SNAIL MAIL
Not even the pandemic can explain these stories of long-delayed letters and peripatetic postcards
On 22 September 2020, Zoe Fierro, 44, from Northampton received a letter from her late grandfather 22 years after he posted it. Ronald Smith from Long Buckby, Northamptonshire, who died in 1999, sent the letter by second class post in June 1998 to thank her for the card and vouchers she had given him for his birthday a few weeks earlier, in May. “Seeing his writing again was a genuine joy,” she said. In May 2020, the family of a soldier who died on the retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940 received his last letter 80 years after he wrote it. Times, 26 Sept 2020.
A picture postcard of St Paul’s Cathedral was delivered in Norwich in October, 100 years and three months late. It was addressed to Miss Eva Browne from her cousin Florrie, postmarked Maida Vale, west London, 22 July 1920, and carried a George V red penny stamp. It was addressed to Glebe Road, but with no house number, and was finally delivered last October to No 72, which has been owned by Philip and Rosalie Nicholson for the last 30 years. Mr Nicholson said the house was empty at the time and he didn’t know who had delivered it. D.Mirror, Sun, 15 Oct 2020.
A postcard from Benidorm arrived in Braintree, Essex, 28 years late. Jim Green, 66, received the card he sent in 1991 to his parents, both now deceased. “Had a good flight over. Everything’s OK,” it began. The decorator now lives in the family home. Metro, 24 Oct 2020.
A Hallowe’en card posted in 1920 was delivered 100 years later to a house 50 miles away in Michigan. Sun, 1 Nov 2020.
A card lost in the post for 65 years found its way to its intended recipient shortly before last Christmas. Chris Hermon was sent the card when he was a boy. He finally got it after a charity shop worker tracked him down. The sender was Fred Kendall, a family friend who was a publisher in New Jersey.
The card featured a New York skyscraper and was postmarked Grand Central Station, 13 October 1955. It read: “I will try and find you some Indian curios for your 10th birthday. It’s a big event.” The card never reached Mr Hermon’s family home in Peacehaven, East Sussex, but re-surfaced at a charity shop in Dorchester, Dorset, as part of a stamp collection fundraising appeal by Weldmar Hospicecare. One of the shop volunteers found Mr Hermon, now living in Pershore, Worcestershire, on Facebook and contacted him about the card. 6 Jan 2021.
In July 1943, William Myler Caldwell, 18, known as Bill, wrote a postcard to his uncle Fred in Aigburth, Liverpool, after his first week training with the Navy, saying he was “finally in blue” and “liking it all right”. The card, which showed the figurehead of HMS Raleigh, was posted in Cornwall and took 77 years and seven months to arrive, popping through the letterbox on 12 February 2021. Luckily, a relative still lived in the terraced house. Bill Caldwell gained the rank of able seaman and won four medals. He was on the first boat into Nagasaki after the Americans dropped the atom bombs on Japan. He died of cancer in 1996. His daughter Elizabeth Caldwell, 58, said: “To actually see his handwriting was beautiful.” D.Telegraph, D.Mirror, D.Mail, 15 Feb 2021.