Sending Children Via Parcel Post
In reading this day’s Santa Fe New Mexican from 100 years ago (25 May 1920), I came across this horrible sounding story in which two young boys, ages 8 and 6, were sent from Topeka, KS to Ogden, UT, by express parcel mail.
After getting over the initial shock of the thought of sending children by mail I decided to see just how common an activity it was.
Beginning with the new year in 1913 the United States Postal Service lifted the 4 pound cap on the allowed weight of parcels it handles within its system. This lead to an explosion in both the number of parcels and in the wide assortment of items people would send. The most unusual being that of small children and often infants. I was able to find 5 such cases in those early years of people sending, or attempting to send, infants and children through the mail.
Infant Is Sent By Mail Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY) 25 June 1914 
Parcel Post Carries Little Girl For 53 Cents The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, FL) 15 March 1914 
Child By Parcel Post The Leon Journal-Reporter (Leon, IA) 29 July 1915 
Tries To Send Child By Parcel Post New Castle News (New Castle PA) 7 Dec 1915 
Wanted To Send Child By Parcel Post The Allentown Democrat (Allentown, PA) 28 June 1915
[May Pierstorff, the little girl featured in the Tampa, FL story, was the subject of a book, Mailing May, by Michael O. Tunnel in 1997.]
The practice was frequent enough that the Post Office issued an edict specifically barring babies—human beings in general—and live animals (except queen bees) from the mail service.
The USPS later lifted its restrictions on shipping live animals, which lead to a few people once again trying to use the mail service for shipping their toddlers cross country. The argument that children were technically live animals seem to work on a few local post offices, and failed at others.
Kazoo Postoffice Refused Child For Parcel Post The News-Palladium (Kalamazoo, MI) 21 November 1923 
Children Are Barred From Parcel Post Mail (still) Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN) 14 June 1920
The practice seems to have died out after the failed attempt of 1923 as I could find no further accounts appearing in any newspaper after that date. A similar incidence did occur in South America in 1928 when a 7-month-old infant arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador on an airmail shipment from Buenaventura, Colombia. The child had a tagged attached to its arm labeled, Perishable; please rush.
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