The Law of Unintended Consequences and Post Boxes

If I told you the first post boxes were installed in Paris in 1653, I am not sure that is correct as mail was being collected 150 years earlier under a milkwood tree from a shoe, granted not a box. I tell no lie.

This first and only postal shoe box (opposite right) is to be found in Mossel Bay, South Africa, when the Portuguese explorers in the very late 1400s put into port, for refuelling of fresh water and provisions, and would leave important letters, about their trip to India and the Spice Islands, for the next sea voyageur to read. These were put in a shoe, hung in a large milkwood tree to be collected by a later ship.

First Paris street letter box from c.1850

So let us go back to the first permanent post box in Europe, which was believed to have been installed in Paris in 1653. Perhaps you call them mail boxes? But I guess you know what I mean – boxes into which letters can be ‘dropped’, then collected by the mail service for onward delivery.

In Victorian Britain they were also called lamp boxes (because they were affixed to lamp posts); Ludlow wall boxes – built of wood, came to be built into stone pillars or the walls of buildings and were never free standing; and last but not least the name we call them today - ‘pillar boxes’.

Lamp box mounted next to a sewer gas destructor lamp in Crookes, Sheffield

(the main purpose of these was to remove sewer gases and their hazards).

Ludlow EIIR plate, now disused, built into a garden wall at a country house in North Wales (to the left)

These collection boxes, mailboxes, drop boxes, or pillar boxes were originally hexagonal in shape and painted green with the first one actually being erected in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1852. The Victorians managed to standardise the colour to green for 21 years, before changing it over to red (a colour now known as pillar box red); however the design continued to be improved for many more years being adjusted to the appropriateness of the locality.

Outgoing mail used to be taken to a ‘letter receiving house’, usually coaching inns, or turnpike (toll) houses where the Royal Mail coach would drop passengers and drop or collect letters. The Royal Mail traces its history back to 1516 when Henry VIII established a “Master of the Posts”; the service was available to the public from 1635 with postage being paid by the recipient!

This rare Victorian 2nd National standard wall box near Andover in Hampshire has a large hood and a pedimented top to keep the rain out (above right)

The Uniformed Penny Post was introduced in 1840. By the late 19th century, there were between six and twelve mail deliveries per day in London, permitting correspondents to exchange multiple letters within a single day.

Law of Unintended Consequences – the first was the painting of the pillar boxes a bronze green colour chosen as it was thought that would be unobtrusive. Too unobtrusive as it turned out – people kept walking into them. So red they became.

This rare Edward VIII pillar box door shows the built-in posting aperture, collection plate and the Royal Cipher. (Remember King Edward VIII abdicated in under a year of succession in December 1936).

The next Law of Unintended Consequence was not foreseen, nor could it be stopped – once the genie escaped the posting box. As letters could now be posted at numerous places, ladies no longer needed to rely on the coachman or servant to take their letter to the ‘receiving house’ for onward delivery.

Can you guess what happened – yes the emancipation of women – ladies were able to start directing their own lives and ultimately became free to contract, to marry and to vote. This was not an obvious outcome that the Victorians expected with the introduction of the posting boxes around cities, towns and country. This rapid change was also abetted by the numerous collections during the day – six to twelve letters being written and received in one day ... love rushes in!

Day dress of c. 1875 James Tissot painting

The Law of Unintended Consequences in common usage, is a wry or humorous expression warning against the hubristic belief that humans can fully control the world around them – I just liked the idea that the introduction of pillar boxes freed us women, to allow us to be where we are now; while the fact that people walked into post boxes because they blended in to the landscape too much - made me laugh: the thought of the Victorians wandering along and going kerplunkt – only to find they initiated an unintended consequence for Victorians to bump into an iron box – strikes me as fun! Hope you think so too?

PS: (Traditionally UK post boxes carry the Latin initials of the reigning monarch at the time of their installation: VR for Victoria Regina (Queen Victoria); GR for George V, ER for Edward VIII, GR for George VI and ER for Elizabeth Regina.)

& that Law of Unintended Consequences .. why oh why, when I set it all out "so nicely" with paragraphs all clearly delineated does Blogger decide to take matters into its own little murky paws and make its own miserable mess up??!! It does irritate me when it does it .. ??!!

Dear Mr Postman – oh oh .. the cold is coming back. My mother is better I’m pleased to say, but she still can’t hear .. we wait for it to resolve this week. It’s difficult communicating – as she can’t hear, and has left-sided neglect – so can’t read properly either .. we did watch the rugby match yesterday, as she was awake and I think loved having something ‘to do’. Difficult times – we’ve got a mini whiteboard – but as I said .. I’m not sure how much she can see – as we can’t talk to each other .. it’s something I can’t work out. Let’s hope it sorts itself out.

Hilary Melton-Butcher
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