The registration-fee of fourpence, prepaid in stamps, will secure careful treatment to any letter, newspaper, or book-packet addressed to any part of the United Kingdom. Record is kept of all such letters throughout their entire course. The registration of a packet makes its transmission more secure, by rendering it practicable to trace it from its receipt to its delivery. For a fee of sixpence letters may be registered to any British colony, except Ascension, Vancouver's Island, British Columbia, and Labuan, for which places they can only be registered part of the way. Letters may be registered to several foreign countries at varying rates. (See British Postal Guide.)
Every letter meant for registration should be presented at the post-office window, or counter (as the case may be) and a receipt obtained for it, and must on no account be dropped into the letterbox among the ordinary letters. If, contrary to this rule, a letter marked "registered" be found in the letter-box, addressed to the United Kingdom, it will be charged an extra registration-fee of double the ordinary fee, or one of eightpence instead of fourpence.
The latest time for posting a registered letter on payment of the ordinary fee is generally up to within half an hour of the closing of the letter-box for that particular mail with which it will require to be forwarded. A registered letter will be received at all head offices up to the closing of the general letter-box, or until the office is closed for the night, on payment of a late fee of fourpence in addition to the ordinary registration fee. All fees, as well as postage, of registered letters must be prepaid in stamps. A registered letter, when re-directed, is liable to the same additional charge as if it were an ordinary letter, the original register fee, however, sufficing until it is delivered.
By Act of Parliament, the Post-Office is not responsible for the absolute security of registered letters, though every care and attention are given to them. Each registered letter may be traced from hand to hand, from posting to delivery, with unfailing accuracy, and there can be no question as to the great security which is thus afforded. Any officer who may neglect his duty with registered letters is called to strict account, and, if the Postmaster-General should see fit, will be required to make good any loss that may be sustained. In cases where registered letters have been lost (in the proportion, it is said, of about one in ninety thousand), or some abstraction of their contents, the Department makes good the loss, if the fault is shown to rest with the Post-Office, and if the sum lost be of moderate amount and the sufferer a person not in affluent circumstances.
FOREIGN AND COLONIAL LETTER-POSTS.
For information of the despatch of foreign and colonial mails; rates of postage; and as to whether prepayment be optional or compulsory; see the "British Postal Guide," published quarterly.
Letters addressed to places abroad may be prepaid in this country either in money or stamps, but such payment must be made either wholly in stamps or wholly in money. The only exception to this rule is when the rate of postage includes a fractional part of a penny, for which, of course, there are no existing English stamps.
With certain exceptions, the only admitted evidence of the prepayment of a foreign letter is the mark agreed upon with the particular foreign country or colony.
When prepayment is optional, any outward letter (e. g. going abroad) posted with an insufficient number of stamps is charged with the deficient postage in addition, unless the letter has to go to Holland, or to the United States, or to a country through France, in which case it is treated as wholly unpaid, the postal conventions with these countries not allowing the recognition of partial prepayment. When, however, prepayment of the whole postage is compulsory, a letter, or aught else posted with an insufficient number of stamps, is sent (by the first post) to the Returned Letter Office.
Letters for Russia and Poland are also treated as wholly unpaid, if the full postage has not been paid in the first instance.