The Special 'G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL' Stamp
Origin and usage on incoming foreign mails
Many postal historians cannot resist the charms of ‘Overland Mails’.1 The words evoke imagery of those early days when pioneering individuals and companies carried letters across virgin untamed lands battling and overcoming problems of all sorts.
The overland mail route with respect to India’s communications with Great Britain and beyond2 was the short-cut across the middle east which connected the East and the West and thus avoided the long transit times associated with the ‘all-sea’ route around the Cape of Good Hope.
By the 1850s, almost mails between East and West were being carried through Egypt. By the 1860s, the phrase ‘overland mail’ was itself becoming obsolete.3 It is, therefore, surprising that the double circular ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’ handstamp made its appearance in 1867 and stuck around until the early 1880s.
The origin of this handstamp is shrouded in some mystery. In this article, I will review existing literature and present my own thoughts on its genesis. Later, I will also show the different usages of this handstamp (feel free to jump ahead if that interests you more).
A Proliferation of Stamps
The Indian Post Office started using various kinds of handstamps on letters, parcels, newspapers, etc. since it establishment in 1774.
The first detailed rules for stamping were provided in the ‘Rules for Using Post Office Stamps’ which was to be read with the Indian Post Office Act and ‘Rules for the Management of the Post Office Department’ of 1837.
Postage stamps came into use from 1 October 1854. The Postal Manual of 1855 and 1858 mentioned the different handstamps that were required in post offices.4 Nevertheless, by the late-1860, a bewildering variety were being used by the seven postal circles.
Unhappy with this state of affairs, the Director-General of the Post Office issued a circular on 15 May 1869 asking the Heads of Circles to prepare a memo of all handstamps being used in their circle with examples of impressions, descriptions, and object of use.
The answers received from all over the country disturbed the Director-General. He wrote to the Circle Heads again in January 1871. He said he had found that “stamps and seals were to be seen of an almost infinite variety of form and description, some being clearly of a most objectional kind, involving great expense in manufacture and ill-adapted from their complicated structure to practical use.” He further added that he had directed the Superintendent of the Allygarh workshop to exercise his discretion in refusing to comply with indents.” (Virk 1991, p.62).
Two years later, the Indian Post Office Manual of February 1873 laid down 21 different kinds of handstamps that were required by post offices and standardised their form and size (Figure 1).
‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’ handstamp
One of the “infinite” number of handstamps introduced a few years before the 1873 reforms was the double circular ‘G.P.O. / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’ (Figure 2) used at the Madras General Post Office (GPO) on incoming foreign mails.
Genesis
The famed postal historian, Colonel Neil Blair, first wrote about this handstamp more than 50 years ago (Blair, 1975). However, he was unable to explain its raison d’être:
I am probably being dense, but there seems no valid reason, to me, for this letter to be backstamped with the “Madras Overland Mail”
Shortly after Blair’s article appeared, Ernest Oehme, put forth two reasons for its introduction (Oehme, 1975):
Unlike Calcutta and Bombay, Madras did not have its own Foreign Mail Department. So, while the former two cities used a stamp with a ‘F’ (or ‘IM’ for import and ‘EX’ for export) to mark foreign incoming mails, Madras used the ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’.
Perhaps Madras was not supplied with redirecting and forwarding stamps and used the aforesaid stamp for these purposes
Thereafter, no new thoughts have come forward.
New Speculations
I now take the liberty of putting forth my thoughts, which considers the postal developments taking place at that time.
Then, overland mails from Suez arrived at Madras through two routes:
Route #1
From Suez to Bombay (with a stop at Aden) on the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s (P&O) steamer plying on the so-called ‘Bombay Line’, and
From Bombay to Madras inland through combination of railways and mail carts
Route #2
Directly from Suez to Madras (with stops at Aden and Galle) on the P&O’s ‘Calcutta Line’ (after a stop at Madras, the steamer would proceed to Calcutta)
By 1866, plans were afoot of making Bombay the sole point of entry for all overland mails into India. With the railways rapidly expanding its reach across India, it was felt that mails could be quickly carried from Bombay to Madras, Calcutta, and other distant parts of the country.
However, the Madras mercantile community had apprehensions. In a letter dated 24 December 1866 sent by the Chairman of the Madras Chamber of Commerce to the Chief Secretary of the Madras Government, they complained (Proceedings of the Madras Government, Public Department, 24 December 1866):
I am desired by the Chamber to bring to your notice the very serious delay which occurs in the transmission of the Mails between Madras and Bombay…
…
It must be a humiliating reflection to the Authorities that, in the present year, with a Railway to carry the Mails so great a proportion of the distance, the time occupied in their transmission should, at the best, be so little reduced below, and very frequently actually exceed, the period which was usual many years ago…
As the new Mail arrangements will soon come into operation, whereby the mails for all India will every week reach Bombay, it will not be considered out of place for this Chamber, representing large mercantile interests, to come forward to urge an early revision of the present postal system, which distributes the Madras mails over several successive days…it results in inconveniences to the public of Madras in the irregular arrival of home correspondence and papers which, if multiplied under the new Mail arrangements, will be altogether intolerable.
Not satisfied with the local response, they sent another letter on 23 February 1867, this time to the Governor General of India.
The importance of this matter is much increased by the new system, now being commenced, of forwarding the whole of the English Mails for this Presidency through Bombay in supersession of the Galle route.
The Director General of Post Office has, it is believed, stated the time occupied by the Express Mails between Bombay and Madras to be four days; and it is true that, on several occasions, the express portions of the English mails, containing a few letters as a small instalment, has reached Madras in that time, but the usual period is five days, and it extends frequently to six or seven days, while portions of the English Mails take eight and even nine days…
The Director-General responded to the Government on 23 March saying that the Madras Chamber of Commerce were mistaken in asserting that the service was performed with much irregularity. He presented data showing that over a one-year period starting February 1866, the Bombay-Madras distance was covered in an average of 4 days 14 hours and 14 minutes (Smith and Johnson 2007, p.61-64).
While we do not have any documentary proof, I think the Post Office thereafter took the following steps to speed things up.
Bombay stopped handling overland letters for Madras individually. I base this on the fact that covers struck with the ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’ do not bear any Bombay marks.
Now, Madras had to postmark these letters. They come up with the idea of a special handstamp which would be applied on incoming foreign letters only. It would serve as an arrival or receipt stamp and also help determine the time taken for letters to traverse the Bombay-Madras distance.
The existing delivery handstamps (Figure 3), used until then on both inland and foreign letters, were suitably modified for this purpose.
However, insufficiently paid letters were still processed by the Bombay GPO before being sent to Madras. Such covers bear both Bombay postmarks as well as the ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’.
Manufacture
Where was this handstamp made?
Until around the 1860s, each Presidency or Circle’s Post Office procured their handstamps locally. Later, a Postal Workshop was established at Aligarh, a town about 90 miles south-east of Delhi.
So, this could have been made either locally or indented from the Aligarh workshop; it is difficult to say for sure.
Seven Types
Philatelic literature records seven known types of the handstamp, each differing from each other in minute ways. The interested reader is referred to articles by Max Smith (1997b and 1998) for more information.
It is thought that each sorter or clerk had a particular type allocated to him so that any errors could be tracked back to the person responsible.
However, I do not agree with this hypothesis. There are differences between the handstamps, but they are very marginal. They arise due to their being handmade.5 If one of the objectives of the different types was to figure out which clerk had applied a particular mark, a letter (say A, B, C….) or number (1, 2, 3…) would have been incorporated in the design of the type, as it was in certain other handstamps.
In this article, I will not be attempting to identify these varieties on the covers shown (see footnote 5).
Red and Black
This handstamp is known used in two colours:
Red
On fully paid letters from 1867 to 1872 / early 1873
Black
On insufficiently paid letters between 1868 and early-1880s
On fully paid letters from 1873 to early-1880s
No-Year Period
From early 1873, the design of all Post Office handstamps does not show the year. The Indian Post Office6 took the unfortunate decision (harebrained, if you ask postal historians!) of eliminating the year slug from all its handstamps (see Figure 1).
While the Post Office got back the year slug towards the end of 1883/beginning of 1884,7 in the absence of examples, it seems that the G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’ had been withdrawn by then.
Usages of ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’
I will now take the discussion forward through the help of some covers. For those unfamiliar with Indian and British currencies, a short note follows:
India: 12 pies (p) = 1 anna (a) and 16 annas = 1 rupee
Britain: 12 pence (d) = 1 shilling (s) and 20 shillings = 1 pound
Exchange rate: 1 anna = 1.5 pence (until mid-1876) and 1 anna = 1.2 pence (until mid-1893)
#1. Earliest Use in Red
A cover dating to June 1867 from Ancona in Italy to Madras correctly franked 90 centesimi is illustrated in Figure 5. It was addressed to Mrs. William Arbuthnot, care of M/s Arbuthnot & Co, a well-known business firm.
The cover arrived at Madras from Suez directly and did not transit via Bombay. On arrival at Madras GPO, a red ‘G.P.O. / MADRAS / JY 22 / 1867 / OVERLAND MAIL’ was struck on its rear. This is the joint-earliest known use of this handstamp.
Another cover bearing this of the same date was reported by Martin Hosselmann in Smith (1997b). It was posted in Brighton, a seaside town in South England, on 19 June 1867 and franked 6d. On arrival at Madras on 22 July, again from Suez directly, it was forwarded to the recipient, Mrs. Master, in Waltair with an 1a postage stamp.8
#2. Struck on Front
In almost all instances, the handstamp is observed struck on the rear of covers.
Figure 6 shows a cover from October 1867. Sent from York in North England, the cover was routed through the Marseilles route to Bombay before being dispatched to Madras.
The ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’ dated 13 November 1867 has been unusually applied on the front of the cover.
The rear has a chamfered Teynampett (a suburb of Madras) Suburban Post Office (S.P.O. No. 4) delivery stamp of 14 November 1867. The recipient, Mrs. William Arbuthnot, who we have encountered before, would have got hold of this letter the same day.
Another point of interest is the franking. Even though the GB-India rate via Marseilles had changed to 10d per ½ oz in June 1863,9 no 10d postage stamp was issued for four years. The cover bears a single franking of the 10d postage stamp which had come out a few months earlier on 1 July 1867.
#3. Earliest Use in Black
Figure 7 is an November 1867 insufficiently paid letter. It is from the same correspondence as the previous one. It was franked 6d rather than the correct 10d. Perhaps the sender initially intended to send it through the cheaper Southampton route, which cost 6d, but later endorsed the cover ‘Via Marseilles’.
In London, the scarce ‘DEFICIENT POSTAGE 4d / HALF FINE_3d } 7d..’ handstamp was struck. The first number indicated the underpayment. The second number was half the full fine of 6d on underpaid letters; the fine was equally shared by GB and India. Hence, 7d indicated the debit made by the British Post Office to its Indian counterpart.
Underpaid mails were bagged separately. On receipt at Bombay GPO, the circular ‘ST. BG. / A-P / 6-8’ (ST. stood for steamer and BG. for bearing) for postage due of 6a8p was struck. Now, 6a8p was equivalent to 10d, which was the total of the amount due to London (7d) plus the Indian share of fine (3d).
The rear shows a black ‘G.P.O. / MADRAS / DE 30 / 1867 / OVERLAND MAIL’. The black colour, of course, reflects underpayment.
#4. Forwarded Cover
Figure 8 illustrates another insufficiently paid cover, this time from London to Madras which was subsequently forwarded to the town of Ootacamund.
The sender franked the cover with postage stamps totalling 1s i.e. short 1d. The GB-India rate via Marseilles had increased to 1s1d just a month earlier.10
At London GPO, the ‘EXCG. / OZ | DEFICIENT POSTAGE_{1} / BRITISH SHARE OF FINE_{4½}’ handstamp was struck on the bottom left of the cover. 1d was the underpayment while 4½d was half the full fine of 9d; the fine had increased from 6d to 9d from 1 March. So, 5½d indicated the debit made by the British Post Office to its Indian counterpart.
At Bombay GPO, the circular ‘ST. BG. / A-P / 6-8’ for steamer postage bearing of 6a8p was struck. This was equivalent to 10d, the sum due to London (5½d) plus the Indian share of fine (4½d).
The black ‘G.P.O. / MADRAS / MY 14 / 1868 / OVERLAND MAIL’ was impressed as before. The letter was delivered to M/s Arbuthnot & Co.
Since the recipient had gone to the southern hill station of Ootacamund, a clerk in the company stuck a 2a postage stamp and put it into the Post Office late on 15 May. Mrs. Gosling would have received the cover three days later.
#5. Fully Paid Letter from ‘No Year’ Period
Starting sometime close to or during the ‘no year’ period (late 1873 to late 1883/early 1884), Madras GPO decided to stamp all letters, i.e. both fully paid and deficient ones, with the ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / OVERLAND MAIL’ in black.
Note that even though this handstamp was not one of the 21 illustrated in the Manual of 1873 (see Figure 1), Madras GPO kept it in operation. They must have managed to convince the powers-that-be of its continued use.
An August 1876 fully paid letter from Birkenhead to the Madras suburb of Adyar is shown as Figure 9. It was sent a few months before India joined the General Postal Union (GPU) on 1 July 1876.
The cover correctly paid 1s, the GB-India rate via Brindisi per ½ oz.11 Even though this was a fully paid letter, on arrival at Madras GPO, the ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / FE 5 / OVERLAND MAIL’ was struck in black and not red. Thereafter, it was forwarded to the Adyar Post Office for delivery the same day.12
#6. Deficient Letter from ‘No Year’ Period
Finally, an insufficiently paid letter from the ‘no year’ period is illustrated as Figure 10.
It was sent from Kentish Town in London during the 33-month GPU period (1 July 1876 to 31 March 1879). Underpaid letters from GB to India during this period are very scarce and those in the opposite direction are outright rare.
The GB-India rate via Brindisi in the GPU period was 8d.13 Since the postal stationery envelope was of 1d value, the letter was underpaid 7d. So, the London GPO applied a black ‘T’ (for ‘Taxe’) on the cover.
On arrival at Bombay GPO, a clerk marked the cover with a circular ‘OVERLAND POSTAGE / DUE / AS. / 8’. The 8a postage due was calculated as 6a India-GB rate via Brindisi plus 2½a (or 2a6p) fine on insufficiently paid letters less prepayment of 1d or 10p = 7a8p rounded up to 8a.14
And at Madras, the black ‘G.P.O / MADRAS / JY 28 / OVERLAND MAIL’ was affixed as usual.
Acknowledgements: Max Smith for his helpful comments and suggestions. Every time I write something and take his feedback, I manage to learn much more. However, I am solely responsible for this article’s contents and any errors that it may contain.
References
Blair, C. N. M. 1975. “Indian “Overland” Handstamps”. India Post 9 no. 1 whole no. 43 (January-March): 20
Moubray, Jane, and Michael Moubray. 2017. British Letter Mail to Overseas Destinations 1840 to UPU. 2nd edn. London: Royal Philatelic Society.
Oehme. E.G. 1975. “Madras G.P.O. Overland Mail”. India Post 9 no. 4 whole no. 46 (October-December): 133
Smith, Max. 1989. “ ‘G.P.O./OVERLAND MAIL/MADRAS’ ”. India Post 23 no. 4 whole no. 102 (October-December): 146
———. 1997a. “ ‘G.P.O./OVERLAND MAIL/MADRAS’ (2)”. India Post 31 no. 2 whole no. 132 (April-June): 82
———. 1997b. “ G.P.O./OVERLAND MAIL/MADRAS’”. India Post 31 no. 4 whole no. 134 (October-December): 156
———. 1998. “ ‘G.P.O./OVERLAND MAIL/MADRAS’ (4)”. India Post 32 no. 1 whole no. 135 (January-March): 32
Smith, Max, and Robert Johnson. 2007. Express Mail, After Packets, and Late Fees in India Before 1870. Wheathampstead, Herts, UK: Stuart Rossiter Trust.
Virk, Brig. D. S. 1991. Indian Postal History 1873-1923. New Delhi: Army Postal Service Association.
There were overland mail routes in many parts of the world. The famous Pony Express and the lesser-known Butterfield Overland Mail, which operated in the United States in the late 1850s / early 1860s, readily come to mind.
Given that it is a big country, there were multiple overland mail routes within India as well. Well into the first few decades of the 19th century, mail was carried by runners across ill-maintained or non-existent roads, jungles, ravines, and rivers; there was always the threat of thugs and tigers lurking around the corner.
A search of the phrase ‘overland mail’ in the British Newspaper Archives gives 79,865 hits in the 1850s; 46,250 in 1860s; 27,235 in the 1870s; 19,448 in the 1880s; and just 5,103 in the 1890s. Meanwhile the number of individual newspapers searched almost triples from 309,553 in the 1850s to 852,412 in the 1890s.
These were:
a stamp for obliterating postage labels
a stamp bearing the office name and date, which was to be affixed on the back of prepaid, unpaid, and insufficiently letters
a circular delivery stamp
an oval redirection stamp
a forwarding stamp
miscellaneous stamps bearing words ‘Too Late’, ‘Refused’, ‘Returned’, ‘Not paid in full’, and ‘Unclaimed’
In his superb book, Virk (1991, p.99) says:
I have not included in my collection varieties in postmarks based on minor variations in lettering, stops, decorations and the like. I have seen at first hand how the components of handstamps are measured, fabricated, engraved and assembled at the Postal Workshop (now called Postal Seals) Aligarh by traditional craftsmen using primitive tools. The processes have remained unchanged during the last 150 years. While adherence to the given design and spellings was insisted upon, there was no insistence on rigid uniformity in spacing, stops and ornamental embellishments.
If the reader is searching for a scapegoat, look no further than the then Director-General of the Indian Post Office, Alexander McLanrin Monteath! On a serious note, Monteath was a dedicated civil servant, who was not afraid of raising matters up with his British counterparts if he felt the India Post Office was being shortchanged. In the coming years, he helped pave the way for the entry of India into the GPU.
Circular No. 40 dated 16 July 1883 asked the Postal Workshop to urgently arrange stamps with type to indicate the year. This was because a new Post Office Manual coming into effect from 1 October 1883 contained forms where spaces to write the date were omitted, the intention being that the impression of the dated stamp would furnish all the necessary information with regard to the date. So, the truth is that Post Office reintroduced it for their own convenience and not on public demand (Virk 1991, p.66).
It is ironic that a handstamp which was introduced (if my theory is correct) to be applied on overland letters for Madras transiting through Bombay saw its earliest known application on two letters arriving directly at Madras.
The 10d rate from GB to India via Marseilles on letters weighing ½ oz was effective from 1 June 1863 to 29 February 1868.
The GB to India rate via Marseilles from 1 March 1868 to 18 October 1868 was 1s1d per ½ oz. On 19 October, the British Post Office issued a notice abandoning the Marseilles route due to the ongoing Franco-Prussian war and directing all mails for India via Brindisi.
The 1s per ½ oz GB to India rate via Brindisi was effective 17 December 1870 to 30 June 1876.
The recipient was David Freemantle Carmichael (1830-1903), a civil servant in Madras Presidency and later Senior Member of the Madras Council.
The GB to India rate via Brindisi per ½ oz was 8d from 1 July 1876 to 31 March 1879 (the GPU period).
Clause 12 of a notification dated 16 June 1876 issued by the Indian Post Office stated:
Letters received from any country of the Union as unpaid or insufficiently paid will be charged, on delivery, at the rate which would be chargeable on a letter posted in India for that country by the same route, together with an additional rate of two and half annas per half ounce. The value of any stamps (as marked by the country of origin) which may be affixed to an insufficiently paid letter will be deducted from the amount this chargeable, fractions of an anna in the remainder being raised to one anna.
The rate “chargeable on a letter posted in India for that country by the same route” was 6a. To this was added “an additional rate” of 2½a (or 2a6p). Then the value of postage stamps affixed i.e. 1d or 10p was deducted. Finally, the sum of 7a8p (8a6p less 10p) was raised up to 8a.
Excellent research article Abhishek ji..