Octagon Crown censor on St. Helena 1941 cover
Posted:
Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:16 pmby hahnkd
Can anyone identify the Octagon Crown Censor PASSED / P.142 marking on the pictured St. Helena cover? It's not noted as a St. Helena marking so was probably applied in England?
Thanks, regards Klaus
Re: Octagon Crown censor on St. Helena 1941 cover
Posted:
Thu Mar 23, 2017 6:59 amby dannmayo
Hi,
The Octagonal handstamps with the P#s were used in the UK. They are shown in the CCSG Catalogue UK section.
The # on the PC 90 tape can be identified to location used through the PC66/PC90 database on this website.
As you probably know, Mr. Uhrig was a serious cover collector during WWII. He had lots of mail sent to himself.
Dann Mayo
Re: Octagon Crown censor on St. Helena 1941 cover
Posted:
Sat Jul 01, 2017 6:16 pmby Ray Murphy
Hi Klaus,
Agree with Dann - Morenweiser discusses these on UK, Vol 1, p.55. There were originally Army Intelligence stamps, but were turned over to Dept of Information 26 April 1940 in the UK. Outside of the UK, apparently they went to MI5. Some of them used in British colonies countries, in particular Jamaica, were censoring done by MI5 instead of the local censor operation which was run by Jamaica rather than the UK. These are mainly seen on the POW camp items with a D/5 (any number 1-7) they are also on other mail where they were looking at the various dissident/communist/foreign refugees groups. Specific groups were one plotting against governments in Haiti, Dominican Rep., and Cuba. This marking by MI5 stopped when the UK took over the Jamaican censorship in Oct 42. (I'm fairly sure the work continued, however).
This highlights the difference between what was important to England vs. what was important to the colonies. Some of the letters/reports I've seen from the British censorship side really knocked the local censors as being incompetent or worse (with some justification).
Hope this helps,
Regards,
Ray