Wilding Mad wrote:
Tell me Winston were stamps affixed to telegrams as proof of payment prior to the GPO taking over from the private sector in the early 1870s, or was this an adopted method used only by the GPO after taking over ?
SK, If you mean Post Office stamps, the answer is no. If however you mean the private company labels/stamps that were issued from the 1850s, I don't know to what extent they were affixed to telegrams.
I have since read that the use of Post Office postage stamps on telegraph forms was prohibited in 1876, so presumably CDSs after then would be postage (letters or parcels) use, I guess until the postage stamps from tobacco duty payments were recirculated.