Blackfriars: The Post Office Magazine: A Nineteenth-Century Network of "The Happy Ignorant"

In 1855, Anthony Trollope, who would serve thirty-three years in the British postal service, addressed the fact that many believed that government offices in general and the Post Office in particular “receive their recruits” from the “idle, the weak in mind, the infirm in body, the unambitious, the jolterheads, the ne’er-do-wells, the puny, and the diseased.”1 While this evaluation was harsh, postal employees did score lower on the civil service exam than most other civil servants. During the mid-to-late nineteenth century, postal employees also found themselves in a number of scandals. For example, between 1873 and 1888, nearly a thousand postal employees were dismissed because of “intemperate habits,” and the Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889 revealed a prostitution ring composed of telegraph boys.2 Probably the most damning factor working against postal employees, however, was that the British public literally saw postal employees who were inefficient. Unlike other British civil servants, postal employees had direct, daily contact with the public, and the result was the Post Office became the “public whipping boy of the Departments.”3 Apparently, familiarity can breed contempt. In September 1885, postal servants, specifically those in the Savings Bank department, began to work against such bad press by publishing the Blackfriars Magazine, which was in print for five years.4 Identifying public contempt as the impetus behind the Blackfriars Magazine, however, does not take a reader far. Like any specialist professional press periodical, Blackfriars celebrated the honor, wisdom, efficiency, and all-around goodness of those who served its institution. The magazine, however, seldom ran articles reacting to public outcry against postal employees; it rather strove to create a network of readers and writers who engaged in intellectual and cultural discussions. “Networking” for the Blackfriars’s readers