Poste Restante Cancel

Here is a Mombasa Poste Restante cancel on a KUT 50-cent dhow:



Why?

Poste Restante (General Delivery in the U.S.) allows a person to pick up mail at a particular post office. If I knew Rod was going to be in Thailand in two weeks, I could send him a letter addressed to rod222 Poste Restante Bangkok, and he could pick it up at the main post office when he arrived. (I've got this right, right?)

Does this cancel imply that someone paid a 50-cent fee for picking up a poste restante letter in Mombasa? I can't imagine that someone mailed a letter from Mombasa to someone poste restante in order to receive this cancel. (Why would Mombasa care?)

So, chalk it up to failure of creativity on my part, but I can't for the life of me figure out what is going on here. Ideas? Better yet, answers?

C.

Yes, you have that right Collin.
Excepting you are assuming a letter.
I find it easy to imagine a lot post restante articles
in Uganda, but perhaps not letters.
A parcel, shoes, clothes, whatever, you want to leave for a friend
who has no fixed abode.

Weird I do not have 1 item of post restante in my entire database.
This is a first

Okay, forget the letter...lets say you are going to leave a goat for a friend. (Might explain why someone soaked this rather than keeping it on piece.)

Are you thinking this item would have been left in Mombasa for pickup in Mombasa? That would explain why there is a specific cancel, but it seems like a fair amount of trouble to go to, to create a specific cancel. And yet, the only other practical scenario I can come up with is charging a fee for pickup, which sounds more French than British Commonwealth.

Why Mombasa to Mombasa ? It could have been a parcel from
anywhere in KUT to Poste Restante Mombasa.

Or am I missing something? (that would not be unusual)
I attempted to turn on the Airconditioner today
with the TV remote.

WOO HOO!! I AM NOT ALONE!!

My cell phone rang the other day and I put the TV remote to my ear.

you guys need to get out more often.

Rod, how big is your database? with images? do you share?

SV: I tried for 10 years to encourage members of forums to join
me in scanning and cataloguing issues but the time just wasn't right
It really hasn't been that long for forums like this to
really engage in posting digital images, good ones at least.
It will happen, but probably not in my time now, but
it will, and all catalogue numbers, (as I see it) will be ditched
and year month day of issue will be substituted to avoid copyright.

Postal packets of any kind to be called for could be addressed to any post office or postal agency. The words Poste Restante or to be called for had to appear in the address.

Poste Restante was provided solely for the convenience of travellers, and could not be used in the same town for longer than three months.

Postal articles would be held for three months, unless the return addressee specified on the article that it should be returned earlier. Letters addressed to a post office at a seaport town for a person on board a ship expected at that port were held for only two months. Letters addressed to fictional names, first names only, etc., were returned to the sender as undeliverable.

Importantly, there was no extra charge for this service.

Is this example an irregular usage?

Just a thought - if an item was not picked up in the requisite time and returned to sender, would it then be stamped Poste Restante as an outgoing, returned letter? It might be that this stamp is the original incoming stamp that just happened to get the cancel on the way out..?

Here's where I get confused..."anywhere in KUT to Mombasa"...then the stamp would have a cancel from "anywhere" but not Mombasa, no?

So how does it get both Mombasa, and poste restante on the cancel?

Another thought, completely unfounded, is that this device could have been applied to poste restante letters, akin to a receiving mark, and in this case, the clerk just used the opportunity to cancel a stamp that didn't get canceled upon mailing.

There must be an easier answer...

Aha! I see, ...my error.
I was "assuming" again, I just saw it as a receival pmk.
Plateflaw's commentary makes sense to me, and that's what I would
accept it as .. a parcel left for a short duration in Mombasa.
It's hard to judge what the article would have been
not knowing what 50c would equate to postally at that time.

Thanks for everyone's input, good thread!

I believe that is what happened in this case.

When I was in Tuvalu in the late 70's, most of my mail came post restante. Funafuti (where I was) did not have a special Poste Restante cancel, but the mail was stamped with the regular mark to show the arrival date. I know I have a cover from Fiji that was uncancelled in Fiji, but cancelled in Tuvalu. Can't find it though.