Dressed to Deliver at The Postal Museum
Dressed to Deliver: an exhibition on the changing uniform of the postal worker and what it tells us about our changing world.
Guest edited by Deborah Nash
These are unhappy times for the nation’s postal service. Revelations over the vindictive treatment of sub-postmasters by the Post Office, and OfCom’s £5,600,000 fine imposed on Royal Mail last year for its failure to meet first- and second-class delivery targets, present a picture of institutional blindness and inefficiency.
At its zenith, Royal Mail was delivering 4 million letters a day and the sound of them dropping onto the door mat was part and parcel of everyday life. Today, its operations are under scrutiny and the service may be reduced to five or even three days a week – in some areas this is already the case. The esteem with which the organisation was once held as a democratising force for the good allowing, at its inception, correspondence to circulate around the country between city, town and village and rich and poor, at the cost of a one-penny postage stamp, has greatly and perhaps irrevocably declined. Sadly, the postie’s uniform no longer guarantees a trustworthy and reliable service.
So it was with surprise that I found myself bursting into laughter at Dressed to Deliver at London’s Postal Museum, a bright cheerful exhibition exploring the evolution of the postie’s uniform from the 1780s to the present day.
Image: Smartness Satisfies Poster 1959. Image: © Royal Mail Group curtesy of The Postal Museum. Image above: 19th century Mail Coach Guard and Current Royal Mail Uniform. Image: © The Postal Museum.
The cause of my merriment was a letter dated 1978 from Mr Tilling of the Scottish Postal Board to the Postal Headquarters in London on the subject of the Queen Elizabeth II gilt buttons on the new uniforms of Scottish postal workers.
Guest edited by Deborah Nash
These are unhappy times for the nation’s postal service. Revelations over the vindictive treatment of sub-postmasters by the Post Office, and OfCom’s £5,600,000 fine imposed on Royal Mail last year for its failure to meet first- and second-class delivery targets, present a picture of institutional blindness and inefficiency.
At its zenith, Royal Mail was delivering 4 million letters a day and the sound of them dropping onto the door mat was part and parcel of everyday life. Today, its operations are under scrutiny and the service may be reduced to five or even three days a week – in some areas this is already the case. The esteem with which the organisation was once held as a democratising force for the good allowing, at its inception, correspondence to circulate around the country between city, town and village and rich and poor, at the cost of a one-penny postage stamp, has greatly and perhaps irrevocably declined. Sadly, the postie’s uniform no longer guarantees a trustworthy and reliable service.
So it was with surprise that I found myself bursting into laughter at Dressed to Deliver at London’s Postal Museum, a bright cheerful exhibition exploring the evolution of the postie’s uniform from the 1780s to the present day.
Image: Smartness Satisfies Poster 1959. Image: © Royal Mail Group curtesy of The Postal Museum. Image above: 19th century Mail Coach Guard and Current Royal Mail Uniform. Image: © The Postal Museum.
The cause of my merriment was a letter dated 1978 from Mr Tilling of the Scottish Postal Board to the Postal Headquarters in London on the subject of the Queen Elizabeth II gilt buttons on the new uniforms of Scottish postal workers.
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