"Post-Haste" was the first film directed by Humphrey Jennings, later to become one of Britain's best-known directors of documentary films. It was made for the GPO Film Unit and is a potted history of the British Post Office from its foundation in the reign of Charles II up to the 1930s. For more than 100 years, the mail was delivered around the country by "postboys", mounted couriers who, despite the name, were normally adult men. They carried horns which they were expected to blow whenever they met anyone on the road or "at least three times in every mile". (This explains why the horn is still used as a symbol of the postal service in many countries). It was not until 1784 that horse-drawn coaches were used to carry the mail. These in turn were phased out with the coming of the railways in the 1840s, a period which also saw the introduction of universal penny postage and of the postage stamp. The 19th century was a period of automation which saw a great increase in the speed and efficiency of the service, something which continued into the 20th.
The contemporary part of the story is illustrated using scenes of a sorting office, mail vans and a Handley Page biplane airliner, which looks very quaint today but which probably looked state-of-the-art at the time. The earlier part of the story could have been illustrated by using actors to stage reconstructions of historic scenes, but Jennings evidently rejected this option as too expensive. Instead he uses old prints and illustrations taken from the British Museum and the (now defunct) Postal Museum, Tottenham. The resulting film is a bit of a historical curiosity, and was recently shown as such on a specialist British movie channel, but I must admit that I did learn from it some facts of which I had previously been unaware.
