LOST LETTERS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1224, 14 August 1885, Page 3

LOST LETTERS.

During a snowstorm which occurred a year or two ago a London firm put up for posting, among others, a letter to a Glasgow firm containing a cheque for a sum little short of L 4.000. The cheque not reaching its destination in due course payment was stopped at the bank, and notwithstanding that every inquiry was miade nothing was heard of the letter at the time. Kventually, however,the cheque was brought to the firm who had drawn it, together with the letter by a police inspector, who had found the letter adhering to a block of ice floating in the Thames off Deptford. The supposition is that when the letters of the day were being carried to the Lombard street Post Office this letter was dropped in the street; that it was carted off in the snow to the Thames; and there, after a week’s emersion in the river, got affixed to the block of ice as already stated. A firm of solicitors in Leith wrote a letter *o a client in same town, enclosing a cheque for LlO2 ; and this letter ahhouuh it was alleged to have beeu duly post, d, failed to reach the person for whom it was intended. The usual inquiries were nude, but unsuccessfully, no trace being discovered of the letter. Some days afterwards the firm received the letter and cheque, minus ; he envelops, from a farmer near Tranent, in one of whose fields a ploughman had picked them un. This man was engaged spreading town refuse upon the Hell when ha found the letter which he opened, and thereupon threw away the cover. For the purposes of investigation, it was very essential that this should .be produced ; but it happened that meanwhile the field had been gone over with a grub biug machine, an I the chances of the recovery of the discarded envelope were thereby greatly lessened. The ploughman’s son waa set to work, however, to make a search, and after toiling a whole day he found the envelope. On examination it was seen that the postage stamp affixed was still undefaced, and the envelope bore nothing to showthat it had ever been in the post office. The whole circumstances left no doubt that the letter had either got into the waste-paper basket of the senders, or had been dropped on the way to the post office, and that it had been carried ten miles into the country among the street rubbish, with which, as manure, the farm in question was supplied from the town of Leith A registered letter posted at Newcastle, and addressed to a banker in Edinburgh, not having reached the addressee’s hands, a telegram was forwarded to the sender intimating the fact, and requesting an explanation of the failure. The banker supposed that the letter had been lost or purloined in the post office ; but it was afterwards proved to have been duly delivered to the bank porter, who, having locked it up in his desk, had quite forgotten it. A lady residing in Jersey applied to the post office respecting a letter which had been sent to her by a clergyman at Oxford. Inquiry was made for it at all tbe offices through which it would pass, but unsuccessfully, no trace whatever of it being found. Subsequently the clergyman informed the secretary of the post office that he had found the letter between the cushions of his own arm»chair, where it ha i been placed, no doubt, at the time of delivery. A person complained of delay in the receipt of a letter which appeared to have passed through the post office twice It transpired that the letter had, in the first instance, been duly delivered at a shop, where it was to remain till called for, but that it had accidentally been taken away with some music by a customer, who had afterwards dropped it in the street. Subsequently the letter must have been picked up and again posted, hence its double passage through the post office A barrister complained of the non-delivery of a letter containing the halves of two LlO Bank of England notes, stating that he had posted the letter himself ; but he shortly afterwards wrote to say that the letter had reached its destination. It appeared that instead of puling it into the letter box, he had dropped the letter in the street, where, fortunately, it was picked up by some honest person, who posted it. A business firm having frequently failed to receive letters which had been addressed to them, made complaint on the subject from time to time ; but the inquiries which were instituted resulted in nothing, After much trouble, however it was at length dicovered that a detect existed in the letter-box in the firm’s office door, and fifteen letters were found lodged between the box and the door, some of which had been in that situation more than nine years. A letter said to contain a oheqne for Ll2 4i, addressed to a London firm, not having reached its destination, inquiries were made with respect to it. At the end of three months it turned up at a papier maohe factory, whither it had, no doubt, been carried among waste paper ; from the office at which it had been delivered. In 1883 a registered letter sent from Dunkjld on a given day was duly re-

ceived in Edinburgh, and delivered at its address, which was a bank, the postman obtaining a signature to the receipt form in the usual way. Borne little time afterwards complaint was made by the manager of the bank that the letter had not been received ; but the post office was able ta prove the contrary by the receipt, the signature to which, on being submitted to the manager, was acknowledged to be that of the wife of the housekeeper of the establishment. Yet this person coaid give no account of the letter, nor had anyone else seen it ; and, as the letter was seated to have contained four LI notes and a bank deposit book, the fact of its disappearance Save rise to a state of things which can be etter imagined than described. The post office, in the circumstances, offered the suggestion that the bank’s waste paper should be carefully examined. As it happened, however, a quantity of this material had just been cleared out, having been purchased by a waste paper dealer ; and the fact made the chances of recovery in that direction all the more remote. Yet the housekeeper was set to work; he traced the bags first to the store of the dealer, then to the premises of a waste paper merchant in another part of the city. With assistance he carefully examined the contents of the bags filled at the bank, and his efforts were rewarded by the discovery of the registered letter, which was in precisely the same state as when delivered, never having been opened. It had very likely fallen from a desk in the bank on to the floor, and by a careless person been brushed aside with used envelopes and scraps of paper, thus finding its way into the waste paper basket.— ‘ The Royal Mail.’