Rare envelope goes uner the hammer

From the Bolton Evening News, first published Sunday 10th Sep 2006.

ONE of the most valuable envelopes ever sent to Bolton is expected to fetch up to £3,500 when it is auctioned next month.

The pale blue envelope was sent from Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1870 at a cost of 10 old pennies.

It was addressed to Mrs W.M.French, Rose Hill, Bolton-le-Moors, and is valuable because the Franco-Prussian war in Europe prevented the letter from being carried on its normal route.

It could not go through France, so it was diverted via the Italian port of Brindisi and came to Bolton via Italy, Germany and Belgium.

On its way, the envelope was stamped: "Insufficiently paid for Brindisi route, deficient postage, 3d."

It is this hand-stamped message which makes the envelope "very rare" and valuable, according to auctioneers Spink, which is putting the envelope under the hammer on October 3.

Only one other envelope posted from New Zealand is known to feature this "insufficiently paid" notice, probably applied by a post office clerk with a metal stamp at Alexandria, Egypt.

Without this, the envelope would be worth only a fraction of its current value, probably between £500 and £600.

But this was of no consolation to Mrs French, of Bolton.

For it meant that through no fault of her own - and because of the war raging in Europe which started on July 15, 1870 a - she had to pay a threepenny surcharge when the envelope eventually reached her in Bolton.

The envelope took 10 weeks to make the 11,500-mile trip from New Zealand to Lancashire: by ship from New Zealand to Alexandria, Egypt, across the Mediterranean to Brindisi, by rail through Europe, across the English Channel to one of the Kent ports, and then by rail to Bolton.

It left New Zealand in July, 1870, reached Bolton Post Office on Boxing Day that year and was delivered to Mrs French the following day, December 27.

It is not known who sent the envelope because the letter inside it is missing.

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