Information sought on area of use of Registration label for LONDON EC 19.

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earsathome
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Joined: Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:00 pm

Information sought on area of use of Registration label for LONDON EC 19.

Post by earsathome »

ec19label.jpg
ec19label.jpg (6.36 KiB) Viewed 11733 times
ec19pmk.jpg
regcovercyls.jpg
Hello All,

This rather flamboyant, but to me at least, very attractive cover raises questions.

All the rubber hand-stamps clearly read
REGISTERED KING ST. B.O. E.C.2 but the registration label reads E.C. 19.

What area of London is covered by E.C. 19 ?

Despite web searches on Google and Bing I have been unable to find E.C. 19. at all.
A lot of information on postcodes, areas and changes but no mention of this one.
The nearest I have found is EC1P but the label is very clear E.C. 19.


The questions arose when preparing to write up the cover stating that the letter was registered at the....Post Office.

Any information regarding E.C. 19 would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Ron.
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admin
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Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 12:00 am

Re: Information sought on area of use of Registration label for LONDON EC 19.

Post by admin »

Ah, this is a postal history "gotcha". The E.C.19 in this case identifies the post office, not the delivery area.

Basically, when registration labels were introduced in 1907, town sub-offices were identified on the labels by the name of the town (or London district) and a sub-office number (allocated by the local head postmaster according to whatever system seemed best to them). So in this case 19 is simply the sub-office identifier in London E.C. for the King Street office.

Later, in 1917, the existing London districts were further subdivided into numbered areas (IIRC to aid the remaining sorters because a lot of staff had been called up for war service). These postal districts have the same "London <district><number>" form as the registration labels, but the numbers allocated have no connection.

There's another "gotcha" to watch out for with these registration sub-office indicators, btw -- large posters sending a lot of registered letters at a time (such as many companies, government departments, and other organisations) could be supplied with registration labels so that they could do most of the work themselves before taking them to the post office. Each of these posters was allocated a "sub-office" number, which bore no relation to the post office they took the registered letters to. So when you see high numbers, more than the number of post offices in the town or district, they're most likely from one of these large posters.
earsathome
Posts: 217
Joined: Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:00 pm

Re: Information sought on area of use of Registration label for LONDON EC 19.

Post by earsathome »

Many thanks for that swift and informative response.

Very interesting.

The conclusion now is that the only possible end to this is to find the company that had EC 19 as its designated corporate sub post office number. That is quite unlikely unless the company had an illustrated envelope it used and one of them was registered. But that would be gilding the lily!

After six decades or so of collecting I know that there is an amazing amount of material out there waiting to be discovered and coincidences do pop up.

Who knows, there may be just the cover out there somewhere that would really tie it all up.

Thanks again.

Ron
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admin
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Re: Information sought on area of use of Registration label for LONDON EC 19.

Post by admin »

earsathome wrote:The conclusion now is that the only possible end to this is to find the company that had EC 19 as its designated corporate sub post office number. That is quite unlikely unless the company had an illustrated envelope it used and one of them was registered. But that would be gilding the lily!
Ah no, sorry, I wasn't clear enough. EC 19 is the King Street post office, not a company -- there were about 50 post offices in London EC.

Here's an example of a company label -- William Brandt's Sons & Co, a merchant bank, London EC 87. They're unusual because they posted letters with labels with the same indicator in at least three offices.
Attachments
London EC 87 Gracechurch St 1912.jpg
London EC 87 Fenchurch St 1910.jpg
London EC 87 Leadenhall St 1907.jpg
earsathome
Posts: 217
Joined: Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:00 pm

Re: Information sought on area of use of Registration label for LONDON EC 19.

Post by earsathome »

Ah, that's me not understanding it, now all is clear, so many thanks indeed.

Regards
Ron
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