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The contents of the broken packages were of great variety – tobacco, wedding cake, soap, bottles of scent, and ornaments for the mantel shelf
A group of men working in a postal sorting office. Photograph: Hulton Archive
Post-office workers had several things to be thankful for this Christmas. The success of the "advance posting" system for Christmas cards did much to relieve the stress of work. Those who sent cards in this manner found that the arrangement worked excellently. Then the intervention of Sunday between the last shopping day and the great day for which such tremendous preparations had been made had the effect of spreading the Christmas postal business over an extra twenty-four hours. The Post-office people too, in an even greater degree than the shopping public, were very grateful for the fine, clear weather, which enabled 4 mail trains and mail carts to run punctually. For these reasons, in spite of a considerable increase in the number of letters and parcels, the Post-office staffs have not had so harassing a time as they experienced in the fogs of last year.
Saturday was the busiest day, and a visit to the General Post-office and the supernumerary office at St. James's Hall on that day showed how vast was the work going on. But a busy day at the Post-office does not mean the scene of wild excitement and disorder which seems to exist in the public imagination. These are the last things to be looked for there. The privileged visitor to the great sorting hall of the General Post-office on Saturday found a persistent corps of men, working "against time" it is true, but working quietly and in regular order. The confused masses of letters which were tumbled out of the mail bags passed quickly from stage to stage of the sorting process, until after passing under several sets of agile fingers, they emerged in orderly piles ready for despatching to their destinations.
One must not forget to mention the Post-office Hospital - a corner of the sorting-room reserved for the treatment of injured letters. Most of the invalids were recruited from the ranks of the unwieldy packages which, since the cheapening of the letter rates, have gone through the post in always increasing numbers as letters instead of parcels. They take up an undue share of room in the mail-bags, and probably inflict damage upon their more wieldy travelling companions, and they give much trouble to the sorters, as they cannot be treated with the ordinary letters. They have to be separated as goats from the sheep.
Many of them had to be treated in the hospital for injuries more or less serious, which in nearly every case resulted from careless packing. They were attended to with great care, but some of the cases seemed hopeless. There were whole families of Christmas cards that had broken loose, with nothing upon them to guide the doctoring official except such unenlightening inscriptions as "From Jack to Jane." The contents of the broken packages were of great variety – tobacco, wedding cake, soap, bottles of scent, and ornaments for the mantel shelf. Wedding cake seems to suffer frequently, the boxes in which it is packed being often so flimsy as to crack like a thin egg shell.
The commonest mistake made by people who send presents through the post is to place small jewellers' boxes in flimsy envelopes. The angles of the boxes soon wear holes in the paper, and the whole package comes to grief. All this wreckage is sorted out with marvellous care and patience. Whenever it is possible to discover the address of the person who should receive it, the broken parcel is patched up and sent on its way.