brooches, never reach their destination, and are never sent back to the sender, because they are often unaccompanied with any letter. These articles, of course, become the property of the Crown.
Postmasters of Irish towns send their "dead and insolvent letters" to Dublin, and the residuum of the local Scotch post-towns are sent to Edinburgh. In both these capitals, this particular class of letters is dealt with in exactly the same manner as in the London office. We are assured that the letters themselves, and the articles found in the Scotch and Irish dead letters, illustrate no little the characters, the feeling, and habits of the two people. The Scotch have, comparatively speaking, the fewest dead letters; and as the writers are generally careful to give their addresses inside the letters, little trouble is said to be experienced in returning them, if it is necessary. The Irish dead letters are more numerous than either the English or the Scotch. This mainly arises from the circumstance of the nomadic habits of a considerable portion of the Irish people: owing also to the same circumstance, it is impossible to return many of the letters to the writers. The Scotch dead letters rarely contain coin or any very valuable enclosures, while of articles of jewellery, such as usually form presents or tokens of affection, we are told there is a "lamentable deficiency." The Irish dead letters, on the contrary, "are full of little cadeaux and small sums of money," illustrating at the same time both the careless and the affectionate nature of the people.
Letters which can neither be delivered nor returned through the Post-Office are, if found to be valuable and if posted in the United Kingdom, appropriated to the public revenue after a certain time; if received for delivery from a foreign State, they are sent back to the chief office of that country for final disposition. Letters posted in this country found to be of no value, are kept at the Post-Office for a month and then destroyed; foreign letters under the same circumstances are not destroyed for two months.
And now, unless we at once return from our digression, we shall not be in time to see the great night-mail despatched from St. Martin's-le-Grand. Whilst we have been occupied with a contemplation of the few waifs and strays of our national correspondence, the great bulk of that correspondence has been well and carefully disposed of: the letters and newspapers which we saw two hours ago as a mass of inextricable confusion, are now carefully stowed away in their respective bags, and not a letter or newspaper can be found. The hall clock is silently approaching the hour of eight, when the bags must all be sealed and ready to leave the place. At five minutes before that time, all is still bustle and activity; five minutes perhaps after that hour the establishment is nearly deserted. "Everything is done on military principles to minute time." "The drill and subdivisions of duties are so perfect," adds a close observer, "that the alternations are high pressure and sudden collapse." This is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the Post-Office, is subject to great variations in the amount of work to be done. Particular nights in the week, Mondays and Tuesdays for example, are known as the "heaviest," and even such events as elections, influence the labour to be performed within the same given time. During the last election for Lambeth, 40,000 circulars were posted in London in one day, and properly disposed of. On the 14th of February last, 957,000 extra letters, or valentines, passed through the Circulation Office in London. Compared with Valentine's Day 1863, there was an increase of a quarter of a million letters!
In place of the old mail-coaches waiting in the yard of the office until the work is completed inside, we have now the well-known mail-vans. As they are rapidly supplied with bags, they chase each other to the various railway stations, from which, to all points of the compass, the night-mails now depart. Half an hour afterwards, we find ourselves in one of these trains watching operations not dissimilar to those we have just left, but much more wonderful, considering how they are accomplished.