Really, so Bob and Sam, or Tricia and Beth could be roomies? 
You mean of the opposite sex, I assume?
Yeah, but back then, most people- especially females listed their names as e.g. “M.Brown” not Mary Brown.
If you read a little bit further…
I doubt that, and i doubt the story in the first place.
I heard a slightly different story from a few decades back. Two couples were living in a house in a residential district in the city (not sure of the marital status of the couples, but it was/is a notably laid-back city). Apparently someone complained about something, and took it to the point that the couples were forced to move: the neighborhood was zoned for single-family housing, and the couples were not kin, so it was more than one family in the house.
Sounds like the fact pattern in a 1974 Supreme Court case:
I do recall reading that even a decade or two ago, there were some US municipalities enforcing bylaws that forbid unrelated people not married from living together. IIRC it was over the neighbourhood concerns not of sexual morality, but that a bunch of college kids would turn their residence into a party house in a nice family neighbourhood. But apparently it was also being aimed at same-sex cohabitation in the days before same-sex marriage. “love thy neighbour” is like “blessed are the cheesemakers” not mean to be taken literally.
My take on the OP story is I’d agree with some previous posters - if the carrier’s supervisor was like-minded, not unusual in the mid-to-late 60’s, complaining would get them nowhere. Going further up the chain of command would result in the attitude “Oh, now you want me to fire a postal worker and an area supervisor? No can do…”
Sure. But that has nothing to do with a postman, whose job does not include enforcing such laws.
Strictly speaking you’re correct, but …
These sorts of non-USPS cites speak to the attitude of the era. Which included a lot of blue-nosed minding of other peoples’ businesses. Allegedly for their own good, but mostly in a spirit of enforced conformity with narrow-minded norms.
My father carried mail from 1984 to 2019. From everything he says, the Supervisor being like minded is INCREDIBLY slim simply because in the dozens of post offices he worked throughout the decades every supervisor was obsessed with the metrics and looking good for their own supervisors. Getting a bunch of customer complaints and also having to deal with a bunch of uncollected mail that’s just accumulating since it’s refusing to be delivered just wouldn’t be worth it especially if it escalated. The only way it would happen if this was some small post office with like 3 people where there was so little going on they could just mess around.
In the 1970s it was difficult for unmarried couples to get a joint bank account, co-sign a lease, loan, or mortgage. Apartment owners would not allow overnight visits by a tenant’s ‘friend’. I knew someone who had to get his girlfriend a ring and say they were engaged to allow her to even go into his rented room (engaged was considered good enough by many at the time). Those weren’t government jobs, very little could be done about it. Even if not allowed by the USPS there weren’t great chances of getting through the bureaucratic process to do anything about it. Each step of the way someone higher up might agree with the postman and block the process. Look how recently a government official refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Things were changing rapidly in the 70s, but it was going to take more time to reach a more but not yet perfect situation we still struggle with.
IIRC the other issue was that bak in the day (at least, in Canada) “keeping a common bawdy house” was not an unusual charge levelled at an owner. This could apply to a prostitute who brought clients back to her apartment, or even a hotel with too much of a reputation for “rooms by the hour”. It did not have to be a full-on bordello.
So this was an incentive for landlords to police the morals of their tenants, even if they did not care otherwise. Too many visitors of the opposite sex could result in problems, possibly due to neighbour complaints. (The neigbours can be nosey pearl-clutchers too) However, I’m sure it reinforced the moral rectitude of those who needed further proof that they were entitled to police their tenants.
I’m also curious how the post office even knew who was living where? I have never told the post office where I lived, nor heard of anyone else doing so, except as a forwarding address notice at the old post office when I vacated a location. I presume the post office delivers all mail unless they start to get a pile of “Not here” returns. Or the postman finds a reason for being difficult…
They don’t exactly know - they just assume that if there is actual mail (not junk) addressed to me at 123 Main St and there is no forwarding order and it isn’t put back in the mail stream with “not at this address” or similar notation, then I live there. It’s not always correct ( my kids moved out 10 years ago and they still get mail here) but it usually is.
Yep.
Sure, but that has nothing to do with mail deliveries.
Responding to the OP’s question, the law on this has changed since the 1970’s, most especially as a result of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Under the current rules, a mail carrier’s failure to deliver mail based on personal beliefs would amount to misconduct subject to discipline or adverse action under 5 US Code Chapter 75.
There’s some nuance here but the short version is that a first offense would probably result in a reprimand or similar corrective action. Subsequent offenses would lead to more significant corrective actions, up to and including removal from federal service. See Douglas v. VA, 5 US Code 7503, and 5 US Code 7513.
I practiced in this area at one point and it was well known that disciplinary cases involving postal workers were among the most frequently reported cases appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board (the federal board that hears appeals by disciplined federal workers).
Contrary to popular myth, government employees are routinely held accountable for misconduct. Precedential decisions on their appeals are available at:
And nonprecedential decisions at:
It has to do with people’s attitudes at the time. Did you think this issue only involved postal delivery?
I can’t speak to the original story, but when we got married in 1983, I kept my maiden name on a lot of correspondence.
Our mailman tended to return-to-sender anything addressed to Mama NotYetZappa, despite its being correctly addressed.
I wound up having to stick a label inside the mailbox saying Papa Zappa / Mama Zappa / Mama NotYetZappa. Should not have been necessary - we got plenty of junk mail addressed to the previous tenants - but I think our mailman was being a jerk.
Couldn’t have been the “shacking up” concept - this was married student housing, and IIRC, we probably had to prove that we’d gotten hitched before being allowed to move in.
Note: this was in North Carolina, albeit a fairly enlightened part of the state. A friend of ours tried to get married by a justice of the peace in her home town (rural / mountainous area) and asked “what do I have to do to keep my maiden name”.
The JP said “Sorry, you cannot DO that”.
Which was blatantly false and he should have known it.
They walked out - and went to a different town and got married there.
As in the old order form statement ([cough] so I’m told) "Please send under plain brown cover. I am over 21 and a genuine lover of art’.
A woman I knew who later married someone else, kept her maiden name - in the mid 80’s. She had been teaching for 8 years and said her professional life was tied to her name and it was simpler not to change it.
So “not changing name when married” was not uncommon even back then, and for pratical reasons not principle. .
The years between the 1960s and the 1980s brought tremendous change in the cultural norms being discussed in this thread.
Good thinking. A woman I know who got her PhD around 1970 has been married 3 times and changed names each time. Math. Reviews has her papers listed under seven different combinations, some with, others without, her maiden name.
Quebec has moved from not permitting a woman to use her birth name to requiring it. It would violate Quebec’s philosophy to actually allow her to choose.