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318
The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance
·
James Wilson Hyde
224
In
March
1880,
a
letter
plainly
addressed
to
an
individual
by
name,
and
bearing
the
name
and
number
of
a
street
in
a
certain
district
of
London,
reached
the
Dead-letter
Office,
whither
it
had
been
sent
by
the
postman
of
the
district,
owing
to
the
person
to
whom
it
was
directed
not
being
known
at
the
address
given.
When
opened,
with
a
view
to
its
return
to
the
writer,
the
letter
was
discovered
to
contain
a
Bank
of
England
note
for
L100,
together
with
a
short
memorandum
suggesting
the
return
of
the
note
to
some
person,
but
in
such
vague
and
general
terms
that
no
one
who
had
not
had
previous
information
on
the
subject
could
have
fully
understood
the
purport
of
the
message.
The
memorandum
was,
moreover,
without
head
or
tail--it
had
no
superscription
to
indicate
whence
it
had
come,
nor
had
it
a
signature
to
show
by
whom
it
had
been
written.
The
circumstance
being
one
of
an
exceptional
character,
special
steps
were
taken
with
a
view
to
trace
the
owner,
and
an
advertisement
was
inserted
in
several
of
the
metropolitan
newspapers--bringing
up,
it
is
true,
a
responsive
crop
of
claimants
for
lost
notes,
but
without
eliciting
any
such
claims
as
would
warrant
the
surrender
of
the
note
in
question.
From
the
terms
of
the
memorandum
in
the
letter,
and
the
fact
that
it
was
anonymous,
the
suggestion
readily
arose
that
whoever
had
had
the
note
last
had
not
come
by
it
in
the
regular
way
of
business;
and
this
idea
was
strengthened
by
the
discovery
that
the
note
had
been
paid
over
by
a
bank
about
eight
years
previously
to
a
person
whose
name
and
address
were
endorsed
upon
it;
and
from
that
period
the
note
had
evidently
not
been
in
circulation.
It
was
thought
probable
that
the
endorser
had
lost
the
note
in
some
way
shortly
after
receiving
it,
and
that
coming
into
the
hands
of
some
individual
who
feared
to
put
it
in
circulation,
it
had
been
kept
up
during
these
eight
years.
Meanwhile,
the
right
to
receive
the
note
not
having
been
established
by
any
one,
the
amount
was
paid
in
to
the
Revenue.
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