The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

On the afternoon of the day of the robbery, a murky fog, such as Londoners know so well and heartily dislike, hung over the metropolis. The street lamps afforded but a dull light in the thoroughfares; shops and offices were lighted up for the evening's business; and the afternoon's work in the Hatton Garden Post-office was at its height (the registered-letter bag, containing some forty registered letters, having just been deposited in an ordinary bag hanging from a peg in the office), when suddenly, and without apparent cause, the whole of the lights in the office went out, and the place was plunged in almost total darkness. Consternation took possession of the female clerks behind the counter, while young clerks and boys from warehouses and offices, conceiving the occasion to be one for noise and merriment, helped to increase the confusion by clamour and hubbub outside the counter. No long time elapsed before matches were obtained and tapers lit, when it was immediately discovered that the tap of the gas-meter in the basement had been turned off; but on the tap being turned on again, the jets in the office were relit, and the place resumed its wonted appearance. The young ladies in the office being now able to see around them, soon detected the absence of the bag, which had been left hanging on the peg, and which they knew had not yet been despatched by them. It did not take long to realise that the bag had vanished--in fact, had been stolen; and to this day the property contained in the lost registered letters has not been recovered, nor have the persons concerned in the theft been traced.