London Penny Post

Dockwra was a merchant and a member of the Armourer and Brasiers Livery Company and was appointed a Customs Under-Searcher for the Port of London in 1663.

The London Penny Post mail service was launched with weeks of publicity preceding it on 27 March 1680.

[1][3] Several Penny Post offices were established at various points within London where letters that were collected from drop-boxes about the city were sorted and sent out for delivery.

Dockwra, Murrey and their partners divided London as far as (inclusively) Westminster and Blackwall and Hackney and Lambeth into seven districts with a sorting office for each.

They established a Head Office that was set up in the home of Dockwra himself who was living in a mansion on Lime Street that was formerly owned by Sir Robert Abdy.

[4] Within two years the Penny Post had grown to such proportions that approximately four to five hundred receiving-houses and wall-boxes had been established at various locations about the city of London, however some of the accounts vary.

For example, in Robert Seymour's Survey of London and Westminster, published in 1735, he puts the number of receiving houses at over 600.

Dockwra's Penny Post delivered letters and packets weighing up to one pound and delivery was guaranteed within four hours, each letter being marked with a heart shaped time stamp indicating the time an item was dropped off for delivery.

Four types of triangular postmarks were used to frank mail, (figure 4) but of the few that survive most are in museum archives, and only four are known to be in the hands of private collectors.

Its success took business from the General Post office, so much so that by 1682 a civil action was brought against Dockwra for having a monopoly on the postal services of the state.

There was also concern about the Whig party which was supporting the Penny Post and using it to distribute anti-Catholic and seditious newsletters in an attempt to exclude James II, Duke of York, from the succession to the throne on the grounds that he was Catholic.

Because the demands of the wars were so great, each time more money was needed to finance them the cost of postage was increased dramatically.

figure 1
Newspaper ad for Penny Post announcing service and postal rates and the advantages to trade and commerce which it offered.
Dockwra plaque in Lime Street, London
figure 2
Lime St. Postmark & heart-shaped Time-stamps
figure 3
Postmark used in 1681
figure 4
~ Postmarks used by the London Penny Post ~
In these examples the letters in the centre identified the office the mailed item was sent from. L = Lime Street and W = Westminster. In the original Dockwra triangular postmarks the words PENNY was always positioned on the left side, POST on the right side and PAID at the bottom, top outwards.