From 1913 to 1915 in the United States a strange story occurred: shortly after the country’s postal service, which had existed since the late 18th century, introduced parcel delivery services, various children were “mailed out”. In fact, some families took advantage of the state service to send their children to grandparents or other relativespaying a regular postage. However, these were not real shipments: the children were simply rely on trusted postmenwell known to the parents. The story, in any case, was reported by the newspapers and in 1914 forced the director of the postal service to intervene to explicitly prohibit the shipment of human beings. The “expeditions” however only ceased in 1915. Let’s delve deeper into this story.
Mailing Children: The Story of the United States in the 1910s
The story of children sent by mail dates back to 1913-1915, but it became popular especially after 2014, when it started circulating on social networks. Let’s reconstruct it briefly. In 1913, the United States Postal Service (United States Postal Service – USPS), founded in 1795, introduced a new service for citizens: the parcel shippingwhich previously only travelled with private couriers. Citizens used the service to send the most varied goods and some families took advantage of it to “send” their children, who had to stay with their grandparents or other relatives, paying a regular postage and gluing the stamp on clothes.
The first expedition of this kind would have been that of a Ohio child which, a few weeks after the introduction of the parcel delivery service, would have been sent by his parents to a grandmother’s house, just over a mile away.
More famous is the story of Charlotte May Piersoffa five-year-old girl who was “shipped” from Grangeville, Idaho, about 73 miles (117 km) away to Lewiston, Idaho, in early 1914, for the sum of 53 cents. The story was told in a 1997 children’s book, Mailing Maywork by the writer Michael O’Tunnel.
At the time of the events, the story of May and the other children interested the newspapers, many of which reported the news of the shipments. Thus in the same 1914 the general director of the USPS, Albert S. Burlesonwas forced to intervene and issued a memorandum to remind that the shipment of human beings was not permitted.
However, shipments of children continued even after Burleson’s intervention. Most were sent to locations very close to the starting pointbut in one case the shipment would have taken place over a long distance: the small Edna Neff It was supposedly sent by rail mail from Pensacola, Florida to Christainburg, Virginia, a distance of over 1,000 miles. However, there is no precise information about this story. What is certain is that shipments ceased completely after 1915.
How much truth is there in the story of children by mail?
The story of the children sent by mail is true, but it should not be misunderstood. The United States Postal Service did not organize large-scale shipments of children or offer a service to citizens. It was simply that when parcel shipping was introduced, the USPS did not explicitly prohibit the shipment of human beings (perhaps figuring that no one would ever try to do so), and some families, who needed to send their children to their grandparents, took advantage of the situation by sending them by mail. The exact number of “human” shipments is not known, but it was certainly of few cases.
Furthermore, it should not be thought that the children were sent like any other package. As highlighted by scholar Nancy Pope, curator of the National Postal Museum in Washington, the children were entrusted to postmen that the parents knew personallyso that they could carry them with them from one city to another. Not by chance, the great majority of the shipments were carried out in small communitiesin which families knew the postmen well, and over short distances. Finally, not all the photos circulating on the web depict real shipments: some – including the one used as the cover of this article – were taken for fun.
In short, if someone is thinking of sending a child or another human being by mail, they must find an alternative solution. It is true, however, that many transport companiesboth air and rail, under certain conditions agree to allow unaccompanied children to travel, who are entrusted to special operators.
