The History of the Postmarks of the British Isles from 1840 to 1876 - John Hendy (1909)

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THE POSTMARKS OF THE BRITISH ISLES FROM I84O.
The double or combined date and obliterator stamps were brought into use in the
larger Scotch offices about the beginning of 1854. The types used are shown in
Figs. 682-685.
Fig. 682. Fig. 683.
^DE i72r-r-§
Fig. 634. Fig. 6S5.
Various single obliterators were also used, of which Figs. 686-689 are specimens.
%MM T59 ^1 =
Fig. 686. Fig. 6S7. Fig. 689.
The extensions and improvements of the railway system naturally led to increased
demands for acceleration of mails. To give anything like a detailed account of such
accelerations would be tedious and confusing ;
the following brief illustration will give
some idea of an important acceleration which took place in 1859, and for the purpose of
contrast we will take the year 1854.
In the latter year a letter dispatched from London
to Edinburgh or Glasgow by night mail of Monday would not have been dehvered until
about noon on Tuesday ;
there would then have been an interval of only two hours
between the delivery of the letters and the dispatch of the next mail to London, and as
this interval would have been too short to admit of the reply being prepared, except in
very urgent or special cases, the reply would not in ordinary course have been dispatched
from Edinburgh or Glasgow until about 8 p.m. on Tuesday, and would not have been
dehvered in London until the afternoon of Wednesday. Following on the acceleration
of the Scotch Mails, a letter dispatched from London to Edinburgh or Glasgow by night
mail of Monday was delivered in Edinburgh or Glasgow early on Tuesday morning, and
the reply, if dispatched from Edinburgh or Glasgow by the night mail, that is, after close
of business on Tuesday, was delivered in London before the commencement of business
on Wednesday morning. But the effect of the acceleration on the correspondence for
places lying north of Edinburgh was still more remarkable. Take Aberdeen; in 1854
a reply to a letter could not possibly have been received much under ninety hours, yet in
1859 a reply was easily possible in sixty-five hours, and for all practical purposes saved
one whole working day.
In 1841 the practice of stamping letters at Receiving Houses in Edinburgh and
Glasgow was, as an experiment, discontinued, the letters being stamped at the Head or