page_title: London Penny Post
section_title: Postmarks
hierarchical_section_title: London Penny Post / Postmarks
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of postmark used by London Penny Post in 1681
context_page_description: The London Penny Post was a premier postal system whose function was to deliver mail within London and its immediate suburbs for the modest sum of one penny. The Penny Post was established in 1680 by William Dockwra and his business partner, Robert Murray. Dockwra was a merchant and a member of the Armourer and Brasiers Livery Company and was appointed a Customs Under-Searcher for the Port of London in 1663. Murray would later become clerk in the excise office of the Penny Post. The London Penny Post mail service was launched with weeks of publicity preceding it on 27 March 1680. The new London Penny Post provided the city of London with a much needed intra-city mail delivery system. The new Penny Post was influential in establishing a model system and pattern for the various Provincial English Penny Posts in the years that followed. It was the first postal system to use hand-stamps to postmark the mail to indicate the place and time of the mailing and that its postage had been prepaid. The success of the Penny Post would also threaten the interests of the Duke of York who profited directly from the existing general post office.
context_section_description: When mail was submitted for delivery by the Penny Post the postage rate of one penny was charged and a hand-stamped postmark and time-stamp were applied to the mailed item confirming that its postage had been paid. The triangular postmarks used by Dockwra's Penny Post account for his fame among postal historians.
  Four types of triangular postmarks were used to frank mail, (figure 4) but of the few that survive most are in museum archives, and only four are known to be in the hands of private collectors. The triangle-shaped postmark is considered by some historians and philatelists as the world's first postage stamp. Each Penny Post office had its own initial letter. The Penny Post also employed heart-shaped time stamps, one with the abbreviation  'Mor.'  designating a morning mailing and one with  'Af.'  indicating an afternoon mailing, along with the number of the hour i.e.  a numeral '4' indicating a 4 O'clock mailing. (figure 2) The triangle postmarks used on letters in 1680 differ somewhat from later examples. The 1680 postmarks are larger, with the shortest side to the triangle at the base.
  The postmarks on mailings in 1681 have triangles whose longest side is situated at the base and with the word PAID inscribed upside-down within the triangle. (figure 3) There also exist examples of postmarks where the word paid is spelled as PAYD. The initial letter was located within the triangle; 'L' for the London office, 'W' for Westminster, 'S' for the Saint Paul office, however there is speculation that the 'L' marking may have indicated a mailing from the office in Dockwra's home on Lime St.
caption: figure 3
  Postmark used in 1681
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2002:12:13 13:33:40", "Image ExifOffset": "420", "Image XPComment": "[91, 0, 104, 0, 116, 0, 116, 0, 112, 0, 58, 0, 47, 0, 47, 0, 119, 0, 119, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "568", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4711", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "191", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "144"}