Cover Calendar For Month And Day -Pics

Just see that you don't, Smauggie, just see that you don't

Found some for January. Here's the 15th. Noted that an esteemed member of Canada's Senate seems to be using the senate post office to order some tailor made shirts from London. I trust that they didn't appear on his expense account too. I think I am a tad late to demand an audit.

I've covers, mostly us modern, if I can unbury them from the back of the closet.
Guess this is the motivation to finish cataloging and ...

Can we back up to Jan 1?
<edit> Knew I'd find it if given time.



Here's Jan 6.

and Jan 8 another year.

Ok, heres my calendar spot.....

Oh... I do like that cover Philb!

And no one had a cover for the 16th? Here's a different one for the 17th, an hour early because I am not staying up for another 4 hours until midnight catches up.

Asleep at the wheel, Your Honour

Here's a 16 January 1906 Indian postal stationery card from Lucknow to one of the several thousand places called Kishangarh in India



and a 17 January receipt CDS of Bhiwaniganj in Jhalawar State (issued stamps 1886 to 1900) from (an unreadable village in) Jind State in 1925



Not close to each other geographically, but the one follows the other in the catalogue. Nice piece of alphabetical symmetry!

For Jan 17th, an FDC of U.S. Scott 1073 -- the 3c Ben Franklin issued this date in Philadelphia, PA. According to Scott, 351,260 covers are said to have received the first day cancellation.

And the 16th makes it on under the wire!

Lovely cover but I do have a question. Were the postal systems of these states, some of which were pretty small, I gather, administered by the British as a part of the larger "India" post office or were they entirely under the jurisdiction of the individual issuing power? Seperate members of UPU and international agreements and the like?

An excellent question, Backroads, and as usual with the Indian States, there's no simple answer.

First, the UPU. This part is simple: no State was a signatory to the UPU. Part of the deal between the British and the Indian rulers was that they could remain in place, as long as they had no relations with any external power or body. (The British unseated the Maharaja of Indore - a major State in Central India - in 1903 ostensibly because he was mad (which he was) but in fact due to rumours he'd been in contact with the French and Germans.)

However, from the 6 June 1950 until September 1951, Travancore-Cochin stamps were valid for postage to foreign destinations. Examples (even philatelic ones) seem to be very scarce. Mail from other States did occasionally slip through, like this from Jind



but it was never legal or authorised.

The six Convention States concluded an agreement with the British in 1885, under which the British supplied Indian stamps (and postal stationery) to be overprinted with the State's name. The State could continue to run its postal system, within its own borders, and the stamps would be accepted for mail throughout India. The States had to keep to the British Indian postage rates (which were usually higher than in the non-Convention States.) I've shown examples above.

Generally, the stamps of the non-Convention States were only valid within their own borders. Mail from the States to British India either had to be franked with British Indian stamps, or had to have both State and British Indian stamps. This cover was sent from Jhalawar State to the neighbouring (Convention) State of Gwalior:



It has a Jhalawar stamp (SG 2) on the British Indian ½ Anna postal stationery envelope. This could cut two ways: mail from outside a State, addressed to a place where there was no British Indian post office, could be carried by the State system, and was sometimes charged. This card



was sent from a town in Hyderabad State to a town in Jhalawar State which didn't have a British Indian PO. The card was carried to the State capital, Jhalrapatan, and was then carried on by the Jhalawar system, and the small black Jhalawar Postage Due cachet was applied in the top left corner.

Finally, two exceptions. Cochin and Travancore States in the southwestern tip of India had an agreement to exchange mails with each other, which the British allowed. Hyderabad, the largest State, was allowed to send its government mail anywhere in India, without using Indian stamps




and also to use its own official stamps to send mail from anywhere in India back to Hyderabad. (I don't have an example of this to show.)

Sorry for that very long-winded explanation, Backroads, but it does show why the Indian States can be so much exasperating fun

Thanks Tony! Actually, I love it when a simple question can provoke such a detailed answer. Being a paper person at heart, I am now going to experiment with trying to print the answer without getting the whole thread.

Day late, dollar short; here's the 16th of Jan.

Here we go with the Indian Convention States again, for the 19 January (well, it's 14 minutes away for me ...)



This one was used in 1932 from the small town of Bhensoda in the former State of Gwalior to Sambhar Lake, a centre of the salt trade in Rajasthan. No prizes for guessing what the correspondence was about, then.

The two cobras and Sun motif on the card, and the cobra in the Bhensoda CDS, refer to the legend that the founder of the ruling house of Gwalior was abandoned in a field as a baby. Two cobras, recognising the importance of the infant, came and shielded it from the sun by spreading their hoods to shade it. All the postal stationery of Gwalior showed the cobras and Sun, in different forms, and many Gwalior cancellations did, too - including some with the cobras crawling around the top of the cancellation.