Travelling Post Office

1838 · Travelling Post Office · Work 151 of 1,871

Travelling Post Office, 1838, Travelling Post Office

A travelling post office carriage on the Grand Junction Railway, clerks sorting letters into pigeonholes while the lineside exchange apparatus swings a suspended mail pouch into the net on the coach side.

What it was used for
A converted horse box with sorting frames temporarily fitted, which according to The Postal Museum ran on the Grand Junction Railway between Birmingham and Liverpool from 20 January 1838. It was attached to the seven o'clock train out of Birmingham, took three and a half hours and returned in the afternoon; the connections at Birmingham were the London night mails, still drawn by horses. Per the TPO & Seapost Society, Frederick Karstadt, Edward Ellis and Henry Mellersh were the first clerks to sort in the moving carriage. Inside, a sorting bench ran half the length of one side, with the net opposite and pigeonholes almost to the roof. Seating was first supplied only in 1859.
What was new
The mail stopped being cargo: sorting moved out of the building and into the vehicle, so the letter arrived already sorted and the step dropped out of the end-to-end time. The bag-exchange apparatus later removed the stop as well. The Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act received royal assent on 14 August 1838, seven months after the trial - so it did not launch the trial but generalised it, obliging railway companies, when the Postmaster General required it, to provide a separate carriage fitted up for sorting as he directed (s. 3; remuneration under s. 6). Who owns the bag catcher is disputed: Nathaniel Worsdell held a patent, the Post Office built its own version to John Ramsey's design (trials in 1838), and John Dicker's modification came in in 1848 or 1852. Grace's Guide states that Worsdell asked £3,500, then £1,500, that the Post Office version was a clear infringement, and that as a Quaker he would not sue and never received compensation. Ramsey was made Inspector-General.

Further reading