Stamp posted missing will cost owner of rare letter about £10,000

IT TRAVELLED half way around the world by bullock, camel and horse-drawn mail. Now this rare Victorian envelope sent to Scotland from the Far East 150 years ago is expected to fetch up to £10,000 at an auction today in London.

Unfortunately for the owner, it could have been worth twice as much if one of the stamps had not been removed.

London auctioneer Spink has described the envelope posted from Penang to Aberfeldy in 1855 as "a great rarity".

Addressed to a Rev James Kippen on 2 July, 1855, it features, as the auctioneer's catalogue explains, "the earliest recorded example of the red Penang circular datestamp" and is one of only two known examples of this date. Yet the value of the artefact was cut in half when someone removed one of four stamps. With all the Indian two annas stamps intact, the envelope might have been worth between 15,000 and 20,000.

As the letter that was inside is missing, the author is unknown, but many Scots worked in Penang, in what is now Malaysia, as it was the first British trading port in the Far East and Scotland provided many of those who toiled in the engine room of the British Empire.

Many of the assistant managers in the Penang Sugar Estate were Scots and their legacy is still recorded in the fabric of the city, which has a Scotland Park and Leith Lebuh (street).

After it was posted in Penang, the envelope embarked on a tortuous 6,000-mile journey to Aberfeldy, as it was still another 14 years before the Suez Canal would open and speed up transport from India and the Far East.

As a result, the envelope had to travel by ship across the Indian Ocean, then up the Red Sea, then overland - possibly by bullock-drawn cart or by camel - to Alexandria, Egypt, then by ship across the Mediterranean to Southampton and then possibly by horse-drawn mail coach from the south coast of England to Scotland, as Aberfeldy railway station did not open until 3 July, 1865.

The envelope is addressed to what looks like the "Revd James Kippen, Aberfeldy, Perthshire, Scotland". According to the auction house, there was a James Kippen listed in Aberfeldy in the 1861 census. However, he was a shopkeeper, not a minister.

When The Scotsman contacted the Church of Scotland it discovered that there had been a Rev James Kippen in Aberfeldy, but he was not ordained until 1857 and was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland.

A spokesman for the Church of Scotland said: "It could be that the individual writing to him knew of his intentions and addressed the envelope accordingly."

The annals of the Free Church of Scotland 1843-1900, record that a James Kippen was born in Aberfeldy in 1823, studied at the University of Edinburgh New College and married a Catherine Boog in 1863..