Although this colorized photo may have been staged, sending children through the mail via Parcel Post was actually a thing for a few years at the beginning of the service. Not many children were mailed, nor were they stuffed into mail carrier sacks with postage pinned to their clothing along with anything else you needed to send, but there were a few incidents of people relying on the mail for human transport. Honestly, the practice wasn’t as heartless as it may first appear, since the postal carriers were considered trusted members of the community, and people were trying to overcome the challenges of early travel.
Source: (Rare Historical Photos/colorized).
On January 1, 1913, the U.S. Postal Service began to accept packages over four pounds to be sent through the mail. With this new service, there weren’t a lot of regulations. This provided increased access for individuals across the country, as people in rural areas could now order more easily from mail-order companies, but the lack of rules led people to try to see what they could get away with. They tested the limits by sending bricks, eggs, and snakes, as well as other things that wouldn’t normally be mailed.
The First Baby To Be Mailed
Source: (Rare Historical Photos).
A few weeks after Parcel Post started, the first child was sent through the mail. A couple in Ohio, Jesse and Mathilda Beagle, sent their 8-month-old son to his grandmother. She did not live very far, only a few miles away in Batavia, Ohio, and the child, James, was just under the 11-pound weight limit. To mail, James cost the parents 15 cents, but they insured him for $50. This first incident made the newspapers, as it was a bit unusual. Other parents soon tried their luck with sending their children through the mail. It was cheaper to mail a child than to send him or her on the train. The weight limit quickly increased, allowing for larger children to be sent.
More Followed
Source: (Rare Historical Photos).
About a year after the Beagle’s sent their child, The New York Times reported the story of Mrs. E. H. Staley, whose two-year-old nephew arrived via Parcel Post. This child did not have a stamp, but instead, sported a tag around his neck. It cost 18 cents to send him; he was transported by rural route for 25 miles. From there, he rode the railroad “with the mail clerks, shared his lunch with them and arrived here in good condition.”
Calling Your Children Mail Was a Cheaper Way To Travel
Perhaps the best-known story of a child being mailed. Source: (petticoatsandpistols/colorized).
For some families, it cost an entire day’s pay to send a child via train, so at least one family decided to mail their child when she wanted to visit her grandmother. In this case, a four-year-old girl named Charlotte May Pierstorff was “mailed” 73 miles from her home in Grangeville, Idaho, to visit her grandmother. Granted, this was definitely not as dramatic as it may seem, since she had company on the trip; Leonard Mochel, her mother’s cousin who worked for the railway mail service as a clerk, traveled with her on the trip. At 48.5 pounds, she was just under the weight limit at that time, and she made the trip with 53-cents worth of postage on her coat. Charlotte May’s trip, on February 19, 1914, actually became a children’s book, Mailing May by Michael O. Tunnell.
Children Are Not "Harmless Live Animals"
Source: (Rare Historical Photos).
Eventually, the Postmaster General issued a regulation forbidding the use of the postal service for child transport. Apparently, “children did not come within the classification of harmless live animals (bees and bugs) which do not require food or water while in transit.” The Postmaster General’s decree appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times on June 14, 1913. While this announcement did slow down the practice, it didn’t stop it altogether. In 1915, a mother sent her six-year-old from Pensacola Florida to the girl’s father’s home in Christiansburg, Virginia for 15 cents, making this the longest distance a child was mailed.
The final child reported to have been mailed was three-year-old Maude Smith, who was shipped from Caney, Kentucky to Jackson, Kentucky in August 1915.
