WALKING PILLAR-BOXES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 184, 2 May 1929, Page 15

WALKING PILLAR-BOXES

OLD-TIME POSTAL SYSTEM IN LONDON. There must still be some elderly Lon. doners alive, not many, perhaps, who can remember hearing, as children, the ring of the bellman, the perambulating pillarbox, magnificently arrayed in top hat, scarlet swallow-tail coat, and blue trousers, and armed with a bell and letter-bag (writes F. C. P. in the “Star”). He went his rounds in the city and in certain residential quarters nt five in the afternoon; when you heard his bell you rushed out and handed him your letters to pdsf, together with a penny fee for each. In the city he entered the offices and collected the mail. The bellman was invented in 1709 byCharles Povey, who introduced a halfpenny post when Dockraw’s scheme failed. Povey’s scheme failed, too, after a brief life of seven months only, but the office of bellman was continued by the post office. A very useful fellow he was. too, for letters had to be handed in for mailing at receiving houses which closed at preposterously early hours —at 5 p.min the city and at 4 p.m. elsewhere—and he combined in himself the attributes of a late fee box and an ordinary pillar-box, not yet invented. Moreover, there was no extra charge for his services; his fee of a penny was the same as that charged by the receiving houses except on Grand Post Nights, three times a week, when there was no charge. If you were economically minded you had. on ordinary nights, to go up to the Central Office, which was always free. The last bellman went his rounds in 1846 or thereabouts; his services were no longer required when the Central Office determined to remain open until the hour of seven in the evening.