Answer: Mail

The postmen of Victorian London really knew how to hustle: at the peak of its popularity, the mail delivery system in London ran nearly all day, six days a week. Monday through Saturday the postmen would make a dozen stops at each home per day. Not a dozen deliveries between major post offices, a dozen pickups and deliveries to each home on their route.

In fact the post service in the 1880s was so speedy that the residents of London used it much like we use email or text messaging today. Although we now think of letters in terms of days (as in “I’ll mail this letter to my grandmother and it will arrive in three days”), back then you could send a letter after breakfast, receive a reply at lunch, and send out another response before dinner. Brief written correspondence was a perfectly useful way to plan an evening and the total postage expended by all parties in planning the evening would amount to only a few pennies.