Penny Penates

The hand-painted design on the postcard shows an image of post office clerks sitting around a giant ink well.

The front features a hand-drawn colour illustration showing a gathering of caricatured postal clerks with huge pens seated around an enlarged inkwell marked "Official."

[1] On the back is inscribed "Theodore Hook Esq, Fulham"; a Penny Black stamp is affixed to the top right as postage.

[4][5][6] Hook presumably intended the card as a humorous practical joke poking fun at the postal workers who would have processed it.

[7][8][9] In 2001 an expert discovered the postcard in a stamp collection and, putting together the sequence of historical events, realised that it had likely been made and mailed by Hook.

Penny Penates postcard front face painting
Back with Fulham address, and 14 July 1840, postmark