PAST EVENTS

LOTS OF LAUGHS AT BAKER STREET

Julie Haley from Transport for London visited the Day Centre
on Wednesday February 23rd 2005. Here's what she told us …

The Transport for London Lost Property Office is near Baker Street tube Station. It is an enormous building, with three floors. Each floor is the size of a football pitch.

Over 150,000 items a year find their way to the Lost Property Office.

40 staff work at the Lost Property Office and, every year, they deal with 140,000 enquiries by phone, fax and email. They track down lost items using letters and forms, and then they reunite the owners with all the weird and wonderful items that have been lost on trains, the tube, buses, taxis and the Docklands Light Railway.

What is lost?

Among the items lost each year are 25,000 bags and cases; 20,000 books; 11,000 mobile phones; 15,000 valuable items like wallets and purses and 20,000 items of clothing. People have also been reunited with their lost schoolwork, one shoe and a laptop computer.

Some of the more unusual and strange items that have been left at the Lost Property Office, waiting to be claimed, are:

A vasectomy kit
Two human skulls in a bag
Three dead bats in a container
A jar of bull's sperm
Breast implants
A 14ft boat
A Chinese typewriter
A wedding dress, with matching shoes and a ring cushion
A false hand.

Human Skull

Chinese Typewriter

Some of the items have been very funny to find, but also quite frightening.

A coffin down the chute - how macabre!

Staff were particularly shocked, and a bit frightened, when a coffin came down the Lost Property chute into the ground floor area of Baker Street! At first, none of the staff on duty were willing to take a look inside the coffin but, finally, somebody lifted the lid and, thankfully, it was empty. The coffin was never claimed and it was thought that this really gruesome item was possibly a film prop thought to be from the film "Four Weddings and a Funeral" that was being filmed nearby.

Claiming items can be amusing!

When people come to claim their lost property, it can be a very amusing situation.

A gentleman phoned to say he had lost his false teeth. He said the date, time and place where he had lost them. Luckily, a set of dentures had been found and the man said he would come in to see if they were his.

When the man came into Lost Property, staff were surprised when he picked up the false teeth to inspect them … and, without a thought or even a rinse, he popped the teeth in his mouth. He was really happy to be reunited with his dentures.

They were even more surprised when, two days later, he phoned to say that the dentures were not his, as they were rubbing!!

Items are auctioned when not claimed

Many items are never claimed. The Lost Property Office keeps items for 6 months. After that, all unclaimed items are gathered together and sent to Greasby's, an auctioneer who sells off the items. The money raised is then put back into the Lost Property Office, which is self-funded, to enable it to continue with its work.