Top portion of a "Letter from Heaven," produced in England. Date uncertain. Text is nearly identical to one printed around 1795.

CHAIN  LETTER  EVOLUTION

Abstract: Apocryphal letters claiming divine origin circulated for centuries in Europe. Around 1900 shorter and more secular letters appeared that demanded the reader distribute copies. Billions of these "luck chain letters" have circulated since then. During thousands of generations they have accumulated remarkable methods of getting themselves copied. For example, complementary testimonials developed, one exploiting perceived bad luck, another exploiting perceived good luck. Using a sample of over 600 dated letters, predominant types are identified and analyzed for their replicative advantage. Key events in chain letter history are examined in detail, including the puzzling origin of money chain letters. A reconstruction of uncollected intermediate forms suggests that around 1932 a luck chain letter actually brought unexpected money in the mail to some who lived in small towns. In 1935 the first money chain letter appeared, the infamous "Send-a-Dime," which was copied over a billion times worldwide within a few months. Newly discovered sources are used to argue that the unknown author of Send-a-Dime was a Denver woman motivated by charity.

The collection of letters is presented on-line in HTML format in the Paper Chain Letter Archive. An Annotated Bibliography on Chain Letters and Pyramid Schemes contains over 350 entries. A Glossary facilitates the independent reading of sections.

CONTENTS

2. Luck Chain Letters
    2.1  Predecessors
    2.2  The Mainline
    2.3  Outliers

3. How Chain Letters Work
    3.1  Population Dynamics
    3.2  Distribution Networks
    3.3  Evolution
    3.4  Retention
    3.5  Compliance
    3.6  Mainline Testimonials
    3.7  Effective Copying
    3.8  Effective Distribution

4. Events in Chain Letter History
    4.1  Origin of Money Chain Letters (1922 - 1935).
    4.2  Divergence of Luck and Money Chains (1935 - 1939).
    4.3  Luck Follows Money (1952).
    4.4  Origin of Copy Quota Twenty-Four (1959 - 1973).
    4.5  The Media Chain Letter (1948 - 1995)
    4.6  The "It Works" Blitz  (1979 - 1982).
    4.7  The Mainline Since 1982.

TABLES

1. Contents of the Paper Chain Letter Archive.
2. Mainline types.
3. Feature linkage: terminology and consequences.
4. Good Luck to Send-a-Dime.
5. Selected Luck Chain Specifications.
6. Occurrences of D, L, LD, and DL postscripts.
7. Occurrences of Trust, Belief, Kiss, Wife's Money, Love and Car.
8. Collapse of the Paper Luck Genre.

Acknowledgments

I could not have conducted this study without the assistance and friendship of Dr. Michael J. Preston, University of Colorado English Professor and folklorist. He obtained scores of letters, gave me copies of his files and put me up in his home while I worked in the CU Boulder library. The help of Dr. William F. Hansen, folklorist and Head of the Department of Classical Studies at Indiana University was also indispensable. He provided many useful chain letters and translations, and his interest and encouragement have been sustaining.

Special thanks also go to Alan E. Mays, who sent many chain letters, his bibliography on chain letters and the Himmelsbrief, and archived chain email. Paul Smith also provided scores of letters and an extensive bibliography. Anna Guigne sent a stack of chain letters and answered questions. Steve Glickman helped with microfilmed Denver Post articles at UC Boulder. Carol Petty copied local newspaper articles in Springfield, Missouri, where chain letters rampaged for a few days in 1935. John Burkhardt shared his thoughts early in the project and emailed digitized letters. James H. Patterson has provided photocopies of many rare chain letters from his collection of "unmailable" items. Sandy Hobbs recently sent photocopies of every chain letter that has appeared in the publications Dear Mr. Thoms and Letters to Ambrose Merton.

I have received much needed help with foreign language chain letters. Sarah Winter translated several chain letters and an entire article from French into English. Ianina Tishchenko found several Russian chain letters and articles, and translated published letters in Polish and Russian to English. Dr. Jean-Bruno Renard has sent chain letters from France and Brazil, and a bibliography of French publications. Natalia Kasprzak sent two Polish articles on chain letters and translated a Polish letter into English. Bill Clark translated some chain letter Tagalog. Recently Martinovich Vladimir Aleksandrovich has been sending Russian chain letters he collected, and has translated a Russian version of the Romance Game chain into English. 

Though I am solely responsible for the approach and presentation here, this effort was sustained because a few people expressed interest. I am especially thankful for the encouragement of Richard Dawkins, who suggested I write "a book on chain letters, with all your detailed examples and analyses." This is not a book, but likely it is enough detail for most readers.

A list of those who provided one or more paper chain letters appears on the information page for the archive.

1.1 Introduction.
Seeking paper chain letters.  Overview.  Files and Conventions.

Seeking paper chain letters.
If you have any information on where we may obtain more paper chain letters please email. Chain letters can be sent directly to D. VanArsdale, PO Box 2335, Lompoc, CA  93438. Include the date you received the chain letter and its method of delivery, as by enclosing the postmarked envelope if the letter came in the mail. Letters nearly identical to one already collected are very useful. Foreign examples, clippings, obscure or foreign references, beliefs and rumors about chain letters, stories of receiving unexpected money in the mail or other personal experiences with chain letters are also welcome. Your comments and suggestions for this article are appreciated.

Overview.
Texts that appeal to superstition to encourage their copying or publication have circulated for over a thousand years. Beginning around 1900, copy quotas and deadlines were added, and claims of divine authorship and magical protection were removed. The resulting "luck chain letters" still circulate, and in over four thousand generations of copying (with variation) they have accumulated ways to increase replication that challenge our understanding.

Using a collection of over 600 dated paper chain letters, we have identified types and variations that appear and disappear over the years. Unexpectedly, it was discovered that, repeatedly, a single letter bearing some new innovation will propagate so abundantly and rapidly that within just a few years its descendants replace all similarly motivated letters in our collection.

Subtle methods that increase replication include:

• The use of ambiguity and obfuscation to deal with such questions as:
• Does simply passing on the received letter avoid bad luck?
• Does distribution of copies after the deadline bring good luck?
• Is the letter from a Catholic or Protestant source?
• The transfer of key text from a foreign letter to an indigenous letter, cueing an ethnic minority to misidentify the indigenous letter as the "same letter" that circulated in their home country.
• The assemblage of complementary testimonials, such as
• One that exploits perceived bad luck by one who is holding the letter, another that exploits perceived good luck.
• One that motivates an office supervisor to comply, another that motivates a subordinate to comply.

Files and Conventions.
Here are the directories (folders) and files in directory /chain-letter/, all pertaining to paper chain letters.

evolution.html  ("Chain Letter Evolution" - this file)
bibliography.htm  (Annotated Bibliography on chain letters and pyramid schemes)
glossary.htm  (Definitions of terms used for paper chain letters)
/archive/  (Filenames in the Directory containing The Paper Chain Letter Archive - system generated)
/archive/!information.htm  (Information on The Paper Chain Letter Archive)
/archive/!search.htm  (Search through the /chain-letter/ directory. Provided by FreeFind.)
/e-archive/  (Filenames in the Directory containing the Chain Email Archive - system generated)

When chain letter text is given in-line it may be slightly edited. Complete texts are indented and may be reformatted. Hypothetical letters and events are given in red. In a sequence of in-line letters, changes over the prior letter are in italics. Italics are also used for text within a paragraph.

The following conventions help the reader decide whether to pursue a link.-

• Links to a chain letter that are not a functional part of a sentence are in square brackets. Example: "There are other examples [1959]."
• Links that are a functional part of a sentence are not enclosed. Examples "See 1959." "According to Budge . . ."
• Navigational links ahead in this documents begin with a ">". Example: (> Media Chain Letter).
• Navigational links back in this document begin with a "<". Example: (< Start of this section)
• Links to the bibliography are in parentheses, often using the author's name. Examples: (Budge), (NYT, 1935-20).
• Links to the glossary are by the defined word used in a sentence. Example: The Martin letter was self-terminating.
• Links to remote WWW pages are in curly braces. Example: {USPS}.

1.2 Motivational Categories
Piety.  Luck. Charity. Petition. Money. Exchange. Parody. "World Record." Chain Email.

A chain letter explicitly directs the recipient to make and distribute copies of itself. Examples reveal that the form and content of a chain letter are highly correlated with the principal motive for its replication. For paper chains the following seven motivational categories apply to almost all the examples one encounters.

Piety.
The Letters from Heaven  claim to have been written by God or some divine agent. They often command Sabbath observance and promise the bearer magical protection from various misfortunes. They have circulated  in Europe and elsewhere for centuries and were reprinted during World War II. The Letters from Heaven do not quite fit our definition of a chain letter since most do not ask that copies be made. However many ask the bearer to "publish" the letter, and threatened those who disbelieved. We discuss them later (> Heaven) as predecessors to luck chain letters. The filenames for the Letters from Heaven begin with the letter "h" in the Paper Chain Letter Archive.

Luck.
Luck chain letters appeal primarily to superstition, promising good luck if the letter is replicated and bad luck if it is not. They are often called "prayer" chains because many prior types started with a prayer or Bible verse. They may have developed from a requirement to distribute a prayer in a Roman Catholic Novena devotion [1898], or as a secularization of promises and threats in the Letters from Heaven. The English language paper luck chain letters of the twentieth century will be our principal topic. Most examples in the last few decades are highly traditional, having gradually accumulated varied devices to promote propagation. Luck chains have also been common on the Internet. Though originally these were simply digitizations of paper letters, they subsequently specialized to the email medium [e1995]. Filenames for paper luck chain letters begin with the letter "l" in the archive.

Charity.
A charity chain letter requests money or some item be sent to a fixed address, ostensibly for charitable, political or memorial purposes. An 1888 letter solicits dimes for the education of "the poor whites in the region of the Cumberlands." This letter states it is an adaption of a previous solicitation, and asks that four copies be sent to friends. For compliance ". . . you will receive the blessing of Him who was ready to die for us" [1888]. This is the earliest known chain letter. In an 1889 example an American college student solicited dimes and ten copies [Martin]. This letter claimed to be self-terminating: recipients were asked to increment a generation count at the top of the letter until it reached some preset maximum at which time the chain was to stop. This practice continued at least through 1916 [Billy]. But a few years after a letter was launched, only those circulated which had inflated the maximum (NYT 1917). We have two examples of a solicitation for used postage stamps to build a children's ward in Australia (OED). The first is from [1900] and is number 173 of 180 maximum. The second, highly modified, was still in circulation ten years later [1910] and is number 375 of 480 maximum. Many charity chain letters exaggerate the loss if there is a single failure to comply [1895]. Apart from intimidating recipients to comply, this may have been influenced by certain mail frauds of the time (Thomas 1900). Recent charity chains are "endless" and some do not ask for money. The Craig Shergold appeal requested get well cards for a dying child (since recovered), intending to break a Guinness world record that existed at the time. It was launched in September 1989 by FAX, email and chain letters. By December 1990 a record 33,000,000 cards had been received (Guigne). Despite efforts to stop the appeal, hundreds of millions have now been sent. Charity chain letters were an influence on early luck chain letters and, 40 years later, enabled the beginning of money chain letters. They are common on the Internet but most are hoaxes {Jessica Mydek}. We include in this category a single example of a request for prayers for missionaries [1905], this in form being very similar to the charity letters of the time. Archive filenames for charity letters begin with "c".

Petition.
In their modern form, chain petitions request their own reproduction, circulation and delivery of signatures. Earlier examples did less. A 1903 letter asks that recipients send their name and address to the "U.S. Moral Society" to be added to a petition to Congress to prohibit the sale of cigarettes to minors [1903]. Subsequently the initial communication is itself a petition, as in an attempt to draft Calvin Coolidge as the Republican nominee for President [1927]. The use of chain letters in political campaigns goes back at least to 1912 (NYT, 1927). Other chain petition causes include Czech independence [1949], nuclear disarmament [1985], protests of apartheid [1988], and a misinformed boycott of Proctor & Gamble [1986]. Chain petitions also appear on the Internet, including a perennial appeal to support National Public Radio [e1996]. Paper chain petitions have filenames beginning with "p" in the archive.

Money.
Money chain letters urge the recipient to send money to one or more prior senders, claiming that one can likewise benefit in the future. A managed list of names and addresses is provided. Money chain letters originated in the United States in the spring of 1935 with the "Send-a-Dime" letter, also called "Prosperity Club" [Denver]. We show how a prior luck chain letter [1933] was used as a model for Send-a-Dime (> Origin $). Money chain letters have influenced the content and distribution of luck chain letters up into the 1950's and possibly beyond (sections 4.2 and 4.3). They continue as an omnipresent nuisance to this day, both in paper [2002] and as E-mail [2001]. Money chains and pyramid schemes violate Federal {USPS} and State (West's CA) laws. If filenames in the Paper are ordered by name, money chain letter filenames will appear in a block, all beginning with an "m."

Exchange.
The exchange chain letters ask that an item small value, such as a recipe or postcard, be sent to one or more prior senders, promising that if the chain is not broken the sender will in turn receive many such items. They first appeared in 1935, modeling the infamous Send-a-Dime money chain letter [1936]. Within several years they had diverged in form, usually reducing the list of senders [1937]. Unlike luck chain letter types, the copy quota on exchange chain letters varies considerably, as does the number of names present. Exchange chains continue to circulate in paper [1996], but only one example in email form has been collected (a used paperback book exchange). Filenames for exchange chain letters begin with an "x" in the archive.

"World Record."
In the 1980's a certain postcard exchange chain letter specialized to circulate among children and falsely claimed that its faithful continuation would soon result in a Guinness world record for chain letters [1985]. By the new millennium the request for postcards had been deleted and the letter is now motivated solely by its promise of a world record (crediting each sender!) and the threat that anyone who breaks the chain will spoil this effort and be identified [2000]. Judging from ISP hit reports on my chain letter files, this chain is still circulating in considerable volume [2005]. Though extremely objectionable for its threatening exploitation of children, this chain bears curious features such as lists of names on the back of the envelope, stampless mail delivery and year of origin claims that sporadically progress. Most of its successful innovations are likely accidental or unintended. If you have received a copy of this letter, I will send you a self-addressed stamped envelope for it plus the postmarked envelope it came in. Just email me your postal address (email). Such examples will assist preparation of a WWW page that informs recipients and their parents about the letter's false promises and  meaningless intimidation. As for all chain letters here, children's names will be obscured in online versions. Filenames for the "world record" chain letters begin with a "w" in the archive. 

Parody.
Very soon after the first publicity (April 19, 1935) of the Send-a-Dime craze, parodies appeared that mocked both the language and the geometrical progression of Send-a-Dime. Examples mentioned in the press include "Send-a-Pint" and the "Drop Dead Club" (shoot the first person on the list). We have obtained complete texts of three early parodies [1935]. The next known examples are the familiar "wife exchange" [1953] and "Fertilizer Club: "go to the top address on the list and crap on the front lawn" [1971]. Perhaps these had circulated, uncollected, since 1935. Parodies are often published, but still circulate in different versions like photocopied office humor. There is no serious request for copies, thus technically they are not chain letters. Parodies have probably served to educate the public on the fallacies of money chain letters, and have influenced the content of luck chain letters. They are very common on the Internet [St. Paul]. Paper parodies of chain letters appear in the archive with filenames beginning with "j" (for joke).

Chain E-mail.
For "chain e-mail" (frequently forwarded e-mail) there are a large and growing number of motives for replication. Hoaxes, humor and expressions of friendship are prominent. The following is an alphabetic list of some of the many topics observed since 1993:  admonitions (duty to friends, sobriety, safe sex), anti chain letters, aphorisms, ASCII art and scrollers, communication experiments and demonstrations, consumer warnings, friendship, hoaxes (virus warnings, charity, giveaways, false quotations), human rights alerts, humor (single jokes and lists, office humor items, stories), inspiration, Internet protection (modem tax, phone charges, anti-censorship), good luck (often in sex or romance), missing children, money chains, number guessing tricks, parodies, patriotism, personality tests, petitions, poems, political commentary, practical jokes (especially April Fools Day), prayer requests, protests, rumors, school & exams, seasonal (Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving Day), speeches, surveys, tag (snowball fight, mooning), urban legends (warnings, humor), Web page suggestions and voting recommendations. Many of these topics appear in combination, such as a humor item with a short luck chain attached.

Though some e-mail chains begin as digitizations of paper chain letters [e1994] or office humor items [e1995], their subsequent  history in the electronic medium, and the chain e-mail genre as a whole, differ significantly from paper chain letters. The main reasons for this are that email is usually reproduced exactly, and can be distributed in great numbers with little effort or cost. Another difference is that e-mail chains are often posted on various lists and group venues, and likewise if there are any denunciations and refutations these may also receive the same exposure. In comparing e-mail to paper letters, let us disregard the many "fun and friendship" type emails which have no counterpart in paper chain letters, and focus on superstition and deception. We then find that for chain e-mail: (1) few minor variations are present and virtually no accidental variations, (2) initial propagation is accelerated but items have a shorter life span, (3) readers replicate messages for a greater variety of motives, (4) motives for innovation are dominated by hoax and vandalism, (5) probably no innovations are introduced by believers, (6) the e-mail genre through time progresses by large jumps rather than modifications within an identifiable lineage. Though there are some "traditional" themes in chain e-mail, such as virus warnings, there is very little traditional text. Nor is there a future for tradition in e-mail replicators. Increasingly, incorporation of traditional text in a chain e-mail innovation facilitates its automated detection and deletion.

Most genres of chain email are reviled by veteran Internet users for their dishonesty and "waste of band width." On the last point, by reading denunciations one would judge that chain letters are far more despised than pornography. But a typical chain email, including some forwarding statements, uses about 2 kilobytes, whereas a typical color picture uses about 50 kilobytes.

<  Start of above section       < Start of Chain Letter Evolution - Contents

1.3  SOURCES
The collection of letters .  Table 1 - Contents of the Paper Chain Letter Archive.  Foreign language letters.
Publications. Web Sites.  Interviews.

The Collection of letters.
I began collecting chain letters in 1973 with the hope they would reveal an evolutionary sequence. This effort was renewed several years later after discovering the folklore literature, particularly Michael Preston's 1976 article "Chain Letters" (Preston). This documented chain letters in a state of flux. Subsequently I placed ads for chain letters in collectibles magazines. Collecting large numbers of more recent letters began in June 1995 when Dr. Preston solicited chain letters for me from folklorists. In recent years I have also purchased old chain letters on Ebay, the immense on-line auction. Sometimes copies were provided free by the seller or buyer, or a transcript could be made from auction photographs.

All of the datable letters (except for some foreign examples and recent money chain letters) have now been digitized in HTML format and each is accessible on-line as a separate file in the Paper Chain Letter Archive. The archive directory also contains an information page. The entire /chain-letter/ directory can be searched, including the text of all the letters in the archive, using a site search engine provided by FreeFind. Transcriptions in the archive preserve the errors in the original letter unless otherwise noted. The medium of the letter, its date of circulation, how it was delivered, the provider and other information is documented after the text.

Table 1  - Contents of the Paper Chain Letter Archive.
Chain letters presently in the Paper Chain Letter Archive are tabulated below by year of circulation and motivational category. The Letters from Heaven (13 in number) and  foreign chain letters (25), though present in the archive, are excluded from the table.
 

Years	Luck	Charity	Petition	Money	Parody	Exchange	World Record
1885 - 89		3
1890 - 94		1
1895 - 99	1	4
1900 - 04	1	3	1
1905 - 09	6	4
1910 - 14	21	1
1915 - 19	12	7	1
1920 - 24	10	1
1925 - 29	7		1
1930 - 34	3
1935 - 39	3	1		40	6	14
1940 - 44	3	1		8		20
1945 - 49	4		1			6
1950 - 54	5	1			6	3
1955 - 59	4				4	2
1960 - 64	1	1			2	1
1965 - 69	5				1	2
1970 - 74	11				1	3
1975 - 79	27			6 (a)	2	6
1980 - 84	35			3	2	4
1985 - 89	36	1 (b)	11	2	6	7
1990 - 94	51	1	1	3	1	4
1995 - 99	50	1		3		16
2000 - 04	6			1			5
2005 -	1			1		1	7
TOTALS	303	32 (b)	16	67 (a)	31	89	12
	Luck	Charity	Petition	Money	Parody	Exchange	World  Record

(a) Over 150 money chain letters have been collected since 1975 but most have not been digitized..
(b) The Craig Shergold appeal circulated widely beginning in 1989 (Guigne). Only two are archived.

The numbers in the table are not reliable measures of relative circulation. An exception are the numerous money chain letters from 1935-1939, all from the 1935 "Send-a-Dime" craze. However the gap afterwards in this column means in part that I did not start saving money chain letters until after 1975. These can be collected by the bushel by answering sucker ads and thus getting on "opportunity seekers" mailing lists.

Foreign Language Letters.
Because of the ease with which letters are transmitted internationally, chain letters are, and have always been, an international phenomenon. Only by the extensive collection and classification of foreign language examples can an accurate genealogy of chain letters be constructed. It is also revealing to see how chain letters vary from one culture to another. There are some foreign language examples presently in the archive, but it is hoped that at some time in the future many more will be collected and subsequently translated into English. To highlight this nascent effort, subdirectories have been established in the archive for chain letters in some other languages.

In 2006 I was contacted by Martinovich Vladimir Aleksandrovich, head of the Center of  New Religious Movements Studies in Belarus. He has collected many chain letters in the Russian and Ukrainian languages. Transcriptions of these are currently being entered in the Paper Chain Letter Archive in the subdirectory /archive/russian/. 

Publications.
Of the over 600 letters in the Paper Chain Letter Archive, over 80 were found in publications, mostly from folklore sources and newspapers. The New York Times Index located a few older texts [1916] and a mention of a McKinley Memorial chain before it was collected (NYT 1906). Some French (Le Quellec) and Polish (Robotycki) publications contain many chain letters that have yet to be entered into the archive or translated. The Annotated Bibliography currently contains over 350 entries, many of them newspaper articles on money chain letters or pyramid schemes.

Web Sites.
There are many thousands of WWW sites that match a search on "chain letter." The vast majority of these are about email chains, which are not our topic here. A useful list of annotated links appears in Watrous, and we will not duplicate this. To find the texts of luck chain letters, paper or early email versions, one can search for traditional text such as "Dolan Fairchild" or "Dalan Fairchild." A few transcriptions of paper luck chain letters found this way have been entered into the Paper Chain Letter Archive [1998]. Others are present on the WWW, but it is difficult to judge if they are complete and unedited. An entertaining survey of chain letters appears in "Meditations on the Chain Letter" by John Burkhardt (link not available, 1/7/07). Included is a typical paper luck chain letter in which many variant readings have been added in parentheses. An article by Charles Bennett, Ming Li and Bin Ma, titled "Chain Letters & Evolutionary Histories" appears in the June 2003 issue of  Scientific American (Bennett). This uses phylogenetic inference algorithms to construct a cladogram for 33 DL type chain letters. The 33 chain letters used, and 8 additional foreign and outlier types, are available online {chain.html}.

Interviews.
I have obtained some information about chain letters and people's attitudes toward them by informal questioning of acquaintances. Several inquiries about foreign circulation have been made on USENET newsgroups. Much more could have been learned by systematic interviewing. However, people who send out chain letters, for luck or money, are often reluctant to reveal their activities and motives. Nevertheless, some interview material in newspapers and popular magazines has been very useful for understanding replication (Marilyn Bender, New York Times, 1968).

<  Start of above section       < Start of Chain Letter Evolution - Contents

2.1  PREDECESSORS
Ancient documents that advocate their own perpetuation.  The Letters from Heaven.  Transitions to chain letters.

Ancient documents that advocate their own perpetuation.
Many ancient texts survive which provide diagrams, incantations or prayers that claim to benefit those who learn them. Some come close to our definition of a chain letter by urging that a personal copy be made. The Ancient Egyptian "Book of that which is in the Underworld" states (of a picture it provides):

The man who shall make a picture of the things which are to the north of the hidden house of the Tuat shall find it of great benefit to him both in heaven and on earth; and he who knows it shall be among the spirits near Ra, and he who recites the words of Isis and Ser shall repulse Apep in Amentet, and he shall have a place on the boat of Ra both in heaven and upon earth. The man who knows not this picture shall never be able to repulse the serpent Neha-hra. (Budge)

The world's oldest extant examples of printing are dharani, or magical incantations, printed in Japan between 764 and 770, during the reign of Empress Shotoku. A total of over one million copies of four different dharani from the Great Dharani Sutra of the Spotless and Pure Light . . . were printed to be placed in . . . [one million pagodas] built at the command of Shotoku. In this sutra it is stated that if a person were to build several million small pagodas and place copies of dharani in them, that person's life would be lengthened, evil karma would be expunged, and rebels and enemies would be vanquished.  (Mizuno, p. 172)

Another Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra, is the oldest (868 AD) extant book printed by wood block reliefs. It promised great merit to those who "observe and study this Scripture, explain it to others and circulate it widely . . ." (Goddard, p. 96)

The Surangama Sutra states:

"Ananda, should any sentient beings in any of the kingdoms of existence, copy down this Dharani on birch-bark or palm-leaves or paper made of papyrus or of white felt, and keep it safely in some scented wrapping, this man no matter how faint-hearted or unable to remember the words for reciting it, but who copies it in his room and keeps it by him, this man in all his life will remain unharmed by any poison of the Maras." (Goddard, p. 275)

The Letters from Heaven.
The "Letters from Heaven" (often called by the German "Himmelsbrief") claim to have been written by God or some divine agent. Many authors restrict the term to apocryphal Christian letters. These often claim miraculous delivery to Earth, magical protection for the possessor, blessings to those who "publish" them and divine punishment for disbelief of their claims. The original copies are often claimed to have been written in gold letters, or with the blood of Jesus. Many published versions were illuminated. An early and frequent feature is the command for extreme Sabbath observance, as in the Madgeburg Himmelsbrief [text].

A German authority on the Himmelsbrief, H. Stube, said the letters long predated Christianity (Oda). Examples in Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Syrian and Ethiopic have been published with German translations. Jewish and Islamic Himmelsbrief are also reported (Hand). These may all derive from an early Greek source (Bittner). A letter which was said to have fallen from heaven existed in the third century AD (Hippolytos, Refutation of All Heresies). The oldest Letter from Heaven for which we have a full text is the Latin "Letter from Heaven on the observance of the Lord's day," the original of which dates from the close of the sixth century (Priebsch). St. Boniface denounced this as a "bungling work of a madman or the devil himself." Eckehard (1115 AD) wrote that it had spread over the whole globe then known to man. It has circulated in English in many versions [1795, image available at link].

Jacob, organizer of the Crusades of the Shepherds, claimed (ca. 1251) the Virgin Mary appeared to him and gave him a letter. While in public he always carried it in his hand. A cult of uniformed flagellants appeared in Germany in 1261 claiming to possess a heavenly letter that had descended upon the altar of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem before a multitude. The text has survived: God, angry at human sin, has decided to destroy all life, but the Virgin intercedes and God grants humanity one last chance to reform. Any priest who refused to pass on the divine message to his congregation would be eternally damned. During the Black Death (1348-9) the same letter, with a paragraph on the plague added, was used as a manifesto by a revived flagellant movement. At gatherings the manifesto was read publicly, the audience being "swept by sobbing and groaning." (Cohn)

Some Letters from Heaven specialized in protection, and accumulated long lists of weapons by which the possessor could not be harmed. The Count Philip Himmelsbrief  [1895] granted protection against "spear, sword, sabre, cutlass, knife, tomahawk, rapier, helmet, burdon, . . . , and  everything prohibited by holy writ, that is from all kinds of weapons, artillery, cannon, musket, rifle, gun or pistol." A preamble mentions its use in the American Revolution and claims that Count Philip of Flanders sponsored it after he was unable to execute a condemned prisoner who had secreted a copy on his person. Various Letters from Heaven in German were printed in Pennsylvania during the 19th and early 20th century (Oda), [1887 image1 & image2]. American forces carried English language versions during World Wars I and II.

Letters claiming divine authority are also reported from India. Chain letters circulated in Shahabad in 1864 that condemned the breeding of pigs and consumption of alcohol.  They were said to be from Heaven. In North Tirhut, 1872, cow protection was advocated by "strange papers" which "warned that Jaganath (Lord of the World) would curse any one who did not pay heed to this message and would burn down the house of any one who failed to pass it along to other people." Letters advocating cow protection in 1893 mandated recipients "make and then issue copies to at least five villages" - a very early example of a copy quota.  (Yang)

An email chain posted to an Islamic coins mailing list [1999] consists of: (1) an Islamic "Letter from Heaven," which likely first circulated in paper, and (2) a reduced version (testimonials only) of a paper luck chain letter we call the Lottery24 type.

Transition to chain letters.
Edwin Fogel, writing in 1908, assumed that a luck chain letter [1908] was a new version of a Letter from Heaven (Fogel). There is little similarity in the texts, but perhaps Fogel was familiar with transitional forms now lost. Speaking of the apocryphal Letter from Jesus Christ [1915], Edgar Goodspeed wrote "it is sometimes sent through the mail with a request that the recipient send copies of it to three others, as some great misfortune is likely to befall him if he does not" (1931). Such a practice must have long predated 1931. Thus luck chain letters may have evolved from the preambles and postscripts to Letters from Heaven. At some stage the divine communication may have been replaced by a less pretentious "prayer," followed by entreaties to copy it. This is the form of the "Ancient Prayer" type (1905 - 1925) discussed in the next section. Some versions of Ancient Prayer promise deliverance "from all calamities" and threaten "eternal punishment" [1906] - as do some Letters from Heaven [Madgeburg]. Folklorists have generally followed Fogel in presuming that luck chain letters derive from the Himmelsbrief tradition (Ellis), though transitional examples have yet to be found.

More collecting, and examination of European sources, should clarify the transition to chain letters. The first luck chain letters may also have been influenced by early charity chain letters [1888], which likely introduced the idea of a copy quota.

<  Start of above section       < Start of Chain Letter Evolution - Contents

2.2  THE MAINLINE
Features of 20th century luck chain letters.  The succession of types.  Table 2 - Mainline Types.
Ancient Prayer.  Good Luck.  Prosperity.  Luck of London .  Luck by Mail. Death20.
Lottery-Death.  Death-Lottery.

Features of 20th century luck chain letters.
Around 1900 chain letters were influenced by increasing literacy, international mail and postcards, and changing attitudes about religion and miracles. Also chain letters themselves accumulated new technologies of increasing replication. Whereas the prior Letters from Heaven often urged the reader to "publish" the letter, chain letters gained more exposure by relying on individual copying with specific copy quotas and deadlines. The following features characterize luck chain letters of the 20th century.

(1) Brevity. The Letters from Heaven typically had over 500 words and were often elaborately printed. By contrast, a widespread luck chain from 1905-17 had about 100 words and was usually distributed by handwritten postcards.

(2) Secularity.  Luck chains originating in the 1900's dropped claims of divine authorship, delivery from heaven to earth, granting protection from fire or weapons, divine punishment for disbelief, and miracles generally. A Saint, missionary or military officer may be attributed as the author of the letter, but never Jesus. Promises of good luck and threats of bad luck exploited vague popular superstitions rather than naive piety.

(3) Copy quota.  Chain letters state a minimum number of copies that the recipient is encouraged to distribute.

(4) Deadline.  This task is to be completed within a stated period.

(5) Waiting period.  But according to most letters, one must wait a certain number of days before receiving  good luck.

(6) Testimonials.  All English language luck chain letters since the 1930's contain accounts of fortune and misfortune allegedly experienced by prior recipients of the letter. These testimonials are told in the third person, usually of a named individual.

(7) Circumnavigation.  Almost all luck chains since 1910 have either (1) declared they are to go "all over" or around the world, or (2) claimed a certain number of completed circumnavigations.

(8) Lists.  When someone signs their name on a chain letter, a recipient may faithfully copy this name. And another person may sign on, and both names may be copied. The growing list suggests to others that they in turn sign on. Thus chain letters often accumulated long lists of senders [1922]. Initials, names of couples [1975], dates received [1982], and company letterheads [1990] have similarly accumulated. Lists may reach fifty or more names and become a burden to copy (Lardner). Some chain letters avoided this by instructing, for example, "Copy the above names, omitting the first, add your name last" [1933]. If obeyed, this maintains an escalating list of fixed length which we call a managed list. Other chain letters forbade "signing on" - notably postcard chains [1911] and Internet luck chains [e1994]. The presence of a senders list on a chain letter may change the motives for sending it and the choice of recipients.

Successive mainline types are listed in the table below. Note that there is little temporal overlap except for the 1960's when both quota five and quota twenty letters circulated. Nor is there any significant regional variation within the U.S., nor even between North America, Australia and England. For the standard example of a type we use the oldest letter that does not have a major deletion. These standard letters are needed to define exactly what we mean be a variation within a type. The word counts in the table are for the standard examples, and exclude names in any list that may be present. The deadline and waiting periods are measured in days.

Table 2.  Mainline types.
 

No.	Type	Sample	Years	Standard	No. Words	Quota	Deadline	Wait
1	Ancient Prayer	42	1905-25	Atwood	105	9 (a)	9 (a)	9 / 10 (b)
2	Good Luck	15	1922-32	Birmingham	66	9 / 5 / 4	1	9 / 4
3	Prosperity (c)	6	1933-45	Hyatt	102	5 (d)	1	9 / 4
4	Luck by Mail	11	1952-67	Halpert	132	5 (e)	1	4
5	Death20	7	1959-77	Bloomsbury	193	20	4	4
6	Lottery-Death (LD)	13	1974-75	Maryland	383	24 & 20 (f)	4	9 & 4
7	Death-Lottery (DL)	181	1973-06	AFC	351	20	4	4

(a) Two postcards from England and one from Australia have quota, deadline and wait all seven [1916, 1923, 1925]. A late US postcard example has quota 10 copies, deadline 10 days and wait 11 days [1924].
(b) Some examples read nine days, others ten.
(c)  Includes two Prosperity type letters re-titled "The Luck of London," [1944, 1945].
(d) A 1937 postcard asks for ten copies [1937].
(e) "Send this copy and four others" - also on a Prosperity example.  [1939].
(f) Both numbers appear on the earliest examples.

Of our 293 examples of dated English language luck chain letters, 265 are from the mainline and 28 are outliers. Any paper luck chain letter received in the 1990's was very likely a mainline letter, and the product of over 4,000 generations of copying going back to an original letter perhaps composed in World War I. But this ancestry includes many deliberate innovations, and the addition of an entire Latin American letter onto a mainline letter around 1973. We now describe the mainline types and their inter-relationships. This also provides an opportunity to introduce some topics we will investigate in more detail later in this treatise.

1.  Ancient Prayer.
An early example of the "Ancient Prayer" chain is a letter postmarked in Leeds, Maine on January 6, 1905.

Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, we implore Thee, O Eternal God, to have mercy upon mankind. Keep us from all sin and take us to be with Thee eternally. Amen

This prayer was sent by Bishop Lawrence, recommending it to be rewritten and sent to nine other persons. He who will not say it will be afflicted with some great misfortune. One person who failed to pay attention to it met with a dreadful accident. He who will rewrite it to nine other persons commencing on the day it is received - and sending only one each day will on or after the ninth day experience great joy.

Please do not break the chain.  [1905]

An Ancient Prayer
Oh Lord I implore thee to bless all mankind.  Keep us from all evil and take us to dwell with thee eternally.

This prayer was sent to me.  It is being sent all over the world. It was said in Jesus time that all who would write it and pass it on would be delivered from all calamities.  Those who would not write it on would meet with some misfortune. Those who write it before nine days, stating the day received, to nine of their friends will on the ninth day receive some great joy.  So do not break the chain.
Received Oct. 6.  Name unsigned.   [1910]

Above we use italics for text that is essentially different from what is in the prior example. The false attribution to Bishop Lawrence has been dropped, and in its place two statements debut that will appear in various forms on millions of subsequent chain letters. We discuss the advantages to replication of "all over the world" later (> circumnavigation). The reward of  "great joy" for compliance is present on nearly all examples of Ancient Prayer we have discovered (even in Russia?, see Viola, note 59). Around 1909 the playful suggestion to copy it and "see what will happen" was introduced [1909]. This became common (but not universal) on Ancient Prayer [1911] and persists in the mainline to the present day [2005].  Early versions of ancient prayer suggest the influence of the letters from heaven. For example,  the 1909 letter claims that its rewards and punishments were spoken of "in Jerusalem." This was subsequently replaced in all examples by "in Jesus' time," possibly originating as a copying error.

An interesting feature in the above 1910 text is the word "stating," seen to be a copying error for "starting" by comparison to other examples [1908, 1911]. A  recipient has responded to this error by writing the date (Oct. 6). An abundant variation was soon established in which the date of receipt was recorded [1912, 1914, 1915]. The advantage to replication of this practice was probably that it reminded the recipient of the impending deadline, whereas postcards lacking the date of receipt could be more easily ignored until the recipient realized the deadline had passed with no ill effect. The role of copying errors in chain letter evolution can be overestimated, as compared to deliberate innovations. But for any copying error to produce a successful variation is remarkable, and we will investigate further possibilities of this (> Quota 24).

Some Ancient Prayer examples are self titled "The Endless Chain" [1911], or "The Endless Chain of Prayer" [Fogel, 1908,1923, 1925]. Chain letters as we know them were originally called "Endless chain letters" (NYT, 1906) to distinguish them from the then familiar self-terminating charity chains.

With U.S. entry into World War I in 1917, Ancient Prayer proliferated and differentiated. Some were exclusive within various fraternal organizations; some prayed for  "peace" and others for "victory." An unmarried woman in Ohio received at least three of the Victory postcards just in October of 1917 [Hers 1, 2, 3]. The chain was so numerous that the editors of the New York Times proposed that it originated as a German plot to clog the mails (NYT, 1917d). A wartime postage rate increase, from one to two cents for postcards, may have cooled the chain off and foiled the Huns. The same chain postcard with substituted titles had also served the martial spirit of the Central Powers. A German language version, postmarked in Austria a year before the start of World War I, begins "We Germans fear God, and Nothing else on Earth!" [1913]. After the war was over Ancient Prayer declined in the U.S. and England. Some resented that "during the First World War they and many people they knew had received letters threatening death or horrors to their loved ones in the trenches of France if the chain was broken." (Simpson 2000). One isolated late example has copy quota ten and a new prayer [1924]. This suggests that the war related prayers [1916, 1917] had completely captured circulation, and thus the end of the war required invention of a new prayer. Foreign collecting will likely reveal the worldwide circulation of Ancient Prayer.

Prior to uploading the first version of Chain Letter Evolution in 1998 there was no classification of luck chain letters into types. The abundance and duration of the Ancient Prayer type had been forgotten. The fact that it was usually written on postcards contributed greatly to its preservation. Almost all of our physical examples were purchased on Ebay from paper collectibles dealers.

2. Good Luck.
According to early reports (1948, 1968) and some chain letters, the Good Luck letter was started by an American officer serving in World War I [later, on a "Flanders battlefield," 1927]. However our earliest examples come from 1922, a boom year for the chain both in England and the U.S. These usually had long lists of paired names at the top, sender to receiver [1922]. Here is an example published by Ring Lardner (he omitted the names):

Good Luck
Copy this and send to nine people you wish good luck.  The chain was started by an American officer and should go three times around the world.  Don't break the chain for whoever does will have bad luck.  But do it in 24 hours and count nine days and you will have good fortune. (1922)

3. Prosperity. Folklorist Harry M. Hyatt reported (1935) that "during the latter part of 1933 a 'chain letter' fad appeared" and he gave a nearly complete text. This letter had a list of six sender's names and cities at the top of the letter and instructions to:

Copy the above names, omitting the first.  Add your name last.

The good luck of Flanders was sent to me and I am sending it within twenty four hours. This chain was started by an American Officer in Flanders and is going around the world four times - and one who breaks it will have bad luck. Copy this letter and see what happens to you four days after mailing. It will bring you good luck. Send this copy and four others to people you wish good luck. Do not keep this letter. It must be in the mail twenty four hours after receiving it.

Mrs. Gay Field received $5000, five hours after mailing.

Mrs. Ambrose received $4000, four hours after mailing.

Mr. Nevin broke the chain and lost everything he had.

Here is definite proof for the good luck sent prayers.

Good luck to you and trust in God. He who suffers our needs.

This brings prosperity to you in four days after mailing.

Do not send money. Cross the top name off and put yours
at the bottom.

[A list of 8 names and cities of residence follow, the first two crossed out.]

Note that  the command "Do not send money" has been added near the bottom. This appears on all subsequent mainline letters to this day. We analyze the replicative advantage of this command in Section 4.2 (> Divergence). Some text in this 1939 letter (. . . was sent to me, . . . see what happens) suggests it has been influenced in some circuitous route by an Ancient Prayer letter.

3a. The Luck of London (sub-type)
We have located only twelve luck chain letters that date from 1930 to 1951. Thus at present it is difficult to delineate a mainline in this period, or to estimate relative circulation. But we can rely in part on observations at the time. The previous Prosperity type was, according to Hyatt, a fad in Illinois in 1933, and hence we can presume it was a fad elsewhere. "The Luck of London" chain letter is said to have originated during the blitz (1940) and continued to circulate after the war (DeLys, 1948). The following example was collected by Jean Reherman in Oklahoma.

                                                                       One flag, One country
                                                                          The luck of London

The luck of London was sent to me, I am sending it on to you. This was started
by an American officer, -It has been around the world four times. Copy this and
see what happens four day's later! Send this and four copies to people you wish
luck.

Grace Field won $45,000 after sending it. Dr. F. A. Anderson won $25,000 but lost it
because he broke the chain. It will bring luck to you four days after mailing it. Do
not send money. Do not keep this letter.  It must be mailed 24 hours after receiving
it. Good Luck. The one who breaks the chain will have bad luck.  [1944]
 

Someone must have deliberately replaced the previous title, "The Good Luck of Flanders," with "The Luck of London" title as above. Some, or all, of the other changes may have already been made on the letter at that time, such as the updating from World War I to II. This is typical for successful chain letter innovations: not too much is added, and changed text often mimics the prior text. A traditional chain letter is exactly what has survived thousands of receipts. Successful innovation requires respect for this received tradition since the letter will bear adaptions that are not understood. Further, there will be recipients who have a magical loyalty to the traditional letter, perhaps because it seemed to work for them once. They will not remember the exact wording of the letter they used, but they are unlikely to tolerate a complete rewrite. Thus in the history of chain letters, certainly since the 1920's, successful innovations are overall conservative: they may be bold in updating themes, but are unlikely to introduce entirely new themes. We examine successful innovations very closely in this treatise. This reveals the mastery of those few anonymous folks who deliberately nudge chain letters along now and then.

The Luck of London letter may have given rise to a chain letter self-titled "Chain of Good Luck." These are discussed in the next section on outlier types (> Outliers).

4. Luck by Mail.
In 1952 Folklorist Herbert Halpert received a chain letter which we have designated a new type, "Luck by Mail," even though the numerical specifications were unchanged.  The text follows, with novelties in italics.

This Prayer has been sent to you and has been around the world four times.  The one who breaks it will have bad luck.

The Prayer. Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not on thy own understandance in all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy path.

Please copy this and see what  happens in four days after receiving it.  Send this copy and four to someone you wish good luck.  It must leave in 24 hours.  Don't send any money and don't keep this copy.  Gen Patton received $1,600 after receiving it.  Gen Allen received $1,600 and lost it because he broke the chain. You are to have good luck in 4 days.  This is not a joke and you will receive by mail.  [1952]

Note the famous General Patton appears here, and also, well known at the time, Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen. The implication that a highly esteemed General sent the letter out could certainly boost replication. The descendants of these testimonials still appear over fifty years later, the names and amounts having undergone countless variations due to copying errors. Such changes are often the first discrepancy noticed by observant readers, and thus may serve to discredit chain letters with the public.

The Luck by Mail type also introduces "this is not a joke" and the qualification that you will receive your luck "by mail." These are now mainline universals, and we judge the latter to have been the innovation most responsible for the predominance of this type in the 1950's. This hypothesis involves a possible relationship with money chain letters (> Luck Follows Money).

A less obvious innovation in Luck By Mail is the unconditional declaration that by receiving the chain letter "you are to have good luck." In contrast, the Luck of London letter promised luck "four days after mailing it."  This illustrates two contradictory beliefs about chain letters: in the first the letter is a talisman which by mere possession brings good luck; in the second only the act of distributing copies brings good luck. We give more examples of this dichotomy later (> Copy First, Copy Later), and discuss how textual ambiguity may benefit replication.

Luck by Mail continued to circulate well into the 1960's, in many variations. This is surprising since a potent innovation appeared in 1959.

5. Death20.
A chain letter mailed from Bloomsbury, New Jersey in 1959 has large blocks of text in common with the Halpert "Luck by Mail" letter given above, including the corrupted Proverb, four day deadline and nine day wait. But near the end a new testimonial has been added:

While in the Philippines, General Walsh lost his life 6 days after receiving his copy.  He failed to circulate the prayer. However, before he died, he received $665,000.00 he had won.  [1959]

Please send 20 copies and after see what happens to you on the fourth day.

It is reasonable to suppose that chain letter copy quotas have increased because of the availability of photocopying. But in 1959 copiers were not readily available - this is the same year that Xerox introduced its first plain paper copier (the Xerographic 914).

Our next example of Death20 is from 1967 (Ace). Without the 1959 Bloomsbury letter one might have guessed at a much later origin for Death20. Possibly it circulated largely in the business and professional communities in its early years. The Bloomsbury letter comes from a hospital and appears to be typeset.

The Death20 chain still circulates, but an entire chain letter has been added to it.

6. Lottery-Death  (LD).
Apparently in the early 1970's a quota twenty-four chain letter was translated from Spanish into English and put into circulation in the U.S. or Canada. Abundant copies of this letter exist combined with Death20, but no examples of it as an independent letter have been collected. We name this type "Lottery24" because of the original copy quota and its introduction of the "Boss Wins Lottery" testimonial:

Constantine Diso received the chain in 1953. He asked his secretary to make 24 copies and send them. A few days later, he won the lottery of 2 million dollars in his country.

Around 1973 Lottery24 (L) letters were combined with Death20 (D) on single pages in the two orders LD and DL. This event was documented with unedited multiple examples by Michael Preston (1976). Perhaps a motive for combining the chain letters was to reduce photocopying costs after the two had been received at about the same time. Our earliest example of the combination Lottery-Death (LD) is a letter mailed from Maryland in 1974.

This chain that comes from Venezuela was written by St. Antoine de Sedi missionary from South America. Since this chain must make a tour of the world, you must make 20 copies identical to this one, and send it to your friends, parents or acquaintances and after a few days you will get a surprise.

Take note of the following:
Constantine Diso received the chain in 1953. He asked his secretary to make 24 copies and send them. A few days later, he won the lottery of 2 million dollars in his country. Carlos Brandt, an office employee, received the chain. He forgot it and lost it.  A few days after, he lost his job. He found the chain, sent it out to 24 people, and nine days later, he got a better job. Zerin Berreskelli received the chain, not believing in it he threw it away. Nine days later he died.

For no reason whatsoever should this chain be broken!!!!!!  Make 20 copies and send them. In nine days you will get a surprise. Write  F.E.G.E. in the right hand corner of the envelope instead of a stamp.
 

THINK A PRAYER
Trust in the lord with all your heart and all will acknowledge that he will light the way. This prayer has been sent to you for good luck. The original copy came from the Netherlands. It has been around the world nine times. The luck has been sent to you. You are to receive the good luck within four days after receiving this letter. It is not a joke! You will receive it in the mail. Send 20 copies of this letter to people you think need good luck. Please do not send money. Do not keep this letter. It must leave within 96 hours after you receive it.

A U.S. officer received $7,000. Don Elliot received $68,000, but lost it because he broke the chain. While in the Philippines, General Walsh lost his life six days after he received this letter. He failed to circulate the prayer. However, before his death, he received $775,000, which he won.

Please send 20 copies and then see what happens the fourth day after. Add your name to the bottom of this list and leave off the top name when copying this letter.

[A four column list of 33 names follows, six struck out, several in different hands]  [1974]

The above device, "Write  F.E.G.E. in the right hand corner of the envelope instead of a stamp," appears on many LD chain letters. Various initials were recommended (some without the instruction to omit the stamp), and examples also come from France (Bonnet and Delestre) and the USSR. The instruction to omit a stamp seems severely counter-replicative. However the original initials may have been "F.M.B.H" standing for "Free Matter for the Blind and Handicapped." Current postal regulations allow free postage for legitimate purposes if the quoted sentence is written where normally a stamp would appear. Someone in the early 1970's probably misused the privilege in order to mail chain letters for free, protected from official reprisal by anonymity. Most recipients would be baffled by this suggestion, but many would repeat it to save postage. Since the initials were meaningless to most copiers, they would soon be corrupted. In disbelief, some copier dropped the instruction to omit a stamp and advised the initials be written on the upper left hand corner of the envelope. These versions may have benefited by being opened more often than a letter with nothing at all where one expects a return address. The mysterious initials may have themselves spurred interest in the chain. Current U.S. postal regulations require that an envelope claiming free matter be unsealed to allow examination of the contents. Dr. Jean-Bruno Renard has collected an interesting chain letter in France that revives the use of  initials as a substitute for a stamp [1999].  Posting without a stamp is also a feature of many of the current (2006) World Record chain letters that circulate among children. Post Office automation, rather than deliberate indulgence, may explain why many of these stampless envelopes are delivered to addressees.

The LD type was prolific in 1974 - 1975, and also circulated in the U.K (Times, 1974). Some Hungarian chain letters [1983], though much reduced, reveal descent from an LD source. By 1980 the Lottery-Death letters had been completely replaced in North America by our final mainline type, the "Death-Lottery" letters.

7. Death-Lottery (DL).
The DL combination first appears in our sample with a Canadian example [1973] published by John Robert Colombo (1975). However, since its ancestry had major deletions, we have chosen a letter supplied by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, as our standard for the type [1974]. At first the Death20 block retained its customary senders list, now as an internal list, the Lottery block following. This awkward requirement was deleted in the mid 1970's and such versions were more propagative. Though we do not use formatting to infer relatedness, the most common paragraphing of a DL letter violates the unity of the Lottery24 block, placing the last sentence of the Death20 block ( "Please send 20 copies of the letter and see what happens in four days") as the first sentence in a new paragraph starting the Lottery block (right before "The chain comes from Venezuela and was written by . . .") [1983]. This may aide propagation by disguising the compound nature of the letter and its resulting redundancy and contradictory claims of origin.

The DL type was temporarily eclipsed by LD letters during 1974-75, but a hyper-competitive descent group of DL letters completely replaced them before the end of the decade (the It Works postscript described in > Section 4.6). Thus all mainline luck chain letters since 1980, certainly over a billion, have been the DL type. Within this type are variations that compete with each other for the attention and resources required for replication. The advantages of some of these variations are easy to explain (> Section 4.7).

The Death-Lottery type luck chain letter has proven to be the most successful paper chain letter in history, not only in the sheer numbers produced but also in its migration to other countries. Surely it originated in North America (around 1973), since this region nurtured the independent circulation of the Death20 component, and the many early variations, including the unsyncretized 24 copy quota in the Lottery24 component (in LD letters only, as < above). From North America it has spread to many countries. Examples so far collected are listed below - each of the foreign language texts is supplied with an English translation.

• A French chain letter [1979] is a translation of the early DL variation with an internal list of senders [cf. 1975] .
• A later French letter [1995] is based on another translation [cf. 1994].
• A Polish letter [from 1986] is a reduced and rewritten descendant of a 1970's DL translation [cf. 1973].
• A later Polish letter [1992] "has been sent to you to make you happy." [cf. 1987]
• We also have a much reduced Russian example [1989] that "has been around the world 800 times."
• A 1996 English language letter headed by devotional images [text, image], collected in the UK but presumably from India, asks that you ". . . make 30 copies and send them after worshipping Shri Saibaba in your house."
• An English language email post [1999], derived from some uncollected paper source, has an Islamic Letter from Heaven followed by a component containing descendants of three classic testimonials of the Lottery24 type (Boss Wins Lottery, Lost Job - Better Job, and Unbeliever's Death). These could have derived from an independent Lottery24 letter, but more likely derive from a DL letter in which the entire Death20 component has been replaced.
• A letter in Dutch [1989] is titled "Met Liefde is Alles Mogelijk" and is very close to English language DL letters of about the same time.
  
• A German chain letter [1994] is titled: "Mit Liebe ist alles möglich" and most of its contents are a translation of an English language DL chain letter.
• An English language version [2004], claiming to have originated in England, was circulating in Eritrea in 2004.
  

<  Start of above section       < Start of Chain Letter Evolution - Contents

2.3  OUTLIERS
 St. Joseph.  Sabbath.  Anthony13.   Novena.  Chain of Good Luck.
The Brill Letter.  Mexican Letters.  Romance Game.  Others.

We have over twenty five examples of English language luck chain letters that lie outside the mainline. These group into several types.

No example of a Sabbath chain letter has been collected, but a commercial "traveling postcard" advocating temperance is present in the "various" category in the archive [1908].

Anthony13.
A brief article in the Pittsburgh Press (1938) mentions a "message to St. Anthony," that was "making the rounds." Though little text is given, it asked for 13 copies and circulated on postcards. It was very likely an ancestor of the following chain letter mailed anonymously on a postal card from Cumberland, Maryland in 1941:

This Prayer: Prayer of Safety must go all over the world by card. So when you get this card send it to thirteen persons and on the 13th you will receive $86 dollars. One woman made fun of it and on the 13th day her daughter went blind. So pray attention to this card. God bless you . Read Matthew 10th chapter.  [1941]

In 1941 the Post Office would have considered the Anthony13 postcard chain to be unmailable, as it violated U.S. Code Title 18, section 1718, which prohibited language of a "threatening character" on postcards or the outside of an envelope. However, this law was ruled unconstitutional in 1973 because it was "overly broad and violative of First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression" (Tollett v United States, 485 F2d 1087, from USCS). Luck chain letters inside envelopes have always been mailable. Thus, despite many statements to the contrary, mailing luck chain letters, threats and all, is not against the law. Presumably this applies to E-mail also. The ethics of communicating threats is a different issue. Money chain letters violate various Federal and State laws {USPS}.

Novena.
A rare prayer chain letter from the closing months of World War II asks that one say a Hail Mary or Our Father once a day for nine days, this as a prayer for peace [1945-02]. Four copies are requested within four days, but the letter claims it is "not a chain letter." The sender gives her name and address, and also, as requested in the text, the name of the person from whom she received the "Novena." "Notice what happens to you on the fourth day."

From Canada and the new millennium we have another short chain letter that calls itself a "Novena" [2000]. It asks that you say four Our Fathers and four Hail Marys on the day of receipt. It also asks for four copies ("hand written") and denies it is a chain letter. "Watch what happens." This could be a distant relative of  the 1945 letter.

Chain of Good Luck.
We have collected two corrupted examples [1949-Burma, 1949-Japan] of the self titled "Chain of Good Luck." These bear testimonials about a private in the Philippine army and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. The first copy states a copy quota of 12, high for the time. The second copy, found in Japan, is close to the Burma letter but even more corrupted. It has even lost its copy quota, which is surely a fatal mutation. Both of these letters have managed lists at the bottom, though the number of names have been inflated to 12 and 20. That both examples are foreign letters (in English) probably represents more collecting bias than a feature of the letter's distribution. The Chain of Good Luck is probably the same type of letter that is mentioned in the Berkeley Daily Gazette, as cited in Western Folklore (1950).

The Chain of Good Luck may have developed from a version of the previously discussed "Luck of London" letters (< Mainline letters). This is suggested by an article in the Denver Rocky Mountain News (1947) in which