POSTAL CURIOS

Evening Star, Issue 19763, 13 January 1928, Page 2

POSTAL CURIOS

COLLECTION OF RETIRED OFFICIAL 'A collection of more than 100,000 Sostal curios, formed by Mr A, V. [oreton, a retired Post Office official, and now the property of the Union ol Post Office Workers, is now being catalogued for exhibition at Bruce Castle, Tottenham, in rooms once occupied jby ? gir Roland Hill, founder of the penny post. The collection (says ‘The Times') includes a letter dated May 24, 1639, written by Sir E. Osborne, who was in command in Yorkshire, to Colonel Pairfax, at the time of the advance of the Royal Army against the Scots. It had been mailed; — “With all possible speecle, hast hast hast, post hast hast for life.”

Another letter is dated 1531, from Bit John Fortescue, Chancellor of tho Exchequer, to the Queen. Another was from Captain Robert Clarke, of the Drake, to the Admiralty, sent posthaste from Dover. It left Dover at noon, and reached Canterbury at 3 p.m., Sittingbourne at 6 p.m., Rochester at 8 p.m., Dartford at 2 a.m., and arrived in London at 6 a.m.

Perhaps the earliest curio is a postage receipt for a Normandy mail dated 1897. Another interesting receipt w r os one for which the coach mail messenger asked Queen Elizabeth 20s fee for de-

livery in Kent. An interesting document, dated 1650, is described as one of the earliest post office guides. It has the following introduction :—“ A brief . directory. for those who would send their letters to Any part of England. Alphabetically printed so that none may pretend ignorance who would gladly send. . . .” 'A list of the times of mail coaches for fll parts of the country was appended. Among the thousands of objects are • medal from which was taken the portrait head of the first penny stamp in the world, issued in May, 1840, a number of flint revolvers carried by the fuards of mails; a coachman’s tin top at, his high boots, satchel, post horns, a complete set of horses’ bells (1620), and a telescope from the mail , carrier E.M.S. Packet Frolic (1823). There is also a bell used by a postman named Thomas Crofts, of Greyfriars street, Nottingham, in 1799, a stout baton supplied to G.P.O. workers at tje time of the Chartist riots in 1848, and a packhorse bell, once used by Richard White, of Reading, in 1620. There is a silver stop watch which registers units, tens, and hundreds, used to count persons pasing through turnstiles in 1799, and still in

perfect working order. A hag made from the bladder of a sheepskin fot the St. Ivilda mail, which used to be thrown into the sea, bears the words “Please open.”

An official of the union stated that the union had bought the collection in order to prevent it leaving the country. They hoped that one day it would bo coupled with the Post Office’s already large collection to form the nucleus of a permanent Post Office Museum.