Postcard hidden inside newspaper
Bray developed a method of obtaining foreign mail sent to him by hiding stamped, self-addressed, postcards inside newspapers which he then mailed to fictitious addresses abroad. When the newspaper was processed by the foreign Dead Letter Office the postcard would be discovered and sent back to Bray.
This card bears all the hallmarks of being subjected to this method, in particular the message on the reverse, in Bray's handwriting, refers to an enquiry about Orange Free State postcards which is basically nonsense.
The story of this card is quite tricky to unravel since despite it being dated 4th June 1900 on the reverse, the earliest postmark was applied on the 28th May followed by a later one on 3rd June both dates preceding the date of the message.
The first postage charge was paid by using two British halfpenny stamps and one Orange Free State 1d. stamp making a total of 2d. These stamps are cancelled by Army Post Office postmarks used during the second Boer War in South Africa. The fourth stamp, a 2d. Orange Free State isssue, is cancelled by a Bloemfontein CDS dated 3rd June 1900. This suggests that the card was in fact posted twice, each time from South Africa to England. If both instances were achieved using Bray's newspaper trick then the postal service would have had to be very efficient for the card to travel from South Africa to England and then back to South Africa in under six days.
Also shown is an extract of an article written by Bray for the 1931 edition of The Post Annual.
