LETTER ARRIVES MORE THAN 100 YEARS AFTER BEING MAILED
A letter has finally been delivered to its destination – more than a century after it was written!
Mailed in February 1916, the letter finally arrived at its intended address in Hamlet Road, South London, much to the bewilderment of the current occupants, who were not alive in 1916.
“We noticed that the year on it was ’16. So, we thought it was 2016,” Finlay Glen told reporters. “Then, we noticed that the stamp was a king rather than a queen, so we felt that it could not have been 2016.”
The envelope has a one penny stamp with the head of King George V, the great great grandfather of the current king, Charles III. The letter was sent in the middle of World War I – more than a decade before the late Queen Elizabeth was even born.
“Once we realized it was very old, we felt that it was okay to open up the letter,” said Glen, a theater director and playwright.
Under UK Postal Services Act 2000, it is a crime to open mail not addressed to you. But, Glen said he can “only apologize” if he has committed a crime.
After realizing that the letter may be of historical interest, he gave it to the Norwood Review, a local magazine. Stephen Oxford, editor of the magazine, said, “As a local historian, I was amazed and delighted to have the details of the letter passed to me.”
The letter was written to “My Dear Katie,” a woman, according to Oxford, who was the wife of local rare-stamp dealer Oswald Marsh.
It was written by Christabel Mennel, the daughter of tea merchant Henry Tuke Mennel, while her family was on holiday in Bath, in western England. In the letter, Ms Mennel writes about ordinary subjects such as “I have been most miserable here with a very heavy cold.”
The address in South London was a hub of business activity at the time. “Lots of wealthy, middle-class people moved into the area in the late 1800s,” Oxford said.
Oswald Marsh, the former resident of the Hamlet Road property, “was a highly regarded rare-stamp dealer who was often called as an expert witness in cases of stamp fraud,” according to Oxford.
Still, it remains a mystery as to how the letter arrived at Glen’s flat.
A Royal Mail spokesperson admitted, “Incidents like this happen very occasionally, and we are uncertain what has happened in this incident. We appreciate that people will be intrigued by the history of this letter from 1916, but we have no further information on what might have happened.”
Oxford noted that the letter was postmarked “Sydenham,” an area in southeast London. He thinks it “may well have been lost, sitting in a dark corner in the Sydenham sorting office, and only have recently been discovered.”
Glen said he and his girlfriend would be happy to give the letter to a local archive if it is of “serious historical significance.” But, if it is found to be more “unimportant,” he said, “it would be nice for us to be able to hold onto it.”
Glen also said that he doesn’t often include strange twists of fate in his plays. But, after this serendipitous delivery, perhaps he will add something like the late letter in his next play.
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