I joined the Post Office in October 1959. When I started in the GPO, General Post Office, as it was then known, was part of the inland Civil Service and its employees were Civil Servants. This changed in October 1969 when the Post Office ceased to be a department of state, changed to nationalised industry status and became a public corporation.
Like many other employees my family had other older members who had been employed in the GPO before me. My uncle Jasper Jasper, Jas as he was usually known, had worked as a P&TO, (Postal andTelegraph Officer), on the counter for years, had progressed to Supervisor and was recently retired owing to eye troubles.
My cousin Michael had been employed as a telephone engineer with PO Engineering and, as he was regarded as something of an expert on circuit’s, had been on long term secondment to the BBC at Broadcasting House to assist with their wiring arrangements. He too suffered from eye troubles and was retired due to ill health in his 40’s
I was lucky to be able to join the PO at age 16 as a Young Postman (Telegram Boy) as there were only four boys in total employed in Enfield, my home area, at any one time. One had to be lucky to apply at just the right moment when a vacancy was about to occur. The vacancies happened as an employed boy reached the age of 18 and progressed onto full adult postman duties.
The Young Postman duties consisted mainly of delivering telegrams using a pedal cycle or driving one of the four motor-cycles (BSA Bantam) models based at Enfield Sorting Office. The fourth motor-cycle was held in reserve to cover breakdowns or, more often, periods when one would be off the road due to accident damage.
The fourth youngster was stationed at the PO Factory in
The factory’s main job was repairing the big old style telephone switchboards. All four boys rotated on these duties on a regular basis. I preferred the factory duty as this worked a five day week with 8.30am to 5.30pm ‘office hours’. The telegram deliveries consisted of various shifts ranging from 8.00a.m. to 7.30p.m. and were, of course, spread over 6 days with a 2-hour overtime duty on Sunday mornings for just one boy.
Two of the shifts included a spell either morning or afternoon in the sorting office to familiarize new staff with sorting office work. This usually consisted of facing up, (turning all the letters round so that the stamp was at the top ready for machine cancellation), at the moving belt facing table or, either manual sorting of letters standing at the old 56 position letter sorting fittings or, hanging empty mailbags on the packet sorting frames ready for the afternoon sorting session. I found manual sorting quickly became extremely boring, very tiring on back and arm muscle’s and preferred facing up or even hanging mail bags.
When I first started I had not learnt to drive so that was the first major thing I had to cope with. The tuition was by following an instructor who was in a mail van. Eventually the learner was put in front and the instructor followed behind.
I learnt later that one usually had about a week’s tuition but for some reason mine was reduced to about three days. I think the instructor was booked to go somewhere else at the end of the week. Somehow I passed the driving test first time. I’d travelled as a passenger with Dad in the front seat of the 1936
I have some other memories from the motor cycling days. One Friday evening I was out on what I thought would be the last delivery of the day when I realised the filament in the rear light bulb had failed. This was a twin filament bulb and only one filament had failed. I could have contacted the sorting office and they would have sent out a van to bring the bike and me back. That would probably have taken perhaps an hour or so and it was about 7pm then and I wanted to get home as I’d been delivering all day. Rather than just chance driving back to the office and risking being stopped by the police I had what I thought was a brainwave and tied on the stop light switch which kept the stoplight illuminated all the time. Not realizing this was a larger wattage. Next day the usual garage mechanic showed me the result – inside the plastic cover had all melted in the heat! Luckily they had a spare fitting in stock but I got a minor telling off.
I probably should have stopped at once but didn’t. Instead acting purely on instinct I turned the handlebars slightly to the right and the front wheel freed itself and tried to pull the bike to the right. As the rear wheel was still running in the tram line that tried to pull the bike straight ahead. It suddenly jumped free and bike somehow flipped right round and was now facing the way I had come from. Luckily I did not come off and just stopped and turned round. This had all happened in an instant and no one seemed to have noticed me. The bike appeared to be undamaged and I carried on with the delivery. However it was pulling to one side and shortly afterwards I was flagged down by a police car. After a quick inspection the police officer told me to go straight back to office and tell the mechanic that the wheels were out of alignment! It turned out that the bike frame had to be stripped down and sent away and be put on a special jig for the frame to be realigned. I do not recall any questions being raised as to the cause of this condition and of course I had no idea how the wheels came to be mis-aligned!
Within a few years transistors’ had replaced valves and later the factory closed and the whole site was raised to the ground. New warehouse style buildings were erected along the roads but, the last time I looked, one could still see some sections of roadway with short sections of tramlines still in place now leading nowhere.On reaching 18 years of age I progressed onto postman’s duties. At this time I had been studying at night school and also had taken a general education postal course with the Civil Service Correspondence College. I entered the Civil Service examination for the grade of Clerical Assistant (CA). This I was fortunate enough to pass and, after filling in option forms which gave one the chance of requesting being posted to the Post Office or various other government ministries or departments including Custom and Excise, The Home Office, Foreign Office, Export Credits Guarantee Dept, British Airports Authority and others, left Enfield and went to work at Post Office Headquarters building at St Martins Le Grande, EC1 in the central registry in July 1962.
At this time I had an old 1950 BSA 250cc motor-cycle with solid rear frame (no rear springing), which I used for the 12 mile journey into work. I remember I used to park by the rear entrance of the old CTO (Central Telegraph Office) building, with other motor-cycle’s, in a little road. This road was on the site that later on became the site occupied by the
These floors were used as overspill accommodation for various headquarters departments. When the Philatelic Bureau was established in 1963 it was located here before eventually moving in 1966 to the first of its new home’s in
After about 6 months using my old ‘bone shaker’ motorcycle and, as winter was about to start, I decided to start using the local train service. This was a lot easier on my back. I eventually sold the old bike to Mum’s chiropodist, a vintage vehicle enthusiast, who rebuilt it and went on to win various prizes in local vintage vehicle shows.
The Central Registry was controlled by The Registrar. This post was also known as the Departmental Records Officer. At this time the post was filled by Dorothy Holmes. I believe she was the first lady to hold this position. Later this position was filled by a chap named L.G. (Lionel) Hart. As Lionel Bart (the composer) was very active at this time having recently composed the music for the stage and film ‘Oliver’, he quickly became known by the wags in the registry as Lionel Bart
The Central Registry was located on the sub ground floor of headquarters building and provided services to all the headquarters departments in
Located on the same floor as the central registry was the "Records Room", actually several interconnected rooms, which had a small photocopier
Photocopiers were relatively new then and the small ones still used a wet water based photographic system. One of the registry duties included a weekly cleaning of the small (I think it was called a Varafax) copier in the ‘Records Room’. Cleaning included finally refilling the copier with a mixture of water and photographic developer solution.
I wonder what the health and safety regulations would make of that nowadays.
The Records Room became known as the Archives later on.
All Head Postmasters, Telephone Managers and some other units such as
At this time even comparatively minor matters of an operational nature were routinely referred to headquarters for a decision so there were always many headquarters and local files in transit. There was a dispatch at 1.00pm for those departments in
One of the main functions of the registry was the provision of a system of registered file numbers for recording enquiries, decisions etc.
Every file had a unique registered number and was recorded by hand by its title in subject index books. File movements were recorded in separate transit record numerical index books. New sets of transit record books were started for each year. These transit record books went right back to about 1895 and, as well as showing the last recorded location of the file, also provided a record showing how many individual cases were opened (registered) each year. In the 1890’s and the early part of the twentieth century they were opening in excess of 250,000 new files per year. This had decreased to about 30,000 or less by the 1960’s. These old transit books occupied a lot of space and were unfortunately thrown away when headquarters building was vacated in 1984. I remember seeing lines of the old ‘basket weave’ skips full of various record books lined up along corridors at this time awaiting removal.
Headquarters had a resident bookbinder with a lady assistant and they looked after the external condition of the record books and prepared the new batch for use from January each year.
A minor point is that the entries in these books were made using lead pencils. These had to be dampened (licked) before they would work. They had just recently introduced ball point pens. Initially these were usually Bic pens. Some years later they tried a cheaper brand called Tallen which were useless. The paper in these books was quite thick and had a rather waxy finish. With the older books, especially ones which had seen a lot of handling, one often had to use a pencil rubber first to remove the wax before a ball point pen would write properly. When a pen expired it had to be handed in before a replacement would be issued.
The normal ‘life’ of a file was regarded as three years. (This suddenly changed to five years in 1986/7 when the registries became more closely linked to the Archives and became more aware of statutory retention periods and the Public Record Acts etc).
At this three-year review time the files held in storage, known as Xaway’s, were examined and reviewed. This weeding duty was carried out in an adjacent room to SG1 staffed mainly by senior staff members who were nearing retirement age and was often referred to (jokingly) as the graveyard. I remember one time, when somebody in the weeding room was about to retire, they proposed to put in a younger person, (who liked to ‘pop’ out to visit the local pub or betting shop from time to time during the day), to fill the vacant post. The young person complained bitterly and fought tooth and nail not to go in as it was regarded as a bit of a ‘dead end’ as far as promotion or overtime was concerned. He won his case.
The Registrar (Departmental Record Officer) had powers to destroy certain types of cases and those of a routine or unimportant nature were destroyed at this review. Any cases found to contain matters that might still be operational would be referred to the owning branch/section for a decision before destruction. Files containing more important or policy material were given a new separate Minute Number prefixed with the letter P (for Post Office or Preservation) and their subject entered again in a revised form often with greater detail by more experienced senior staff in separate indexes. These minuted files would be kept for at least 25 to 30 years before being reviewed again. Those retained at this second review stage became public records subject to the various public record acts.
When I joined it the registry had a staff of about 50 to 60 people and occupied a large oblong shaped room with a number of smaller rooms associated. There was also a large repository for storage of recent files.
Unlike today, when all files seem to have been standardised on A4 size, the file covers came in two sizes; foolscap 13”x8” a little larger than the present International A4 size, and I think it was called quoto, which was about two thirds as tall. When files were returned for storage (known as Xaway) the book entry had to show X for the smaller sized cases and XF (Cross flat) for larger files and they were stored in separate rooms. Also was an enormous basement area used for storage of older minuted bundles of files. All these files were on wooden racking and I was told someone had calculated that there was approx 8 miles of shelving. Even with all that space there was always a shortage of storage areas and extra rooms were always being added whenever one became available.
I remember one of the main file storage areas was actually under the roadway which ran through the centre of the building. On one occasion a larger then usual vehicle came into the centre courtyard and one wheel went through the surface and appeared in the roof of the room below. On another occasion one of the florescent lighting fittings broke loose and was dangling from its wiring conduit. The engineers had to come in and eventually fitted loads of extra supports as the whole lot probably had been installed in the 1930’s and had not been closely looked at for years
Most of these basement rooms were located beneath the large high pressure cast iron steam pipes that brought steam heat from the basement boiler rooms across the road in
I remember one incident when an overhead pipe in a basement corridor leaked over the weekend and was not discovered until staff arrived on Monday morning. (There were no water leakage sensors installed in those days). The floors were all old parquet wooden flooring blocks. The water had soaked in and made the blocks swell so much that they had lifted several inches off the floor in an undulating fashion like a frozen sea and had jammed all the nearby doors either open or closed. The whole area had to be removed and dried out before the blocks could be re-laid.
Another incident I remember is when a complete dead cat was found during some telephone rewiring work. In common with a number of other
Most of these basement rooms were located beneath the large high pressure cast iron steam pipes that brought steam heat from the basement boiler rooms across the road in
I remember one incident when an overhead pipe in a basement corridor leaked over the weekend and was not discovered until staff arrived on Monday morning. (There were no water leakage sensors installed in those days). The floors were all old parquet wooden flooring blocks. The water had soaked in and made the blocks swell so much that they had lifted several inches off the floor in an undulating fashion like a frozen sea and had jammed all the nearby doors either open or closed. The whole area had to be removed and dried out before the blocks could be re-laid.
Another incident I remember is when a complete dead cat was found during some telephone rewiring work. In common with a number of other
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