Dead letter mail

Largely based on the British model that emerged in the late eighteenth century, many countries developed similar systems for processing undeliverable mail.

As it is performed by internal departments within postal administrations, little information about the dead letter office function has ever been made public.

A few journal articles and at least one recently published book (Canadian) dealing with this topic have appeared.

[3] Many countries, including Canada and the United States, have issued special labels for envelopes that have travelled through the dead letter office.

Genuinely used examples are highly prized by collectors, although mint labels, because they have no postage value, are often fairly common.

A dead letter office (DLO) is a facility within a postal system where undeliverable mail is processed.

[6] Patti Lyle Collins was a long-time employee of the office, responsible for the redirection of an estimated 1,000 letters a day.

Postal Service; when the rightful owners cannot be identified, the correspondence is destroyed to protect customer privacy, and enclosed items of value are removed.