A Lifeboat procession ......... a collection of postal workers ...... and something new

So, I wonder what these men of the Post Office thought about dressing up in the summer of 1907 for the procession to mark Lifeboat Saturday. *

Or just who got to choose who dressed up as a Post Mistress through the ages.

The chap imitating a post box seems happy enough but the onerous task of pretending to be the Postmaster General seems too much for his colleague who looks into the far distance.  He may well have felt the part with the embroidered lettering PMG and walking stick, but there is a hint that he is either very uncomfortable playing the part or such a role is below his dignity.

Of course, we will never know but together the team seem a bit abashed at their contribution which celebrates the history of the Postal Service.

And so they should, because my old friend David Harrop, he of all things postal, informs me that behind them is one of the first mechanised postal vans, marking that transition from horse to petrol.

To this I can add from my Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, "that around 1904 the Royal mail introduced their Rapid Transit Mail Delivery using a motorised tricycle and in 1907,  the first motor vehicle entered Royal Mail service - this was a 2.5 tonne lorry called the Maudslay Stores Number 1 (the first vehicles were stores vehicles rather than mail vehicles). The vehicle was in service for 18 years during which it covered over 300,000 miles”.

All of which means that this picture postcard is quite a find.

And that is all I have to say, except that the first Lifeboat collection happened here in Manchester in 1891, following a disaster when five years earlier, 27 men from Southport and St Anne’s died while trying to rescue sailors from the stricken vessel the Mexico.**

Location; Ipswich, 1907

Picture; Lifeboat Saturday, Ipswich, 1907, from the collection of David Harrop

*1891 First Street Collection, RNLI, https://rnli.org/about-us/our-history/timeline/1891-first-street-collection

** Royal Mail Graces Guide to British Industrial History https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Royal_Mail#:~:text=1907%20The%20first%20motor%20vehicle,it%20covered%20over%20300%2C000%20miles