Talk:Postage stamps and postal history of the Cape of Good Hope

Cape of Good Hope Postal History
Dear Colleagues,

As a result of research I am currently doing on the postmarks of the Cape Post Office, a number of statements by previous researchers in the field have come under review. In writing about the introduction of the "Triangle defacing stamp of 1853". in 1943 Adriaan Jurgens stated that "the Triangular defacer used in 1853 ... appears to have been taken from the defacing Stamp used by the Stamp Office, Cape Town, in 1837" and that "the large triangle was used for defacing the embossed Revenue Stamps on documents" (p55).

In 36 years of archival research, most of it unrelated to postal matters, I cannot claim to have recorded a single example of such a canceller being used to obliterate revenue stamps on Cape documents. The only examples I have seen to date can be found on pp128-130 of Jurgens' book, but they purport to represent the postal use of revenues, and not the revenue cancellation of revenues. They are also generally held by other experts in the field to be forgeries.

I would like to ask the assistance of collectors and other historians in confirming, or refuting, the claims made by Jurgens which I have quoted above. It would also be valuable to confirm whether a similar barred canceller was ever used to obliterate revenues in Britain prior to 1837 or, indeed, at any time.

With kind

Franco Frescura — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.214.35 (talk) 08:46, 31 May 2015 (UTC)