A GENUINE "PLATE 6."
THE FAMOUS "STOCK EXCHANGE" FORGERY OF THE ONE SHILLING GREEN STAMP OF GREAT BRITAIN.
One specimen was used on October 31, 1872, and the other on June 13 of the next year. The enlargements betray trifling differences, in the details of the design as compared with the genuine stamp above.
The first attack on the Post Office revenue of which there is any record is the subject of a letter from Downing Street, London, dated September 2, 1840, and addressed to the late Sir (then Mr.) Rowland Hill:—"Mr. Smith has just called and informed me that a forgery of the Penny Label was yesterday detected in his office. The letter bearing the forged stamp has been handed over to the Stamp Office to be dealt with by them ... the forged stamp is a wood-cut...." An entry a few days later in Mr. Hill's diary reads:—"At the Stamp Office I saw the forged label. It is a miserable thing and could not possibly deceive any except the most stupid and ignorant."
The above seems to have been an almost isolated attempt to defraud the revenue, but it is interesting as being the earliest known forgery, appearing, as it did, within four months of the issue of the first postage-stamp.
A far more romantic forgery, and one of almost colossal magnitude, was discovered in 1898. About that time, a large quantity of British One Shilling stamps—those of the 1865 type in green, with large uncoloured letters in the corners—came on the market, though, as they had been used on telegram forms, they ought to have been destroyed: probably the guilty parties relied on this official practice, not always honoured in observance, as offering a security against not merely the tracing of the offence but the discovering of the fraud itself.
Anyhow, after a lapse of twenty-six years, it was found that amongst these one shilling stamps there was a large proportion of forgeries (purporting to be from plate 5), all used on July 23, 1872, at the Stock Exchange Telegraph Office, London, E.C. More recent discoveries show that the fraud was continued for over twelve months,[16] and, as an indication of the precautions taken by the forgers, plate 6 (which came into use in March, 1872) was duly imitated, although the change of the small figures was a detail probably never noticed by members of the general public.