Registered Mail Leather Mailbag

Before valuable or important mail could be tracked electronically, the postal service needed a physical system for protecting it. Registered mail provided that additional security, and a heavy leather bag like this was part of the process.

Registered mail was intended for correspondence and packages considered too important simply to travel with ordinary mail. Money, legal documents, business papers and other valuable items could be registered, creating a record of the item as it moved through the postal system. Rather than relying only upon an address on an envelope, postal employees documented its transfer from one point to another.

The construction of the bag reflects that responsibility. Heavy leather made it durable enough for repeated travel, while the reinforced opening and fastening system allowed the contents to be secured. The mail inside could pass from postmaster to railway postal clerk, ship or another postal employee while remaining together and protected.

This was especially meaningful on Prince Edward Island, where mail leaving or entering the province could have a complicated journey. Bags traveled by wagon and train and then had to cross the Northumberland Strait before continuing through the mainland postal network. Each transfer required people to take responsibility for something entrusted to the postal service.

The registered mailbag therefore represents something we still expect from the postal system today: trust. Someone could place an important document or valuable item into the mail, hand it to a postal employee and expect that a chain of people they would never meet would protect it and deliver it to the correct person.