The
Penny Red, issued in 1841, succeeded the
Penny BlackThe Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 May, 1840, for use from 6 May of that year...
and continued as the main type of
postage stampA postage stamp is adhesive paper evidence of a fee paid for postal services. Usually a small rectangle attached to an envelope, the stamp signifies the person sending it has fully or partly paid for delivery...
in the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and IrelandThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927...
until 1879, with only minor changes to the design during that time. The colour was changed from black to red because of difficulty in seeing a cancellation mark on the Penny Black; a black cancel was readily visible on a Penny Red.
Initially some of the same plates that were used to print the Penny Black were used to print the Penny Red and about 21 billion Penny Reds were printed by Messrs.
Perkins, Bacon & CoMessrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co was a printer of bank notes and postage stamps, most notable for printing the Penny Black, the first stamps, in 1840.- Origins :...
. Initially the stamp had no
perforationPerforation refers to the puncturing of a material with a harder object to create a hole or aperture.-Methods of perforation:Perforation or microperforation can be created by pins, needles, die and punch or laser.-Pins and needles:...
s, and had to be cut from the sheet using scissors in the same manner as for the Penny Black and the early printings of the
Two pence blueThe Two Penny Blue was the world’s second official postage stamp, issued after the Penny Black.It was issued in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in May 1840, and was essentially the same format as the Penny Black...
. Perforations, (experimental gauge 16), first came into use in 1850 and were officially adopted in 1854, (in the same size as the experimental issue). The experimental issue can be distinguished from the general issue as the later was applied to stamp which used a different alphabet type for the letters in the lower corners. Each stamp has unique corner letters AA, AB, AC ... AL etc, so its position on the plate can be identified.
In January 1855 the perforation size was changed from 16 to 14 as it was found that the sheets were coming apart too easily. The reduced size allowed the sheets to remain intact until pressure was applied to force the separation.
The stamps were printed in sheets of 240 (20 rows of 12 stamps), so one row cost 1
shillingThe shilling is a unit of currency used in current and former English Commonwealth countries and still used in countries which have become republics, such as Kenya. The word shilling comes from schilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of...
and a complete sheet one
poundThe pound sterling , often simply called the pound, is the currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and British Antarctic Territory...
. This, 240 stamps per sheet, configuration continued with all British postage stamps issued until 1971 when
decimal currency was introducedDecimal Day was the day the United Kingdom and Ireland decimalised their currencies.-The old system:Under the old currency of pounds, shillings and pence, the pound was made up of 240 pence , with twelve pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a...
when the sheet size was changed to 200, (20 rows of 10 stamps) making the lowest value denomination, (half pence), one pound per sheet.
On 1 April 1864 the stamp was issued with the plate number engraved in the design, in the left and right side lace work. At this time the stars in the top corners were also replaced with the same check letters as used in the lower corners, but in reverse order.
Because of wear, over 400 different plates were used to print the Penny Red. Two different basic
watermark----A watermark is a recognizable image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness when viewed by transmitted light , caused by thickness variations in the paper. There are two main types of watermark, the Dandy Roll process, and the more complex Cylinder Mould process...
s were used for the paper, small crown, (on the early issues) and large crown, introduced on 15 May 1855. The first stamps printed on the large crown watermarked paper showed two small vertical lines in the central portion of the crown. Later printings showed a revised watermark on which these central lines are not present.
The era of the Penny Red came to its close at the end of 1879, along with Perkins Bacon's contract. It was superseded by the
Penny Venetian RedThe Penny Venetian Red was a British postage stamp equal to the value of one penny. Issued in 1880, it was designed and surface-printed by security printing company De La Rue...
printed by
De La RueDe La Rue plc is a British security printing, papermaking and cash handling systems company headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire. It also has a factory on the Team Valley Trading Estate, Gateshead...
, which was in use for a little over a year before being succeeded in turn by the long-lived
Penny LilacThe Penny Lilac was the basic penny postage stamp of Great Britain from its first issue on 12 July 1881 and was used until 1901. It superseded the short lived Penny Venetian Red because the Customs and Inland Revenue Act of 1881 necessitated new stamps that were also valid as revenue stamps, and so...
.
See also
- Archer Roulette
The Archer Roulette was the first type of perforation used as a means of separating postage stamps in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Henry Archer, an Irish businessman working in London, presented the British Government with this method of postage stamp separation...
- List of British postage stamps
- List of notable postage stamps
- Postage stamps and postal history of Great Britain
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Great Britain.The postal history of Great Britain is notable in at least two respects; first, for the introduction of postage stamps in 1840, and secondly for the establishment of an efficient postal system throughout the British Empire,...