CHAPTER XVI.

TELEGRAPHIC BLUNDERS.

Although the work of sending and receiving telegraphic messages may be regarded in a general way as partaking largely of a merely mechanical nature, yet it is work to which the operator who is to achieve credit in his sphere must bring much tact, good sense, intelligence, a knowledge of the world, and a considerable amount of patience. Not only are the terms in which telegrams are frequently written so far devoid of context in themselves, owing to the curt way in which they are worded, as to render the sense of little a.s.sistance in estimating the correctness of a message received, but the letters of the telegraphic alphabet, being nothing more than little groups of dots and dashes variously arranged, are extremely susceptible of mutilation, owing to any lack of exact s.p.a.cing on the part of the sending operator. Nor does the liability to error lie only in these directions. The dots and dashes frequently fail or run together, owing either to feeble signals, contact of the wires with one another, with trees, or other objects, or to the instruments not being in perfect adjustment. A grain of grit or of dust getting between the points of contact in a delicate instrument will sometimes do much mischief in the way indicated. There is liability to mistakes, too, in consequence of the handwriting of the senders, or of the operators at a transmitting point where messages have to be again taken down, not being very plain. Yet over and above these tendencies to error, there is the fallibility of human nature, which will sometimes lead a person to write "no" where "yes" is intended, or "black" where "white" is meant; and of such mistakes probably no explanation can be given. So that the work of a telegraphist is beset with pitfalls, and he requires all his wits and a fair share of intelligence to keep him right in his work. It may further be remarked that many errors in telegrams, which might be supposed by the public to be gross or inexcusable, have occurred in the most simple way, or have been shown to be due to failures of a very trifling kind.

The following are ill.u.s.trations of such mistakes:--

A pleasure-party, telegraphing to some friends, stated that they had "arrived all right," but the message was rendered, "We have arrived all tight." The words "right" and "tight" in the Morse code are as follows:--

r i g h t - - - - t i g h t - - - -

In another case, a poor person, desiring to state that her daughter was ill, wrote in her message, "Mary is bad." This was rendered, "Mary is dead," the sense being changed by a slight imperfection of s.p.a.cing, thus--

d e a d - - -

instead of--

b a d - - -

In a third case, owing to failing signals, possibly from so simple a cause as the intermittent contact of the wire with a wet branch of a tree, or a particle of grit or dust finding its way between the points of the instrument, the import of the message was altogether changed.

Thus, "Alfred doing well, enjoyed egg to-day," was received, "Alfred dying, enjoyed GG to-day."

A gentleman telegraphed from London to his brother in the country to send a hack to meet him at the station; but when the gentleman arrived at the station he found a _sack_ waiting for him. A firm in London telegraphed, "_Send rails ten foot lengths_;" but the message was delivered, "_Send rails in foot lengths_."

A person telegraphed to a friend to "take two stalls at the Haymarket,"

but the message conveyed directions to secure "two stables at the Haymarket." In another telegram, the intimation, "mother is no worse,"

was changed to "mother is no more." Again, "You will be glad to hear that your sister has accepted an engagement with your father's approval," was rendered, "that your sister has accepted an engagement with your father's apostle." In another case a plain business message, thus--"Come to me as early as you can, that we may arrange Wednesday,"

was given a matrimonial turn by being delivered as, "that we may arrange wedding." The next case is one in which a hungry man would doubtless be made an angry man in consequence of the mistake which occurred. His message, which was written thus,--"Shall arrive by train to-morrow _morning_; provide a good _supply_ of bread, b.u.t.ter, eggs, milk, and potatoes,"--was delivered as "provide a good _supper_ of bread," &c. In another instance the notice that "Mr ---- will come to-night with me at 7 to tea," was rendered, "Mr ---- will come to-night with me, get 7 to tea;" the only argument in favour of the mistake being "the more the merrier." Then, on another occasion, a telegram sent by a person in the country to "Madame ----, Costumier," at an address in London, conveying an order for a fancy dress, was presented to the maker of costumes as "Madame ----, Costermonger." In a telegram directed to "----, M.P., House of Commons," the address somehow got changed to "----, M.P., House of Correction;" but the member not being found there, the clerks at the delivering office suggested that it should be tried at the "House of Detention,"--a not unlikely place for successful delivery of such a message as things were at the time.

It has been left to America to produce a mistake in telegraphing which, while it is very amusing, could not result in hurt or disappointment to any one. Here it is, just as received from the other side of the "ferry":--

A St Louis merchant, while in New York, received a telegram notifying that his wife was ill. He sent a message to his family doctor asking the nature of the sickness, and if there was any danger, and promptly received the answer "_No danger; your wife has had a child; if we can keep her from having another to-night she will do well._" The mystification of the agitated husband was not removed until a second inquiry revealed the fact that his indisposed lady had had a _chill_.

CHAPTER XVII.

HOW LETTERS ARE LOST.

In dealing with the vast numbers of letters and other post articles which daily flow through the capacious veins of the British Post-office, the officials of the department come to learn many strange things connected with the wanderings of letters from their proper courses; they learn much in regard to the blunders made by the senders of letters in writing their addresses, and of the supreme folly frequently shown by individuals in transmitting valuables in carelessly-made-up packets; and this experience not only has the effect of causing complaints made by the public to be sometimes met by doubts and misgivings on the part of the Post-office, but is of great use in tracing home the blame to the right quarter, which is found to be, not infrequently, where the complainer had least reason to suspect it. The following facts will probably establish what is here advanced, besides proving of interest to the reader.

It is quite a common occurrence for letters--especially letters of a small size--which are dropped into a letter-box, to slip inside newspapers or book-packets, and to be carried, not only out of their proper course, but to places abroad, thus getting into the hands of the wrong persons. Such letters are returned from time to time from every quarter of the globe, but what proportion of those which go astray are duly returned it is impossible to say; for there are persons who, on receiving letters in this way not intended for them, proceed to open the envelopes through sheer curiosity, and having thus violated the letters, do not hesitate to destroy them. Others again, through dishonest motives, open letters of this cla.s.s in the hope of gain. But there are others who, through no such interest, but merely from the want of a neighbourly spirit, refuse to take any trouble to put an errant letter in its proper course. This spirit was displayed in the case of a letter which had been misdelivered by the postman at a given address on the first floor of a tenement (it being intended for a person occupying the ground floor), the person who had received it stating, when questioned, that he had torn up the letter because he would not be troubled to send it downstairs! Letters are sometimes, too, carried away to wrong addresses by sticking to the backs of other letters.

Again, through a great want of sense, or perhaps a redundancy of stupidity, letters are deposited occasionally in the most extraordinary places, in the idea that they are being posted. A servant-girl being sent out to post a letter, drops it into the letter-box of an empty shop, where it is found when an intending tenant goes to look at the premises. In a town in the north of Scotland a person was observed to deposit a letter in a disused street hydrant, and on the cover of the box being removed, three other letters were found, the senders of which had similarly mistaken the water-pillar for a letter-box. The letters had been pa.s.sed into the box through the s.p.a.ce formerly occupied by the tap-lever. A somewhat similarly absurd thing happened some time ago in Liverpool, where two letters were observed to have been forced behind the plate indicating the hours of collection on a pillar letter-box--the person who had placed them there no doubt thinking he was doing the correct thing.

It must be that many individuals entertain the greatest confidence in the servants of the Post-office, or they would not send money and valuables as they do. They also, perhaps, regard the Department as a fit subject on which to perpetrate petty frauds, by sending things of intrinsic value enclosed in books and newspapers. Instances of this kind are frequent.

Within the folds of a newspaper addressed to a person in Ireland were found two sovereigns, yet there was no writing to show who the sender was.

A brown-paper parcel, merely tied with string, unsealed, and not even registered, was found to contain six sovereigns, one half-crown, two sixpences, and three halfpenny-pieces, wrapped up in small articles of ladies' dress.

In the chief office in London, two gold watches were found inside an unregistered book-packet addressed to New Zealand, the middle portions of the leaves having been cut out so as to admit of the watches being concealed within. On another occasion, but in a Scotch post-office, a packet containing a book bound in morocco, was on examination discovered to have the inner portion of the leaves hollowed out, while still retaining the appearance of an ordinary book, and inside this hollow were found secreted a gold watch and a silver locket. At another time, a 20 Bank of England note was observed pinned to one of the pages of a book addressed to the initials of a lady at a receiving-house in the London Metropolitan District.

A packet done up in a piece of brown paper, unsealed, but tied with string, was found to contain a small quant.i.ty of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, a collar-box with a few paper-collars, and inside the box were two 1 notes and 10s.

in silver. A halfpenny wrapper was used to serve as a covering for the transmission of a letter, a bill of sale, and four 5 Bank of England notes. In a newspaper which reached the Dead-letter Office were found four sovereigns, and in another a gold locket. A packet carelessly rolled up was seen to contain a sovereign, two half-sovereigns, and a savings-bank book. In several instances coins have been found imbedded in cake and pieces of toast; and on one occasion gold coins of the value of 1, 10s. were discovered in a large seal at the back of a letter, the gold pieces having come to light through the wax getting slightly chipped. But the most flattering act of confidence in the probity of the Post-office fell to be performed by a person at Leeds, who, desiring to send a remittance to a friend, folded a five-pound note in two, wrote the address on the back of it, and, without cover or registration, consigned it to the letter-box. Petty frauds are committed on the Post-office to a large extent by the senders of newspapers, who infringe the rules by enclosing all sorts of things between the leaves--such as cigars and tobacco, collars, sea-weed, ferns and flowers, gloves, handkerchiefs, music, patterns, sermons, stockings, postage-stamps, and so on. People in the United States and Canada are much given to these practices, as shown by the fact that in one-half of the year 1874, more than 14,000 newspapers were detected with such articles secreted in them.

Occasionally letters of great value are very carelessly treated after delivery, through misconception as to what they really are. A person alleging that a registered letter containing a number of Suez Ca.n.a.l coupons had not reached him, the Post-office was able to prove its delivery; and on search being then made in the premises of the addressee, the coupons were found in the waste-paper basket, where they had been thrown under the idea that they were circulars. In another instance a registered letter, containing Turkish bonds with coupons payable to bearer, was misdirected to and delivered at an address in the west end of London, though it was really intended for a firm in the city. The value of the enclosures was more than 4000. When inquiry came to be made at the place of delivery, it was found that the bonds had been mistaken for foreign lottery-tickets of no value, and were put aside for the children of the family to play with.

Cases come to light, too, involving a history--or at least suggesting a history without affording particulars--or leaving us entirely in the dark as to the circ.u.mstances of the matter. Thus, two packets which had been addressed to Australia, and had been forwarded thither, were returned to England with the mark upon them, "unclaimed." On being opened, one of them was found to contain 100 sovereigns, and the other 50 sovereigns; yet there was no communication whatever in either to show who had sent them. It was supposed, by way of explanation, that a person proceeding to Australia had directed the packets to himself, intending to reach the colony by means of another ship; and that, having died upon the pa.s.sage, or his ship having been lost, no application was ever made for them at the office to which they had been directed.

On one occasion a cheque for 9, 15s. was found loose in a pillar letter-box in Birmingham. The owner was traced through the bank upon which the cheque was drawn, but he was unable to give any explanation of the circ.u.mstances under which it had pa.s.sed from his possession.

The following are a series of instances in which letters have got out of their proper bearings,--chiefly in the hands of the senders or the persons addressed, or through the carelessness of the servants of those persons; and the cases show how p.r.o.ne the public are to lay blame upon the Post-office when anything goes wrong with their letters, before making proper search in their own premises. A number of cases are added, in which the servants of the senders or of the persons addressed have been proved dishonest, when the blame had first been laid upon post-office servants; and one or two cases are given where the Department has been held up as the delinquent, merely to afford certain individuals an excuse for not paying money due by them, or otherwise to shirk their obligations.

"A person applied at the Leeds post-office, and stated that two letters (one of which contained the half of a bank-note) which he had himself posted at that office had not reached their destination--mentioning at the same time some circ.u.mstances a.s.sociated with the alleged posting of the letters. After some conversation, he was requested to produce the letter which had informed him of the non-receipt of the letters in question; but instead of producing it, he, to his own great astonishment, took from his pocket the very letters which he believed he had himself posted."

"Inquiry having been made respecting a letter sent to a person residing at Kirkcudbright, it appeared that it had been duly delivered, but that the addressee having left the letter on a table during the night, it had been devoured by rats." Another case of the depredation of rats upon letters is as follows:--

Certain letters which ought to have reached a bookseller in a country town not having been received, it was concluded, after inquiry, that they had been duly delivered, but had subsequently been withdrawn from under the street door, which was furnished with a slit to receive letters, but without a box to retain them. During subsequent alterations in the shop, however, when it was necessary to remove the flooring under the window, the discovery was made of thirty-one letters, six post-cards, and three newspapers which had been carried thither by rats!

The corners of the letters, &c., bearing the stamps, were nibbled away, leaving no doubt that the gum upon the labels was the inducement to the theft. Several of the letters contained cheques and money-orders.

But rats are old enemies to letters, as is known in the Post-office; for in the olden times, when sailing-ships were in use as mail-packets, sad complaints were made of the havoc caused by "ratts" to the mails conveyed in these ships.

Nor are rats the only dumb creatures which have shown a "literary" turn, in getting possession of post-letters. Some years ago a postman was going his rounds delivering letters in Kelvedon, in Ess.e.x, carrying a registered letter in his hand ready to deliver it at the next house, when a tame raven--a worthy compeer, if not a contemporary, of the Jackdaw of Rheims--suddenly darted down, s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his grasp, and flew off with it. The bewildered postman could only watch the bird while it made a circuit over the town, which it did before alighting; and so soon as it got to a suitable place, it set to work to a.n.a.lyse the composition of the missive by tearing the letter to pieces. The fragments were shortly afterwards collected and put together, when it was found that part of them were the remains of a cheque for 30, which was afterwards renewed when the singular affair was made known.

Another curious incident in which birds are concerned occurred in the spring of 1884 at Shewbridge Hall, near Nantwich, in Cheshire. For the convenience of the people at the Hall, a letter-box is placed by the gate at the roadside, into which the post-runner drops the correspondence addressed to Shewbridge Hall. Mr Lockett, the occupier of the house, expecting a letter from Liverpool, containing a cheque for 10, went to the box, where, as it happened, he found the letter, but in a mutilated state, and the cheque gone. Believing that a robbery of his box had been committed, or that the letter had been violated before being deposited therein, he forthwith rode into Nantwich to report the matter at the post-office and to the police. Returning later on, he examined the box more closely, and discovered tomt.i.ts inside; and further investigation led to the discovery of the cheque lying twenty yards away on the turnpike road, whither it had evidently been carried for examination. The cheque was folded small, and could therefore be easily carried by these small birds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Letter-box taken possession of by Tomt.i.ts.]

The tomt.i.ts had taken possession of the box for nesting purposes, and perhaps they found the letter to be in the way, and accordingly made an effort to remove it. In the spring of the previous year a pair of tomt.i.ts built their nest in this letter-box (possibly the same pair), and reared a brood of young, though letters were being dropped into the box every day.

A very similar circ.u.mstance occurred in the same season at a place near Lockerbie, where a letter-box is affixed to the trunk of a tree bordering on the main road, for the convenience of the people living at Daltonhook farm, which occupies a site some distance from the highway.

The letter-box is about fifteen inches square, with the usual slit to admit of letters being dropped in, and a door to the front the full size of the box, to allow the postman to clear it or to place larger packets within. A pair of tomt.i.ts, considering the box an eligible place for bringing up a family, built their nest in it, obtaining ingress and egress by the letter-slit, and choosing that portion of the interior farthest from the door for their purpose. In contrast to the ruthlessness and cruelty of many who show no love to G.o.d's creatures unless they contribute in some way to their comfort or profit, the post-runner and the family who use the box, in a kind-hearted way took every care to disturb these objects of interest as little as possible, and in due time the nest was complete, and eight tiny eggs were deposited therein. While the female was sitting on the eggs during the term of incubation, she did not rise from the nest when the post-runner opened the door, but would make a peculiar noise and peck at his hand as he put it forward to take out or deposit letters. But after a time the two became more friendly, and kindness on the one side begetting confidence on the other, the bird at length became so familiar, that while it continued to sit on the nest it would peck crumbs from the man's hand, instead of showing displeasure, as it formerly had done. At length seven young birds became the joy of the parents. These, however, did not find the box altogether free from drawbacks; for letters, in being deposited through the slit, sometimes fell on the top of the youngsters, and so excited the wrath of the old birds. This was proved on one occasion when a servant dropped a letter into the box, for when the post-runner next visited the receptacle, he found the letter so mutilated, either through sheer rage on the part of the tomt.i.ts, or in their endeavours to eject it by the slit, that he took it back to the farmhouse rather than send it forward in its badly damaged state.

However, the brood at length got through the troubles of their infantile days; and we may indulge the hope that they have since lived to join in the antiphonies of the grove, or to adorn the roadside spray with their neat figures and glowing colours.

It may be added that these little birds are very eccentric in the choice of their nesting-places. In one case they selected the inside of a weatherc.o.c.k on the top of a steeple for their breeding-place, and in another the interior of a beehive in full work. Here they set up house and reared their young, neither injuring the bees, nor being molested by them in return.

"A gentleman at Archerstown, county Westmeath, complained of a letter, containing half bank-notes and post-bills amounting to 400, addressed to Dublin, not having come to hand; but when the matter came to be fully examined, it was ascertained that the letter was in a drawer in the house of the very person to whom it had been directed, but by whom it had been entirely overlooked."

A banker residing in a country town in Scotland reported that a letter containing two 20 notes and two 1 notes, addressed to him by another banker, and posted at a town ten miles distant, had not come to hand. On inquiry, the sender could not state either the numbers or the dates of the notes. He had, moreover, allowed upwards of two months to elapse before taking any steps to ascertain whether his letter had reached its destination. "As this valuable letter had been posted without the precaution of registration, and had the words 'county rates' on the envelope, it was supposed to have excited the cupidity of some one connected with one or other of the two post-offices concerned, and an officer was immediately despatched to investigate the case. The complainant reiterated the statement that the letter had not reached him; but within half an hour of the officer's departure, an inmate of the house having made a fresh search, found the letter among some papers in a press, where it had apparently been placed unopened when received."

"A bank agent sent a letter containing valuable enclosures to another bank agent. The letter was presumed to have been lost by the Post-office; but no trace of it could be obtained there, and the applicant was informed accordingly. It subsequently appeared that the son of the person to whom the letter had been addressed had called at the Post-office and received the letter, and that he had afterwards left the town for the holidays, carrying the letter away with him in his pocket, where it had remained."