The "Dead Letter Office Really Means Just That!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Headed down the driveway to the mailbox to check what my mailman dropped off today.  Always one of the favorite parts of the day...especially if I'm expecting a check in the mail.  Did you ever think about how that letter got to your house from miles away.  It was close to two years ago that our travel agent, Magali, on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, mailed my car key fob to me after I realized I had left it in the safe of our rental, but not until we were in Baltimore, Maryland.  The day I opened the mailbox and found that small package made me realize just how lucky we are to have a postal system such as we do in the United States.  It was back in 1775 that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) was established by the Second Continental Congress.  It did take years to get the regular, reliable mail system we have today, but it had to start somewhere.  One item they struggled with at first was mail that had no address on it or no return address. It wasn't until 1825 that the Postal Service opened a "dead letter office".  

One days collection at the Dead Letter Office.

Starting in 1922 the USPS began to sell off the contents of the dead letters and packages that were never claimed.  But, the postal system as we know it today actually began almost 40 years before it was started by the Second Continental Congress.  Benjamin Franklin became the postmaster of Philadelphia while it was under British rule in 1737.  Four years later he printed a list of almost 800 names, in the Pennsylvania Gazette, of people who'd not picked up their mail and paid the necessary penny for it.  At that time in history, the recipient of the mail had to pay the postage.  "Mr. Franklin warned that if they were not redeemed before March 25 of that year, they would be sent away as dead Letters to the General Post Office.  When the postal service was established in 1775, Franklin was appointed Postmaster General, since he had the most experience.  In 1825 the first Dead Letter Office opened and by the 1860s, with most men in the United States fighting in the Civil War, women mail workers outnumbered the men 38-7.  These mostly female clerks acted as "skilled dead letter detectives inspecting the mail for potential clues about who sent it or where it was going.  At the time, dead letter clerks handled three types of mystery mail:  "Misdirected letters" which for some reason were sidetracked, "Blind Readings" so called because the address would appear as though it was read blindfolded, and "Prank mail."  By 1893 over 20,000 items passes through the Dead Letter Office.  But, by the 1990s the USPS opted to change it to better reflect the ultimate goal of returning mail.  Today the Dead Letter Office is based in Atlanta and known as the Mail Recovery Center.  

Items other than letters that have never been claimed.
These items will be sold at auction.  If not sold they will
be discarded.

When a letter, package, etc. is mailed, it is meant to be delivered.  But, illegible hand- writing, scant infor- mation, wrappings with nearly illegible handwriting and missing addresses sends it to Atlanta.  Only clerks in the Dead Letter Office have the permission to open those items and regulations allow them only to read the bare minimum to discover names and locations of the sender or intended recipient.  In addidion to ethics and reasoning skills, the work required knowledge of languages and geography.  Items that are never claimed or that could never be delivered, postal workers oversaw their disposal.  Clerks have to tally enclosed money and turn the funds over to the Treasury Department.  Contents of packages are held for a period of time and then sold at public auction.  Items that remain are destroyed or sent to the Dead Letter Office Museum.  So, when you send a package or letter in the mail, make sure you have the correct address on the package, place your return address on the package or letter and make sure it can be easily read.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an oridnary guy.