A Mail Bag is the epitome of human life – Holbrook
From the postman’s and postal employee’s point of view there was much to do.
The lady of the house said ‘It’s all right postman – the dog won’t bite you – look he’s wagging his tail.’ The postman replied ‘Yes madam but I wasn’t looking at that end.’
Structure and business of the Post Office
There is a need to consider at the outset of this Lecture what the business of the Post Office was. The reason for this is that services changed and developed over a period and tended to differ from country to country. A member of the public arriving at a post office counter on any day in any year would expect to be able to obtain and pay for particular services then available without question about reliability or service standards – time for dealing with the service perhaps. The services available in 1870 differed from those available in 1970. The function of a post office business is to give the customer what has been advertised as available as a service and to deal with that service efficiently by having relevant business and work practices and outside contracts in place and to make a profit.
For a long time the British Post Office was a Department of the Government; it is still owned by the Crown through a shareholding. Profit was taken into general revenue but by and large general revenue provided the capital for expansion and development of services. It is important to make this point as the Post Office in the UK and in many other countries has been subject to political control as well as financial constraints for a long time. The Postmaster General was a member of the Government of the day until that government departmental post disappeared.
The reason for this was that from the earliest times Governments had a big interest in effective communication not only for its own purposes but so that the business of a country could be conducted efficiently, speedily and in competition with postal services provided in and by other countries. Postal, telegraphic and telephone charges, modernisation, improvements in services and technical research depended on profits being made or subsidies being paid.
However at the other end from government at the operational level eye to eye with a customer and in very basic terms the post office counter clerk in 1960 had to know about:
The Post including postal rates and the various supplementary services
The Parcel Post at home and abroad
The Postal Order
The Money Order
The Savings Bank
The Telegraph
The Telephone
Insurance and Annuity business
Services with speed of various types [later including Data Post]
Other services such as selling insurance stamps and fiscal stamps
Getting legal documents stamped
Illustrate form
Page 1
Post Office leaflets for the public and internal circulars
Various types of licences
Old age pensions and social security payments [and in recent years passport applications]
Dealing with Customs and Excise regulations
Knowledge of the postal regulations of other countries [did you know that in 1975 you were not allowed to send platinum or contraceptives to the Central African Republic – assuming you know where that country was].
All these were the business of the Post Office in the UK and there had to be a structure to support these activities.
I mention all these as a reading of British, US and Canadian Post Office Guides over the years will give a good idea and exact idea of what the post office did [at least until post office guides were no longer produced in their old format]. The acceleration of ‘speedy services’ in the last 30 years has been interesting in the sense that they show how the post office has had to adapt to invention and technological advance and to give up services as well as introducing new services and suffering a decline in the ordinary letter post because of email.
So how did the Post Office in the UK control these activities: a basic list would be:
St Martins le Grand control which was subject overall to:
Government control [the ‘GPO’]
The staff of the Post Office
Instructions to staff
Provision of buildings
Home and abroad
Transmission of mails
Railway contracts
Shipping contracts
Air contracts
The UPU
Wartime – Interruption, suspension and censorship of mails
The GPO
Fred Dixon, a well known postal historian in Dublin now long dead, showed me when I once visited him, a Return of two Orders of the House Of Commons showing the name of every person employed in the GPO [in London] and in Dublin by name and with date of appointment, nature of duties, salary and the fund that paid the salaries in February 1845. This is an invaluable document to show how the Post Office was organised. A copy of two pages are illustrated.
Illustrate two pages
Pages 2 and 3 One page is to illustrate administration and the other is to illustrate ‘action’.
The description of duties column provides the most interest: Let me take two examples.
Mr WJ Chetwynd in the Dead Letter Office as a junior clerk appointed in August 1841 had to Return undelivered letters to the writers and attend the early duty of the Inland Department to dispose of mis-sent and redirected letters addressed to or passing through London at a salary paid from Post Office revenue of £80pa.
Mr RW Hawkes in the Ship Letter Office as a senior clerk appointed in July 1839 had to attend at 5.45am three times a week to prepare letters inwards for distribution, to enter mails to various parts, to charge and enter letters inward brought to London, to register vessels for foreign parts, to prepare orders for the payment of gratuities and the return of overcharges on letters and to despatch mails to foreign parts at a salary paid from Post Office revenue of £110pa.
This 1845 report shows the job description of the Earl of Lonsdale as PMG as ‘Control, management and superintendence of all matters and business relating to the British Post Office department in Great Britain and Ireland, and the Colonies and Foreign Parts’ - all at a salary of £2500 paid from Post Office revenue. Col Maberley’s job at a salary of £2000 paid from Post Office revenue was general superintendence under the PMG.
The headings of the 1845 Report are [and this shows the organisation]
PMG
Secretary’s Office
Mail Coach Office
Solicitor’s Office
Receiver-general’s Office
Accountant-generals office
Money Order Office
Dead Letter Office
Ship Letter Office
Inland Office
General Post Letter Carrier’s Office
General Post Subsorters
General Post Letter carriers
London District Post Office
The 1845 Report is in such great detail that not only can one work out the ‘office routine’ but one can identify that the River Letter Carrier [on the Thames] was a Mr Samuel Evans who was appointed on the 7th October 1832 and who was allowed an assistant [presumably to row and look after the boat] and that Mr Edmund Fanning as the Fifth Clerk in the Mail Coach Office checked and entered railway time bills, reported accidents and delays – railways were still under the Mail Coach Office!
Another very important source of information about activity on the other side of the counter is Minutes of Evidence before Select Committees of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. There is an important one in June 1847. The Post Office counter clerk, windowman, receiver and internal clerk would need to know all of the elements in the following exchange
Q. In addition to franking a letter out of this country could I frank the Paris postage by stamps here? A. Yes
Q. The French part as well as the English? A. Yes it is an optional payment
Q. There is a connexion? A. Yes with France. All that France knows is that we mark the letter with a red mark and they receive that as postage paid and we account to them
Q. Therefore the stamps are as good as a red mark? A. Yes
Q. Then my correspondent [in Paris] would not pay if I had put stamps on? A. No.’
And then later
Q. Do you place any additional charge on letters which go to Bombay through Suez or is there only one general charge on letters from England to Bombay? A. The general rule now since the adoption of penny postage has been that to all our colonies to which we have direct packets from England the rate is uniformly 1s 0d with the exception of Heligoland where it is 6d.
Other Post Offices
A good account of postal life in a Provincial City [up to about 1900] is contained in RC Tombs book ‘The Bristol Royal Mail’.
This deals amongst other things with the acquisition of a new site and building for the Bristol Head Post Office because of the increase in work and the need for extra counters. Two extracts:
In dealing with the’ Public Office’ - interesting as a post office employee’s description of what the public would call ‘the post office’ and writing about 1900 - Tombs says: ‘The public office of the Bristol Post Office is very commodious and affords ample counter accommodation to the citizens for conducting their post office business properly. It is markedly superior as regards size and fitting up to almost any other provincial office and indeed its equal in those respects is scarcely to be found in all London’. So Mr Tombs on the other side of the counter regarded the provision of these facilities as important.
Telegraph business
Of the transfer of the telegraph business to the Post Office in 1870 Mr Tombs says: The officials taken over from the [private] companies were located in the Small Street Post Office but it was not until January 1872 that room could be found for the entire staff, which had then grown to ninety clerks and fifty messengers.
The telegraphic system soon after the Government took to it was extended in this district to twenty of the principal villages. In the first year of Post Office working there were 450,000 messages dealt with and now [about 1900] the yearly number is 350,000 and the staff is 22 superintendents, 140 male and 44 female telegraphists, eight telephonists and 155 telegraph messengers. Telegrams are delivered from the head office, two branch offices, fifteen town suboffices, forty rural suboffices and four railway stations’. This shows big business with a lot of organisation and staff and a numerical description of post offices in Bristol. The importance of getting this right for the person handing a message over the counter can be deduced straight away.
An extra little detail may assist.
‘The post office at Avonmouth, a Bristol suboffice is much used for telegraphic purposes by persons on board vessels passing up and down the Kingroad in the Bristol Channel [where a disinfection station was earlier in the nineteenth century]. The Bristol Corporation placed outside the port a large white notice board with TELEGRAPH OFFICE painted upon it in black letters to attract the attention of mariners. Telegrams for vessels lying in the Kingroad are often taken out by boat at midnight or in the early hours of the morning. This is often in consequence of the tide not serving or being too strong for the boatmen to go out at seasonable hours’.
Postal orders
Postal orders were first issued on the 1st January 1881. The reason for this was that the cost of dealing with money orders for small sums [introduced in 1871] was causing a loss on operations. There had been a feeling against introducing a low value paper currency equivalent [fixed amounts at a low rate of commission] but the loss caused new thinking and with a three month life restriction and a limit of value at £1 the objections were set aside. In June 1884 it was arranged that stamps could be added to postal orders for broken amounts. The reduction of the registration fee to 2d in 1878 and the introduction of compensation simplified the sending of money through the post at a cost that would not deter people form so doing. In Bristol in the first year 500,000 postal orders were issued or paid.
Post Office Savings Banks
There was a long political controversy about how to set up arrangements so that working class persons could save small amounts. Cost of administration was a factor. The first POSB business was transacted on the 16th September 1861 and 301 post offices were authorised to carry out the business. In Bristol on the opening day £35.4s.0d. was deposited.
Deposits were to be in multiples of 1s 0d and the limit of deposit was £30pa and £150 overall. In September 1880 arrangements were made for 1d stamps to be used to save amounts up to 1s 0d [to benefit children savers]. Many countries had these savings forms including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Southern Rhodesia and the United States. Gradually the limits were increased and the number of post offices dealing with POSB business extended. Details were published in Post Office Circulars weekly. [These Circulars are an important source of detailed information about the administration of post office business].Training and security of cash deposits were an issue. Telegraphic arrangements for withdrawal started in December 1893.
[Illustrations POSB book, savings slips]
Pages 4, 5 and 6
[Illustration POC] Pages 7 and 8
Insurance and Annuity busines
This started in 1865 as part of the same drive to enable persons to save and provide for themselves in later life. Between 1865 and 1884 7,064 insurance policies were issued. Policies for immediate annuities in the same period numbered 13,402.
Likewise arrangements were made in November 1880 for the Post Office to be able to make arrangements for the public to buy Government stock.
Inland revenue licences
The Post Office started to issue licences in 1869. By 1911 36 different types of licences were issued and about 3 million were issued every year. They included:
Private brewers. Dogs, Hounds, Male servants, Carriages including motor cars [of which there were 21 kinds], Hackney carriages and Hackney motor cars, Armorial bearings, Guns, Game, Game dealer and Gamekeeper.
[Illustrate modern dog licence]
Page 9
Airmails
For me the main interest in reading rather than collecting are the stories behind the set up of the airmail routes. The post office officials and the air pilots and the support teams who started the development of the mail line to the Middle East and on to India, the Far East and Australia and the Empire Airmail route by flying boat with passengers over Africa to South Africa have exciting stories to tell. Persia, for example, from Harper and Bernard:
‘Meanwhile the agreement with Persia expired, and was renewed for short periods only, while the alternative route along which the Persians wished the air service to travel, while flying over their country, was being surveyed and investigated. This was an inland route, and although it served some of the most important towns in Persia, the country between those towns consisted of high snow covered mountains, with precipitous gorges upon which no satisfactory sites for emergency alighting grounds could be located; while the area was utterly devoid of wireless and weather services. In addition, the existing aerodromes were of such a nature that it was impossible to use them throughout the year as they became badly affected by varying weather conditions. In fact the whole route was most unattractive and would have been extremely costly to organise and very difficult to operate on an all the year round basis. It was therefore decided to investigate the possibilities of a route along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf thus avoiding Persia altogether’.
That sort of thing lay unappreciated by most members of the public in the 1930’s who stuck their 6d or other stamps on airmail letters to India.
If you want a good read about setting up long distance airmail routes then Antoine St Exupery’s books ‘Terre des Hommes’ and ‘Vol de Nuit’ which tells of the French flights across the Sahara to establish the airmail route to South America in the 1920’s is recommended as is a UPU account of the opening of the route to French and Belgian Congo in 1935 [looked at from the point of view of a passenger looking down from his window over the whole route].
Non Letter services
A list is all that is needed here by way of reminder about what needed to be organised after an item had been paid for by a member of the public. Knowledge of rules and rates was needed at most stages:
Prices current and commercial lists
Bookpost, packet post and printed papers
Newspapers
Samples and patterns
Bankers' parcels
Parcels
Articles for the blind
Data post
Swiftair and so on including items in these categories that could be sent registered or express or insured.
Perhaps the best example of ‘Need to Know’ on the part of the counter staff was how to handle superscribed parcels for the USA and Canada to travel on the Queens Mary or Elizabeth in 1956.
Illustrate the Notice
Page 10
Valuables and security: diamonds
The South African Post Office procedure for getting diamonds from Kimberley to the English mail at Cape Town in the 1920’s and 1930’s is worth looking at. The account is in the Post Annual for 1934.
The diamonds were made up into small packets and registered at the post office at Kimberley. They were kept securely until Tuesday morning when they were put into a small safe and sent down from the post office to Kimberley Railway Station and put on the TPO to Cape Town. The safe was a small iron box which was locked by means of eyebolts on the floor of the TPO van. The Postmaster had one set of keys both to lock and open the box and to fasten it to the floor and unfasten it. The Controller of the Post Office at Cape Town had another set. He always used to meet the TPO and then took the safe in an hansom cab to the GPO where it was opened.
The registered packets were checked and transferred to an ordinary registered mail bag and this bag was then placed in an ordinary mail bag. The bag with other mail bags in the last load of mail was then sent on to the mail steamer. It and they were accompanied by a clerk from Cape Town Head Post Office who kept an eye on it without appearing to do so until it and the other bags were in the mail room on the steamer. No-one after that knew which bag had the diamonds until the mail steamer got to the UK and the bags were opened.
Wireless telegraph
There is a story in the Post Annual for 1930 which encapsulates belief in the working of the other side of the counter.
‘I never for the life of me’, said Mrs Doherty to Mrs Casey, ‘could understand about this wireless telegraph thing’. ‘Why’, replied Mrs Casey, ‘it is as plain as day. They just send the messages through the air instead of over the wires’. ‘Sure I know that’, said Mrs Doherty, ‘but how do they fasten the air to the poles?’
Life in other Post Office Administrations
A good account of Post Office life in ordinary and varied detail in the USA is contained in J Holbrook’s book ‘Ten Years among The Mail Bags’ [1886]. Two extracts now follow from which one can deduce mail operations and difficulties in general and in detail: ‘In the summer of 1851 a company of travellers were seated in the mail stage that runs from Mexico to Vera Cruz. Marauding parties of guerrillas had often stopped the mail and when practicable robbed the passengers. Sometimes returning Californians and other travellers gave these freebooters a rather warm reception’.
[Talking of mails from the Mississippi to New Mexico and Utah] – ‘A usual mail train consisted of three covered wagons, with elliptic springs each drawn by six mules guarded by eight or ten men and perhaps carrying as many passengers. Thirty miles a day was a usual drive and this gave several hours rest in every twenty four. By having plenty of Sharp’s rifles and Colt’s six shooting cavalry pistols the entire company of men and passengers formed a terrible phalanx able to fire three or four hundred shots without any delay in loading. The Indians soon learned to respect these parties.’
Generally a reading of the US, Canadian and Irish equivalents of the Post Office Guides show a very similar approach to the British way of doing things. The US Guide for July 1937 for example combines information to the public with instructions to postmasters on what to do in every given circumstance. I illustrate a page that deals consecutively with ‘Spanish Swindles’ and the need to keep records.
Illustrate p116 from Part 1 Domestic US Postal Guide 1937
Page 11
Persons who want to go into more detail on the American system with offshoot benefits to other postal administrations should try to get access to the US Senate reports on the US Post Office. For example the Report for 1873 gives the text of the Postal Convention between the USA and Japan, and separately with Norway. They are detailed and illustrated is a copy of one of the annexes to the Norwegian Convention that deals with Dead letters. The form gives other information by the back door. The same Report gives details of postages received in relation to European mails and from that one can deduce volumes of mail to each of the countries specified; a copy is in your folder.
Illustrate Dead Letter bill p170 and p230 European volumes US PMG Report 1873
Pages 12 and 13
The 1875 Report is invaluable as it contains a full text of the UPU Treaty and more importantly the Detailed Regulations made under the treaty and the forms to be used between respective UPU countries when sending mails directly or indirectly to each other. Post Office staff had to learn and then use these regulations and forms in order to deal with the public need for transmission of mails by the new UPU rules.
In France there was a book [I have a 1916 copy] called ‘Manuel de l’Agent des Postes et Telegraphes’ which gives detailed instructions to a local postmaster o how to deal with Post office and Telegraph business. Allowing for the French mindset and administrative centralist control [not too dissimilar from the GPO in the UK] things are more or less the same as in the UK and the USA. The only difference is that the French book actually has diagrams which show you how to wire up the telegraph system!
After the airmail had reached Bushire in the 1920’s
This is a follow on from the airmail section. The Post Office had to cope with old and new ways of doing things. The airmails landed at Bushire were mainly for the European business community in Persia. They were met by a covered van with four horses – a cross between the Wild West in the USA and a stagecoach in England – four in hand. It carried not only the mails but also passengers, merchandise and livestock all mixed up. The journey to Tehran or one of the other few big towns was made in daily stages of fifteen miles. Relays of horses were provided at designated villages or outposts; they were generally second hand horses from the Persian Army.
One mail route was from Ruz on the border with Iraq to Karind in the north west of Persia. The route was long and arduous – over desert and mountain passes including the Paitac Pass the gateway to the north of Persia which is four miles of step criss-cross gradients to the top on ledges just wide enough for the van and horses. Camel and horse bones littered the way. The driver and passengers were always well armed because of danger of robbery by brigands with many running fights. When brigands were known to be about a guard of Fantisi or cavalry would be provided from one stage to another to protect the mails and passengers. This was a mixed blessing because the soldiers assigned would demand with threats gratuities. Post Offices on the way were no better. There was no delivery of letters, just someone say a shopkeeper appointed to receive the mail. The mail would be spread out on a muddy floor [just like on board a British warship in the nineteenth century] with people picking out their letters and sometimes those of others.
Connections with other Postal Administrations, Railways and wartime
Perhaps this is the best place to show how the staff at the Post Office had to think ahead to deal with the anticipated public requirement. The history of domestic TPO’s need not be touched on here as it is well known. Wartime suspension of mails and arrangements in consequence and censorship are subjects in their own right but have to be noted as causing immense logistical problems on the other side of the counter. What I have chosen is the brief history of the Trans Siberian Mail.
The question of sending mails via Siberia [to Japan and China] was first considered in 1896 as a transit service to Vladivostock. The service involved conveyance by steamship on the Amur. At the time the cost was thought to be too much and the concept too visionary. Very little correspondence was going into Russia for conveyance via Siberia as the trans Siberian railway was incomplete and large parts of the journey was by caravan. The time of transit from the UK to Vladivostock under such conditions was about six to eight weeks with five or six weeks to Peking. In 1902 Russia announced that it would be ready in due course to receive correspondence from UPU countries and set out conditions and postal rates that would apply. Transit charges were to be high. The Russian Post Office said that this was due to the involvement of the Chinese Eastern Railway which joined the trans Siberian Railway in the north of Manchuria.
The 1st October 1903 was set as the opening date for this mail service. Transit time from Moscow was estimated at 16 ½ hours. The British said that all mail had to be marked ‘via Siberia’ to follow despatch arrangements with countries through to Russia.
In April 1904 this service was suspended because of the Russo-Japanese war. It was not reopened until February 1907. Then the service became twice a week with a twelve day transit to Vladivostock but no mails could be sent o the line south from Harbin to Tientsin, Peking and Hankow. This service resumed in October 1907 and gave rapid transport of mails into China and this route was used for the China mails jointly with a route via Vladivostock. This route was superseded when a Japanese packet service operated to China from Dalny.
The point of all this is that the situation had to be coped with; the person posting the letter at the counter expected it but did not know the details of it.
Post Office employees
Perhaps the best flavour of life for employees in the Post Office from top to bottom in the middle of the nineteenth century can be found in the Journal entries of Rowland Hill. It was the serialisation of these diaries in Robson Lowe’s Philatelist from the 1950’s that first got me interested in how things worked behind the counter. The Royal Philatelic Society London has done a great service in the two volumes that they have published.
Four small extracts may suffice:
‘October 2nd 1850 A specimen of the Spanish postage stamp has been sent to me today. It is an imitation of our label but so made as to look like a caricature.’
‘October 4th 1851 Savings in iron boxes. And a third point shows how a saving of at least £450pa [probably £600] may be effected in the cost of iron boxes for the India Mail. It is mainly by an increase of 50% in the cubical capacity which will not only reduce the cost of the boxes but save trouble in the making up and in transporting the mails.’
‘27th March 1851 Letter boxes. The PMG has sanctioned a notice to be issued in London again recommending Street Door Letter Boxes making the Great Exhibition a reason for their immediate adoption.’
‘8th January 1852 Street Letter Boxes. We [RH and the PMG] had a conversation on the subject of Street Letter Boxes when I found the PMG was not disinclined to a trial of them in the great thoroughfares of London.’
At the other end is a training exercise book that I have where the postman has entered around 1935 [after dealing with how to fold and tear up sheets of stamps]:
‘Keeping stamps in stockbook: Sell odd stamps quickly. Affix spoiled stamps to sheet in rows according to the value. Head sheet with name of office. Leave margin on right hand side. Write total value in bottom right hand corner. Cash transactions. Warning against fraud. Cash must be obtained before stamps are handed to purchaser. Keep cash from purchaser on the counter until transaction is completed. Test suspected counterfeit coin. Break if bad.’
Post Office Instructions to staff
A distinction must be made here between instructions that relate to the carrying out of postal operations and instructions that relate to employment in the sense of terms and conditions of employment. A good example of operational instructions can be found in the Official Postmasters’ Account and Record book 4th Class that the US Post Office required the Postmaster at Guthrie in the State of Missouri to keep.
Illustrate two pages of Instructions
Pages 14 and 15
Post office staff were issued with books with [in 1924] 116 separate headings. There was the Staff Rule book and Rules for Workmen. They dealt with such things as secrecy, discipline, late attendance, overtime, promotion, holidays, sickness, pensions and expenses. The crossover sections were those relating to registered letter and telegraph errors and errors on counter duties.
Illustrate 4 pages s85 to s 104
Pages 16, 17, 18 and 19
Working practice books were also issued to staff that needed them; for example in the London Postal Service EC Section there was a printed list of Provincial and London District arrivals and despatches.
Illustrate the page on Continental Mails p48
Page 20
Organisation of collection and delivery services was as much an art as railway timetable construction but it had to be done to serve the public well before the telephone took over; telegrams were relatively expensive for an ordinary person. Transport and in particular motorisation was a feature of the development of handling large quantities of mail quickly and efficiently once they had been offloaded from trains. Another raft of organisation behind the counter was required for this – a long way from the river postman and his assistant! Nevertheless the change from stagecoaches and mail carts had to be managed.
Illustrate p 48 and p49
Pages 21 and 22
Anyone who wants to look at matters affecting the working lives of Post Office employees should look at the rule books, manuals and papers in POST68 at the British Postal Museum and Archive. That Archive also contains many photographs of the Post Office in action taken by the GPO’s own photographic unit – POST118. There is also the Post Office’s own internal magazine ‘Post Office Magazine’ which contains articles and photographs. Even an article by Mr Reginald Bray of strange addresses on postcards fame appears in one. It includes a photograph of Mr Fullarton the postmaster at Invermoriston who has seen the Loch Ness Monster [1934]. 1934 sees articles and photographs on most things the other side of the counter from The Birmingham Post Office Rugby Football Club to pages of pictures in foreign post offices, laying the new Channel cable, a description of the Irish Mail, the development of telephone trunk dialling and rural collections for the Post Office Savings Bank:
‘The Rural Postman is not as many people suppose a mere deliverer of letters and parcels. Besides his more familiar duties he accepts correspondence for the post, sells postage stamps, weighs parcels on his spring balance, obtains or cashes a postal order, or accepts a letter for registration. He also brings succour to the sick in the shape of medicine from a country doctor a service that the Department allows him to perform in addition to his ordinary official duties. And now [1934] in many districts he has undertaken work that to some is far more interesting and attractive: he has become a travelling agent of the great Post Office Savings Bank’.
In the middle are instructions to head office staff on how to check what local postmasters were doing particularly in the keeping of accounts. The two pages shown give a mirror image of what the individual postmaster was expected to do and will repay reading. They are taken from Appendix D to the 1864 Report to the Treasury on the checks necessary to protect public money in the hands of the Post Office.
Illustrate p38 and p39 from the 1864 Report
Pages 23 and 24
In your folder of papers you will find an example of a post office form of 1858. This was one of the bits of papers that was used in the accountancy chain dealt with in the Report. It also shows you part of the system after unpaid or registered letters had been received from the public.
Illustrate the form
Page 25
Instructions to postmasters about postal business tended to be in unequivocal words in plain language. You will see in your folder an example of postal rate calculations for France from the 1840’s and tying in with the ‘red ink’ mentioned in the Parliamentary Q and A session the French mail instructions.
It should be understood [and this will be immediately apparent if You look at Raguin’s reproductions of Notices to the Public and Notices to postmasters] that postmasters received more information and instructions than the public. Look the following illustration for a specimen page from Raguin that contains both.
Illustrate a page from Raguin
Page 26
Trade Union activity
Life in the Post Office became subject to trade union activity; the voting restrictions on Post Office employees were lifted in 1868. The incorporation of the private telegraph company employees in 1870 brought independent thinking with a degree of militancy. In 1871 they formed an employee grouping; in 1887 the United Kingdom Postal Clerks’ Association started life and in 1890 the Fawcett Association which represented sorting clerks came into being. A Postman’s Association arrived in 1891. Pay and conditions were to the fore. The Associations were weak and poorly organised and a postal strike in 1890 failed. Good conduct stripes and stripe pay were weapons used by the Post Office to keep things quiet. They were introduced in London in 1872 and in 1882 in the Provinces and lasted until 1914. You can see them on old photographs of postmen.
Nevertheless the GPO responded slowly but by concession to give better working conditions and there were for example six wage adjustments between 1881 and 1914 as well as working condition improvements at the expense of the Post Office.
Postal strikes occurred in 1871, 1872 [Huddersfield and Warrington], 1890, 1897 [telgraphists], ], 1912 [in Liverpool], 1913 in Glasgow by sorters], 1916 [in Glasgow by temporary postmen], 1919 [by temporary postmen in Manchester], 1931 [a withdrawal of goodwill in Manchester], 1947 in Weston Super Mare, 1951 [an unofficial strike in London], likewise in 1958, 1961 in London, 1962 [a work to rule] 1964 [by postmen – overtime and nearly a full strike averted by Maudling and Smith for the UPW at the last moment], 1969 [overseas telegraphists] and of course in 1971 and 198?
There were also problems associated with support or strikebreaking when transport workers generally but particularly on the railways were involved – for example in 1911. Postal workers also wanted to take action in 1973 to embargo mail for South Africa and against French Nuclear tests in the Pacific. In relation to the latter the Australian and New Zealand governments actually suspended postal communications with France.
The reading list specifies to books to read on Post Office labour relations.
Illustrate French cover, Strike Notice and LPS strike piece
[27,28 and 29]
The Solicitor’s Office
It is not possible to deal with all the GPO Departments in a lecture such as this. The main Departments underneath the PMG and the Secretary to the Post Office were either operational or financial. A look at Whitaker for any year prior to 1960 will give you an idea of the organisation. I have chosen 1941.
There was the PMG, and his Assistant and Deputy and The Post Office Board; then came the Director of Postal Services and the Director of Telecommunications; then the Medical Branch, the Investigation Branch, the Architectural Branch, The HQ Telegraph and Telephone Organisation, The HQ Postal traffic Organisation, the Wireless Telegraph Organisation and the Registry Branch. The Accountant-General’s Branch, The Engineering Department, the London Postal Region, the Post Office London railway, the Circulation Office, The Metropolitan District Offices, the London Telecommunications Region, the Money Order Department, the Public Relations Department, the Post Office Savings Bank Department, the Stores department and eight Regional Departments and one other.
That other was the Solicitor to the Post Office and his Department should not be forgotten. It acted for all the other Departments of the Post Office on legal matters and it was the oil between all the Departments and the outside world.
Over the years it drafted agreements with shipping companies, railway companies, internal regulations, conditions of service; it dealt with prosecutions of the public under Post Office and Wireless Telegraphy legislation, and defences of Post Office staff [for example under Road Traffic legislation]; it dealt with problems on the siting of postboxes and telegraph poles; it dealt with contracts for all aspects of stamp production; it dealt with purchases and building contracts; relations on a legal basis with other postal administrations; arbitrations were also an important part of the work; it helped the drafting of Post Office Laws and regulations and had an impact on the text of Post Office Notices by making sure they were not inconsistent with anything else already in place. The Solicitor dealt with negligence and breach of statutory duty claims against the Post Office and so on. It is interesting [and this is why I have chosen it] that the Solicitor’s Department is not mentioned in any of the Indexes in the main textbooks apart from Cruchley.
There were 14 Solicitors between 1702 and 1938 compared with 87 PMGs. I said that it was the oil of the business – it was also the glue and the memory of what all departments were doing when those departments did not know what was happening elsewhere in the Post Office.
The Confidential Enquiry Branch
This Branch worked alongside the Solicitor’s Office. Perhaps people have only noticed references to it when entries of undated postmarks issued to this Branch have been noticed in the Proof Books. As well as investigating alleged criminal matters it dealt with missing, mislaid and destroyed letters. There is a story in Baines:
‘A country postmaster said that a merchant who lived out of town had sold produce at a Channel port for £650 and had received a telegram from his agent that a cheque would follow by post. The post arrived but no cheque or letter. The postman recollected the packet, its shape colour and postmark. He had by habit poked it under the merchant’s door with two other letters and a newspaper. The merchant’s wife said she had picked up those. The Confidential Enquiry man making the enquiries noticed a litter of puppies. When the straw was taken out of the kennel the letter and cheque in a hundred bits were found.’
The Blind Branch employees dealing with pictograms and letters spelled in dialects as they were spoken are also unsung heroes in the Post Office.
Political considerations
A lecture on this would take days. A good summary of political and social considerations is contained in the Introduction to Smith’s book on the Development of the Rates of Postage – an important task on the other side of the counter. Herbert Samuel [PMG 1910-1914 and 1915-1916] wrote there:
‘Where the State itself conducts an industry there is always a risk that commercial and fiscal considerations will not be sufficiently distinguished. Charges may be fixed at a higher point than is warranted by the cost of the services rendered. The surplus goes to the national revenue. It is a tax, but a concealed tax, and in the case of postal rates it is one of the worst kinds of tax, a tax on communications. On the other hand, charges may be fixed at a lower point than will cover the cost of the service. The deficit is a subsidy, but a concealed subsidy. The halfpenny postage rate for bulky newspapers, for example, or the extension of telegraph offices to rural districts may be socially useful, but they are unremunerative. The loss that they involve to the Exchequer may be justifiable but if so it should be deliberately incurred.’
That was written in 1917. Do I hear echoes of that today in the withdrawal of services from post offices and the closure of post offices?
Censorship
I am not going to allude to the normal functions of censorship but to mention a paragraph in the Report on Postal Censorship in the Great War 1914 to 1919 which in its own way connects political control and the Post Office. Postal censorship was also used for purposes not directly or indirectly connected with the prosecution of the War.
Information from letters intercepted after posting was communicated to Government departments: [section 25]
Where there was no penal offence
Opposition to the Government to serve private interests
Action taken contrary to the public interest as set out in official notices
Enabling people to buy cheaply
Revealing movements of currency notes
Indicating undesirable conduct on the part of a person with an official position
Information on political matters from well informed private persons
Information which enabled the police to keep track of anarchists
Where there was an indication of a penal offence
Revealing crimes eg murder
Exposing offences such as evasion of military service or desertion
Exposing fraud on the Inland Revenue
Where the despatch of the letter constituted a criminal offence
Betting circulars
Obscene literature
Further illustrations
I have included a few notices, forms and instructions issued to a small post office in New South Wales in Australia in the last century. The list of items needed to run a post office is perhaps the most interesting especially the reference to black and red powder for cancellations.
The rest are forms taken from my collection of these sorts of things and I hope that you will see how they fit into the theme of what I have already said. You can look at them in detail without needing narrative to explain them here.
Pages 30 to 55
Further reading
My recommendation would be two books if you do not want to read in more detail.
The first is Archie Donald’s book on the Posts in Sevenoaks in Kent. This looks in detail at many of the subjects alluded to in this lecture from a particular local point of view. It is well illustrated and contains much detail on non head office and employee points. It is the best book to start with; forget that it relates to Sevenoaks – any provincial town of its size could take its place. It starts in the year 1085 and has 451 pages.
Donald covers for example where I cannot: ‘Village problems and the Eaton Bridge Messenger [in 1810]
The problems of a messenger at Eaton Bridge highlights the difficulties that villages had. Where letters had to be taken to and collected from a Receiving House say six miles distant, what more natural than to employ a local village man who is trusted and on whom an eye can be kept as to how well he does the job as he lives locally? The locally based man goes to the Receiving House in the morning and comes back in the afternoon with the letters. They cannot then be answered the same day.’
Here both sides of the counter were concerned with a problem when walking was the normal method of working for town ad country postmen. No bicycles or motors. Occasionally boats and horses in particular places ad trains if lines existed.
MJ Daunton’s book ‘Royal Mail The Post Office since 1840’ gives the head office employer account. It contains important sections called ‘Officials and Politicians’ and ‘Retreat and Reform in the Postwar [WWII] World’. It has 388 pages.
As I said at the beginning there was much to do and I have hardly scratched the surface. I started with a little story so I will end with one as well:
A Sunday school teacher in Wales had been asked to get a new banner for the school; he wrote out the details on a bit of paper but left it at home. He sent a telegram to his wife to ask her to go to their local post office and send a telegram back with the details. This she did but the lady on the other side of the counter at Abercynon Post Office was surprised when she read: ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given 7ft long, 5ft broad blue front, yellow back.’
Reading list in more detail
Illustrated London News for pictorial representations of the Post Office at work
Picture postcards of post office related subjects
Post Office Guides
Swift HG The History of Postal Agitation
Clinton A Post Office Workers – A Trade Union and Social History
The Postman’s Case for an Enquiry – The Inter-Departmental Committee on Post Office establishments
Smith AD The Development of the Rates of Postage [Contains a very extensive and wide ranging bibliography of little known material]
Tombs RC The King’s Post
Tombs RC The Bristol Royal Mail
Holbrook J Ten Years among The Mail Bags
Cruchley ET GPO
Daunton MJ Royal Mail – The Post Office since 1840
Perry CR The Victorian Post Office – The Growth of Bureaucracy
HMSO The Post Office An Historical Summary
Donald A The Posts of Sevenoaks in Kent
Harper and Bernard Romance of the Flying Mail
Baines FE Forty Years at the Post Office
Mountfield D Stage and Mail Coaches
Fryer and Akerman The Reform of the Post Office in the Victorian Era and its impact on Economic and Social Activity. Rowland Hill’s Journal.
