The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

It is not probable that the petty fraud of again using stamps which have already passed through the post is perpetrated with any great frequency upon the Post-office. Still, cases no doubt do occur, and may at any time lead to criminal proceedings, like those which took place at Hull some years ago. A person in that town having posted a letter with an old stamp affixed, the stamper who had to deface the stamp in the usual way, detected the irregularity, and brought the matter under notice. Proceedings were taken against the offender, and the case being established against him, and the fact being stated that this person had previously been warned by the Post-office against committing like frauds, he was mulcted in a fine of L5 and costs, with the alternative punishment of three-months' imprisonment. The accidents and misfortunes which are the lot of letters in this country, seem also to attend post-letters in their progress through the Post-offices of other countries. A curious case was noticed some years ago in the French capital. Some alterations were being carried out in the General Post-office in Paris, when there was found, in a panel situated near a letter-box, a letter which had been posted just fifty years before. There it had remained concealed half a century. The letter was forwarded to the person whose address it bore, and who, strange to say, was still alive; but the writer, it transpired, had been dead many years.