Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/120

52 To interchange letters between London and Hampstead, through the post, requires, under the most favourable circumstances, about ten hours: a messenger would walk over the ground in a quarter of the time.

A letter which shall arrive in London between six and seven o'clock, by a morning mail, would not be delivered at Hampstead, or any other place equally distant, till eleven or twelve o'clock.

A London tradesman residing at Hampstead, who should, from any cause, be prevented from returning home as usual in the evening, would be unable to prepare his family for his absence by a post letter, unless he wrote before three o'clock; and even after two o'clock a letter would be too late, if put into any district receiving-house.

If two letters were put into the proper district receiving-houses in London, between five and six o'clock in the evening, one addressed to Highgate, the other to Wolverhampton, (which lies 120 miles further along the same road,) the Wolverhampton letter would be delivered first.

In the charges for postage the most unaccountable anomalies exist; e.g.: there is a cross-post from Wolverhampton through Dudley, Stourbridge, and other places. Between Dudley and Stourbridge this post passes through the village of Brierly Hill. The postage of a letter from Wolverhampton to Dudley is 4d.; but from Wolverhampton to Brierly Hill, some miles further on, it is only one penny.

The remedy for the defective arrangements which