The men who sent themselves through the post

One man wanted to test an unusual postal loophole after reading about it in a newspaper while another was desperate to get home to his family as war spread across Europe.

More than 30 years apart, Harry Turner and Major "Peabod" Palmer both travelled between Channel Islands by post.

In 1905, Guernsey resident Turner decided to find out whether the postal system could really be used to transport a person - it had previously been done by a man in London in 1900.

After reading a newspaper article about the rules, he arranged to be sent from Guernsey to Sark as a postal item, becoming what is believed to have been the first person ever to post himself.

"A bit of a mischievous man," was how Guernsey Post's head of philatelic Bridget Yabsley described Turner.

She said: "I think he decided to say, 'Right, I'm going to test this out,' and he did, and he got himself posted to Sark."

It was a very different set of circumstances for Major Palmer - in February 1940 he was trying to get from Guernsey to Alderney to reunite with his family as war spread across Europe.

All the passenger places on the ferry were booked, but after studying postal regulations, he concluded there was nothing preventing him from travelling under postal supervision.

The ferry captain initially refused to take him because passenger numbers were restricted and he was neither cargo nor mail, but circumstances changed when some booked travellers failed to arrive - although he had to travel in the hold.

Yabsley said when Palmer reached Alderney he was taken to the postal sorting office and was "actually physically handed over to his wife" by a local postman.

Yabsley said she had discovered newspaper articles about the events among Guernsey Post's historic records and thought they would make "quite a nice kind of light-hearted story to tell".

She added: "Harry Turner was the first individual ever to be posted [in the islands], and then Major Palmer was the last.

"So even though they're years apart, we thought it was a really good kind of first and last story that we could tell."

The regulations were later changed, closing the loophole and bringing the era of human parcels to an end.

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