Chats on Postage Stamps

by Frederick John Melville

According to calculations, based on the average numbers used on several days, the Post Office must have lost about £50 a day during the period mentioned above. Who were the originators and perpetrators of the fraud will probably never be known: possibly a stock-broker's clerk (or a small "syndicate" of those gentlemen), or, more probably, a clerk in the Post Office itself. It was an ingenious fraud, well planned and cleverly carried out at a minimum of risk, and, but for the market for old stamps, it would never have been discovered.

Amongst foreign countries, Spain has been the greatest sufferer from forgery: her numerous, and until recent times almost yearly, issues were mainly necessitated by the circulation of counterfeits, which appeared on letters within a very short time after each new series of stamps had been put on sale.

Some of the old Italian States, particularly Naples and the Neapolitan Provinces, were defrauded of part of their revenue by numerous forgeries of some of their stamps; and in these cases, as in that of Spain, letters survive on which the postage has been entirely, or in part, "paid" by means of counterfeits.

An ingenious fraud on the Indian Post Office was discovered in 1890, through the care with which collectors frequently examine their stamps. The One Rupee, slate, of the 1882-88 issue, very cleverly imitated, was found to be frequently coming to this country on letters from Bombay, and police inquiries, made on the information of a well-known philatelist, led to the detection of the culprit; he, it seems, engraved a facsimile on box-wood, and printed his stamps, one by one, on paper as similar as possible to the genuine, but without watermark; the perforation he effected by placing the printed label between two plates of thin metal each with holes corresponding to the intended perforations, and then, by the aid of a blunt wire, punching out the small circular pieces of paper!

Other instances have been noted, but those given are the best known, and serve as good examples of frauds against Post Offices, so far as forgery of the entire stamp is concerned; but, of recent years, a new kind of fraud has come into vogue—the alteration of a genuine stamp into one of a much higher denomination, affecting British Colonies only.

The possibility of this has resulted from the desire of the authorities to print the majority of colonial stamps, available for postal or fiscal purposes, in two colours—one being distinctive of the particular value, and the other a purple or green, very susceptible to any attempt to remove an obliteration or cancellation, whether by the Post Office or by a member of the public: by the latter, in writing-ink.

The modus operandi is ingenious—a stamp is selected, of which nearly the whole design is, say, in green, the name and (low) value being in some distinctive colour; the original value and name are removed by chemical means, the name and new (high) value being substituted in a colour applicable to the higher denomination—result, if the work be carefully done, a stamp which would deceive not only the ordinary official (who is seldom of real philatelic inclinations) but even, at first glance, the average collector, unless he is on the look-out for such "fakes," which, as a matter of fact, have been made for his delectation also.

As has been remarked, the number of forgeries made to deceive collectors has been immeasurably greater than of those prepared for defrauding the Revenue; and it has been endeavoured to select some of the most daring, and often successful, attempts to palm off a clever forgery as a genuine—generally rare, but sometimes quite common—postage-stamp.

In 1903, taking our own country first, an attempt was made to place on the market unused copies of the rare Ten Shillings and One Pound stamps of 1878-83, printed on Large Anchor paper, and perforated 14: these were almost at once discovered by Mr. Nissen, the same philatelist who first noticed the One Shilling (plate 5) counterfeits used at the Stock Exchange Post Office, to be exceedingly clever forgeries. They were, save for a slight lack of finish in the finer details, practically of design identical with that of the original stamps; the colours were well matched, and, most deceptive of all, the paper and perforation were undoubtedly genuine. This timely discovery nipped the forgers' schemes in the bud, but, some eight years subsequently, the lower of these two forged stamps came again on the market, this time provided with a neat, though fraudulent, postmark.