Waghorn Sidebottom 15

Sidebottom 15 is a late mark, recorded from 1850 and listed in neither Sidebottom nor Smith. That year is significant: Thomas Fletcher Waghorn died in January 1850, in reduced circumstances, his pioneering work on the overland route by then largely overtaken by the official services it had helped inspire.

Struck in black and documented here rather than in the standard catalogues, this marking belongs to the very end of the story. Covers from this period are rare, and an unlisted mark from the year of Waghorn's death is a poignant and unusual survival — one of the small group of late types that this census records to round out the history of the agency's markings.