"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.