Founding father of American physiotherapy

1864 cover from LEICESTER to NEW YORK

franked with SG89 1/- deep green wing margin (the scarcer shade and often you see SG90 green get wrongly labelled - but this one is as deep as they get).

Nice clear 5c USA accountancy mark in red. Poor condition on back but fine on front.

The recipient is one Mary Anne Cape c/o Dr George Taylor. She was likely one of his residential patients or employees at his IMPROVED MOVEMENT CURE INSTITUTE.

Doc Taylor wasn’t any old high street quack. He was one of the pioneers of physical and and mechanical therapy in America, and the first to introduce Swedish massage as a treatment form in USA, having spent time studying in Scandinavia. He gained a rep and had patients come to him from near and far.

He also invented and patented a variety of apparatus for use in his therapy programmes such as ‘the Manipulator’ pictured.

SG would have you pay £450 for an SG89 cover to the USA in the same year. Theirs is nicer for sure but not as interesting. This one is scrappy at the back but overall stamp anice example with a lovely crisp duplex.