Great Britain: Postmarks

Hi daniel
Indeed, the stamp has faded ink and a few smaller teeth.
The paper has a watermark - I am not familiar with Great Britain stamps - it is thin and has a fine structure of dots, like a grid.
Are these features common for this stamp?
I also noticed a tear in the lower left frame and the deformation at the bottom of the letter "O".
Comments?
George

Hi daniel
I looked for a thread with GB plate flaws where to continue the discussion; unfortunately I didn't find it.
An image of this 179b plate flaw would be very helpful. (I failed to notice the defect on your 2 stamps)
I have many German stamps with plate flaws and it is quite difficult to distinguish them from printing defects.
Maybe I'll start a thread with German stamps with plate flaws.
George

Thank you daniel
I collect German stamps with plate flaws and I am starting to have some experience in identifying them.
When you mentioned the possibility of a plate flaw, I used a minimicroscope for a closer check.
In the bottom left corner of the frame and under the letter "P" in the areas I assumed to be possible frame breaks, I found small traces of ink.
Unfortunately, I do not have the technical possibility to post images.

George

Firstly a happy New Year to one and all. Here we have an interesting little QV cover/wrapper sent from the returned letter office, general post office London. What made me smile is the packet was posted as a sample (contains a bottle of white powder) which was contrary to law to send items such as these by sample post. However, it is OK to send as a parcel! Imagine the furore if this was done today, without the relevant paperwork. Graham

Not sure where to list these two GB WW2 Censored covers but as I bought them yesterday at the York Stamp fair for the POSTMARK then this is probably the best place

"POSTAGE REFUNDED"       
"[ POSTAGE
  REFUNDED]" 

one cover to JAVA   censored but returned to sender with a refund of the postage, could not be sent because Singapore, the primary distribution point for mail to that region, had fallen to the Japanese  In January 





The other had evidently failed to get past the censor so was returned with the green instruction label ( Unfortunately we don't Know the reason)    It was addressed to Stockholm Sweden which was neutral  in WW2  Postage refunded again , a different style of handstamp 

I had not come across it before in any of my otherGB covers returned by censor as undeliverable. I have a couple of others with the green labels , one indeed has the actual reason why it infringed the censorship rules, but none has the “POSTAGE REFUNDED” handstamp which is why I bought them yesterday.

Another one of these red Airmail marks used when the sender has underpaid postage. In this instance a letter is being sent from North London to Denmark and no postage has been applied at all. In this case, a card would have been sent to the sender asking them to pay the necessary postage with stamps or a meter mark. The red Airmail/Par Avion/Postage Paid RP2/London GB was then applied and the letter sent on its way.

Another fine piece from the last auction purchases. In amongst an average assortment of GB covers was this QV 4d carmine cover, with some lovely postmarks; Leeds JU 28 1859 (numeral 447), posted via London and Calais June 29th, to Lille on the 30th. Upon opening up the letter had a pleasant surprise to see the headed paper from Thomas R. Harding, maker of patent porcupine & marine combs and various other items. I managed to find out a bit more about him and found this;
"T R Harding started a business in 1836 at Lille, France, making cast steel pins, combs and other mechanical parts in the production of textiles. In 1858, he came to Leeds to start a business in England. Originally at works in Great Wilson Street, Holbeck, his trade expanded so that in 1864 he was able to build Tower Works in Globe Road, Holbeck. He retired in 1890 to be succeeded by his son, Col T W Harding."
This ties in very nicely with the cover and shows the connection with Lille. Graham

good clean dated postmarks - very attractive. The slightly later one appears to be showing they'd gone in for work on Boxing day - would they do that now I wonder, and what, if any, is the significance of the 'cross' symbol on the earlier mark?

I

In 1857, 22 year old Madeleine Smith of Glasgow was tried for the murder of her lover by buying arsenic and poisoning him. He had threatened her over the return of her letters when she broke the secret relationship and got engaged to another.

the evidence was circumstantial and the dates of posting of some of the letters was crucial to the prosecution. The judge complained that many of the experimental Glasgow datestamps were unreadable.

Scots law has a third verdict between guilty and not guilty , freed, not quite innocent but “not proven”.

the type of postmark at the time of the letters has now become known as the MADELEINE SMITH cancel 

Dumb Barred Cancel

In the post above there appeared to be a contradiction between the seller and Stanley Gibbons. This Censored cover seems to confirm that it likely was a Maritime cancel, World War I with no information to give away the origin of the envelope.

The Temple Press was part of the publishing firm J M Dent who produced, firstly, the Temple Classics and later the Everyman range of classics.

From HM Ships some home made cancels

GB QV 2d the provisional issue used with Seething Lane B. O. 1883 London postmark, quite a nice postmark. here is what wikipedia has to say about Seething Lane, "is a street in the City of London. It connects All Hallows-by-the-Tower, Byward Street, with St Olave's Church, Hart Street. The street is named after an Old English expression meaning "full of chaff", which was derived from the nearby corn market in Fenchurch Street." Graham