I discovered this article in “The Postage Stamp” (1913). I have read through literally thousands of philatelic articles and have barely seen any reference to these issues. It gives good historical background to the stamps and their postal usage. Collectors of Antarctic material should also find things of interest here.
Last week we had something to say in The Postage Stamp, concerning the recent extraordinary attempt to foist the stamps of the recent Antarctic Expedition upon the public as philatelic and philanthropic investment. The general press knowing little of the ins and outs of Philately did not perceive the impropriety in the name of the Antarctic postmark in a London office. Nor did the newspapers realise the very slender claim these Antarctic labels have upon the interest of the philatelist. It is typical of the generosity of the London and provincial press that they gave the widest publicity to the needs of the fund, and incidentally to the prices at which these labels were being sold in the interests of the Fund.
If the circumstances attending the offer of these labels were not so discreditable to the present conductors of the Fund we should have welcomed this publicity given to a Fund most deserving of public support. But philatelists may with good reason protest against this philandering with their study, whether for general philanthropic or for private purposes.
There are several points concerning the offer of the Antarctic stamps which seem to call for further attention. There are rumours that the number of penny stamps on hand is very large. We are told that these stamps were issued for the postal requirements of the Expedition, but “members of Expedition had 24 each at first.” The stamps to be bona fide postal issues should have been accessible to member the Expedition for all their reasonable requirerments in the way of postal communication, and the limitation to 24 stamps, when such large numbers of the stamps had been printed points to a pre-conceived plan to unload a large remainder stock at high premiums after the Expedition.
Yet we can scarcely conceive that the gallant officers who led the expedition and whose tragic
end is recorded as one of the greatest glories of British heroism, would have planned such a cheap-jack scheme as is now presented to the British public. A man of the late Captain Scott’s calibre is scarcely the type of man to mis-use his honorary office of postmaster to the extent of postmarking fictitious dates on stamps to give them a false philatelic significance. It is admitted that the stamps are being postmarked in London as required, and the gullible portion of the public in sending along its cheques or postal orders, has only to say “we want postmarked copies” to have them neatly postmarked in the office of the Fund, or of the Stamp Fund.
Then when appeals are made, and gratuitously advertised through the courtesy of a press, ever-ready to support an appeal in a noble cause, the question of commissions ia apt to be glossed over. In the present case varying commissions on the sale of the stamps by dealers, by newspapers, etc., have been offered, and it is reasonable to assume that the philatelists organising the matter are informed by Mr. Vallancey, the philatelist in question, that the “full trade terms” at which he can offer the stamps are 21s. 3d. and 4s. for the stamps to be sold at 25s. and 6s. respectively. It would be interesting and instructive to know just what portion of the public moneys contributed for these stamps at the rate of 25s. and 5s. actually go to the purposes of the Fund, and how much of it goes into the pockets of intermediaries between the public and the Fund.
Among the questions which naturally arise in the minds of thinking philatelists who deplore the debasing influence of such issues and offers upon their pursuit: We should like to ask if the stamps were the property of the Fund at the time of the recent public offer of them? We should like to ask where the New Zealand Government comes in in this scheme? The late Captain Scott, as honorary postmaster of Victoria Land was, presumably, responsible to the New Zealand postal administration as to his stock of stamps, and as to the duties of his office, and it would seem to call for some explanation as to how his successor can have been justified in bringing the large stock of these stamps back to London instead of surrendering them to the New Zealand Post Office. We should also like to know why, if these stamps were intended for bona fide postal use 24 each were doled out to members of the Expedition?
We should further like to know by what process of reasoning the New Zealand postal authorities could have permitted any postmaster to fix the official postmark to show a date long since passed; by what reasoning indeed should the postmaster have retained the official postmark die after ceasing to hold office as a New Zealand postmaster?
It would also seem to call for some explanation as to how it should be permitted to parties in this country to have in their possession such a postmark die, and how it should be permitted to them to use an official mark of a colonial postal authority on any stamps whatsoever. The governments concerned may have sanctioned each of the several details of the scheme, but if that be the case they have given their sanction to an abuse of the postmark, and the Antarctic postmark of Jan. 18, 1913 1.30 p.m. can no longer be recognised as evidence or proof of posting.
The stamps, of the earlier – the Shackleton – Expedition of which there was evidently a considerable remainder also, were, we understand, sold to a well-known dealer and offered by him for sale; but we think he did not invite the public to buy those stamps in the sense of contributing the purchase money to the Funds of the Shackleton Expedition. His offer appears to have been a proper enough business transaction.
One feature of the offer of the Scott Expedition stamps, which we can scarcely ignore, unpleasant as it is for us to have to criticise the actions of an official associated with us on the Council of the Stamp Exchange Protection Society, is that the present scheme is being engineered by a philatelist, one of whom we should have expected higher discretion. Mr. F. Hugh Vallancey, whose name was appended to the information sent in slip-form to the press, is the Hon. Secretary of the Stamp Exchange Protection Society, an organisation which is doing and we hope may long continue to do much to improve the general character of the membership of the organisation and conduct of stamp exchange clubs. These clubs need Protection in various ways, and Philately should be the better for the work Mr. Vallancey is doing in connection with this Protection Society. But philatelists need protection in other ways, and it could have been wiser if, while protecting them with the one hand, Mr. Vallancey had not used the other to forward so speculative a scheme as this of the London-postmarked Antarctic stamps among collectors and the public.
In the circumstances the reports of the success of the appeal do not cheer us; we are told that £80 worth were sold the first day after the publication of the appeal in the press, and doubtless the postmarker of Farringdon Street, or wherever the operator may he, has been kept quite busy. But think of the proud possessors of these London-postmarked copies fondly imagining that the hand which struck that postmark at or near Cape Evans on January 18, 1913, was but slenderly nourished on the flesh of penguins, and was bitten by the Antarctic frosts. These are the souvenir-collectors of Mark Twain’s travels!
If you wrote an article about life we’d all reach enligthenmnet.
Dear Chuckles,
That’s probably true but our primary objective at Philatelic Database is to enlighten philatelists not to discuss philosophy…