The History of the Mailbox & Why We Should Go Back to the Front Door Mail Slot

It's truly frightening the level of theft in not only those old cast iron mailboxes you still see in a lot of urban neighborhoods of America, but even the supposedly secure locked ones with multiple mail compartments that are starting to become easier to pry open. Call this the scary prospect of mail thieves managing to get several steps ahead of even the post office, which we suspected all along anyway. Those multiple compartment mailboxes always looked flimsy to me, despite my thought that because many are out in the open, nobody would attempt to pry open the side door in broad daylight where someone desperate for some cash would have the pick of about thirty mail slots likely containing checks or other personal information.

Well, how wrong I was. Outside of the convenience of those boxes for mail carriers, there should be a demand for some changes soon.

Americans can't blame a foreign country for inventing the multiple compartment mailbox. That's mainly an American invention thanks to the advent of housing developments, apartments and duplexes. Thankfully, a lot of Western Europe only has apartments (or flats depending if you're in the U.K.) and not so much of the other two mentioned. We can overall thank Britain, however, for inventing the process of inventing a personal box where our mail can be delivered to our homes. Before the idea of having mailboxes attached to our homes arrived, Britain was using the mail drop-off box at local post offices already by the early 1800's.

When in doubt with how you want your mail delivered, do what the British did (and still do)...

Credit: Richard Smith (Wikimedia.org)

Copyright: Richard Smith (Wikimedia.org)