Part 11 (2/2)
Occasionally the postmen have to encounter the difficulties arising from a frost-bound letter box. Such a case occurred with a box situated on the summit of the Mendip Hills. The letter box and the wall in which the box is built were found by the postman to be covered with ice, caused by rain and snow having frozen on them. The door resisted all his efforts to open it, and he had to leave it for the night. On making another effort when morning came, it taxed his ingenuity and that of other interested and willing helpers to get the box open. Hot water was tried, paraffin was poured into the lock, and it was only after a hammer had been used and a fire in a movable grate had been applied for a time that the lid could be opened.
A letter box erected in a brick pillar in a secluded spot on the East Harptree road, about a mile distant from any habitation, was, late one night, damaged to the extent of having its iron door completely smashed off, apparently either by means of a large stone which lay at its base when the violation was discovered, or by means of a hammer and jemmy.
Although the adjacent ground, ditches, and hedges were searched, no trace of the iron door could be found. As three roysterers were known to have pa.s.sed the box on the night in question, it was a.s.sumed that the damage was done by them out of pure mischief and not from any desire to rob Her Majesty's mails. Whether such were the case or not, they had the unpleasant experience of being locked up over the Sunday on suspicion.
CHAPTER XVII.
RURAL DISTRICT SUB-POSTMASTERS. RURAL POSTMEN. INCIDENTS.
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 Pucklechurch, Iron Acton, and Thornbury across to the starting-point on the Severn. The large rural area is for the greater part agricultural in character, but there are collieries and stone quarries in some few districts.
At the Bristol town and rural sub-Post Offices there are 554 a.s.sistants of all kinds employed. Many rural sub-postmasters act as postmen; in the main it is a healthy occupation, and proves a very good antidote to sedentary employment, although there are hards.h.i.+ps to be borne, as the toil has to be undergone in all weathers--the scorching sun of summer, the pitiless cold of winter--in rain, hail, and snow. In connection With the Early Closing Movement, at some of the outer Post Offices business is suspended at 5.0 on one day in the week--usually Wednesday.
In the suburban and rural districts there are 105 sub-Post Offices, and 78 of them are letter delivery offices, served by an aggregate number of 226 postmen. Of the 78 districts, 42 have two daily deliveries 28 three, and 6 four, with about a corresponding number of collections.
The sorting clerks and telegraphists at head-quarters gain some sort of acquaintance with sub-postmasters through daily communication by mail bag and wire; also in the pa.s.sage of reports and counter-reports; but occasionally people performing postal work throughout the extensive Bristol district are brought into closer harmony and touch with each other by means of social functions, such as ”outings” and Bristol Channel steamer trips, when town and country officials take their pastime in company, and the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses of the Somersets.h.i.+re portion of the district get acquainted with those of the Gloucesters.h.i.+re side, and all with the head office officials. By these means of friendly intercourse and interchange of kindly feeling, the service is much benefited. As an indication of this exchange of courtesy, the felicitations exchanged by telegram when the first annual trip by steamer to Ilfracombe was taken ran thus:--
”From Postmaster, Bristol.--Pleasant journey to you. Long may Sub-Postmasterly friends.h.i.+p continue.”
”From Sub-Postmasters at Ilfracombe.--Telegram received. Thanks for good wishes. Have just drank your good health. Pleasant trip. Regret your absence extremely.--Sub-Postmasters.”
The Bristol Post Office has only recently had electric light introduced, but the squire of East Harptree had long before set the good example of progress by having the Post Office in his village illuminated by electricity. In the Bristol area very many villages have their little counterpart of the huge combination shops in London, where the villager is enabled to procure everything that his modest income will allow him to purchase. It is at these village ”Whiteleys” that the Post Office is generally to be found, and a surveying officer may soon become well versed in the qualities of bacon, cheese, bread, flour, candles, and get a knowledge of rakes, p.r.o.ngs, and besoms, without much difficulty. In other instances no business except that of Post Office work is carried on.
The picture of the sub-Post Office at Cribbs Causeway, five miles from Bristol, may give our readers who are ”in cities pent” an idea of a delightful place for the sale of postage stamps and postal orders and the distribution of letters. This unique Post Office has few houses anywhere near it, but it serves a large, albeit very spa.r.s.ely populated, area. Some of its interest rests in the fact that it was formerly the half-way inn on the once important highway from Bristol to New Pa.s.sage, for the ferry over the Severn into South Wales. Some of our elderly readers may probably recollect it as the stopping stage of the coaches which ran prior to the introduction of the railway system. The sub-Post Office, which stands on high ground, is held by two sisters, who went to it as a health resort from a farm in the low-lying Severn marsh. They act as postwomen, and brisk exercise and the early morning dew has brought such roses to their cheeks as would be envied by their Post Office sisters whose fate it is to reside in smoke-begrimed regions.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CRIBBS CAUSEWAY POST OFFICE.]
Although some of the Bristol district villages are situated at a long distance from town and remote from main roads, yet only one of the Post Offices presents the primitive condition of having a thatched roof. None of the rural postmen now avail themselves on their journeys of the services of that faithful creature, the donkey; but the last animal so used was on the road until 1890, when its master, poor Sims, the Congresbury to s.h.i.+pham postman, shuffled off this mortal coil. Times change, and our manners change with them; so also do our tests for gold coins. At the Wrington Post Office there are bra.s.s testing weights, for sovereigns and half-sovereigns, inscribed ”Royal Mint, 1843,” such as have not been observed by the writer at any other Post Office, either in the Bristol district or in London. A certain sub-postmistress in the district has for many years been in the habit of keeping her sheets of reserve postage stamps in a large Family Bible. Not that she is irreverent--indeed, she is a pious woman,--but, being a lone widow, she has kept them in that manner for safety, as she imagines that no burglar would look for them in such a depository.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. EDWARD BIDDLE.
(_Sub-Postmaster of Rudgeway._)
_Photographed by Mr. Protheroe, Narrow Wine Street, Bristol, from an oil painting._]
A notable man in his day was Edward Biddle, on the Thornbury side of Bristol. Mr. Biddle was sub-postmaster of Rudgeway for over forty years, and occupied the post until his death in 1889, at the ripe age of 91 years, when he was succeeded by his daughter, and she, in turn, was succeeded by his son, William Biddle, who still holds the appointment.
Prior to becoming sub-postmaster, Mr. Edward Biddle was ”Pike” keeper at Stone, and used to pay 752 per annum for his post. There he had to open his gate to no fewer than twenty mail coaches daily, on their way between Bristol and Gloucester. At Rudgeway he carried on the joint occupation of sub-postmaster and innkeeper, at a tavern where the Post Office business had been conducted for many years before he succeeded to it; but the innkeeping business had in course of time to be given up, under Post Office regulations. Mr. Elstone, of Alveston House, wrote expressing his satisfaction that the Post Office was to be carried on at a private house, and not as previously at a ”roadside pothouse,” which all the district considered a very improper place. At that time John Blann and other stage carriers drove their unwieldy waggons, drawn by four strong cart-horses at a walking pace, along the Gloucester turnpike road. The waggons were indeed the goods trains of olden times. The present sub-postmaster, the son of Edward Biddle, who has had for many years to use ”Shanks's” pony in the delivery of letters, was engaged in olden times in going on horseback down to the Pa.s.sage to take, in saddlebags, the mails for South Wales and receive them therefrom. As late as 1850, letters from Rudgeway for Bristol were impressed with a stamp thus:--
BRISTOL 4 JA 50.
BY POST.
Mr. James Tiley, the village blacksmith of Clutton, now an octogenarian, calls to mind that sixty years ago the letters for Clutton, Temple Cloud, Stowey, Bishop Sutton and adjacent districts were delivered from Old Down, a hamlet on the main coach road from Bath to Wells, distant from Tyburn Turnpike, London, 121 miles. Mr. Tiley has had the luxury of paying 10d. for a letter brought from London by the above means; and as it was dear to him at the time, it is dear to him now in another sense as a reminiscence of the past. Mr. Tiley recalls the sending of letters of the district by waggoners to Bristol or Bath to save the postage, and slyly remarks: ”So stupid were the waggoners that as often as not they brought the letters back again, having forgotten to--what Post Office people now term--'properly dispose of them.'” Also that Joseph Tippett, a postman of the olden time, was brutally a.s.saulted on Stowey Hill, and nearly lost his life and his letters. His a.s.sailants were discovered and were transported for life. The Old Down postman was timed to reach Temple Cloud Bridge at 12.0, and always blew horn or whistle to let the village schoolmaster know the time of day. During the Bristol riots the arrival of the mail every morning was eagerly awaited by persons far and near, anxious to hear the latest news.
So recently as the year 1867, a postman had to trudge right away from Bristol to the distant village of Chew Stoke, having to breast the steep hill of Dundry and pa.s.s through Chew Magna on his way. All the letters and newspapers then delivered at Bishopsworth, Dundry, Chew Magna and Chew Stoke were carried by this man. Now, with the introduction of the parcel post and a cheaper letter post, and consequently increased weight, the morning mail is carried in a mail cart, and that service is supplemented by two or three other despatches to Chew Magna and Chew Stoke by train _via_ Pensford. The hamlets of Breach Hill, Moreton and Herons Green were at that time unserved by the postman officially, and if delivered privately by him he charged for them at the rate of an extra penny each. The residents in those outlying districts who did not get their letters delivered in that way, and who did not call for them at the Chew Stoke Post Office, usually obtained them--two, three, or four days old--from the postman on Sundays, who stationed himself at the church door to oblige such wors.h.i.+ppers. Some of the older country postmen say that in by-gone days the poor people, unable to read themselves, considered it part of a postman's duty to read their letters for them, and they looked for sympathy from the postmen in case of receipt of bad news. The Chew Stoke postman had a walk, in and out, of over twenty miles, and had to carry whatever load there was for the route. The pay attached to the post was small. This was in the good (?) days of not so long ago, but the postman who then had to take the journey is by no means anxious for a return to them, for now he receives double the amount of pay then allowed. He was out from five o'clock in the morning till seven or eight o'clock at night; but now he performs his eight hours' duty straight off, and has, therefore, more time at home for his private purposes.
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