"DEAD" LETTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 229, 27 September 1937, Page 5

"DEAD" LETTERS.

SMALL PROPORTION.

POST OFFICE BARGAINS. SPECULATIVE PURCHASES. A number of Wellingtonians recently experienced the thrill of making speculative purchases of packets collected by the dead letter section of the General Post Office. When compared with the enormius postal business of the Department, the auction catalogue of less than 100 lots suggests that Xew Zealanders are not particularly careless in their methods, although the large number of handkerchiefs available indicates a rather -widespread tendency to post them as pleasant reminders of friendship with an insufficient address and no indication of the sender except that of a Christian name.

The result is -that neither the Bender nor the intended recipient can be traced and the article ends in an auction room. The list included a few cameras and a small amount of jewellery, the latter being kept for ten years before the Post Office gives up all hope of its bein~ claimed.

A remarkable feature of the work of the dead letter office is the maintenance year after year of approximately Kisame totals of letters returned to the senders in New Zealand. They nearlv : always approach 400,000 per annuni, while letters destroyed because thev I could not be delivered and the senders were unknown keep up an annual average of 23,000. It scarcely varies by a thousand in any \ear.

The dead letter office achieves its best results i.i finding the owners of correspondence which has temporarily gone astray, and it is a tribute to its efficiency as well a* to the care of tho average letter writer that the pwptftion of letters undelivered, oom Ps*J with the millions which »' w *y" gj. their destination, is txp&aatA -?* -'fcr- •anti