Waghorn Sidebottom 1

Sidebottom 1 stands at the head of the Waghorn catalogue — the first of the forwarding-agent markings applied by Thomas Fletcher Waghorn's Egyptian transit agency to mail moving between Britain and India. Its earliest recorded strike, in November 1836, places it among the very first cachets used once Waghorn had put his overland service on an organised footing, carrying letters across Egypt from Alexandria through Cairo to Suez, and onward to Bombay, decades before the Suez Canal.

Struck in black and listed as Smith 1 as well as Sidebottom 1, the mark belongs to the pioneering phase of the agency, when the overland route was still a private venture racing to prove it could beat the three-month passage around the Cape of Good Hope. Covers bearing it are among the earliest tangible evidence of that experiment, and every surviving example recorded here adds to what is known of how Waghorn's mail actually moved.