Mailing Children
Jan. 26th, 2026 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feng_shui_houseI went back to the USPS webshite,
https://www.usps.com/
but this time I went looking on all the bottom links- one was to the National (Smithsonian) Postal Museum.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/
From there I went to photos (a post talking about a collection made 2006-2008)
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/about-postal-operations/photographs
It had a link to the Flickr album of 199 photos of ’People and the Post’ looking for a photo I’d caught a glimpse of on the si.edu page. Really old, interesting a lot of biplanes and pilots, etc. AND then on page 2 I found the pic I was looking for.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/albums/72157605338989538/page2
Once upon a time, the USPS parcel post mailed CHILDREN. The photo is a joke, but it really happened at least twice.
After the parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples.
Good thing they stopped doing it. The kids would starve or die of thirst before they got there if sent today.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2584174182/in/album-72157605338989538
A commenter added "With the advent of Parcel Post in 1913, after some adults sent their children in the mails— with postage affixed to clothing— the U.S. Postmaster General issued regulations barring such shipment. The theory was that children were under the 50 lb. weight limit, and that it was a lot cheaper to mail them than to pay rail fares. In part, the regulation followed a letter inquiring as to whether parcel post would be appropriate, and the Postmaster General was of the opinion that children were not within the definition of "bees and bugs" which were the only fauna permitted to be mailed.[13] Nevertheless, several children were actually mailed. On 13 June 1920, sending children by Parcel Post was officially forbidden. Thereafter, a mail bag stuffed with a child was prominently featured in a humorous photograph to illustrate the prohibition."
https://www.usps.com/
but this time I went looking on all the bottom links- one was to the National (Smithsonian) Postal Museum.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/
From there I went to photos (a post talking about a collection made 2006-2008)
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/about-postal-operations/photographs
It had a link to the Flickr album of 199 photos of ’People and the Post’ looking for a photo I’d caught a glimpse of on the si.edu page. Really old, interesting a lot of biplanes and pilots, etc. AND then on page 2 I found the pic I was looking for.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/albums/72157605338989538/page2
Once upon a time, the USPS parcel post mailed CHILDREN. The photo is a joke, but it really happened at least twice.
After the parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples.
Good thing they stopped doing it. The kids would starve or die of thirst before they got there if sent today.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2584174182/in/album-72157605338989538
A commenter added "With the advent of Parcel Post in 1913, after some adults sent their children in the mails— with postage affixed to clothing— the U.S. Postmaster General issued regulations barring such shipment. The theory was that children were under the 50 lb. weight limit, and that it was a lot cheaper to mail them than to pay rail fares. In part, the regulation followed a letter inquiring as to whether parcel post would be appropriate, and the Postmaster General was of the opinion that children were not within the definition of "bees and bugs" which were the only fauna permitted to be mailed.[13] Nevertheless, several children were actually mailed. On 13 June 1920, sending children by Parcel Post was officially forbidden. Thereafter, a mail bag stuffed with a child was prominently featured in a humorous photograph to illustrate the prohibition."
no subject
Date: 2026-01-26 09:02 pm (UTC)https://www.history.com/articles/mailing-children-post-office
In January 1913, one Ohio couple took advantage of the U.S. Postal Service’s new parcel service to make a very special delivery: their infant son. The Beagues paid 15 cents for his stamps and an unknown amount to insure him for $50, then handed him over to the mailman, who dropped the boy off at his grandmother’s house about a mile away.
In the case of May Pierstorff, whose parents sent her to her grandparent’s house 73 miles away in February 1914, the postal worker who took her by Railway Mail train was a relative. The Idaho family paid 53 cents for the stamps they put on their nearly six-year-old daughter’s coat. Yet after Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson heard about this incident—as well as another inquiry someone had made that month about mailing children—he officially banned postal workers from accepting humans as mail.
Still, the new regulation didn’t immediately stop people from sending their children by post. A year later, a woman mailed her six-year-old daughter from her home in Florida to her father’s home in Virginia. At 720 miles, it was the longest postal trip of any of the children Pope has identified, and cost 15 cents in stamps.
In August 1915, three-year-old Maud Smith made what appears to be the last journey of a child by U.S. post, when her grandparents mailed her 40 miles through Kentucky to visit her sick mother. After the story made the news, Superintendent John Clark of the Cincinnati division of the Railway Mail Service investigated, questioning why the postmaster in Caney, Kentucky, had allowed a child on a mail train when that was explicitly against regulations.
“I don’t know if he lost his job, but he sure had some explaining to do,” Pope says.
Though Maud seems to be the last successfully mailed child, others would later still try to mail their children. In June 1920, First Assistant Postmaster General John C. Koons rejected two applications to mail children, noting that they couldn’t be classified as “harmless live animals,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
(OMG yes, I would NEVER classify children as 'harmless'.) :^0