Everything including the kitchen sink: the history of the Lost Property Office
Introduction
Between the creation of London Transport in 1933 and 2019, the Lost Property Office at 200 Baker Street reunited passengers with belongings left on vehicles, stops and stations across the network.
In this story, we explore the history of this vital service through photographs, posters, film and an interview with Paul Cowan, the manager of the Lost Property Office in recent years.
Today, the service continues to operate from a larger facility in South Kensington.
200 Baker Street
In 1933, the creation of London Transport (LT) brought together different modes of public transport, often run by private companies, into one organisation. A relatively little noticed aspect of this, unless happening to lose an umbrella perhaps, was the creation of a centralised Lost Property Office at 200 Baker Street.
This office sat immediately beside the Metropolitan and Bakerloo entrances of Baker Street Underground station. It seems fitting that such a vital service was located adjoining one of the Underground’s very first stations.
Have you left anything behind?
In the early 1950s, around 350,000 items were ending up in the Lost Property Office each year. Characterful posters such as these – one featuring a tearful mislaid glove, the other an elephant who became a familiar feature on posters from the 1950s to 1970s – reminded passengers where to go to recover their forgotten items.
Both posters featured in this 1955 film, which humorously depicted the huge logistical operation behind the Lost Property Office, and LT as a whole. As the film highlights, thankfully live tortoises were a more common discovery for LT staff than elephants.
From umbrellas…
Among the most commonly recovered items have been umbrellas, a regular feature of the racks in the Lost Property Office throughout its history. This was despite the reminders of stylish posters by designers like Tom Eckersley and Beath (John M Fleming), showing that attractive designs did not always translate into preventing forgetful behaviour.
Humorous poster designs by the likes of well-known cartoonist Fougasse (Cyril Bird) also attempted to reiterate the message. David Langdon’s ‘Billy Brown of London Town’ reminded passengers during the Second World War to label their belongings, just in case. Today umbrellas often remain unclaimed, often seen as cheap and disposable, with only 2% of 10,000 umbrellas handed in during 2017 reclaimed.
…to gin and a kitchen sink
The Lost Property Office often became the temporary home of the weird and the wonderful. Among a huge variety of items recovered over the decades were a wedding dress, a lawyer’s robes, a 14-foot boat, several urns containing cremation ashes, a briefcase containing £10,000, a park bench, a stuffed eagle and a kitchen sink.
This photograph from 1951 shows an attendant with three bottles of lost gin, his steady pose and expression attempting to convince the viewer he had not touched a drop.
Lost, found and rarely wasted
The Lost Property Office continues to be as vital today in the Transport for London (TfL) era.
In this oral history interview, Paul Cowan describes his work as the manager of the service, recalling how items were still listed in handwritten registers up to the 1990s and how some of his staff had dedicated their 40-year careers to lost property.
His team sift through over 330,000 items in a typical year.
Lost items are kept for up to three months, during which attempts are made to reunite them with owners through contact information found on the property or by matching them to customer enquiries.
After that period, unclaimed items have any personal data removed and securely destroyed, before they are either donated to charities, recycled, sold or disposed of.
TfL has close links with charities including The Salvation Army, The British Red Cross and Scope. Any revenue generated from unclaimed items contributes towards the cost of running the service.
This photo shows the Lost Property Office in its last few weeks of operation at 200 Baker Street.
After nearly 86 years of handling millions of lost items at this familiar location, the Lost Property Office moved to bigger facilities in Pelham Street, South Kensington.
With over 900 items recovered on the network every day, it continues to be a sizeable operation. While the larger proportion of lost items remain unclaimed, around 25% of lost property is returned to its owners, some of whom are visitors to the Capital from across the globe.
