Cape of Good Hope: Newspaper mail
Newspaper mail was a very important part of the Post Office operations and especially during the first half of the 1800s, when the residents were anxiously awaiting for news. As in most parts of the world today Governments tried to control their distribution and content. The British way was through taxation and in the Cape Colony by not granting licenses to dissenting voices.
They are also very difficult to collect, as any surviving specimens are fragile (they can literally crumble in your hands). For later years one can study the wrappers, but sadly they are mostly undated and can provide very little new insight.
I have been hunting them for years and I haven't been very successful as any bearing postage stamps are beyond what I can afford. But the story starts earlier with "Franking Stamps".
I have very little literature on the topic, so please anyone that can add to the jig-saw puzzle please do.
I am starting the story with an example from the Grahamstown Journal.
Rosenthal claims this was the first postage stamp in the world! More on the attachment. In later posts I will post earlier specimens, but I thought this was a good start for the topic.
I have about 10-12 pages and more questions than answers.
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The next part is again from Grahamstown. I post this as an image as well as a pdf to make it easier for you to scale and focus on the subscription rate. By this time the post office was charging for delivering the newspapers? How much?
Was there a "Miltary Post" at the time as stated? Anyone has details? These were bad times for the area due to the Xhosa Wars.
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Yannis, these are proper historic items that should be national treasures. Are the newspapers with the 'Franked Stamps" which you show the same ones found by Power in the Kimberley Library? From your explanation, I take it that these are more fiscal stamps rather than postal ones. I am guessing that they do not appear in Barefoot?
Yannis, please continue to post your Newspaper material here in this topic. I have removed the Experimental sub-Forum topics and placed them in General SA form. The Forum page now looks a bit more minimalist. Must try harder.
Please give me your thoughts on having separate Forums for Cape, Natal, OFS, Transvaal, Union, Republic, Homelands, etc., and the other southern African countries. I have been meaning to do this for some time but now I am no longer so sure. I find if you type 'Cape' or 'datestamps' into the SEARCH facility on the Home page it works quite well. I will delete this and the previous post after you reply.
Steve, to be honest a week ago I thought splitting them was a good idea, but also have my doubts now. Maybe is too early to tell? Let us give it another two months or so before doing changes.
I always take care on new topics to preface them with "Cape of Good Hope:" to make it easier to search. The same can be done for ZAR, NATAL etc.
Yes, prefacing them with with "Cape of Good Hope:" is good practice, also NATAL, OFS, ZAR. etc. It may help with the automated extraction of the various areas later. I agree, lets wait a while and see what pans out. There's definitely gold here, broer! I have spoken to another member who called me and he suggests keeping it all together "because so many of the subjects overlap collecting interests". If you have any suggestions for site improvement, please advise. I do all this web stuff in isolation with just some technical advice and input from my non-philatelic wife.
Quote from Steve on October 2, 2020, 7:07 pmYannis, these are proper historic items that should be national treasures. Are the newspapers with the 'Franked Stamps" which you show the same ones found by Power in the Kimberley Library? From your explanation, I take it that these are more fiscal stamps rather than postal ones. I am guessing that they do not appear in Barefoot?
I hope they are not the same as those found by Power and that those have been preserved on full newspapers and they are in some National archive.
The Grahamstown Journal is difficult to find as a complete newspaper. From memory there is a full run of the Journal in the Kew archives in Britain and I am sure maybe one in the National British Library. One day after I visit Tibet my next trip will be at Kew, because also there one can find the loot letters, which can settle once and for all the "VOC" handstamp question.
I am not sure if they appear in Barefoot, as I don't have a copy. If anyone has a Barefoot would appreciate a scan of the page.
To my knowledge they were first listed by Sherwood (1980). I have a photocopy of an extract from his catalogue.
As you say they are "fiscal/revenue" stamps. Britain had proper "newspaper franks" (revenue stamps). They predate postage stamps.
The newspaper tax was repealed on 6/7/1848 by Ordinance Act of 1848.
There is information as to the monopoly of the Government in selling paper for newspapers and other periodicals and the revenue stamp was normally handstamped before printing. I would post examples later on. The question that remains is how was postage was paid during the pre-adhesive period? Was this over the counter, did they receive a marking?
Curiouser and curiouser. Tibet, Kew, loot - the VOC handstamp question. Now that's a post I want to start! And will!
I did not mean to cast aspersions about your ownership of these items but much material has gone missing from SA Museums in recent year, fortunately not on the scale of the looting of Iraqi Museums but then SA is not as ancient a country, if you ignore the Bushman's footprints in the landscape. Is it not better that appreciative collectors should preserve this material rather than entrust museum authorities who cannot safeguard it?
This is a fascinating topic. I have a Cape Government Gazette with a red stamp on it. I will try to find it.
When did it all start?
In 1826 (13 Oct) new regulations for the transmission of mail were published, including details for the transmission as well as the taxation of newspapers.
I attach a copy of the Government Gazette for the week (the inset is an extract from the bottom half of the newspaper), which is not shown in the image.
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Appearance of the revenue
It appears that the revenue started to be stamped on the newspapers from January 1827.
The earliest copy I have is attached.
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