The Post-Office Contention
Robbery on Open Day
On the afternoon of the 24th of August a robbery took place apparently in the following manner. The thief descended the area of 27 Eversfield place, which was unoccupied, cut out a frame of glass, unlocked the door from the inside, went to the top of the empty house on to the roof and over to the roof of No. 26, whence he entered that house by an attic window and descended to a room beneath. He there wrenched open a dressing-case, and carried off jewels worth about £100, and then retraced his way through the unoccupied house and got clearly away.
Inventions
Although St. Leonards men might not surpass the ingenuity of the thief above described, some of them were at least his equal in more honest devices. One of these was Mr. Charles Blake, who invented a novel method of preventing draughs(sic) in doors. There was also another useful invention by a St. Leonards man in the same year, the description of which has got mislaid.
Postal Matters
The commencement of a secretly cherished ambition of a few persons to claim the portion of St. Leonards eastward of the Archway as Hastings was by an attempt to get the general post-office of the within limits of the Archway abolished. To that post-office the without district (which had also been named St. Leonards from its commencement) had been attached for 23 years the postal and other services, which by no other arrangement could have been so convenient either to the Post-office authorities or to the inhabitants. The contention over this question was even more prolonged than the disagreement over those of the Local Board map and the cemetery sites; as it led to a bitter feeling between the two towns, much space in this History will be required for the arguments for and against, as well as for the elucidation of the real bearings of the case. It will be shewn in the next chapter that a public meeting was held at the Town Hall for the purpose of removing the Hastings post-office to the Priory and to extinguish the St. Leonards post-office altogether – the latter to my knowledge being exactly 1½ miles distant from the former. The said public meeting was the outcome of a small number of persons , including the Mayor (Mr. Clift) who, at a private meeting at the Castle hotel, formed a committee of four to represent to the Postmaster-General “That there being two post-offices – one in St. Leonards and one in Hastings - was a great inconvenience, particularly to Hastings.” The said representation was in the form of a memorial to the Postmaster General, signed by the Mayor, Mr. Ross, Mr Paine (a reporter) and others. A counter-memorial was immediately dispatched to the same official from St. Leonards, far more numerously signed than the one sent out by the Mayor and his friends, as was also another counter memorial even from Hastings itself. In reference to the St. Leonards me-
