Andrea here, musing today about privacy and our personal correspondences. I think that most of us would prefer that our words are only read by the person or persons for whom they are intended. Thus we’re paying more attention to having passwords and two-step notifications set up to keep “snoopers” away from our e-mails.
But the wish for privacy is nothing new when it comes to personal correspondences. Apparently historical figures like Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, Galileo, Marie Antoinette, and Albrecht Dürer, just to name a few, were equally worried about people snooping through their mail! Recently, I happened to come across a fascinating article in the New York Times about historical “letterlocking” in Western Europe and thought I would share some of what I learned on the subject.
The availability of foldable paper in the West, which happened roughly around the 13th century, allowed the idea of writing a letter to flourish. Paper was easy to transport, allowing one to communicate with others, both near and far. A simple fold or two could, of course, protect the words. But in the course of the letter’s travels, anyone could take a peek if they so desired.
As letters came to be used for important correspondences—government, banking, commerce, church matters— the need for privacy became a big issue. And as the modern envelope, with its adhesive flap, wasn’t invented until the 19th century, earlier letter writers had to be creative!
Beginning in the fifteenth century, people began to devise an intricate system of "foldable" security. Methods included creating a dangling strip of paper from the letter, and then using it to thread through slits in the rest of the paper to tie the folds of the letter together. The lock would have to be “cut” in order to read it, and thus someone would know whether the content had been compromised. Sealing wax and silk threads were also sometimes used to add to the complexity of the “locking.”
According to the New York Times article, this method was used by Mary, Queen of Scots to send her last communication before being beheaded. Other notables who used elaborate “letterlocking”—the most common form was the spiral lock—included Catherine de Medici, King Charles IX and Queen Elizabeth I.
It was Jana Dambrogio, a conservator at the M.I. T. Libraries, who came up with the term “letterlocking.” While on a Fellowship at the Vatican archives, where she was working on accounting and legal records, she became fascinated by the folds, slits, dangling strips and evidence of wax that she was finding on the documents. Curious, she began to delve deeper into what was going on.
Through further work projects, she began to realize that security measures were used a lot, and began documenting the different styles used. In the New York Times article, she mentions that letter writers had to be very confident to employ the spiral lock, because one mistake would require re-writing the whole document—a task that could take hours.
Other styles that she has identified include the basic tuck-and-fold, the dagger trap, which involves an ingenious booby trap for those looking to spy on the contents, and the triangle lock, which was popular with Elizabeth I and her spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham.
Dambrogio also noted that the practice of letterlocking appeared to spread through European courts through royalty—the sovereigns would write to each other and use highly sophisticated “lock” to keep their messages safe, and courtiers began to use the techniques as well.
She and her colleagues find it demands painstaking attention to detail to figure out some of the locking techniques. Letters that have been flattened for centuries may have lost their folds, but patterns of dirt paper discoloration can help indicate where the folds were. They also experiment with historical formulas for sealing wax to figure out how the seals would crack.
I found the whole idea of letterlocking fascinating. And for those of you who do too, I have a fun link to share. If you want to try making your own locked letters, you can go here!
So what about you? Do you use a lot of the new security options to keep your letters and data safe? Also, would you have the patience to letterlock your written letters?
