Futility Closet

In 1898, 19-year-old W. Reginald Bray made a thorough study of British postal regulations, which laid out rules for mailing everything from bees to elephants and promised that "all letters must be delivered as addressed." He resolved to give the service "a severe test without infringing its regulations." In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review the antics that followed, in which Bray sent turnips, bicycle pumps, shoes, and even himself through the British post. We'll also sympathize with Lucius Chittenden, a U.S. Treasury official who had to sign 12,500 bonds in one harried weekend in 1862, and puzzle over the worrying train journey of a Wall Street banker. Our segment on W.R. Bray, the Edwardian postal experimentalist, is based chiefly on John Tingey's 2010 book The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects. Tingey maintains a website with an extensive catalog of the curios that Bray sent through the post. Also David Leafe, "The Man Who Posted Himself," Daily Mail, March 19,