" Letter Arrives More Than 100 Years After Being Posted"

Alright, I don't wanna hear any of you complaining about shipping speed for awhile - this case has you all beat!





A letter has finally been delivered to its destination – more than a century after it was written.

Sent in February 1916, the correspondence arrived at its intended address in Hamlet Road, south London, much to the bewilderment of the current occupants.

"We noticed that the year on it was '16. So we thought it was 2016," Finlay Glen told CNN Thursday. "Then we noticed that the stamp was a King rather than a Queen, so we felt that it couldn't have been 2016."

Glen told CNN that the letter arrived at the property a couple of years ago, but he has only recently taken it to the local historical society, so they can research it further.

The envelope has a 1 pence stamp bearing the head of King George V. The letter was sent in the middle of World War I – more than a decade before Queen Elizabeth II was born.

"Once we realized it was very old, we felt that it was okay to open up the letter," said Glen, 27.

Under the Postal Services Act 2000, it is a crime to open mail not addressed to you. But Glen said he can "only apologize" if he's committed a crime.

Finlay Glen with the century-old letter, outside the Hamlet Road property.
After realizing that the letter may be of historical interest, he gave it to the Norwood Review, a local quarterly magazine.

"As a local historian I was amazed and delighted to have the details of the letter passed to me," said Stephen Oxford, editor of the magazine, in a release.

The letter was addressed to "my dear Katie," who, according to Oxford, was the wife of local stamp magnate Oswald Marsh.

It was written by Christabel Mennel, the daughter of tea merchant Henry Tuke Mennel, while her family was on holiday in Bath, in western England. In the letter, Mennel writes: "I've been most miserable here with a very heavy cold."

The neighborhood of south London was a hub of business activity at the time. "Lots of wealthy, middle class people moved into the area in the late 1800s," Oxford told CNN.

Oswald Marsh, the former resident of the Hamlet Road property, "was a highly regarded stamp dealer who was often called as an expert witness in cases of stamp fraud," according to Oxford.

The Norwood Review is producing a full report on the letter.

"My dear Katie," the letter begins.
Yet it remains a mystery as to how the letter arrived at Glen's flat.

"Incidents like this happen very occasionally, and we are uncertain what has happened in this incident," a Royal Mail spokesperson told CNN in a statement Thursday.

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"We appreciate that people will be intrigued by the history of this letter from 1916, but have no further information on what might have happened."

Oxford noted that the letter was postmarked "Sydenham," an area in southeast London. He thinks it "may well have been lost sitting in a dark corner in the Sydenham sorting office and only recently discovered."

Glen said he and his girlfriend would be happy to give the letter to a local archive if it's of "serious historical significance." But, if it's found to be more "innocuous," he said, "it would be nice for us to be able to hold onto it."

Glen, a theater director and playwright, said that he doesn't often include strange twists of fate in his plays. But, after this serendipitous delivery, "perhaps the next one will."


Source:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/uk/l...i/index.html

I always take these "sensational" stories with a huge grain of salt. How many opened letters (or postcards) do we all have which could be resealed and remailed today to "create" a story. And the reporters fall for it every time.

"Don't trouble to write, but give me a thought in passing"

How nice Christabel.

SYDENHAM 1 hammer EKU 1908, so certainly had some work out.
BATH (Beautiful Somerset) machine cancel (5 wavy lines) EKU 1914



I must confess, I was a tad circumspect.

Beats the Registered item in the USPOD possession for over 50 years, circa post 7-1-1913 to mid-1960s, before delivery unless John Becker is correct here. Mine was found after 50 years in a supposedly empty registry canvas postal bag.

I don't understand the blue wax crayon, obliterating Sydenham,
and script of "Norwood"

None of this type. King George V stamps are pre-decimal stamps and have not been valid for postage for 50 years.
It has been cancelled in 1916.
To have been remailed in the last 50 years, there should have been a decimal stamp attached. This would also not have been cancelled not to leave a trace.

In this case the whole claim it was received recently would be the porky,

I don't see any modern postal markings whatsoever on the cover. This feels staged as others above suspect.

How many old covers with letters do many of us own? Many, many, many. I could drop off a letter to a particular address once a week for three years plus given the volume of these covers I have.

Slow news days some places I guess.

Why would there be modern markings? That would suggest staging more than the lack of them.
Royal Mail appears to be confirming it.

In October 2021, UPS delivered an unusual parcel to my workplace. It was only one box of a five-box shipment. That's not odd in and of itself. We had already reported the box missing and been reimbursed for the loss. That's not unheard of, either. But this box was shipped on 18 October 2007! I have no idea how UPS managed to lose it for 14 years and nevertheless deliver it in perfect condition.

Mail does become misplaced,
entirely believable, I have lost a cover myself, for a few hours,
only to find it under my scanner lid.

But I think it healthy to be vigilant when "lost letters" turn up
on a fairly regular basis in local news.

I would tend to believe this one, handed in by National Archives 2009
46 years late

There may be a few true long delays, but most don't pass close scrutiny. No delay markings, no current postal marking of any sort, etc.

The problem with the extreme delays ... very few PO buildings are in service for decades without remodeling, repainting, furniture replacement, etc. Mail just can't find a nook to hide in for 75 or 100 years. Upon visiting an unusual PO, I have occasionally given a piece of vintage mail to the clerk/postmaster as a souvenir of their office. It would be easy for a later employee to "rediscover" it in a file and think it had never been delivered.

In the case of the "mum's letter" it appears to have been with the immigration office and *not* the post office.

I have thought about looking for a few old covers to remail and test the gullibility of the press.

This is Europe. There are quite a number of post offices that are that old and that were never completely refurbished, that may have stored old furniture. If a clerk finds a stray mail item, puts it in a closet, and forgets about it, it may pop up after years when someone opens that stored closet.

It is not common to apply labels or cachets explaining something that cannot be explained. Cancellation is not very common here. The stamp was cancelled in 1916 and Royal Mail - that confirmed it happens - did what it was paid for to do.

The news just appeared in Australia in Newsprint "Crikey Worm"