General Instructions for the Guidance of Post Office Inspectors in the Dominion of Canada

by Alexander Campbell

3. Carefully examine the post-marks. If the impressions or indentations have penetrated from the cover to the letter inside, ascertain whether there has been any change in the position of the letter in the envelope between the time it received the post-mark of one office and the time it received the post-mark of another office.

This will sometimes enable you to determine at which office the abstraction was affected.

4. Ascertain if any of the post-marks have penetrated through the envelope from one side of the letter to the other. In such a case you may be able to determine whether, at the time the letter was stamped at any particular office, it actually contained an enclosure.

15. Cases of alleged abstraction have been brought to light in which it has been proved that paper has been enclosed in letters by the senders instead of the money purported to have been remitted.

The proof consisted of the impressions of the postmarks placed on the letter at the office at which posted having gone through the envelope on to the papers enclosed.

It is, of course, important to ascertain whether the stamps were placed on the letter at the time it was posted.

16. Cases of alleged theft have also been brought to light by the writing on the envelope being in a different hand to the writing in the letter enclosed, by the date of the letter not corresponding with the date of the post-mark of the office at which mailed, and by the dates of the post-marks on the letter showing that it has been subjected to some unusual delay. All these points should, therefore, be closely looked into.

17. In all cases it would be desirable to ascertain at what point the best opportunity for the alleged theft would have been afforded.

18. The evidence in each case of enquiry should be carefully taken down in writing, and every circumstance, however trifling, which may in the slightest degree bear on the case, noted. It is frequently by a collection of apparently unimportant facts that important results are arrived at.

19. Care should be taken in every case to avoid the formation of any opinion until all the facts which it is possible to obtain in regard to it are collected together. It is only from these facts and from the character and antecedents of the parties who may have been concerned in the loss, and not from some suspicion unsupported by facts, that conclusions can with any safety be drawn.