London District Office Cancels
Introduction
This display is of the postmarks used in the London Districts – oval cancellers with the numbers in circles, from 1844 to the 1900s. This seems a long period, and it is, but the variants in cancellers are quite interesting. I think so anyway!The collection starts with the 1st series and, to some, the best. These were first issued on the 20 May 1844 and continued for a long time for some offices (the latest I have seen used is 1889 of Bow 12), there were recuts of these cancellers with some striking differences and other times subtle differences.
There was a transition from the 10 rides or routes to the division of London into districts in 1857 and this gave rise to the use of district initials when addressing a letter.
Then the 1861 series and the introduction of the letter B to the office numbers and generally these were all sub offices, their parent office holding the 1st series canceller. Finally, we lead to the 3rd series – vertical ovals, which in my opinion are much understudied and just as scarce as the earlier issues.
As a conclusion there are examples of town office cancellers which are different in format so can be regarded in a different light. Also, unusually, some of these offices were issued duplex cancellers.
The pages are shown in the "frames" in approximately the way they were shown on the day for the live display – i.e. blank pages at the end of some frames to make neat sections.