The travelling post-office deserves special attention, not less on account of the interesting nature of the work performed, than because it serves many important ends in the system of which it forms a part. It is to the railway post-offices that the Department is indebted for much of the simplification of its accounts. At different points in a mail-coach journey, long stoppages used to be made in order that the "bye" and "forward" letters might get sorted; on the introduction of railways, it was seen that the number of bags must either be enormously increased, and other complications arise, or the railways could not to any extent be rendered available for post-office purposes. Just at this juncture, it was suggested that the work might be done during the journey, and the obstacles were soon surmounted. Further, by means of the travelling offices, the Post-Office is enabled to offer more time for the posting of letters, and not only so, but to give the public the benefit of earlier deliveries.
The railway-mail service has now assumed quite gigantic proportions. Twenty-six years ago, when railways were only partially used for post-office purposes, a writer predicted that they would "soon become the ne plus ultra of rapidity," and that the Post-Office would have to take to them more and more. "In a few years," said the writer, "railways will have become so general, that scarcely a mail-coach will be left in England; certainly, none will be wanted in London." Both predictions have since been verified; for the last twenty years, railways have gradually absorbed all the mail contracts,—year by year the estimates for this service showing a corresponding increase.[155] The first railway post-office journey was made on the Grand Junction Railway, between Liverpool and Birmingham, on the 1st of July, 1837. When the line was completed to London, in January, 1838, the travelling office started from the metropolis. The following curious account of the "Grand Northern Railway Post-Office," as it was called, is culled from the Penny Magazine. "On the arrival of the four 'accelerators' at the Euston Station with the mails, the railway servants immediately carry the large sacks to a huge looking machine, with a tender attached to it, both at the end of the train. This caravan is the flying Post-Office, with a table for sorting letters, and holes round the walls for their reception." The carriage was certainly either an ungainly structure, or the above is a most ungainly report. "In ten minutes," continues the narrator, "the omnibuses are emptied of their contents, and the train of carriages is then wound up to the station at Camden Town, where the engine is attached, and the Primrose Hill tunnel soon prevents us hearing the thunder of their rapid progress." The Londoner of 1864, in these days of metropolitan railways can afford to smile at this last sentence. That the change in the system of mail conveyance wrought immediate and striking improvement at the Post-Office does not admit of question. In a contemporary account, we find an interesting but wonder-stricken writer stating that "by means of the extra railway facilities, letters now pass along this line (London and Birmingham) in a space of time so inconceivably quick, that some time must elapse before our ideas become accustomed to such a rapid mode of intercourse." We learn from different works published by Mr. Charles Knight, that when the railways were extended farther northwards, the Railway Post-Office was extended with them, and was formed into sections. Thus, when the lines were continued north as far as Lancaster, there were two divisions formed, one staff of clerks, &c. to the number of eight, working between London and Birmingham, and ten between Birmingham and Lancaster.[156] There were two mails each day in both directions. The distance between London and Lancaster (241 miles) was accomplished in eleven hours and a half. The weight of the railway post-office, tender, bags, and clerks, is stated by Mr. Whishaw, in his work on railways, to have been at that period about nine tons. At that time, the expense of the service was regulated by the weight carried. At present, on the great trunk line of the London and North Western Railway Company, no fewer than eight mail-trains run daily up and down, each conveying railway post-office carriages and post-office employés. Half of these trains are run specially, the number of passengers being limited. The weight of mails running over this ground must have increased fourfold at the least, inasmuch as the number of officers have been augmented in even a greater proportion. Surprising as was the speed at which the first railway post-office travelled, and wonderful as it was thought at the time, one of the mail-trains now runs nearly double the distance between London and Lancaster during the time which used to be taken for that ground alone. The Limited night-mail, travelling between the Euston Square station in London, and Perth in Scotland, accomplishes the distance of 451 miles in eleven hours and a half, or about forty miles an hour including stoppages!
The railway post-office proper, is now extended over nearly every considerable line of railway in the kingdom. It comprises a number of divisions or sections, named generally from the locality through which they extend, or the railway travelled over, as the Bangor and Leeds division, the Caledonian Railway post-office. The four principal or trunk mails, three of them being divided into two sections, are (1) the North-Western Railway post-office, travelling between London and Carlisle; (2) the Irish Mail, between London and Holyhead; (3) the Great Western, between London and Exeter; and (4) the Midland, between Bristol and Newcastle-on-Tyne. Most of these divisions have day- as well as night-mails running over them daily. Four trains a-day, being two in each direction, are therefore the usual proportion of mails on the chief lines of railway. As London is the heart of the postal system, so these four principal mails may be termed its main arteries, while as veins in the great system, there are a number of smaller divisions of the railway post-office that have not been enumerated. Again, at other parts or points not important or extensive enough for travelling offices, railway trains are arranged to wait the arrival of the trunk mails; and thus, to continue the figure, our letters—the life-blood of a nation's commerce and sociality—are conveyed to the remotest corners of the country.
It may be imagined that a proper control of this vast machinery, extending through almost every county in the kingdom, with its scattered staff of officials, will be difficult; but the efficient working of the whole is nevertheless as thoroughly and promptly maintained as in any other department where personal supervision is more direct. Each divisional part has distinct officers allotted to it, the number of clerks being regulated according to the number of mails running over the division in the course of a day, and the number of sorters according to the amount of sorting duties to be performed. Each mail travels under the charge of one clerk, while each division is locally superintended by one senior clerk. The entire direction, however, of all the travelling officers is vested in the Inspector-General of Mails, who also presides over the Mail Office at St. Martin's-le-Grand. We may here further state, that the length of the divisions—the extent of one of which forms a post-office journey or "trip"—varies slightly, averaging about 170 miles; the average time taken to perform the journeys being between five and six hours. As a rule, the night-mails travel during the night-time, or between eight P.M. and six A.M.; the day-mails generally speaking throughout the day.
But we must make ready for our journey, and enter more into detail. While van after van is arriving with its heavy loads of mail-bags, we have time to notice that the train standing at the great London terminus is nearly all post-office. Two or three carriages are being filled as full as possible with made-up bags, and two more, fitted up like post-offices, are simply meant for operations similar to those we have already seen at the General Post-Office, in connexion with the unfinished work which has now to be accomplished during the journey. It is with the remaining carriage only that we have to do. Seen from the outside, the office itself may still answer to the description given of it twenty-five years ago by our authority above adverted to, although considerable improvements must have been made in its construction since that time. Though the structure is built with a very evident serviceable purpose, the large, heavily-painted, windowless vehicle, looks more as if intended for the conveyance of Her Majesty's horses than Her Majesty's mails; the roof, however, covered with glass, with other contrivances for the purposes of ventilation, soon convinces us that it is intended for some description of the genus homo. We go inside, and find it built like an ordinary saloon carriage, about twenty-two feet long, and as wide and spacious as the railway arrangements will allow. It is night-time, the reader will remember, and the interior looks warm and cheerful with its row of bright-burning moderator lamps, and, in this respect, contrasts strongly and pleasantly, as far as we are concerned, with the dimly-lighted station, through which the cold night air is rushing. The reader who is following us in this description must abstain from imagining anything like luxury in the internal fittings. Everything here is requisite for accomplishing the work in hand, but there is no provision for any kind of indulgence; and spacious as the place seems at a first glance, there is not to be found, when we come to look narrowly, a single foot of spare room. Along the whole length of one side of the carriage, and encroaching materially upon its width, a number of tiers of boxes—the "holes" of our ancient authority—are arranged for the sorting processes; the smaller ones for the letters, and the larger ones in the centre of the office—more like shelves, many of them being movable—for the newspapers and all that vast variety of articles forwarded according to the rules of book-post. Every available inch of space on the other side of the office is covered with upright pegs, in recesses sunk in the carriage-sides, upon which are hung the bags—now made of canvas, with the names of towns conspicuously painted upon them—to be used in the course of the journey. These recesses, as well as the two ends of the office, are well padded over, to secure additional safety to the officers in the event of any accident.[157] Under the desks or counters, which run from one end of the carriage to the other, bags are packed, to be given out as the train arrives at the respective stations.
In less time, however, than it would take to read the foregoing, the mail has speeded miles away, and reached, by this time, the fox-covers and game-preserves of those Hertfordshire landowners who, when the railway was projected, expressed the wish that its concoctors "were at rest in Paradise!" The train possibly "thundered" through Camden Town as it used to do in olden times, but it would be but a momentary sensation, not to speak of the inhabitants being now quite accustomed to it. The post-office work commenced when the train left the station. The bags were quickly seized by the proper sorter, cut, and their contents turned out on the desk. Then he distributes what he finds in the bags according to a pre-arranged order. The registered letters which have found their way to the office he at once transfers to the clerk on duty whose special province it is to deal with them; the bundles of ordinary letters—in one of which packets is the identical letter we ourselves posted—he hands over to his fellow-sorters, who, each standing opposite to a distinct set of boxes, labelled with the names of different towns on the route, at once sort them away. The newspapers he deals with himself. The work thus started, the scene presently becomes one of considerable animation and a pleasant-enough sort of excitement, till every bundle of letters is cut open and disposed of in the boxes. There is then a lull, but it is only temporary. It is true that the train will not stop till the county of Warwickshire is reached; but the intervening country is provided for nevertheless—arrangements having been made that at all the towns we pass the exchange of letter-bags shall be effected by means of machinery whilst the train is progressing at its usual speed. The contrivance in question deserves minute description.[158] The machinery is not worked in the post-office, but in an adjoining van. By means, however, of a substantial iron gangway, the two carriages are connected, so that we can pass easily from one to the other and see the operation itself. As we do so we are evidently nearing some town, for the sorter is at that moment engaged in peering out of the window into the darkness in search of some familiar object, such as bridge, river, or cluster of trees, by means of which he is enabled to tell his whereabouts with almost mathematical precision. Whilst he is busy finding his position we will take the time to explain, that the machinery is arranged so as to secure, simultaneously in most cases, both the receipt and the despatch of bags. For the purpose of receiving bags, a large strong net is fixed to one side of the van, to be drawn down at the proper moment; and close to the door, on each side of it, securely fixed to the carriage, are hollow iron bars, inside each of which, working by means of a rope and pulley, an iron arm is fixed, upon which the bags to be delivered, securely strapped in a thick, leathern pouch, are suspended. Where the exchange has to be effected at the station we are nearing, the arrangements are just the counterparts of this. A net is spread to catch each pouch from the extended arm of the carriage, and pouches are hung from iron standards in the ground of sufficient height for the net in the train. The operation itself is just commencing. The door is pushed back into the groove in which it works, and then the sorter, touching a spring that holds up the net, it is loosened from its supports, and projects over the carriage-sides; the iron arm, acting on its pulley-rope, is drawn round into the carriage, where the pouch is rapidly fastened to it by means of a catch or spring—but in such a manner that a touch from the net-apparatus at the station will bring it off—and then let down, remaining by virtue of its own weight at right angles to the door. A moment of waiting, and then all the machinery acts its assigned part properly; the pouch disappears from the arm (or arms, if the bags have been heavy enough for two to be used), and at the same moment another descends into the post-office net, and all is over and quiet as before. We mean, of course, comparative quiet, as much as is possible amid the din and endless rattle of a train speeding at the rate of forty miles an hour.
We follow the sorter as he makes his way back into the post-office carriage, carrying with him the treasures we have watched him pick up by the wayside. These new arrivals disposed of in the orthodox way, and the process repeated two or three times, there is suddenly a movement among the officers as they busy themselves in collecting from the different boxes all the letters that have been received from first to last for the bags about to be despatched at the approaching town—the first junction station. The letters in question are examined to test the correctness of the sorting, then tied up in bundles in a sharp and decisive way, then placed away carefully in the several bags, which are tied, sealed, and ready for delivery just as the train is brought to a stand. Here they are given out; fresh supplies are received from a number of large towns in the immediate district, and the train is again on its way. The bags received are at once opened; the same round of sorting, collecting, examining, is gone through; the same process of despatching for the next and all subsequent postal stages is repeated, just as we have described. Little variation is noticed, except that at certain points a much larger number of bags are thrown into the office—for instance, as the train nears the more thickly populated parts of the midland counties, then the "black country," as it is called, and subsequently the manufacturing districts. At one of these points a considerable addition was made to the staff of sorters, who fell at once to work in the vacant spaces left for them. And it was not before they were required; for presently the train arrives at one of the principal mail junctions in the kingdom, where an immense number of bags wait our arrival. These bags have been brought somewhat earlier on, by other mail trains, arranged so as to effect a junction with us; these having in their turn met with other trains running across the country in transverse directions. Thus there are here, bags from towns near and towns remote, containing letters for places from which we are, as yet, hundreds of miles distant. The work, however, will be resumed with increased activity, according to the number of letters which may be forthcoming, only whatever number there may be, all must be finished in a given time. So far, the reader may imagine the duty to be one of dull routine and very monotonous; so as a rule we believe it is: there are circumstances connected with the manner of travelling, however, which conspire to make it at times somewhat varied and exceptional. One moment, and we are clattering down a hill, and the sorting partakes, to some extent, of the same tear-away speed; another time, we are panting up a line of steep gradient, and the letters find their boxes very deliberately; now, the rails are somewhat out of order, or the coupling of the carriages has not been well attended to, or we are winding round a succession of sharp curves, and can scarcely keep our feet as the carriage lurches first to one side, then to the other; in all which cases, not only is our own equilibrium a source of difficulty to us, but we see that things proceed anything but smoothly among the letters, which refuse to go in at all, or go in with a spirited evolution, fluttering outside, and then landing at their destination upside down, or in some other way transgressing official rules in such case made and provided. Then the work is accompanied to the different kinds of music, well known to "express travellers." Now the train is tearing away through a tunnel, or through an interminably long cutting of thick-ribbed stone, and then under or over a bridge. Nor is this all, nor the worst: these noises are very frequently varied by what is anything but a lively tune on the engine whistle, but which, supposing the signal lights to be against us, or Cerberus asleep at his post, is too often a round of screeching and screaming enough to waken the Seven Sleepers.
Whatever be the general character of the work, we are bent on enjoyment during this particular journey. The country through which the train is now proceeding is but thinly supplied with towns, hence the number of letters received is much smaller, and we may avail ourselves of the opportunity which this break in the character of the duty gives us, to examine more closely and from our own point of view, a few of the letters which are waiting to be despatched. The sorters also, glad of a little relaxation, have produced from their hiding places under the blue cloth-covered counter, an oval kind of swing-seat attached to it, which turns outside somewhat ingeniously upon a swivel, and seat themselves at their work.
Undoubtedly, the first thing which will strike an observer placed in circumstances like ours, is, that the Post-Office is eminently a democratic establishment, conducted on the most improved fraternité et égalité principles. The same sort of variety that marks society, here marks its letters; envelopes of all shades and sizes; handwriting of all imaginable kinds, written in all shades of ink, with every description of pen; names the oddest, and names the most ordinary, and patronymics to which no possible exception can be taken. Then to notice the seals. Here is one envelope stamped with the escutcheoned signet of an earl; another where the wax has yielded submissively to the initials of plain John Brown; and yet another, plastered with cobbler's wax, with an impression that makes no figure in Burke or Debrett, but which, indeed, bears many evidences of having been manufactured with hob-nails. Then to think that Queen Victoria, and John Brown, and the cobbler aforesaid, must each find the inevitable Queen's head, without which no letter of high or low degree can pass unquestioned! Here they are—these letters—mingling for a few hours at any rate in silent but common fellowship, tossed about in company, belaboured with the self-same knocks on the head, sent to their destination locked in loving embrace, and sometimes, as in the case of the cobbler's, exceedingly difficult to part.
If we turn to consider the addresses, how amusing we find some in their ambiguity; how blundering and stupid a few more! Some say too little, others too much; some give the phonetic system with malice prepense, others because it is nature's own rendering and they have never known school! Sometimes (and the practice is growing) the envelope is covered with long advertisements, for the benefit and information of the Post-Office officials, we presume, in which case it is difficult to arrive at the proper address of the letter at the first or even second glance. Some give the address of the sender in prominent printed characters, and it is surely not a matter of wonder when the letter, as not unfrequently, happens, finds its way back to the sender. In all cases of this kind, time is of course lost to the Post-Office, and the work of examination is necessarily deliberate, hesitating, and slow. At one point, the quota of letters from the sister-isle is received, and it is then perhaps that the sorter's patience is put to the severest test. The addresses of the letters of the poorer Irish are generally so involved—always being sent to the care of one or two individuals—that they usually present the appearance of a little wilderness of words. As a specimen of the kind of letter referred to, we give our readers a copy of one which actually passed through the Post-Office some time ago, assuring them that though the following is rather an ultra specimen, this kind of minute but indefinite address is by no means uncommon among the class referred to:—