The 1880s when stamp collecting came of age

n the 1850s, a decade after Great Britain introduced Penny Blacks as aids to rapid and inexpensive postal communications, the general public, spurred on by sensation-mongering newspaper reporters, believed with unswerving conviction that anyone who collected used postage labels, as stamps were known at that time, must be up to no good. It was common knowledge, they asserted, that gangs of unscrupulous confidence tricksters had developed scientific methods to remove obliterating marks from used stamps so that they could be fed back into letter delivery systems for a free ride in a postman’s sack. In truth, that very fraud had been perpetrated within a few days of the first postage stamps going on sale in 1840. Hungry, under-fed office boys began experimenting with the basic cleaning fluids kept in Victorian sculleries from the moment they were sent out to buy Penny Blacks and post their company’s office mail. The boys soon learned that oil-based obliterating ink could be removed with the swift pass of a bit of rag soaked in a solvent; and that one penny could then be safely pocketed to buy an evening meal. Here is a typical newspaper