Posted on 02/20/2023 11:22:11 AM PST by Red Badger
A letter mailed in 1916 arrived at its intended address in London more than 100 years later. Photo courtesy of the Norwood Society/Twitter Feb. 20 (UPI) -- A London man who received a letter addressed to a former resident of his home was shocked to discover it had been mailed more than a century earlier in 1916.
Finlay Glen said the letter arrived a couple years ago at his address on Hamlet Road in south London, but it was addressed to an unfamiliar name and bore an extremely old stamp and postmark.
"We noticed that the year on it was '16. So we thought it was 2016," Glen told CNN. "Then we noticed that the stamp was a king rather than a queen, so we felt that it couldn't have been 2016."
The letter was addressed to "Mrs. Oswald Marsh" and was made out to "my dear Katie." The sender was identified as Christabel Mennel.
"Once we realized it was very old, we felt that it was OK to open up the letter," Glen said.
Glen recently took the letter to the Norwood Society, a local history group that publishes the quarterly Norwood Review.
"It's very unusual and actually quite exciting in terms of giving us a lead into local history and people who lived in Norwood, which was a very popular place for the upper middle classes in the late 1800s," Stephen Oxford, editor of the Norwood Review, told the BBC.
Mennel wrote in the letter that her family was vacationing in Bath, England.
It remains unclear why the letter took so long to arrive at its intended destination.
"We appreciate that people will be intrigued by the history of this letter from 1916, but have no further information on what might have happened," the Royal Mail said in a statement.
I want that stamp!
If I had to point the finger at someone, I'd probably blame the government.
Just a common 1 penny. I doubt that it would be worth that much in a used condition.
I have some “mint” commons from around the same time. They aren’t THAT rare. But they are interesting.
Prince Albert was in the can!...................
Send it back. “No longer at this address.”
It’s “Old Mail Day!” (Hint: Green Acres)
The portrait on the stamp is of King George V. My grandfather had to renounce his allegiance to King George V when he became a US citizen.
Maybe they could locate the individuals involved on the 1911 census of Great Britain (if those are open to the public...in the US the wait is 72 years but I don't know what the rule is in Britain).
Was the check enclosed?
the stamp is worth more remaining on the letter, especially now that the letter has been covered by the media.
Prince Albert was in the can!...................
><
It looks like they let him out.
“I shall be arriving on the RMS Lusitania. Please wait by the docks.”
I say the post office was finally cleaned
More like Prince Albert was 6 feet under. 1916 would have been George V.
Well, then he was in a can!.....................
It would be nice it they track down any living descendants of the intended recipient (or the sender).
Mailed a friend a postcard from Istanbul in 2019. Couple of years later she sent an email and said you went back to Istanbul? She got the card in 2021.
“Yes, I’ll marry you, my love!”
Ms. Mennel probably went through the whole rest of her life miffed that Mrs. Marsh never replied to her letter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.