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Post Office and Telegraph Act 1897
(60 & 61 Vict c.41, 6th August 1897)

An Act to make provision with respect to the Delivery of Telegrams, Guarantees by Parish Councils in Scotland, and the Pensions of certain Persons employed in the Telegraph Service.
[6th August 1897]

Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

1.—(1.) As from the twenty-second day of June, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, the following provisions as to the delivery of telegrams shall be substituted for provisoes (2), (3), and (4) of section two of the Telegraph Act, 1885 (which provisoes are hereby repealed).

(2.) The sums charged for the transmission of written telegrams shall cover the cost of delivery by special messenger within such limits (herein-after referred to as the limits of free delivery) as the Postmaster-General, with the consent of the Treasury, may fix.

(3.) When the addressee does not reside within the limits of free delivery, and the sender does not direct that the telegram be delivered by post, the charge to the sender for the delivery of the telegram by special messenger shall not exceed such sum as the Postmaster-General, with the consent of the Treasury, may fix; and unless the sender prepays the charge the Postmaster-General shall not be bound to deliver the telegram by special messenger.

(4.) When the addressee does not reside within the limits of free delivery, and the sender directs that the telegram be delivered by post, the telegram shall be delivered free of extra charge by the ordinary postal delivery next following on the arrival of the telegram at the terminal telegraphic office.

2. In the application of the Post Office Amendment Act, 1895, to Scotland, the following provisions shall have effect:—

  1. A reference to the Post Office Act, 1891, as amended by the Post Office Act, 1892 , shall be substituted for the reference to the Post Office Act, 1891; and
  2. Any expenses incurred under the Act by a parish council in Scotland shall be defrayed as expenses incurred for the purposes of Part IV. of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1894 .

3. Any officer or clerk formerly in the service of the Submarine Telegraph Company Limited, or of the Société Carmichael et Cie., who on the first day of April, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine, entered the permanent civil service of the State in an established capacity, shall, for the purposes of the Superannuation Acts, 1834 to 1892, be entitled to count his past years of continuous service with the company since the twenty-eighth day of January, one thousand eight hundred and seventy, as years passed in that civil service.

4. This Act may be cited as the Post Office and Telegraph Act, 1897, and may be cited with the Post Office Acts, 1837 to 1895, and, so far as it relates to telegraphs, with the Telegraph Acts, 1863 to 1892.