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Snail Mail: Welsh Postcard Sent in 1903 Arrives 121 Years Later

Was it lost all this time—or did it get sent twice?

Ellen Gutoskey|
What British mail was like around the time Ewart's postcard was mailed.
What British mail was like around the time Ewart's postcard was mailed. | duncan1890/GettyImages

Did young Lydia ever learn that Ewart was doing alright with his 10 shillings of pocket money? That’s what internet sleuths are currently trying to find out after a postcard arrived at its destination a full 121 years late.

As The Guardian reports, the note appeared in the mail on August 16 at the offices of Swansea Building Society in Swansea, Wales. It’s addressed to Miss Lydia Davies at 11 Cradock Street and dated August 1903, long before that stretch of homes was bombed during World War II. The postcard bears a stamp of King Edward VII, who ruled the UK between 1901 and 1910, and the front is print of Sir Edwin Henry Landseer’s 19th-century painting The Challenge, depicting a stag in a snowy landscape. 

“Dear L.,” the postcard reads. “I could not, it was impossible to get the pair of these, I am so sorry, but I hope you are enjoying yourself at home. I have got now about 10 as pocket money not counting the train fare so I’m doing alright. Remember me to Miss Gilbert + John with love to all from Ewart.”

According to Swansea’s West Glamorgan Archives, Lydia was the oldest of John and Maria Davies’s six children; she was 16 years old in August 1903. Ewart’s identity hasn’t been confirmed, though people have put forth their theories on the Swansea Building Society’s Facebook page. One commenter suggested that the sender was William Ewart Morris, a solicitor’s clerk who lived about a tenth of a mile from Lydia’s house. Another found a census reference to a Ewart Davies who would’ve been about 13 years old in 1903. Written in pencil along the top edge of the postcard is “Fishguard PEM,” referring to Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, and Ewart Davies lived in Pembrokeshire (though not in Fishguard). Lydia’s father, coincidentally, was born in Fishguard—so it’s possible that Lydia and Ewart were related.

Other key elements of the mystery remain unsolved. What, for example, did Ewart fail to procure a pair of? Swansea Building Society communications manager Henry Darby shared his best guess with CBC: shoes. And did Lydia ever actually receive Ewart’s message? For what it’s worth, the Royal Mail doesn’t think the postcard languished in some corner of a processing center for the past 121 years. “It is likely that this postcard was put back into our system rather than being lost in the post for over a century,” a spokesperson told the BBC. Assuming the postcard reached Lydia back in 1903, then, who slipped it back in the mail in 2024—and where did they find it in the first place?

If you have any tips, feel free to share them on the Swansea Building Society’s Facebook post.

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