CURIOSITIES OF THE POST-OFFICE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1386, 1 September 1885, Page 3

CURIOSITIES OF THE POST-OFFICE.

The curiosities and romance of the Postoffice have furnished Mr J. Wilson Hyde, Superintendent in the General Post-office, Edinburgh, with a subject for one of the most entertaining books of the year. Mr Hyde narrates in the preface how for five and twenty years it has been his practice to note and collect facts connected with his department. Mr Hyde has watched the lighter features of the department from day to day, observed coincidences, noted complaints, and acquainted himself with all the circumstances connected with Post-office frauds and robberies. Mr Hyde tells us much about the old roads ami the postboys, the stage coaches and the mail packets. Some curious instances of the riddles that have to be solved by the blind officers in the Post-office are given in the chapter on strange addresses. Here is one that tried their ingenuity

too dad Thomas, hat the ole oke Otohut, 10, Barry. Padt. Sur plees to let ole feather have this sefe. The destination of this ecceutricallydirected epistle proved to be the Old Oak Orchard, Tenbury. 23 Adne Edlo Street, London, found out the person for whom the letter was intended at 2, Threadneedle Street; and

52, Oldham & Bury, London,

was rightly delivered at 52, Aldermanbury. A gentleman at Johnshaven, in the North ot Scotland, received a letter directed “John 7.” Letters to the Danish and Norwegian Consul at Ipswich have reached him with the name of the town spelt in fifty-eight different ways. Elsfleth, Hvsspys, Igswield, and Yitspits are among the wilder attempts to master the orthographic difficulties of the word. Other addresses given in this chapter indicate that one section of the letterwriting public expect from the Department a wide acquaintance with men and things. An American gentleman, not knowing where his aister was residing, addressed a letter to her previous address thus r Upper Norwood, or Elsewhere. The letter was delivered to the lady on the top of a stage coach in Wales, which caused the gentleman to write that “no other country can show the parallel, or would take tha trouble at auy cost.”

To my sister Jean, Up the Canongate, Down a Close, Edinburgh,

She has a wooden leg, was vague ; but, thanks to the timely reference to Sister Jean’s misfortune, the direction proved sufficient. A letter addressed to

My dear Aunt. Sue, as lives in the cottage by the wood, Near the New Forest, reached the cottage for which it was intended near Lyndhnrat. Whether tho search for a member of a travelling band, “ One of the four playing in the street at Pershore, Worcestershire,’' or for “a young girl that wears spectacles and minds two babies ” were successful or not Mr Hyde is unable to say. The chance of letters going astray is, of course, much greater where similarities exist in the names of places. Thus hardly a day passes but some letter addressed to Edinbridge, in Kent, reaches Edinburgh in Scotland. Letters for Leek and Leith are constantly confounded owing to careless writing, as also those for Musselburgh and Middlesborough. Letters for Fiji are frequently stopped at Edinburgh on the way to Fife ; and the Colonial Postitiaster" of Fiji states that numbers of letters and papers intended for Fife reach the B'iji Islands. The function Bof the department are at times strangely misinterpreted. Inquiries about deceased persons are sometimes sent to the dead letter office—commonly requests to look up relatives who may have left money. Some correspondents regard the Postmaster as a matrimonial agent, and even ask his opinion as to the characters of individuals who are paying attention to their sisters. One amorous couple wrote to him to send a marriage license by return of post, and a farmer desired him to name a suitable party to whom he might sell a thirty-stone pig. Applications for employment in all sorts of trades are common ; but the man with an ulcerated leg, who wanted the Postmaster to interfere with some neighbours who called him bad names, was very far wide of the mark, and so was the proud mother who asked when the Baby Show was to be held at Woolwich.

Wonderfully few letters are lost, but the number would be fewer still if people did not occasionally post them in such extraordinary places. Mr Hyde narratates how a person was observed to deposit a letter in a disused street hydrant, where, on the cover of the box being removed, three other letters were found. In Liverpool, tome time ago, two letters were found forced behind the plate indicating the hour of collection on a pillar lettei-box. Letters are also found posted in the letter-boxes of empty shops. Carelessly constructed letter-boxes are responsible for many apparent postal miscarriages. Rata are enemies to letters. On a booksbliei’s shop in a country town being altered, forty letters and newspapers were found under the flooring, where they had been carried by rats for the sake of the gum on tbe labels. They had been paused through a slit in the door, hut, as there was no letter box, they fell on the floor. The narratives of how letters are found are no less interesting. During a mow storm a year or two ago a Loudon firm put up for posting a letter containing a cheque for £IOOO. Tl>e tetter went asuuy, and eveutuailv was found attached to a block of ice floating in the Thames off Deptford. It had been dropped in the street} and curried

oft’ with tin; snow to the river. A firm of solicitors sent a cheque for £lO2 to a client. Nothing more was hoard of it until the letter was found among some manure in a farmer’s field many miles away. Extraordinary confidence is displayed in the servants of the Post-office. Perhaps the moat flattering evidence of this was the act of a person at Leeds, who, desiring to send a remittance to a friend folded a £5 note in two, wrote the address on the back of it, and without cover or registration consigned it to the letter-box.

I Here are a few instances of the frauds |to which the Post-office is subject. Coins 1 are embedded in cake and pieces of toast jto escape the registration fee. They are | also commonly sent in newspapers. An ■ unsealed brown paper parcel tied with string, was found to contain six sovereigns, one half-crown, two sixpences, and three half-penny pieces, wrapped up in small articles of ladies’ dress. Two gold watches were found inside an unregistered book-packet addressed to New Zealand, the middle portions of the leaves having been cut out to admit them. This mode of fraudulent, despatch is evidently common. A £2O pound note was found pinned to the pages of a book. Inside a halfpenny wrapper was found a letter, a bill of sale, and four £5 Bank of England notes. The plan for originality must, however, be awarded to the individual who sent £1 10s in gold coins in a seal at the back of a letter, the gold having come to light through the wax getting slightly chipped. Cigars, collars, gloves, music, postage-stamps, are constantly sent with newspapers ; but in this respect w« are not so daring as the people of Canada and the States, where, in the year 1874, more than 14,000 newspapers were detected with small articles concealed inside.