Tanganyika: Stamps & Postmarks

A few more from the British Mandated Territory of Tanganyika.

Wmk: Multiple Script CA, Perf 14.

Printed in Typography by De La Rue.

tobben63 - I was stunned when I saw the handwritten dated “cancel”. It makes me wonder why more classic pen cancels weren’t dated like this. Was it too slow - a squiggle being much faster?  I wonder if many postal authorities were told that only official cancelling devices could be dated? There could be legal reasons as the dates on posts can be used as proof of on time payment and other matters. Huh, very interesting IMHO. 

Thanks for your post, Torbjørn (tobben63).  I agree that it is an interesting stamp.

I am with JeffS on this one, I also think it is most likely a fiscal cancel, not a postal one.  But of course, now that it has been separated from its "entire", meaning either the document or envelope to which it was affixed, it is not possible to be 100% certain.

I can just say from my experience with fiscal uses on revenue stamps that many are script cancels of dates, sometimes accompanied by initials or signature.

As always, other opinions are welcome, of course.

It's a valid question, Terri (philatelia )!

The old postal pen cancels I have are generally either an "X" or simply a line drawn through, much as the "Marker Monkeys" of modern times are doing.  My best guess is that it's much faster to do the X or simple stroke of the pen, and that the volume of mail needing postal cancels was high, so they looked for ways to do it quickly.

Fiscal cancels would have been rendered by bank staff or other officials rather than postal clerks, so my guess is that they were not in so much of a hurry to process big volumes of material needing cancels, and there may have even been a legal requirement to show the date that the revenue fee was paid.

Perhaps someone who knows more about revenue uses can comment: Londonbus1 , vikingeck , daniel , JeffS .... others?

The pen cancel with date is almost certainly revenue use on a document , or receipt, where the date of signature or contract is legally significant.


Most pen cancelled postal stamps are temporary expedients where the post office has no handstamp, maybe just a receiving depot.  the object is merely to render the stamp unusable again. The date is usually irrelevant . Sometimes the stamp is cancelled later when it passes through a larger post office.

There are exceptions where postal clerks did write the date but these are unusual. From my personal collections I only have seen dated ink cancels in Denmark for 2 weeks in 1851 and in Samoa in 1877 until handstamps were aquired. Pen dates are also found on 19th century India and Ceylon , where they function as security to prevent pilfering between the sender and the post office where they will be cancelled as usual in addition.

what I have written applies to 19th century cancels …….not the modern postman’s biro!

So far the only theory in response to my initial query asking why weren’t dates used in postal pen cancellations matches my own - squiggles and X’s were simply faster for harried clerks and as vikingeck said they fulfilled the primary purpose of the cancel ie obliteration. Yup - Occam’s razor for certain here - the simplest answer is probably right.

Still, the universal absence of dated pen postal cancels on stamps and covers strikes me as just a tiny bit odd. There must have been a few anal postal clerks who used dates, right? Yeah - I was one oh those pesky little kids who always asked “But WHY?” lol! 

I will suggest that such pen canceled stamps were once on an envelope or folded letter, with the dispatching town and date adjacent to the stamp written in ink. In the US these are referred to as “manuscript postmarks” where a metal cancel device wasn’t available.

Sometimes it pays to visit EVERY stamp dealer at a stamp show, even if you think you won't find anything else.....

In 2019 I was nearing the last of the dealer booths at a big stamp show in Sindelfingen, Germany.  I almost passed up the fellow offering yet more German covers.  I thought to myself I had plenty of those!  So I said "sorry I'm only looking for oversized covers!" and before I could scoot away he pulled out this gem.

A 1939 registered oversized cover.  Sent from Chunya (Tanganyika at the time; it's in present-day Tanzania) to a Mr. Ulrich von Seydlitz in nearby Kungutas.  Multiple circular date stamps show May 25, 1939 cancellations.

There is a notation after the address "Lupa Goldfields" so I'm assuming this oversized registered envelope may have carried documents pertaining to a nearby mining operation.  It was "cut down" (reduced), unfortunately, by someone other than me.


The FRONT is franked with 25 King George V KUT (Kenya/Uganda/Tanganyika) 1 cent stamps, from the 1935 set:




On the reverse are THIRTY more of the same stamp!




Sure glad I stopped there.....