The circular date stamp marked the letter as mailed in Lyon. The PD-in-rectangle denoted payment of postage through to a foreign destination (Udine, Italy). The 1818 in a diamond-of-dots canceled the stamps.
Figure 1
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Part 1 - The Masking Stranger
|
Several years ago, I borrowed a stamp club's copy of the Yvert et Tellier
French catalog to check my collection and duplicates. I was looking for
varieties, including plate flaws, those fly specks that result when a
printing plate has a defect that marks the stamps produced. On used stamps,
the cancellation often covered just the spot where the plate flaw would be.
The cancellations didn't come in just one shape or size; they varied as
needed to cover all evidence of the flaw. This led to the question of why
there were so many different cancellations, what they meant, and if they
could be helpful. Thus, à la "The Lone Ranger," the masking stranger on
the stamp became useful rather than threatening.
After several months of checking literature, Internet sites, and thousands of stamps in dealer stock and local auction lots, I knew enough to be dangerous. This article shares the knowledge, so you too will be able to endanger your wallet and dealer stock. My thanks go to all who contributed knowledge, material, or images to use in these articles. |
|
Postal markings had been applied to stampless covers for many years before
France issued its first adhesive stamps. When stamps came into use, the
postal service needed to "cancel" the stamps on the cover so they could not
be reused. France already used circular date stamps to mark the origin of
the mail, as well as its intermediate and final stops. Post office
officials wanted another mark to cancel the stamps. This gave rise to the
typical cover shown in Figure 1.
The circular date stamp marked the letter as mailed in Lyon. The PD-in-rectangle denoted payment of postage through to a foreign destination (Udine, Italy). The 1818 in a diamond-of-dots canceled the stamps.
|
Figure 1 |
 Figure 2 |
The earliest common cancellation was a diamond-shaped grill of six rows of six smaller diamonds. This grill (Figure 2) came into use with the Ceres issue in 1849. |
| Starting in 1851, if there were multiple stamps to cancel (or even if there were not!) an "endless" grill could be used. This grill was made up of small parallelograms, five rows deep and "endless." Figure 3 shows an endless grille au rouleau on a cover, canceling a single stamp. |
 Figure 3 |
 Figure 4 |
Sometimes the difference between six rows of diamonds (normal grill) and five rows of parallelograms (grille au rouleau) is the easiest way to tell which cancellation is on a particular stamp. Figure 4 shows a late-usage example of the normal grill, more than doubling the value of this item. |
|
There was a second imperforate Ceres issue. This second set (called the
"Bordeaux" issue) was printed during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Both
Ceres issues had lines of shading under the eye. On the first issue, the
shading lines curve clockwise from the upper left to the lower right. On
the second imperforate issue, the lines are horizontal or run from lower
left to upper right. By the time the second imperforate Ceres issue was
produced, France had issued two perforated sets of stamps, so some of the
Bordeaux issue stamps were "privately" perforated, mostly 13x13, although
some were 15x15 or 16x16.
By the time of the second imperforate Ceres issue, one of the most common cancellations was the numerals-in-diamond-of-dots. The numerals came in two sizes--early small petits chiffres and later large gros chiffres. Each number represented a unique French post office. In Figure 1, 1818 is the petits chiffres cancel for Lyon. |
Detective Case
|
The stamp in Figure 5 looks like a 10c Bordeaux, not a 10c
perforated Ceres from the 1870-75 series. The 15x15 and 16x16
perforated Bordeaux stamps come from the departments (provinces) of le Cher
and Lot-et-Garonne, and from the Marseille central post office. The gros
chiffres 3485 cancellation is from St. Armand-en-Puisaye, which is in the
department of Nièvre. Nièvre is adjacent to le Cher!
The stamp probably is a privately perforated copy of the Bordeaux issue. The lines of shading under the eye buttress this conclusion as they run southwest to northeast, as in the Bordeaux issue. |
 Figure 5 |
Part 2 - Losange
 Figure 6 |
 Figure 7 |
In France, from the time of the imperforate Emperor Louis Napoleon stamps (1853) through the perforated Head of Ceres issue (ending in 1875), the most common cancellation was an 8x8 diamond-of-dots (losange in French). In the center, it had short numerals or letters called petits chiffres (PC), or tall numerals called gros chiffres (GC). PC numerals were about 4 mm high and GC numerals about 6 mm high. Figure 6 shows the arrangement of dots for the PC cancellation for Alexandria, Egypt. Figure 7 is the GC cancel for the same city. |
|
PC cancels were used from 1852-1862. Thus they were common on the
imperforate and perforated emperor stamps. The initial PC cancels were
assigned to individual French cities and towns in alphabetical order;
PC 1 was for Abbeville, and PC 3703 for Yvré-l'Evéque. PC 3704 (Alexandria)
through PC 3709 (Smyrne) were for foreign cities, PC 3710-3739 were
Algerian post offices, and PC 3740 began a sequence for newly created
post offices anywhere.
GC cancels came into use at the time of the emperor-with-laurel-wreath issue of 1863. Like PC cancels, GC cancels were assigned alphabetically. GC 1-4361 were original assignments, and GC 4362-4999 were later metropolitan post offices. GC cancels 5000-5078 were for Algeria, 5079-5103 for offices abroad, and 5104-5172 were later Algerian and foreign cities and towns. GC 6000-6449 were for even later metropolitan post offices. Generally one cannot determine the cancel number when it contains only 6s and/or 9s, unless it has an associated date stamp to reveal the city. For example "66" could be "99." But for some of the GC 99 cancels, the "99" is underlined. While there had been limited movement of PC cancels from one city to another, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 severely upset the GC numbering system. When France lost the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany as part of the peace treaty, the French postal authorities took the GC cancels from the lost cities and towns and reissued them to new post offices. The only way to determine the origin of a GC number that is known to have been used twice is by an associated circular date stamp with either the town or date legible, or by its presence on one of the perforated Ceres stamps issued after the war. Both PC and GC cancels exist in red or blue, but not for all locations. With some of the smaller numbers in GC cancels, the space at each end was filled with a horizontal line, a stylistic variation. The GC cancels also exist with smaller capital letters under the number. These represent branch post offices in major cities. For example, GC 2145A was the Les Terreaux branch post office at Lyon (GC 2145). If the smaller letters are "BG" they represent mail from the postal branch at a train station. BG stands for boîte gare or station (post)box. For GC cancels, a sub-category is those remade because the earlier cancel was lost, too worn to use, or damaged. The new cancel was often different enough to be distinguishable from its predecessor. GC 99 is a remade GC cancel. |
| When GC cancels came into use, the obsolete PC cancels were sent to the city now using the number. Thus PC 1002 for Courtenay was sent to Cherbourg, GC 1002. Occasionally the PC cancel was used again, creating PC of GC usage. It is reported that postal officials in Aïn Béida (PC 4116), Nice (PC 2656), and Sétif (PC 3735) retained their PC cancels and continued to use them. In general, the old PC cancels were used for registered mail, for the GC cancel if it were misplaced, or during periods of high mail volume. Figure 8 shows a PC of GC cancel. |
 Figure 8 |
| How does one recognize PC of GC usage? If a PC cancel is on any stamp from the emperor-with-laurel-wreath or a later issue, it is PC of GC usage. There are some situations when the PC cancel is more valuable in its original location and others when its value increases in PC of GC usage. |
 Figure 9 |
When the losange went into use, Paris post offices used letters and
numerals with serifs. Later, branch post offices in Paris used letters
and numerals without serifs. Near the end of the losange period, the
star-and-number cancel came into use at the Paris branch post offices.
All three of these are shown in Figure 9.
Any cancel that appears to be a GC cancel with a one or two digit number usually is a Paris six-pointed star cancel. |
| France used sans serifs letters in the losange for rail route cancels. For example, "TB" in a losange was for the Toulouse-to-Bordeaux rail route. Figure 10 shows another rail post losange, the "(P)GSO" cancel from a Paris train station, the Gare du Sud-Ouest. |
 Figure 10 |
| How does one know the letters in Figure 10 are PGSO? In a losange, the characters are centered. "SO" is right of the centerline (from top center dot down), so there also must be two characters to the left of the centerline. The only four-character combination ending in "GSO" is "PGSO" for Paris Gare du Sud-Ouest. In Figure 10, the right tip of the loop of the "P" just exists, looking like a missing perforation. |
 Figure 11 |
The losange existed with an anchor in the center for use on ships, as
shown in Figure 11.
France also used sans serif letters for special post offices. Examples included the Exposition Universelle (EU) of 1867 and the 1860 Corps Expeditionnaires de Chine, Bureau A (CECA). |
| Losanges also came with nothing in the center (losange évidé) (Figure 12), and with dots filling the center (losange plein). A losange plein on an imperforate copy of the emperor-with-laurel-wreath or last Head of Ceres issue strongly suggests that the stamp is a French Colonies general issue imperforate. Many colonial cancels had dots filling the losange. |
 Figure 12 |
 Figure 13 |
It is even more likely that a losange plein cancel comes from a colony if
the cancel is in color. Color is much more common as a colonial cancel
that as a metropolitan one (Figure 13).
There are French Colonies general issue stamps with losange numeral cancels. While such cancels are uncommon, the design, color, and denomination of the colonial and metropolitan stamps was the same. The only difference was that the metropolitan stamps were perforated and the colonial stamps were not. This made it was easy to use the colonial stamps on metropolitan mail if they were at hand. |
Detective Case
| The PC cancellation in Figure 14 looks very strange! The number is not centered in the losange. The circular date stamp is for Cherbourg, but the PC cancel looks like 1202, and Cherbourg is PC 842. The date is 1874, but PC use essentially ended in 1862. The diamond-of-dots cancel is 8 dots "wide" and 10 dots "high" but should be 8x8. |
 Figure 14 |
|
Analysis: the clerk canceling the stamp seems to have used the handstamp
once, but not been satisfied with the resulting (partial) strike. The
clerk canceled the stamp again, a little lower and to the right, producing
this "higher-than-normal" diamond and off-center number.
This explains the difficulty in reading the second numeral, which could be a 2, 1, or 0. The appearance of a "1" is caused by the 1 from the first strike. The appearance of a "2" is from the top of the first 0 from the second strike and the 1 from the first strike. Thus it is a 0. What leads to belief that the cancellation is 1002? The French postal service moved the PC cancels from their original offices to wherever the same number was to be used for GC cancellations. If the GC cancel were unavailable, the PC cancel would be used. In this case, Courtenay's PC 1002 was moved to Cherbourg, now GC 1002, for use as needed. Thus 1002 is indeed a losange cancel for Cherbourg. |
Part 3 - Sage
| In 1876, France released a new stamp series showing allegorical figures of Peace and Commerce with hands joined across the globe. The stamps commonly were called the Sage issue after the designer, J. A. Sage, whose name appeared in micro-printing below the lower left inner frame line. Slightly earlier in 1876, the circular date stamp (CDS) became the usual stamp cancellation. From 1849 to 1876, France had used a separate marking (grill, petits points, gros points, losange, etc.) as a cancellation. During those years, the CDS was elsewhere on the envelope to identify the place of origin (front) and on the reverse as a transit or receipt mark. Using the CDS, cancellation of ordinary mail became a one-cancel rather than a two-cancel process. |
 Figure 15 |
Figure 15 shows the CDS, in its wavy-lined ondule version, canceling the stamp. In many cases, an ondule cancel was on mail canceled at the postal window inside railroad passenger coaches. The cancellation in Figure 15 was for mail on the Gap to Marseille train. The ondule cancel came in various sizes with later cancels being larger. Railpost cancel shapes included an ondule-in-circle (express mail train), concentric circles (night mail train format), octagon in a circle (day mail train), and circle-in-ondule (a rare railpost trial cancel). A later article discusses railpost cancels in more detail. |
| Common CDS formats were Type 84, a double-circle CDS with the inner circle composed of line segments, and the "Type of 1885" with three concentric circles (the outermost composed of dots--which became dashes if the handstamp were dirty). The normal cancellation was black, but red, blue, and violet cancels existed. The most common red CDS was the cachet à date des Imprimés for printed matter or journaux for journals and periodicals. Various forms of the Imprimés cancel were used throughout the 19th century. Another printed matter cancel was a CDS with PERIODIQUES (Figure 16) in the bottom of the annulus, marking payment of postage on periodicals. |
 Figure 16 |
|
As in the PERIODIQUES cancel, occasionally the CDS included designations
for special mail services. Other special markings included:
The CDS also could mark special events. Two examples were the 1889 Paris International Exposition and the 1900 Paris Exposition. "1889" at the bottom fully identified the cancel from the 1889 exposition as it was the only 19th century stamp cancel with a four-figure year. |
 Figure 17 |
The cancels in Figure 17 looked unusual.
The one in the upper left was a test cancel used in the Paris post office at Place de la Bourse. All metropolitan French CDS cancellations with dotted or dashed circles had them on the outer ring, even the trial cancels. If a cancel had a circle of dots as an inner ring, the cancel probably was from a colony. This is one way of separating used copies of imperforate metropolitan stamps from their often less expensive French Colonies general issue brethren. As a reminder, cancels with short dashes were really ones with dots but a dirty handstamp. Hexagonal cancellations commonly were used at privately operated auxiliary post offices. Some of the privately operated offices were in towns with greatly varying population, such as resorts. These had a dashed-inner-circle. A solid inner circle in a hexagon (Figure 17, upper right) was used at urban auxiliary offices offering a limited range of services. |
|
Common circle-in-octagon cancels were for late mailing or for mail canceled
on a ship (paquebot). E1, E2, or E3 in the upper left of the central date
stamp showed payment of a fee (levée exceptionnelle) for sorting mail after
the last mail sort was done but before the mail had left (Figure 17, lower
left). This late-sorting fee began in 1863 and was 20c for the first
quarter hour late, 40c for the second quarter hour, and 60c for any greater
time. In 1887, the fee became a flat 15c, and in 1895 it dropped to 5c. A
related postal marking was aprés le départ which marked mail posted after
the last collection had taken place either with or without payment of a
late fee. In this case, the piece of mail would be held until the first
collection the following day.
The easiest way to identify paquetbot cancels is to find the letters "PAQ." A typical mail boat cancel would have either the letter indicating the line or the port of departure and the destination shown i.e. MARSEILLE and, "PAQ. FR. V NO 8" for the French paquebot route V from Marseille to Reunion and Ile Maurice route, on ship number 8. The GC in losange (diamond-of-dots) cancel was officially out of service (except in Shanghai, GC 5104), but was still used if needed (Figure 17, lower right) during the deluge of cards at New Year's Day (jour de l'an in French). During this annual rush, all available canceling devices were used, including the old GC cancels. |
|
Paris branch post offices had their own identifying devices to mark the
origin of mail. These were also used as cancels, but only at the time of
the New Year's Day mail rush. Figure 18 shows one of these cancellations.
All had large numerals in a medium-sized circle. Arabic numerals were used to identify each branch. Roman numerals were used to identify arrondissements, major divisions of Paris. The arrondissements marking was quite uncommon on Sage issue stamps. |
 Figure 18 |
 Figure 19 |
Until this time, all mail was hand-canceled. An early mechanical canceling machine was the Flier canceler. It produced the flag cancel shown in Figure 19. The Flier was able to cancel 38,000 letters an hour. An earlier device to speed mail handling was the Daguin machine which simultaneously applied both the stamp cancel and a separate receiving office CDS to the envelope. The Daguin devices had been in use for some time by 1900 and survived for some fifty years. |
| With the end of the Sage issue, the 19th century closed and a surfeit of cancellation types appeared. Some unusual early 20th century cancels are the topic of a future article. |
Detective Case
|
Figure 20 shows a very strange cancellation. This was the first example
of this cancel encountered by the author.
Usually the Sage issue cancel is a circular date stamp. None of the cancels discussed above look like the one in Figure 20. An e-mail correspondent supplied the explanation: It's a "typographical" cancel, that is to say it was used for printed matter. At the time, the French had a curious system of affixing the stamps to the paper before it was printed! Thus the printing on the paper served as the cancellation for the stamp! |
 Figure 20 |
|
The printing on the stamp probably is part of the paper's date,
SAMEDI 7 MAI, Saturday 7 May.
The format of typographical cancels was limited only by what newspapers might have had on their front pages. These cancels were interesting because the post office gave special dispensation for postage stamps to be canceled by other parties, in this case the newspaper printers. The reason was to allow the papers to be printed at the last minute and rushed to the station for shipment to the provinces without the need for the papers to be stamped and taken to the post office. It was a good example of the post office reacting to commercial needs. I am deeply indebted to Peter R.A. Kelly for his help with this article. Mr. Kelly's recently published The Type Sage Issue of France, 1876-1900, A Study of the Postmarks and Postal History has a wealth of information on Sage issue postmarks, and Mr. Kelly has been unfailingly helpful. |
Part 4 - The Circular Date Stamp
| France began to use postage stamps in 1849 with the first imperforate Head of Ceres issue. Postal authorities decided to cancel the stamps with something other than the circular date stamp (CDS) that already marked the origin of the piece of mail. The first parts of this series, "The Masking Stranger" and "Losange" discussed and illustrated the grill and the diamond-of-dots cancels commonly used at different times during this period. This section covers the circular date stamps which inadvertently or intentionally canceled some of the first twenty-six years of French postage stamps. |
 Figure 21 |
On the first imperforate Head of Ceres issue, a grill is the common stamp cancellation, although the grill cancels were not available at most post offices until January 13-15. For the first two weeks of January 1849, and occasionally later, a CDS is the cancel, as in Figure 21. At this time, the CDS came in large, medium, and small sizes. This appears to be the medium size. |
|
The flower petal shape in the annulus of a double concentric circle
(Figure 22) marks a mail boat cancel.
The mail boat CDS is used on both Emperor Louis Napoleon issues and on the emperor-with-laurel-wreath issue. |
 Figure 22 |
 Figure 23 |
Figure 23 is a rail route cancel, for the Bordeaux-to-Toulouse route.
Those with copies of the Losange article can find its losange converse there, a TB in the center for the Toulouse-to-Bordeaux route. |
|
Figure 24 shows the more common circular date stamps used in this time
period.
On the far left is the small double-circular Type 15. AFFRANCHISSEMENTS in the bottom of the annulus denoted payment for a special mail service. Next is Type 16, the only single-circle CDS used for regular mail in the 19th century. In the center is the larger double-circular Type 17, with "(49)" at the bottom to identify the départment (region) in which the stamp was mailed. The Type 17 bis is next; in the bottom of the annulus is the name of the street where the post office was located. This format was called the "Streets of Paris" cancel. Type 17 bis also existed with the name of the department or specifics such as gare (train station) affranchissements, départ, and étranger, at the bottom. (The Ceres catalog calls this Type 18.) The last cancel in Figure 24 is Type 24 from Port Said, Egypt. Type 24 had three concentric circles with the outer one dotted. |
|
As mail volume increased, cancellations changed to increase information,
legibility, and service life. For example, the Type 16 is merely a Type
15 without the inner circle. This allowed insertion of a marker
identifying which of the day's mail sortings processed a given piece
of mail. Type 17 was a larger cancel created to improve legibility and
service life. All classes of post office always had the same general
format of cancel at the same time. Thus a full-service office always had
a cancel with a solid outer circle, although Types 15, 16, and 17 were in
service at the same time. Offices offering fewer services always had a
cancel with a dotted outer circle, although the dots often were dirty
enough to leave short dashes on a piece of mail.
Cancels came in both blue and red. The most common red cancels were the cachet à date des Imprimés, for printed matter and journaux, for newspapers. The CDS became the intended cancel in 1876, perhaps as a result of France joining the Universal Postal Union that year. |
French Colonies General Issues
|
Now let's take a look at the general issues for France's colonies
(Figure 25).
Many cancels were very similar to metropolitan French cancels. The losange with "MQE" was used in Martinique. The circle-in-octagon was the mail boat cancel mentioned in the "Sage" section. Of special interest is the CDS on the right-hand stamp. The inner circle of dots in the St. Pierre et Miquelon cancel was a typical colonial format. As was true in metropolitan France, dots became short dashes as dirt built up on the handstamp. No cancel from metropolitan France had an inner ring of dots or short dashes. |
 Figure 25 |
Detective Case
 Figure 26 |
Is the stamp in Figure 26 a colonial or a metropolitan stamp?
A dealer had it priced a French 1850 imperforate 25c blue Head of Ceres.
Background:
|
|
The blue dots* suggest the 25c Head of Ceres stamp of 1873. It has such
dots in the least expensive of the three types. But that stamp is not
listed imperforate, and its date should be between 1871 and 1875. The
same blue dots appear on the French Colonies 25c blue Head of Ceres
(imperforate) stamp, but the cancellation year would be 1872-1877.
Even if it were the 1850 stamp, the date should be 1850-1852.
The key is the ring of short, closely spaced dots forming the inner circle. This typical colonial cancel makes it very likely that the stamp is from the French Colonies general issue. The city probably is Pointe-a-Pitre, capital of Guadeloupe. The date probably is a smeared or altered 1874. *: The blue dots in the upper corner flower petals can't be seen at this resolution, but five-power magnification is adequate to reveal them. |
Part 5 - Emperor to Ceres
| In 1853, France issued imperforate stamps showing Emperor Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III). The usual cancellation was the diamond-of-dots, the losange. Another common cancel was a circular date stamp. But there were other cancellations in use, and occasionally a supplemental marking ended up on the stamp. |
|
Some of the cancels used many small dots, petits points, to form a
pattern. The cancel in Figure 27 was a circle filled with small dots.
Figure 28 shows four other patterns: a rectangle (upper left), a rectangle with sloping columns (upper right), an octagon (lower left), and a star without a center number (lower right). |
 Figure 27 |
 Figure 28 |
 Figure 29 |
Cancels using larger dots were still in use. Figure 29 shows a pattern of medium-sized dots in six rows. |
| By 1863, when the Emperor Napoleon III with laurel wreath stamps appear, the star usually had numbers in the center, identifying Parisian branch post offices. This cancellation looked like the lower right cancel of Figure 28 but with a large numeral in the center. This was the same time at which the large-numerals-in-diamond-of-dots, losange, cancels went into use for cities other than Paris. |
|
Mail handled by ships or French mail posted in foreign ports came with a
variety of cancellations as seen in Figure 30.
It shows a British postal cancel (Malta) in the upper left, a Spanish cancel from Barcelona in the upper right, a cancel from Napoli (Naples) in the lower left, and, in the lower right, part of the FRANCIA VIA DI MARE cancel for French mail posted with a ship captain headed for an Italian port. |
 Figure 30 |
 Figure 31 |
 Figure 32 |
A somewhat common foreign postal marking was a red "LONDON PAID" on French
mail transiting London (Figure 31).
For those who recall the Sage section in this series, the cancellation in Figure 32 may be familiar. |
|
This was a typographical cancel, created by printing a newspaper with
the stamp attached to the paper before printing. Thus the newspaper
was ready for mailing without the post office having to cancel a stamp
on each copy.
Postmen were supplied with marking devices to use on mail collected on their route. These include a single capital letter in a circle (used to mark mail collected from a rural mailbox) and an OR in a circle. OR stood for origine rurale, canceling stamps on a letter picked up by a rural postman and later delivered by him. As with other cancels mentioned but not illustrated in this series, images of these are available from the author by e-mail. |