See a Mysterious Postcard That Was Delivered 121 Years Late

More than a century ago, someone named Ewart placed a postcard in the mail. On one side, he scrawled a short note addressed to Lydia Davies, who lived at 11 Cradock Street in Swansea, Wales. The other side featured a beautiful print of a stag standing beneath a blanket of stars.

Earlier this month, the card reached its final destination—121 years after it was sent. It arrived at the head office of the Swansea Building Society, a financial institution located at Davies’ former address, where staffers were astonished to find it among the mail.

“The postman came to the door as normal with lots of letters regarding mortgages and savings,” says Henry Darby, the society’s communications manager, in a statement. “As one of the managers was sorting through it, this postcard dropped onto the table—no envelope, no note, just as it was.”

The image on the card is a black-and-white print of The Challenge, a 19th-century painting by English artist Edwin Henry Landseer. The handwritten message from Ewart, who appears to have sent the card from the coastal Welsh town of Fishguard, is barely legible. It discusses an unknown matter that Davies presumably had the context to understand:

Dear L. I could not, it was impossible to get the pair of these. I am so sorry, but I hope you are enjoying yourself at home. I have got now about ten [shillings as] pocket money not counting the train fare, so I’m doing alright. Remember me to Miss Gilbert and John, with love to all from Ewart.

“It looks like something that should be in a museum, definitely. The penmanship is amazing,” Darby tells Susan Bonner of CBC Radio’s “As It Happens.” “It reads very much like it’s from a different time—which it is.”

The mysterious missive is stamped with a postmark that reads “AU23 03,” which Darby thinks is short for August 23, 1903. The stamp also features an image of Edward VII, who served as king of the United Kingdom between 1901 and 1910.

Tracy Coleman, a specialist at the Royal Philatelic Society London, an organization for stamp collectors and historians, tells CBC Radio that the postcard and markings appear to be consistent with 1903, though she can’t provide definitive confirmation.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about it,” she adds. “It is the sort of postcard that anyone can find many examples of at a stamp fair or even in charity shops.”

Of course, most postcards found in charity shops don’t end up back in the mail. But that’s just what Darby thinks may have occurred: Perhaps someone bought the note at an estate sale and wondered what would happen if they dropped it in a mailbox.

Officials with the Royal Mail, the United Kingdom’s postal service, agree with this theory.

“It is likely that this postcard was put back into our system rather than being lost in the post for over a century,” says a spokesperson in the statement. “When an item is in our system, we are under obligation to deliver it to the correct address.”

In 1903, the area around Davies’ house was more residential than it is today. The building society was founded two decades later, in 1923. The neighborhood was bombed during World War II, and many of its structures were rebuilt after the war—including 11 Cradock Street.

Last week, the building society appealed to the public for help. Staffers posted a photo of the card on social media and asked if anyone knew anything about a Lydia Davies who’d lived on Craddock Street in 1903.

Since then, several new leads have emerged. Using census records, Andrew Dully, an archivist in the Swansea area, found that a man named John F. Davies once lived at that address with his wife and six children.

“The oldest of them was Lydia,” Dully tells BBC News’ Aimee Thomas. “She would have been 16 when this postcard was sent.”

Nobody knows if Davies received the postcard in 1903. Regardless, Darby is determined to leave it in good hands, ideally with one of Davies’ relatives or in a local archive, he tells Sky News’ Tomos Evans. He is now in touch with a woman who may be Davies’ grand-niece. In the meantime, he’s keeping the postcard safely tucked away in the top drawer of his desk.

Ellen Wexler | | READ MORE

Ellen Wexler is Smithsonian magazine’s assistant digital editor, humanities.