CHAPTER XVII.

RURAL DISTRICT SUB-POSTMASTERS. RURAL POSTMEN. INCIDENTS.

The Bristol postal area is an extensive one, the distance from point to point being thirty miles, with width ranging from five to twelve miles. It is bounded on one side by the river Severn, from a point about five miles below Sharpness to a point close to Portishead; thence the boundary stretches across country to the Mendip Hills, up to Cheddar Cliffs; then from a point four miles north-east of Wells to Newton-St.-Loe, near Bath; across the river Avon, under Lansdown, thence in a line by Pucklechurch, Iron Acton, and Thornbury across to the starting-point on the Severn. The large rural area is for the greater part agricultural in character, but there are collieries and stone quarries in some few districts.

At the Bristol town and rural sub-Post Offices there are 554 assistants of all kinds employed. Many rural sub-postmasters act as postmen; in the main it is a healthy occupation, and proves a very good antidote to sedentary employment, although there are hardships to be borne, as the toil has to be undergone in all weathers--the scorching sun of summer, the pitiless cold of winter--in rain, hail, and snow. In connection With the Early Closing Movement, at some of the outer Post Offices business is suspended at 5.0 on one day in the week--usually Wednesday.

In the suburban and rural districts there are 105 sub-Post Offices, and 78 of them are letter delivery offices, served by an aggregate number of 226 postmen. Of the 78 districts, 42 have two daily deliveries 28 three, and 6 four, with about a corresponding number of collections.

The sorting clerks and telegraphists at head-quarters gain some sort of acquaintance with sub-postmasters through daily communication by mail bag and wire; also in the passage of reports and counter-reports; but occasionally people performing postal work throughout the extensive Bristol district are brought into closer harmony and touch with each other by means of social functions, such as "outings" and Bristol Channel steamer trips, when town and country officials take their pastime in company, and the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses of the Somersetshire portion of the district get acquainted with those of the Gloucestershire side, and all with the head office officials. By these means of friendly intercourse and interchange of kindly feeling, the service is much benefited. As an indication of this exchange of courtesy, the felicitations exchanged by telegram when the first annual trip by steamer to Ilfracombe was taken ran thus:--

"From Postmaster, Bristol.--Pleasant journey to you. Long may Sub-Postmasterly friendship continue."

"From Sub-Postmasters at Ilfracombe.--Telegram received. Thanks for good wishes. Have just drank your good health. Pleasant trip. Regret your absence extremely.--Sub-Postmasters."

The Bristol Post Office has only recently had electric light introduced, but the squire of East Harptree had long before set the good example of progress by having the Post Office in his village illuminated by electricity. In the Bristol area very many villages have their little counterpart of the huge combination shops in London, where the villager is enabled to procure everything that his modest income will allow him to purchase. It is at these village "Whiteleys" that the Post Office is generally to be found, and a surveying officer may soon become well versed in the qualities of bacon, cheese, bread, flour, candles, and get a knowledge of rakes, prongs, and besoms, without much difficulty. In other instances no business except that of Post Office work is carried on.

The picture of the sub-Post Office at Cribbs Causeway, five miles from Bristol, may give our readers who are "in cities pent" an idea of a delightful place for the sale of postage stamps and postal orders and the distribution of letters. This unique Post Office has few houses anywhere near it, but it serves a large, albeit very sparsely populated, area. Some of its interest rests in the fact that it was formerly the half-way inn on the once important highway from Bristol to New Passage, for the ferry over the Severn into South Wales. Some of our elderly readers may probably recollect it as the stopping stage of the coaches which ran prior to the introduction of the railway system. The sub-Post Office, which stands on high ground, is held by two sisters, who went to it as a health resort from a farm in the low-lying Severn marsh. They act as postwomen, and brisk exercise and the early morning dew has brought such roses to their cheeks as would be envied by their Post Office sisters whose fate it is to reside in smoke-begrimed regions.

Although some of the Bristol district villages are situated at a long distance from town and remote from main roads, yet only one of the Post Offices presents the primitive condition of having a thatched roof. None of the rural postmen now avail themselves on their journeys of the services of that faithful creature, the donkey; but the last animal so used was on the road until 1890, when its master, poor Sims, the Congresbury to Shipham postman, shuffled off this mortal coil. Times change, and our manners change with them; so also do our tests for gold coins. At the Wrington Post Office there are brass testing weights, for sovereigns and half-sovereigns, inscribed "Royal Mint, 1843," such as have not been observed by the writer at any other Post Office, either in the Bristol district or in London. A certain sub-postmistress in the district has for many years been in the habit of keeping her sheets of reserve postage stamps in a large Family Bible. Not that she is irreverent--indeed, she is a pious woman,--but, being a lone widow, she has kept them in that manner for safety, as she imagines that no burglar would look for them in such a depository.

A notable man in his day was Edward Biddle, on the Thornbury side of Bristol. Mr. Biddle was sub-postmaster of Rudgeway for over forty years, and occupied the post until his death in 1889, at the ripe age of 91 years, when he was succeeded by his daughter, and she, in turn, was succeeded by his son, William Biddle, who still holds the appointment. Prior to becoming sub-postmaster, Mr. Edward Biddle was "Pike" keeper at Stone, and used to pay L752 per annum for his post. There he had to open his gate to no fewer than twenty mail coaches daily, on their way between Bristol and Gloucester. At Rudgeway he carried on the joint occupation of sub-postmaster and innkeeper, at a tavern where the Post Office business had been conducted for many years before he succeeded to it; but the innkeeping business had in course of time to be given up, under Post Office regulations. Mr. Elstone, of Alveston House, wrote expressing his satisfaction that the Post Office was to be carried on at a private house, and not as previously at a "roadside pothouse," which all the district considered a very improper place. At that time John Blann and other stage carriers drove their unwieldy waggons, drawn by four strong cart-horses at a walking pace, along the Gloucester turnpike road. The waggons were indeed the goods trains of olden times. The present sub-postmaster, the son of Edward Biddle, who has had for many years to use "Shanks's" pony in the delivery of letters, was engaged in olden times in going on horseback down to the Passage to take, in saddlebags, the mails for South Wales and receive them therefrom. As late as 1850, letters from Rudgeway for Bristol were impressed with a stamp thus:--

BRISTOL 4 JA 50. BY POST.

Mr. James Tiley, the village blacksmith of Clutton, now an octogenarian, calls to mind that sixty years ago the letters for Clutton, Temple Cloud, Stowey, Bishop Sutton and adjacent districts were delivered from Old Down, a hamlet on the main coach road from Bath to Wells, distant from Tyburn Turnpike, London, 121 miles. Mr. Tiley has had the luxury of paying 10d. for a letter brought from London by the above means; and as it was dear to him at the time, it is dear to him now in another sense as a reminiscence of the past. Mr. Tiley recalls the sending of letters of the district by waggoners to Bristol or Bath to save the postage, and slyly remarks: "So stupid were the waggoners that as often as not they brought the letters back again, having forgotten to--what Post Office people now term--'properly dispose of them.'" Also that Joseph Tippett, a postman of the olden time, was brutally assaulted on Stowey Hill, and nearly lost his life and his letters. His assailants were discovered and were transported for life. The Old Down postman was timed to reach Temple Cloud Bridge at 12.0, and always blew horn or whistle to let the village schoolmaster know the time of day. During the Bristol riots the arrival of the mail every morning was eagerly awaited by persons far and near, anxious to hear the latest news.

So recently as the year 1867, a postman had to trudge right away from Bristol to the distant village of Chew Stoke, having to breast the steep hill of Dundry and pass through Chew Magna on his way. All the letters and newspapers then delivered at Bishopsworth, Dundry, Chew Magna and Chew Stoke were carried by this man. Now, with the introduction of the parcel post and a cheaper letter post, and consequently increased weight, the morning mail is carried in a mail cart, and that service is supplemented by two or three other despatches to Chew Magna and Chew Stoke by train _via_ Pensford. The hamlets of Breach Hill, Moreton and Herons Green were at that time unserved by the postman officially, and if delivered privately by him he charged for them at the rate of an extra penny each. The residents in those outlying districts who did not get their letters delivered in that way, and who did not call for them at the Chew Stoke Post Office, usually obtained them--two, three, or four days old--from the postman on Sundays, who stationed himself at the church door to oblige such worshippers. Some of the older country postmen say that in by-gone days the poor people, unable to read themselves, considered it part of a postman's duty to read their letters for them, and they looked for sympathy from the postmen in case of receipt of bad news. The Chew Stoke postman had a walk, in and out, of over twenty miles, and had to carry whatever load there was for the route. The pay attached to the post was small. This was in the good (?) days of not so long ago, but the postman who then had to take the journey is by no means anxious for a return to them, for now he receives double the amount of pay then allowed. He was out from five o'clock in the morning till seven or eight o'clock at night; but now he performs his eight hours' duty straight off, and has, therefore, more time at home for his private purposes.

When, about eight years since, there was a deep fall of snow in this district, the West Town postman, who is likewise sub-postmaster, very considerably added to his labours by carrying tea, sugar, medicine, and even bread to the people on the Mendips, who were snowed up and deserted by baker, butcher, grocer, and indeed by everyone except the faithful Queen's messenger. The floods of November, 1894, which proved very disastrous in the West of England, interfered in no small degree with Post Office arrangements in the rural districts around Bristol. In some villages the roads were submerged from three to four feet, and it was impossible for the public to get to the letter boxes, the postmen and postwomen being, perhaps, the greatest sufferers. In order to avoid flooded roads, it was necessary to change routes and make long detours. Many postmen were compelled to wade through the water waist deep, whilst others had to be driven through in horse and cart. The inhabitants and farmers in many places kindly lent their horses and carts for the purpose, and but for these kindnesses the letters would have been delayed for many hours. In spite of all difficulties, the letters were generally delivered without much delay, and only in a few cases had the letters to be held over for any length of time until the waters had subsided.

A tit made her nest in the bottom of a Post Office letter box at Winterbourne, near Bristol, laid her eggs, and notwithstanding that letters were posted in the box and that the box was cleared by the postman everyday, the bird tenaciously held to her nest and brought up five young tits, two of which perished in their attempts to get out of the box by means of the small posting aperture through which their mother had squeezed so frequently, carrying with her all the materials for the nest. The three survivors flew off one day when the door of the box was purposely left open for a time by the obliging postman portrayed in the picture.

That all is not gold that glitters has been recently brought home to three or four of the sub-postmasters in the Bristol district, a "sharper" having presented coins gilded to represent sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and obtained Postal Orders in exchange for them. Through the vigilance of the Bristol police the offender was eventually taken into custody, and, having been sentenced at the Assizes to six months' imprisonment, he had plenty of time to reflect on his offences. A bright, shining new farthing was received at the Bristol head office, sent inadvertently in a remittance from a sub-office as a half-sovereign, and mixed up with coins of that value, only to be detected, however, by the vigilant check clerk. The sub-postmaster who accepted it in error for a coin of more precious metal, and did not discover the mistake even in preparing the remittance, had to bear the loss.

One sub-postmaster, who has now departed this life, was wont to furnish his explanations and reports in rhyme, a course which was tolerated on account of its singularity and of the writer's zeal and known devotion to his duty. The following is an example:--

To the POSTMASTER OF BRISTOL:

"I willingly answer the question Respecting the length of the track From Shirehampton P.O. to Kingsweston House front door, or lodge at the back; But respecting the relative merits Of back door, or door at the front, As delivery door, I aver it's A question I cannot but shunt. To return to the question of distance: Suppose that the birds of the air, Sworn in as Post Office assistants, To Kingsweston would messages bear: As straight through their skiey dominions They flew from front door to front door, The length of the track of their pinions In yards would be 1224. When a featherless biped is bearer, And through the lone woods his path picks, The feet of this weary wayfarer Cover yards quite 1466. Should the wight have a key, there's a second Way thro' the sunk fence's locked gate, And then his poor feet must be reckoned To make yards 1388. As regards the back door, I pass by it; The back lodge itself is much less Than a mile, howsomdever you try it, By Shirehampton Post Office Express. I do not pretend to correctness, To one yard or even a dozen; No need for extreme circumspectness, The margin's too ample to cozen. I'm obliged by your flattering reference, And when you've another dispute on, I shall still be, with all proper deference, Your obedient Servant,--G. NEWTON."

The turnpike gates in the neighbourhood of Bristol were abolished in October, 1867, and the consequence was that the proprietors of the various omnibuses by which day mail bags were conveyed to and from several of the districts around Bristol applied for, and obtained, a money payment in lieu of the tolls, the exemption, from which had formed the sole remuneration for the services performed.

The Bristol mail carts running to the rural districts, by permission of the Post Office, carry for the newspaper proprietors bundles of papers, weighing on an average on ordinary days 40 lbs., and on Saturdays 80 lbs. The enterprise of the Bristol newspaper proprietors in circulating by private means the many thousands of the newspapers which they daily print is evidenced, from the circumstance that they find it necessary to commit to the agency of the Post Office only about 160 copies for distribution, and that chiefly in remote rural districts.

Sub-postmasters in the rural districts of Bristol attain to great ages. The sub-postmaster of Mangotsfield, who had long since passed three-score years and ten, had his cross to bear, having at 60 entirely lost his eyesight. Although blind, and unable to work in consequence, he quaintly appeared in his apron to the end, and said that having worn it for so many years he did not feel happy without it. A daughter acted as his deputy, and mitigated, as far as possible, his hard lot. At his funeral some hundreds of people, representing various religious and other bodies, attended to pay their last tribute of respect to him.

At Bitton, a village midway between Bristol and Bath, there died Sub-postmaster James Brewer, in the 87th year of his age, and in the fifty-seventh year of his Post Office service. It was more pleasant to enter this Post Office and find the old man calmly smoking his churchwarden pipe before the fire, cheery and chatty, than to have such a welcome as that afforded at another office by the exhibition on the Post Office counter of a miniature coffin and artificial wreaths for graves. Another worthy of local Post Office fame has lately passed away in the person of Join Warburton, aged 84, who for thirty years was the sub-postmaster of Henbury, and who for five years was his daughter's adviser after her succession to the appointment. The sub-postmaster of the village of High Littleton lost an arm some fifty years ago, but notwithstanding that affliction he manages with adroitness to sell postage stamps and issue postal orders to the public. This will not be considered a very great feat, considering that he has been for years a crack one-handed shot, and even now, at the age of 70, can bowl over a pheasant or a rabbit quite as readily as many of our sportsmen who have the use of both arms.

Sub-postmistresses of great longevity are also to be found. One dame (Martha Pike), now in her 93rd year, represented the Department until quite recently in the charming little village of Wraxall. When nearly 90 years old she had a three hour letter round every morning up hill and down dale, and she even trudged a mile and a half to fetch a letter and parcel mail from the railway station. The sub-postmistress of Stoke Bishop died at the age of 84; she and her father had held the Post Office in the village for over fifty years. An equally remarkable case was that of Hannah Vowles, the sub-postmistress of Frenchay, who, after performing the active duties of that position in the village of Frenchay for forty-seven years, resigned when within five years of 100 years old. In her youth she lived for some time in the West Indies; but she gave up her employment there in order to return home to support her mother, who was 90 years of age when she died. Mrs. Hannah was succeeded in the office of sub-postmistress by Miss Kate Vowdes, a relation, who had already been postwoman in the same district forty-two years!

Hannah Brewer is one of the Bristol Post Office worthies. Her father was the sub-postmaster of the village of Bitton alluded to herein. Hannah commenced to deliver letters in the hamlets and at the farmhouses near Bitton when a mere child, and continued to do so during all the years our gracious Sovereign has sat on the throne. Recently, however, she had to give up the work, as, having attained the advanced age of 72 years and walked her quarter of a million of miles, she felt that she ought to take life more easily than hitherto. In distance her round was eleven miles daily, and the route was a very trying one on account of the steep hills she had to traverse, and of great exposure to the sun in summer, and to the wind, frost, and snow in winter. It may be interesting to record that Hannah Brewer, although she had to serve a district sparsely populated, was never robbed, stopped, nor molested in any way. She was the recipient of the first official waterproof clothing issued to postwomen in England, and in her picture she is represented as wearing it. She only occasionally made visits even to places so near as Bath or Bristol, and was, as a rule, a stay at home.

She was not a great reader of the newspapers, but persons on her round looked to her as an oracle, and derived information from her as to passing events. Hannah naively says that, as regards Christmas boxes, she fared very well in olden times, but they were not so plentiful in her later years. Hannah, through her devotion to her father when he was alive, and through her assiduous attention to her duties as a humble servant of the Crown, had gained the respect of all those who knew her, both in her native village and on the long round she daily had to traverse. As she served the Post Office throughout her long life (her memory carrying her back to the days when the letters reached Bitton by mail coach and a "single" letter from London cost 10d.), it is gratifying that in her old age, when unable to continue to do her daily round, the Lords of the Treasury, under her exceptional circumstances, granted her half-pay pension, a sum which, with her savings, will serve to maintain her until the end of her days. The writer has had few more pleasurable duties than that which he undertook of presenting Hannah, in her neat and trim cottage, with her first pension warrant.

At the celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in the village, the opportunity was taken, in the midst of the festivities, to make a presentation of an elegant marble clock and purse to Miss Brewer. The inscription ran: "Presented during Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee, together with a purse of money, by the inhabitants of the postal district of Bitton, Gloucestershire, to Miss Hannah Brewer, postwoman, upon her retirement, having served this office from the commencement of Queen Victoria's reign."

Even Post Office surveyors are sometimes the subject of little jokes on the part of their subordinates. An assistant surveyor, when testing a rural postman's walk, said that if he had arranged the round originally, he should have taken a shortcut across the fields to a certain little hamlet so as to serve it before instead of after a more distant place, when the postman drily said that he should not have done anything of the kind, as there was a rhine about 18 ft. wide and very deep, which could not well be got over or through, and, turning to the surveyor, he remarked: "Evidently you never were a postman." The humour of this incident lies in the fact that the surveyors have always been drawn from the elite of the Service. A certain imperious surveyor visited a sub-office for the purpose of reprimanding the sub-postmaster for some delinquency, and after soundly rating the individual he addressed, and refusing to hear a single word in explanation, he, when his harangue was over, was coolly informed that he had made a slight mistake, as the circumstance referred to another sub-office altogether.

On a certain occasion recently, on entering a Post Office the writer heard proceeding from a back room a voice, recognisable as that of the sub-postmaster, shouting out a greeting in his (the writer's) Christian name: "Come in, Robert." Well, the sub-postmaster thought he saw through the partly-curtained glass in the door a friend of that name, and meant no disrespect to his surveyor-postmaster.

On calling at another little Post Office on a Saturday, the aged sub-postmistress was washing her stone floor--down on her knees in business-like attitude. Without looking up, her greeting to the writer was: "Halloa! I thought you had been to Jericho. You have not been to see me for such a long time!" That salutation was rather embarrassing; but on getting to the perpendicular the old lady was the confused party, as she had thought her visitor was a local resident who occasionally looked in to have a cheery word with her.

It would seem that postal improvements in the Bristol district have been carried almost as far as is needful; indeed, in one district, not seven miles from the city, contemplated improvements whereby letters would be delivered an hour earlier in the morning and might be posted two hours later at night, and a day mail in and out be afforded, were declined by the parish authorities in council and by memorial from the villagers generally. In this rural hollow the people are very clannish, and rather than let their postwoman suffer a loss of two shillings a week, which the change involved, they were content to forego improved postal facilities, and were not greatly stirred by the "lasinesse of posts" as, according to history, was King James of old.

While Bristol is ever expanding and while splendid buildings are being erected, there are not wanting places within a short distance of the ancient city where there are signs of decadence, as indicated by houses unoccupied and cottages in ruins, and by shrinkage in the number of letters. At Stanton Drew, where some thirty large stones alone remain to mark a site where there probably stood a splendid Druidical Temple, the postal arrangements a few years since were not in a satisfactory condition. Not unlike the story which has recently been going the round of the newspapers, that a sub-postmaster of an Oxfordshire village fixed this notice up: "Have gone fishing. Will be back in time to sell stamps," the sub-postmistress of this Somersetshire hamlet went away for days without putting up any notice whatever, and left her son to supply the inhabitants with postage stamps when he got home in the evening from his work as an agricultural labourer. Still, people did not complain, so that they may be regarded as accessories to the sub-postmistress's delinquencies. There was, however, a postal super-session in that village!

There is still in the rural service a postman who labours under the disabilities of having only one arm and of being unable to read or write. He has not a very extensive delivery, and so his pockets are made to do duty in the place of the faculty of reading. The left breast pocket indicates that letters placed in it are for Cliff Farm, those in the right breast pocket for Rush Hill Farm, several other pockets serving in like manner.

From very old official books sent into store on the change of holders of sub-offices, it is noticeable that the writing of fifty years ago was much superior to that of the present day, indicating that sub-postmasters of olden time either took more interest in caligraphy than their successors, or possibly had more leisure in which to make the necessary entries than is afforded in the present period of high pressure.

'Tis strange that it was so, as at the time the steel pen had not ousted the quill. Even so short a time as forty years since a new intrant to the Post Office, hailing from the Emerald Isle, had, like all other new-comers, to enter his name and address in the Order Book on his first introduction to St. Martin's-le-Grand. A steel pen was handed to him, with which he dallied for a time, and when asked why he did not proceed, said: "Sure, I was waiting for a feather."

The institution for the care of consumption started in this country, and known as Nordrach-upon-Mendip, is in the Bristol postal district at one of its most distant points on the range of the Mendip Hills, at an altitude of 850 feet above sea level. It has already played an important part as regards the Bristol Post Office, inasmuch as a consumptive telegraph clerk has benefited considerably from the new treatment, and has indeed left the institution as cured. It is not generally known that until recently there existed a small Convalescent Home on the Mendips, but "Cosy Corner," founded and maintained by Sir Edward Hill, K.C.B., stood there as such, and it served a good part as regards a postal servant. A postman employed at the Bristol railway station as mail porter, who had suffered from a serious attack of typhoid fever, and who had been verily at death's door, passed several weeks at this rural retreat, and derived such benefit from the kind treatment he received and from the bracing air of the district that he quite recovered from his ailment and is now in robust health. "Cosy Corner" has now been affiliated to Nordrach-upon-Mendip.

The rule of the Service is that coins, postage stamps, and other articles of value picked up in a sorting office are regarded as treasure trove and have to be handed over to the authorities for disposal; but a letter carrier's round can hardly be regarded in the light of a Post Office, and so a postman of the Thornbury district who at Aust Cliff, picked up a well-preserved bronze coin with the image and superscription of Claudius Caesar (A.D. 41-54) did not consider himself called upon to give it up to the sub-postmaster, but disposed of it for the sum of 15s. 6d. The purchaser presented it to the Leicester Museum.

Tradition hath it that Miss Hannah More, the celebrated authoress and philanthropist, when residing (1770) at Wrington, near Bristol, in the churchyard of which place her remains now repose, made an arrangement with the postman of the period whereby on passing along the road near her residence he was to signal to her when any event of importance had occurred. Her sitting and bedroom windows commanded a view of the walk near which the postman had to pass, so that she could see him coming, and she always hurried down to the wicket-gate in readiness to meet him when he put up his flag. A son of the postman, now alive, remembers well that his father told him that he had given the signal on the death of Queen, Caroline. It was outside the postman's function, to wave the red flag with which Mistress Hannah, had provided him, but Post Office matters were not carried on so strictly in those days as under the present regime. The Wrington postman obtained the news about important passing events from the mail-man who rode through the village on his way from Bristol to Axbridge. George Vowles, who died twenty-six years ago, at the ripe age of 88 years, was the mail-man who conveyed to the villages on his way the news of the battle of Waterloo, brought down from London by the mail coach, which had been decorated with laurels and flowers in honour of the great event.