(USNewsReport.org) – It’s the 21st century and people can ship or receive just about anything their heart desires through the postal service. Well, that is everything except for a human body. What many don’t realize is it wasn’t so long ago that you could do just that.
What is known as the United States Postal Service began delivering packages January 1, 1913. Americans fell in love with the new service, and it’s clear we still enjoy it very much today. Issue was, maybe some people enjoyed the service a bit too much.
When the new parcel service began, restrictions on what exactly could and couldn’t be sent weren’t very clear. In other words, there were no postal regulations like today, so people sent all kinds of unusual items out just to see what they could get away with — including babies.
Believe it or not, there were times when it was perfectly legal to ship a baby through the mail.
While it may be true that today’s society would frown on such an act, you have to consider that in the early 20th century, people had different relationships with their mailmen. These workers weren’t just strangers they handed their children off to. In some cases, they were actually close family members or acquaintances, and they definitely weren’t shoved into mail sacks with other packages. Not one child that was ever sent through the postal system arrived harmed in any way.
Another appeal was the cost. It was cheaper to send a child through the postal service than it was by train, such as the example of a 6-year-old girl whose family sent her from Florida to Virginia, 720 miles, on 15 cents worth of stamps.
Even though postal regulations stopped the mailing of human beings in 1914, it wasn’t until 1915 when they actually began enforcing the end of “baby mail.” The last known account was of a 3-year-old girl named Maud Smith, who was mailed 40 miles through Kentucky from one family member to another. Though there were two applications to mail children as “harmless live animals” rejected in 1920, the Postal Service reports no known instances since.
What would you’ve done at that time in history? Would you have been willing to mail a child off cross-country to visit a family member? How about receiving a family member through the mail?
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