As lately as 1839, each inhabitant of these islands only wrote on an average three letters per annum. In 1840, the year associated with the introduction of the penny post, the total number of letters rose to one hundred and sixty-nine millions, giving an average of seven letters to each person, or something more than double the average of the preceding year. Since then, the history of the British Post-office, the greatest emporium of letters in the world, has simply been the history of the growth of commerce and civilisation in our midst. Each year the number of letters has surely and steadily increased, until, in 1875, it reached the enormous total of a thousand and eight millions, or an average of thirty-one letters to each person in the United Kingdom. Besides these, there were more than eighty-seven millions of post-cards, and very nearly two hundred and eighty millions of newspapers and book packets; so that a grand total of nearly fourteen hundred millions of all descriptions of postal matter is reached. How few of us can realise at the first blush what a thousand millions represents!

While the average number of letters to each person in the United Kingdom in 1875 was thirty-one, it was as high as thirty-five in England and Wales, and as low as thirteen in Ireland. Scotland occupies the happy medium between the two, shewing an average exactly double that of Ireland, and about twenty-five per cent. below that of England and Wales. It may be doubted, however, whether purely social and domestic correspondence by letter is less frequently indulged in by the Scotch people than by the English; and probably if London, where there is quite an abnormal amount of correspondence, were excluded from the calculation, Scotland would be found to be very nearly on a level with England.

It is a striking and gratifying fact that only a mere fraction of the total number of letters posted fail to reach their destination. People often grumble at the bore of letter-writing, but seldom think of the boon they enjoy in the penny post. To write, address, and post a letter—and this is all the sender is required to do—is a mere trifle, compared with the labour of the Post-office in earning the 'nimble penny,' which is affixed to the letter in the shape of the 'Queen's Head.' Think of what has to be done for a letter posted, say, in the suburbs of London, and addressed to some remote village in the north of England or in Scotland. Perhaps it has been posted over-night, in which case the letter-carrier will be busy collecting and conveying it to the sub-district office some hours before moderately early people are thinking of getting up. From the Sub, it will be conveyed to the Head District Office, there to be stamped, sorted, and despatched to St Martin's-le-Grand. Here, in company with many thousands of others which have arrived in the same way, it will probably be manipulated as many as half-a-dozen times, in the different processes of facing, dividing, sorting, and so on, before it reaches the stage of being tied up in a bundle with a hundred or more of its fellows addressed to the same town or district, and despatched on what may probably be only the initial stage of its journey. If a night letter, Fate may decree that it should pass under the scrutinising glance of that sleepless official, the travelling sorter; in which case the bag, with its seal hardly 'set' as yet, will be ruthlessly torn open, and the bundles dispersed to the four corners of the railway sorting tender. Here is a miniature post-office, with pigeon-holes, bags, and bundles innumerable; whose officials, in a desperate effort to keep ahead of the train, wait not for the shrill whistle of the guard or the first puff of the engine to commence their hard night's work. There are letters, letters everywhere, and not a moment to lose. There may be a bag to sort and drop before the train has accomplished the first dozen miles of its journey. Our letter is amongst the heap lying ready to be operated upon; it will be got ready by-and-by, and towards the gray of the morning it will be dropped at some little roadside station, whither the mail-cart driver has driven half-a-dozen miles or more to receive it. Thence to the post-office, another half-dozen miles; and here again the familiar process of unpacking, resorting, and re-stamping. Our letter is not for the town at which the bag is opened, but for one of its outlying villages; and the rural postman must be called in before the transaction, commenced in London some ten or twelve hours previously, can be completed. Away he goes, ere yet it is daylight, bag on shoulder, stick in hand, thinking less, probably, of the precious secrets of which he is the bearer, than of his return with a similar, although probably a lighter load in the evening. His life is not exactly one round of pleasure, but an out-and-home sort of journey, in which there is very little real progress, and the 'lettered ease' of which consists in the occasional Sundays on which he is relieved of his burden. He is the final link in the chain which, in the shape of men, horses, steam-engines, has had to be put in motion in order to deliver our penny letter!

Letters may be posted at no fewer than twenty-three thousand five hundred receptacles throughout the United Kingdom. How various is the character of these so-called receptacles! Here is the stately post-office of many of our great towns, situated in the very centre of life and activity. There the wayside letter-box, far removed from human habitation and, to all appearance, from human necessity. Lonely roads are no bar to the progress of the rural postman; although the Postmaster-general relates how an attempt to provide postal facilities in a certain district in the west of Ireland was frustrated by a superstitious objection to collect the letters from a wall-box, because 'a ghost went out nightly on parade' in the neighbourhood. Between the stately post-office and the wayside letter-box there are several different kinds of receptacles for letters: there is the branch post-office, an offshoot of the parent establishment; the receiving-house, at which a kind of uncovenanted postal service is carried on; and the pillar letter-box, which is dotted about our great towns almost as plentifully as lamp-posts are. In London there are no fewer than eighteen hundred receptacles for letters, and of these more than eleven hundred are pillar and wall letter-boxes. The public have a peculiar affection for the pillar-box, thinking probably that it can tell no tales. The writer remembers perfectly well seeing a pillar-box thrown down by a passing wagon in one of the streets of London, and afterwards turned with the 'slit' or aperture downward, so that it might not be used until re-erected. But despite this, it was rolled over and several letters inserted in it while it lay prostrate in the gutter! Similarly, letters intended to be 'posted' have often been dropped into the letter-boxes of private firms, and even into the 'street orderly bins' which stand at no great distance from the pillar letter-boxes in the city of London.

St Martin's-le-Grand is, of course, the great central depot for the letters of London, although it is doubtful whether more letters are not actually posted at the well-known branch-office in Lombard Street. Around this spot the bankers and merchants of the metropolis 'most do congregate,' and of necessity the quantity of matter 'mailed' nightly is very large. So is it at Charing Cross, another of the great posting centres of the metropolis.

Visitors to London are perhaps most familiar with the scene which is to be witnessed any evening between half-past five and six o'clock at St Martin's. Here the post-office gapes more widely at its customers, the public, than anywhere else we know of; and here it is prepared to swallow any kind of matter, from the tiniest, flimsiest document, written on 'India post,' to the stock-in-trade of a bookseller from 'the Row' adjoining, or the latest edition of an evening newspaper from neighbouring Fleet Street. Look at the numerous apertures as they gape and yawn in front of you. There is one labelled 'Newspapers,' about as big as a street-door, into which a whole edition of an evening paper might be thrown, without disturbing the calm serenity of the official inside whose duty it is to clear the throat of the monster. 'Letters,' inland, foreign, and colonial, town and country, large and small, thick and thin, may be posted with ease at as many different openings; while the 'stout card' and the thin card, the circular, the book packet, and the sample parcel, each has its appointed mode of descent into the cavernous depths below. What a struggle is there as the hour of six approaches! Burly office-porters jostle delicate shop-girls in their efforts to reach the letter-box; tiny office-boys strain and struggle beneath a load which might more appropriately have been conveyed to the post in a cart or wagon; and hapless youths who have started late, and who have been leap-frogging by the way, are fain to shy their bags or baskets of letters at the nearest opening, and take their chance. Bang goes the clock overhead, and in an instant the box closes with a crash, which must, one would think, have guillotined many a hapless letter thrown in on the stroke of the hour. Eagerness gives way to disappointment in the faces of those who are in the act of ascending the steps 'as the clock was striking the hour,' for the man in the red coat, whose heart is steeled against all importunities, has pronounced the words 'Too late,' and already the officials at the 'window' are busy exacting the fee of procrastination.[2] No sooner has one description of posting finished than another begins. Half an hour prior to the closing of the box at St Martin's-le-Grand, the boxes all over London have closed, and the mail-carts—designed rather for speed than for elegance—are rattling into the yard behind, from the various district and branch post-offices. East, west, north, and south, all contribute their quota to the load which, a couple of hours hence, is to leave the post-office yard for the various railway stations in the shape of the 'Night-mail down.'

The penny post has destroyed all distinctions in the great republic of letters. In the eyes of the post-office all letters are equal, whatever their character, caligraphy, or country; and no rival interests are studied within the walls of St Martin's. The big letters are not permitted to oppress the little ones, each being tied up in their own particular bundle; and books and samples are so disposed that they are transported with a minimum of inconvenience to their less robust neighbours passing through the post. The work of facing—that is, putting all the letters with their addresses one way—stamping, dividing, sorting, and despatching, is performed in regular succession, as the letters are cleared from the box; for it is needless to say that all the operations of the post-office are carried on with clock-like regularity. In the old coaching days, when letters were despatched they were said to be sent 'down the road;' and the term 'road' is still retained in the Circulation Office, as indicating the particular desk or division at which the bags are made up for particular lines of railway or districts of country.

Eight o'clock is the hour at which the great night-mail is despatched from London; and the scene, although perhaps less stirring than that of the old mail-coach days, is sufficiently curious to attract a large crowd at St Martin's-le-Grand. Gorged with the accumulated correspondence of four millions of people, the huge building, now used exclusively for the sorting and despatch of letters, begins to exhibit palpable signs of discomfort as the hour of eight approaches; and ever and anon from the floors above come shooting down on to the platforms by which the building is surrounded on three sides, sackfuls of letters and newspapers, which are quickly transferred to the gaping mail-carts and wagons ranged underneath. Gradually the descent becomes fast and furious, until at five minutes to eight every aperture in the building is seen to belch forth its bag, box, or bundle of letters; and cart-drivers are shouting lustily to make way for 'Her Majesty's mails.' Away go the carts, vans, and omnibuses—a whole string making for Euston with the load of the 'Limited,' which seems to be limited in all else save letters; and others making for the different railway termini scattered all over London. A few minutes later, and there emerge from the building hundreds, we had almost said thousands, of busy toilers whose work has just preceded them; and in less than half-an-hour silence reigns supreme in and around St Martin's.

Letters are not always so plainly or so correctly addressed as they might be. This is a truism which most people will be inclined to reject as beneath their notice; and yet it is a truth which is painfully thrust upon the officials of the post-office every hour of the day. Think how the circulation of a badly addressed letter must be impeded at every stage of its progress! Let us suppose that a righteous fate overtakes it at the very outset, and that it 'sticks', in the aperture of the letter-box and loses a collection. Let us suppose, further, that it is addressed to 'George Street, London,' simply. There are only twenty-three streets of the name in the metropolis; and it so happens that there is one or more in each, of the eight postal districts! Thus, then, a letter so addressed might have to be sent all over London before reaching its destination; and who shall say that the fate was not richly merited? Much the same kind of thing would happen to a letter addressed to 'Queen Street, London;' there being no fewer than twenty streets bearing the title of our most illustrious sovereign, besides squares, crescents, gardens, terraces, rows, and roads innumerable. Quitting London, however, we will suppose a letter addressed to 'Newport' simply. Is it intended for Newport, Monmouth; Newport, Isle of Wight; Newport, Salop; or for any of the remaining four towns in England, two in Ireland, and one in Scotland, which flourish under that name? So too with Ashford, of which there are four places of the name in England; Bradford, of which there are three; Broughton, seven; Burnham, five; Burton, fifteen; Bury, four; and a host of others which we need not stay to enumerate. The post-office regulation on the subject of addresses runs thus: 'Every address should be legible and complete. When a letter is sent to a post-town, the last word in the address should be the name of that town, except when the town is but little known, or when there are two post-towns of the same name, or when the name of the town (such as Boston) is identical with or very like the name of some foreign town or country. In such cases the name of the county should be added.' Very good regulations these, but unfortunately they are not always attended to by the sorting clerks. We are constantly getting letters which have been delayed in their journey by the perverse stupidity of sorters mistaking the address, however plainly written, and in fact not attending to the name of the post-town. There are some other grounds for dissatisfaction. In numberless instances, towns near each other hold no direct postal communication, and letters between them make a long round before reaching their destination. These are blots on an otherwise wonderfully perfect system.

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