Beasts Of Burden

Animals harnessed for postal purposes have come in all shapes and sizes. Some of the choices and some of the scenarios might surprise you

- John Wright

Post delivered slowly has long been jokingly referred to as ‘snail mail’, but in reality there are many genuine examples of tail mail: letters carried by postal workers with a tail.

In most cases these are furry, in some cases feathered. Pigeons, horses, donkeys, mules, dogs, camels, reindeer and goats (allegedly even cats) have all been employed as mail carriers. In some cases, they still are.

Dogs in Britain You might be surprised to learn that dogs were once used to transport the mail in Britain, during the era of postal reforms and the Penny Black, no less.

The Postal Museum has a record of a contractor’s mail cart, pulled by four canines, plying a route between Chichester and Arundel in West Sussex, from 1830 to 1850.

One advantage may have been security. A highwayman once attempted tried a night-time robbery in the woods, but the driver was able to speed off.

A disadvantage was that dogs often scared the horses that pulled the mail coaches. One London-to-Manchester mail coach overturned in one such incident in July 1837, killing the driver and injuring passengers. By 1855, dog carts had been banned.

Dogs in Alaska

In snowy wilderness, using dogs to pull sleds is an obvious choice. Dog teams have carried mail in parts of Alaska, Canada and Russia, for example, for many years.

Remote Alaskan settlements which might be cut-off from civilisation between October and May started benefiting from a regular dog-sled mail service in the 1910s, and continued to do so until the 1960s.

Chester Noongwook never let bad weather stop him and his dogs completing their weekly 100-mile mail run between Savoonga and Gambell on remote St Lawrence Island (which is only 36 miles from the easternmost tip of Russia), sometimes in blinding snowstorms with visibility of no more than 3m and temperatures of -40C.