Christmas & the English Post Office.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1629, 21 December 1912, Page 15

Christmas & the English Post Office.

HOW THE MILLIONS OF YULETIDE PARCELS ABE DEALT WITH. ! During tho days which herald Christ- [ mas, while the rest of London is pro- ! paring to forgot toil in feasting and revelry, Niagaras of letters, cards, and circulars, and avalanchcs of parcels arc sweeping down hourly on her harassed army of postal officials From every far corner of tho earth, from Norway to TS T ew Zealand, and from Japan to San Francisco, a thousand tributary streams swell tho torrent, which speeds on London with such forco and in such volume that the marvel is that the whole postal system, wonderful as it is, is not overwhelmed and swept away. _ Try for a moment to grasp the meaning of this annual deluge. During Christmas week something like 115,000,000 letters alono pour through tho Post Office of London—a number so great that it would allow of a distribution of almost three letters to every man, woman, and child in. tho United Kingdom. Add. to this deluge the avalanche , of parcels, four million in number and weighing thousands of tons, which are posted and delivered in London alone and the hundreds of thousands, roughly threequarters of a million, which are so many substantial messengers of goodwill between us and the rest , of the world, and we get an impressive if vague idea of the stupendous task which the London postal army has to grapple with this Christmas-tide. How do tliey do it is a question easier to put than to answer. That the task is accomplished with the smoothness of the machinery _ of a great liner, and with os little noise, is one of tho great, marvels of an ago of wonders. It is the last word in organisation. Great as is the normal postal army of London, which numbers over 25,000 —the population of a small town—it is recruited for this special work by 7000 carefully picked men, each of whom must be guaranteed by two sponsors. These "Christmas casuals" were recruited in a recent year from no fewer than 200 occupations; painters and house-dec-orators being especially numerous, whilst among the others were six cricketers, n steeplejack and a leather-sorter. Extra offices are temporarily rented, such as the drill-hall in Bunhill How, the l'addington Baths, tho small Agricultural Hall at Islington, and even a church, that of the Good Shepherd, at Haverstock Hill, has been transformed into a parcel depot. But let us pay a visit to headquarters, and watch this busy hive wrestling with its colossal task. As the .thousands of mail-bags potu tn, without rest or respite, from all quarters, 1 see how quickly and smoothly they are all absorbed and disposed of. Each bag as it arrives is whisked away to the primary sorting-room, where its contents are' pigeon-holed according to districts. As each sorter fills his pigeonholes, the letters, papers, and book-pack-ots are taken out, tied up, 'nnd trollcyed noiselessly away into the divisional sorting offices, where each letter is placed in bags for delivery to tho "road"—a trroup of adjacent towns—to which it is addressed, and the letters for each "road" are again sorted for the different post-toivns included in it. ; Thus the work goes ceaselessly on with tho regularity of cloekwoxk, mountain after mountain of bags being in turn absorbed by thousands of sorters. Even more amazing is tho skill and eelerity with which the millions of Christmas parcels aro dealt with. Fast as the vans .drive into the courtyard the huge' baskets aro stacked in lanes towering often twenty or more feet high. Onward the .avalanche moves towards the main sorting counter, where the. sorters, forming the first line of attack, divide them according to the railways by which they are to travel. This done, a second attacking line arranges them in groups of towns; and, finally, tho parcels are selected for the places to which they are. addressed, again stowed into baskets, and dispatched . to the railway stations. The work of absorption and' distribution proceeds so smoothly and swiftly that one scarcely: realises tho perfection of organisation which, alone :.makes. it, pas-

Hut al! is by no means such smooth sailing as it might appear at first sight. Thousands of parcels reach this stage of their journey in such a deplorable condition that nothing hut the most skilful treatment in the "Hospital" can mako them lit to continue it. Tho "Hospital" is truly a heartrending scene. Here come the sorry wrecks of once proud hampers—tho langlo of albumen and yolk that was uncle's fino present lo Niece Barbara; the cloying, scented, oozing mas:-: that was once a case of perfume for mother; and the turkey which has lost itseli because the label has gone from its neck, and which smells joyously of mother's flower essence.. Here is a fino toy, with its !x>x crushed about it, and which, but for the intervention of tho "Hospital," would reach Tommy battered aiui broken, and spoil his Christinas. A tart, in a brown-paper parcel, and soft sweetmeats in a light bag, are enough to vex the soul of the most patient ~ostman, especially after a leakage. Last Christmas one well-meaning person dispatched some honey in a frail jar. The jar collapsed, and its sticky contents were impartially distributed over at least thirty parcels, each of which had to be strioped of its sticky covering, repacked, and placed in waterproof paper. Thousands of other parcels (and letters, too) are cither unaddressed, or with addresses that arc almost, worse than useless. Thus one was labelled: "To , In the house of tho mountain, five houses of the High Street, in tho town of the east river." Through the ingenuity or the "Blind Office," the package found its nroper destination at the Mount. No. 5, High Street. Eastbourne. A letter, addressed in Hindustani, "To the King of Kings, Edward, London," was by no means the puzzle afforded by another which bore the superscription, "Miss .Tones, Gladstone Road, Miss Jones." But however inadequate or vague tho address, It rarely escanes solution by the clever officials of the Blind Office. But there still survives homeless turkeys and stranded parcels of one kind or another, for which (he utmost inironuity cannot find a destination, and these are kept for a time, after which, if unclaimed, they are sold, tho money going to the claimant whenever ho presents himself. Nor must we overlook the work done by the lynx-eyed Customs officers, who aro kept very busy opening packages from the colonies and the Continent, so that none shall escape dntv. Here aro bundles of cisars from different parts of the world, nerfumes from France, tablecloths from Siam, wines and spirits, silks from Sincranore, silver-irilt. bangles, and blouses and fans from. Ceylon—and so on, tho Christmas tribute of goodwill from all the four quarters of the earth. Each of these has to pass under the eagle eye of the Customs, whose interpretation of "reace end goodwill," even at Christmastide, is by no means allowed to influence its zeal for "duty."