The extent of the Bristol postal establishment in 1775 may be gleaned from the reply given by the Postmasters-General to a memorial complaining that there was only one letter carrier for the delivery of all the letters received in Liverpool. The answer was that only one letter carrier was maintained in any provincial town, including the premier city of Bristol, and that they did not think themselves justified in incurring for Liverpool the expense of another. An additional Bristol postman was, however, appointed between then and January, 1778. In 1792 there were four letter carriers at Bristol, but only two appear to have been allowed by the Department, the other two being employed as extras, and provided for, probably, by an extra charge on the letters delivered. The Bristol letter carriers were not supplied with uniform clothing until 1858. Then, a hat and coat once yearly, and a waterproof cape once in two years, were given to them. The uniform clothing was not supplied to the auxiliary letter carriers. Bags or pouches for the men to carry for the protection of the letters were at that time provided. In 1859 the postmen wore scarlet uniform and issued out from the Post Office three times daily to traverse the length and breadth of the city in the distribution of letters. In 1899 the "men in blue" sally forth six times every day. In the postmen's department there are now seven inspectors and three hundred and seventy postmen. The delivery of letters in the town district is made from the head office. There is a branch delivering office at Clifton, but those at North Street and Phippen Street were long since abandoned. In the Bristol postal district, sixty years ago, there were fewer than 20,000 letters delivered in a week, or about 1,000,000 in a year--a number now nearly reached in a week. The letters delivered annually from the Central Post Office number 31,000,000; from the Clifton Post Office, 6,250,000; from the suburban offices and rural offices, 7,300,000. It is a noteworthy fact that the letters posted in Bristol for delivery within its own limit form 27 per cent. of the total number, which percentage is only surpassed at two or three of the large cities of the Kingdom. Six deliveries of letters and five deliveries of parcels are made in the city, with ten collections. The average number of persons to whom letters are delivered by each postman in Bristol (city) is 1,800. There are 666,536 parcels delivered annually. To each of two firms are delivered more than one quarter of a million letters annually, equal to one hundredth part of the total number of letters delivered.