The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

Let me now explain the system of sorting. The majority of people probably never give a thought as to the happenings of a parcel which they have posted: they leave it in faith on the counter and the wonderful Post Office sends it direct to its destination. That is probably their idea. Supposing you have left your parcel on the public counter of King Edward's Building, what happens next? The parcel is taken to the despatching room to wait the arrival of the van which will convey it in a sack to the Parcel Office at Mount Pleasant. It will there be turned out on a long sorting-table which has a sunken surface, after the fashion of a scullery sink, the well of which is lined with zinc. Your parcel is in the company of others, intended for all parts of the world, and the first step is to get the parcels to the various parts of the office from which they will be despatched to other destinations. Along the whole length of one side of the table is a wooden framework or sack holding the empty baskets. These ten baskets are labelled Scotch, Irish, Paddington, Foreign and Colonial, Delivery, Liverpool Street, Euston, King's Cross, Waterloo and London Bridge, Town, and the sorters stand between these baskets and the table laden with parcels. They pick up the parcels from the table and place them in the respective baskets. Full baskets are carried by a porter to another part of the office, where the second stage of the sorting is to be gone through. Here the parcels are turned out on to another table similar to the one already described. Let us suppose that your parcel is in the basket labelled “Euston.” There are twelve baskets on the sorting rack at the Euston division table, and they are labelled to the large centres known as “Roads” and also to the “Aylesbury Coach” and to “Blind” as follows: Chester, Carlisle, Preston, Rugby, Stafford, Blind, Watford, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Shrewsbury, Aylesbury Branch.