STAMP STORY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30895, 30 October 1965, Page 5

STAMP STORY

Private Post

(Specially written for "The Press" b|| KENNETH ANTHONY > VOWADAYS, when you post J '' a letter, you take it for granted that it will be delivered to the addressee's door. This was not always so. In many countries for many years, mail had to be collected from the post office. Such was the situation a century ago in Constantinople, now Istanbul. Turkey—the Ottoman Empire. as it was then—was a late-comer to the ranks of stamp-issuing nations. The first stamps did not appear until 1863. This was because the Turkish population was then largely illiterate, and most of the foreign trade was in the hands of nationals of other countries who had established their own post offices in Turkey. In the lack of a delivery service in Constantinople, a Greek trader named Liannos saw his opportunity. He offered to run a private-enter-prise local post within the city, so that people would be spared the trouble of collecting their letters from the post office. In August, 1865, he received official approval for his scheme, and immediately set about obtaining his own stamps so that the charges could be pre-pa’ The design, as can be seen from the illustration, incorporated the Islamic symbols of the Star and Crescent —also to be found on modern stamps of Pakistan—and the inscription “Poste Ix>-

cale." In those days French was the commonly used commercial language in the Middle East. Unhappily, the promoter's hopes of quick profits from his local post were unfulfilled. After only about 15 months' operation the service was closed in March, 1867. There are believed to have been two main reasons for the failure. First of ail, a large proportion of Turkish mail was still being posted unstamped. The addressee was obliged to call at the post office to pay postage before collecting his mail, and was thus unable to take advantage of the delivery service. Also, the amount of local mail, sent from one part of the city to another, proved disappointingly small. Nevertheless, this bold effort of Liannos afterwards inspired the Turkish authorities to provide their own delivery system, which they did in 1870. Large supplies of the local stamps were left over when the Liannos service closed down. These subsequently reached the philatelic market, with the result that unused examples can still be obtained quite easily even today.—All Rights Reserved.