Great Britain Additional Halfpenny Mystery

Hello All,

We have a letter to William McGowan Dumfries from McNicol of Langholm dated 1837


The letter is written on heavy paper with no watermark. It has 4 postal markings :

Langholm straight-line town stamp in black ink, a partially struck datestamp which looks like DUMFRIES 27 JUN 1837, an unidentified Additional Halfpenny mark and the charge in black ink of '8'.


This is quite a mystery, as on the present day maps Langholm is about 24 miles from Dumfries on a direct road, but the 8d charge is for 50 to 80 miles. The map in Robertson's book does not have Langholm on it, and his reference shows that mail to Dumfries from London went via Carlisle, so it is possible that this letter started at Langholm, went down to Carlisle and then back to Dumfries. However...

Langholm does not have an Additional Halfpenny stamp and the stamps of both Carlisle and Dumfries are boxed types.


Can anyone shed any light on this, all information gratefully received.

Regards

Ron and Eunice

I don't know if this helps but my understanding is that the letter would be charged according to the distance traveled by the carriage and that direct distance calculations only came in 1839. So, your letter was charged at the 50 - 80 mile rate (1812) of 8d as, presumably, the mail coach normally went some distance further than the direct route.

It is a mystery where the Additional Half was picked up, indeed.
As to the journey, I'd like to suggest that it was picked up by the 4.45pm Edinburgh mail coach on its way south and it did not go via Dumfries but did call at Langholm on the way to Carlisle and onwards. This could have been on the 26th of June as written on the letter. That would be a rough distance of 22 miles so far. Dropped off at Carlisle it would have been on the next day mail coach leaving 3pm from Carlisle (London) as postmarked (27th) and arriving in Dumfries at 10pm. Distance from Carlisle to Dumfries is approx 35 miles making a total mileage taking the letter into the 50 - 80 miles category.

What is written immediately below the '@' mark?

There is a wonderful chapter in this book about mail service in Langholm: https://archive.org/stream/langholm...694/mode/2up

You'll see, if you care to look, that the postal rate in early days from Dumbfries was 8.5d. (The same, I think, as from Edinburgh. You'll have to look.) No explanation is given, however.

All the rates in that part of the book would appear to be correct. For instance... Langholm to Longtown is 4½d (4.5 pence) so the calculation was based on the distance of approx 11 miles and the rate was 4d for up to 15 miles and then the Additional halfpenny tax for the use of a 4 wheeled coach. As both the sender and recipient lived on the same coach route there was no additional mileage to calculate such as the Penguin's letter (in my estimation) going from Langholm to Carlisle then to Dumfries (8d plus the Additional halfpenny tax).

To me the partially struck date stamp looks more like CARLISLE

Thank you both for those replies, it is brilliant to have such help.
so, for KGB the postal charges and the reason for them is such an interesting part of our collection, and we have two separate interests in this because of the Additional halfpenny charge and then the postal charge. We have a reasonable collection of mileage marks which were used to calculate the postal charges and we have copies of the John Cary maps of 1790 which show these roads and distances – fascinating - but of course in the nearly 50 years later that this letter was written there was a huge amount of road making and toll roads etc, which changed the charges. There is a section on our website which covers the mileage marks, with illustrations -/webgil/mileage.html

So in answer to KGB query – 'what is below the @ sign.... '
this is a filing note written by the addressee (or more likely his clerk!)

'June 27th 1837 Mr Nicol Nr Langholm @ Thorburn & Nicol Ansd.'



Re Scotzm



The information about the mail coach taking the letter down to Carlisle sounded likely to us, if there was not a direct road at the time, as Robertson shows the mail from Langholm to London as going through Carlisle. This would put it into the correct distance for the 8d charge. Thanks for that information about the timing of the mail coach. The earlier records we have show that the Edinburgh mail went through Berwick to London, and that the Glasgow mail went down via Carlisle, but obviously your information shows a different route.

KGB
We checked the link you gave for the Langholm site but we got the following message

" The item you have requested has a problem with one or more of the metadata files that describe it, which prevents us from displaying this page."

Would you be able to give us any more information about the book?


We have more than 40 letters to Carlisle dated between 1828 and 1832 and none of these have a back stamp of Carlisle. When we queried this we were told that it was quite usual. This seemed unlikely to us because we have about 40 letters in a different collection all about the same years, to and from London from all over Britain (a commercial traveller) and most of those have back stamps on them, so there is never just one answer to the questions in postal history.

The quest continues into the office applying the Additional Halfpenny mark....


Regards to all
Ron and Eunice.

The Carlisle Mail Coach left Edinburgh every afternoon at 4.45pm and went the route shown on the map... the stops at that time were (in order) : Fushie Bridge, Torsonce Inn, Selkirk, Hawick, Langholm, Longtown then Carlisle.

You can see that Dumfries would be a diversion and that area was covered by two Dumfries Mail Coach routes...
1. Edinburgh, Penicuick, Noblehouse, Crook Inn, Moffat on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
2. Slight variation on Monday, Wednesday and Friday going via Biggar, Elvanfoot and Thornhill. All coaches on that route left at 6am.


It would be logical to assume your letter went to Carlisle and put on the Dumfries Mail Coach which..." sets out every day from the Coffee House, Carlisle, by Longtown and Annan, at three o'clock in the afternoon, and arrives at The George, Mrs McVitie, Dumfries, at ten o'clock the same night "

"...Edinburgh mail went through Berwick to London "

That is mostly true, I expect but there was mail send from Edinburgh to Carlisle and then from Carlisle to Manchester ..."where the mail is taken up by the Edinburgh and York mail coach, and the passengers conveyed to London"
Carlisle was an important hub for mail and, despite being across the border in England, was issued with the Scottish Additional Halfpenny Tax handstamps.
By the way.. the fare from Carlisle to London was £3.15s if you sat inside, £1.17s if you sat outside and anywhere along the route was 3d per mile

p.s. the Carlisle to Dumfries mail coach also took mail to Portpatrick in the West of Scotland to meet the steamers to Ireland.

Thanks so much to KGB and Scotzm for all this information.

We really appreciate that information about Langholm, as we could not open the link for some reason, but it could all prove useful to us for our other Scottish letters. We have more than 20 Dumfries letters, so that information about the two Dumfries mail coaches will be invaluable.

We were going to ask whether when we put this letter up on our website to join the other old letters, we could use that picture of the map, or is it copyright. We can use the information without the map, but as they say "a picture is worth a thousand words", and we find that applies particularly to maps.

We have a good many reference books including Haldane's "Three centuries of Scottish posts", which has excellent maps tucked inside the front cover. They are on very thin paper, so we tend not to handle them, but after reading that post with the map we took them out and checked them. What a pair of twits we are! There is the map showing the routes of Scottish mails. We usually rely on Alan Robertson's book for our rates and mileages, and had forgotten about Haldane. That'll teach us !
It just shows that you never stop learning about postal history.

The odd thing is that this does not solve the problem of the Addl ½ stamp, as it is not Carlisle or Dumfries types. However, digging deeper I suspect that this is an Edinburgh mark H & S Fig 20, listed in use 5-9-27 to 24-8-39. It is a pretty poor strike but the criteria seem to match 19mm x 16 mm and within the dates.

Working on the assumption that it is an Edinburgh addl half, would it work that the North bound coach picked it up at Langholm and onwards to Edinburgh getting the addl half mark there and then transferred to the South bound coach dropping it off at Dumfries?
Close inspection under a magnifier does not seem to show any sign of it having been to Carlisle.

We have a good sub-section of add half marks, and have the basic information up on our website, but would not have room to put all our examples there. If anyone has any queries about these particular marks though, we would always be willing to help.

As a matter of interest we also put this query on the GBPS discussion board a week or so before Stamp Community and that has resulted to date in 43 reads and no replies. Just look at the statistics on this post here – More power to StampCommunity!

Regards
Ron and Eunice.

" We were going to ask whether when we put this letter up on our website to join the other old letters, we could use that picture of the map, or is it copyright "
That "map" is simply a Google map with my own approximate locations for the coach stops although the old roads would have roughly been around the same, excluding any motorways etc
As far as I know you can use these sort of maps under "fair usage" terms without problems.

" would it work that the North bound coach picked it up at Langholm and onwards to Edinburgh getting the addl half mark there and then transferred to the South bound coach dropping it off at Dumfries? "
That was a possibility I had explored but I discounted that as the distances would have taken the letter into another "band" not consistent with the eight pence charge. However there was a stage coache doing that Carlisle to Edinburgh via Langholm etc route.

The "Sir Walter Scott" to Edinburgh, every Mon. Wed & Fri morning at 4.40am, through Langholm, Hawick, and Selkirk; returning at 6pm in the evening.
The "Independent" to Edinburgh, every Mon. Wed & Fri at 5am through Longtown, Langholm, Hawick &c; returning Tue. Thu & Sat at 6pm (this comes from your own website)

They were passenger coaches mainly but not exclusively and may have carried some mail.

Regarding stagecoaches... I'm not too sure of the "Independent" information previously given.
Anyway my information is the following...

Leaving Manchester going to Edinburgh was the stagecoach "New Times" starting off at 4.45am going via Preston, Lancaster, Kendal, Carlisle (change coach at Carlisle to the "Sir Walter Scott"), Longtown, Langholm, Hawick, Selkirk, and Dalkeith, to the Black Bull Inn, arriving at 6pm next evening.

The "New Times" stagecoach stopped at Carlisle then "The Independent" went to Glasgow via Gretna, Annan, and Dumfries, to the Black Bull Inn, Trongate, arriving at 9pm the same evening.

Hi Scotzm and KGB,
This letter will be put on our website and we wondered if you would like an acknowledgment for your help.
If so could you let us know what form it should take?
If you would rather not put it on the discussion board you can e-mail us direct.
BTW We found the book doing a google search so have the details.
Thanks and regards.
Ron and Eunice.

I don't need an acknowledgement. I just hope the information was useful in a small way.
You probably have these rates already but for the benefit of others I can post the postal rates that apply to your cover...
The letters above the columns are S (single), D (double) T (treble) and refer to the sheets comprising the letter.


It can be seen, for instance, that the pages from the book posted by KGB containing the postal rates have the rate from London to Langholm exactly right.
London to Langholm is approx 335 miles and looking at the table shows 1/- for the first 300 miles plus 1d for up to 100miles more. All calculations have the Wheel Tax halfpenny to be added if the letter used Scottish roads and the conveyance had more that two wheels.