Page 394 - Jarvis & Wright: Jamaica Display to RPSL

Jamaica Registration: Certificates of Posting, outside Kingston.

From the beginning of registration, the post office gave a certificate of posting to anyone properly
posting a registered item. The certificates were provided to post offices in books. Each page
comprised a right-hand receipt separated from a left-hand counterfoil by a perforated vertical
ornamental trellis.

Details of the transaction were entered on both the certificate and its counterfoil and signed by the
postmaster or clerk. The certificate was then datestamped and separated from the counterfoil along
the perforations, the certificate was handed to the customer and the counterfoil retained by the post
office. The same registration number, pre-printed on the certificate and the counterfoil, was also the
number entered in the post office’s register and way bill and was written on the outside of the letter.

The form below, like much Jamaican post office stationery, is closely modelled on British forms. A
nearly identical form, used in Britain from 1841 to 1842, may have been a template. This suggests
that this form had been in use in Jamaica for many years. By 1893, though, its use seems to have
been only outside Kingston.

Certificate of posting of a registered letter at Up Park Camp, 1893.

The heading, REGISTERED LETTER, reflects the fact that only letters could be registered at this date.
Pre-printed registration number 16. The perforations at the left show where the counterfoil was attached. The
postmaster entered the date, 10 Dec 93, and the addressees, Messrs C Larbie & Co. The certificate was then
signed by the Postmaster, E Chappell. The certificate, and probably also the counterfoil, were then
datestamped Up Park Camp 10 December 93.