CHAPTER XIII.
ABUSE OF THE FRANKING PRIVILEGE, AND OTHER PETTY FRAUDS.
Abuse of the Franking Privilege.
Wherever the use of anything of value is given without the check of a money or other equivalent, the use is sure to degenerate into abuse; and in the experience of the Post-office this has been proved to be the case, both as regards letters and telegrams. In regard to the first, the franking privilege was long found to be a canker eating into the vitals of the Revenue; and its abolition on the introduction of the penny postage in 1840 came none too soon. Had the privilege been longer continued, it is impossible to conceive to what extent the abuse of it might have grown; but what might have occurred here has, in some measure, taken place in the United States, as is shown by the following statement made by the Postmaster-General of that country, about twenty years after the abolition of the privilege in this:—
"Another potent reason for the abolition of the franking privilege, as now exercised, is found in the abuses which seem to be inseparable from its existence. These abuses, though constantly exposed and animadverted upon for a series of years, have as constantly increased. It has been often stated by my predecessors, and is a matter of public notoriety, that immense masses of packages are transported under the Government frank which neither the letter nor the spirit of the statute creating the franking privilege would justify; and a large number of letters, documents, and packages are thus conveyed, covered by the frank of officials, written in violation of law, not by themselves, but by some real or pretended agent; while whole sacks of similar matter, which have never been handled nor even seen by Government functionaries, are transported under franks which have been forged. The extreme difficulty of detecting such forgeries has greatly multiplied this class of offences; whilst their prevalence has so deadened the public sentiment in reference to them, that a conviction, however ample the proof, is scarcely possible to be obtained. The statute of 1825, denouncing the counterfeiting of an official frank under a heavy penalty, is practically inoperative. I refer you to the case reported at length by the United States attorney for the district, as strikingly illustrating this vitiated public opinion, reflected from the jury-box. The proof was complete, and the case unredeemed by a single palliation; and yet the offender was discharged, unrebuked, to resume, if it should please him, his guilty task. This verdict of acquittal is understood to have been rendered on two grounds—first, that the accused said he did not commit the offence to avoid the payment of the postages; and second, that the offence has become so prevalent that it is no longer proper to punish it. These are startling propositions, whether regarded in their legal, moral, or logical aspects."
The unblushing way in which the British Post-office in its earlier days was called upon to convey not only franked letters, but, under franks, articles of a totally different class, will be perceived from the following cases. It is not to be understood, however, that the things consigned actually passed through the Post-office, but rather that they were admitted for transport on board the special packet-ships of Government, sailing for the purposes of the Post-office. The cases are taken from the first annual report of the Postmaster-General:—
"Fifteen couples of hounds going to the King of the Romans with a free pass."
"Some parcels of cloth for the clothing colonels in my Lord North's and my Lord Grey's regiments."
"Two servant-maids going as laundresses to my Lord Ambassador Methuen."
"Doctor Crichton, carrying with him a cow and divers other necessaries."
"Three suits of cloaths for some nobleman's lady at the Court of Portugal."
"A box containing three pounds of tea, sent as a present by my Lady Arlington to the Queen-Dowager of England at Lisbon."
"Eleven couples of hounds for Major-General Hompesch."
"A case of knives and forks for Mr Stepney, her Majesty's Envoy to the King of Holland."
"One little parcell of lace, to be made use of in clothing Duke Schomberg's regiment."
"Two bales of stockings for the use of the Ambassador of the Crown of Portugal."
"A box of medicines for my Lord Galway in Portugal."
"A deal case with four flitches of bacon for Mr Pennington of Rotterdam."
The Post-office always had a great deal of trouble in controlling and keeping in check this system of franking; and withal, the privilege was much abused. Before the year 1764, members of Parliament had merely to write their names on the covers to ensure their correspondence free passage through the post; and packets of such franks were furnished by the members to their friends, who laid them past for use as occasion required. Nay, more,—a trade was carried on in franks by the servants of members, whose practice it was to ask their masters to sign them in great numbers at a time. It was even suspected, and probably with sufficient reason, that franks were forged to a large extent; and, had postage been paid on all franked correspondence, it is estimated that the Revenue would have been increased by £170,000. In the hope of imposing some greater check on the evil, it was enacted in 1763 that the whole superscription must be in the handwriting of the member; but even this proved inadequate, and further restrictions were imposed in 1784 and 1795. Some very difficult and troublesome questions arose from time to time in dealing with member's letters. For example, when a member of Parliament had no place of residence in London, and was living out of the United Kingdom, if he had his letters addressed to a public office, or to any solicitor, banker, or other agent, he was not entitled to have his letters free of postage, but, if so directed and delivered, the postage had to be paid. Again, when a member kept up a residence in London, but had his letters directed to another place, the member ceased to enjoy the privilege as regards such letters; as he also did when letters were addressed to his residence in the country, and he happened to be elsewhere at the time of their delivery. Then a Catholic peer dying, who had never taken his seat, and being succeeded by his brother, who was a Protestant, the question is raised whether the latter could claim to use the franking privilege before the issue of the writ calling him to the House of Peers; and the legal decision is given that he could not so exercise the privilege. Keeping the members within proper bounds must evidently have been a task for the officers of the Post-office requiring both vigilance and determination.
But there was another kind of fraud carried on under the privilege granted to soldiers. A surveyor in Scotland thus referred to the irregularity as observed in Scotland in 1797:—
"As there is so much smuggling of letters already in Scotland, and reason to suspect it will increase from the additional rates, it is matter of serious concern to the Revenue to obtain a clear legal restriction; and I wish you to represent it to the Board at London, in case it may not be too late to offer any hints from the distant situation we are in.
"I have had occasion formerly to observe to you that a very great evasion of the Post Revenue has taken place—particularly in the north of Scotland—from the privilege granted to soldiers, under cover of which not only a very general opportunity is taken by the common people there to have their letters carried by soldiers to be freed by their officers, and having them again in return under soldiers' addresses; but even in several instances which I observed and detected, persons in higher ranks have availed themselves of this circumstance."
Nor were people of quality above the habit of committing similar frauds upon the Post-office revenue, as will be observed from the following remarks penned by an official on the 9th April 1812. The statement runs thus:—"On the 31st ultimo, having gone into the mail-coach office at Glasgow, soon after the arrival of the coach from Ayr, and observing several parcels which had arrived by it, one in particular took our attention by its appearing to contain a loaf of bread of the supposed value of 6d. or 8d., addressed to the Honble. Mrs ——, of Glasgow; and as this parcel was charged 10d., it created the idea of some mistake having happened in sending it in that way, by which the carriage exceeded the value, besides the original cost of it.
"In a few minutes after this, however, two ladies called for the parcel, one of them believed to be Mrs —— herself, and the other her sister, and inquired for the parcel; and my curiosity leading me to notice the issue of this supposed hoax, I was not a little surprised to find, after the lady had cut up the cover, that two or three letters were enclosed with the loaf, one of which she gave to the other lady, and sent the loaf home by the porter."
The Post-office has also been exposed to frauds in other ways. Thus it was a common device to take a newspaper bearing the newspaper frank, prick out with a pin certain words in the print making up a message to be sent, and the newspaper so prepared served all the purposes of a letter as between the sender and receiver. Or a message would be written on the cover of a newspaper with the first of all fluids known to us—milk—which, when dry, was not observed, but developed a legible communication subsequently when held to the fire.
The following anecdotes of the evasions of postage are told by the late Sir Rowland Hill:—
"Some years ago, when it was the practice to write the name of a member of Parliament for the purpose of franking a newspaper, a friend of mine, previous to starting on a tour into Scotland, arranged with his family a plan of informing them of his progress and state of health, without putting them to the expense of postage. It was managed thus: He carried with him a number of old newspapers, one of which he put into the post daily. The postmark, with the date, showed his progress; and the state of his health was evinced by the selection of the names from a list previously agreed upon, with which the newspaper was franked. Sir Francis Burdett, I recollect, denoted vigorous health."
"Once on the poet's [Coleridge's] visit to the Lake district, he halted at the door of a wayside inn at the moment when the rural postman was delivering a letter to the barmaid of the place. Upon receiving it she turned it over and over in her hand, and then asked the postage of it. The postman demanded a shilling. Sighing deeply, however, the girl handed the letter back, saying she was too poor to pay the required sum. The poet at once offered to pay the postage; and in spite of some resistance on the part of the girl, which he deemed quite natural, did so. The messenger had scarcely left the place when the young barmaid confessed that she had learnt all she was likely to learn from the letter; that she had only been practising a preconceived trick—she and her brother having agreed that a few hieroglyphics on the back of the letter should tell her all she wanted to know, whilst the letter would contain no writing. 'We are so poor,' she added, 'that we have invented this manner of corresponding and franking our letters.'"
In asserting its monopoly in the carriage of letters in towns, or wherever the Post-office had established posts, there was always trouble; and so much attention did the matter require, that special officers for the duty were employed, called "Apprehenders of Private Letter-carriers." The penalties were somewhat severe when infringements were discovered, and the action taken straight and prompt, as will be seen by the following, which is a copy of a letter written in 1817 to a person charging him with breaking the law:—
"Sir,—His Majesty's Postmasters-General have received an information laid against you, that on the 18th ultimo your clerk, Mr ——, for whom you are answerable, illegally sent three letters in a parcel by a stage-coach to you at Broadstairs, Kent, contrary to the statute made to prevent the sending of letters otherwise than by the post.
"I am commanded by their lordships to inform you that you have thereby incurred three penalties of £5 each, and that they feel it their duty to proceed against you to recover the same.
"Should you have any explanation to give, you will please to address the Postmaster-General.—I am," &c.
General Post-Office, Aug. 10th, 1792
A CAUTION.
To all Coach-Masters, Carriers, Higlers, Ship
Masters employed Coastwise, Newsmen,
Watermen and Others.
Having received repeated Information that Letters
are illegally collected, carried and delivered, to the great
Injury of the Public Revenue, and it being the wish of this
Office rather to prevent than punish, and that the unwary may
be made acquainted with the Penalties they are subject to; I am
directed to give this Public Notice, that from the Date hereof,
every Effort will be used to detect and punish all Persons so
offending.—The Penalties for which are FIVE POUNDS
FOR EVERY LETTER SO COLLECTED, CARRIED,
OR DELIVERED, WHETHER FOR HIRE OR NOT,
AND ONE HUNDRED POUNDS, FOR EVERY
WEEK SUCH PRACTICE IS CONTINUED.
By Command of the Postmaster General,
Johnson Wilkinson, Surveyor.
In August 1794, at the Warwick Assizes, a carrier between Warwick and Birmingham was convicted of illegally collecting and carrying letters, when penalties amounting to £1500 were incurred; but the prosecution consented to a verdict being taken for two penalties of £5 each, with costs of the suit. A report of the period observed that "this verdict should be a warning to carriers, coachmen, and other persons, against taking up letters tied round with a string or covered with brown paper, under pretence of being parcels, which, the learned judge observed, was a flimsy evasion of the law."
The very cheap postage which we now enjoy has removed the inducement in a large measure to commit petty frauds of this kind on the Post-office Revenue, and the commission of such things may now be said to belong to an age that is past.
Frauds on the Public.
The Post-office, while it is the willing handmaid to commerce, the vehicle of social intercourse, and the necessary helper in almost every enterprise and occupation, becomes at the same time a ready means for the unscrupulous to carry on a wonderful variety of frauds on the public, and enables a whole army of needy and designing persons to live upon the generous impulses of society. While these things go on,—and Post-office officials know they go on,—the Department is helpless to prevent them; for the work of the Post-office is carried on as a secret business, in so far as the communications intrusted to it are concerned, and the contents of the letters conveyed are not its property or interest. There are men and women who go about from town to town writing begging letters to well-to-do persons, appealing for help under all sorts of pretences; and these persons are as well known, in the sense of being customers to the Department, as a housekeeper is known at her grocer's shop. There are other persons, again, who carry on long-firm swindles through the post, obtaining goods which are never to be paid for; and as soon as the goods are received at one place, the swindlers move on to another place, assume new names, and repeat the operation. The schemes adopted are often very deeply laid; and the police, when once set upon the track, have hard work to unravel the wily plans. But tradespeople are not infrequently themselves very much to blame, as they show themselves too confiding, and too ready to do business with unknown persons.
The following is an instance of a fraud upon well-to-do persons in this country, attempted by an American in the year 1869:—
The Rev. Mr Champneys, of St Pancras, London, received a letter posted at Florence, Burlington County, New Jersey, U.S., which upon being opened seemed to be not intended for him, but was a communication purporting to be written from one sister to another. The letter made it appear that the writer was highly connected, had fallen into the greatest distress owing to the death of her husband, that her feelings of self-respect had restrained her from telling her griefs till she could no longer withhold them, and making free use of the deepest pathos and high-sounding sentiments, and finally appealing for an immediate remittance. Mr Champneys, not suspecting a fraud, and desiring to help forward the letter to the person who, as he supposed, should have received it, inserted the following advertisement in the 'Times' newspaper:—
"A letter, dated Florence, Burlington County, New Jersey, U.S., intended for Mrs Lucy Campbell, Scotland, has been misdirected to Rev. W. Champneys, 31 Gordon Square. Will Mrs Campbell kindly communicate her address immediately?"
In response to this inquiry, what was Mr Champney's surprise but to find that a large number of persons had received letters in identical terms and in precisely the same circumstances! This of course caused him to reflect, and then the facts became clear to him—which were, that under the guise of a trifling mistake, that of placing a letter in the wrong envelope, a set of dire circumstances were placed before persons who were likely to be kind-hearted and generous, in the hope that, though the writer was unknown to them, they might send some money to cheer a poor but respectable family steeped in calamity!
How far the attempt succeeded does not appear, but Mr Champneys very properly at once wrote a letter to the 'Times' exposing the fraud, and it is to be hoped that some generous souls were in consequence saved from folly.
One more instance—but one coming within the class of the "confidence trick." In several country newspapers the following advertisement made its appearance:—
"An elderly bachelor of fortune, wishing to test the credulity of the public, and to benefit and assist others, will send a suitable present of genuine worth, according to the circumstances of the applicant, to all who will send him 17 stamps—demanded merely as a token of confidence. Stamps will be returned with the present." And then the address followed, which was not always the same in all the advertisements.
The advertiser alone would be able to say how far he profited by this little arrangement, but some idea of the simplicity of mankind may be derived from the fact that between 300 and 400 letters for this person, each containing 17 stamps, reached the Dead-letter Office—owing doubtless to his having "moved on" from the places where he had lived, in consequence of their becoming too warm to hold him. Specimens of the letters written by the dupes are as follows:—
1. "The Rev. —— encloses 17 stamps. He is a clergyman with very limited means, and the most useful present to him would be five pounds. If his application be not agreeable, he requests that the stamps be returned."
2. "I have enclosed the 17 stamps, and shall be very pleased to receive any present you will send me. As I am not very well off, what I would like very much would be a nice black silk dress, which I should consider a rich reward for my credulity."
3. "Mrs —— presents her compliments to the 'elderly bachelor,' and in order to amuse him by her credulity encloses 17 stamps, and thus claims the promised present. Her position and circumstances are good, she mixes in gay society, and is quite an adept at dancing the polka mazourka. These details may determine the suitability of the present."
4. "Having read your advertisement testing the 'credulity of the public,' I feel disposed on my part to test the upright and honourable intentions of a stranger, contrary to the opinion of some, who tell me it is only a hoax, or, worse, a mere take-in. I therefore, with the honesty of an Irishman, beg to say I am a clerygyman's wife, mother of nine children,—the six eldest fine enterprising sons; the three youngest, engaging, intelligent girls. We Irish generally have larger hearts than purses. I therefore lay these facts before you, an Englishman, knowing that a Briton's generosity and capabilities are proverbially equal.—Hoping I may be able to prove I have formed a correct opinion of advertiser's truthfulness, I am," &c.
After this we may afford to smile, and use the words of a very old author with every confidence of their freshness: "Oh, where shall wisdom be found? where is the place of understanding?"