The prehistoric times of Philately may be said to have ceased in 1863, when the publication of the Stamp Collector’s Magazine and the Timbre-Poste commenced. The few and meagre catalogues which preceded them in 1862—such as those of Mount Brown and Dr. Gray in England, Moens in Belgium, and Potiquet in France—can only be looked upon as archaic productions, interesting certainly because of their associations, but of no appreciable utility now-a-days to the student of stamps. It is, however, worthy of remark that the difference between imperforate and perforated stamps was then recognized, as they are distinguished from each other in the catalogues both of Moens and Potiquet; this shows that even at that early date the true philatelic spirit was already abroad.

When studying countries of which the philatelic histories begin prior to 1862 or 1863, we are dependent entirely on public notices emanating from postal authorities, official records, and information derived from the books of firms who manufactured the stamps, or supplied the plates, paper &c. for printing them, sources of knowledge not always easy of access. Luckily for our present purpose, seeing that postage stamps were not adopted in St. Vincent until 1861, we are not so dependent on these official or commercial records, having a great number of philatelic works, such as catalogues and periodicals, to rely upon, all of which we have carefully searched and collated; at the same time we have received great assistance from Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., Limited, the printers of the stamps included under the head of Section I. This Company have been good enough to furnish us with a complete list of every stamp sent out by them to the Island, a copy of which we give in Appendix D, and we acknowledge with thanks our indebtedness to the Managing Director and Secretary, for the valuable material they have so considerately placed at our disposal, which has enabled us to satisfactorily clear up several points that before were more or less obscure. It will also be seen that the list helps in no small degree to form what we hope may be considered a fairly complete history of the stamps of this Island.

Our method of designating and arranging the perforations of the stamps supplied to the Colony by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co. from 1861 to 1882 is a novel one, but we think it will remove the difficulty that has hitherto been felt in classifying the perforations, as it has always seemed impossible to assign any limit to the number of so-called compounds, which, if we are to believe some recently-published catalogues, must indeed be infinite, and incapable of any classification whatsoever. For instance, in one of these catalogues, five simple and seven compound perforations are given to the stamps of 1861; to those of 1866 seven simple and five compound; to those of 1869 four simple and five compound; and so on through later issues. On the other hand, another catalogue, also of recent date, is content to make the general statement that the issues up to 1880 are perforated 11½ to 15, simple and compound. This is at first sight an apparently innocent statement, but in reality it opens up an appalling perspective of interminable lists. We think we shall have justly earned the gratitude of the many philatelists who (as far as it is compatible with strict accuracy) desire above all things simplicity of arrangement, in having banished from the lists all mention of these fanciful perforations, whether simple or compound. The fact is that in the St. Vincent stamps printed by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., with the exception of one (that is the yellow-green Six Pence of 1862), there are only two simple perforations and one compound, and although this last makes its appearance very frequently, it is always exactly the same in every issue in which it occurs. No doubt the confusion which has arisen has been caused by the too zealous and indiscriminate use of a perforation gauge limited to two centimetres, and applied to single specimens of stamps, which has led true compounds to be confounded with those apparent deviations from the normal gauge arising from irregularities in the spacing of the holes, irregularities existing in both of the two machines used for these stamps by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., but in a very much greater degree in one of them than in the other.

The whole point of our argument lies in this, that to separate perforations, it is only necessary to differentiate between those produced by distinct machines, and that there is no object in collecting the same stamp over and over again merely because the perforation varies within a space of 2 centimetres, if it can be shewn that the stamps were all perforated by one and the same machine. Hitherto it has been the great aim of collectors and writers to try and gather together every variety of perforation that can be found on a stamp of any one particular issue—this quite regardless of the cause from which these varieties arise. Our method obviously removes many difficulties, and greatly simplifies the arrangement of all stamps that have been perforated by machines in which the pins were irregularly spaced. We further claim that our system is based upon strictly scientific lines, and that it is applicable, not only to St. Vincent, but to the other British Colonies whose stamps were printed and perforated by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., although it must be borne in mind that in some of these there were other machines used, besides those we describe for St. Vincent.

As in the Notes we go fully into all details of perforation, it is not now necessary to dwell further upon this point; we only wish to insist on the importance of the subject, as it was the uncertainty hitherto regarding it that first induced us to particularly examine the stamps of St. Vincent, and that now leads us to make public the results of our investigations.

In order to make the list of the varieties of perforation as complete as possible, we have during the last three years examined a very large number of St. Vincent stamps, so many that we think it is highly unlikely there still remains anything to be added to the tables of perforations (Appendices B and C), and this in spite of the gaps that will be seen to exist in them.

The history of the use of distinctive postage stamps in St. Vincent dates from May 1st, 1860, when the Colonial Authorities took over from the Imperial Government the entire management of the Post Office of the Island, which, like the posts of many of the other British West Indies, had up to that date been administered by the Postmaster-General of the United Kingdom. The Local Legislature of the Island thereupon passed an Ordinance, known as the “Post Office Act,” which became law on June 14th, 1860. This Act, amongst other things, provided for the appointment of a Colonial Postmaster, a General Post Office for the Island, rates of postage, and the issue of postage stamps. As many of the clauses of the Ordinance possess a good deal of interest for Philatelists, we give, in Appendix A, a copy of those which, from a collector’s point of view, may be considered the more important ones. After the passing of the Act postage stamps were ordered from England, and, as we shall afterwards see, a supply was despatched to the Island on March 27th, 1861. The stamps were no doubt put into use immediately on their arrival, as a statement in the Blue Book of the Colony for 1861 gives the amount received for postage during that year as £158 16s. 5d., as against £78 5s. 4d. for 1860, and the increase is accounted for by the “Sale of Postage Stamps which were obtained in 1861.” This fixes with certainty the date of the first issue, but when we commenced to study those of the later issues, and attempted to make a proper chronological list, we found there were many discrepancies in the published catalogues we consulted; from them we turned to contemporary notices in the pages of the Timbre-Poste, the Stamp Collector’s Magazine, the Philatelist, the Philatelic Record, and other less celebrated periodicals, in hopes of removing our difficulties. Unfortunately Philately was decidedly under a cloud from the middle to near the end of the seventies, and this is just the time during which a number of issues took place in St. Vincent. The Stamp Collectors Magazine ceased with 1874, the Philatelist, never a good source of original information, stopped in 1876, and after that the Timbre-Poste alone filled the breach until the Philatelic Record made its appearance in 1879. It is with regard to this important subject of dates that Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co.’s list has been so extremely useful, as we have thereby been enabled to check the notices scattered through the pages of the various philatelic works we have mentioned. We therefore believe that the dates of issue given by us will be found to be more accurate than those in any previous publication.

With regard to describing the colours of the stamps, we have met with the usual difficulty of at once satisfying our own opinions, and those of various friends whom we have occasionally questioned as to what they would call the colour of such or such a stamp, and we do not think we have got out of the difficulty either better or worse than other compilers of catalogues usually do, the differences of opinion we have met with, as to the proper names by which to call certain shades, being generally hopelessly irreconcilable. No reference to other works is of much use; for instance, we find the one shilling of 1874 called “dirty rose colour” in the Stamp Collector’s Magazine, “dull rose-pink” in the Philatelist, “lilac-rose” in the London Society’s list, “pink” by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., “rose sale” in Moens’ Catalogue, and “lake” in Messrs. Stanley Gibbons & Co.’s price list. It must be confessed that all this is very confusing, and we are afraid that collectors will always find the task of distinguishing between the earlier red shillings of St. Vincent rather a difficult one. Fortunately there are not many cases in this Colony where the identification of a particular stamp depends on the description of its colour alone, as we are generally helped to the desired conclusion either by the watermark or the perforation.

We think that the two plates of autotype illustrations accompanying this work will be found something more than mere embellishments, and will be of real use to our readers as a means of discriminating between genuine and false surcharges, and also of distinguishing the various perforations alluded to in our text.

There are many interesting questions connected with the perforating machines used by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., as well as with the papers, unwatermarked and watermarked, employed by them for the numerous British Colonies to which they supplied stamps; but in this handbook we do not propose to enter into these questions more fully than is absolutely necessary for elucidating our subject. We intend to do so at greater length in a handbook of the stamps of Barbados, now in course of preparation. This country is much more complex than St. Vincent, both in its watermarks and perforations, and a thorough knowledge of the stamps of the latter Colony will prove to be of the greatest assistance when the more difficult subject of Barbados comes to be studied.

The stamps of St. Vincent are remarkable, inasmuch as this is the only British Colony that still continues to print the whole of its stamps from line-engraved plates. This is certainly noteworthy when we bear in mind that since the year 1883 the stamps have been printed by Messrs. De La Rue & Co., whose name is generally associated with surface-printed stamps.

The change of printers, although the same plates have always been employed, marks such a distinct epoch in the history of the stamps, that we have thought it advisable to place those furnished by the two different firms under separate headings, and so break up the Reference List into two parts, under the nomenclature of Sections I. and II.

It will be observed that our lists contain no mention whatever of postal fiscals. Such stamps do not exist in St. Vincent, although M. Moens and other writers have chronicled them. All postmarked specimens that may be met with must have either been passed through the post by inadvertence, or been obliterated by favour.

In concluding these remarks we beg to acknowledge with thanks the kindness of Mr. T. Maycock, Mr. M. Giwelb, and Mr. W. H. Peckitt, who have lent us stamps for illustration, and of Messrs. Whitfield King & Co., who sent us for examination a great number of entire sheets of the De La Rue printings, which have been of the greatest assistance to us in writing the notes to Section II. of this Handbook.