Forgetting the present unhappy Postal Dispute one could almost think of the Post Office at Grimsby as being an uninterrupted success story. You look back and you think of this and that Post Office being opened, of mechanisation being introduced behind the scenes at head office to speed up the handling of both mail and parcels, of S.T.D coming along for telephones (foot note: STD being the dialling codes for towns through out the country).
But there have been grumbles, too, the reasons for the grumbles being that Grimsby has always been more dependent on its postal service than most towns.
For Grimsby, let us now recall it, has always been in the distribution business we were the great mail order house for fish. The fish mongers of Wolverhampton or Oxford or London looked our way when they were ordering and they never looked in vain. The Post Office, by telegram or letter, was the essential link between supplier and retailer, almost more than it is today.
All our letters bore penny stamps. Practically speaking, there was no such thing, say in 1912 as second class mail. Grimsby's 200 postmen made four deliveries a day on weekdays and one delivery on a Sunday. The day started with a delivery at 7:30am, and finished with the last delivery of the day at 11:30pm even fish merchants could not ask for more. Collections started would you believe it, at 2am the very last box to be cleared was emptied at 11pm, Vaguely one remembers there was some kind of a speed up at the docks to catch the main clearance at Victoria Street.
But to have the benefit of this you had to put on an extra halfpenny stamp.
Can readers remember exactly how this worked?
Talking of memorials of the old days can some 80 year old veteran remember a picture of the out door staff at the Post office which once hung in a corner of the old sorting room, the Postmaster and his assistant wearing top hats? We would very much like to publish thus picture if only it can be un earthed. If it be true that one generation build upon foundations laid by another, then these bearers of the mail bags of old receiving something short of one pound a week are well worth remembering. The right Hon. Herbert Samuel, as he then was visiting Grimsby in 1910 as Postmaster General put his finger on the important role being played by the Post office when he declared open the £30,000 head office in Victoria Street. He said "The Post office reflects precisely and immediately, the commercial, standing of any town." Looking at it like this, he and the top ranking officials who gathered for the occasion must have thought that Grimsby was providing an object lesson for many other towns. In 30 years, said Herbert Samuel; Grimsby's postal business had increased sevenfold. "Your commercial activity is even outstripping the growth in your population," the Postmaster General declared. Grimsby post office was being regarded as an index of Grimsby prosperity. But Herbert Samuel made it clear that he would go further than that. He made it clear that he was involved in a personal sense as well.
"Almost every morning of the year," he said, "I breakfast off fish that comes direct from Grimsby". And every night without exception when the house is sitting I go home and regale myself with the utmost regularity on fish sandwiches, the fish coming direct from this town." Note, there is no mention here of fish fingers or improving food technology. That was to come along later. It was when fish had to be got with all speed from the merchant to the consumer that the post office was so fully relied upon, in it's Tele-communications and it's mail service, to help speed up deliveries.
Girls were only then beginning to come into the post office, wearing blouses high at the neck and skirts which covered their ankles. Mr A. Shannon we at that time Postmaster with Mr E.M. Tilbrook as Superintendent. The men were mostly at the counters but there seems to have been a liking for girls with a knowledge of Morse for working in the telegraph department. Grimsby let us recall was then handling one and a half million telegrams a year as well as 22,000,000 letters. The P.M.G. was able to announce that the very latest Wheatstone instruments enabling messages to be sent from Grimsby with the utmost rapidity had just been installed.
On this visit to Grimsby he said:"If the postal and telegraph business here were to close down, I, really do not know how you would be able to manage without us. I think the postal and telegraphic departments have done their best for Grimsby and we shall of course continue to do so."
It should be pointed out, said the P.M.G. 60 years ago that Grimsby was a difficult town to serve. This was because the town was not situated upon one of the main railway lines. In order to counteract the problem provided by the towns geographic position, what had been done, he said, was to provide sorting carriages on the railways so that letters might be speeded on their way as much as possible.
The inconvenient geographic location of Grimsby right away from the main currents of national life has always been rather a problem for the post office. This was so even before the time of Roland Hill when Grimsby seems to have had one postmaster and one postman. Consternation was caused about a 150 years ago as now when the London coaches changed their route and letters from London to Grimsby were found to be taking about a day longer than they had previously been doing. A town meeting as held at the Queens Head Inn, William Marshall in the chair, at which it was decided to take the matter up direct with the Postmaster General. Mortons, of Grimsby printed what was called a memorial on the subject which was sent to MPs, the Bishop of Lincoln, the Lord Lieutenant and others. "We feel that Grimsby correspondents should be accelerated as much as possible," said the memorial.
With horses, as in later years with trains, what Grimsby business men were concerned about was the route to be followed in getting to Grimsby. Lincoln, then so much more influential than Grimsby, had planned the way to be taken by the mail coaches when for some reason the route was changed. Grimsby did not like the new route at all and gathered at the Queens Head to say so.
The old route taken by the London coach when it came to Lincolnshire was to turn right-handed at Stamford and come up to Lincoln via Sleaford and thence up the old Ermine Street to Brigg.
Grimsby mail bags were taken off the coach at Brigg and reached Grimsby by way of Limber, which was said to have suited Lord Yarborough as his servant could meet the Chaise there, enabling his lordship to get his letters half a day before Grimsby Corporation.
The speed-up suggested by the Queens Head meeting was that Grimsby letters should go by way of Market Rasen, reaching here by a fast coach passing through Stainton-le-Vale, Thorganby, Ravendale and Waltham. The argument was that in this way mail vehicles would be cutting a corner, Market Rasen at that day having a fairly good coaching service and the great desire being to avoid the long gallop up to Brigg, at what was estimated to be 10 miles an hour.
Lincoln was then the dominating centre so far as mail distributions were concerned, Grimsby quite obviously playing second fiddle, perhaps even third fiddle. The great Lincoln to Peterborough turnpike trust was ranked as the most powerful in England. The Lincoln to Barton trust was also well known. It was against this county background that Grimsby, possessing only a single turn pike of it's own, rebelled.
Even the fact that Grimsby had two members of Parliament, William Ellice and Charles Pelham, doesn't seem to have made much difference, nor could the Postmaster General himself do an awful lot, it could be deduced, to speed up the mails.
Mail coaches continued to run in Lincolnshire longer than they did in most counties. At Grimsby the mails continued to be brought by coach until about 120 years ago.
The year 1848 was perhaps the pivot of change so far as the Grimsby postal service was concerned. The new Railway Bridge near St. James cost several thousand pounds and was finished on April 28th of that year.
Once the railway lines were open, and trains were running south and west, the iron hand of the turn-pike trusts in determining the times of postal deliveries was broken.
Grimsby obtained at one bound a direct connection with Industrial Yorkshire and through the action of a local company, it acquired a supplementary route to Boston.
We have said before that it was the railways which made Grimsby. It should now be added that it was the railways which provided the town with its first up to date postal service.
When the new post office in Victoria Street was opened by the Postmaster General in 1910 it was, in effect, the jubilee of a service which had kept pace year by year with the immense surge forward which was taken by Grimsby from the time of the arrival of the railways.
This had not always been an easy task, said Mr J. Barrett, proposing the health of the officials of Grimsby post Office at a celebration luncheon at which the P.M.G. and what might be called the top brass of the postal service were entertained.
"The growth of Grimsby has been phenomenal," said Mr Barrett, "and it has not been easy for the postmen of all ranks to keep pace with this growth. We have here a town which has length without a great deal of breadth. You can perhaps call it a peculiar town. You can perhaps call us peculiar people."
The problem which Grimsby presented to the post office - "and still presents," he said- was partly geographic. But this problem had largely been overcome, he said, as the result of the most meticulous attention to detail. And he did not know, he boasted as an insider, of any other town or post office where so much business was done in so short a time.
The year 1910 was an important one for Grimsby post office . But there had been other dates to note as well. Six years ago mechanisation and chain conveyors were introduced. Five years ago improvements were carried out in Osbourne Street.
And so it goes on. The Post Office always has a story of it's own to tell if only it can be persuaded to tell it. The year 1971 is no exception.