These days, more people send emails than letters. They use the telephone more than they send telegrams. And yet, in this day and age of frantic internet buying, with sites like eBay and Gumtree, and the countless other online businesses offering all kinds of goodies with which to suck the money out of our wallets, mail delivery is just as important now as it has ever been before.

Postal systems have been around since the dawn of writing, and to cover the development of a mail-delivery system would take an entire book…which I’m not going to write. Instead, this posting will look at the history of the various aspects which make up the modern postal system.

Why is it called a “Postal System”?

We all get mail. We all send, deliver and receive mail. But people also tend to call it ‘post’. There’s the Royal Mail in England, Australia Post in Australia, the United States Postal Service in the U.S.A. Why does it switch between ‘mail’ and ‘post’?

‘Mail’ is the cargo which a postal system transports and delivers. Letters, postcards, parcels, packets, boxes, crates and so-forth. The system which delivers this cargo is the ‘postal system’. But why is it called a postal system?

The very word comes from the earliest days of mail delivery. Back in the 1500s, when Henry VIII developed the Royal Mail in England, mail-couriers or despatch-riders literally rode, on horseback, between mail-posts, set into the roadside from town to town. To send something by the postal service was to literally meet the post-rider…at the post, the wooden stake in the road…and give him your letter which you wanted to have delivered. These days, we might be familiar with the position of “Postmaster General“. This came from the original Tudor office of ‘Master of the Posts’, literally the man who was in charge of ensuring that the post-officers remained…at their posts!…and delivered mail in a safe and efficient manner.

Mail Delivery

Ever since the first mail-services were created, delivery was extremely slow for an extremely long time. A letter posted in London could take days to reach Edinburgh, or Paris, or Berlin. A letter posted in New York could take weeks to reach San Francisco. And a letter written on one side of the world to be sent to the other, could take months to get there, often relying on trade or naval ships to transport it in their cargo-holds, if they happened to be going in that particular direction.

One of the first attempts at prioritising the delivery of mail was made in the 1700s. For a roughly seventy-year period between the early 1780s until the late 1850s, the British Royal Mail relied on a fleet of mail coaches to speed deliveries of mail throughout the United Kingdom.

Mail delivery had previously been very slow, and dangerous! Post-riders transported not just mail, but also parcels and packages, which might contain valuable or expensive items. It wasn’t uncommon for lone post-riders to be set upon by highwaymen who would relieve them of their cargoes, steal their valuables and even kill them!

The coordinated system of mail-coaches changed this. Not only was delivering mail by coach relatively faster, but also safer. The mail-coach always had at least four men riding on it: A driver, his assistant, and two armed post-guards, who rode on the back running-board. This way, anyone attempting to rob the coach would have to deal with four armed men, first!

An actual British mail-coach from the early 1800s. This one ran the route between London and York. Note the huge storage-trunks over the axles for carrying mail

The mail coach was also used as a sort of long-haul public transport system. Passengers could pay a fee, and ride along inside the mail-coach during its journeys, to get to their destinations much faster than what they might ordinarily. Also, since the mail-coach was working for the Royal Mail, a government agency, it was illegal for anyone to stop a coach. Toll-men, highwaymen, nobody could halt a mail-coach, and they didn’t stop for anything less than a broken axle!

Steam-Powered mail took over from horse-drawn mail in the 1850s. With the improvement and expansion of railway networks around the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada and America, mail-coach services were eventually phased out when the postal-services realised that these newfangled wood- (later, coal-) fired, steam-powered locomotive engines could speed mail to every part of a given country. Soon, post-offices and railway stations merged, so that post could be transported by rail and steam as far and as fast as was necessary and possible.

Special mail-trains were used in most cases, and their only task was the delivery of mail. To save time, letters and parcels were often sorted en-route by the mail-handlers, so that when the train reached its next drop-off point, or station, the necessary mail-sacks could just be dumped off on the platform, without time wasted in needless waiting and sorting.

To save even MORE time and to further improve the efficiency of mail-delivery, rail-mail was collected and dropped off even when the train was on the move! Specially-designed mail-cranes were built next to major railroad-routes:

Different types of mail-cranes or mail-hooks were used. Some simply held up sacks of outgoing mail for the train to snatch off it as it rocketed past. More complex ones would collect incoming mail, and send off outgoing mail at the same time.

As sacks of mail were prepared onboard trains, they were hung on hooks outside the mail-carriage. At the same time, sacks of mail waiting to be picked up were hung onto the arm of the mail-crane. As the train whizzed past the crane, the crane-arm whipped the sorted mail-sack off the side of the train. At the same time, the arm swung around, and a second hook or arm on the railroad carriage yanked the outgoing mail-sack off the crane, throwing it into the mail-carriage! Later on, the local postman would show up and pick up the dropped-off mail, and possibly hang another sack of outgoing mail onto the crane, to be collected by the next train that came hurtling by.

This silent film from 1903 shows a mail-crane in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lVSC4jt2R8

Steam-power also changed the nature of international mail-delivery. With faster, steam-powered ocean-ships, mail delivery was cut from months to weeks, or even days! In the United Kingdom, ships with the prefix “R.M.S.” (“Royal Mail Ship/Steamer”) were officially licensed to transport shipments of British mail. As on trains, mail-clerks onboard ships would sort the mail en-route to their port of destination.

With all these innovations, it’s not surprising that the Victorians were the ones who had among the most efficient postal systems in the world. Up to twelve deliveries a day! No worries about not getting that contest-entry form in on time, huh?

In the interwar period of the 1920s and 30s, the first experiments were made in air-delivered mail. Not having to worry about signals and tracks and waves and oceans, an airplane could fly mail from city to city, dropping it by parachute, and then landing to pick up more mail to speed onto its next destination.

Envelopes

For much of history, whenever you posted a letter, not only did you have to write it by hand, you also had to produce your own envelopes by hand! Most people would fold their letters into envelope-shaped forms, write out their letter onto it, and then simply fold the letter up and sealed it with wax, so that the letter and envelope were one and the same, which saved time.

It wasn’t until the invention of the first purpose-made envelope-folding machine in 1845, that envelopes could be purchased separately from stationer’s shops.

The classic envelope was cut and folded so that when it was assembled, it created a neat rectangular or square shape:

But have you ever wondered why envelopes have four, triangular flaps meeting in the middle?

Although you could glue the flaps down with regular paper adhesive, envelopes were originally folded and set in this manner so that a single wax seal, placed in the center of the envelope, was all that was needed to hold the entire packet neatly closed.

Most of us don’t seal our envelopes anymore, and generally rely on the paper glue that comes with the envelope, to do that for us, or we simply lick the glue to moisten it and then smash the thing shut, but nevertheless, the triangular, X-form on the back of envelopes has remained to the present day.

Stamps

It used to be that when letters were sent by post, it was the duty of the recipient to pay for the letter’s delivery. This was seen as inefficient, difficult to enforce, and frankly – rude. Why should YOU have to pay for a letter which you might not have been expecting, or which you wouldn’t want to receive, anyway?

This widespread dissatisfaction with the payment of mail-delivery charges led to widespread corruption, abuse, frustration and distrust of the postal system. To combat these issues, and to ensure payment for poastage, the introduction of the postage-stamp was made in England in the 1840s. With the new ‘Penny Black’, the first-ever postage-stamp, the sender purchased the stamp along with his envelopes, and pre-paid for the delivery, which cost…one penny!

With payment taken care of before the letter was even picked up by the mailman, there were far fewer complaints from customers about who had to pay for postage, how much and when.

Mail Boxes

With their twelve-a-day system, you can bet that it was the Victorians who invented the concept of the mail-box! There would be no other way to organise the millions of letters, envelopes, cards and parcels that sped around the U.K. at the time!

Mail-slots for incoming mail came about in the 18th century in Paris, but it wasn’t until the 1800s in Britain that the idea of a mail-slot, or a mailbox for each residence or business really took off. As part of the reforms of the postal-service (which also saw the introduction of the penny-post), Britons were encouraged to have a mail-drop point somewhere on their residence for the convenience of themselves, and the postman! In more built-up areas, a simple letter-slot, sometimes with a basket hanging on the side of the door, was sufficient. In more suburban parts of town, actual kerbside mail-boxes were installed.

Pillar-boxes, or public post-boxes for the depositing of outgoing mail came about in the Georgian era. The oldest one thought to exist dates back to 1809 in England.

In the United States, mail-boxes became popular in the 1880s, when the U.S.P.S. encouraged people to have individual mail-boxes outside their houses for the speedy delivery and pick-up of mail. Instead of large, bulky public boxes that might take up space on the street, residential mailboxes in the ‘States were used for both incoming, and outgoing mail. Raising the red flag on the mailbox told the postman that there was outgoing mail which was to be collected.

The Mail Always Gets Through…

Mail has existed for thousands of years. But the icons of mail-delivery such as stamps, envelopes, mailboxes and dedicated postal-delivery men are all relatively recent developments. Where once mail took weeks and months to get anywhere (and sometimes still does!), technological advancements have meant that in the 21st century, mail is delivered faster and with less hassle. All the more important with the heavy reliance that all of us place on the postal-service, even now in the 21st century.