What is going one here 1?

August 18, 2022 9:53 AM

During the late 1940s and early 50s some classified ads in magazines that I read had entries for "remailing services" where you could use a mailing address other than your own where letters would be forwarded to your correct address. My elderly memory says they cost about 20 cents a letter for the service. What was going on here? The magazines in question were Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Science and others like them.
posted by Raybun to Society & Culture (7 answers total)

These still exist. People can use them for a number of different reasons.

- privacy so people don't know your home address
- privacy so people delivering your mail or in your home won't know who you're getting mail from (remailers will put things into a new envelope to forward it along)
- possibly to establish residency somewhere (not technically legal but can work)
- for people who are nomadic of some sort, they can change the "deliver to" address to where they are at the time. Fulltime RVers use these a lot
posted by jessamyn at 10:04 AM on August 18, 2022

Imagine you lived in a small town in that era and everyone knew your business including the post-office workers.

If you wanted to, for example, order something the neighbors would frown upon like a girlie magazine how would you do it? This is one way. There was a reason these services were advertised in male-oriented magazines.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:06 AM on August 18, 2022

It's just a service (which still exists today) that you can use for a verity of reasons where you don't want to give out your real address for whatever reason.

I have friends who are full time RV's who have official "residency" in a specific state for taxes, vehicle registration, and such but have their mail FW though a private company to where ever they are currently staying.
posted by Captain_Science at 10:06 AM on August 18, 2022

Even into the 60's, "Hell remails" was a novelty thing. Send your letter and a small fee inside another letter, and it would get postmarked from "Hell" (Michigan).

Hell has since branched out: https://www.gotohellmi.com/
posted by dws at 10:09 AM on August 18, 2022

I know some places won't mail to APOs, and anecdotally I've heard of remailing services to get around that. I would imagine, with military deployments being what they were in the 40s and 50s, that that would have been an even bigger problem. Also, I would imagine the military would probably monitor incoming mail in a lot of those locations, and the types of mail that someone who reads Popular Science might receive could theoretically arouse some suspicion. So I don't know if it would be successful, but I could see a use case where a soldier getting mail from, like, the 50s equivalent of Nuclear Physics for Dummies might want to try to avoid hassle.

I would also imagine that if you moved frequently (e.g., if you were a soldier on deployment at the end of a major war), it would be easier to just update your address with the remailing service than to change it with everyone who sent you mail. The midcentury equivalent of a password manager.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:19 AM on August 18, 2022

Also useful if you are corresponding with anyone whose gender or identity would have led to questions—and very likely danger—from your household or community.
posted by corey flood at 11:53 AM on August 18, 2022

Also sometimes used as a marketing technique - a finance business might prefer a New York mailing address, a tech company prefers a San Francisco address, etc.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 7:41 PM on August 18, 2022