PARCEL DELIVERY OFFICE.
Besides what is termed “the goods traffic,” or the conveyance
of heavy goods in luggage-trains, the London and North-Western
Railway Company have for some time undertaken to forward by their
passenger-trains, to the various stations on as well as beyond their
lines, light parcels, for the conveyance and delivery of which,
charges, of which the following are a sample, are made:--
For parcels under 12 lbs. weight:-- _s._ _d._
From London to any part of Birmingham and vice versâ 1 0
For distances under 160 miles 1 6
„ „ 210 miles 2 0
From London to Durham, Carlisle, or Newcastle 3 0
From London to Edinburgh or Glasgow 4 0
The above charges include porterage and delivery of the parcels. In
London, however, the delivery is limited to within three miles of the
General Post-office, or say six miles from Euston Square.
The mode in which the business of this department is conducted at
Euston Station is briefly as follows:--
The superintendent of the department sits in an elevated room, the
sides of which being glazed enable him to look down on his right
and left into two offices, both of which communicate on the south
with the street by which parcels arrive from or depart to various
parts of the metropolis, and on the north side with a branch railway
leading into the main line. The floor of one of these two offices is
generally covered with baskets, brown-paper parcels of all sizes,
game, triangular boxes of wedding-cake, and other articles, which
have just arrived by rail from all parts of England, Ireland,
and Scotland; that of the other with a multitude of parcels to be
forwarded by rail to similar destinations. In the daytime the down
parcels are despatched from the office in the break-waggons of
various passenger-trains, and the following locked-up vans laden with
small parcels are also forwarded every night:--
2 vans for Birmingham,
1 „ Manchester,
1 „ Liverpool,
1 „ Carlisle and Lancaster,
1 „ Newcastle,
1 „ Derby,
1 „ Nottingham.
The number of parcels thus conveyed to and from London and the North
amounted, in the year 1847, to 787,969, and in the year 1848 to
774,464; of the latter number it appears that only two were lost. The
manner in which all these little parcels are circulated throughout
the country is as follows:--
As soon as the empty railway vans arrive by the branch-rail close to
the north side of the parcels-office, a porter, who, assisted by his
comrades, has for some time previously been arranging the parcels
into heaps according to their respective destinations, commencing
with one set of them and rapidly taking up parcel after parcel,
exclaims in a loud monotonous tone, easily enough set to music,
inasmuch as it is exactly the middle note of a stout porter’s voice,
and which never varies for a moment during the whole operation--
“Now _Leighton_.
“A paper for Hancock, of ----, light.
“A basket for Wagstaff, of ----, out 8_d._, light.
“A box for Tomkins, of ----, weighs (he puts it into an index-
scale at his right hand, and in about three seconds adds)
26 pounds.
“A paper for Jones, of ----, out 4_d._
“Now _Leamington_.
“A paper for S. on Avon (the porter never says _Stratford_)
for ----, light,” &c. &c.
As fast as this chanting porter drawls out his facts the chief clerk
indelibly records them, convulsively snatching up at each change of
station the particular book of entry which belongs to it. Another
clerk at each exclamation hands over to a porter a bill for the cost
of conveyance, which he pastes to every parcel. For all articles
declared by the first porter to be “_light_,” by which he means that
they do not exceed twelve pounds weight--(by far the greater number
are of this description)--the charge on the paper to be affixed
is ready printed, which effectually prevents fraud; but where the
weight _exceeds_ twelve pounds, or where any sum has been paid out,
the charges are unavoidably inserted in ink. The velocity with which
all these little parcels are booked, weigh-billed, placed into
hand-trucks, wheeled off to their respective vans, packed, locked up,
and then despatched down the little branch-rail to the main line,
on which is the train ready to convey them, is very surprising.
While witnessing the operation, however, we could not help observing
that the Company’s porters took about as much notice of the words
“Keep this side uppermost,” “With care,” “Glass,” “To be kept
very dry,” &c., as the Admiralty would to an intimation from some
dowager-duchess that her nephew, who is about to join the Thunderer
as a midshipman, “has rather _a peculiar constitution_, and will
therefore require for some years _very particular_ CARE.”
During Christmas week the number of railway parcels that flow into
and ebb out of London is so enormous, that extra accommodation, as
well as preparations, are necessary for their reception and despatch;
and as we chanced to arrive from the country at Euston Station on
Saturday the 23rd of December last, we will endeavour briefly to
describe the scenes which for a very few minutes we stopped to
witness.
A considerable portion of the space usually allowed for the
disembarkation of the passengers arriving by the up-trains had
been cut off by a lofty partition, or, as it is now-a-days termed,
a barricade, behind which, instead of red republicans armed with
loaded muskets, we were exceedingly happy to find nothing but
phalanxes, solid squares, columns, and pyramids of small parcels, the
destinations of which in large letters were chalked on consecutive
compartments of the north wall of the Euston territory, as follows:--
“OVER THE WATER.” “FINSBURY.”
“STRAND.” “SQUARES.” “CLERKENWELL.”
“ISLINGTON.” “KINGSLAND.”
“CAMDEN TOWN.”
“CITY.” “WEST END.”
“WESTMINSTER.”
“PIMLICO.”
As soon as we had rapidly glanced over the tarpaulin-covered-in
arrangements above described, which had been made for the reception
of parcels _for_ London, we hurried across the five sets of rails
that separate the platforms of the in and out trains to the “Parcels
Delivery Office,” both departments of which we found had been
exclusively devoted for the week to the reception and despatch of
parcels _from_ London to the country. On the floor of each of the
offices we have already described we saw piled to a considerable
height masses of parcels, which it was evident could scarcely
be despatched as rapidly as they were arriving. The clerks, the
assistants, as well as the extra persons who had been engaged, all
appeared more or less exhausted. The accountant--the recording angel
of the establishment--looked deadly pale, while the voices of the
chanting porters were, to a pitiable degree, weaker and fainter than
when we had last heard them; indeed, the whole establishment had
evidently been overwhelmed with parcels which the Company’s servants
were still collecting, receiving, lifting, driving, wheeling,
turning, twisting, weighing, pasting, labelling, and hallooing at,
and yet, notwithstanding the rapidity with which they were despatched
by rails, vans, waggons, carts, and busses, they were arriving, if
possible, faster than ever!
Now, after this afflicting description of the plague of parcels
which during Christmas week annually infests and infects the Euston
Station, our readers will, no doubt, feel somewhat alarmed when we
state that we propose to inform them in detail of the contents of
each!
The job, however, is easily performed, for in these parcels there
are neither gold, silver, jewels, pictures, nor books--they contain
neither covering for the body nor consolation for the mind--they
belong neither to the vegetable nor to the mineral kingdom--in short,
they are simply composed of good, plain, honest eatables, bequeathed
by British hearts, addressed by British hands to British stomachs of
all classes of society.
But as our arterial blood is of one colour, while that which returns
through our veins is of another, so is there a most remarkable
difference in the character of these flowing and ebbing parcels: all
those which have come _into_ London being either deceased turkeys
or game, while the outgoing or outward-bound parcels are, with
scarcely an exception, composed of barrels of live oysters, several
of which are accompanied by a good heavy basket of fish. The number
of barrels thus despatched from Euston Station within twenty-four
hours amounted to 5009, and, as a hundred oysters are usually packed
in each barrel, it is strange to think of half a million of “natives”
leaving London in one day for the express purpose of wishing “a merry
Christmas and a happy new year” to those whose hares, pheasants,
partridges, rabbits, turkeys, and chickens have inanimately come to
the metropolis on the very same day on the very same errand! To the
above “bills of fare” we may add, that during last Christmas week no
less than 450 waggons of live cattle arrived at Camden Station within
the space of twenty-four hours.