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The Reuse of Letter Wrappers in Georgian England

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In the early nineteenth century, a piece of paper with what looks like a late eighteenth-century Dutch watermark was used by someone as the wrapper for a letter destined for ‘Mr Day at Mr Petty’s, 24 Crown Street, Newington Butts’. The letter, bearing a 3d charge mark, was stamped at the Fleet Street Post Office.

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The wrapper was reused in 1819, when it encased a letter sent to Benjamin Lepard, a wholesale stationer who lived at 6 Punderson Place, Bethnal Green Road. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Lepard was ‘of cultured Huguenot descent’.

Such re-use of robust sheets of paper was very common. Later forms of envelope recycling, from WWI onward, often required labels to be stuck over the initial address. I feature examples of those (and other nineteenth-century wrappers) in my forthcoming book, Rummage.