Children’s Health Camps

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 93, 14 January 1936, Page 11

Children’s Health Camps

Sir, —As the sponsor and founder of the New Zealand health stamp, I wish to congratulate this year’s organisers, Mr. L. O. Hooker and his staff, and the generous public for the amazing response to the appeal made by the patron, his Excellency the Governor-General. When I presented my plan in 1927 to a doctor in the Health Department, the actual specimens were seals which I had brought back with me from the United States of America, where they are used extensively to seal letters and parcels. I asked that the seal be transferred into a stamp if possible. This was done, and in 1929 the first health stamp was issued and for sale, bearing my likeness from a photograph. It may interest your readers to know that Victoria, Australia, was the first country to use postage stamps as a means of raising funds for charity—a Id. stamp selling for 1/-, and 2-ld. for 2/6. I think that was about 1897. Next came Switzerland in 1913. That country since has issued each year a charity stamp. Stanley Gibbon’s, catalogue—the “Bible’’ of the stamp world—gives the above information. The Kowhai League formed last year has adopted the seal as a means of raising funds, which will be divided up this way, half to the milk for children, the other half to purchase native flora for the children to plant. The first seals will bear in the design the kowhai. New Zealand’s national floral emblem. —I am, etc., WINNIFRED MACDONALD 213 Adelaide Road, Wellington, January 11.