The Bristol Royal Mail Part 12

When, about eight years since, there was a deep fall of snow in this district, the West Town postman, who is likewise sub-postmaster, very considerably added to his labours by carrying tea, sugar, medicine, and even bread to the people on the Mendips, who were snowed up and deserted by baker, butcher, grocer, and indeed by everyone except the faithful Queen's messenger. The floods of November, 1894, which proved very disastrous in the West of England, interfered in no small degree with Post Office arrangements in the rural districts around Bristol. In some villages the roads were submerged from three to four feet, and it was impossible for the public to get to the letter boxes, the postmen and postwomen being, perhaps, the greatest sufferers. In order to avoid flooded roads, it was necessary to change routes and make long detours.

Many postmen were compelled to wade through the water waist deep, whilst others had to be driven through in horse and cart. The inhabitants and farmers in many places kindly lent their horses and carts for the purpose, and but for these kindnesses the letters would have been delayed for many hours. In spite of all difficulties, the letters were generally delivered without much delay, and only in a few cases had the letters to be held over for any length of time until the waters had subsided.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LETTER BOX AT WINTERBOURNE.]

A t.i.t made her nest in the bottom of a Post Office letter box at Winterbourne, near Bristol, laid her eggs, and notwithstanding that letters were posted in the box and that the box was cleared by the postman everyday, the bird tenaciously held to her nest and brought up five young t.i.ts, two of which perished in their attempts to get out of the box by means of the small posting aperture through which their mother had squeezed so frequently, carrying with her all the materials for the nest. The three survivors flew off one day when the door of the box was purposely left open for a time by the obliging postman portrayed in the picture.

That all is not gold that glitters has been recently brought home to three or four of the sub-postmasters in the Bristol district, a "sharper" having presented coins gilded to represent sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and obtained Postal Orders in exchange for them.

Through the vigilance of the Bristol police the offender was eventually taken into custody, and, having been sentenced at the a.s.sizes to six months' imprisonment, he had plenty of time to reflect on his offences.

A bright, shining new farthing was received at the Bristol head office, sent inadvertently in a remittance from a sub-office as a half-sovereign, and mixed up with coins of that value, only to be detected, however, by the vigilant check clerk. The sub-postmaster who accepted it in error for a coin of more precious metal, and did not discover the mistake even in preparing the remittance, had to bear the loss.

One sub-postmaster, who has now departed this life, was wont to furnish his explanations and reports in rhyme, a course which was tolerated on account of its singularity and of the writer's zeal and known devotion to his duty. The following is an example:--

To the POSTMASTER OF BRISTOL:

"I willingly answer the question Respecting the length of the track From Shirehampton P.O. to Kingsweston House front door, or lodge at the back; But respecting the relative merits Of back door, or door at the front, As delivery door, I aver it's A question I cannot but shunt.

To return to the question of distance: Suppose that the birds of the air, Sworn in as Post Office a.s.sistants, To Kingsweston would messages bear: As straight through their skiey dominions They flew from front door to front door, The length of the track of their pinions In yards would be 1224.

When a featherless biped is bearer, And through the lone woods his path picks, The feet of this weary wayfarer Cover yards quite 1466.

Should the wight have a key, there's a second Way thro' the sunk fence's locked gate, And then his poor feet must be reckoned To make yards 1388.

As regards the back door, I pa.s.s by it; The back lodge itself is much less Than a mile, howsomdever you try it, By Shirehampton Post Office Express.

I do not pretend to correctness, To one yard or even a dozen; No need for extreme circ.u.mspectness, The margin's too ample to cozen.

I'm obliged by your flattering reference, And when you've another dispute on, I shall still be, with all proper deference, Your obedient Servant,--G. NEWTON."

The turnpike gates in the neighbourhood of Bristol were abolished in October, 1867, and the consequence was that the proprietors of the various omnibuses by which day mail bags were conveyed to and from several of the districts around Bristol applied for, and obtained, a money payment in lieu of the tolls, the exemption, from which had formed the sole remuneration for the services performed.

The Bristol mail carts running to the rural districts, by permission of the Post Office, carry for the newspaper proprietors bundles of papers, weighing on an average on ordinary days 40 lbs., and on Sat.u.r.days 80 lbs. The enterprise of the Bristol newspaper proprietors in circulating by private means the many thousands of the newspapers which they daily print is evidenced, from the circ.u.mstance that they find it necessary to commit to the agency of the Post Office only about 160 copies for distribution, and that chiefly in remote rural districts.

Sub-postmasters in the rural districts of Bristol attain to great ages.

The sub-postmaster of Mangotsfield, who had long since pa.s.sed three-score years and ten, had his cross to bear, having at 60 entirely lost his eyesight. Although blind, and unable to work in consequence, he quaintly appeared in his ap.r.o.n to the end, and said that having worn it for so many years he did not feel happy without it. A daughter acted as his deputy, and mitigated, as far as possible, his hard lot. At his funeral some hundreds of people, representing various religious and other bodies, attended to pay their last tribute of respect to him.

At Bitton, a village midway between Bristol and Bath, there died Sub-postmaster James Brewer, in the 87th year of his age, and in the fifty-seventh year of his Post Office service. It was more pleasant to enter this Post Office and find the old man calmly smoking his churchwarden pipe before the fire, cheery and chatty, than to have such a welcome as that afforded at another office by the exhibition on the Post Office counter of a miniature coffin and artificial wreaths for graves. Another worthy of local Post Office fame has lately pa.s.sed away in the person of Join Warburton, aged 84, who for thirty years was the sub-postmaster of Henbury, and who for five years was his daughter's adviser after her succession to the appointment. The sub-postmaster of the village of High Littleton lost an arm some fifty years ago, but notwithstanding that affliction he manages with adroitness to sell postage stamps and issue postal orders to the public. This will not be considered a very great feat, considering that he has been for years a crack one-handed shot, and even now, at the age of 70, can bowl over a pheasant or a rabbit quite as readily as many of our sportsmen who have the use of both arms.

Sub-postmistresses of great longevity are also to be found. One dame (Martha Pike), now in her 93rd year, represented the Department until quite recently in the charming little village of Wraxall. When nearly 90 years old she had a three hour letter round every morning up hill and down dale, and she even trudged a mile and a half to fetch a letter and parcel mail from the railway station. The sub-postmistress of Stoke Bishop died at the age of 84; she and her father had held the Post Office in the village for over fifty years. An equally remarkable case was that of Hannah Vowles, the sub-postmistress of Frenchay, who, after performing the active duties of that position in the village of Frenchay for forty-seven years, resigned when within five years of 100 years old.

In her youth she lived for some time in the West Indies; but she gave up her employment there in order to return home to support her mother, who was 90 years of age when she died. Mrs. Hannah was succeeded in the office of sub-postmistress by Miss Kate Vowdes, a relation, who had already been postwoman in the same district forty-two years!

[Ill.u.s.tration: HANNAH BREWER.

(_Postwoman._)]

Hannah Brewer is one of the Bristol Post Office worthies. Her father was the sub-postmaster of the village of Bitton alluded to herein. Hannah commenced to deliver letters in the hamlets and at the farmhouses near Bitton when a mere child, and continued to do so during all the years our gracious Sovereign has sat on the throne. Recently, however, she had to give up the work, as, having attained the advanced age of 72 years and walked her quarter of a million of miles, she felt that she ought to take life more easily than hitherto. In distance her round was eleven miles daily, and the route was a very trying one on account of the steep hills she had to traverse, and of great exposure to the sun in summer, and to the wind, frost, and snow in winter. It may be interesting to record that Hannah Brewer, although she had to serve a district spa.r.s.ely populated, was never robbed, stopped, nor molested in any way. She was the recipient of the first official waterproof clothing issued to postwomen in England, and in her picture she is represented as wearing it. She only occasionally made visits even to places so near as Bath or Bristol, and was, as a rule, a stay at home.

She was not a great reader of the newspapers, but persons on her round looked to her as an oracle, and derived information from her as to pa.s.sing events. Hannah naively says that, as regards Christmas boxes, she fared very well in olden times, but they were not so plentiful in her later years. Hannah, through her devotion to her father when he was alive, and through her a.s.siduous attention to her duties as a humble servant of the Crown, had gained the respect of all those who knew her, both in her native village and on the long round she daily had to traverse. As she served the Post Office throughout her long life (her memory carrying her back to the days when the letters reached Bitton by mail coach and a "single" letter from London cost 10d.), it is gratifying that in her old age, when unable to continue to do her daily round, the Lords of the Treasury, under her exceptional circ.u.mstances, granted her half-pay pension, a sum which, with her savings, will serve to maintain her until the end of her days. The writer has had few more pleasurable duties than that which he undertook of presenting Hannah, in her neat and trim cottage, with her first pension warrant.

At the celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in the village, the opportunity was taken, in the midst of the festivities, to make a presentation of an elegant marble clock and purse to Miss Brewer. The inscription ran: "Presented during Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee, together with a purse of money, by the inhabitants of the postal district of Bitton, Gloucestershire, to Miss Hannah Brewer, postwoman, upon her retirement, having served this office from the commencement of Queen Victoria's reign."

Even Post Office surveyors are sometimes the subject of little jokes on the part of their subordinates. An a.s.sistant surveyor, when testing a rural postman's walk, said that if he had arranged the round originally, he should have taken a shortcut across the fields to a certain little hamlet so as to serve it before instead of after a more distant place, when the postman drily said that he should not have done anything of the kind, as there was a rhine about 18 ft. wide and very deep, which could not well be got over or through, and, turning to the surveyor, he remarked: "Evidently you never were a postman." The humour of this incident lies in the fact that the surveyors have always been drawn from the elite of the Service. A certain imperious surveyor visited a sub-office for the purpose of reprimanding the sub-postmaster for some delinquency, and after soundly rating the individual he addressed, and refusing to hear a single word in explanation, he, when his harangue was over, was coolly informed that he had made a slight mistake, as the circ.u.mstance referred to another sub-office altogether.

On a certain occasion recently, on entering a Post Office the writer heard proceeding from a back room a voice, recognisable as that of the sub-postmaster, shouting out a greeting in his (the writer's) Christian name: "Come in, Robert." Well, the sub-postmaster thought he saw through the partly-curtained gla.s.s in the door a friend of that name, and meant no disrespect to his surveyor-postmaster.

On calling at another little Post Office on a Sat.u.r.day, the aged sub-postmistress was washing her stone floor--down on her knees in business-like att.i.tude. Without looking up, her greeting to the writer was: "Halloa! I thought you had been to Jericho. You have not been to see me for such a long time!" That salutation was rather embarra.s.sing; but on getting to the perpendicular the old lady was the confused party, as she had thought her visitor was a local resident who occasionally looked in to have a cheery word with her.

It would seem that postal improvements in the Bristol district have been carried almost as far as is needful; indeed, in one district, not seven miles from the city, contemplated improvements whereby letters would be delivered an hour earlier in the morning and might be posted two hours later at night, and a day mail in and out be afforded, were declined by the parish authorities in council and by memorial from the villagers generally. In this rural hollow the people are very clannish, and rather than let their postwoman suffer a loss of two shillings a week, which the change involved, they were content to forego improved postal facilities, and were not greatly stirred by the "lasinesse of posts" as, according to history, was King James of old.

While Bristol is ever expanding and while splendid buildings are being erected, there are not wanting places within a short distance of the ancient city where there are signs of decadence, as indicated by houses unoccupied and cottages in ruins, and by shrinkage in the number of letters. At Stanton Drew, where some thirty large stones alone remain to mark a site where there probably stood a splendid Druidical Temple, the postal arrangements a few years since were not in a satisfactory condition. Not unlike the story which has recently been going the round of the newspapers, that a sub-postmaster of an Oxfordshire village fixed this notice up: "Have gone fishing. Will be back in time to sell stamps," the sub-postmistress of this Somersetshire hamlet went away for days without putting up any notice whatever, and left her son to supply the inhabitants with postage stamps when he got home in the evening from his work as an agricultural labourer. Still, people did not complain, so that they may be regarded as accessories to the sub-postmistress's delinquencies. There was, however, a postal super-session in that village!

There is still in the rural service a postman who labours under the disabilities of having only one arm and of being unable to read or write. He has not a very extensive delivery, and so his pockets are made to do duty in the place of the faculty of reading. The left breast pocket indicates that letters placed in it are for Cliff Farm, those in the right breast pocket for Rush Hill Farm, several other pockets serving in like manner.

From very old official books sent into store on the change of holders of sub-offices, it is noticeable that the writing of fifty years ago was much superior to that of the present day, indicating that sub-postmasters of olden time either took more interest in caligraphy than their successors, or possibly had more leisure in which to make the necessary entries than is afforded in the present period of high pressure.

'Tis strange that it was so, as at the time the steel pen had not ousted the quill. Even so short a time as forty years since a new intrant to the Post Office, hailing from the Emerald Isle, had, like all other new-comers, to enter his name and address in the Order Book on his first introduction to St. Martin's-le-Grand. A steel pen was handed to him, with which he dallied for a time, and when asked why he did not proceed, said: "Sure, I was waiting for a feather."

The inst.i.tution for the care of consumption started in this country, and known as Nordrach-upon-Mendip, is in the Bristol postal district at one of its most distant points on the range of the Mendip Hills, at an alt.i.tude of 850 feet above sea level. It has already played an important part as regards the Bristol Post Office, inasmuch as a consumptive telegraph clerk has benefited considerably from the new treatment, and has indeed left the inst.i.tution as cured. It is not generally known that until recently there existed a small Convalescent Home on the Mendips, but "Cosy Corner," founded and maintained by Sir Edward Hill, K.C.B., stood there as such, and it served a good part as regards a postal servant. A postman employed at the Bristol railway station as mail porter, who had suffered from a serious attack of typhoid fever, and who had been verily at death's door, pa.s.sed several weeks at this rural retreat, and derived such benefit from the kind treatment he received and from the bracing air of the district that he quite recovered from his ailment and is now in robust health. "Cosy Corner" has now been affiliated to Nordrach-upon-Mendip.

The rule of the Service is that coins, postage stamps, and other articles of value picked up in a sorting office are regarded as treasure trove and have to be handed over to the authorities for disposal; but a letter carrier's round can hardly be regarded in the light of a Post Office, and so a postman of the Thornbury district who at Aust Cliff, picked up a well-preserved bronze coin with the image and superscription of Claudius Caesar (A.D. 41-54) did not consider himself called upon to give it up to the sub-postmaster, but disposed of it for the sum of 15s.

6d. The purchaser presented it to the Leicester Museum.

Tradition hath it that Miss Hannah More, the celebrated auth.o.r.ess and philanthropist, when residing (1770) at Wrington, near Bristol, in the churchyard of which place her remains now repose, made an arrangement with the postman of the period whereby on pa.s.sing along the road near her residence he was to signal to her when any event of importance had occurred. Her sitting and bedroom windows commanded a view of the walk near which the postman had to pa.s.s, so that she could see him coming, and she always hurried down to the wicket-gate in readiness to meet him when he put up his flag. A son of the postman, now alive, remembers well that his father told him that he had given the signal on the death of Queen, Caroline. It was outside the postman's function, to wave the red flag with which Mistress Hannah, had provided him, but Post Office matters were not carried on so strictly in those days as under the present regime. The Wrington postman obtained the news about important pa.s.sing events from the mail-man who rode through the village on his way from Bristol to Axbridge. George Vowles, who died twenty-six years ago, at the ripe age of 88 years, was the mail-man who conveyed to the villages on his way the news of the battle of Waterloo, brought down from London by the mail coach, which had been decorated with laurels and flowers in honour of the great event.

CHAPTER XVIII.

GENERAL FREE DELIVERY OF LETTERS.

No stone has been left unturned in the endeavour to afford a free delivery of letters at the door of every house in the district; and at last all houses and cottages, even in the remotest localities, have been reached, and the woodman, the gamekeeper, and the lone cottager now receive a daily visit from the postman. In visiting out of the way places of the kind with a view to arranging a delivery, the surveyor has to look out for dogs. A certain warren house in this district affords a typical case. It is far from the ordinary haunts of man, and was without an official delivery on account of its extreme inaccessibility. The approach is through a deep gorge, known as Goblin Combe, and the path to the house is precipitous. The gamekeeper residing there had to send to a farmhouse a mile and a quarter distant for his letters, which the obliging farmer had consented to take in for him. The attempts of the staff to arrange a method of delivery by postmen had long been baffled.

At the time when the writer went to view the place there was a rumour in the neighbourhood that, owing to serious depredations by poachers, fierce dogs roamed the enclosed warren; and on pa.s.sing out on to the warren from the wood corner, there was observed standing on a wall near the house what in the distance and misty morn, appeared to be a large bloodhound, and so the advance had to be made warily. The attendant rural postman was armed with a riding whip, on which his grip tightened, for he had already been four times bitten by dogs, as the scars on his hand testified, and he desired to guard himself against another attack.

At last, as the place was neared, the object of distrust was found to be--a large goat! Another out-of-the-way place in the same neighbourhood, also unserved by the postman, was a woodman's house in a dense wood, which, with its bowling-green, is said once to have been used by "Bristol bloods" of old time as a safe retreat where they could indulge in a little business connected with the prize ring and c.o.c.k fighting. That the Duke of Norfolk's liberal policy in Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee year has proved a boon and a blessing to many residents in isolated spots is indicated, for instance, by what a poor woman living in a wild district stated. She had recently to trudge the whole way from her house to Bristol, a distance of eight miles out and eight miles back, while a letter which would have obviated her journey had been lying undelivered for days at a Post Office only two miles off.

Blaize Castle, which is within four miles of the Head Post Office, was singularly enough almost the last habitation in the Bristol district which was granted a free delivery of letters daily, for until 1898 the postman in his official capacity had never penetrated to that rock-elevated and remote part of the Blaize Woods where the castle stands. That reproach to the Bristol district has now been removed, and the custodians of the castle have obtained their rights as citizens of the great kingdom in having their letters delivered at the door daily by the Postmaster-General's representative. It was a difficult matter to find out all the houses at which the postman did not call, and this particular castle, which is now only occupied by caretakers, was not notified by the rural postman, as the occupiers had signified to him that they did not care for a delivery and were quite satisfied if the letters were left in the village till called for. The circ.u.mstance may be of interest to Bristolians, from the fact that Blaize Castle is spoken of by many but is seen by very few. Its flagstaff is visible from some little distance, but the castle itself can scarcely be discerned through its wooded surroundings, even from the far-famed Arbutus Walk, which is separated from it by a deep gorge. The castle is situated on a lofty plateau in the midst of the large woods. Close to it is a sheer perpendicular rock, three hundred feet high, known as "The Giant's leap." The castle is said to have derived its name from St. Blaisius, the Spanish patron of wool-combers, to whom a chapel was dedicated on a hill in the grounds where the castle now stands, and where there was once a Roman encampment. The interest attaching to this castle is enhanced from a postal point of view by the circ.u.mstance that the son of the lady who owns the property married a daughter of the late Postmaster-General, the Right Hon. H. C. Raikes.

Mr. Raikes was one of the hardest working of Postmasters-General. So diligent indeed was he, that almost nightly, when the House of Commons was sitting, the right hon. gentleman, after all other Members had gone home, retired to his official room and went through the papers which had been sent up from the Post Office for his consideration. So absorbed would he become in the doc.u.ments, which he read carefully through from end to end, so that he might judge from his own standpoint and not from that of his official advisers, that he would sit well into the small hours of the morning, whilst that patient and most obliging of officials, the postmaster of the House, Mr. Pike, kept weary vigil, waiting to take the despatch-bag to the Post Office in the City before he went home to his well-earned rest. Mr. Raikes's invariably clear and even writing betokened that, long past the hour for bed as the time might be, he never had any idea of doing his work in a hurry. He was probably known to many of the citizens of Bristol, through his frequent visits to a mansion on the Westbury side of the Downs.

CHAPTER XIX.

LOCAL RETURNED LETTER OFFICE.

The Bristol Post Office has its returned letter branch, with which almost all the towns in the West of England, and South Wales are affiliated for "dead letter" work. Through its agency over a million letters and postal packets are returned to senders annually. Book packets and circulars form 50 per cent. of the total number, and of these only 75 per cent. can be restored to the persons who posted them.

Over 10,000 letters containing property are recorded in the ledgers, and they represent a total value in cash, bank-notes, bills, cheques, postage stamps, etc., of about 36,000 per annum, nearly the whole of which reaches the hands of the senders. About 400 letters containing money orders, and 1,700 letters containing value, compulsorily registered, are returned in the course of the year. Amongst the curiosities of returned letter office experience may be mentioned the following. A letter was received thus peculiarly addressed:--"Miss ----, 4, Pleasant View, in that beautiful city which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramanto and Palladio, and which the genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen has made cla.s.sic ground." The pundits in the returned letter office who deal with derelict letters properly divined that the place so glowingly described was Bath, and issuing the letter accordingly, it was duly delivered in the fair city.

A packet was received simply addressed "Post Office, Bristol, to be called for." The contents were an army reserve man's discharge papers and pension application forms. The application bore evidence that it referred to Lichfield, and the packet was accordingly sent to that military depot. Two or three days afterwards an old soldier called at the Bristol office for his letter, and could not possibly understand why it had been opened in the returned letter branch, and the contents sent to Lichfield. His fury was unbounded, and he consigned all and sundry to Hades. His papers were soon obtained for him from Lichfield, and his grat.i.tude at getting them, was as effusively manifested as his disappointment had been in not finding the papers awaiting him on first application. His thanks were conveyed in the following terse communication:--

"Dear Boss,--A thousand pardons, everything comes right to those who wait. Patience is a virtue.

"Obt servt, W. H. ----."