Original Source: Unknown, Post-Runner, c. 1880. Hand-colored albumen photograph.
Here you can see how a photograph like this might have been edited during the engraving process to make an anonymous post-runner into "Sir Harry's Messenger." Tattoos were likely removed from the body and the stick carrying the message was edited as more of a pouch to carry items.
This particular photograph was scanned from Volume VI of Captain Francis Brinkley's folio series titled Japan: Described and Illustrated by the Japanese (1897).