POST NO BILLS (OR CHARLIES OR SYLVIAS OR....)

The US Postal Service (formerly known as the US Post Office) did not accept packages for mailing until January 1, 1913. At the time there were few restrictions, and you could, for example, mail a rifle to somebody by writing the recipient's name and address on the stock and slapping on the appropriate postage stamps.

Creative parents quickly took advantage of this service by posting their children. If you wanted to send little Joey out of town over spring vacation, it was a lot cheaper to mail him than to buy him a train ticket. For example, six-year old May Pierstoff's parents in Idaho sent her by parcel post to her grandparents for the princely sum of 53 cents. When Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge mailed their son in Ohio, they took the extra precaution of insuring him for $50.

As a practical matter, only small children or infants could be sent by this method, as there was a 50-pound (23 kilograms) weight limit for parcel post. 

Eventually, Postmaster Albert Burleson established regulations forbidding the mailing of humans, although the practice continued for about two years after his edict. 

For the benefit of you bleeding hearts out there, the children were not sealed up in boxes. Their parents would attach the appropriate amount of postage and the relevant address to the clothing of the child, and he or she would then be shepherded by postal employees with the more normal packages along the route.

For more information about the practice of mailing children, click here.

Photo from Smithsonian's National Postal Museum Blog at
http://postalmuseumblog.si.edu/2013/02/very-special-deliveries.html,
which is not affiliated with Henry's Daily Factoids