"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," is supposed to be the mail-man's (delivery persons if you prefer), motto, and creed around the globe.
And in the main, especially in the first world, the mail does operate fairly effectively. There are differences, as anyone who posted a holiday card from Southern Italy, Spain or Greece in the 1980's, or before, will be able to attest.
You posted it first day on arrival at the resort on your two week break, only for it usually turning up two weeks after your return to work. A depressing reminder of the fact that your annual holiday was over, and of that first day in the resort, oh so long ago now, when you had a feverish brow (it was way, way too hot), and a pallid complexion (which had been tan cured, but which was now peeling unpleasantly after two weeks of burning). But, at least the postcard had been delivered.
However there is in fact a long and ignoble tradition of postmen who don't post. Well to be precise, who don't actually post through the intended recipients letter boxes. This black tradition was brought back to my attention by the recent case of the Indian village postmaster, Jagannath Puhan, in Odhanga village in India's Orissa state, who had been only delivering tracked mail, for years. The rest he had stored in a back room of the post office. He was caught when the post office moved to a new building, and children playing in the old building uncovered the undelivered mail hoard. His excuse was that he was too old, and too unwell to deliver it all.
But these sorts of shenanigans knows no postal boundaries, and here are a few examples from around the globe:
In Britain 2011, a Royal Mail postman, Paul Willicott of Paignton, Devon, hoarded 30,000 letters and parcels in his house, car and a garage. When he was caught, he claimed that he did not have enough time to deliver all the mail he was expected to handle during his four-hour round. He was sacked, and later the judge ordered him to pay £1,700 costs (which was only half of the total that the Royal Mail spent investigating him), and he was ordered to do 280 hours of unpaid work.
In 2008, Adam Stuart a postman in Wales, failed to deliver 5,500 items of mail, and told investigators he "couldn't be bothered more than anything else". He informed investigators that had been unhappy that he had not been paid properly for the previous three or four weeks, and could not cope when moved to delivery work. In May that year, a forestry worker discovered mailbags containing 3,100 items of post dumped in woods close to Stuart's home in the village of Trefriw in the Conwy Valley. Also a colleague reported a package hadn't been delivered to her. Other residents at Colwyn Bay also hadn't received their post. He had admitted two counts of delaying mail and also admitted stealing 67 postal packets. He was jailed for nine months.
Stephen John Firth a Royal Mail postman failed to deliver hundreds of items of mail in 2006 .... this came to light in when 165 items of mail were found dumped in Woodland off Keresforth Road, Barnsley. When investigators went to his home they found a further three bags of undelivered mail scattered around his house. A total of 860 packets were found in the house and in an old shed, a fridge and a composting bin in the garden ... tellingly they also said 44 letters had been opened. Some of their contents were missing. And some door to door items had been burnt. Firth admitted two counts of intentionally delaying postal packets, theft and criminal damage. He sobbed as he was jailed for 15 months by a judge at Sheffield Crown Court.
Richard Appleby a postman in Suffolk who failed to deliver nearly 70,000 mail items, was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence in 2009. He had admitted "interfering with the mail" between April 2004 and November 2008. Appleby had been a postman nearly 20 years with the Royal Mail. Investigators had found mail in Appleby's living room, hallway, garden shed and loft. They counted 61,487 items of normal mail, and 6,874 items of junk mail which he had hoarded.
In April 2018 in Italy, a 33-year-old former Italian postman was stopped during a routine road check near Turin, and police found a 20cm long folding knife, and 70 letters on the back seat of his car. A search of his home uncovered a further 40 boxes of undelivered mail that included bank statements, bills and other private correspondence. He told police that he had actually quit the postal service in 2017 because “I wasn’t paid enough and so I quit.” He now awaits trial for charges of theft, misappropriation of correspondence and for carrying a weapon.
In Palermo Sicily 2012, police arrested a 56 year old postman who had failed to deliver letters or parcels for more than a year. The hoard weighed 700kg .... oddly no locals complained until they had not seen any correspondence for more than a year. The postman was placed in custody at Palermo's Ucciardone prison, facing charges of embezzlement, abuse of office, interfering with the postal service and fraud.
Also in Italy 2018, police in the northern city of Vicenza arrested a a 56-year-old, after they found 500kg of undelivered mail (1,261 pounds), dating back to 2010 hidden in his garage. The police said it was the largest haul of undelivered mail ever found. It was only uncovered when a recycling centre reported receiving 25 large yellow containers full of mail. The postal service in the city pledged to deliver the mail, even though the correspondence was up to six years late ... In 2013 a postman in Sardinia failed to deliver mail during a four-year period. The hoard weighed 400kg, and he faced a prison sentence of up to one year if convicted.
In the US in 2018, Aleksey Germash a mail carrier in the Dyker Heights neighbourhood of Brooklyn, was found to have stashed about 17,000 pieces of undelivered mail for more than a decade. He later claimed he was “overwhelmed” by the amount he had to deliver. But he told investigators that he always “made sure to deliver the important mail.”
Remaining in the U.S. Gary Wayne Collins a former postman in North Carolina, was spotted stashing several tubs of mail holding 1,500 items behind a dumpster in Shelby in April 2014. Investigators visited his home and found an undelivered letter dated from 2000, while a bag held 134 pieces of mail stamped with a September 2002 date. Confronted, Collins said he could not keep pace with delivery due to health problems and pressure from management to finish his route by 5 pm. He told the investigators that he originally planned to retrieve and deliver the mail later. The hoarded mail couldn't be salvaged, and was later hauled away in dump trucks. Collins pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully destroying, detaining and delaying U.S. mail, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In the western Kentucky city of Dawson Springs, mail man William "Brent" Morse, stashed at least 44,900 pieces of mail in his dead mother's house and a rented storage unit until he was caught in 2014. He had been a letter carrier for five years, and was sentenced to six months in jail, followed by six months' home incarceration for destroying, hiding and delaying the delivery of U.S. mail. Morse was also convicted of theft in state court, for cashing about $31,000 in Social Security cheques made out to his deceased mother.
The New York Post reported in March 2014 that a Long Island letter carrier had been charged with throwing about 1,000 pieces of mail into trash bins. In Australia, newspaper The Age in Victoria reported in 2013 that a carrier for Australia Post was charged after about 10,000 undelivered pieces of mail were found in his bedroom.
Manuel Gutierrez, a now ex-postman in Argentina was sentenced to 1 year in a maximum security prison after 19,000 undelivered letters were found in his Puerto Madryn home. Why he's in maximum security is hard to explain as he's obviously too lazy to try to escape.
But sometimes the delivery failure is state sponsored ....
In 2018, Israel released packages, letters and even a wheelchair intended for Palestinians held from delivery to Palestinian West Bank, after blocking deliveries from Jordan since 2010. This release was under a one-time agreement.
But finally, to restore the postman's reputation, here's one who did deliver to the motto ......
...... no matter what. A dedicated postal worker in Santa Rosa, California was spotted by a drone operator, delivering mail to the wildfire burnt out section of the town.
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| Emptying Mailboxes Is Tiring Work ..... |
And in the main, especially in the first world, the mail does operate fairly effectively. There are differences, as anyone who posted a holiday card from Southern Italy, Spain or Greece in the 1980's, or before, will be able to attest.
You posted it first day on arrival at the resort on your two week break, only for it usually turning up two weeks after your return to work. A depressing reminder of the fact that your annual holiday was over, and of that first day in the resort, oh so long ago now, when you had a feverish brow (it was way, way too hot), and a pallid complexion (which had been tan cured, but which was now peeling unpleasantly after two weeks of burning). But, at least the postcard had been delivered.
However there is in fact a long and ignoble tradition of postmen who don't post. Well to be precise, who don't actually post through the intended recipients letter boxes. This black tradition was brought back to my attention by the recent case of the Indian village postmaster, Jagannath Puhan, in Odhanga village in India's Orissa state, who had been only delivering tracked mail, for years. The rest he had stored in a back room of the post office. He was caught when the post office moved to a new building, and children playing in the old building uncovered the undelivered mail hoard. His excuse was that he was too old, and too unwell to deliver it all.
But these sorts of shenanigans knows no postal boundaries, and here are a few examples from around the globe:
In Britain 2011, a Royal Mail postman, Paul Willicott of Paignton, Devon, hoarded 30,000 letters and parcels in his house, car and a garage. When he was caught, he claimed that he did not have enough time to deliver all the mail he was expected to handle during his four-hour round. He was sacked, and later the judge ordered him to pay £1,700 costs (which was only half of the total that the Royal Mail spent investigating him), and he was ordered to do 280 hours of unpaid work.
In 2008, Adam Stuart a postman in Wales, failed to deliver 5,500 items of mail, and told investigators he "couldn't be bothered more than anything else". He informed investigators that had been unhappy that he had not been paid properly for the previous three or four weeks, and could not cope when moved to delivery work. In May that year, a forestry worker discovered mailbags containing 3,100 items of post dumped in woods close to Stuart's home in the village of Trefriw in the Conwy Valley. Also a colleague reported a package hadn't been delivered to her. Other residents at Colwyn Bay also hadn't received their post. He had admitted two counts of delaying mail and also admitted stealing 67 postal packets. He was jailed for nine months.
Stephen John Firth a Royal Mail postman failed to deliver hundreds of items of mail in 2006 .... this came to light in when 165 items of mail were found dumped in Woodland off Keresforth Road, Barnsley. When investigators went to his home they found a further three bags of undelivered mail scattered around his house. A total of 860 packets were found in the house and in an old shed, a fridge and a composting bin in the garden ... tellingly they also said 44 letters had been opened. Some of their contents were missing. And some door to door items had been burnt. Firth admitted two counts of intentionally delaying postal packets, theft and criminal damage. He sobbed as he was jailed for 15 months by a judge at Sheffield Crown Court.
Richard Appleby a postman in Suffolk who failed to deliver nearly 70,000 mail items, was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence in 2009. He had admitted "interfering with the mail" between April 2004 and November 2008. Appleby had been a postman nearly 20 years with the Royal Mail. Investigators had found mail in Appleby's living room, hallway, garden shed and loft. They counted 61,487 items of normal mail, and 6,874 items of junk mail which he had hoarded.
In April 2018 in Italy, a 33-year-old former Italian postman was stopped during a routine road check near Turin, and police found a 20cm long folding knife, and 70 letters on the back seat of his car. A search of his home uncovered a further 40 boxes of undelivered mail that included bank statements, bills and other private correspondence. He told police that he had actually quit the postal service in 2017 because “I wasn’t paid enough and so I quit.” He now awaits trial for charges of theft, misappropriation of correspondence and for carrying a weapon.
 |
| The Palermo Hoard ..... |
In Palermo Sicily 2012, police arrested a 56 year old postman who had failed to deliver letters or parcels for more than a year. The hoard weighed 700kg .... oddly no locals complained until they had not seen any correspondence for more than a year. The postman was placed in custody at Palermo's Ucciardone prison, facing charges of embezzlement, abuse of office, interfering with the postal service and fraud.
Also in Italy 2018, police in the northern city of Vicenza arrested a a 56-year-old, after they found 500kg of undelivered mail (1,261 pounds), dating back to 2010 hidden in his garage. The police said it was the largest haul of undelivered mail ever found. It was only uncovered when a recycling centre reported receiving 25 large yellow containers full of mail. The postal service in the city pledged to deliver the mail, even though the correspondence was up to six years late ... In 2013 a postman in Sardinia failed to deliver mail during a four-year period. The hoard weighed 400kg, and he faced a prison sentence of up to one year if convicted.
In the US in 2018, Aleksey Germash a mail carrier in the Dyker Heights neighbourhood of Brooklyn, was found to have stashed about 17,000 pieces of undelivered mail for more than a decade. He later claimed he was “overwhelmed” by the amount he had to deliver. But he told investigators that he always “made sure to deliver the important mail.”
Remaining in the U.S. Gary Wayne Collins a former postman in North Carolina, was spotted stashing several tubs of mail holding 1,500 items behind a dumpster in Shelby in April 2014. Investigators visited his home and found an undelivered letter dated from 2000, while a bag held 134 pieces of mail stamped with a September 2002 date. Confronted, Collins said he could not keep pace with delivery due to health problems and pressure from management to finish his route by 5 pm. He told the investigators that he originally planned to retrieve and deliver the mail later. The hoarded mail couldn't be salvaged, and was later hauled away in dump trucks. Collins pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully destroying, detaining and delaying U.S. mail, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
 |
| US Mail Found In Storage Unit ...... |
In the western Kentucky city of Dawson Springs, mail man William "Brent" Morse, stashed at least 44,900 pieces of mail in his dead mother's house and a rented storage unit until he was caught in 2014. He had been a letter carrier for five years, and was sentenced to six months in jail, followed by six months' home incarceration for destroying, hiding and delaying the delivery of U.S. mail. Morse was also convicted of theft in state court, for cashing about $31,000 in Social Security cheques made out to his deceased mother.
The New York Post reported in March 2014 that a Long Island letter carrier had been charged with throwing about 1,000 pieces of mail into trash bins. In Australia, newspaper The Age in Victoria reported in 2013 that a carrier for Australia Post was charged after about 10,000 undelivered pieces of mail were found in his bedroom.
Manuel Gutierrez, a now ex-postman in Argentina was sentenced to 1 year in a maximum security prison after 19,000 undelivered letters were found in his Puerto Madryn home. Why he's in maximum security is hard to explain as he's obviously too lazy to try to escape.
But sometimes the delivery failure is state sponsored ....
In 2018, Israel released packages, letters and even a wheelchair intended for Palestinians held from delivery to Palestinian West Bank, after blocking deliveries from Jordan since 2010. This release was under a one-time agreement.
But finally, to restore the postman's reputation, here's one who did deliver to the motto ......
 |
| "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" |
...... no matter what. A dedicated postal worker in Santa Rosa, California was spotted by a drone operator, delivering mail to the wildfire burnt out section of the town.
Another story has just hit the news .... Japanese police investigate a former postman who kept about 24,000 pieces of mail at his house in Kanagawa, near Tokyo. The unnamed 61-year-old reportedly said it was "too much bother to deliver them," and that he did not want to seem less able than his younger colleagues. A familiar excuse for laziness.
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