Nfld. 117 Gueudecourt Caribou overprint question?

Canadian specialists would be able to advise if these issues were valid for fiscal or telegram use.

I'd guess a signature with a date underneath.
Laid on its side with Newfoundland reading up, one can discern a "3" which may indicate beginning of a date.

If it were British, you would almost certainly assume it to be fiscal,
commonly seen with all sorts of scribbles.

Newfoundland is a new collecting area for me.

Another avenue, is to go to ebay, look for used Newfoundland, and look at the sorts of postmarks / scribbles that may be evidenced.

Jean
"Philately begins where the Catalogue ends"  

Your next avenue of attack, would be to search "Manuscript cancels" Newfoundland and search there.

I am of the opinion that it is either just a scribble, or a manuscript cancel of some sort,   of minimal value
Should it been philatelic manual overprint, then the script would have been legible to some degree  (1c Magenta Mauritius an exception)
(The weird thing, yours appears to have a postal cancel as well)

For me, the question remains, were these used for telegrams or Fiscal? 
If you are patient and keep searching, someone will know.

The Newfoundland hand script would look like this   ...  (Sold for $40,000)

The exhibit Newfoundland Fiscal Stamps and Usage (Terrance R. Harris, Gold at ORAPEX 2009) addresses the use of regular postage stamps for fiscal purposes (frame 2 beginning with page 15).

My take on the information presented in the exhibit is that, if the stamp shown in the original post was used as a fiscal, the revenue rates for period usage would have meant that the stamp was one of several placed on either a bill of exchange or charter parties instrument. Over payment of the 2c rate for other instruments is also a possibility, but probably unlikely.

Fabulous detective work, Steve.
Well done, you.

This would answer James' query, as well

Congrats on reaching the magic 50 posts.Love seeing your stuff.

Thanks Jack. I'll play with it and see what happens...

edited to add:  It works great!  But the writing is just scribbles from what I can tell.  Looks like 3100 W or M written a couple times across it and something else in-between.  This is almost as bad as deciphering my doctor's handwriting!

Also, that scan was at 600 dpi.  Am I doing something wrong with it?

Thanks Rod. I think that one's a done deal then. Onto the next stamp!