It’s hard to believe that at the beginning of the 20th century, it was possible to mail a baby or small child through the Postal Service.
But in January 1913, an Ohio, USA, couple did just that.
The parents used the US Postal Service to mail something that would be unthinkable nowadays: their infant son.
For just 15 cents worth of stamps and $50 in insurance, Jesse and Mathilda Beagle handed their child over to the mailman, who dropped baby James off at his grandparent’s home a mile away in Batavia, making him the first child to be mailed.
Little James was just shy of the 11 pound (4.9 kg) weight limit for packages sent via Parcel Post.
Without any regulations on what could and couldn’t be sent via mail, people began pushing boundaries when post offices began accepting packages over four pounds (1.8 kg) on 1 January 1913.
There wasn’t a postal regulation against mailing children, or any other “unusual” packages for that matter.
For the next several years, other parents followed suit.
Although it wasn’t common to mail children, there were multiple instances between 1913 and 1915 where children were shipped short distances.
A year after Baby James was first mailed, the Times reported on a similar situation where a young boy was shipped by his grandmother from Stratford, Oklahoma to his aunt in Wellington, Kansas, via Parcel Post.
The boy wore a tag around his neck showing it had cost 18 cents to send him by mail.
He was transported 25 miles by rural route before he reached the railroad.
In another case, six-year-old Edna Neff was sent 720 miles (1,158.7 km) from Pensacola, Florida to Christiansberg, Virginia, where her father lived.
However, for longer distances it was more economical to send children by Railway Mail than to purchase a train ticket.
One child was reported as having made a trip via railway mail car.
Four-year-old Charlotte May Pierstorff was sent from Grangeville to Lewiston, Idaho to see her grandmother on 19 February 1914.
Charlotte was just under the US Postal Service’s 50 pound (22.6 kg) weight limit, weighing just 48.5 pounds (21.9 kg).
Her parents attached 53 cents in parcel post stamps to her coat, and she rode in the train’s mail compartment, 73 miles (117.4 km) away to Lewiston.
She was personally handed off to her grandmother by Leonard Mochel, the mailman on duty.
Several instances of children being mailed by Parcel Post were reported on over the next few years before the Post Office finally decided to cease such occurrences, putting a stop to “baby mail.”
What appears to be the last journey of a child by US post took place in August 1915, when three-year-old Maud Smith was mailed by her grandparents 40 miles (64.3 km) through Kentucky to visit her sick mother.
Photos of postal workers carrying babies in their mailbags were staged photos and taken jokingly and don’t have any connection to a real-life case of a child being sent through US mail.
Although the practice of mailing children may seem strange or negligent, it served as an example of how much rural communities 'relied on and trusted postal workers', explained Jenny Lynch, a United States Postal Historian.
“Mail carriers were trusted servants, and that goes to prove it,” she told Smithsonian.com.
“There are stories of rural carriers delivering babies and taking [care of the] sick. Even now, they’ll save lives because they’re sometimes the only persons that visit a remote household every day.”
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