The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and RomanceHyde, James Wilson
History
The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance
Hyde, James Wilson
Postal service -- Great Britain
"A barrister complained of the non-delivery of a letter containing the
halves of two £10 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 putting 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 discovered that a defect 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 cheque for £12, 4s., 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-mâché_ 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 Dunkeld on a given date was duly
received in Edinburgh, and delivered at its address, which was a bank,
the postman obtaining a signature to the receipt-form in the usual way.
Some 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
to 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 could give no account
of the letter, nor had any one else seen it; and as the letter was
stated to have contained four £1 notes and a bank deposit-book, the fact
of its disappearance gave rise to a state of things which can be better
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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