"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الجزء II. ج. ج. لوريمر. ١٩١٥" [‎٢‎٤‎٤‎٧] (١٢٦٢/٩٦٤)

2447
In 1877-79 a number of official letters addressed to officers in the
Foreign Department of the Government of India by the Residents
at Bushehr and Baghdad failed to reach their proper destinations, while
others were greatly delayed in transmission, one from Bushehr being
received in 61 instead of 20 days, and one from Baghdad in 49 instead of
28 days, after despatch. In more than one case duplicates specially
sent to the Foreign Department in place of lost originals also dis
appeared ; and in all 47 Persian Gulf letters and 5 Baghdad letters of
the years 1877 and 1878 were missed. In 1879 there were two fresh
cases of non-receipt. Some of the lost documents were important^
others unimportant. The correspondence of the Resident in the
Persian Gulf with the Government of Bombay, however, continued to
arrive with perfect regularity, and in one instance a registered letter
reported missing was proved by means of the receipt to have reached the
Foreign Department, from which circumstances it may be suspected
that the correspondence in question was not really lost or delayed in the
Post office, but mislaid after receipt (??).
One of the special features of the Gulf postal division is a system
of personal letter bags, which has been arranged by the postal author
ities for the convenience of the British Consuls-General at Bushehr and
Baghdad and of the Consuls at Masqat and Basrah. The system began
on a request, made in 1882 by the Colonel Ross, Political Resident and
Consul-General in the Persian Gulf, for a special bag which could be
removed from the ship at the port most convenient for rapid delivery,
and which should be treated in the same manner as the bags arranged
for Her Majesty^s ships in the Gulf. Colonel Ross's request was
granted, and the bag for the Resident in the Persian Gulf was at first
made up at Bombay. In 1884 the Post Office^ of its own motion,
provided similar bags for the other officers who at present enjoy the
same privilege; and these special mails are now made up both by the
Bomb ay-Karachi sea post office and by the post office at Karachi.
Postal insurance was introduced in India from the 1st of January
1878 and was extended at the same time to the Persian Gulf offices; but
the peculiar conditions under which trade is carried on in the Gulf led
to unforeseen uses (and indeed abuses) of the insurance system, and
ultimately necessitated its withdrawal. The facilities offered for the
despatch of specie insured by post were taken advantage of by
the Jewish and Armenian merchants of Baghdad, and to a lesser ex
tent by those of Basrah, for sending money to Bombay—chiefly to Jewish
firms—in payment for the drafts by means of which the remitters^ debts
to foreign creditors were settled. The total value of the postal insur
ances effected at Baghdad rose from Rs. 27,000 in 1878-79 to over 24
lakhs of rupees in 1882-83. In 1884 the Tigris and Euphrates Steam
Navigation Company protested against this development of postal
operations, on the ground that it not only robbed them of a large
part of their income from the carriage of a specie but also saddled them
with obligations more onerous than had been contemplated in the contract
which they held for the carriage of the British mails. In 1884 the
same question arose in a slightly different form in Bahrain, where the
pearl merchants, immediately upon the institution of a post office there,
Loss of
Foreign
Department
correspond
ence from
the Persian
Gulf and
Baghdad.,
1877-79.
Personal
letter bags,
1882-1907.
Postal in
surance,
1878-1907.