Hitchin Post Office, 2 Market Place, 1891

The postmaster John Beaver (1830-1911), seated at the centre of the group, and staff of Hitchin Post Office, when it was in Market Place. He was Postmaster for forty years, from 1859 to 1899, also running a grocery business in the shop.
Some of the postmen seen standing in the second row delivered to the villages, including Holwell, Offley, St Ippollitts and Shillington. Robert H Holloway (1873-1943) reclines on the rug in the front.
John Edmund Tully (1870-1926), seated at the left, was the overseer of the Post Office after it moved to Brand Street in 1904. He discovered a window broken by suffragette Jane Short on 27 June 1912 and called the police to arrest her. Mr Gadd, the postmaster, asked that she be sent home rather than imprisoned. Fanny Williams (born 1872) sits to his right.

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