Barnsbury Boy - Micky Isaacs - 1958-1960
Micky Isaacs
Micky once appeared in the Guardian Newspaper. Here is his view of life in the Lost Property Office.
As many of you will already know I spent nearly 49 years working in public transport, and one of my many jobs was to be in charge of the lost property office of Connex (now Southern) at Purley. I say “in charge of” in fact the lost property department consisted of me and when I went on holiday the whole thing shut down for as long as I was away, people just had to wait to get their stuff back.
Every day, Monday being the worst, I used to get sacks, usually old GPO sacks, full of stuff from the stations; in theory all labelled when and where found. Some stations were very good with this, Brighton and Victoria falling in this category, others such as Sutton and Eastbourne simply not bothering. I then had to check the contents and enter them in a big book (this was 15 years ago before computers at least on the railway). The next job was to shelve them in the long vaults which ran under the tracks at Purley with the trains rumbling overhead. Of course you had to sort them into date order, and every month a Luton Transit would turn up to take away the stuff that had been on the shelves for three months to go to auction. Lost property after three months becomes the property of the railway company legally. That Transit was always absolutely full which gives an idea of the volume of stuff.
The next job was to check the reams of faxes snaking across the floor sent by the customer service centre detailing enquiries for lost items and attempt to match the two up, easy peasey!! Of course all this documentation had to be kept so you had an audit trail, and also in case the stations were slow sending stuff, which they often were.
Lost property often seems to attract curiosity among people, but sorry to disappoint, the vast majority of stuff was sports bags with smelly gym kit inside, odd gloves, beaney hats, the inevitable umbrellas, scarves, coats and mobile phones being the most common. Incidentally I had four enormous boxes full of mobile phones, one for Nokia, one for Motorola, one for Eriksson, and one for odds and sods.
For example, we would get enquiries saying a person had lost a black Nokia. The batteries would always be flat by the time we got them, so amongst the couple of hundred I had there was no way of identifying it. Virtually nobody had the IMEI number which is in the phone by the SIM card which is the only way of actually identifying it. So that’s a tip, always make a note of the number.
Of course there were ones you do remember; a beautiful brand new Virgin Vicuña man's overcoat came our way, and even better, it fitted me!! After we had kept it for three months my manager said I could purchase it for £10. I have it still. There was a filofax found at Victoria which the entries were all written in Japanese, but I noticed in the address section the woman’s name was English, although the address was in Japanese, so I cut that bit out and stuck it to an envelope and sent it off to Japan with the standard letter asking them to come to Purley to reclaim their property, and lo and behold this woman’s mother actually did come and claim it!! Sometimes we dealt with the results of crime. An air hostess had had her bag snatched at Victoria and chucked on the tracks but they had left her staff pass inside and so I contacted her. Now the smack heads at Victoria had taken the money, but left about ten grand’s worth of jewellery inside in a little velvet bag. On another occasion we got one of those transparent large plastic bags stamped HMP that prisoners put their stuff in when released. Inside was probably everything this person owned, a little radio, clothes, washing gear, and right in the bottom a set of teeth. Presumably on release this bloke had quite understandably got pissed and lost the bag!! It was never claimed..
On more than one occasion I had to send suitcases off that people had left. I always thought the postal charges made it uneconomical, especially the ones I sent to the USA.
Anyway it was an interesting job that I did for two years and one that called for some detective skills, as well as a lot of humping things around.
Micky Isaacs
Micky once appeared in the Guardian Newspaper. Here is his view of life in the Lost Property Office.
As many of you will already know I spent nearly 49 years working in public transport, and one of my many jobs was to be in charge of the lost property office of Connex (now Southern) at Purley. I say “in charge of” in fact the lost property department consisted of me and when I went on holiday the whole thing shut down for as long as I was away, people just had to wait to get their stuff back.
Every day, Monday being the worst, I used to get sacks, usually old GPO sacks, full of stuff from the stations; in theory all labelled when and where found. Some stations were very good with this, Brighton and Victoria falling in this category, others such as Sutton and Eastbourne simply not bothering. I then had to check the contents and enter them in a big book (this was 15 years ago before computers at least on the railway). The next job was to shelve them in the long vaults which ran under the tracks at Purley with the trains rumbling overhead. Of course you had to sort them into date order, and every month a Luton Transit would turn up to take away the stuff that had been on the shelves for three months to go to auction. Lost property after three months becomes the property of the railway company legally. That Transit was always absolutely full which gives an idea of the volume of stuff.
The next job was to check the reams of faxes snaking across the floor sent by the customer service centre detailing enquiries for lost items and attempt to match the two up, easy peasey!! Of course all this documentation had to be kept so you had an audit trail, and also in case the stations were slow sending stuff, which they often were.
Lost property often seems to attract curiosity among people, but sorry to disappoint, the vast majority of stuff was sports bags with smelly gym kit inside, odd gloves, beaney hats, the inevitable umbrellas, scarves, coats and mobile phones being the most common. Incidentally I had four enormous boxes full of mobile phones, one for Nokia, one for Motorola, one for Eriksson, and one for odds and sods.
For example, we would get enquiries saying a person had lost a black Nokia. The batteries would always be flat by the time we got them, so amongst the couple of hundred I had there was no way of identifying it. Virtually nobody had the IMEI number which is in the phone by the SIM card which is the only way of actually identifying it. So that’s a tip, always make a note of the number.
Of course there were ones you do remember; a beautiful brand new Virgin Vicuña man's overcoat came our way, and even better, it fitted me!! After we had kept it for three months my manager said I could purchase it for £10. I have it still. There was a filofax found at Victoria which the entries were all written in Japanese, but I noticed in the address section the woman’s name was English, although the address was in Japanese, so I cut that bit out and stuck it to an envelope and sent it off to Japan with the standard letter asking them to come to Purley to reclaim their property, and lo and behold this woman’s mother actually did come and claim it!! Sometimes we dealt with the results of crime. An air hostess had had her bag snatched at Victoria and chucked on the tracks but they had left her staff pass inside and so I contacted her. Now the smack heads at Victoria had taken the money, but left about ten grand’s worth of jewellery inside in a little velvet bag. On another occasion we got one of those transparent large plastic bags stamped HMP that prisoners put their stuff in when released. Inside was probably everything this person owned, a little radio, clothes, washing gear, and right in the bottom a set of teeth. Presumably on release this bloke had quite understandably got pissed and lost the bag!! It was never claimed..
On more than one occasion I had to send suitcases off that people had left. I always thought the postal charges made it uneconomical, especially the ones I sent to the USA.
Anyway it was an interesting job that I did for two years and one that called for some detective skills, as well as a lot of humping things around.
Micky Isaacs