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. These cover the whole of the United Kingdom, as well as Ireland up until 1920. Some of these are more informative than others but they normally have a potted career history of the person. Those for small or rural Post Offices often have very little information.

Other records on Ancestry that will be useful are the Appointment books www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1933. These show date of appointment, who appointed by, where they worked and why they left.

And the Royal Mail Pension and Gratuity Records 1860-1970

www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62452. These show date of retirement, final salary, pension awarded, any days of sick leave in the few years leading to retirement and other comments including reprimands that may have affected a final pension. It is rare for records to exist if people left before official retirement. These are listed by date of retirement, which was typically at the age of sixty, or from 1876, for women, on marriage. Later, women who had worked for more than six years got a gratuity on marriage, which was a month's pay per year worked. Many women used this for a nest egg.

You may also like to check the Addressing Health website, which lists pension details for some workers.

There were two categories of post office staff, ‘established’ or permanent staff who appear in these records and ‘unestablished’ seasonal workers. Employees in small, local and rural post offices, where it was run as part of another business, were not classed as working for the Post Office. Instead, they were ‘agents’ so the rules regarding retirement didn’t apply as they were not civil servants. Married women could therefore be ‘sub-postmistresses’, again not under Post Office rules and could retire when they liked. The weren't eligible for a Post Office Pension but depending on the circumstances, might be paid a gratuity.

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.

Women in the employ of the Post Office were mostly office workers, sorting clerks and telephonists/telegraphists. Women didn’t work at night and were often escorted in and out of office buildings out of sight of the men. Only staff who worked outdoors wore a uniform. Women letter carriers were only used in rural districts if men were not available. In the larger offices, women and men were physically separated, even if they were doing the same job/role. The number of women PO workers expanded during the World Wars. In the Second World War, a worker in Angus, Scotland called Jean Cameron campaigned for female Post Office workers who worked outside, to wear trousers rather than a longer skirt. This was approved and the trousers were called ‘Camerons’ and introduced in 1941.

Established Staff were those who had sat and passed the Civil Service exam and medical and completed two years' probation. They were entitled to a pension and sick pay. Unestablished staff were more temporary/part time; they didn’t sit an exam or face medical examination and had no pension or sick pay.

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)

Hemmeon, J. C. The History of the British Post Office Cambridge Harvard Press (1912)

A Short History of the Post Office The History Press (2018)

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