1914 - Jan 3 HSR Lost and Found

“Several thousand articles are generally lost by forgetful persons in the Hamilton streets cars. In fact, the street car is one of the favorite places to leave things.

Hamilton Spectator. January 3, 1914.

Hamilton’s street car network of electric lines was extensive, and heavily-used in 1914. One of the side effects of such a high ridership was the human failing of forgetting things, and leaving them on a car for HSR employees to retrieve.

As a reporter with the Hamilton Spectator noted, people were capable of forgetting things in a wide variety places :

“Everyday preoccupied men and women leave some of their belongings lying about in the shops, in the theatres, in offices and other places of business, even in church and anywhere where people congregate”¹

“Leave Things in Street Cars : Great Public is Somewhat Forgetful : Conductors Find Many Strange Objects : Company Has Room Stocked With the Lost”

Hamilton Spectator. January 3, 1914

However, in the Hamilton of 1914, the reporter concluded that “the favorite place to leave anything you want to get rid of, or don’t want to get rid of, is the street car.”¹

To deal with such the problem of articles left on its vehicles. The Hamilton Street Railway company devoted one large room on the ground floor of its building. People could look in the room if they were searching for an item they might have left on a street car.

The storage room on the ground floor of the Terminal Building was visited by the Spectator reporter who described it as resembling “nothing so much as a church missionary bazar, a junk shop or, at best, a disreputable species of variety store:”

“Here you find everything from alarm clocks to baby buggies – everything conceivable in the category of merchandise from 98 shirtwaists, new hosiery and other dry goods of all popular brands – from the 57 varieties of pickles to real hard home-grown Canadian cider.

“It is said that in Toronto the Good, Bibles and hymn books are collected from the street cars in goodly number every Sunday. Hamilton, however, has not become quite so active in this form of propaganda among motormen and conductors.

“Club boxes and valises are left in large numbers on the street cars. So are ladies’ hand boxes and vanity boxes.

“Sometimes a kitten or a pair of live rabbits are forgotten by their little owners, who are bustled off too hurriedly by their mammas. Sometimes a society lady will forget her dear little Snoozle-ums, but unfortunately this does not happen as often as it should. Nor are babies – meaning the ordinary garden variety of sure-enough human babies – ever forgotten except in the moving picture plays.

“Patients returning from visiting the doctor and the druggist will sometimes forget their medicine – and who can blame them?

“Rolls of music, books, magazines, eye glasses, stick pins, muffs, parcels containing lace, lingerie, blouses, hats, caps, boots and shoes, socks, stockings, clocks and other time pieces, mechanics’ tools, keys, cuff links and other jewelry are just a few of the things that the conductor finds in his car after all his passengers have ‘tripped out.’ “Tripped’ is here used advisedly, because that is about one-half of them do, thanks to the hobble skirt.

“Parcels of meat and other food stuffs are sometimes found. Such perishable goods are destroyed after being kept a certain number of hours.”

The Spectator concluded his exhaustive, but partial, survey of what he saw in the Hamilton Street Railway’s Lost and Found storage room by noting that “a considerable portion of the goods lost and found on the Hamilton street cars are never claimed.”¹

 While other cities eventually auctioned off unclaimed lost and found items, the reporter found that was not the case with the Hamilton Street Railway who the reporter jokingly thought was “contemplating the establishment of a museum in the old library building, which it is intended to stock up completely with a wide variety of curios.”¹