Postmans Beat
The postmarks shown in the file below relate to what are known as "Postmans Beat" - a system where a specific mark was applied to letters or cards when they were collected from various pillar boxes. In 1901, there were eight pillar boxes in use, which expanded to eleven by 1929. These postmarks are exceptionally scarce, and historical information regarding them remains uncertain. Hopefully, the following article will throw some light on this philatelic mystery.
This is a summary from an article in IOSC IO96 written by Dave Tarry.
In 1985 whilst on holiday in Mauritius I met one of our ex-Mauritian members who contributed a lot to the early postal history of the Island. He had in his possession a cover with an encircled hand-struck 3 and what it meant he said he knew of three different encircled numerals all struck on covers emanating from being posted in a pillar box. He said he had asked an elderly ex-postman who used to deliver the mail in Port Louis who told him that there were
seven delivery walks within the town. After delivering the mail the postmen had to empty any pillar boxes on the way back to the sorting office. Any letters taken from these pillar boxes had to be struck with the postman's identifying handstamp for each postman had been issued with a numbered handstamp. These were purported to be
numbered 1 to 7 of which only three have been recorded these being 3, 4 and 5, the ones' seen by our ex-member.
The encircled numerals of 3, 4 and 5 are the only numbers recorded by myself but have only seen and acquired numeral ' 5 ' struck on an adhesive. These marks are extremely elusive and rare and only recorded between 28 September 1916 and 8 April 1944 and are found struck on both inland and overseas mail. The numbers 5 and 4 are
only recorded on Pillar Box Port Louis Type 3 cds's whereas all the recorded number 3's are struck on covers cancelled by the Pillar Box / General Post Office cds. Only one type of each of the numbers 5 and 4 are known but with numeral 3 I have found four different handstamps used to date. With the exception of the Type 3d h/s all the other encircled numerals are very scarce indeed and I would welcome any information on other covers with the above marks and of course any that have not been seen or recorded before.