Post Office Workers

The General Post Office, Lombard Street, London

Image from Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain

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The data sets that we will be using for this Forgotten Women Friday are the Post Office Establishment Books, which are held at London’s Post Office Museum www.postalmuseum.org and are available on Ancestry for the period 1691-1979. The cover the whole of the United Kingdom, as well as Ireland up until 1920. Other records on Ancestry that will be useful are the Appointment books www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1933

And the Royal Mail Pension and Gratuity Records 1860-1970

www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62452

There were two categories of post office staff, ‘established’ or permanent staff who appear in these records and ‘unestablished’ seasonal workers.

We will be researching female staff across the date range, although the earlier books record few employees. From the mid 1700s, the information that they contain includes name, role, the name of the office where the individual was employed and until 1969, when the post office was nationalised, the salary.

There are an increasing number of different roles as time goes own, ranging from postmen and sorters, to telephonists and postmistresses. Note that, from 1876-1946, women were forced to resign on marriage, so those listed will be unmarried or widowed.

There was an interesting article about the Post Office Establishment Books by Susannah Coster in the October 2025 issue of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine.

Clinton, Alan Post Officer Workers: a trade union and social history George Allen & Unwin (1984) available on the Internet Archive.

Daunton, Michael J. Royal Mail: the post office since 1840 Athlone Press (1985)

Mary Carter, later Mary Braund 1690s-1765, from ? - Women at Work, Post Office. 5 minute read.