The romance of the British Post Office : its inception and wondrous development . end, and the point of interestis to be found at the north end of the great hall,where mail-bags are being rapidly filled, tied, labelled,and sealed. In the yard outside is waiting a longrow of mail-carts, into which porters shoot the bagswith the rapidity and precision born of constantpractice. Each cart is labelled with the name of theline it is going to, and a clerk stands by to tick-offthe number of bags deposited. Under the lurid glareof the electric light a busy scene is enacted in theyard by a throng of act
The romance of the British Post Office : its inception and wondrous development . end, and the point of interestis to be found at the north end of the great hall,where mail-bags are being rapidly filled, tied, labelled,and sealed. In the yard outside is waiting a longrow of mail-carts, into which porters shoot the bagswith the rapidity and precision born of constantpractice. Each cart is labelled with the name of theline it is going to, and a clerk stands by to tick-offthe number of bags deposited. Under the lurid glareof the electric light a busy scene is enacted in theyard by a throng of active workers, and it is notuntil a quarter past eight that the lid of the last cartis slammed down, and the mails of the evening finallydespatched. The carts rattle along the streets at thehighest speed to the great railway termini, where the AT SAINT MARTIN S LE GRAND. 79 bags are speedily transferred to the mail vans attachedto each of the out-going trains. So end the laboursof the day in the Circulation Office, so far as thenight mails are concerned, at St. Martins le AT THE FOOT OF THE SHOOT AT EIGHT It may be fitting to conclude this chapter with aword as to the work of delivering the mails. Arrivedat the towns for which they are destined, the bags arequickly transferred from the train to the station, 80 THE BRITISH POST OFFICE. whence they are at once taken by mail-cart or hand-barrow to the Post Office, where they are seized, theirthroats cut, and their contents poured on the sortingtables. Once again they pass through the ordeal ofbeing stamped, after which the sorting clerks takethem over and arrange them in the different of the clerks prepare the letters for the post-men, while others do so for the subordinate PostOffices and rural messengers, these letters beingdespatched thence either by train, mail-cart, or ruralmessenger. The town postmen, having received theirbundles of letters, retire to their own room, wherethey arrange the letters in con
Size: 1331px × 1878px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1897
