EARLY MAIL DAYS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 293, 8 November 1934, Page 9

EARLY MAIL DAYS

A LETTER OF 1841

AN INTERESTING DOCUMENT

WELLINGTON, Nov. 7

One of the oldest existing documents relating to the postal history of New Zealand lias recently been handed to the Director-General of the Post and Telegraph Department, Mr G. McNamara, by a Wellington resident. Written more than 93 years ago at Rio de Janeiro, it concerns the dispatch of a mail from that port for New Zealand. It reads:—“Agent’s Office, Rio de Janeiro, 16th Apr., 1841. This is to certify that the Mail on board the First Ship directed to New Zealand and sealed with the seal of this Office, an impression of which is hereunto affixed, contains: 1 Letter, 0 Newspapers.— Nat Lucas, Agent. To Her Majesty’s Postmaster-General at New Zealand, who is requested to sign, date the arrival, and return the certificate to the British Packet Office, Rio do Janeiro, by the first opportunity. Reed, this 15th day of September, 1841, Thomas R. Benson, A.P.M.”

In those days it was no uncommon thing for a letter addressed to New Zealand and posted in England to wander over half the earth before it finally arrived in this country. Mail would be put on vessels “going out that way,” and lie in such out-of-the-way ports as Canton or Rio de Janeiro before another boat could be found that was proceeding to New Zealand. In this instance the notice must refer to the smallest mail ever to arrive in the colony. It was exactly 10 years before—in 1831—that the first attempt was made at the establishment of a mail service when a Mr Powditch, a personal friend of the Postmaster-General of New South Wales, was commissioned to receive and make up mails at the Bay of Islands. When, in 1840. a Government was established at Kororareka. a {lost office was also set up. At that time settlers had mostly to rely on whale ships, and it was a rare thing for an answer to a letter to be received within two years of the time of dispatch from New' Zealand. This was in the days before the use of stamps, which did not appear on letters until 1855, and mail was handed to the postmaster 1 with the required money—sometimes

amounting to a much as one shilling for postage on a letter from New Zealand to Sydney. The address of every letter, with the amount of its postage, was entered in a ponderous record book from which monthly returns were forwarded to the seat of Government. At the time when the above notice was sent, New Zealand had no such official as a Postmaster-General, the “A.P.M.” attached to the signature of the New Zealand recipient apparently meaning acting-postmaster. Mr Thomas R. Benson, the signatory, was appointed temporarily to the position of postmaster at Auckland, which had, a few months before, been made the seat of Government, while awaiting the arrival of Mr William Connell, of Port Nicholson, the man who was responsible for the abortive Postage Ordinance of 1842. The postmaster s salary at the time was £l6O per annum.’