WORLD'S WORST HANDWRITING

Dunstan Times, 2 November 1936, Page 7

WORLD'S WORST HANDWRITING

LONDON G.P.O.'S BATTLE OF WITS Two men working in a room at the General Post Office are daily matching their wits and their intuition against the world’s worst handwriting and the vaguest of superscriptions (says a writer in the ‘Observer’). Every day the sorters of the foreign mail bags, incoming and outgoing, are unable to understand some of the addresses. These are sot aside for these two men to tackle in their own peculiar way.

Pride of conquest, a general knowledge of many languages, a keen sense of the improbable, a useful working library, constant contact with Lloyd’s. Consuls, and the film offices, together with a gift for “ getting into the mind of the letter writer,” enables these two super-sorters not merely to retain their sanity, but positively to enjoy the daily round. CHINESE PUZZLE.

“ Chinese puzzles there are in plenty, and puzzles from Japan, India, and most countries of the world, while the polyglot populations of New York and other American cities provide a diverse and never-ending set of problems.

I was handed a pile of problems by one of the super-sorters, and invited to assist. Possibly, with one exception, every envelope was “double Dutch ” to the untutored eye, and the one superscription in which there was a glimmer of daylight bore for the town of destination the strange device: Schlteiihammggos. It conveyed little to me, but the super-sorter grinned and said: “ Obviously, this is a letter for Cheltenham, Glos. Now. try this one.”

This one appeared to have as a superscription five lines of indifferent shorthand. “It comes from India, and it might be a variation of Hindustani or Bengalese, or, possibly, some dialect we have not yet encountered. This will require a little time, and if we are beaten we must simply send it back to Bombay marked ‘ Address insufficient,’ or something like that. “ Actually we have to return only a very small percentage of the hundreds of queries we deal with every week. At present we are having a very busy time, for nearly every mail from the United States contains from 80 to 150 ‘ doubtful cases.’ ”

An official, commenting on the work of these super-sorters, ascribed its excellent results to a mingling of guess work, wit, and intuition. WORLD’S CLEARING HOUSE.

“ Lascars on British ships,” he said, “ in all parts of the world, and their families, set a high proportion of problems. So does that inveterate correspondent, the West African native, who is constantly writing to England for free samples of this and that, and invoking blessings on the head of his benefactor.

“ We trace many letters to ships, and here we have the excellent assistance of Lloyd’s, London has come to be regarded as the letter clearing house of the world, and, as a result, much of the correspondence dealt with should not really come here at all. “ The day’s problems are always cleared up; to allow them to accumnredate would he disastrous. Sometimes we are beaten by the of China and Japan, but the proportion we are unable to clear is remarkably small, and we trouble the Return Letter Department as little as possible.” The easiest part of the task is the “ fan mail.” When letters arrive for “ Lloyd George, England,” “ Alex. James,” “ George Arliss,” “ George Robey,” and “Tauber,” little trouble is experienced. But when the inevitable letter arrives for one of the 200,000 odd “ William Browns,” it sipiply has to go back marked “ Address insufficient.”