January was a members’ day where we had four of our members displaying.
Simon McArthur was first up with two displays, the first one was on the ‘German Day of the Stamp.’ The second display was on Censored mail from the Netherlands 1945-47. We saw various censored mail from civilian and companies with different manuscripts and postmarks, along with some airmail and postcards.
Robert Prentice was next up with Naval Postal History where he showed us a cross section of various ships from Admiral Nelson’s ship, the H.M.S Victory to ships in WW1. We enjoyed seeing letters from various notable Admirals and Captains. Robert explained the difference between a battleship and battlecruiser, mainly that the armour was less on a cruiser that enabled it to go faster and what a ships’ rating meant, mainly the amount of guns on board.
In the second half we enjoyed a wonderful display from Michael Lockton who gave us a history of ‘Compulsory Registration,’ for letters. This started on 1 January 1841 with a price of 1/- (one shilling). Michael showed us many covers that had various marks/manuscript wording/cancellations/blue crayon covers throughout the years, culminating in registration labels, introduced in 1908 and Postage Due labels, introduced in 1914. It was interesting to note that Scotland had different registration labels.
Our last speaker was Michael Cope who showed us social history of the Outer Hebrides. His wife’s grandfather, Archibald Chisholm was the Sheriff-Clerk for County of Inverness twice from 1878-1881 and 1913-1933. He was immersed in the well being of the islands and was also a keen photographer. It is this that Michael showed us his many photos that were made into postcards.
A very enjoyable, fascinating and varied afternoon.