POST OFFICE
(Contd.)
828
fortunately, they have been preserved intact.
More detailed references to the department's records are reserved for subsequent instalments of this series.
A summary of the earlier history of the Post Office in Hong Kong was given yesterday, and we might now proceed to take certain items from the old records in greater detail. There was the question of staff and status, for example, and the filed correspondence from 1847 onwards discloses some interesting facts in this connexion.
We know that the original Post Office, as mentioned in yesterday's article, was merely a sorting and clearing house for letters. For this reason no postage was charged, and the so-called postal department seems to have been really nothing more than a subsidiary office of the Harbour Master. This probably explains why practically none of the earliest official records from 1842 to 1846, are preserved.
In due course the Colony settled down to be (more or less) a revenue-producing unit, and the matter of charging fees for letter carriage must have arisen. It is evident that the General Post Office in London must have come early into the picture with a request for a levy on correspondence, and somewhere about 1846, the Hong Kong department had attained a position of some importance in the scheme of things. The Postmaster, Judging from the correspondence which began to pass, was able to assert himself to some extent,
It is important to note that even then the Post Office here was a subsidiary of the General Post Office in London: thus all the staff were appointed, granted leave, or dismissed with the sanction of the Postmaster General in England. For a good many years this condition of affairs persisted, and the Hong Kong Government, as landlord, charged rent to the London postal authorities for the use of the premises on Queen's Road, while all the expenses and revenues of the local Post Office were paid by and remitted to, London.
The charges for carriage of letters appear to have been for a long time in the form of accounts rendered, and the records show how these were levied; all amounts being then in sterling. It might be mentioned, for the better understanding of the monetary side of the subject, that the local dollar in those early years was practically standardised at an exchange value of four shillings and two pence; also that the cost of living was then considerably less than it is now.
In due course we shall briefly mention the sub-departments of the local Post Office which were established at Macao, Canton, Shanghai, and so forth (actually, the one at Shanghai appears to have been the oldest, and we are not much concerned with it), but in the meantime let us take a look at what the old correspondence discloses of staff arrangements.
One of the earliest letters on file, dated July 14, 1847 is written by R. H. Crackanthorp, addressed to the Postmaster General in London (Lt.-Col. Maberly), stating that the former had assumed charge of the Hong Kong Post Office, "a few days previous to the departure of Mr. Hyland for England in the last month's mail packet," and had taken up residence in the apartments in the Post Office. A later entry refers to a notification which had been signed by Mr. Thomas Hyland in June 1847 stating that the Postmaster General (London) had granted him leave of absence, and that Mr. Crackanthorp, the Chief Clerk had been directed to conduct the duties of the office in the meantime.