BROKEN SEALS

A Recipe that Changed History- Broken Seals by Sune Christian Pedersen

This article is the beginning of a small serial – a real spy story. Or maybe rather the continuation of one as readers of MuseumsPosten in 2002 may remember the story about post controller Christian Christoffer Erlund (1673-1754) and his incredible faith in the years around the Great Nordic War. Erlund has become the object of a research project which has dug up new details about the foxy doings of the unscrupulous postal official. Here we present a small document about falsified seals.

From the middle of the 17th century the European postal services were transformed into regular spy centrals intercepting and opening all letters of political interest they could get hold of. If the letter writers found out that their letters had been opened, they would no doubt find new ways of communication – or they might even make a political scandal out of the case. Therefore it was important that the confidential postal officials could close the letters again so that no-one would suspect foul play; a difficult piece of work which often took place at night or under pressure of time. The mail had to be delivered and even the shortest delay might arouse suspicion from an alert recipient.

The seal was the decisive factor. Christian Erlund founded his great career in the postal service on his ability to perform the sly trick with letter and seal. His closest servants were also participating in the difficult task. Most of the times they got away with it without anybody noticing anything, and Erlund was consequently able to deliver hundreds of intercepted letters or copies of letters to the king. Nevertheless, rumours circulated that the Copenhagen Post Office was not safe. E.g. in 1717 Erlund could (probably with some contentment) inform the king in one of his reports from intercepted letters; this time a letter from French consul Hansen in Elsinore to a French diplomat in Copenhagen named Poussin: "Then he [Hansen] asks Poussin to carefully observe the letters he receives as Hansen had sensed that all letters from him addressed to Poussin had been broken open here [at Copenhagen Post Office]. And even if Poussin could not feel or see it on the envelopes, he should, however, rest assured that it happened nevertheless, since it was a well-known fact that they were able to do it so well that nobody could see or feel it".

The Secret Technique

How did they do it? Erlund is extremely secretive on this point and reveals nothing about it in his autobiography. Experiments with secret techniques of falsifying seals were made everywhere. Engravers specialized in copying seals so that nobody could see that they had been tampered with. Elsewhere casts of seals were made which could be kept and used for later forgery.

Among Erlund's posthumous papers there is a small document in German, undated and without sender, titled: "Wie ein Siegel nach zu machen" – "how to copy a seal". It is impossible to determine where Erlund got it from. We do not know. However, this peculiar paper throws an unusually clear light on an otherwise obscure practise.

"You Take…"

The document contains three small recipes of chemical substances that can be used for making casts of seals. The first recipe reads: "You let brimstone melt and when liquid, you throw shredded powder of white lead into it. Put this paste on the seal: It must, however, be wrapped, either in paper or in wax with chalk, and then you can take an impression of it. And when it has cooled down again, you have the signet of such a seal".

Another recipe is based on the sediment of a solution of among other things vinegar, vitriol, and ink which is stirred with mercury and pressed onto the seal whereupon it hardens in the open air so that the signet becomes almost as hard as metal. The third recipe is founded on parboiling of metals (among others mercury) which harden when cooled down enabling a cast of the seal. It was indeed an unhealthy business to falsify seals at the Copenhagen Post Office!

It must also have been a slow affair which required access to a well-supplied pharmacy and quite some space, discretely, of course. The latter was available, in particular when the letter post office was fitted up in Erlund’s own house in 1713. On the other hand the method had the advantage that it was suitable for "mass production" once the "paste" had been prepared. And once a cast had been made, it was there for future use. When an old acquaintance as e.g. the Frenchman Poussin wrote, it was relatively simple to remove his seal quickly, copy the letter, and then make a new seal by means of a previous cast.

The capacity of the postal service to open and close letters secretly was very useful to the king. The postal service kept Denmark informed about the diplomatic negotiations of Sweden and other Great Powers on the European scene, and on several occasions they succeeded in capturing foreign spies in Denmark.

The story about Erlund and his servants continues ...

Seals and sealing were already known in antiquity. Seals on orders and contracts made them valid in law and endowed them with the authority of the sovereign. In the Middle Ages private persons (nobility and clergymen) began to use their own seals on their letters and the seals got the additional function of sealing, a symbol of the secrecy of the mails, and a very practical measure in order to see whether a letter had been read by unauthorized persons. Before the envelope was introduced, the seal was used for closing the folded letter.

Abuse and falsification of seals also date back to the Middle Ages. Legal documents could be forged and it was possible to cheat in cases concerning offices or ownership if you had access to a royal stamp. Or you could falsify the seal by scraping it off the document with a heated knife as the seals were made of wax at that time. If you had a document provided with a seal, you could cheat by trying to wipe the document clean and simply write a new one with the genuine seal on.

The falsified stamp required a metal cast or an engraving, but in the Middle Ages cast stamps almost always turned out smaller and blurred, often with tiny blisters in the metal. The falsifications became more difficult when a French merchant in the 1620’s started to sell sticks of sealing lacquer. These often perfumed sticks soon became popular among letter-writing maids of honour. Before long, lacquer sealing became standard and the lacquer was considerably more difficult to deal with than the previous wax. The secret opening and closing of letters soon became a mere science.