By Oyintari Ben
After being written more than a century ago, a letter has finally reached its intended destination.
The letter, sent in February 1916, surprised the current residents when it arrived at the designated address in south London’s Hamlet Road.
“We discovered the year was ’16. The stamp was a King rather than a Queen, so we concluded that it couldn’t have been 2016 after that. We thus believed it to be 2016,” Finlay Glen told CNN on Thursday.
According to Glen, the letter arrived at the home a few years ago. However, he has recently given it to the local historical organisation so they may further investigate it.
A 1 pence King George V-head stamp is attached to the envelope. More than ten years before the birth of Queen Elizabeth II, the letter was written in the midst of World War I.
Glen, 27, stated, “Once we understood it was so ancient, we thought it was okay to open the letter.”
It is illegal to open mail that is not addressed to you, according to the Postal Services Act of 2000. Glen asserted that he could “only apologise” if he had broken the law.
After realising that it might be of historical importance, he gave the letter to the local quarterly journal, the Norwood Review.
The magazine’s editor, Stephen Oxford, said, “As a local historian, I was amazed and happy to have the facts of the letter handed to me.
According to Oxford, the recipient of the letter was “my lovely Katie,” who was also the spouse of the area’s largest stamp manufacturer, Oswald Marsh.
While on vacation with her family in Bath, in western England, Christabel Mennel, the daughter of tea merchant Henry Tuke Mennel, wrote it. In the letter, Mennel writes: “I’ve been most miserable here with a very heavy cold.”
