Unlike the hand press used for the stamps where the image
was printed from a plate with recessed impressions, the plate
used for the steam press required a raised or relief impression.
This allowed the plate to be inked by passing under a roller
before having the paper rolled over the plate via the cylinder
thus allowing the whole process to be combined into one
operation.
The plates or formes were created from twelve
identical stereotype plates cast in an amalgam of lead, zinc and
antimony – and they were cast from plaster of Paris moulds
which were all taken from one original plate.
of one or two shil lings depending on the denominations)
were required for each forme.
The size and complexity of
the design meant that each of the stereotypes required
correction.
On Ap ril 10th Henry Cole wrote to John
Thompson “Mr.
H ill is desirous that, without delay you
examine the ster eotypes which have been taken from the
brass plate and t o do whatever is requisite in order that they
may be ready for the press on Monday [13th].”.
On Monday
April 13th Rowlan d Hill called on Thompson to pick up 36
plates only to fin d that 24 had already been returned to the
printers.
On that day Hill also made the last addition to the
stereotypes by in cluding a unique “A” number between 1
and 210.
These a ppear randomly on the formes although
the omission of c ertain numbers suggest several of the
stereotypes were unusable.
Eight presses were put into
operation during the first week of printing that actually
began on Tuesda y April 14th indicating that 96 individual
stereotypes had been produced.
The plate was made by John Thompson (1785–1866), the
pre-eminent wood engraver of the day, who was charged with
cutting the image in relief on brass.
This must have proved
somewhat difficult as Hill did not receive a finished proof from
the brass plate until April 1st.
Numerous proofs do exist from
the brass plate in various stages of completion however it
was not until the discovery of the Wallace correspondence
that a stereotype proof dated March 15th 1840 proved that
the design must have been substantially complete by the
second week of March.
The taking of these first stereotypes
highlighted the weakness of the background design and led
to an overall strengthening of the lines, not an easy task when
dealing with a relief engraving.
The early stereotypes did allow
for at least one forme to be produced for comparative essays
of the side tablets that were to accompany the design, the
earliest of these dating from March 20th.
A letter from Henr y Cole to William Mulready on April 15th
containing a 2d.
le tter sheet overprinted “PROOF” reads “My
dear sir, Here are specimens of the real thing now printing
at the rate of seve nty thousand per hour.”.
A similar proof in
the Wallace archiv e may well be the adjoining stereotype and
was presented to him by Francis Baring on the same day.
Of
the eight presses, four were for 1d.
lettersheets, two were for
1d.
envelopes, and one each were for the 2d. stationery
Each
sheet took approx imately five seconds to produce compared
with a minute and a half for every sheet of the stamps.
On April 3rd Francis Baring sent a copy of the finished proof
to Queen Victoria with a memorandum from Mulready and
Thompson explaining the design.
On Monday 6th Hill’s
diary notes “Met Thompson Pressley and E.H.
[Edwin Hill
had been appointed to supervise the manufacture of the
stamps etc at Clowes’s] to superintend the arrangement of
the several parts of the covers and envelope stamps.
Left
Clowes’s people taking stereotype casts under direction of
E.H.”.
This and several surviving proofs annotated by Hill
confirm this as the date the design of the side tablets were
approved.
Stereotype production continued all week and, on
Thursday 9th, Hill confided in writing in his diary the pressure
and time constraints he was working under: “E.H.
is making
great exertion, he is at Clowes from 6 in the morning till 10 at
night.
They seem to think at the Stamp Office that the whole
machinery is to be set to work without any trouble on their
part.”.
On April 10th Hill took copies of the proof taken from
the brass plate to the National Gallery.
THE WALLACE C ORRESPONDENCE
The Wallace corre spondence was originally contained in
a binder belongin g to Robert Wallace.
It had passed from
Wallace to the Cal dwell family in Scotland and they had
displayed various parts of the collection at local philatelic
societies through out the years.
In 1991 it was consigned to
Cavendish Philate lic Auctions who sold it to an overseas buyer
in its entirety.
It w as then broken up and the three major pieces
were separated.
I n chronological order: the earliest known
1d.
Mulready stere otype proof a91 presented to Wallace by
Rowland Hill on M arch 15th; secondly, the April 10th document
presented here; a nd thirdly, a 2d.
Mulready letter sheet dated
April 15th, fresh o ff the steam presses at Clowes, that had also
been presented b y Francis Baring.
This latter was the bottom
At
right-hand copy fr om the sheet of twelve, with the stereo
number A99.
APRIL 10, 1840
The security paper for the issued stationery came from
John Dickinson and Sons based in Hertfordshire.
His silk-
thread paper involved embedding lines of colored silk in a
continuous web of machine-made paper while still in the pulp
stage.
The idea had been inspired by the government rope of
the day, as intertwined in the braid was one white strand to
denote its official status.
The paper was prepared at Apsley
Mill near Rickmansworth and it appears that it was favoured
for the stationery from very early on.
An early essay for the
London District Penny Post in 1837 had featured the paper
and had been widely circulated gaining particular praise for
its protection against forgery.
Even though the contract for
the supply was opened to public tender in January 1840 the
contract was awarded to Dickinson at the beginning of March.
On the morning of Friday April 10th, 1840 Rowland Hill made
Francis the three-mile journey from his residence at 1 Orme Square in
Bayswater to his office at 11 Downing Street.
It was nearly the
end of a very busy week.
The previous Friday April 3rd, Queen
Victoria had declared herself “much pleased” with the design
by William Mulready for the envelopes and wrappers.
On
Monday he had been able to finalize the inscriptions that were
to accompany the design with William Clowes and Son, the
printers, and John Thompson, the engraver.
The first plate for
the new Postage Stamps had been completed on Wednesday
April 8th by the engravers at Perkins, Bacon & Petch and
was set to begin printing only for the want of the first reams
of the new crown watermark paper.
The presses at both
establishments were being prepared and, hopefully, full-scale
production would begin the following week.
Both the public and
the Government were growing impatient for the appearance
of these new methods of prepaying the mail that had been
promised for March yet until this day only a very select few had
seen the actual designs.
time Hill, a famed early riser, leaving for work,
Baring, Chancellor of Exchequer, and Robert
Wallace, M.P.
were preparing to go to bed.
The three-day
debate on the motion against the Whig government on the
question of the Opium Wars with China had been defeated
by a majority of a mere nine votes at 4:30 a.m.
that morning.
Both had voted against, in support of the government,
following the marathon twelve-and-a-half-hour session of
Parliament.
The identically ma rked Mulready, likely the adjoining copy, which
would have been t he second removed, was sent to William
Mulready and is no w housed in the British Postal Museum.
It is possible that this was when the notations on the Wallace
document were w ritten.
The note at the bottom of the
document states “These come into public use on the 6th of
May”.
Rowland Hi ll had visited both printers the previous
day (April 14th) w ith the intention of fixing the date for the
introduction of th e new stamps and notice of a pending official
announcement w as made the following day in The Times.
Wallace must hav e made a special allowance for this visit to
Downing Street as he would have had to leave London on
that day in order t o return to Scotland in time for Easter, the
journey then takin g three days by rail and stagecoach.
He did
not attend that af ternoon’s closing session of Parliament.
It was almost certainly Francis Baring who advised Hill to visit
the Royal Academy who were met “in council” at the National
Gallery, as the approval for the Mulready by the Council of
Royal Academicians was regarded as essential.
It was Baring
who, through Henry Cole, had suggested Mulready as the
artist for the new postal stationery.
Baring’s family had a long
history of patronage of the Royal Academy and, as such, he
may well have intended to attend the meeting.
Unfortunately,
the House of Commons was in session and the affairs of State
took precedence.
Production of the finished stereotype plates of the Mulready
began on April 6th 1840.
Twelve plates (with a sheet value
142
143