Thou Shall Not Steal

but for
(Postal History) Good!)
Abhishek Bhuwalka
Figure 1. Front of India-
Netherlands letter from 1852

Figure 2. Rear of the

letter

S
hown in Figures 1 and 2 is the front and
rear of a wrapper sent from Calcutta to
Amsterdam. While it is only a wrapper
and the contents are missing, the docketing
tells us that it was written on 6 April 1852. It
seems to be addressed to Messrs. Van Goy-
hen & Co. but there is more to it than meets
the eye! We will first look at the postal his-
tory aspects of this letter – the route it took,
the rates it paid, and the markings on it.

Postal Route
The letter was first carried on the Peninsular
& Oriental (P&O) Steam Navigation Com-
pany’s packet steamer, Oriental. Leaving Calcutta
on 8 April, the steamer went to Suez (via Madras,
Galle, and Aden) reaching on 4 May. Going over-
land across Egypt, it caught the P&O’s Ripon (Fig-
ure 3) at Alexandria which subsequently steamed
to Malta, Gibraltar, and finally Southampton
reaching the latter place on 21 May. Thereafter
the letter went via London to Ostend, Belgium via
a steamboat and then to Amsterdam overland
where it reached on 23 May.
As an aside, it must be mentioned that, at this
time, mails from India to Europe via Southampton
are considerably scarcer than mails via Marseilles
or Trieste.

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Figure 3. ‘The Arrival of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s Steamship Ripon…in Southampton
Docks… April 3rd 1864.’ © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Postal Rate
The letter was sent unpaid from India (see the IN-
DIA rather than the INDIA PAID handstamp on
front). Since it was posted at the port of despatch
i.e., Calcutta, there was no inland postage applica-
ble. And because it was being routed via
Southampton, there was no necessity to prepay
the ‘Red Sea’ postage (then eight annas or one
shilling) in India; mails to Europe via Marseilles
had to prepay this rate.

At London, a postal clerk marked the rate of ‘1/8’ Figure 5. Rendering of the ENGELAND / OVER OSTEND.
in black on the front right being the sum of one From Winter (2009).
shilling and eight pence (1s8d) debited to Nether-

lands by Great Britain. This amount can be bifur-

cated as 1s British steam or packet postage and
another 8d being the British share under the 1844
Postal Convention between Great Britain and
Netherlands effective 1 January 1844.

Now, at the exchange rates specified in the said

Figure 4. The ENGELAND / OVER OSTEND handstamp
on the rear of the letter obscured by the Amsterdam
datestamp applied on top
Convention, 1s8d was equal to 100 Dutch cents.
To this was added 10 cents Belgian transit fee and
20 cents Dutch internal postage making the total
130 Dutch cents. A clerk in Amsterdam marked
this amount in black on the front center as being

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 Figure 6.
Richard F.
Winter RDP
(1937- ). From
his book
Understanding
Transatlantic
Mail Volume 2
(2009).

Figure 7. Cornelis
Muys (1919-2016).
From the Catalogue
of FILACEPT 88, the
international stamp
exhibition at The
Hague held 18-23
October 1988.
Acknowledgement:
Jan Vellekoop.

postage due from the recipient (for some reason
the amount is also mentioned in red crayon on the
rear).
Postal Markings
On the front can be seen a red rectangular INDIA
(Giles SD17) which was applied at Calcutta; this
handstamp, in its various settings, was in use from
early 1838 onwards and signified that the letter
had to be sent via the overland route rather than
the then usual Cape of Good Hope one. On the
rear is a red rectangular handstamp G.P.O. / {1852
April 7} (Giles G14) also applied at Calcutta. There
is a London datestamp of 21 May and an Amster-
dam datestamp of 23 May.
seemed to be different from the original. Just a
couple of days later, I stumbled upon the answer.
The correct name of the recipient is Messrs. Van
Eeghen & Co. Founded by Jacob van Eeghan in
1662, the firm traded in agricultural products and
later diversified into finance, establishing a bank;
its history (available on its website and elsewhere
on the internet) makes for fascinating reading.
Currently the company is into the food business
and is run by the 15th generation of the family!
Now, who altered Eeghen to Goyen by using some
white correction fluid and a fine black pen. And
why?

Note the red orange oval ENGLAND / OVER OS-
TENDE (Figure 4) applied at the exchange office of
Breda, Netherlands to show the letter was from
England by way of Ostend, Belgium. This hand-
stamp is obscured by the Amsterdam datestamp
which was applied over it; hence a clearer ren-
dered example is shown as Figure 5. From 1 De-
cember 1849, closed mail bags from England could
be sent via Ostend to the Dutch exchange office at
Breda for an additional 10 Dutch cents (which was
due to Belgium) over the direct route to Rotter-
dam. Mails arriving at London from overseas
could be sent by either route according to their
routing endorsement; however, on those days
when there was no direct service to Rotterdam,
mails would automatically go by Ostend. This is
what happened to this letter.
Eeghen not Goyen
In Volume 2 (pg. 652) of his brilliant Understand-
ing Transatlantic Mails, Richard F. Winter (Figure
6) explains:
A large number of letters from this archive
exist and are in numerous collections today,
each with the name in the address altered. In
the 1960s, an employee of the Amsterdam
banking house to which the letters were sent,
was ordered to supervise the destruction of
the company archive. Contrary to his orders, he
took out material for himself, which he sold off
at auctions in larger or smaller portions,
depending on his needs. In order not to be
caught, he altered the names on the letters to
disguise the archive from which they had
come.

Now on to this ‘Goyen’ business. When I received This information was provided to Winter by Cor-
the letter, I was wondering why the name was cor- nelis Muys (Figure 7), the noted Netherlands
rected. The black ink colour of the correction postal historian.

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So, on the one hand, society would surely consider
the unnamed employee to be in the wrong for
stealing his employee’s property. On the other
hand, we postal historians, are ambivalent to the
act; rather, while we won't admit this, we are
grateful to him for saving these letters from de-
struction. While the motive was immoral, the end
result wasn't. So much saved postal correspon-
dence is now in our hands, and they all go a long
way in our understanding of postal history. Yes, I
would have preferred he didn’t alter the name but
then I can live with that; in fact, I wouldn't have
written this piece if he had not!
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References
Giles, D. Hammond. Catalogue of the Handstruck
Postage Stamps of India. London: Christie’s Rob-
son Lowe, 1989
Linden, James Van der. Catalogue / Katalog Mar-
ques de Passage / Postvertragsstempel Katalog
1661-1875 (= Catalogue of Marks of Passage /
Postal Stamps). Luxembourg: Soluphil, 1993
Winter, Richard F. Understanding Transatlantic
Mail. Volume 2. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Bellefonte, PA, USA:
American Philatelic Society, 2009