I read an interesting question the other day — “When did it become illegal to mail children?”
The answer is in June 1920. After that date you could no longer have your children delivered to relatives by the US Postal Service.
The US Parcel Post Service began January 1, 1913, allowing rural communities to receive packages that weighed more than four pounds without relying on the private delivery services. This was a huge boon to both mail order companies and the rural recipients of their goods.
The original regulations for what could or could not be mailed through the Parcel Service were vague, leading to people mailing all kinds of unusual things, like bricks and snakes, just because they could. Regulations during those early years varied from post office to post office depending on how the postmaster interpreted the rules. Just weeks after the parcel service began, an Ohio couple, Jesse and Matilda Beagle, mailed their eight-month-old son to his grandmother who lived a few miles away. The postage cost 15 cents and he was insured for $50.
In February of 1914, four-year-old Charlotte May Pierstorff was mailed from Grangeville, Idaho and traveled by train to her
grandmother who lived 70 miles away. She was accompanied by her mother’s cousin, who worked as a mail clerk. The 53 cents postage was much cheaper than a train ticket and the stamps were affixed to her coat. When the Post Master General heard of this incident, he banned the mailing of human beings.
The ban didn’t slow some people down. In 1915 a woman mailed her six-year-old daughter 720 miles from Florida to Virginia by train for 15 cents. All in all there are seven verified cases of children being mailed. In August of 1915, three-year-old Maud Smith was mailed 40 miles to visit her sick mother in Kentucky. The postmaster got called onto the carpet for that incident and that was the last recorded child mailing.
People still tried to mail their children, however, and in June of 1920, the assistant Postmaster General refused the request to mail two children as “harmless animals” and the practice was officially outlawed. It was still legal to mail bees, bugs, baby chicks and other harmless animals, but not those of the human variety.
