In postal history, a gallows letter was a letter with a "gallows" mark meaning "very quickly".
Gallows letters were official letters or dispatches used by the Privy Council of Elizabeth I of England. To express an extreme degree of urgency of delivery, the letter had on the address panel a rough drawing of a gallows. Sometimes the picture included a hanging body. These drawings could also have repeated written directions as "haste haste", "post haste", "haste for life", "for life haste", etc.[1]
There are also modern forgeries of such letters. This is when counterfeit gallows marks have been applied onto original letters.[2]
