Out of very small beginnings many great commercial enterprises have arisen, and the Parcel Post is not the only big business which sprang into being in a cellar. In the basement of the old General Post Office at St. Martin's le Grand in the year 1883 the Parcel Post began its work, and though it speedily outgrew this limited accommodation, not even the most optimistic of its supporters could have dreamed that in less than thirty years the General Post Office would be dealing annually with 118 million parcels, and that instead of a basement, many great buildings would be required in which to transact the business.

In 1880 a Postal Conference was held at Paris with the view of creating an International Parcel Post, and at that Conference the British Post Office was represented, although, having then no Inland Parcel Post, it was unable to enter into any international agreement. But the example of foreign nations undoubtedly stimulated the energies of English officials, and in the two following years negotiations were carried on with the railway companies which finally resulted in an arrangement, to which legal effect was given by an Act of Parliament passed on the 18th August 1882, that the companies should receive eleven-twentieths of the postage collected upon all parcels carried by railway. It was from the outset intended to link the Inland to the International Parcel Post as soon as might be possible.

In the early days no parcel weighing over 7 lbs. could be sent by Parcel Post, and the charge for a parcel of this weight was 1s. To-day a 7 lb. parcel can be sent for 7d., and parcels weighing up to 11 lbs. are accepted. The charge for 11 lbs. is now 11d. The reduction in charges was a part of the Diamond Jubilee Reforms of 1897. The minimum charge of 3d. for a parcel not weighing over 1 lb. has remained unchanged since 1883.

The dimensions of a parcel must not exceed 3 feet 6 inches in length nor a total of 6 feet in length and girth combined. Ladies' hats are sent by the Parcel Post in large numbers, and grave fears were at one time entertained, when the hats were growing larger week by week, that the General Post Office would have to close its doors to these enormities. They were approaching perilously near the limit of 6 feet length and girth combined. It is difficult at all times to find out what determines a change of fashion; it is possible in this instance that the Parcel Post regulations may have influenced those mysterious individuals who decide what ladies are to wear; anyhow, the situation was saved by the introduction of “the pudding basin” hat, and though the large hat did not disappear, high tide in size had been reached.

In its early beginnings the Parcel Post was confined to the United Kingdom, but in 1885 it was extended to some of the Colonies and British dependencies, to India, Gibraltar and Egypt, to Malta, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, some of the West Indies, and South Africa. In the following year business was begun with Germany. Belgium, and Constantinople, and other continental countries were soon added to those we exchanged parcels with. Canada joined the system also in 1886, These foreign extensions were not always considered successes by the public. An indignant business man, complaining of the loss of parcels sent by him to Persia, wrote: “The Parcel Post Service was evidently established in Persia with the object of providing the officials of that country with food and clothing. The only articles which appear to reach their destination are the publications of the Religious Tract Society.”

We are accustomed to see in the windows of suburban houses cards bearing the letters C.P. or L.P.D., indicating that the carts of certain carrying agencies are required to call, but we should probably experience something in the nature of a shock if we saw in the windows a card lettered P.P. or G.R. to indicate that the Parcel Postman was to call. There is an accepted tradition with the public as well as with officials that the Post Office does not advertise. Mr. Fawcett was Postmaster-General when the Parcel Post was organised, and he broke through that tradition not only as regards the Parcel Post but also in dealing with the Post Office Savings Bank; and in the early days of the Parcel Post, cards were distributed to householders with the request that they should be placed in the windows when the Parcel Post cart was required to call. The cards were coloured with the Post Office red, and the lettering was white.

The chief Parcel Office is at Mount Pleasant, Clerkenwell. It is a district rich in historical associations. Here was the famous Bagnigge Wells, where Londoners used to stroll on summer evenings to drink a dish of tea and to enjoy the humours and fashions of the town. Here also stood the Coldbath Fields Prison, and gradually, as buildings surrounded the jail, the district lost prestige as a health resort. The prison authorities doubtless realised this, and decided to seek purer air for their 2000 visitors, and they removed their headquarters further into the country. The prison was thus thrown on the market, and after a period of negotiations the General Post Office took possession with the intention of erecting a pile of Government buildings on the site. The Parcel Post had rapidly outgrown its cramped quarters at St. Martin's le Grand, and in 1887 the business was transferred to the prison buildings. For some years the chief Parcel Sorting Office in Great Britain was located in the old prison treadwheel house behind massive and gloomy walls. The khaki-clad, barefaced gentry had departed to their country residence, and the huge treadwheels had been removed to make way for the Parcel Post.

But the prison was very quickly demolished and gave way to a handsome Sorting Office, the floor space of which when completed was to cover two acres. The Parcel Post took possession of the new building in October 1892. It is always difficult to transact any business in a building constructed for quite another purpose, and the conditions of service in the prison buildings had not been exactly comfortable. Spacious yards surround the Post Office buildings, and in these yards platforms have been built giving direct access to the Sorting Office. Post Office vans arrive in one yard loaded with receptacles containing parcels collected from post offices in the City and other parts of London, or sent up from the provinces and brought here from the railway termini. The loads are discharged on to the platform and conveyed by porters into the Sorting Office. In another yard on the opposite side of the building other vans arrive empty, and back up to the platform to receive their loads of parcels for conveyance to other parts of London or to railway stations for despatch to provincial towns.

In the early days the parcels were chiefly packed in wicker hampers with heavy fastenings, but the weight and cost of these receptacles rendered it necessary to find something lighter. Many experiments were made, and at last a receptacle was adopted with a wicker body and a canvas top, which required no metal fastenings, as the canvas top was tied with string and sealed with wax. The latest improvement on this is the substitution of a leaden seal for the old wax sealing. Even this much lighter receptacle is considered too heavy and costly for the conveyance of ordinary parcels, and canvas sacks of extra durability are now being generally used for the conveyance of parcels across London and to and from provincial towns. Parcels of a fragile nature when sent by railway are still packed in wicker receptacles for greater security.

The public are advised to affix a label marked “Fragile” to any parcel which requires more than ordinary care in handling, and from time to time wonderful examples of fragile parcels have been met with. A pair of boots wrapped in brown paper has been so described, so have a plum pudding in a cloth, a basket of fish, a box of butter, a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a York ham, an iron bolt wrapped in corrugated paper, and a roll of blankets.

Wicker receptacles are not suitable for the service with the Colonies: the parcels would not be sufficiently protected during the long voyage and railway journey. For this traffic parcels are packed in tightly fitting boxes unless the contents can safely be sent in sacks made of double canvas.

As the practice increased of packing parcels in canvas sacks rather than in wicker baskets, difficulties were experienced in finding supports for the sacks during the process of packing. Every schoolboy knows that a basket stands on its own bottom, but an empty sack falls flat. Officials with a mechanical turn of mind vied with one another in suggesting how to evade or to get round this natural law—in other words, how to support the sacks—and eventually the Dockree support was chosen. This consists of four iron arms extended at right angles from a pedestal, each arm being constructed to support a sack at full length and with the mouth open. An improved pattern of this holder, capable of supporting eight open-mouthed sacks at one time, has recently been introduced. A sorter is thus able to sort into eight mouths at once without any of the stooping which was unavoidable when the sacks lay limp on the floor.

Let me now explain the system of sorting. The majority of people probably never give a thought as to the happenings of a parcel which they have posted: they leave it in faith on the counter and the wonderful Post Office sends it direct to its destination. That is probably their idea. Supposing you have left your parcel on the public counter of King Edward's Building, what happens next? The parcel is taken to the despatching room to wait the arrival of the van which will convey it in a sack to the Parcel Office at Mount Pleasant. It will there be turned out on a long sorting-table which has a sunken surface, after the fashion of a scullery sink, the well of which is lined with zinc. Your parcel is in the company of others, intended for all parts of the world, and the first step is to get the parcels to the various parts of the office from which they will be despatched to other destinations. Along the whole length of one side of the table is a wooden framework or sack holding the empty baskets. These ten baskets are labelled Scotch, Irish, Paddington, Foreign and Colonial, Delivery, Liverpool Street, Euston, King's Cross, Waterloo and London Bridge, Town, and the sorters stand between these baskets and the table laden with parcels. They pick up the parcels from the table and place them in the respective baskets. Full baskets are carried by a porter to another part of the office, where the second stage of the sorting is to be gone through. Here the parcels are turned out on to another table similar to the one already described. Let us suppose that your parcel is in the basket labelled “Euston.” There are twelve baskets on the sorting rack at the Euston division table, and they are labelled to the large centres known as “Roads” and also to the “Aylesbury Coach” and to “Blind” as follows: Chester, Carlisle, Preston, Rugby, Stafford, Blind, Watford, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Shrewsbury, Aylesbury Branch.

Each of these centres or “Roads” contains a group of towns, and the Aylesbury Coach “Road” covers all places served by the coach. The basket labelled “Blind” is to receive all parcels which have reached the Euston division table in error, through having been mis-sorted at the first stage, and also any parcels which bear insufficient or doubtful addresses. The business of the sorter at this stage is to put the parcels on to the proper “Road,” and unless he has thoroughly learnt not only the groups of towns on each “Road” but also the numerous smaller places subordinate to these towns, he will cause trouble at the third or final stage of the sorting. When these baskets are filled with parcels they are taken to their respective “Roads,” and then the final process of making up the mails takes place. The sorter at “the Road” receives the basket of parcels proper to his centre, and then he sorts the parcels for the various towns included in his district. He may have as many as a dozen mails to prepare for despatch within a few minutes of each other, and this means that he has to sort his parcels into twelve different receptacles. These are close round him, and the advantage to the sorter of having his sacks supported at full length will now be understood.

Any parcels which have been mis-sorted to the officer on “the Road” have to be placed on a shelf, and are subsequently returned to the sorting-table to be put into their proper channel. This means that they may miss their proper mail, and the importance of obtaining reliable men for the sorting of the second stage is great.

The sorter at “the Road,” having packed his sacks or hampers, has to prepare a bill for each receptacle, and this bill, when filled up, is put in a pocket provided in the receptacle. The receptacle is then tied, sealed, and sent off. The bill gives particulars of the number of the receptacle, the offices of despatch and destination, the time of despatch, and also an account of any registered or valuable parcels which there may be in the mail. Registered parcels are not placed on the ordinary sorting-tables, but are treated individually from the moment they enter the Sorting Office to the time when they are packed ready for despatch. They are passed from hand to hand, and signed for at each transfer.

“Blind” parcels are those which are incorrectly or incompletely addressed. All such parcels have to be examined at comparative leisure, and the public would be surprised to learn what a large amount of time is spent by the Post Office in making good the many defects and shortcomings in addresses on parcels and other postal packets. The Parcel Post comes in for many kicks from the public, but in justice it must be said that the officials spare no pains to trace the proper addresses of parcels. They exercise, too, great ingenuity in the task, and books of reference are in constant use. Bad spelling in addresses was formerly a very common source of trouble to sorters, but it is less noticeable now, and possibly this may be one of the results of universal education. I will give some instances of addresses of this kind which have been successfully dealt with by the Post Office staff:—

Then there are instances of extraordinary abbreviations in addresses. For instance:—

People, too, sometimes address their parcels with word pictures instead of written characters, and of course the funny man who sends a parcel is also in evidence.

which is obviously intended for Poultry, E.C.

Of insufficiently addressed parcels there are a great number, and the difficulties with these are not lessened by the number of towns bearing the same name. For instance, there are as many as 24 places in the United Kingdom alone bearing the name of Newton, 12 named Milton, 16 Middleton, 20 Newtown, 12 Newport, 9 Mount Pleasant, and so on.

The covers of some packages are embellished with drawings, pen-and-ink sketches, and even paintings, and the monotony of the sorter's duties is relieved, though when the address of the parcel is hidden among the foliage of a landscape or written in small characters on a boulder by the sea-shore his difficulties are not lessened.

Some years ago, before the Parcel Post was established, and when the difference between the book rate of postage and the letter rate was much greater than it is at present, a poor woman sent a pair of trousers through the post to her son, and paid only at the book rate. When the parcel was delivered, a heavy charge was demanded and paid. The woman then appealed to the Secretary, and a reply was sent explaining the regulations and pointing out that the Book Post was not intended for the transmission through the post of articles of clothing: this she would see if she consulted the Post Office Guide. The woman replied that she had consulted the Guide before despatching the parcel, and had found that anything open at both ends could go by Book Post. She therefore asked for the return of the surcharge.

One Christmas parcel consisted of a hare stuffed with packets of tea, raisins, sweets, rashers of bacon, a roll of tobacco, a briar pipe, a small toothed comb, all wrapped in a red handkerchief. And here is another instance from a provincial Parcel Post Hospital. A flimsy hat-box with the lid secured by tape. From it flows a thick and viscid stream of egg yolk and albumen. When opened it reveals a silk top hat, inside which is packed a damp goose, the spaces between the goose and the lining of the hat being packed with eggs. This parcel had travelled by coach, steamer, and rail via Holyhead to Leeds!

Bad packing, indeed, on the part of senders of parcels causes an infinity of trouble. Only three days after the establishment of the Parcel Post in 1883 the Post Office found it necessary to issue notices to the public throughout the country, warning them of the risk of damage to the contents of parcels through thoughtless and careless packing. A man sent bullion from abroad consisting of 400 sovereigns placed loosely in a light wooden box. The shaking on the journey forced the sides of the box open, and the sovereigns were scattered among the other parcels in the same sack. Umbrellas and sunshades are often sent by post wrapped up merely in brown paper. Now brown paper is just sufficient covering to be worse than none at all. In the case of an umbrella it hides the nature of the article, and without any covering at all it would stand a better chance of travelling safely. It is surprising, too, that china and glass ware are so frequently sent through the post with the barest protection. Perhaps a piece of cardboard or a small piece of corrugated paper without shavings is all that is wrapped round a breakable article.

It has often been noticed that if a bottle of hair-wash or cod liver oil is broken in transit there is generally no difficulty in recovering a substantial portion of the contents to be poured into another bottle, but when a bottle of champagne or of whisky is broken none of the contents ever remain to be deposited in another vessel.

Ireland is a great country for dairy produce, and she sends many parcels of butter to England, but such parcels require careful packing. A parcel wrapped only in grease-proof paper, with an outer wrapper of linen, looks beautifully firm at the beginning of its journey, but in warm weather deterioration sets in quickly, and only the wrappers are left by the end of the journey. The tale is told by the other parcels in the receptacle. They have all been anointed with oil. One parcel may be a silk dress, another a gentleman's white shirt, another an album or the latest thing in millinery.

Who is responsible for lost parcels? In 99 cases out of 100 it may be confidently answered that the sender is the culprit. The parcel is probably sent with only a tie-on label, and this gets detached in transit. Tie-on labels ought never to be attached unless the address is also on some part of the parcel itself. Parcels of game and poultry are often sent with merely a paper label tied round the necks of the birds. Post Office servants do their best, but such labels will get torn off sometimes, and the birds then find their way to the Returned Parcel Office. Here they are only kept for a day or two, as they are perishable matter. They are sold at a sacrifice to outside tradesmen. Articles not of a perishable nature are kept for some months in case they may be claimed. In the Returned Parcel Office there is a motley collection of all kinds of articles awaiting claimants. An elaborate register is kept of these articles, and a history is furnished of all that is known respecting them.