REGISTRATION OF LETTERS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12488, 15 March 1909, Page 4

REGISTRATION OF LETTERS.

The Postal Department gives the following advice: — • ' .

!.'■ The Post Office, by means of a conspicuous^ notice placed over every post-ing-box ia the Dominion, cautions the public against sending money aild valuable articles in unregistered letters. Notwithstanding this warning, money continues to be sent by post in unregistered letters in the most careless manner. It will hardly be credited by people who exercise ordinary prudence in such matters that it is a common tiling to find in the post office letters crammed full of bank notes, very often in the flimsiest of covers. Frequently the contents protrude from the envelopes, or are found loose in the mail-bags, having burst their envelopes, and as frequently letters filled with notes are as' carelessly thrown loose in the .railway- vans for the guard to deliver with the mails. Many other cases could be instanced of carelessness on the .part 'of the public in* sending/money by post. It often happens that letters containing money are alleged to be lost in the post office, and it has' been generally proved that either such letters, were not posted, or were mislaid or lost after due delivery. When an unregistered money-letter, alleged to have been sent by post, is reported missing it may happen that suspicion is. cast on every one conecrned, viz., on the person supposed to have posted the letter, the officers Of the post office through whose hands the letter would pass, and the person who would in ordinary course receive the letter from the post office either from a street-door letter-box or "a private letter-box, over the post office counter, or from the hands of a lettercarrier. No record is kept of iinregistered letters, and persons who post such letters containing money expose to temptation every one through" whoso hands lihey may. past, and in event of non-delivery, suspicion is cast on many innocent, persons. The public are again urgently requested to register jill letters containing money or valuables intended to be sent by. post. Letters can be registered at every post office in the Dominion, and the fee for sucn registration is only twopence. Receipts are , given for registered letters. The letters are traced from hand to hand, and a receipt obtained on delivery therefore it is very rarely that a registered letter is lost.