Saint Vincent, with notes and publishers' prices

by Francis John Hamilton Scott Napier; Sir Edward Denny Bacon

We must here call attention to a change which took place about 1871 in the character of the perforation made by the A machine. Up to that time the paper was very seldom even slightly pierced by the pins, or any of it removed—i.e., the perforation is what is called blind. A writer in the Stamp Collector’s Magazine of December, 1866, speaking of St. Vincent stamps, thus describes it: “… the stamps … are perforated (if that term be quite accurate) by an instrument fixed in the machine, which leaves a series of indentations … which does not remove a particle of paper except in a very occasional spot, hardly one in a thousand. On severing the stamps by tearing, a rough indented edge is left…” This is quite correct, and we cannot better the description of the work of the A machine given by this old-time philatelist of nearly thirty years since, who collected and studied stamps in a day when perforation-gauges were not. It is only after 1871 that we generally (but not always) find the pins piercing through the sheet and leaving small holes, the paper being thrust aside and turned back by the passage of the pins through it, but little or any of it being removed. We wish to call particular attention to this point; that is, that the holes are small, and that the portion of paper displaced is not clean-cut or punched out. If this be not attended to, these particular examples of the later work of the A machine may be confused with the clean-cut perforations of 1862, which we have yet to consider.

It is to the vagaries of the B machine that we are principally indebted for the extraordinary number of perforations, simple and compound, that have been ascribed to the stamps of St. Vincent, as well as to those of the few other Colonies for which this machine was used. These Colonies are Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, and Turks Islands. We know of no other instances in which the B machine was used, and in all these it was employed to a very limited extent as compared with its use in St. Vincent. Possibly this limitation was owing to the very unsatisfactory nature of its performance, and to the difficulty of separating the stamps without tearing them.

In examining unsevered blocks perforated by the B machine, the first thing we notice is that the holes cut by it are circular, and of nearly uniform size, and that the pieces of paper are punched out and altogether removed, leaving holes varying from a little less than 1 mm. to a full 1 mm. in diameter, and of which the edges are clean-cut. These holes vary in their spacing to a very great extent, some being separated from edge to edge by a space of 1¼ mm., while between others there is only a thread of paper left. This is not owing to variation in the size of the holes, since measuring from centre to centre we find some holes to be as much as 2¼ mm., and others as little as 1 mm. apart. Besides these extremes all sorts of different measurements are to be found, generally in close proximity to each other, so that it is impossible to get more than a few consecutive holes that measure the same from centre to centre. Under these circumstances, how is it possible to assign in the usual manner any particular gauge to a perforation so erratic? And is it worth while, by the laborious examination of single stamps, to attempt to make a list that we know from the nature of the case must necessarily be interminable? We ourselves are quite content to look on all stamps perforated by the B machine as being of one and the same perforation, and we have so treated them in the Reference List, extending the same system to the perforations of the A machine. At the same time we do not think that any philatelists ought to lay down the law to others perhaps more ardent than themselves in the pursuit of varieties, as to what ought or ought not to be collected, and it is quite open to any such collectors, whenever they find a stamp in these lists said to be “perforated B,” or “perforated A,” to gather together, by what we call the injudicious use of the perforation-gauge, as many examples of the aberrations of the machines as they please, or as their time and purses will permit. We think they will find it in some cases, say in that of the Five Shillings, to be a laborious, an expensive, and above all an unsatisfactory, task.

In order to ascertain the mean gauge of the B machine, the only possible way would be to get a line of perforations representing the whole length of the machine, and measure it. The longest line of perforations we have been able to experiment on is one of 124 mm.; this contains 72 holes, giving a mean gauge of about 11⅔ in the 2 centimetres. In some places in this line nearly 13 holes can be counted in the space of 2 centimetres, in others not more than 11, and all intermediate gauges as well are present in the same line. Indeed one has only to move the perforation-gauge one or perhaps two holes to the right or left to obtain a striking change of gauge. We have seen that the same sort of thing occurs in the perforation done by the A machine, but in a much lesser degree, the variation being only between 14 and 15—here it is from 11 to nearly 13, and is visible at a glance without the aid of the perforation-gauge. The above mean gauge of 11⅔ is very near to the 11½ usually ascribed in catalogues to stamps perforated by the B machine, but even if that be correct as a mean gauge for the whole line, it is very misleading so to call the perforation, as a collector whose solitary specimen might gauge, say 13 x 12½, would naturally suppose that it was a variety differing essentially from those said to gauge 11½. This, as we have seen, it would not be.

As in the case of the A machine, after the B machine had been in use some considerable time (about 1876), its perforations show a change of character, the holes being seldom punched right through; the discs of paper remain in their places, so that when the stamps are severed the edges are very ragged. Otherwise there is no change whatever, the holes, or the marks where they should be, being still circular, and spaced in the same irregular manner.

Besides the two simple perforations A and B, we find one compound when the two machines are used in conjunction for the same sheet. Whenever this compound appears it is invariably the same in all cases; that is, the horizontal lines of perforation are made by the B machine, and the vertical lines by the A machine; or, adopting the philatelic notation now generally accepted, it is “B×A.”

Omitting the Six Pence of 1862, this reduces the possible number of varieties in the perforations of the stamps of Section I. to three in all; and in order to show at a glance how these occur in the different issues, we have arranged them in a table, which will be found under the head of Appendix B.

It will be observed that no one stamp is known with all three varieties of perforation, except the One Penny, bright rose-red, on the unwatermarked paper, and it is not at all certain that all these varieties existed together in any one of the seven different printings that were made of this stamp. Another point we may also note is, that whenever a stamp is to be found with the compound perforation, it also invariably exists with one of the two simple ones, but, with the above exception, never with both.

Our second plate of illustrations consists of six groups of four unsevered stamps each. These are intended to illustrate the various perforations of the A and B machines, and as these are more easily studied on the reverse side than on the face of the stamps, it is the backs of the groups we have had reproduced. Nos. 16 and 17 show the work of the A machine at two different periods of its career. No. 16 is a group of four of the One Penny of 1861, when the perforations made by the A machine were blind; and No. 17 is a similar group of the One Penny of 1871, when the pins generally pierced the paper.

These particular groups were selected by us for illustration as showing a very marked contrast between the character of the perforation of 1861 and that of 1871; but as regards the latter, it is not easy to find such long lines of perforations in which all the holes are pierced through, as in the example we show in No. 17. In these two particular instances, if the central lines of perforation be gauged, the vertical line in No. 16 will be found to be 14 at the bottom and 14½ at the top. Its horizontal line is 15 on the left and 14½ on the right. In No. 17 the vertical line is 14½ at the bottom, higher up it is 15, and at the top it is again 14½. The horizontal line of No. 17 gauges 15 throughout its length. It will be noticed that in no one of these four lines do the two extremes of 14 and 15 both appear; but it must not be inferred from this that such is never the case, and we have now before us a group of four of the Six Pence of 1871, in which both gauges of 14 and 15 are present in the same line, and actually overlap each other. This group would not, however, have been so suitable to illustrate the general character of the A perforation in 1871 as the one we selected, since the holes in it are only pierced through in parts of the lines.