THE STAMPS OF GREAT BRITAIN

So far these talks have dealt almost entirely with ways and means of stamp-collecting, but now our attention must be centred on the stamps themselves. We naturally turn to the issues of Great Britain, the first specimen to be considered being the "penny black," bearing a portrait in profile of Victoria the Good. Not only was this stamp the first to be issued within our kingdom, but it was also the pioneer stamp, of the whole world. It is thus one of the most interesting labels which can figure among the treasures of any collection.

To Sir Rowland Hill, the promoter of the penny postage and other postal reforms, belongs the credit of first suggesting that the postage on a letter should be prepared by means of an adhesive label. Not only may he be called the inventor of postage stamps, but he also sketched in rough the design which was used for the first stamp. To him, also, was entrusted the work of arranging for the issue of this novel label.

On August 17, 1839, Parliament sanctioned the use of adhesive stamps, and immediately afterwards the Lords of the Treasury asked the public to suggest suitable designs. Nearly 3,000 drawings were submitted, but none were considered satisfactory. It was then that Hill made the rough sketch mentioned above.

Many were the difficulties which Hill had to overcome, but probably the most perplexing was how to get the stamps printed. We must remember that in those early days colour-printing was a slow and tedious process, and there were very few firms who could be entrusted with the work. After much consideration, Sir Rowland went to a Fleet Street house of printers named Perkins, Bacon and Co., and asked them whether they could undertake the task of producing the proposed adhesive stamps. Their reply is sufficiently interesting to be given in full.

"69, Fleet Street,
"London,
"December 3, 1839.
"Sir,

"We have given the subject you mentioned yesterday afternoon all the attention the time would allow, and beg to say as the result that we would engrave steel dies of the size you gave us, containing work of any conceivable value as to cost and quality, transfer them to any number of plates that could possibly be wanted, and print them in any numbers per day, at a charge of eightpence per thousand stamps, exclusive of paper, which, we understand, would be supplied us; and, assuming that the numbers wanted would be very large, we have only named a fair price for the printing, and have considered the plates and dies, which ought to be very costly in the first instance, as given in without charge. You are probably aware that, having prepared the original die, we could insure perfect 'facsimiles' of it for a century.

"Our charge would not exceed what we have named above, nor be less than sixpence per thousand; but what relative position it would take between these two extremes would depend upon the exact size of the stamp, and the number which the paper would allow us to put upon one plate.

"We could prepare everything so as to commence printing in a month. Our present belief is that we could print 41,600 labels per day, or double that number in a day and night, from each press employed upon the work.

"We are, sir, very respectfully,
"Your humble servants,
"Perkins, Bacon, and Petch."

The Perkins' firm was entrusted with the printing; instructions were also given them to elaborate the rough sketch made by Hill. They called upon a then noted engraver, Frederick Heath, to complete the design which has since become world-famous. He engraved the head and the lettering, but the beautiful curves forming the background of the stamp were "engine-turned" by means of a Rose engine, a contrivance consisting of a series of moving wheels which produced curved lines in geometric pattern.

The stamp proved a great success, thanks to the energies of Hill and the assistance of the printers; but it had one great fault—it was printed with a fast ink, which enabled dishonest people to wash out the obliterations and use the cleaned copies a second time. As a result, the black specimens were superseded in less than nine months by red ones printed with a fugitive ink. The short life of the first stamp has, of course, much to do with its present high price.

The dies used for the black impressions were employed for the red pennies, so that the two stamps are identical in all respects but colour. Gradually, as years passed along, slight changes were introduced. First, the small check letters in the lower angles were substituted by large letters, then perforated edges were provided, whilst in 1854 the whole of the dies were re-engraved. Stamps printed from the old and the new plates may be distinguished fairly easily. In die I. the nose is straight, there is little shading around the eye, and the lobe of the ear terminates with an upward curl. In die II the nose is slightly rounded, the eye is surrounded by much shading, and the lobe of the ear finishes without any upward curl.

The black and red penny stamps were line engraved (cf. previous chapter). The only other stamps printed in this style were the twopenny blue, issued concurrently with the penny black; the halfpenny rose; and the three-halfpenny red rose, both issued on October 1, 1870.

It seems somewhat remarkable, in these days when we have thirteen different stamps of values lower than a shilling, that in the early years the country was able to carry on its postal arrangements with but a penny and a twopenny stamp. That there was need for specimens of higher value seems certain, as the inland registration fee was a shilling, and the postal rates abroad were surprisingly high. In 1847 the letter rate for the United States was lowered to a shilling, and for France to tenpence; consequently, the time seemed appropriate for introducing three new stamps—a shilling, a tenpenny, and a sixpenny.

Though the line-engraved stamps had proved extremely satisfactory, there were certain high officials who claimed that these labels were by no means proof against dishonest practices. It was partly to please these dissentients that the three new values bore the familiar head of Queen Victoria in cameo relief. The innovation was almost if not a complete bar to forgery, also to the removal of obliterations by people of questionable character; but it made printing a slow and expensive process. Hitherto a sheet of stamps had been printed by one movement of the machine, but every embossed stamp needed a separate pressing. There were twenty-four stamps of these three new values on a sheet, which meant that instead of one action completing the sheet, twenty-four actions were required.

Some of these old stamps are to be found with the impression of another partly overlapping; this is due to the fact that the machines were fed by hand, and unless the workman placed the paper in exact position one stamp was bound to fall partly on to its neighbour.

One curious feature of the tenpenny and shilling stamps must be mentioned. Into the paper on which these adhesives were printed was introduced a number of silk threads in such a way that each stamp bore two portions of the thread. The silken lines ran either horizontally or vertically across each specimen, and made counterfeiting an almost impossible task. The sixpenny value was provided with a watermark as a safeguard.

The cameo stamps gained but little popularity, and were current less than ten years. Of the sixpenny specimen, we know that 6,659,920 copies were printed, and of them, 2,941,640 were destroyed after their withdrawal, probably about as many copies as are sold of our current penny stamps on an ordinary weekday.

On July 31, 1855, a fourpenny stamp was introduced. It was produced neither by the line-engraved process nor by the embossing method. A system of typography, or surface-printing (see p. 21), had long been used on the Continent, and it was this process which was employed for the printing of the new fourpenny value. Messrs. De La Rue and Co. were entrusted with the work.

The fourpenny surface-printed stamp proved very successful, and was followed by other values—the shilling green, the threepenny rose, the sixpenny lilac, and the ninepenny straw colour. Many of these early stamps bore minor distinguishing marks, and consequently command high prices. A very dark shade of the shilling green is worth £65 in an unused condition, the threepenny rose, with a white dot on either side of the word "Postage," has changed hands for £40, whilst the ninepenny straw colour, with a fine white line drawn across the exterior angles of the square spaces for the corner letters, is catalogued as high as £30. Specimens of these values should be carefully examined to see if they happen to be the rare kinds.

The surface-printed stamps issued between 1862 and 1881 bore angular check letters as well as plate numbers, and therefore prove of exceptional interest to those of us who wish to specialize in the stamps of our own Kingdom. Unused copies should be carefully preserved with the original gum on the backs, as their prices advance with every season. The used copies, also, prove a good investment.

In 1881 (July 12) the well-known penny lilac, with a large head of Victoria, was issued, and continued in use until the accession of King Edward. The stamps sold during the first five months had fourteen white dots in each corner, but afterwards the number, for some unaccountable reason, was increased to sixteen. The early variety, needless to say, commands a much greater price than the later one. The two stamps are easily confused, but a careful examination of our copies will soon tell us whether each used specimen is worth a fraction of a farthing or a sixpenny piece. Some time after the accession of King Edward the writer went into a post office and bought two dozen penny stamps. The clerk who served him half apologized for still selling the old specimens bearing the Queen's head. On reaching home, however, the adhesives were carefully examined, and found to be the rare "fourteen dot" variety, worth, unused, about four shillings apiece. It is hardly necessary to add that the block, intact, has found a home in the writer's collection.

The next stamps to attract attention are those of King Edward. At first sight there appears to be one variety of each value, with the exception of the halfpenny and the fourpenny, which are both found in two obvious varieties. On closer examination, however, the Edwardian stamps will be found to possess many minor but interesting differences. In the first case, most of the values were printed in turn by the firm of De La Rue, by Harrison and Son, also by the Government at Somerset House, and each set of impressions shows marked variations in colour. The most interesting Edwardian differences, however, are due to varieties of paper. In 1905 the authorities came to the conclusion that the then current stamps were not sufficiently protective against fraud. It was easy enough, they said, to compound an obliteration ink for use in the post offices which could not be cleaned away; but, as postage stamps were also used in increasing numbers for revenue purposes, it was also necessary to make the stamps of such colours that they could not be cleaned of even ordinary writing-ink. As a consequence, the labels on the usual paper were gradually superseded by specimens printed on a specially prepared "chalk-surface" paper. When this paper is wetted, the chalky glaze breaks up, and the coloured design is ruined. This innovation provides a complete check to the practices of fraudulent "stamp cleaners," but makes it almost impossible for collectors to remove the paper backing which disfigures many of their treasures.

"The easiest way to find out whether a stamp is printed on ordinary unsurfaced or on chalk-surfaced paper," says Mr. F. J. Melville in "King Edward VII. Stamps," "is to draw a small silver coin across one of the perforations or a piece of the marginal paper adhering to the stamp. If a black line appears where the silver has touched the paper, it indicates a chalk surface."

A third minor variety of the Edwardian stamps must be recorded. In certain of the halfpenny and penny values the large crown watermark is found inverted. Such specimens were not, as might be expected, the result of faulty printing, they were made especially for the stamp booklets, which have grown so popular since their introduction in 1903. The plates from which the booklet stamps were printed were divided into four panes, each of sixty labels. Each pane consisted of ten rows of six stamps surrounded by a fringe of blank paper. The panes were cut vertically down the centre and then along every second horizontal row. This gave ten blocks of six stamps, five coming from the left of the vertical cut and five from the right. Now, it was necessary to have a strip of edging paper on the left of each block for the binding-pins of the booklet to pass through; consequently, the stamps placed on the right of the vertical cut were inverted. As the watermark was not similarly turned round, the specimens in 50 per cent. of the booklets were provided with inverted crowns.

The stamps of King George require but little mention. When first issued they caused considerable adverse comment, owing to their poor design and inferior gum. The earliest dies of the halfpenny and penny values were re-engraved at least twice, but not until the small head was replaced by the larger profile bust could they be considered even passable. As a whole, the Georgian first issue may be now considered fairly attractive in pattern and colour; but the Mother Country has yet much to learn in the matter of stamp designing from her young Dependencies, notably Canada.