The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-20 00:00:00

OFFICE.

The following extracts are from a very interesting article
in Monday's Daily Telegraph, entitled "St. Valentine at the
Post-office," written by a Special Reporter :
On the Eve ot St. Valentine I happened to receive
a courteous invitation to the great entertainment of
energy and soirée of system annually held in St
Martin's-le-Grand. It was a quarter to six as I rassed
by the illuminated Post-office clock, and already round
the huge silver-rimed post-box was gathered a curious
and miscellaneous crowd The patient and
most courteous guide who had been appointed to
direct my wandering steps, and to explain to me the
mysteries of the postal entertainment on St.
Valentine's Eve, clearly understood the value of
contrast and the startling effect of • change of
scene. He led me through gloomy corridors and
dderted passages, busy a few hours ago with the
constant rush of clerks hurrying backwards and
forwads with letters to sign and statements to be
checked, and in our course we stopped every now and
then to listen to a hum and subdued ,roar as
of a great manufactory at work. Then suddenly
opening a door, we stood on an upper gallery, and
looked down upon an extraordinary scene. In my
time I have seen many pictures of action and groups
of activity, but I do not think I remember to have
been so impressed or dazzled as by the bird's-eye view of
the sorting room of the General Post Office on St.
Valentine's Eve. I have been down a copper mine in
Cornwall, and under the sea to the Bottallack. My
ears have been dizzy with the roar of a Nottingham
manufactory at work. I have spent along, dirty morn-
ing down a coal shaft in Westphalia. I have wit-
nessed the process of makine, pens in the North of
England, and of bird's-eye Aobacco in Bristol. I
have seen tile streets of Paris after the theatre from
the top of an omnibus going along the boulevards,
the dancing at Cremorne from an upper window,
London from St. Paul's and the Monument--all
effective pictures in their way, but few so inbtinct
with action as this. Try and imagine an enormous
room with side apartments and overhanging galleries,
dotted all over with hundreds of bright lights, covered'
with green shades, by means of which the illumina-
tion is flung down upon more letters than have ever
been seen before in one space. Conceive row after row
of standing desks piled high with letters and shape-
less packets, and over the desk baskets, and bags, and
receptacles for clearing and sorting. At each of the
long row of desks is a file of boy-sorters, almost
shoulder to shoulder, and in uniform, busy with nimble
fingers placing and arranging the white letters, which
dazzle the eye and make the stranger almost giddy.
But there is far more action than this. Porters come
in with great sacks of letters, and scatter them far and
wide on the lengthened tables; boys pass to and fro

continually emptying the baskets and•crtitea; there is
i
a thud of stamping n one corner, and the activity of
facing in another. Superintendents aft scattered all
over the room watching persistently the 'fingers.of the
sorters at their work, and giving their orders-in a tone
-which compels compliance. -There is-no rest-or. cessa-
tion in this wonderful room, and yet there is no
noise. No one shouts; no voice appears to be
raised above a whisper; the system is so admirable
that each boy and man is drilled to his post. The
letters are emptied out of the sack, making an alarm-
ing heap. They disappear. The valentine packets of
every conceivable shape and size—bulky, thin, square,
oblong, triangular—are seized upon by the busy fingers,
-and reduced to order. Inn few minutes a mountain has
been laid low. More sacks come in—the same idomitable
system is pursued. But although there is no noise, and
not a sign of confusion from one end of the room to the
other, the-concentration of crackling paper and whisp
of these. countless letters; the extraordinary subdued
hum of business and activity of work affects those who
arg unaccustomed to it. My brain seemed to whirl,
and my eyes were dazzled with the sight of this silent
but determined toil. It was a relief to be led away
-from the upper gallery over the gas burners, and com-
manding the huge hive,. and to be told that the clock
was on the stroke of six, the hour when the post-box
is closed. The change is pleasant, hidden in a corner
at the month of the silver-rimmed box, and there is a
refreshing draught of air from St. Martin's-le-Grand.
I can see the city policeman in blue and the post-office
servant in scarlet, each at his post on either side of the
box. Lads are in waiting to close up the very instant
the clock has done striking. . • Some messenger,
just as the Clock is striking, arrives with a waste-paper
basket full of letters, which he pelts at us through the
slit, and on the last stroke there is a scamper up the
steps and the very latest of the bulky packets is flung
on to the enormous heap.

Six o'clock hat, -atruck, and the box closes on the
instant. The t overs are put over the bins, the under
baskets are cleared away, and -young hands are ready
to bear them off to be showered on the facing-tables. •
Let us follow them there. The process is accomplished
is quick as lightning. Ordinary letters commercial
letters, official letters are taken up, selected, and faced.
It is no easy task with the valentines in their curious
boxes, but practice makes perfect. In less time than
it takes to tell of it, the heap disappears, and its con-
ten,ts have been faced, arranged, and even weighed
whenever there appears to be any doubt. - From the
facing-table away they go to the stamper, who with
marvellous rapidity scatters the packets before him, and
with a blow obliteratesthe stamp and marks the date and
hour of posting. M. Hermann, the conjuror, isnot more
skilful with a pack of cards. The letters appear to
run by magic under the nimble fingers of the
stamper, and at his elbow stands a boy to • bear them
off to the sorter. The piles we have seen perpetually
reduced, faced, and stamped, are made up of letters
posted in St. Martin's-le-Grand as the head-quarters
of the East Central District, of letters arrived in hot
haste from the London District Offices, and of letters
from the country which, as we see from the gallery,
were brought in on sacks by a succession of staggering
porters. On ordinary occasions a good part of the
labour of sorting is got over by the district and coun-
try postmasters. Not so, however, on St. Valentine's
Eve.- They have been too busy to do more than
bind up their letters in rough bundles ,with direc-
tions to, "forward." This means that the :chief
labour of sorting must fall upon the head office.
A pair of scissors snips the "forward" bundles,
and their contents are treated just as if they had
been posted at six o'clock in St. Martin's-le-
Grand. Every letter and packet in all these
heaps goes through three courses of sorting. First;
they are divided into the three great railway systems;
secondly, into a system of "roads," •following the old
coach roads as far as possible; and, thirdly, into a
town system. This wonderful process, executed with
marvellous rapidity, occupies the two short hours
between six, when the post closes, and eight, when the
mails are despatched. But do not imagine, that the
business of receiving, facing, stamping, sorting, and
despatching is all that is done in these two
hours. The stamping clerk has to count his
letters and make up his "tally." The sorting
clerk has to prepare his special green bags of
registered letters, and to make up his complicated
account with the various head-quarter postmasters. ,
Everything is checked, accounted for, and signed for.
And, beyond all this, throughout the evening patients
are taken off from the sorting tables in ambulance
baskets to the " Hospital " and to the "Blind
Asylum." The Hospital is the table for binding up
the wounds of the maimed and broken letters. The
"Blind Asylum" is the busy corner where illegible
addresses are deciphered and instances of silly careless-
ness corrected. First let us repair to the Hospital. A
curious sight presents itself on St. Valentine's Eve.
Heaped up around an indefatigable assistant are the
wounded in the postal fray. Broken valentine boxes,
bunches of artificial flowers, bouquets of real blossom,
camelia end azalea, dolls, red herrings, vesuvian cases,
bottles of scent and oil, a packet Of soot, samples of
corn in little bags, and sugar in little boxes, are sac-
cessiiely brought in maimed, and promptly attended
to. When the town addresses can be deciphered the
packets are sealed up, placed in covers, and
sent on. When all ingenuity fails in dis-
covering the owners, the articles are sent to the dead.
letter office to be claimed. When all was over on.
Saturday, the wreck, considering all things, was com-
paratively small. . . . There is other work to be
done in the Blind Asylum. Cataracts must be removed
and sight restored for all these patents before eight
o'clock.
,So away work the attendants and gazetteers,
directories, Codreguides, clergy lists and army lists,
nevergiving in, and deterniining not to 'he beaten. They
are as clever here in the art of handwriting as M.
Chabot or Mr. Netherclif t, and they penetrate into the
depths of stupidity with marvellous skill. They dis-
cover that Ship in Hunger". means "Chipping
Onear," they find out the post-town for some estate or
place in the country; they discover the owner of a
letter addressed to a Post-office official merely by a
likeness; they put in the right course army letters
and ships' letters, and when eight o'clock comes every
difficulty has been solved. There is no shirking it. It
must be done.
Meanwhile the time is passing 'rapidly away. I
look at the clock, and see that it is past seven. To
my unaccustomed eyes it seems as a no ix-ogress had
been made whatever since I last looked down from
the birds's-eye gallery. In come the sacks as before,
and are poured upon the tables. I hear the constant
click of the stamping. lam conscious of the dazzling
white of the thousands of letters on the sorters' tables.
There is no variation or alteration of the monotonous
and busy routine. It is impossible to believe the work
can be done by eight. As for myself I cannot help
feeling a certain oppression caused by the hum of
work and the buzz of suppressed noise. They
take me up lifts and down lifts from one floor
to another; at one minute I am among the news-
papers, and the next in the circular division.
They lead me into the E.C. district post-office,
and then change me to the silent soom, where they are
despatching the foreign mails. The same system, the
same order, the same punctuality, the same precision.
The whirring and whirling of the constant business is
so incessant that I feel I should like to shout in order
to break the monotony, an& I confess I am very glad
when, about half-past seven, I am beckoned up to a
rostrum in the sorting room to rest for a while, and
discuss the marvellous system with the worthy Chief
Clerk and kind Assistant-Controller of the Circulation
Department. They are congratulating themselves
on the comparative lightness of the labour this
evening, for the valentine work has been care-
fully divided over two nights this year. They
call my attention to the paragraph in the Post-
master-General's report where we are told that
on St. Valentine's Eve, in 1873, "no fewer than
306 extra mail-bags, each three feet long and
two feet wide," were used in the General Post Office
alone, and they unanimously decide that, thanks to
the Christmas card system, the toil of Christmas Eve
is now, unequalled throughout the year. Valentine's
Eve runs second in the race. However, they see the
work is proceeding merrily to night; and, sitting here
in the rostrum, they warn me to expect a surprise
when the clock strikes eight. They declare I shall
see an empty room. I confess that lam becoming a
little dazed with this unaccustomed sight. The
whirring and the buzzing increases as the time proceeds.'
The superintendents become more active, the nimble
fingers are lost in the !dazzle" of the letters, and after
my rest in the rostrum I ask leave to go down
into the crowd and find my way, once more to the
Hospital and the Blind Asylum. "Do you
think you can find your way ?" they ask.
"Oh, yes," I answer, never doubting. But I reckoned
without my host. Taking' a wrong turning at the
commencement, I found myself in a maze or labyrinth
of sorters. I turned to the right and to the left, and
found I was perpetually wrong. I was passed on from
Bodmin-road to the Great Northern system. I avoided
Bristol, and found myself in Ireland. Accrington
directed me to York, and a strange nightmare feeling
came over me as I gave myself up for lust in the East
Central district . . But at last I, was conscious of a
tap on the shoulder, and i kind voice saying, "You
are going wrong ! " They had enjoyed my dilemma
from the rostrum, to which I was re conducted; and
then my short nightmare was over.

-
But the dramatic moment of the evening had yet
to:arrive. The clock showed us it was nearing.eight. At
ten minutes to the hour a signal was given for making
up. Out came the sacks all directed to the station to
which they were destined. Jets of gas started out
from the sides of the desks. Lads with huge flaming
sticks of dropping sealing-wax (reminding one of Mr.
Irving's torch in "Hamlet") stood by to secure the
bags. It was now a case of mum qui petit, .for all the
lads and sorters and messengers are hurrying with their
burdens out of the buildiu.2s. I follow them up a steep in-
cline, and find myself on an outside gallery, or balcony,
looking down upon the courtyard of the Post Office.
Stationed under the various lamps, all marked with the
name of a railway station, are the long scarlet post.
carts, ready horsed, and waiting for the start.. It is a
wonderful scene, the Office brightly lighted in the rear
and the courtyard dark in front. On each cart a re-
sponsible official is stationed, to see thfft-no mistakes
are made in the loading. Down the shoots from the
upper stories come the newspapers, the outside gal-
lery swarms with porters heaving the sacks into the.
vans. The instant a cart is full off it gallops, clat-
tering over the stones to the railway, and by.the tithe
the clock has done striking eight, the courtyard is as
silent as the sorting-room! It is true. Ire enter the
office from the outside gallery, and find a transforma-
tion far inOre wonderful than I had expected. Not a
letter, newspaper, bag, sack, valentine, box, or scrap
of paper is to be seen. The clerks and sorters and
superintendents have put on their top coats and hur-
ried home, and I find myself, at five minutes past
eight, standing in the middle of a deserted hall.
Dating from this instant for two hours—ithe only two
hours in the day—the sorting-room will be silent, and
I.the cireulation•cea.sed. At ten o'clock new hands will
come on for fresh duty, and the public work will pro-
ceed with the same faultless regularity and magnificent
system. But why look into the busy future and the
depression of oncoming work now, at this silent
time, when the hum is over, and the valentines are
being driven away at full speed to the railway
stations? Suffieient for that hour is the evil
thereof. We look round, and do not detect one
fallen valentine one forgotten sack; the officials
properly congratulate one another on a brilliant
success; and as I shake hands " my kind
friends, and wish them "Good night, there are
those amongst them who do not hesitate to own that

•

they have earned their rest, for "they have been hard
at it since half-past four." The good folks who with
curious obstinacy persist that in England we do not
understand system and have no order, should watch a
penny letter as it travels through the English post.
lhere is no department in this country E 0 admirably
managed as the Vost-office, and Englishmen, systematic
or not, may well be proud of it.

040."',tt