The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and RomanceHyde, James Wilson
History
The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance
Hyde, James Wilson
Postal service -- Great Britain
There are some persons who suffer from the delusion that their
landladies and the sorters in the Post-office habitually conspire to
keep up, or rob them of, their letters--letters generally which they
look for to bring them money or the right to property. These people are
always giving trouble, and are difficult to shake off. On one occasion a
lady, who was possessed of a set idea of this kind, called at the
General Post-office in London to state her grievance, which she did in
most fluent terms. Her complaint was noted for inquiry, and then she
went away. An hour or two after, she returned to ascertain whether she
had left a packet of papers which she had meanwhile missed; but they
could not be found. This circumstance, she stated, convinced her that
she had been robbed; and an incident that happened when she quitted the
building in the morning confirmed her, she stated, in her idea. A man
came up to her and asked if he could show her the way to the Dead-letter
Office. "No, thank you," was the reply; "I can find the way myself." She
said she knew him to be a magistrate or a judge: "He had a thick neck
and flat nose, and the bull-dog type of countenance, and was altogether
repulsive-looking." She felt assured he was watching her, &c.
An aged couple in the south of England moved about from place to place
in order to escape from persons who were supposed by them to open their
letters. Persecuted, as they imagined, in one town, they would take
lodgings in another town, and very soon they would suspect the servants
of the house and the officers of the Post-office of obtaining a
knowledge of the nature of their correspondence. Then they would wait on
the postmaster, and generally go through their chronic grievance. The
postmaster, in turn, would assure them that their letters were fairly
dealt with; but this did not satisfy them, and very soon they were off
to another town, in the hope of evading their tormentors, but in reality
to go through the same course as before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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