HANDSTRUCK STAMP

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 108, 10 May 1938, Page 9

HANDSTRUCK STAMP

That the postage stamp was a seventeenth, not a nineteenth, century invsntion was the contention of Mr. Robson Lowe, a philatelic authority, in a lecture to the Postal History So- ! ciety, London. He was not dealing with the adhesive stamp. He said that when in 1661 the posts were ( farmed out to Henry Bishop, he, in. his own words, ''invented a stamp that is put over every letter" to check and prevent delays in transmission. This stamp, the first in the world, enclosed in a circle the date when the letter I was received by the Post Office, and j its form has been preserved for us as; the cancellation stamp used today. An-' other of these handstruck postage j stamps, he said, was the first penny i stamp used by William Dockwra for j his London penny post in 1680. This | was rougly triangular. I The penny black of 1840 was, of course, adhesive, and the handstruck i postage stamp was still used concur- 1 rently with the adhesive stamp up to 1853. Nearly every town had its own design, and Mr. Lowe stated that the Postal History Society now had records of more than a hundred different handstruck stamps, and he believed that somd of considerable value, would yet be discovered. '