Highlights of the R M Phillips Collection

Go to Full list of volume titles for the Phillips Collection.

About Reginald Phillips

Reginald Phillips was an entrepreneur from Brighton. He had a strong interest in charitable work, particularly in helping children with sensory disabilities.

Phillips had a great passion for stamps, and his wealth allowed him to build up such a remarkable set of material he felt it had to be shared. In 1965 he presented his albums, including many of his own notes on their contents, to Postmaster General Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who accepted them on behalf of the nation.

Phillips expressed the hope that a museum might be founded to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the stamps and other postal treasures he had gathered together. The presentation of the Phillips collection online is the ultimate expression of this hope, reaching a truly global audience.

About the Phillips Collection

The Phillips Collection is an unparalleled philatelic collection, chronicling many of the important changes to the postal system in the 19th century. In an age when we can communicate at the push of a button, it can be hard to imagine that using a pre-paid label to stick on a letter was once such an incredible idea. Yet telephones, text messages, and email all owe a debt to the power of the first postage stamp - the Penny Black - and to the postal reforms which inspired mass communication.

The Phillips Collection charts the development of these reforms, from design to different experiments with production, and from the iconic Penny Black to the 'Jubilee' issue of 1887. It contains rare examples of original stamps, experiments with paper and ink and documents on postal history. What follow are just some of the highlights of the history that the Phillips Collection tells with links to examples within the collection.

Postal reform

In 1837, Rowland Hill wrote a booklet called Post Office Reform. He wanted to change the way people paid for postage, making postage cheaper but increasing the use of the mail. In a letter written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in November 1839, he suggested that ‘It [the New Postage Act] should introduce the practice of charging by weight’. A 14-page draft of this letter, is included in Volume I of the Phillips Collection (use the numbers at the top of the image page to skip forward through the 14 pages).

A transcript of this letter (PDF, 30KB) is also available.

Treasury competition

Once Hill’s idea had been accepted, the Treasury ran a public competition for ideas to put Hill’s notions into practice. Various ideas came to light, including pre-paid envelopes and marks. Rowland Hill himself suggested “a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash”. The Phillips Collection contains most of the competition entries outside the Royal Philatelic Collection. On Volume I, page 15 there are two typical entries by James Chalmers of Dundee.

The first stamps

One result of the Treasury Competition was the use of Queen Victoria’s head as a means to avoid forgery. The Penny Black was created using a combination of the head, put together with other security devices by the printers. The head was based on the City Medal by William Wyon, the foremost medallist of the time, and shows the young Queen Victoria created from a sketch when she was aged just 15. Wyon’s medal was sketched by Henry Corbould and this was used by Charles and Frederick Heath to engrave the head on to a die for printing by line engraving.  The Phillips Collection contains a bronze and a silver
Wyon medal.Volume IV, page 3 of the collection shows the first ‘first day cover’ in the world: a Penny Black used on 6 May 1840, the first day of validity.  Two days later, on 8 May 1840 , the Twopenny Blue was introduced.

Mulready envelopes

Prepaid ‘Mulready’ stationery was also introduced in 1840.  Envelopes and lettersheets were designed by artist William Mulready as alternative ways of prepaying postage, but his fanciful design was caricatured mercilessly. Volume II, page 16 shows an example of  Mulready used on 1 May 1840 when it was first put on sale.

Rainbow Trials

Even before the first stamp was issued it was found that the red Maltese Cross mark used to cancel a stamp could be removed from the Penny Black. This meant unscrupulous people could reuse a cancelled stamp, depriving the government of revenue. Black ink seemed to be the best, but this did not really work well with a black stamp!

The ‘Rainbow Trials’ began in March 1840: they were ink trials to find an alternative colour using a specially created printing plate. Volume VIII of the Phillips Collection shows many beautiful examples of the wide range of colours tried, before red-brown was agreed upon and the Penny Red was introduced in 1841.

Perforations

To begin with, individual stamps were snipped from a sheet of 240 with scissors (there were 240 old pence to the pound). Between 1848 and 1854, various trials were carried out to try and find a better way of separating stamps from a sheet.  Different printing methods had to be used, as the wet printing process used for the first stamps caused each sheet to shrink as it dried. Examples of some of these trials can be found in Volume XXII.  In early 1854, the first officially perforated Penny Red was put into circulation.

Postal Fiscals

The Inland Revenue was created in 1849 by combining the Stamps and Taxes Office with the Excise Office. ‘Fiscal stamps’ were used by the Government Revenue departments to indicate the payment of a particular duty or tax. This is the same idea as a stamp or label to show paid postage revenue.

The revenue ‘stamps’ embossed the relevant page in the records. The Inland Revenue felt that flat printed stamps could be an alternative to embossing. The first flat printed fiscal stamps were registered in October 1853. In 1881 these labels were made valid for postage, and became known as ‘postal fiscals’ – an alternative to ‘proper’ postage stamps. Volume XLIII includes many examples of Inland Revenue postal fiscals. 

Railway Letter Post

Volume XLIII also includes material on the Railway Letter Post.  This started on 1 February 1891, and allowed letters to be sent between two railway stations, where they could either be collected or posted on. This was a fast and direct service for urgent mail, and to send a letter via the Railway Letter Post cost 2d on top of the ordinary postage rate.  Volume XLIII includes an artist’s drawings, proofs and actual examples of 3d Railway Letter Post stamps.I It also includes a nine-page document from 1890 about the inauguration of the Railway Letter Post (use the numbers across the top of the webpage to scroll through the different pages).

Jubilee Issues

Despite the name, the ‘Jubilee Issue’ stamps were not intended to mark the Golden Jubilee year of Queen Victoria in 1887.  As Reginald Phillips explains in his introductory notes to Volume XLI, “It was the result of several years' work by a special committee and the staff designers of Messrs De La Rue, the printers, to produce a set of stamps each value of which could be easily and clearly differentiated by Post Office Sorters even under adverse operational and lighting conditions.” (Go to catalogue entry for the page which displays this text).

The first stamps of this set were issued in 1887, hence the Jubilee name, but more continued to be issued until 1901. Volume XLI contains essays, proofs, imprimaturs (the sheets of stamps submitted to Somerset House for endorsement to authorise the use of the printing plate), 'specimens' and unused issued stamps from this set.  Of particular interest in Volume XLI are the ‘Jubilee’ colour trials.  Volume XLI, page 36 shows a series of colour trials for one of the last stamps of Victoria’s reign, the bi-coloured 1/- of 1900.