When People Sent Their Children Through the Mail

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories and up next
another story from our Rule of Law series. Christopher Warren
of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum is here to share
about how some bizarre rules came to be, like why
you can't send your child through the mail. Here's Christopher.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Our postal history is very diverse in this country. It
really touches on every aspect of American history. There's not
an event a person in American history that hasn't been
affected really by mail delivery over the years. Now, during
the nineteenth century through the nineteenth century, deliveries of packages
was not part of the Postal Department's purpose.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Really.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
They would only deliver things that were four pounds or less,
so there was no real package delivery from the United
States government. If you wanted to mail packages anywhere, you
had to use private carriers, companies whose rates were constantly
in flux. There was no regulation on how much sending
a package from one location to another, how much that
would cost. It was relatively expensive, so mainly it was

(01:11):
used by businesses sending things back and forth. Other nations,
especially in Western Europe, had instituted government funded package delivery,
and the United States was kind of late to the
game in this regard, but by the eighteen eighties eighteen
nineties this was becoming a big topic of conversation. Lots
of people wanted this post delivery to be upgraded to

(01:32):
more than four pounds. It was controversial in Congress because
many of the senators in Congress or big investors in
these private carrier companies, so they didn't want the competition
from the government because the government would regulate the rates.
I just thought they had regulated the rates on a
regular mail delivery. So it was a contentious battle throughout
the eighteen nineties. They were used to getting their mail

(01:53):
delivered to them, and they began advocating and complaining that
they should also have more regulated, cheaper ability to send
larger packages through the mail. Eventually, the private companies who
would deliver these packages, they lost kind of their advocates
in Congress, so in nineteen thirteen, parcel post delivery was

(02:13):
begun by the Postal Service. Originally it was, like I said,
up to four pounds, and once this parcel postal service
delivery was instituted, he could then mail things up to
eleven pounds. This was hugely successful in the first six
months alone, of this parcel post delivery, over three hundred
million parcels were delivered in six months.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Three hundred million. That's a ton.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Because it was so successful, the Postal Department increased the
size of packages, the weight of packages that could be delivered.
It went from eleven pounds to twenty pounds, and eventually
it went to fifty pounds. So with this new delivery system,
the regulations were kind of they weren't all spelled out.
The Postal Department had not anticipated some of the issues.

(02:56):
Types of things people wanted to send through the mail.
You name it, people tried to mail it, including their children.
This was not an endemic problem, but did occur on
a few specific instances. Probably the most well known instance
of a child being mailed occurred on February nineteenth, nineteen fourteen.

(03:16):
The little girl's name was May Piersdorf, who was almost
six years old at the time, and she was actually
mailed from her parents' home in Grangeville, Idaho, to her grandparents'
house about seventy three miles away, for just fifty three
cents worth of stamps, which were actually pinned on her coat.
Her parents didn't want to pay for the more expensive

(03:39):
train ticket to send their child to her grandparents, so
instead they used the postal service. Now she wasn't the
only child that was sent through the post The first
one was a child, an unnamed boy. We don't know
his name, but he was mail up from a Batavia,
Ohio and he was carried by the rural free delivery carrier.
His name was Vernon Leto to the little boy's grandparents. Again,

(04:00):
that was only about a mile away, and they knew
the postal carrier.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
They trusted the postal carrier.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
It cost them fifteen cents, and the parents even ensured
the package their son for fifty dollars.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Just in case it happened a couple more times.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Probably the longest trip that ever occurred from a child
being mailed was from a six year old named Edna Neff.
She traveled from her mother's home in Pensacola, Florida, to
her father's home in Christianburg, Virginia, which is a little
over seven hundred miles, went by railway. Mail train cost
fifteen cents in parsonal post stamps, which is much cheaper

(04:37):
than a train ticket going from Florida to Virginia. And
of course this all had to be under the fifty
pound limit. The first one I talked about she was
forty seven and a half pounds. Most of these children
were young, they were small. Nineteen fifteen was really the
last year that we have any evidence that children were
sent through the mail. The Postmaster General in nineteen fourteen

(04:57):
had actually seen that this was a problem of continuing.
Some of the local postmasters were writing back to Washington,
DC for guidance on what they should do with this.
But they looked in the regulations and there was nothing
in the regulations that prohibited mailing children. So very quickly,
the Postmaster General changed these regulations in nineteen fourteen, saying
that no human being could be therefore sent through the mail.

(05:21):
But it still occurred a couple more times in nineteen fifteen,
and it was either postmasters ignoring the rules because remember
they were very far away from Washington, DC, so that
they didn't always feel like they had to do obey
every single rule every single time. September in nineteen fifteen
is the last known instance of a child being mailed.
Three year old maud Smith. She went on her parcel

(05:43):
post journey and again she traveled from her grandparents' home
to her mother's home in Jackson, Kentucky. A local newspaper
actually recorded this incident, and they also recorded that it
was being investigated by postal authorities. Remember it it was
against regulations in nineteen fourteen, and this happened in nineteen fifteen.
So once those investigations started on this type of activity,

(06:03):
they really ended. And that was the end of sending
your children through the mail for cheaper than of train tickets.
We're pretty sure that because of these investigations, no postmasters
from that point forward thought it was worth the risk,
even if they could get a little notoriety.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Or celebrity status.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
So there's a lot of great pictures out there of
children in mail bags, children with stamps on them being
supposedly sent through the mail, but most of those pictures
were stage just to kind of highlight and have a
little fun with the process of mailing children. It only
happened maybe ten times total that we know of, and
most of the time they knew this rural mailman, trusted him.
You know, small towns, rural areas, everybody knows everybody. He

(06:41):
would hand deliver the child to the parents, so it
wasn't as scary as we might think. Of like actually
sending your child and just trusting in the postal service.
They knew these mail carriers, They trusted these mail carriers.
It's still dangerous, of course, we wouldn't think about doing
that today, but it was a lot cheaper than getting
a train ticket. We're all, of course, familiar with the
mail and postal delivery, and it's been part of everyone's

(07:05):
life for forever. Really, we just don't even think about
it much anymore. So it's the institution of a new
service or a upgraded service like parcel delivery that we
take for granted. We don't think anything about our Amazon
package is coming from the post office today, But back
then it was brand new to people, and it's interesting
to see, you know, how they wanted to use this service,

(07:25):
what they used it for. It was brand new to
them and they had no guidance regulation. There was a
man in New York City who he bought a roast
beef downtown New York City. He mailed it to his
wife and arrived in the evening post and she cooked
it and by the time he got home from work,
the roast beef dinner was ready. One of the more
interesting items that was sent through the mail was an

(07:45):
entire bank, brick by brick. So in vernal Utah, the
Bank of vernal Utah was wanting to build a new bank.
The closest place they could get bricks for the bank
was about one hundred and twenty seven miles away in
Salt Lake City. Now, it would have cost about four
times the amount to have those bricks transported via railroad
and then a horse and carriage to the site. This

(08:06):
construction site, they needed forty tons of bricks, so they
sent them in fifty pound packets. So day after day,
all these fifty pound packets of bricks would show up
at the Salt Lake City post office and they would
have to deliver those to vernal Utah. And it was successful,
and the Vernal Bank is still there today. Again, the
Postmaster General saw this was a problem. The purpose of

(08:27):
the postal Department was not to send massive construction supplies,
so he came out with a regulation saying you had
a back then a maximum of two hundred pounds could
be sent per day from any one individual. So that
stopped this kind of activity. But you know, it was
a great workaround for a very intelligent business person or
a construction person instead of paying four times the amount

(08:48):
sending it by freight, I'm going to send it by
fifty pound packets at a time. And it got there
and they constructed their bank. It's interesting to see, right
when the service was instituted, we are shipping things that
today we would maybe even hesitate to ship metal egg crates.
Farmers could send eggs, you know, a dozen eggs to

(09:09):
purchasers through the mail as well. And today, you know,
people get their groceries to the mail, but it's always
kind of touch and go with the eggs. But even
back then, they were trying to send these things. Butter boxes,
so you could send sticks of butter to people who
were purchasing them, keep it cool and keep it protected
through the mail as well. Bees, queen bees, and beehives
were being sent through the mail right from day one.

(09:31):
Special boxes were built so they couldn't escape, but you
keep food inside. This is so they stay alive. There's
all kinds of items that were being sent right from
the get go that you know, we would think would
be maybe a little odd today or just maybe just
take for granted, why would you send your child through
the mail? Who would think of that? But somebody did
people use this service? Like I said, three hundred million

(09:52):
in the first six months, anything and everything they were
trying to ship to people.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
And a special thanks to Madison for the production on
the piece. And a special thanks to Christopher Warren. And
he's at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. When you're in DC,
take a visit. The Smithsonian franchises are all around the city,
straight out to the Air and Space Museum. Another rule
of law story. This was not as serious as civil
asset forfeiture or eminent domain or rule of law as

(10:28):
it relies to property and intellectual property rights. But I
think we could all agree it's probably a good idea
legally not to be able to mail our children. The
story of America's post Office, some stories about it, and
some fun ones and some odd ones here on our
American Stories