The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

A CAUTION. To all Coach-Masters, Carriers, Higlers, Ship Masters employed Coastwise, Newsmen, Watermen and Others. Having received repeated Information that Letters are illegally collected, carried and delivered, to the great Injury of the Public Revenue, and it being the wish of this Office rather to prevent than punish, and that the unwary may be made acquainted with the Penalties they are subject to; I am directed to give this Public Notice, that from the Date hereof, every Effort will be used to detect and punish all Persons so offending.--The Penalties for which are FIVE POUNDS FOR EVERY LETTER SO COLLECTED, CARRIED, OR DELIVERED, WHETHER FOR HIRE OR NOT, AND ONE HUNDRED POUNDS, FOR EVERY WEEK SUCH PRACTICE IS CONTINUED. By Command of the Postmaster General, Johnson Wilkinson, Surveyor.] In August 1794, at the Warwick Assizes, a carrier between Warwick and Birmingham was convicted of illegally collecting and carrying letters, when penalties amounting to L1500 were incurred; but the prosecution consented to a verdict being taken for two penalties of L5 each, with costs of the suit. A report of the period observed that "this verdict should be a warning to carriers, coachmen, and other persons, against taking up letters tied round with a string or covered with brown paper, under pretence of being parcels, which, the learned judge observed, was a flimsy evasion of the law." The very cheap postage which we now enjoy has removed the inducement in a large measure to commit petty frauds of this kind on the Post-office Revenue, and the commission of such things may now be said to belong to an age that is past.