Mixed frankings on pre-war Malta mail

Abstract

The 19th century witnessed an irreversible shift to pre-payment of postage by the sender, as opposed to the previous system which favoured the total or partial taxing of the mailing costs to the receiver of the mail. Pre-payment provoked a certain uniformity in the appearance of postal items; the adhesives almost invariably belong to the postal administration of the country in which the postal object was first inserted in the mail stream. Letters originating from Malta are franked by Maltese stamps, those originating in Mexico, by Mexican ones. This is the rule; like most rules it suffers from some exceptions. Postal objects which carry the stamps of two (or more) postal administrations are occasionally, if rarely, met with. These are known as "mixed frankings", though sometimes one finds them referred to as "composite", "combined", "combination" or "compound" frankings. I here adopt the more generally accepted "mixed frankings" description. [excerpt]