1. All cases of alleged loss of mails or letters, or of abstraction of money or articles of value from letters should be promptly and thoroughly investigated.
2. The circumstances attending those cases are so various that it is difficult to lay down any specific rule as to the mode in which the investigation should be conducted.
This must be left to the judgment of the Inspector. The following course, however, may be taken in ordinary cases.
3. The printed form of questions should be filled up by the applicant in each case. If the applicant cannot supply all the particulars required, they should be obtained from such other parties as may be able to furnish them.
4. A "Tracer" should be filled up, and sent to the office at which the letter was posted.
5. The particulars of the cases should be at once entered in the book for the record of applications for lost letters.
6. The papers connected with each case should be enclosed in a printed "Missing Letter Envelope." This should be docketed, the date on which, and the name of the office to which the Tracer was despatched entered thereon, and placed in a pigeon hole appropriated to Missing Letter cases "awaiting answers."
7. A prompt return of the Tracer must in all cases be insisted on. On no account should its unnecessary detention at any office be permitted.
8. If on return of the Tracer it is shown that no loss has occurred, the applicant should be so informed, a memorandum to that effect written on the envelope in which the papers are enclosed, the papers put away amongst cases of application for letters which have been found, and the entry of the case in the record of applications for Lost Letters scored out with a blue pencil.
9. If it is found that a loss has actually taken place, the names of all the offices through which the letter passed, or should have passed, should be carefully recorded in the book of record of applications for missing letters. These offices should then be carefully indexed and a minute examination made with the object of ascertaining whether any of the offices through which the letter passed, or should have passed, appears with unusual frequency in other cases of loss, and whether in such event there is any reason either from the resemblance in the character of the losses or the circumstances attending them to suspect that the losses may be attributable to the same office.