The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

A postal superintendent draws on long service and official records to survey the development, organisation, and everyday work of the postal system. The book outlines conveyance methods from old roads, postboys, and mail coaches to sea packets and travelling sorting vans, and explains circulation, sorting, telegraph connections, savings services, and administrative procedures. It collects anecdotes and reports about shipwrecked mails, robberies, lost letters, strange addresses, abuses of franking, telegraphic blunders, singular coincidences, odd enquiries, and claims against the service, and closes with sketches of postmasters and instances of red tape, blending practical description with curious and amusing incidents.