In these days when books on every conceivable subject are written in their thousands annually; when monthly journals are produced by scores, and daily newspapers in hundreds, to supply the public with a record of the world's doings; and when readers are found for them all, it may not be thought unfitting that each large mail centre in the United Kingdom which contributes by its postal and telegraph organisation to the dissemination of much of this literature, should in its turn have some record

It appears that before Post Offices were established special messengers were employed to carry letters. It is recorded that such a special messenger was paid the sum of one penny for carrying a letter from Bristol to London in the year 1532, but the record affords no further particulars as to the service, and the assumption is that the special messenger was, in his own person, a rough-and-ready "post." Later on, a post would be suddenly established for a particular purpose, and as soon abandoned

Notwithstanding Ralph Allen's innovations, the conveyance of letters between the principal towns was carried on in a more or less desultory fashion. Speaking of the want of improvement in 1770, and the haphazard system under which Post Office business was conducted, a local newspaper gave this instance of unpunctuality: "The London Mail did not arrive so soon by several hours as usual on Monday, owing to the mailman getting a little intoxicated on his way between Newbury and Marlborough, and fal

A new coach, from "The Bush Hotel" to Exeter, was put on the road on the 6th of April, 1819, the time allowed for the journey—74¾ miles—being fourteen hours—less than 5½ miles an hour. In June, 1820 a new coach started for Manchester, performing the journey in two days, the intervening night being spent at Birmingham. To accomplish the first half of the task, the vehicle left Bristol at half-past 8 in the morning and reached Birmingham—85½ miles—in thirteen hours. An advertisement, published in

Although the world's railway system was inaugurated by the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, it was not until 1838 that any attempt was made by a great railway to open up the traffic to the West from the Metropolis. It was in that year that the Great Western Company made a line between Paddington and Maidenhead, and mails were sent by it. The section from Bristol to Bath was opened in the same year. Woolmer's Gazette of January, 1840, speaks of the 9.0 a.m. "Exquisite" coac

Official records at St. Martin's-le-Grand show that postmasters of Bristol were appointed as follows; viz., Thomas Gale, 1678; Wm. Dickinson, 1690; Daniel Parker, 1693; Henry Pine, September, 1694; Thomas Pine, senior, 1740; Thomas Pine, junior, 16th January, 1760; William Fenn, 1778; Mrs. Fenn, 1788; Mr. Fry managed the office for Mrs. Penn from 1797 to December, 1805, when he died, and Mrs. Fenn retired on an allowance in 1806; Mr. Cole, March, 1806, died whilst holding office; John Gardiner,

Probably the most illustrious man of the Post Office service who had Bristol for a birthplace was Sir Francis Freeling. Sir Francis was born in Redcliffe parish, Bristol, in 1764, and was educated partly at Colston School and in part by the Master of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School. In an ancient city record it is stated that he commenced his official career as "an apprentice" at the Bristol Post Office, where the combined results of his education, probity, and talents were soon discovered. On

There is record of a Post Office having been established in Bristol by the Convention Parliament in 1670, but the site is unknown, and probably the postmaster had post horses—not letters—to attend to. In the year 1700 Mr. Henry Pine, the postmaster of the day, was one of the parties to an agreement for leasing a piece of land "with liberty to build upon the same for the conveniency of a Post Office." The wording of the said agreement shows that the old-fashioned form of building was not in every

It is pleasing to look back to the time, little more than one hundred years ago, when Bristol was the premier provincial post town. It had long ranked next to London in wealth, in population, and in its Post Office. Bristol has, however, in a postal sense, yielded place to other towns, and now ranks after Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester. Dipping into history, it is found that there was a Post Office at Clifton a hundred years since. At about the time of the Battle of Waterloo it w

From the archives of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce it transpires that from the very first constitution of the Chamber in 1823, it had before it a scheme for the conveyance of mails between this port and the South of Ireland by direct steam packet. It was considered that such a service would be highly advantageous to the city, and correspondence on the subject from time to time took place with the Post Office Department. Allusion is made to it in the Chamber's Annual Report in January, 1824; ag

In 1855 the Bristol Post Office staff consisted of a postmaster and fifteen clerks, with sixty-four letter carriers. Over 1,500 people of all grades, including sub-postmasters and their assistants, are now employed; and the annual bill for salaries, wages, and allowances of men, women, and boys amounts to little short of £100,000. It will thus be seen that the Post Office ranks as one of the largest employers of labour in the western city. The head office is centrally situated both for the recei

A century ago the Christmas card was unthought of; whether it will be a thing of the past in the year 2000 cannot be foretold. The preparations made to meet the annually recurring pressure involve much forethought and considerable labour, and have to be in progress for a long time prior to Christmas. The time occupied in getting the instructions ready for the staff and making all arrangements incidental to the season is equivalent to more than the entire duty of a clerk for a whole year. Nothing

The public office of the Bristol Post Office is very commodious (50 ft. by 44 ft.), and affords ample counter accommodation to the citizens for properly conducting their Post Office business. It is markedly superior as regards size and fitting-up to almost any other provincial office, and indeed its equal in those respects is scarcely to be found in all London. In contrast to the spacious public hall of the Bristol Post Office and the civility of its clerks, the writer's first impressions of the

The Saxon King, Edmund I., doubtless never conceived, when he held court ( A.D. 940-946) at his palace in the village of Pucklechurch, seven miles from Bristol, that in generations to come there would exist, as there does now, a telegraph office within a few yards of the site of his castle, whence a question could be wired to the ends of the earth, and a reply obtained in the short space of a few hours. Probably at that remote period a journey from Pucklechurch to the north of Scotland would hav

The telegraph messengers in uniform employed in the Bristol district number about 160. They have a literary institute, a drum and fife band, hold swimming classes, etc. That there is need of night classes may be inferred from the following specimens of telegraph messengers' orthography and syntax:— (1) "Supt, Sir, I will try to be more careful in the pass. Yours obed, H. P——." (2) "Supt, Sir, I having asked where the message was ment for and they told me to go up the road where I should see a ch

The extent of the Bristol postal establishment in 1775 may be gleaned from the reply given by the Postmasters-General to a memorial complaining that there was only one letter carrier for the delivery of all the letters received in Liverpool. The answer was that only one letter carrier was maintained in any provincial town, including the premier city of Bristol, and that they did not think themselves justified in incurring for Liverpool the expense of another. An additional Bristol postman was, h

The three hundred and fifty pillar and wall letter boxes are placed at convenient points, regard being had to the wants of the immediate neighbourhood that each has to serve—to approach by paved crossings, to contiguity to a public lamp, to being out of the way of pedestrians and as far removed from mud-splashing as possible. At the same time, the inspectors endeavour to place the boxes so that they may be an attraction, rather than an eyesore, to the spot where erected. The sign of "The Pillar

The Bristol postal area is an extensive one, the distance from point to point being thirty miles, with width ranging from five to twelve miles. It is bounded on one side by the river Severn, from a point about five miles below Sharpness to a point close to Portishead; thence the boundary stretches across country to the Mendip Hills, up to Cheddar Cliffs; then from a point four miles north-east of Wells to Newton-St.-Loe, near Bath; across the river Avon, under Lansdown, thence in a line by Puckl

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 ca

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 tot