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Fears have been raised after postbox thefts have occurred across the country, with police suspecting the iconic red boxes may be abroad. According to police, more than 110 post boxes were stolen last year, and a Royal Mail spokesperson said the company is working with the charity Crimestoppers to encourage people to share information about the thefts.
Cheshire is one of the UK regions that has seen such thefts, with four stolen last year. PC Jonathan Lightfoot, a rural crime officer with Cheshire Police, believes that the “ornamental” postboxes are being stolen to be displayed outside homes.
He added: “We might think they might be going abroad as well. Now people have stolen those postboxes, they’re gone, that history has left.”
UK postboxes were first introduced in the Channel Islands after Anthony Trollope, a Post Office clerk and later novelist, saw them used in continental Europe. Green postboxes were then rolled out across mainland Europe from 1853 until they became the standardised iconic red in the 1870s.
Chris Taft, collections manager at the Postal Museum, says the beloved postboxes are a part of the country’s identity and that crimes are “horrible”.
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He said: “It’s destroying parts of our heritage and I think it’s awful that people feel the need to steal these things, often damaging them in the process.
“It’s not just taking away the local facility, it’s destroying an important part of history that has sat there for over 150 years in some cases.”
PC Lightfoot also urges people to “keep an eye on” postboxes they believe could be vulnerable to theft and report any concerns to the police, which are working with Royal Mail to use new technology aimed to try and preventing further crimes.
The officer explained: “We’re looking at things like forensic marking, we’re looking at other methods as well.
“We’re trialling 3D scanning software where we’ll build a 3D model of the postbox and then we’ll have a record of what it looks like.
“So if we find one that is stolen, then we can compare it to records of ones we’ve already scanned and prove that that’s from there.”
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