Her Majesty's Mails

Still more important was the division of London into ten postal districts, carried out during the year 1856. The immense magnitude of the metropolis necessitated this scheme; it having been found impossible to overcome the obstacles to a more speedy transmission of letters within and around London, or properly to manage without some change, the ever increasing amount of Post-Office business. Under the new arrangements, each district was to be treated in many respects as a separate town, district post-offices to be erected in each of them. Thus, instead of all district post-letters being carried from the receiving houses to the chief office at St. Martin's-le-Grand, there to be sorted and re-distributed, the letters must now be sent to the principal office of the district in which they were posted; sorted there; and distributed from that office according to their address. The time and trouble saved by this arrangement is, as was expected, enormous. Under the old system, a letter from Cavendish Square to Grosvenor Square went to the General Post-Office, was sorted, and then sent back to the latter place, travelling a distance of four or five miles: whereas, at present, with hourly deliveries, it is almost immediately sent from one place to the other.[132] An important part of the new scheme was, that London should be considered in the principal provincial post-offices as ten different towns, each with its own centre of operations, and that the letters should be assorted and despatched on this principle.