The Sun.
London, England, 1859-04-21 00:00:00

THE POST-OFFICE

The ficr la report, of which the following is a copy,
has Just oeen published :
To TB
.E RIGHT HON. THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF

HER MAJESTY'S TREASURY.

iity Lords,—l have the honour to present to your
lordships the fifth annual report on the Post-office,
being that for the year 1858.
Your lordships will observe with satisfaction that
while postal facilities have been much increased,
and reductions have been made in the rates of post-
age on letters between the United Kingdom and
several foreign countries, there has been an increase
in the postal revenues.

EXTENSION OF INLAND SERVICE.

Last year the number of post-offices in the United
Kingdom was increased by 134, making the whole
present number 11,235 ; of which 806 are head post-
offices and 10,429 sub-post-offices.

New and more commodious offices have been
opened at Cork, Swansea, Colchester, and Ports-
mouth.

The offices at Derby, Dumfries, Brighton, Leeds,
Huddersfield, Nottingham, and Cambridge have
been enlarged and improved; and similar altera-
tions are about to made in the offices at Bath,
Rugby, Stafford, and Yarmouth.
Speaking of the Liverpool office, at which sundry
improvements have been made, the surveyor of the
district says, " Sun-burnecs have been introduced ;
and for a uniform and beautiful light, and excellent
ventilation (the latter being much promoted by the
use of the sun-burner), the Liverpool sorting-office
stands unequalled."
Two branch offices have been established at Bris-
tol, affording great accommodation to portions of
the city, and considerable relief to the chief office.
Should further experience confirm the benefit of
this arrangement, I shall consider the expediency
of adopting it elsewhere. One important advan-
tage it affords is the means of providing for a large
increase of postal business in any town without the
erection of a new chief office.
New sites, on which it it intended to build offices,
have been obtained at Edinburgh, Dundee, and
Dover; and measures are in progress for providing
new or better offices at Canterbury, Lincoln, and
Southampton.
A site has also been obtained for the erection of
a large new office at Manchester • but, in deference
to the wishes of manyof the leading inhabitants,
has been determined to ascertain whether it is
practicable to procure, on such terms as the case
will warrant, a site in substitution for this in
another part of the town, which it has been repre-
sented would be more convenient to the inhabitants
generally.
With a view of making the amount of postal ac-
commodation in the large towns, by means of re-
ceiving offices, money order offices, and road letter-
boxes, sufficientinall cases, and as far as practicable
uniformly proportionate to the extent of population
and amount of correspondence, a complete revision
has been made, which has resulted in a large exten-
sion of accommodation, and that without any: in-
crease of expense, indeed with a positive saving,
owing to a substitution in many cases of road letter
boxes for rckeiving
exchange, houses—always an economical
When the arrangements consequent upon this
revision shall have been completed (and this has
now nearly been done) no house in London, unless
in some exceptional case, will be more than a quar-
ter of a mile from a money order office, or more
than a furlong from either a receiving office or a
road letter box ; and in the neighbourhood of the
Royal Exchange, where the greatest number of let-
ters is Posted, the maximum distance will be less.
The augmentation in the number of road letter
boxes in London has much increased the facility of
posting letters for the morning mails ; since it is
only from these letter boxes that so early a collec-
tion as that necessary for this despatch can be made;
and the increased facility thus afforded has ren-
dered it practicable to anticipate by one hour the
last evening collection from the receiving offices, and
thus commence that collection a 1 nine in the even-
intinstead of ten.
10 superadd, as far as practicable, the conve-
nience of a receiving-office to that of a road letter
box, it has been arranged to supply any shopkeeper
in the neighbourhood of a letter box, who for the
sake of the usual poundage and the increased pub-
licity to LSshop, may be willing to undertake the
trouble, with a supply of postage stamps, with
Printed Postal notices for exhibition, and with a
copy, for reablia reference, of the British Postal
Guide.

rho whole number of additional road letter boxes
Put up last year was 465 ; making a present aggre-
gate of 1168.
The general revision of rural posts, mentioned in
Previous reports, has now been completed, and has
resulted in large extensions of theie posts,
; especially
in Ireland
but with lapse of time a necessity has
arisen for partial new revisions, and works of the
kind, on this smaller scale, will no doubt always be
111 Progress.
fAt 1,355 places free deliveries were established
or the first time last year, and 454 other places,
including York, Carlisle, and Preston, the free
delivery was extended or otherwise improved.
. The arrangement, mentioned in the last report,
I°.r enabling the public to post letters during the
!light at all post-offices where there is night duty,
and
ttaving been found to work satisfactorily in England
lreia/r,‘dales, has been extended to Scotland and
toAdiPlungh it has not yet been practicable, owing
I dfieulties of various kinds, to provide in every
~dOll district a suitable building for a permanent
has
Post-office yet every district not so furnished has been i •
An • s-113Phed at least with a temporary office.
interchange of bags is now, therefore, made
betweenoin.all the districts; and greater rapidity of
forranieduneation between house and house, which
postal da chief object of the division of London into
istricts, will, I hope, be soon fully attained.
As re
every case
gards the town portions- of the districts in
the lette (provided they bear the district initials)
box for the Posted at a receiving office or road letter
district ofße :mi.: district are at once selected at the
soon be flirt r elivery ; and the process will
to a minimum her accelerated, so as to reduce almost
deliver the time between the posting and
Much
of a letter properly addressed.
postal irn as been done in carrying forward the
in pro,' Pro.-ements which have for some time been
,rest in the towns• Lon-
don ; thouh, 0 and villages round .
Lon-
much still remaiving to the vast amount of detail,
have been epenne7, to be done. New sorting offices
work with /nor, ur, from which the letter carriers
instances the ti_sacnility and expedition ; in many
new deliveries a'll__e, tor posting have been extended,
and the intervottoliseolleetions have been established,
London have been between the despatches from
That the public made more equal.
of the increased faciir.ive largely availed themselves
the London district itey of Postal communication in
provements is shown °bilsequent on the recent im-
number of district lettY the great increase in the
previous to 1857, when ers. During the 10 years
theiugh continuous and the improvements effected,
tively small, the annul unportant, were compara-
what less than a million ate
of increase was some-
the last two years the •
and a half ; while during
lows : %crease has been as fol-

Indeuriernge
tohfeLyeetarter.s
.................. 4,239,000
In 1857 .......
In 1858 . ............
......... 6,270,000
and since the commence
increase has been still higher. 01 1859 the rate of
The augmentation of this
a.cfrl fi of letters during
the last two years has thus
ded an increase of
about £48,000 per annum in
groom revenue.
th°l.
I feel pleasure in noticing
extensive com-
pliance by the public with the
of the partment that the addresses of le
initials of the
iselleBto London or
to be delivered ;
de-
its neighbourhood should includaeft
postal district in which they
in
letter-boxes
and in its desire that when, as
eeiving offices, there are two separatehe 1-4114" re-
for •
different classes of letters, care. should be taken,
in posting, to drop the letters into the
By readiness right bo
too of this kind on the part l' public to
Iles etch
with the department, ttte
sorting,
ninet, and ultimately the delivery ofe
letters are
At all the
newly erected district offices, and at
been made for sortingprevi offices, arrangements
much better accom
luz the letter carriers with
the sanitary state olfnc4datien than formerly, and
been improved. many of the o:d offices has
Some further progress hag
been mae in imrov-
ing the nomenclature of the
but
treets ind Londonp and
the numbering of houses
the main work has
still to be accomplished.
During the last year 14 additional towns were
metropolis
provided with day mails to or fromth
of one or other of the three parts ,t;
Kingdom, and some of them with mailst United
directions ; and arrangements were made
both
commenced on the Ist January of the present
forgiving, for the first time, the advantage of a '
day mail to several towns in the south-west of
England, including Plymouth and Devonport, and
for accelerating the existing day mail from London
to that district.
-Supplementary day mails, moreover, were esta-
blished with Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Co-
ventry, and Epsom.
While, however, I have had the pleasure of pro-
Tiding these additionalmailte da
s, I have been compelled
h
with regret to withdraw .
Ennis-
killen and some other towns l n thaty mail to
part of Ireland,
owing to the unwillingness of the Dundalk and
Enniskillen Railway Company to continue the
service for a payment which •
was the utmost that