Waghorn Sidebottom 13a

Sidebottom 13a is a late marking, recorded from 1847 and listed in neither Sidebottom nor Smith — a discovery of this census. By the time it was struck, the character of the overland route had changed: through the mid-1840s the East India Company, the government and the P&O steamship company had taken increasing control of the Egyptian transit, and Waghorn's private forwarding business had passed its peak.

Recorded in black, it belongs to the thin tail of late Waghorn markings that survive from the years after the agency's heyday. Covers of this period are markedly scarcer than those of the busy late 1830s, which makes this unlisted mark, documented here from surviving material, a valuable record of the agency's later life.