Financial records

The Royal Mail Archive holds financial records ranging in date from the 1670s through to the present day. These include cash books (POST 2) and accounts (POST 9), Treasury correspondence (POST 1) and property and income tax assessments and certificates (POST 7). They can be a very useful source of information for business or family historians. Alternatively, they can simply provide a fascinating glimpse into the past.

If you know more about these or other financial records produced by Royal Mail why not tell us about it or read what others have said on our new Wiki?

Here are four examples of financial records in our collection:

Account of money received and paid at the Post Office, 1-31 August 1677, finding number: POST 2/1

This account comes from a cash book in POST 2 that begins in June 1677. The first page sets out what the Post Office received while the second and third pages set out what it spent.

If you look carefully at the bottom of the second page you will see that they bought some accessories for the office including "eight new Socketts and eighteene Candlesticks" for 11 shillings 4 pence and "3 dozen of large leatherne Baggs" for 1 pound 1 shilling.

Archive class POST 2 contains some of the earliest records that we hold here in The Royal Mail Archive.

Large image of the first page of the account (539 KB)

Large image of the second page of the account (624 KB)

Large image of the third page of the account (682 KB)

Warrant, 21 January 1692, finding number: POST 1/1

This warrant from the Post Office to the Treasury asks permission to grant Captain Robert Winnett's petition for injury compensation. The warrant states that the injury was sustained in March 1691.

Robert Winnett was working on the packet ship the Frances Ketch. As the ship came into Harwich from Helford Sluice with the Holland Mail, he was attacked by a French Man-of-War. Unfortunately, in the action that followed, his right arm was shot off.

The Post Office was a government department until 1969. Therefore what it spent was controlled by the Treasury. This means that we have a lot of correspondence between the Postmaster General and the Treasury about the Post Office’s expenditure in archive class POST 1.

Large image of the first page of the warrant (421 KB)

Large image of the second page of the warrant (572 KB)

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Account of expenditure for steam packet stores, June 1821, finding number: POST 4/30

This is an account from POST 4/30. It gives details of the bills paid and the stores purchased for the first Post Office steam packets, the Royal Sovereign and Meteor. These packet ships sailed between Holyhead and Howth from 31 May 1821.

The accounts of various packet ship services are in archive class POST 4. Information on postmasters and agents in British overseas posts can be found in POST 4, which includes accounts of postmasters and agents from places as far away as Canada and the West Indies.

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List of mail guards, 1857, finding number: POST 7/12

This list of mail guards is from archive class POST 7 which contains property and income tax assessments and certificates. These records are a very useful source of information for family historians. This is because they contain lists of staff employed in the Post Office between 1843 and 1884 and in 1891. Mail guards, for example, appear in POST 7 from 1854 onwards.

Further information about how to trace a member of your family who worked at the Post Office can be found in the Family history research section of our website. 

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