LOMBARD STREET 1 9 



away without hope of rescue. In one of her rooms 

 the housekeeper, as well as her family, lived ; in the 

 other, she cleaned, inter alia, a hundred candlesticks, 

 of which process it may be assumed the dwellers 

 above became daily aware. 



The letter-carriers' room, with eighty men in it, 

 was ' unwholesome and offensive.' Daniel Stow, the 

 Superintending President, said the Inland Office was 

 too small by half. The crowded state of the three 

 great sorting offices rendered necessary an enormous 

 consumption of vinegar for fumigation, such being 

 the approved antiseptic of the period. 



Outside it was no better. The public found them- 

 selves in tight places. To gain access to the unpaid- 

 letter posting-box and the paid-letter window, they 

 had to struggle up long passages, six feet wide from 

 Lombard Street, five feet wide from Abchurch Lane, 

 and four feet wide from Sherborne Lane. Between 

 six and seven o^clock in the evening, from eight to 

 ten thousand persons streamed into these culs-de- 

 sac. Bobberies and rows, despite the constables, 

 flourished. 



For the mail-coaches (seventeen were running out 

 of London in 1814, but seven only started from 

 Lombard Street) there was scarcely standing room. 

 Two coaches had to be loaded up in Cornhill and 

 Bank Street, and six at the Gloucester Coffee-house, 

 nearly three miles from Lombard Street. 



Public traffic during the despatch of the night 

 mail had to be stopped. Sherborne Lane, on the 



