UK - BPA Examination of Mail, New Device

[dannmayo]

Herewith, a British Philatelic Association handstamp not listed in Torrance and Morenweiser, incorporating the 3 Brenner Street address, tying a plain brown resealing tape on an incoming cover from the US. It appears that there is something in front of the /BPA, but I can make little or nothing of this. (The first letter may be a P, raising a suspicion of PTS. But that is mere speculation.) The tape is tied on the back of the cover by a London 16 July 1941 postmark. There are no Postal Censorship markings of any sort on this cover.

This would appear to establish the existence of an examination procedure different from that described in T&M.

Can anyone provide additional examples of this marking, or of other BPA markings not listed in T&M.

[gmark]

Hello Dann
Maurice Buxton is the specialist in this subject.
I will alert him to the query
Graham

[mozzerb]

I have one or two examples of this on outgoing mail -- it appears to be simply the standard office address stamp -- but the use on forwarded incoming mail is interesting.

My guess is that it represents mail to a known dealer that was passed to the BPA for checking, but turned out to contain simply regular correspondence rather than anything of interest under the trade/censorship regulations -- and hence did not need the "examined by the BPA" label.

Alternatively, given the odd scarcity of those labels compared to cachets on outgoing mail, it may represent a quick-check procedure for trusted dealers. I don;t have the references handy at the moment, but was Bird one of the actual BPA control committee?