THE UNDELIVERED POSTAL PACKET
It is often brought as a reproach against the General Post Office that
while it occasionally fails to deliver a letter which is only slightly
incorrect in its address, it frequently succeeds if the address is
entirely wrong or is more or less unintelligible to the average reader.
But Post Office men and women have the ordinary human point of view, and
we must not blame them for sometimes despising the solution of simple
difficulties and laying themselves out to solve the larger problems of
official life. Like Naaman, they prefer to be asked to do some great
thing. For one reason, both their chiefs and the public will give them
more credit for solving an apparently hopeless puzzle than for
suggesting a way out of an easy difficulty. They may have in the one
case a paragraph all to themselves in the _Daily Mail_: in the other
case they will not even be thanked by the man who receives the letter,
and who is not modest enough to be surprised because he is known to the
Post Office in spite of an imperfect address.
None the less, the failure of the Post Office to deliver a letter often
means a loss of self-respect to the member of the Department whose duty
it is to find an owner for the packet, and he will make great efforts to
save his reputation.
The Department which deals with the undelivered letters is called the
Returned Letter Office, but the older and more striking name was the
Dead Letter Office. This name, however, gave rise to some
misunderstanding on the part of the simple-minded British public. Many
thought that this office was a place where they could learn all about
dead and missing friends and relatives. Descriptions were frequently
sent as to the age and appearance of lost fathers, husbands, uncles, &c.
For instance, information was required of the whereabouts of “R——, a
carpenter by trade, 5 feet 10½, blue eyes, brown hare, and a cut on the
forreid, a lump on the smorle of his back, and no whiskers.” A lady
wrote this letter: “To the Dead Office Post Office, London. I, the
mother of Michael Roach, beg leave to write to you trusting that you
will kindly send me the necessary information regarding the death of my
son, and if dead you as a gentleman will kindly send me an answer to
this, whether dead or living.”
Other folk who are influenced by superstitious considerations disliked
the gruesome suggestiveness of the title. Hence this letter: “To the
Dead Letter Office. If any of my letters should come to your office that
I have not sent since the last, will you be so kind as to burn them and
never send them back to me. After that one came, as many as 21 persons
have died and been buried in this little place, and I don't know what
will be the end of it. I think this will be my last.”
Communications of this nature may have brought about the change in name,
but I am inclined to think that this was induced by the reluctance of
the staff to admit the deadness of any postal packet which passed
through their hands.
At one time there were Dead Letter Offices only in London, Edinburgh,
and Dublin, but now the chief towns in the Kingdom have their own
Returned Letter Offices, and they deal with the business in their own
districts.
Our first thought will probably be that the work of these offices must
be of a somewhat simple character, but this idea will not survive many
minutes' consideration. A large proportion of the letters are found to
contain enclosures of varying value which require special treatment.
Among them are bank notes, cheques, bills of exchange, letters of
credit, circular notes, dividend warrants, money and postal orders,
stamps, jewellery, and countless articles of value. All these different
items have to be accounted for, and care taken that none but the
rightful owners shall possess them.
The figures relating to these undelivered postal packets are positively
startling. They show an amount of carelessness on the part of the
British public which in these days of universal education is almost
unexplainable. During the year ending March 1910 the total number of
undelivered packets of all kinds, including packets entirely unaddressed
and articles found loose, is estimated to have reached a total of
31,241,000. The curious thing about these figures is that they include
nearly 400,000 packets containing articles of value. The total amount of
money found in addressed and unaddressed packets was £647,832, of which
£15,127 was in cash and bank notes and £632,705 in bills, cheques, money
orders, postal orders, and postage stamps. These figures, of course, do
not include the value of remittances which may have been enclosed in
packets returned unopened to the senders or the value of miscellaneous
property dealt with as undeliverable.
The number of packets of all descriptions posted during the same year
without any address and of articles found loose in the post was 427,000.
Among these were bank notes and cash to the value of about £1500, and
bills, cheques, and other forms of remittance to the value of about
£16,000.
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[Illustration]
_Photo_ _Clarke & Hyde._
THE SORTING OFFICE.
The final sorting of the letters, which pass through the
hands of three different sets of sorters. The last set sort
them into thoroughfares ready for delivery. Notice the
labels above the shelves. The term “Road” is an interesting
survival from the old coaching days.
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It would almost seem as if we had been instructing our people in the
higher branches of education and that large numbers were still in
ignorance how to address a letter properly or to see that it is stuck
down effectively before it is despatched. The only other explanations
must be that hustling and hurry in business are on the increase, and
that absent-mindedness is a widespread disease.
But sometimes the reasons for the apparent negligence may be quite
different. A heavy letter packet was received as a “Dead Letter” from
Australia. It had been posted in London some three or four years before.
On opening the packet it was found to contain an old leather pocket-book
filled with sovereigns to the number of one hundred. It contained no
name of the sender and no communication whatever. It was kept in the
safe for three years, was not claimed, and the money was eventually paid
into the Revenue.
Another packet mailed “Advertised but not claimed” was returned from the
United States. It contained a valuable gold watch embedded in a book. A
round well had been cleverly cut through all the pages, and in that the
watch had been so tightly deposited that it was difficult to extract it.
There was no writing nor any clue to the sender with it. This was never
inquired for.
It is possible that both these packets were the fruits of robberies, and
the thieves, to avoid the risk of being found with these hauls on them,
had made them up into postal packets and addressed them to places where
they intended to follow, but their plans had been frustrated.
Here is a curious example of carelessness on the part of a member of the
public:—
A registered parcel which reached one of the Returned Letter Branches as
undeliverable was found to contain jewellery the value of which must
have exceeded £2000. The contents included a pearl and diamond necklace
which was valued, according to a letter found in the parcel, at £1100.
The sender was advised in the usual course, and in reply she stated that
the parcel was of great importance, and she requested that it might be
forwarded at once to the correct address (which she furnished), adding
that the amount of postage required for re-direction was enclosed. The
stamps for fresh postage were not, however, enclosed, but were
afterwards received in a registered letter, with a note that the sender
had forgotten to enclose them in the first letter. We should not be
surprised if we heard that the lady was an authoress.
It is no uncommon occurrence for valuable documents to be found in
pillar boxes. Here are a few examples:—Bonds to bearer of the nominal
value of £800 were posted inadvertently with their correspondence by a
firm of brokers; an unaddressed letter from a marquis enclosing a cheque
for £3000; a letter of credit for £1000 posted without address.
A watch and chain, and several articles of personal jewellery such as
might fittingly adorn the person of a gentleman in easy circumstances,
were found in a pillar box, and the why and the wherefore remained for
some time a mystery. Eventually a nurse wrote up to the Head Office
about them, and it then appeared that the articles belonged to a poor
fellow of weak intellect who, on this particular day, escaped from his
keeper, and was subsequently found wandering about in a state of partial
undress.
A small bottle of white powder was found loose in the post some years
ago. It presented no uncommon feature, and was placed with a number of
similar and more or less valuable articles to await inquiry. There was
some astonishment when, a few days later, an inquiry came from a
professor at an English college describing the contents of the phial as
a compound of radium, and stating that the insignificant white powder
was almost priceless.
There have been many instances of letters having been posted in the
receptacles used by scavengers in cleansing the streets. One old lady
complained that letters sent by her were not reaching their destination.
On inquiry it was found that she had been in the habit of posting them
in a drain outside the post office. But her action was quite intelligent
when compared with that of a servant girl who had recently arrived from
a rural district, and was sent by her mistress to the bank with a
pass-book and cash to the value of £38. The maid, it seems, had
possessed from childhood a money-box in the shape of a miniature
pillar-box which she always called her bank, and seeing a duplicate of
her treasure standing in the street she immediately concluded this was
the bank of her mistress; its greater size compared with hers seemed to
be evidence of the fact, in that her mistress was a woman of ample
means. She then posted both pass-book and money in the pillar-box. On
her return she was asked for the pass-book, and replied that she had put
it in with the money. “Whom did you see?” asked the mistress. The girl
replied, “I couldn't see no one, ma'am, although I looked for a long
time in the hole.”
Now let me give a delightful facsimile of the posted packet which is
despatched unaddressed.
A lady, almost overcome with indignation, seized a postcard and wrote an
angry note to her butcher. In her wrath she thought only of the strong
words she wanted to use, and she wrote these on the address portion and
then posted the card, omitting altogether the name and address of the
butcher.
[Illustration: postcard]
The notorious “Spanish Swindle” sometimes comes under notice in the
Returned Letter Offices. One letter addressed “to Don X. Y. Z., Madrid,”
which fortunately for the sender was returned from Spain as
undeliverable, was found to contain £185 in bank notes. The sender was
an illiterate man who had raised all the money he could in the hope of
gaining £10,000.
One of the curious incidents of the office was the return of a letter
from Italy in 1905 marked “undeliverable” which had been posted in
Ireland in 1862. The letter contained a Second of Exchange for £600.
As a rule the public trusts the Post Office too much. They have a kind
of impression that it can work miracles, and very little assistance in
consequence is needed on their part. How else can we explain an address
such as this? “To my dear Father in Yorkshire at the white cottage with
green palings.” This was the address of a packet containing a pair of
steel spectacles which a poor girl was sending to her father, implicitly
believing that the Post Office would deliver it. Of course it could not
be delivered neither could it be returned.
I cannot deny that the Post Office frequently encourages people in the
idea that it can do great things. An Aberystwith postman managed to
deliver to the proper person a letter bearing the address, “Mrs. Brown,
Wearing a Large Bear Boa, Violet Flowers in Bonnet. Promenade mornings,
Aberystwith.” The letter was from the lady's son, who had mislaid his
mother's seaside address. This was a comparatively easy puzzle, and
probably any observant man would have found the lady.
The following was perhaps a little more difficult. An American gentleman
arrived in England, and not knowing where a sister was residing at the
time, addressed a letter to her previous residence thus—
“Upper Norwood
or Elsewhere.”
The letter was delivered to the lady on the top of a coach in Wales, and
in thanking the Department for what had been done the gentleman said,
“that no other country can show the parallel or would take the trouble
at any cost.”
Here is another quaint address: “To the military gentleman who arrived
from Aldershot on Thursday, who often stays at the Queen's Hotel, and
who wears a long fawn overcoat and light cap. Queen's Hotel.”
I am afraid a great many people furnish puzzle addresses with malice
aforethought, and the Department does its best to discourage such
attempts to waste its time. An official may sometimes make an effort to
deliver such packets, but there is no call upon him to do so. For
instance, a letter was posted in London addressed as follows:—
“From an old Bachelor
To a Young Lady,
The Youngest of Three,
Who lives in a house
Close down by the sea.
The house is quite large,
Part of it used for a shop,
Where the relatives
Deal in tea, bacca, and soap,
In the scraggy tail end of the British Isles.”
The letter was passed on from one sorter to another, and was finally
hung up. Then a sorter wrote in blue pencil across it—
“Now, postal officials, don't curse so;
It's probably intended for Thurso.”
Away went the letter to the extreme north, but Thurso did not own to the
young lady. Kirkwall was then tried, and eventually the packet found an
owner in a village in the Shetland Islands. This was evidently more than
the writer deserved.
A letter was returned undelivered with unmistakable signs on the address
portion of the efforts that had been made by the Department to effect
its delivery. “Not Cæsar,” “Try Hannibal,” “Not in Jupiter,” “Try Mars,”
were the sorters' and postmen's notes, showing that the universe, seen
and unseen, had apparently been searched in vain. Yet the owner of the
letter was simply an able-bodied seaman attached to the Channel Fleet.
Many people will doubtless think what an amusing place the Returned
Letter Office must be, and how interesting must be the duty of reading
the undelivered letters. But they have only to realise the number which
pass through the office daily to understand that very little time can be
given to reading other people's correspondence. Moreover, most of it is
terribly dull and uninteresting to strangers. Now and then the eye of
the clerk spots something good, but he is usually thinking more of
correct addresses than jokes. These lines were found in a lost letter
written from a wife to her husband at sea:—
“Darling, there is a promise in your eye:
I will tend you while I'm living,
You will whack me while I die—
And if death kindly leads me
To the blessed shades on high
What a hundred thousand welcomes
Shall await you in the sky.”
The man who supplied me with these verses says the lady mis-spelt
“watch” as “whack,” but I see no reason why her sentiments should be
explained away.
I am sorry to say that the complaints of the public respecting the
non-delivery of their letters are not always politely expressed. No
allowance is made for possible errors on the part of the person sending
the letter. The following letter is at least outspoken:—
“TO DEAD LETTER OFFICE
“If I don't get an anser to this I shall say there as been rogery at
work somewhere. I wont be rob out of my money not by no one. I sent a
P.O. for a pound and it is hard I should waste my time here. If I dont
receive a anser on Tuesday morning some one will receive vitrol in their
face, if others be rogues I will be villain. i dont mind penal servitude
send a anser as soon as possible if you receive same.”
This is, I suppose, what is called being quits.
The following letter was received by the Postmaster-General, and I have
seldom seen a case in which the accuser comes into court with dirtier
hands:—
“Enclosed please find wrongly addressed envelope which was sent after I
had given my correct address to you. Such careless mistakes are deeply
to be deplored, and I trust they will not occur again.
“Is there in your Dead Letter Office a post-card addressed to Mr. J. M.,
35 —— Villas? If so please return it, as I put the wrong address on it.
It was posted three weeks ago.”
There is more justice in the complaint of a man who claimed £2
compensation because a letter containing no value from the woman he was
engaged to marry had failed to reach him. In his own words: “That letter
I would not have missed for anything—through that I lost a wife. After
returning from a nine months' voyage my intended wife was not to be
found, and I do not consider £2 full compensation.” There is no doubt,
however, that such a sum would have gone a considerable way towards
repairing the loss, but the Department was obliged to inform the man
that the Postmaster-General could not be held responsible for the loss
of the lady. She was not a registered packet.
The form of inquiry which is handed to applicants for missing postal
packets does not err by asking too little. A man had carefully and
laboriously filled up answers to all the questions relevant and
irrelevant to his particular loss, and then he came to the concluding
sentence: “Any other observations should be made here.” At this point,
his pent-up feelings got the better of him, and he wrote simply “Damn.”
Another story bearing on the complexity of this same form tells of the
case of a man who in filling up the form had omitted certain important
particulars. The form was returned for completion, only to come back
from the postmaster to this effect, that “Mr. —— after filling up the
form (in the first instance) had had a fit and died.”
Some postmasters take themselves and their duties very seriously: they
will even pursue a missing packet after it has been found. Application
had been made respecting a missing letter, and in the course of the
official inquiries the papers were referred to the postmaster at the
office of posting with a request for precise particulars of posting.
Directly afterwards a communication was received from the sender saying
that the letter inquired for had been found. This communication was sent
forthwith to the postmaster, who it was assumed would understand that
the inquiry was at an end. But the postmaster was misjudged: he went on
with the case. He kept the case for about six weeks, trying to obtain
from the exasperated sender particulars of the posting of the letter. He
then returned the papers, confessing that he had been baffled, and that
the case was incomplete.
Every Christmas brings a number of letters from children addressed to
Santa Claus. One such letter, addressed “Santa Claus, Chimney Corner,
Heaven,” was sent by a playful sorter to Hever, Edenbridge, for trial.
It is pathetic to think that the destination of all letters so addressed
is the prosaic Returned Letter Office. A spinster lady who lived in a
county town at a house delightfully named “The Haven” wrote to the
Postmaster-General to complain that an official letter had been sent to
her bearing a wrong address. The abode with the restful name had
actually been described as “The Harem”! No wonder the lady's deepest
feelings were aroused, and she was scarcely consoled by the expression
of the Postmaster-General's regret that the envelope had been
inadvertently addressed in this way.
Here is the facsimile of another envelope:—
[Illustration: postcard]
For dearie M^{rs} Hibbert
The Cottage by the Wood
M^r Thomas Hibbert's
Farmer and all the rest of it
if you take the Carrage Drive
you'n find it to ^{th} right on you
M^r Postman titherington
Addresses are sometimes obviously taken from invoices or memoranda
forms. “Messrs. Hair cut by machinery,” and
“Mr. Richard Funerals
at shortest notice
Mile End,”
are of this kind. This sort of thing is often done by foreigners.
People of the same name living in the same place constantly embarrass
the officers of the Department. Two gentlemen, one a Minor Canon and the
other an Independent Minister, each bearing the same Christian name and
surname, lived in a city on the west coast of England, and it sometimes
happened that a letter or parcel intended for the one was delivered to
the other, who sent it on to its rightful owner with an apology. These
mistakes never caused any misunderstanding until a parcel of game for
the Minor Canon was delivered at the house of the Independent Minister,
and in his absence was unopened. As soon as he returned home he
discovered his mistake and sent the game, which was past eating, to the
Minor Canon with a letter of apology. But the loss of the game so upset
the Churchman that he wrote to the Dissenter, “If you had not assumed
the title of Reverend, to which you have no right, this mistake would
not have occurred.” Soon afterwards another parcel was delivered to the
Independent Minister, who found the contents to be manuscript sermons
that had been ordered by the Minor Canon from an agent who supplied
sermons to preachers unable or unwilling to write them. The sermons were
at once repacked and sent to their owner with a note: “Sir, if you had
not assumed an office for which you have no qualifications, this mistake
would not have occurred.”
The Post Office is always delighted to hear of its difficulties being
adjusted by the complainants themselves: it can rarely speak out its own
mind to the obtuse, the ignorant, and the careless. And it is not the
uneducated folk who give the most trouble. In the autumn of 1910 there
appeared in the _Morning Post_ a letter signed “John Brown,” and he
described himself as “senior partner in the firm of Brown, Jones, and
Robinson, Dumpington House, Little Britain.” The letter was obviously
written sarcastically, and was a protest from a typical Briton's point
of view against compulsory service, on the ground that it would mean
interference with his profit-mongering and the curtailment of many of
his luxuries. This is the kind of argument he used. “I have often to
sign my name fifty times in the course of the day—a hard-working man of
business. I must have some relaxation, and how could I obtain this if I
were forced to sell my yacht and give up my moor in Scotland, to say
nothing of my fishing in Norway. What, again, would my wife and family
do without the little villa in the Riviera to fly to from the rigours of
an English winter. And what, I should like to know, would my friends
say, and how long should I retain them, if I had to make these enormous
sacrifices, and all to please a parcel of scaremongers with no knowledge
of business, no sense of duty, no appreciation of the claims of a man
who would get on in the world and make a figure in the social life of
the community?”
A retired military officer read this obviously faked-up letter and
boiled over with indignation. He replied “direct,” as he said in a
letter to the Department, “to Mr. Brown at the address furnished; but to
my surprise my envelope and enclosure were returned through the Dead
Letter Office and marked, as you will see on the envelope, 'Not known.'
I shall be glad if you will say why my letter was returned. As regards
the address, Little Britain, our local postmaster here told me that
Little Britain was London, E.C., and further that as a Londoner he knew
it quite well.”
The Department never laughs, and rarely gives a reply to anybody without
some qualification. The cautious officer dealing with the case replied:
“The address in question _appears_ to be fictitious. It is regretted
that no assistance can be given you in the matter.” This last sentence
may of course have been intentionally subtle, because the assistance
which the military gentleman required was evidently in the direction of
the surgical operation recommended by Sydney Smith to obtuse North
Britons.
The Department was called upon to explain a joke in another instance.
The following note appeared outside a wrapper, addressed from Canada to
this country:—
“This package contains a pair of undressed kids, size 6¾, colour black
finish, extra fine: trade No., 23; manufactured in Paris, France, by
Lemoine Fils & Co. To Mrs. J. Smith.”
The recipient, on receipt of the packet, addressed this letter to the
Postmaster-General:—
“DEAR SIR,—The addressee of the enclosed envelope was the recipient
recently of the empty envelope and fillings which I beg to enclose for
your inspection. The packet originally contained a pair of black kid
gloves sent by Mr. J. Jones, Montreal. The gloves were evidently
abstracted in Montreal, as a paper filling, a Montreal newspaper, was
used as a blind to fill up the package. I can assure you that it could
not have been the nature of a joke. If you can help me in this matter
you will confer a favour on yours truly, ——”
Notice the Sherlock-Holmes-like touch in tracing the theft to Montreal.
The Post Office again “helped” with this letter. “Inquiry will certainly
be made on the receipt of a description from the sender of any article
missing from the packet. It is, however, pointed out that the postage
prepaid is only sufficient for the present contents and would not carry
a pair of gloves, that the cover bears the name of a toy company, and
that the superscription may perhaps be a jocular allusion _to the black
figures of undressed children enclosed in the envelope_.”
Every year the Postmaster-General makes the same appeal to the erring
British public; he tells them the same pitiful tale of undelivered
letters and parcels; he begs that ordinary care and discretion may be
observed; and yet the trouble goes on. It is curious how the educated
public as well as the uneducated fail in this matter.