CHAPTER VI.

PARCEL DELIVERY OFFICE.

BESIDES What is termed "the goods traffic," or the conveyance of heavy goods in luggage-trains, the London and North-Western Railway Company have for some time undertaken to forward by their passenger-trains, to the various stations on as well as beyond their lines, light parcels, for the conveyance and delivery of which, charges, of which the following are a sample, are made:

For parcels under 12 lbs. weight:—

From London to any part of Birmingham and vice versâ
For distances under 160 miles

From London to Durham, Carlisle, or Newcastle
From London to Edinburgh or Glasgow

3 0

4 0

The above charges include porterage and delivery of the parcels. In London, however, the delivery is limited to within three miles of the General Post-office, or say six miles from Euston Square.

The mode in which the business of this department is conducted at Euston Station is briefly as follows:

The superintendent of the department sits in an elevated room, the sides of which being glazed enable him to look down on his right and left into two offices, both of which communicate on the south with the street by which parcels arrive from or depart to various parts of the metropolis, and on the north side with a branch railway leading into the main line. The floor of one of these two offices is generally covered with baskets, brownpaper parcels of all sizes, game, triangular boxes of wedding ́e, and other articles, which have just arrived by rail from all

parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland; that of the other with a multitude of parcels to be forwarded by rail to similar destinations. In the daytime the down parcels are despatched from the office in the break-waggons of various passenger-trains, and the following locked-up vans laden with small parcels are also forwarded every night:

The number of parcels thus conveyed to and from London and the North amounted, in the year 1847, to 787,969, and in the year 1848 to 774,464; of the latter number it appears that only two were lost. The manner in which all these little parcels are circulated throughout the country is as follows:

As soon as the empty railway vans arrive by the branch-rail close to the north side of the parcels-office, a porter, who, assisted by his comrades, has for some time previously been arranging the parcels into heaps according to their respective destinations, commencing with one set of them and rapidly taking up parcel after parcel, exclaims in a loud monotonous tone, easily enough set to music, inasmuch as it is exactly the middle note of a stout porter's voice, and which never varies for a moment during the whole operation

“A paper for S. on Avon (the porter never says Stratford) for light," &c. &c.

As fast as this chanting porter drawls out his facts the chief clerk indelibly records them, convulsively snatching up at each change of station the particular book of entry which belongs to

it.

Another clerk at each exclamation hands over to a porter a bill for the cost of conveyance, which he pastes to every parcel. For all articles declared by the first porter to be "light," by which he means that they do not exceed twelve pounds weight(by far the greater number are of this description)—the charge on the paper to be affixed is ready printed, which effectually prevents fraud; but where the weight exceeds twelve pounds, or where any sum has been paid out, the charges are unavoidably inserted in ink. The velocity with which all these little parcels are booked. weigh-billed, placed into hand-trucks, wheeled off to their respective vans, packed, locked up, and then despatched down the little branch-rail to the main line, on which is the train ready to convey them, is very surprising. While witnessing the operation, however, we could not help observing that the Company's porters took about as much notice of the words "Keep this side uppermost," "With care," "Glass," "To be kept very dry," &c., as the Admiralty would to an intimation from some dowager-duchess that her nephew, who is about to join the Thunderer as a midshipman, "has rather a peculiar constitution, and will therefore require for some years very particular CARE."

During Christmas week the number of railway parcels that flow into and ebb out of London is so enormous, that extra accommodation, as well as preparations, are necessary for their reception and despatch; and as we chanced to arrive from the country at Euston Station on Saturday the 23rd of December last, we will endeavour briefly to describe the scenes which for a very few minutes we stopped to witness.

A considerable portion of the space usually allowed for the disembarkation of the passengers arriving by the up-trains had been cut off by a lofty partition, or, as it is now-a-days termed, a barricade, behind which, instead of red republicans armed with loaded muskets, we were exceedingly happy to find nothing but phalanxes, solid squares, columns, and pyramids of small parcels, the destinations of which in large letters were chalked on consecutive compartments of the north wall of the Euston territory, as follows:

As soon as we had rapidly glanced over the tarpaulin-coveredin arrangements above described, which had been made for the reception of parcels for London, we hurried across the five sets of rails that separate the platforms of the in and out trains to the "Parcels Delivery Office," both departments of which we found had been exclusively devoted for the week to the reception and despatch of parcels from London to the country. On the floor of each of the offices we have already described we saw piled to a considerable height masses of parcels, which it was evident could scarcely be despatched as rapidly as they were arriving. The clerks, the assistants, as well as the extra persons who had been engaged, all appeared more or less exhausted. The accountant-the recording angel of the establishment— looked deadly pale, while the voices of the chanting porters were, to a pitiable degree, weaker and fainter than when we had last heard them; indeed, the whole establishment had evidently been overwhelmed with parcels which the Company's servants were still collecting, receiving, lifting, driving, wheeling, turning, twisting, weighing, pasting, labelling, and hallooing at, and yet, notwithstanding the rapidity with which they were despatched by rails, vans, waggons, carts, and busses, they were arriving, if possible, faster than ever!

Now, after this afflicting description of the plague of parcels which during Christmas week annually infests and infects the Euston Station, our readers will, no doubt, feel somewhat alarmed when we state that we propose to inform them in detail of the contents of each!

The job, however, is easily performed, for in these parcels

there are neither gold, silver, jewels, pictures, nor books-they contain neither covering for the body nor consolation for the mind-they belong neither to the vegetable nor to the mineral kingdom-in short, they are simply composed of good, plain, honest eatables, bequeathed by British hearts, addressed by British hands to British stomachs of all classes of society.

:

But as our arterial blood is of one colour, while that which returns through our veins is of another, so is there a most remarkable difference in the character of these flowing and ebbing parcels all those which have come into London being either deceased turkeys or game, while the outgoing or outward-bound parcels are, with scarcely an exception, composed of barrels of live oysters, several of which are accompanied by a good heavy basket of fish. The number of barrels thus despatched from Euston Station within twenty-four hours amounted to 5009, and, as a hundred oysters are usually packed in each barrel, it is strange to think of half a million of "natives" leaving London in one day for the express purpose of wishing" a merry Christmas and a happy new year" to those whose hares, pheasants, partridges, rabbits, turkeys, and chickens have inanimately come to the metropolis on the very same day on the very same errand! To the above "bills of fare" we may add, that during last Christmas week no less than 450 waggons of live cattle arrived at Camden Station within the space of twenty-four hours.