The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

There are some persons who suffer from the delusion that their landladies and the sorters in the Post-office habitually conspire to keep up, or rob them of, their letters--letters generally which they look for to bring them money or the right to property. These people are always giving trouble, and are difficult to shake off. On one occasion a lady, who was possessed of a set idea of this kind, called at the General Post-office in London to state her grievance, which she did in most fluent terms. Her complaint was noted for inquiry, and then she went away. An hour or two after, she returned to ascertain whether she had left a packet of papers which she had meanwhile missed; but they could not be found. This circumstance, she stated, convinced her that she had been robbed; and an incident that happened when she quitted the building in the morning confirmed her, she stated, in her idea. A man came up to her and asked if he could show her the way to the Dead-letter Office. "No, thank you," was the reply; "I can find the way myself." She said she knew him to be a magistrate or a judge: "He had a thick neck and flat nose, and the bull-dog type of countenance, and was altogether repulsive-looking." She felt assured he was watching her, &c. An aged couple in the south of England moved about from place to place in order to escape from persons who were supposed by them to open their letters. Persecuted, as they imagined, in one town, they would take lodgings in another town, and very soon they would suspect the servants of the house and the officers of the Post-office of obtaining a knowledge of the nature of their correspondence. Then they would wait on the postmaster, and generally go through their chronic grievance. The postmaster, in turn, would assure them that their letters were fairly dealt with; but this did not satisfy them, and very soon they were off to another town, in the hope of evading their tormentors, but in reality to go through the same course as before.