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                      THE POST OFFICE & ITS STORY

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: HEAVING OVERBOARD THE MAILS.]

      Fernando Noronha is a little island in the South Atlantic
      Ocean, and when a vessel does not call there the letters are
      enclosed in a cask, to which a flag is attached; this is
      cast into the sea and there left floating until a boat from
      the island picks it up. The island is sighted by perhaps
      more ships and visited by fewer than any other spot on the
      globe.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                            THE POST OFFICE
                             AND ITS STORY

                       _AN INTERESTING ACCOUNT OF
                  THE ACTIVITIES OF A GREAT GOVERNMENT
                              DEPARTMENT_




                                   BY
                             EDWARD BENNETT




                         With 31 Illustrations




                                 LONDON
                       SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LTD.
                        38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET
                                  1912

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                      THE SCIENCE OF TO-DAY SERIES

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                     SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED




                             AUTHOR'S NOTE


A great deal has been written about the General Post Office in
newspapers and magazines, but the books on the subject are comparatively
few. And these volumes are either exhaustive historical treatises, such
as Mr. Herbert Joyce's _History of the Post Office_, or more popularly
written descriptions of Post Office life and work of the character of
Lewin's _His Majesty's Mails_ or J. W. Heyde's _Royal Mail_. Mr. Joyce's
work, however, carries us no farther than the eve of penny postage,
while the other books were written too long ago to be a guide to the
Post Office of to-day. It is within the last twenty years that the
Department has made the most rapid strides in the extension of its
activities, and it is this period especially which is without an
historian.

What I have attempted to do is to tell the story of the Department,
briefly in its early beginnings, more fully in its modern developments,
and in such a way as to give the reader the impression that the Post
Office is alive, that it is in close touch with the needs of the nation,
and is in less danger of being strangled with red-tape methods than at
any time of its existence.

A book on the Post Office written for the student should contain
abundant references to authorities and exhaustive tables of figures and
estimates, but in the interest of the general reader I have omitted
these aids to reflection. Mark Twain, when he published one of his
novels, said he had omitted all descriptions of scenery in the story,
but those who liked that sort of thing would find it in the appendix. I
have dispensed even with an appendix, and those who really want figures
and estimates must be referred to the Postmaster-General's Annual
Reports.

Of course I am largely indebted to the volumes I have mentioned and to
others for the historical portions of my book. To Sir Rowland Hill's
Life, written by his daughter, I owe many of the facts contained in my
chapter on “The Penny Post.”

The staff of the General Post Office have during the last twenty-one
years conducted a magazine entitled _St. Martin's le Grand_, the volumes
of which have been of great assistance to me, as they will be in the
future to a more serious historian of the Post Office than I can claim
to be. Among the writers to this magazine whose contributions I have
found of great use are A. M. Ogilvie, J. A. J. Housden, C. H. Denver, R.
C. Tombs, I.S.O., and R. W. Johnston. Mr. Johnston, who had held during
a long life several important posts in the Department, took a keen
interest in this book in its early stages, but, to my great regret, died
before it was completed. Articles by J. G. Hendry and W. C. Waller
helped me considerably in my chapter on “The Travelling Post Office.”
Mr. E. Wells and Mr. A. Davey gave me their kind help on the subject of
“Motor Mails” and “The Parcel Post,” and to my friend Mr. A. W. Edwards
I am indebted for most valuable assistance in the writing of my chapters
on “The Telegraph.” I have also to thank another friend, Mr. R. W.
Hatswell, for advice and help in many directions.

My acknowledgments are due to Messrs Jarrold and Sons of Norwich and
Warwick Lane, E.C., for their kind permission to include a schoolboy's
essay on the postman in my chapter dealing with that official. The essay
is to be found in a book entitled _The Comic Side of School Life_, by H.
J. Barker.

The Post Office has many critics, friendly and unfriendly, but it counts
its friends in millions, and I have written this book with the belief
that a closer knowledge of the Department with which we all have
dealings will be acceptable.

                                                     EDWARD BENNETT.




                                CONTENTS


     CHAP.                                                      PAGE

        I. POSTBOYS AND MAIL COACHES                              17

       II. THE PENNY POST                                         31

      III. LOMBARD STREET AND ST. MARTIN'S LE GRAND               43

       IV. KING EDWARD'S BUILDING                                 56

        V. THE TRAVELLING POST OFFICE                             69

       VI. THE PARCEL POST                                        83

      VII. MOTOR MAILS                                            98

     VIII. THE UNDELIVERED POSTAL PACKET                         108

       IX. MONEY ORDERS AND POSTAL ORDERS                        125

        X. THE POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK                          137

       XI. THE TELEGRAPH                                         155

      XII. THE TELEGRAPH (_continued_)                           170

     XIII. THE TELEPHONE                                         181

      XIV. ENGINEERS, STORES AND FACTORIES                       195

       XV. OCEAN MAILS                                           208

      XVI. THE POSTAL UNION                                      222

     XVII. CONCERNING FOREIGN POST OFFICES                       231

    XVIII. THE POST OFFICES OF THE EMPIRE                        246

      XIX. THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL AND THE PERMANENT              261
             STAFF

       XX. THE HEAD POSTMASTER                                   276

      XXI. THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE                               289

     XXII. THE POSTMAN                                           304

    XXIII. THE POST OFFICE GUIDE                                 317

     XXIV. OLD AGE PENSIONS AND OTHER ACTIVITIES OF              332
             THE POST OFFICE

           INDEX                                                 350




                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

 HEAVING OVERBOARD THE MAILS                              _Frontispiece_
                                                                    PAGE
 THE MAIL COACHES LEAVING LONDON                                      20
 MAIL COACH AND TRAIN                                                 34
 ST. MARTIN'S LE GRAND                                                48
 THE BLIND SECTION                                                    62
 THE TRAVELLING POST OFFICE—
      INTERIOR                                                        70
      SUSPENDING THE POUCH                                            76
      POUCH AND NET                                                   76
      POUCH TAKEN                                                     76
      APPARATUS FOR RECEIVING POUCH                                   78
      APPARATUS FOR DELIVERING POUCH                                  78
 THE PARCEL POST HOSPITAL                                             94
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS AT WORK                                    96
 THE SORTING OFFICE                                                  110
 A POSTCARD                                                          114
 A POSTCARD                                                          120
 A LONDON POSTMAN (OLD STYLE)                                        126
 THE WOODPECKER AND THE TELEGRAPH POST                               156
 TELEGRAMS ON TELEPHONE WIRES                                        172
 THE TELEPHONE DETECTIVE                                             182
 THREE MINUTES' CONVERSATION BY TELEPHONE                            192
 UNDERGROUND TELEPHONE WIRES                                         198
 HOW TREASURE WAS BROUGHT TO LONDON                                  210
 ST. KILDA MAIL                                                      219
 THE POSTAL UNION MONUMENT                                           228
 A POST OFFICE STONE                                                 255
 THE RIVER POSTMAN                                                   258
 THE SORTING SCHOOL                                                  280
 THE POSTMAN'S BELL                                                  306
 A COUNTRY POSTWOMAN                                                 314
 A NEST IN A LETTER-BOX                                              328




                            THE POST OFFICE
                              & ITS STORY




                               CHAPTER I
                       POSTBOYS AND MAIL COACHES


A schoolboy who was given the task of writing an essay on the Post
Office used these words: “The Post Office contains the whole world's
circumstances, or welfare, day after day, as a mother shuts all her
chickens under her wings. A man would not reveal his very secreate words
to his wife or to any one, but he trusts them to a weak envelope in the
Post Office.” This boy was perhaps wiser than he knew. For there is no
institution existing in the country which comes so near to the hearts
and homes of the British people as the General Post Office. Created
primarily for the despatch and delivery of letters, it has developed
into a vast organisation which is at once the carrier of the people's
correspondence and parcels, the people's bank, and the agency by which
all communications by telegraph and telephone are conducted. To tell the
story of that organisation, how from the smallest beginnings in the
Middle Ages it developed into the Post Office of the present day, would
be a delightful task, but my intention is rather to relate its modern
triumphs and to deal with its history so far as it helps us to
understand the position of things to-day.

It is usual, in telling the story of the Post Office, to go as far back
as Greek, Roman, and Jewish times. In almost every book and article on
the subject we are reminded that Ahasuerus sent letters into all
provinces concerning his wife Vashti, and that Queen Jezebel has at
least one urbane action to her credit in that she despatched the first
recorded circular letter. Then we are reminded that Cicero and Pliny
were accomplished correspondents, and that St. Paul wrote letters which
have had a wide circulation. But these instances usually belong to the
history of letter-writing and have little relation to our subject. It is
obvious that so soon as letters began to be written in any nation they
must have been despatched by some means or other to the persons for whom
the communications were intended. Ancient history has many instances of
posts specially created for the delivery of perhaps only one letter. The
story of the Post Office can only properly begin at the time when the
first efforts were made to systematise what was already a prevailing
habit of the people.

The history of the British Post Office as a system can be divided into
three periods. There was the age of the post-horses and postboys,
extending from the time of the Tudors far into the eighteenth century.
There was the age of the mail coaches, the romantic age of the General
Post Office, full of stirring deeds and adventures. Indeed the title
“His Majesty's Mails” would have accurately described the whole of the
business transacted by the British Post Office during these centuries.
Lastly there is the age in which we are living, the age of the mail
train, which has produced a wide extension of the duties of the
Department, and the despatch and delivery of letters is now only one of
its activities. There is possibly another age in the near future of
which we can already distinguish the dawn, that of the airship and
aeroplane, but we are dealing in these pages with only accomplished
facts.

There is little doubt that the first posts organised in this country
were simply for the transmission of public despatches, and though from
time to time attempts were made by private individuals to organise posts
of their own, these efforts met with but little success, and in 1637 it
was ordered by proclamation that no other messengers or foot posts were
to carry letters except those employed by the King's Postmaster-General,
unless to places untouched by the King's posts. This order marked the
beginning of the monopoly which ever since has been in the hands of the
Government.

The word “post” comes to us from the French; in early English records
the carrier of the post is called a runner or a messenger. We
assimilated the word under the Tudors, and the first man to be described
as Master of the Posts was Brian Tuke, appointed by Henry VIII. in 1509.
In this reign there was a service more or less regular between London
and Berwick and between London and Calais. The Dover road is probably
the oldest mail route in the kingdom. During the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries services were gradually extended to Scotland,
Ireland, and the West of England.

The posts were slow and unreliable. The roads of this country were for
several centuries in a wretched condition, and travelling was difficult
and dangerous. The causeway or bridle-track ran down the middle of the
road, while “the margin on either side was little better than a ditch,
and being lower than the adjoining soil and at the same time soft and
unmade, received and retained the sludge.” The authorities were chiefly
concerned to preserve the causeway, for the mails were carried by
runners or postboys on horseback. The maximum speed for the postboys
allowed by the Master of the Posts was seven miles an hour: there was no
authorised minimum, and the speed, including stoppages, rarely exceeded
four miles an hour. Moreover the postboys were undisciplined and a
source of infinite trouble to their employers. The postmaster on the
other hand frequently considered that any horse was good enough to carry
the mails, and the animals he supplied were a disgrace to the service.
The temptations of the wayside inn often also explained the long delays.
An official in the early part of the eighteenth century complained that
“the gentry doe give much money to the riders whereby they be very
subject to get in liquor which stops _the males_.”

The words, “Haste, Post, haste,” have been found on the backs of private
letters written at the close of the fifteenth century, and this was no
formal endorsement but an urgent appeal to the lazy postboy to hurry up.
“Ride, villain, ride,—for thy life—for thy life—for thy life,” appeared
also on letters with sketches of a skull and cross-bones or of a man
hanging from a cross-bar. It was thought desirable to frighten the
servant of the Government into the performance of his duties.

The towns on the route were bound to supply the horses for the King's
posts. The postmasters in each town were the persons immediately
responsible for this business, and it is interesting to know that one of
the qualifications for the situation was the ability of the candidate to
furnish a certificate under the hand and seal of the Bishop of the
diocese that he was conformable to the discipline of the Church of
England, and he was required to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper three months after admittance to office. The postmaster was
frequently the innkeeper: he was the person best able to supply horses;
and though his salary was small, the position was probably remunerative,
as travellers were drawn to his house.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: THE MAIL COACHES LEAVING LONDON.]

      In the early part of the nineteenth century one of the
      sights of London was the departure from St. Martin's le
      Grand every evening of the mail coaches bound for all parts
      of England.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

But we must not forget the foot posts in the old days, or runners as
they are usually called. In the year 1715 there was not a single horse
post in Scotland, all the mails being conveyed by runners on foot. Cross
posts were frequently undertaken by runners, and the runners were not
extravagantly paid for their services. A post-runner travelled from
Inverness to Lochcarron—a distance, across country, of about fifty
miles—making the journey once a week, for which he was paid five
shillings. Naturally there was much difficulty with them, and they were
continually at the mercy of highwaymen. Moreover, in spite of the
penalty of capital punishment being visited on those who robbed his
Majesty's mails, the postman himself was a frequent offender.

The difficulties of travelling in the seventeenth century are
illustrated by the fact that in 1626 nearly £60 was spent in setting up
wooden posts along the highway and causeway, near Bristol, for the
guidance of travellers and runners. A Government running post then
existed from London to Bristol. There is a spirited description in
Cowper's _Task_ of the arrival of the mail which would have been
applicable during the whole of the postboy period:—

         “Hark, 'tis the twanging horn! O'er yonder bridge,
         That with its wearisome but needful length
         Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
         Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,
         He comes the herald of a noisy world,
         With spattered boots, strapped waist and frozen locks,
         News from all nations lumbering at his back.
         True to his charge, the close packed load behind,
         Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
         Is to conduct it to the destined inn,
         And having dropped the expected bag, pass on.”

Such was the service with which our forefathers were more or less
contented during the greater part of two centuries. At the end of the
seventeenth century there were weekly posts to many parts of the
country: there was a mail six days a week along the Kent road: at any
place where the Court happened to be in residence a daily post was at
once created, and during the season at Bath and Tunbridge Wells the
visitors enjoyed the privilege of a daily despatch and delivery of
letters.

It was not until late in the eighteenth century that any radical
alteration in the system took place. For many years it had become a
reproach against the Post Office that it had not kept pace with the
travelling capacities and requirements of the time. What were called
“Flying Coaches” had been established in the seventeenth century to many
towns in the Kingdom, and while these conveyances were increasing in
speed and comfort the Post Office was still satisfied with its four or
five miles an hour. The slowness of the posts was in fact becoming
intolerable to the people. The General Convention of the Royal Burghs of
Scotland called the attention of the Postmasters-General to the slowness
of the posts on the Great North Road. “Every common traveller,” they
wrote, “passed the King's mail on the first road in the kingdom,” and
complaints were made, generally by traders and professional men, that
business was hampered by the backwardness of the Post Office.

To John Palmer, proprietor of the theatre at Bath, belongs the credit of
the proposal to use the coach for the carriage of the mails. He was
remorseless in his description of the system he wished to abolish. The
correspondence, he said, “was entrusted to some idle boy without
character mounted on a worn-out hack, who so far from being able to
defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with
one.” Palmer's duties carried him into many parts of the country, and he
thought letters should be conveyed at the same pace at which it was
possible to travel in a chaise. He submitted his plan to Pitt, who was
Prime Minister, and this statesman gave his warm approval to a trial of
the scheme. On the 2nd August 1784 the first mail coach started from
Bristol, and so successful was the experiment that in the following year
there were coaches running to all parts of the Kingdom. Then ensued a
period of great activity on the part of the General Post Office. There
was competition with the private coaches, and year after year there were
attempts to make records and to accelerate the mails.

The mail-coaching period extended a little over fifty years, and it
marked as great an advance on the service of the past as the mail train
has since shown compared with the mail coach. For instance, in 1715 the
time allowed for the mail between London and Edinburgh was six days.
Eighty years later a great advance had taken place. In 1798 Lord
Campbell relates: “I was to perform the journey by mail coach to
Edinburgh, and was supposed to travel with marvellous velocity, taking
only three nights and two days for the whole distance from London. But
this speed was thought to be highly dangerous to the head, independently
of all the perils of an overturn, and stories were told of men and women
who, having reached London with such celerity, died suddenly of an
affection of the brain. My family and friends were seriously alarmed for
me and advised me at all events to stay a day at York to recruit
myself.” The fares he mentions were £10 from Edinburgh to London; to
York, £4, 15s.; and from York to London, £5.

In 1836 the speed of some of the mail coaches was nearly ten miles an
hour including stoppages, and this was kept up over very long distances.
From Edinburgh to London, a distance of 400 miles, the time allowed was
forty-five and a half hours; from London to York, 197 miles, twenty
hours; from London to Holyhead, 259 miles, twenty-seven hours. The
time-bills of the old mail coaches are most interesting, and they show
how complete was the organisation of the service. There was a column for
the distance between each place, another column for the time allowed,
and another column for the actual arrival and starting times. The
numbers of the coach and the timepiece which it carried were recorded,
and the delivery of the timepiece “safe” was always signed for at the
conclusion of the journey.

The coachman, though not a Post Office servant—he was employed by the
contractors—always wore a brilliant uniform; and the mail guard, an
officer of the Postmaster-General, also arrayed in bright uniform,
carried firearms. The mail guard had to see that time was kept, and
especially that there was no delay in the time allowed for refreshments.
The instructions to guards bring home to us the ways of the road a
hundred years ago. At the beginning of the last century the chief
superintendent of mail coaches was Thomas Hasker, an official of the
Post Office. His instructions, written in homely language, seem to be
instinct with a vitalising influence which was speeding up the whole
system. What to him was the safety of mere passengers compared with the
punctual delivery of his Majesty's mails? To the postmaster of Ipswich
he wrote: “Tell Mr. Foster to get fresh horses immediately, and that I
must see him in town next Monday. Shameful work—three hours and twenty
minutes coming over his eighteen miles!” On the Exeter road the mail
guards were instructed by him as follows: “You are not to stop at any
place whatever to leave any letters at, but to blow your horn to give
the people notice that you have got letters for them. Therefore if they
do not choose to come out to receive them don't you get down from your
dicky, but take them on to Exeter and bring them back with you on your
next journey.” Again an instruction to the mail guards reads: “If the
coachman go into a public-house to drink, don't you go with him and make
the stop longer, but hurry him out.”

The halt for refreshments was always an annoying necessity to Hasker. A
guard had attempted to hurry out the passengers as well as the driver.
And the passengers had complained. “Sir,” wrote Hasker, “stick to your
bill and never mind what passengers say respecting waiting overtime. Is
it not the fault of the landlord to keep them so long? Some day when you
have waited a considerable time (suppose five or eight minutes longer
than is allowed by the bill), drive away and leave them behind.” We can
imagine a guard acting on this instruction and losing his tips!

The guards were expected to be as regular as clock-pieces, but even Mr.
Hasker had sometimes to reckon with them as human beings. “The
superintendents,” he writes in another memorandum, “will please to
observe that Mr. Hasker does not wish to be too hard on the guards. Such
a thing as a joint of meat or a couple of fowls or any other article for
their own family in moderation he does not wish to debar them from the
privilige of carrying.” But he was against the guards assisting the
poachers.

Even in those days Post Office servants were obliged to give written
explanation of their misdeeds, and they occasionally scored against
their fault-finders. A mail guard had been reported for impertinence by
certain contractors who were notorious for the indifferent lights with
which they supplied their coaches. The mail guard admitted his offence,
“but,” he slyly added, “perhaps something may be said for the feelings
of a guard that hears the continual complaints of passengers against bad
lights and the disagreeable smell of stinking oil, especially when
through such things the passengers withhold the gratuity which the guard
expects.” There is some dignity in this way of putting the matter.

The mails were of course the first consideration on the coaches. The
available room after the loading of the mails was given to passengers'
luggage, and this had frequently to be reduced by the passenger himself
before starting. The great trouble with the guards was the temptation to
overload the coaches. A contributor to the _Quarterly Review_ in 1837
said: “Yet notwithstanding the moral improvement of the drivers, the
improved state of the high roads throughout the kingdom, stage-coach
travelling is more dangerous than it was before owing to the unmerciful
speed of the swift coaches and the unmerciful loads which are piled upon
the others like Pelion upon Ossa, or suspended from them, wherever they
can be hung on. 'Coachman,' said an outside passenger who was being
driven at a furious rate over one of the most mountainous roads in
England, 'have you no consideration for our lives and limbs?' 'What are
your lives and limbs to me?' was the reply, 'I'm behind my time.'”
Sometimes the driver himself suffered after a spell of bad weather which
had rutted the roads. Mr. Hasker reported that “the York coachman and
guard were both chucked from their seats going down to Huntingdon last
journey, and coming up the guard is lost this morning, supposed from the
same cause, as the passengers say he was blowing his horn just before
they missed him.” These were strenuous days, and weather conditions,
especially after a fall of snow, were formidable enemies to the
timekeeping of the guards. Robberies of the mail were far less frequent
than in the days of the post-horses, and the roads, thanks to the
splendid efforts of the great engineers Telford and Macadam, were
immensely improved, but snow and flood were still to be reckoned with.
It was one of the sights of London to see the mail coaches start at
night from the Swan with Two Necks and the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate
Street. A small crowd was usually to be seen at Hyde Park Corner
watching the westward-bound coaches go by on their night journey.

The great coaching event of the year was the procession of mail coaches
which took place in London on the King's Birthday, and heading the
procession was usually the oldest established mail, the Bristol coach.
In 1834 there were twenty-seven coaches in the procession. At the start
from Millbank “the bells of the churches rang out merrily, continuing
their rejoicing peals till the coaches arrived at the General Post
Office.” I quote from a book, _Annals of the Road_: “In the cramped
interior of the vehicle were closely packed buxom dames and blooming
lassies, the wives, daughters, or sweethearts of the coachmen or guards,
the fair passengers arrayed in coal-scuttle bonnets and in
canary- or scarlet silk. But the great feature after all was
that stirring note so clearly blown and well drawn out, and every now
and again sounded by the guards and alternated with such airs as 'The
Days when we went Gipsying,' capitally played on a key-bugle. Should a
mail come late, the tune from a passing one would be, “Oh dear! what can
the matter be?”

I have already spoken of the mail-coach era as the romantic age of the
General Post Office. English literature and English art have drawn upon
the real and legendary history of the period for much of their
inspiration. Nobody has revealed to us with more vivacity the humours of
the mail coach than Charles Dickens—did not Mr. Tony Weller drive a
coach?—nobody has written of the glories of the mail coach with greater
power than Thomas de Quincey. De Quincey has described one journey in
particular which lives in our literature. The mail was carrying with it
into the country districts the news of a great victory. “From eight P.M.
to fifteen or twenty minutes later, imagine the mails assembled on
parade in Lombard Street, where at that time and not at St. Martin's le
Grand was seated the General Post Office. In what exact strength we
mustered I do not remember, but from the length of each separate
_attelage_ we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were
drawn up in double file. On _any_ night the spectacle was beautiful. The
absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the
harness, their strength