Sorry for posting just a question....but I've been unable to dig up any insights of an answer to it on my own.
Let's presume that Abby did indeed have a messenger boy deliver a note from a sick friend around 8:30 the morning of August 4. If one's household did not include such a person to deliver the note, how would a 'normal' person go about arranging such a delivery?
I know the telegraph offices employed messenger boys and I presume the service was available otherwise since most didn't have telephones. But that said....does anyone know more on this topic?
And I can testify to it by referring you to Western TV shows. (Hey Timmy. Deliver this note to Wyatt Earp like a good boy. And when he did Wyatt Earp gave the boy a nickel.)
You would just grab a neighborhood kid, a next door neighbor's child, your own son, etc. and have him run a note over.
Not only did everyone not have a phone in fall river in 1893, not every one had a phone in 1958. I lived in a poor neighborhood and we did not have a phone. We couldn't afford a phone. Air Conditioners were space age items. And a car... what are you nuts. Do you know how much a car cost?
My guess is a random neighbor kid delivered the note, (if in fact there was a note).
I remember my friend Joey as a child running a note to the local corner store to buy cigarettes for his parents. He would give the note to the fella behind the counter and the store clerk (owner) would just post the sale into a weekly ledger. And we were only seven or eight years of age. Once a week his parents, along with mine, would come to the the store and settle the account. Not everyone had ready cash. Some of us had to wait for payday to settle our accounts. Now, that is what you call living from paycheck to paycheck.
Now if the note to Lizzie had been from someone out of town, then I would have to give that one some thought.
