[187] The number of newspapers delivered in 1862 amounted to nearly 73,000,000, a considerable increase on the previous year. The number of book-packets exceeded 14,000,000, being an increase on the previous year of about 1,700,000, or nearly 14 per cent. Upwards of 400,000 newspapers, or about one in two hundred, were undelivered in the same year, about half of which failures arose from improper or incorrect addresses, while the remainder were owing to the newspapers becoming detached from their covers in transit through the post.
[188] It is calculated that every year nearly fifty thousand postage-stamps rub off letters and newspapers in their passage through the Post-Office. At one time the quality of the adhesive matter was called in question, loud complaint, even ridicule, settling on the theme. Now, however, that the gum is better the number of stamps which "will not stick" is scarcely perceptibly smaller.
[189] Only one instance is on record of any violent and wilful attempt to damage a pillar letter-box. This is the more wonderful as the temptation to lift the lid and contribute articles not contemplated by our postage-system must naturally be strong in the eyes of our City Arabs. A singular accident befell one of these letter-boxes (1862) in Montrose. A quantity of gas from the street pipes seems to have got into the box, and a night-watchman to have ignited it by striking a match on the top in order to light his pipe. The top was blown off and the pillar-box hopelessly damaged, although the watchman and the letters escaped without injury.
[190] The following announcement from the postmaster of Manchester, as given in a bill dated 1721, contrasts strangely with the latitude allowed now. "The post goes out to London," says he, "on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, at nine o'clock in the morning. It will be best to bring the letters the night before the going out of the post, because the accounts and baggs are usually made up over-night." In these days, when we may post up to within five minutes of the despatch of a mail, and letters for America may be posted within ten minutes of the sailing of the packet, we cannot be too thankful for our privileges.
[191] This arrangement does not apply to foreign letters coming to or going out of this country.
[192] The number of registered letters last year was over two millions, or one registered letter to about three hundred ordinary letters.
[193] Most of our readers will have heard or read stories of curious articles passing through the post, and without doubt the records of the Returned-Letter Branch of the London Office will present strange appearances in this respect. Sir Francis B. Head, who was permitted to peruse an extraordinary ledger in the General Post-Office where several notable letters and packets were registered, has strung together a catalogue of them, which reminds us of the articles passing through the post before the revocation of the franking privilege. He tells us he found amongst the number—two canaries; a pork-pie from Devonport to London; a pair of piebald mice, which were kept at the office a month, and duly fed till they were called for by the owner; two rabbits; plum-pudding; leeches in bladders, "several of which having burst, many of the poor creatures were found crawling over the correspondence of the country." Further, there was a bottle of cream from Devonshire; a pottle of strawberries; a sample bottle of cider; half a pound of soft soap wrapped in thin paper; a roast duck; a pistol, loaded almost to the mouth with slugs and ball; a live snake; a paper of fish-hooks; fish innumerable; and last of all, and most extraordinary of all, a human heart and stomach.—Head's Essays.
[194] The annual return just published (February, 1864) shows to some extent how far the public prefers the stamped newspaper, which can be sent through the Post-Office, in fact, until it is fifteen days old. The number of stamps issued to the principal London newspapers from June, 1862, to June, 1863, are as follows:—
Times, 2,782,206; Express, 261,038; Morning Post, 260,000; Daily News, 124,888; Morning Herald, 103,256; Globe, 140,000; Shipping Gazette, 261,000; Evening Standard, 80,020; Evening Star, 75,000; Evening Mail (thrice a week), took 345,000; St. James's Chronicle, 89,000; Record, 423,500; The Guardian (weekly), 219,300; The Illustrated London News, 1,136,062; Punch, 129,500. Eleven English country newspapers took 100,000 each, the principal being the Sussex Express, 336,000, and the Stamford Mercury, 334,276. Thirty country newspapers bought more than 50,000 stamps.
[195] Many orders are never claimed at all. In Ireland twice as many orders are allowed to "lapse" as in England or Scotland, though there are many more orders granted in the two latter countries than in Ireland. Perhaps the fact may be accounted for by the wretched addresses of most Irish letters, which make it impossible to deliver many of them and equally impossible to return them to the writers. Of ordinary money-orders, one in 837 are unclaimed within two months; whilst as a curious fact, instancing the pertinacity of a careless habit, it may be stated that when these very orders have been renewed on payment of a second commission, one in every thirty-nine are again overlooked, and allowed to lapse, many of them, in fact, becoming entirely cancelled, and the money forfeited.