ACROSS THE NUMBER 73 



In 1839, before penny postage came in, the weekly 

 average of letters at Hull was two thousand five 

 hundred ; now it is more than three-quarters of a 

 million. The York bag would sometimes contain a 

 single letter ; now it is full of letters. By the night 

 mail, a hundred and fifty bags and parcel baskets are 

 sent off — a mountain of matter, which needs two or 

 three vehicles for its conveyance to the railway- 

 station. Mr. Duesbury has no sinecure. 



memories of Dickey Sagg, of Johnny Stones, 

 and the leisurely, mayor's-daughter-marrying Jarvis ! 

 how would any one of you now compass, single- 

 handed (and one of you single-legged), the delivery of 

 letters for Hull in a day? How now, Billy Levitt, 

 borough-bellman, would 3^ou contrive to carry the 

 bags, brought by the down night mail, on your arm, 

 as you did in the old coaching days, from the south 

 end of the Humber pier to what residents in Hull 

 as in every other large town in England are given 

 to term the General Post-Office ? 



What would have been your astonishment, Post- 

 masters of Hull in the eighteenth century, at there 

 being a demand, not only for one post-office, but for 

 thirty-one or more in the town, besides the head office 

 on the island, facing the river — to say nothing of 

 fifty-one sub-offices lying outside in the villages, which 

 include those with the deeply interesting names 

 of Wawne, Swine, Boos, Skirlaugh, Bewholme, and 

 Thorngumbald ? Though, by the way, Bilston, in 

 Staffordshire, by far eclipses Hull in curious names, 



