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


CHAIN  LETTER  EVOLUTION


Daniel W. VanArsdale
©1998, 2002, 2007
442 kilobytes

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

Acknowledgments                                                                                                  
1. Paper Chain Letters
    1.1  Introduction
    1.2  Motivational Categories
    1.3  Sources

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.


ILLUSTRATIONS

Letter from Heaven (partial), eighteenth century. Lead to title.
Send-a-Dime money chain letter, 1935. Lead to Part 4.
Links to images in the Paper Chain Letter Archives:  Letter from Heaven, 1795.   German language Himmelsbrief, 1887.
Car Pyramid scheme, 1936.   Money chain letter puzzles, 1996.   Proctor and Gamble - Satanic libel, 1986.
               

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. Paper Chain Letters

1.1 Introduction.
Seeking paper chain letters.  OverviewFiles 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:

Though most successful variations first appear as deliberate innovations, often the resulting advantage to replication could not have been anticipated. And some highly successful variations likely first appeared as copying errors (for example, the demand for 24 copies instead of 5 copies within 24 hours). By testing hundreds of thousands of variations, chain letters have discovered and exploited our secret fantasies and vulnerabilities. In addition to this relentless probing of the human psyche, they have an internal history marked by the irreversible appearance of new technologies and deadly competition between variations. Our collection supports the view of chain letters as a "mind virus" (Goodenough & Dawkins), a self perpetuating subversion of human will and action. They have evolved free from any need to fulfill promises, free from the need to carry out threats and free from institutional control. Billions have been distributed despite near universal condemnation. Chain letters are "designed" to replicate, not to help anyone. Hope and fear, truth and error, charity and greed, anything that increases replication becomes part of the tradition. There is no master example or authority to set things aright. Yet in this terrible freedom lies their one service to humanity: they instruct us on the generality and inexhaustible opportunism of evolution.

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)
The Annotated Bibliography contains over 350 entries and was designed for the author's use in preparing this treatise. Since it may be of use by other researchers I have placed it on-line as a single HTML file and linked citations here to internal targets in the Bibliography. We have chosen terminology that is easily remembered. However many concepts, such as "circulation," have a specialized definition here. Such terms are given in bold when first introduced and defined; some later appearances are linked to a Glossary where formal definitions are given. This facilitates reading sections independently. All paper chain letters cited appear in the /archive/ directory as separate HTML files (archive Information). Errors in the original texts are preserved in the archived versions, and when feasible, each keystroke is preserved. Paper chain letters are our principal focus - email chains are mentioned only incidentally. Those several that are cited appear in the /e-archive/ directory as separate HTML files.

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.-

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

1.2 Motivational Categories
PietyLuck. 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 lettersTable 1 - Contents of the Paper Chain Letter Archive.  Foreign language letters.
Publications. Web SitesInterviews.

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     6
3
1955 - 59 4
      4
2
1960 - 64 1 1     2

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. LUCK CHAIN LETTERS

2.1  PREDECESSORS
Ancient documents that advocate their own perpetuationThe Letters from HeavenTransitions 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):

Some Buddhists Sutras promised good fortune or spiritual merit for reproducing their text. This spurred innovations in printing technology in Asia. Most of these dharani were likely printed using copper plates. Surely this Sutra set the all time record for the most copies requested. The Great Dharani Sutra was appealing to monarchs, as with the promise that rebels would be vanquished. The small "pagodas" were probably intended to preserve the documents.

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:

The instructions concerning paper and "scented wrapping" probably intended to promote the long term physical survival of the text. The Diamond Sutra speaks of readers 500 years in the future. Though perhaps unintentional, texts that are traditionally placed in graves may gain readers much further in the future.

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.

Recently (2006) a chain letter from 1898 was found that is a Roman Catholic prayer for intercession by St. Joseph [1898]. This is the oldest luck chain letter so far collected, predating the earliest Ancient Prayer type by seven years. It requests that five copies by sent out, but asks for a repetition of the prayer each day for nine successive days as in a Novena devotion. The abundant and international Ancient Prayer type starts with a prayer to Jesus and asks that a copy be sent each day for nine days. With these examples in mind, it now seems likely that luck chain letters developed when a Novena devotion required posting a prayer on nine successive days. The text and a brief discussion on the St. Joseph letter is presented in a subsequent section (>outliers).

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 lettersThe succession of typesTable 2 - Mainline Types.
Ancient PrayerGood LuckProsperityLuck of London Luck by Mail. Death20.
Lottery-DeathDeath-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.

The succession of types.
Chronological arrangement of English language luck chain letters reveals a succession of distinctive types that appear and disappear over the years. Changes in the copy quota, deadline, or waiting period (the numerical specifications) of a luck chain letter usually change only when there are other key changes in the text. Thus these numbers often provide a convenient means of classification into types. Of the over thirty known North American luck chains letters (& postcards) dated from 1905 to 1917, all have closely related text that requests that nine copies be distributed. We have designated these letters the Ancient Prayer type. After 1921  we discover a sequence of  types which (1) predominate circulation for a while, and (2) share much text in common with the prior type. Beginning with Ancient Prayer, we call this succession of related types the mainline. The mainline concludes with the "Death-Lottery" type, a group of around two billion letters all derived from a single letter that appeared in the 1970's. Focus on the mainline tradition helps us understand how chain letters "respond" to changing social conditions, and how textual innovations affect replication. Three or four types outside the mainline have also replicated in abundance, possibly dominating the circulation of luck chain letters for a year or so. These are foreign or specialized traditions that were not derived from the previous mainline type. We discuss these, along with some rare types, in the next section (> Outliers).

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
Death20 7 1959-77 Bloomsbury 193 20 4 4
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]

This is the oldest Ancient Prayer letter in our collection. Here "He who will not say it will be afflicted . . ." seems to imply that recitation of the prayer is sufficient to avoid punishment for noncompliance. "Bishop Lawrence" was the Episcopalian Bishop of Massachusetts and a well known author, at least among Protestants. He actively denied that he had anything to do with the chain letter (1926). Later in 1905 a Catholic publication from France (Bayonne) denounced a similar chain letter. This claimed that a voice heard in Jerusalem during the holy Liturgy predicted terrible punishment for those who do not send out nine copies. Beginning around 1910 a persistent new version of Ancient Prayer appeared on U.S. postcards.


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):


Quota nine Good Luck letters, with names of senders, were still circulating in England in 1928 (Burrell), as were longer French, Italian and Swiss versions (Deonna). A late example [1931] of this tradition from Florida contains the leading paired names characteristic of the 1922 English language letters, but otherwise is closely related to a Good Luck letter given by Deonna three years previously, very likely being a translation from the French [1928]. However, at the same time in the US a quota five (or four) version of the Good Luck letter had developed. This dropped the list of senders, and the American officer author was placed in Flanders, hence the title "The Flanders Chain of Good Luck [1928]. This letter may have been very abundant: it appears to have been parodied [1932?], and "Flanders" persisted on luck chain letters until World War II, afterwards being replaced by the "Netherlands." We have only a few examples of the Good Luck letter from the late 1920''s and early 1930's. These seem to grade into our next type - so with more collecting the present classification may change. Phrases from the Good Luck letter, such as sending to "people you wish good luck," still appear on chain letters from around the world [1990].

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:

This is our earliest example of a managed list, a crucial technology of chain letters. The body of the letter shared features of the prior Good Luck chain, including the attribution to an American officer, the 24 hour deadline and nine day wait. It had also reduced the copy quota from nine to five, as on a late example of the Good Luck letter [1929]. Here is the full text of an unpublished later example [1939] of this "Prosperity" type:
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.]

The managed list instruction that appeared on the Hyatt letter has been dropped. This letter is very close to late examples of the Good Luck type [1928]. However the three testimonials are similar to those on Hyatt's 1933 Prosperity example. Testimonials of receiving money appear on French letters from 1928, but apparently these letters did not have lists of recipients [Deonna]. Probably the Prosperity letters developed after someone added the list management instructions to a Good Luck letter. These changes eventually led to the advent of money chain letters in 1935 (> Section 4.1), and for this reason we have split these letters off from the previous Good Luck type. A detailed discussion of this relationship appears below (> Origin of Money Chain LettersDivergence of Luck and Money Chains).

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]
 

With its changes in italics, we see that the Luck of London letter is basically a Prosperity type letter with a new title, "The Luck of London," replacing "The Good Luck of Flanders" [1939, and < as above]. Also the "American officer" is no longer located in "Flanders," further suggesting to a reader that the letter is a World War II creation. All the numerical specifications remain the same. No list of prior senders is present on our two examples, whereas these were present in the mainline before and after. There is a shift  from seeking "prosperity" back to promising "luck," understandable considering the full employment and high war casualties of the time. Despite these shifts in motivation, the actual changes in the text are so small that we have classified The Luck of London chain letter a variation of the prevailing "Prosperity" luck chain letter of the Depression Era.

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 is the debut, in our sample, of Proverbs 3:5-6 ("The prayer"). This was copied on hundreds of millions of subsequent chain letters, though it is absent on some other Luck by Mail examples [1953, 1954].

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:

This is the first appearance of an implied death threat in the mainline, though we have Wickets' account that the Sabbath letter [1902] accumulated a more severe threat. This "Death and Money" testimonial is now on all mainline letters. Immediately after news of this shocking reversal of fortune appears the polite request: The copy quota has been increased from five to twenty! Because of this burdensome quota, backed by an implied death threat, we call this new type "Death20." It also seems to have introduced the puzzling title "Think  a prayer" (or "Thing a prayer") which was common until 1979. This may have been a corruption of "This prayer." All Death20 letters collected contain a trailing list of senders.

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.
State lotteries were spreading in the U.S. in the 1970's and this letter must have appealed to those holding lottery tickets. Since Lottery24 by itself is an outlier that has never been collected in North America, we do not include it as a mainline type. Probably it did circulate abundantly in South America in both Spanish and Portuguese versions, and it was there that it acquired its testimonials adapted to office culture and state sponsored lotteries.

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.

Saint Antoine's

The copy quota in the Lottery portion is stated as both 20 and 24. The earlier 24 quota was soon changed to 20 for consistency with the Death20 block. Lottery24 proclaims Venezuelan origin, contains Spanish surnames, and cognate letters still circulate in Brazil [1994]. Further, it is unlike Mexican letters, so its South American origin seems likely. The title "Saint Antoine's" is a traditional European and Latin American attribution for chain letters.

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.


Despite the success of the DL type letters in the 1990's, their circulation, at least in English, declined significantly after the new millennium (> All fall down ).

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


2.3  OUTLIERS
 St. Joseph.  SabbathAnthony13.   NovenaChain of Good Luck.
The Brill LetterMexican LettersRomance GameOthers.

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

St. Joseph.
A single example of "A Prayer to St. Joseph" was mailed from Palmyra, New York in 1898. It contains a 139 word prayer asking St. Joseph to intercede with his infant son Jesus on behalf of the petitioner. The complete text (slightly edited):

               Nellie Sullivan

                                              A Prayer to St. Joseph.

Oh, St. Joseph
          Whose protection is so great success so prompt before the throne of God. I place in you all my hopes, and confide to you all my interests. Deign Oh,      St. Joseph to assist me by your powerful intercession and obtain for me from your divine foster son all spiritual blessings through Jesus Christ our Saviour. So that after having enjoyed here below your heavenly favors, I may offer you my thanksgiving and homage to the most tender and loving of all fathers.
          Oh, St. Joseph, I never weary of contemplating you with Jesus asleep on your arms; but I dare not approach while he reposes on your heart. Press him in my name, kiss softly his forehead for me, and ask him to return that kiss when I draw my last breath.
          St. Joseph, patron of despairing souls pray for me.
- - - - -
         To obtain the request granted to this prayer it must be written and given to five different persons who will give it to five others. Repeat the prayer for nine days after distributing it. It has never been known to fail in any request.
                        Nellie Sullivan.       Mary Hennessey.

Note that only five copies are requested, but the prayer is to be repeated on nine successive days as in a Novena devotion. In the last paragraph it is revealed that the sender may have made a personal "request" of Joseph, who is described as the "patron of despairing souls." This and other features, including the claim that "it has never been know to fail," suggest this letter may be a distant source for personal appeals to St. Jude that appear in the classified ads of present day newspapers in the U. S.  (>jude).  St. Jude also appears on subsequent English language luck chain letters beginning around 1987 (much later than some have supposed), and one appositive for St. Jude is "saint of things almost despaired of."  The Prayer to St. Joseph is the oldest luck chain letter known.

Sabbath.
The Sabbath letter [1902] circulated shortly after the turn of the century and was self titled "The Prayer Chain." It is known from only one obscure source, Donald Wickets, writing over thirty years later (1935). The letter protested Sabbath violations such as Sunday theater and beer sales and did not promise any personal benefit to participants. Promotion of Sabbath observance was characteristic of many Letters from Heaven. The chain set a copy quota of seven and a deadline of seven days. This is the earliest example of a deadline on a luck chain letter - a feature present on most subsequent chain letters. Later a harsh threat against breaking the chain was added which accelerated replication, including international circulation. According to Wickets the letter folded because some early senders "received their echoes" and because it failed to halt the activities it protested.

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:

We have one other example, a postcard from California [1942]. These two collected luck chains have dropped mention of St. Anthony and both threaten blindness in the family as a punishment for ridicule. From the earlier 1938 title we name this type Anthony13. It is somewhat similar to a published quota 13 Polish chain [1984], a "Letter to St. Antony." Perhaps an ancestor of this Polish letter circulated among Eastern European immigrants in the Pittsburgh area in the late 1930's, its English translation giving rise to the "message to St. Anthony." One reporter recalls (1978) that the Anthony13 chain postcard dominated luck chain letter circulation during the 1940's.

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