The 1883 Great Britain Unified Issue by Tony Stanford

The 1883 Great Britain Unified Issue

 

By Tony Stanford

 

 

In May 1882 the British Government proposed replacing the current definitive stamps with a “unified” series (postage, revenue, telegraphs and parcels), all to be printed with doubly fugitive ink to avoid fraudulent removal of postmarks and (in the case of fiscal use) signatures and at the same time enabling the individual values to be more easily identified in the poor lighting conditions of those times. Unfortunately the only available doubly fugitive inks (ie fugitive in water and solvents) were lilac and green, so all the trials were in lilac. Eventually this would lead to the “lilac and green” set of 1883, but in the meantime an urgent short-term solution was needed so essays were produced by De La Rue,  all printed  in pale lilac with the value repeated by overprinting in large characters.

 

It is claimed that only one complete set of the unoverprinted lilac essays survives. Eight full sets of the ten overprinted values, ½d – 1s, were produced, of which only four remain intact, the others having been broken up. The remaining four sets are identified as AB, AC, AD and BC after the checkletters of the 1s value. It is the AD set that came on the market in 2008, finally being sold for £90,000 by Brian Bayford of BB Stamps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 1  The full trial unified series  set AD

 

 

Fig. 2  The Penny Lilac trial strip of 3

 

Further trial overprints on the 1881 1d lilac stamps were produced in September 1882 with surcharges for 3d, 6d and 1s in red and also in blue, to see if that would stop the black overprint clashing with the cancellations (fig. 2).  In the end only the 3d and 6d postage stamps adopted this solution, as they, with the 1d lilac (and the 1s for which the essays were rejected), were the values most frequently used. The 3d and 6d surcharges in red ink were issued on 1 January 1883 (fig. 3).

 

Fig. 3  The issued 3d and 6d surcharges

 

A large number of revenue stamps were similarly overprinted for the same reason, for example Companies Winding Up 1896, Consular Service 1886, Contract Note 1888, District Audit 1896 etc (Barefoot “Great Britain Revenues”) and the shilling values of the Cyprus Revenues issued during 1887/8 (fig. 4).

 

 

 

 

 

 

                         

Fig. 4 Specimens of the surcharged Cyprus Revenue stamps

 

The 1883 3d and 6d unified series surcharges were used to produce the ‘GOVERNMENT PARCELS’  trial overprints. As illustrated in fig 3,  this trial comprised three types, Type A using small sans serif capitals, Type B using large thin sans serif capitals and Type C, the adopted form of large thick sans serif capitals.  The illustrated items were in the "Silkin" collection of GB Official Stamps which Stanley Gibbons auctioned on 5 October 1978.

 

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Fig. 5  The complete unoverprinted trial unified series set TL

 

Sources

The De La Rue Years 1878-1910 Volume II by W.A. Wiseman Chapters 1 and 5, Stanley Gibbons Publications, 1990.

The Overprinter Edition 4/2008 (Journal of The GB Overprints Society)

 

For further information please contact Tony Stanford, Secretary of The GB Overprints Society, at gbos@talk21.com

 

Copyright: Tony Stanford 2010