While on the topic of stowaways, let’s delve a little further into the little explored, oft ignored topic of human mail. I always took the idea for granted - people sending themselves off in the guise of a package - but it’s as real as the the hair on your head or the cat in my house.

Henry “Box” Brown, pictured above, was a slave who mailed himself in a dry goods box from Virginia to abolitionists in Philadelphia.
The trip took 27 hours and cost Brown $86, which was half of his life savings, but surely that was a small price to pay for a lifetime of freedom.
His first words upon emergence were, “How do you do, gentlemen?” Brown then proceeded to sing a psalm.
Brown went on to become an abolitionist speaker, but had to move to England after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
There, he became a showman with his moving antislavery panorama called “Mirror of Slavery” (I’m not sure if they mean moving as in emotionally touching or moving as in it literally moved), then a mesmerist, a conjurer, a magician, and, lastly, a singer.

In 2003, Charles McKinley, 25, wanted to visit his parents but didn’t have $300 to pay for the airfare from New York to Dallas.
Cunning McKinley decided to mail himself there and charge the $600 or so shipping fee to his employer.
The box was labeled as containing 350 lbs. of clothing and computer equipment and departed on a plane from Newark Airport.
McKinley made it all the way to Texas where, as he was in a delivery truck en route to his parents’ house, he foolishly decided to remove his covering and was found out by the delivery man, Billy Ray ~~Cyrus~~ Thomas.
Thomas described seeing “a pair of eyes eyes between the slats of the crate,” which he thought belonged to a corpse until McKinley kicked the crate open and popped out (surprise!).
McKinley proceeded to shake the delivery man’s hand and thank him. What manners have these stowaways!
Thomas called the cops. Truth be told - I don’t think I would have. It ended up that McKinley had 3 outstanding warrants for his arrest. He was taken to jail.

There have been a few other notable instances:

In January 2007, a 28-year-old German prisoner climbed into a cardboard box in the mailroom of the prison and was loaded onto the mail truck, where he made a hole in the box and ran out of the truck. The empty box was discovered and they traced it back to him, though I’m not sure if he was reincarcerated.
Another such incident occurred a month prior when an Austrian prisoner hid in a box that was supposed to contain lamp post parts.
This just in: BOTH ESCAPEES REMAIN AT LARGE, but that was as of 2 years ago.

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Of Human Mail