Anarchy Postmark, 1883

Hi all. Hope you've had a good summer.





I'm not sure what the postmaster was thinking of when he created the above killer, but I'm sure most people know what it stands for today.

Anyone else seen something similar?

-AJV

Basic letter "A" "Cork Killer" fancy cancel. What was he thinking? It all depends. It would probably be based on the volume of whiskey he consumed from of the whiskey bottle this cork came either directly before--during--or after he started carving the initial with his knife. The initial is not quite centered, so the cork was probably a bit too wet to work with and needed to dry out more...I'd guess he was pretty happy with his cork.

So you are saying there was a huge American corporation that was anarchist, with their logo slightly altered to disguise their politics?

I suspect it wasn't even intended to be an 'A'. The postmaster probably simply carved 3x grooves in his cork and, by chance, it looks like an 'A'. Could have just as easily ended up looking like a starburst (all intersect in the middle), or as a triangle (intersections more evenly distributed around). If he was really shooting for an 'A', he could have done a better job.

As an aside, does anyone know what the typical lifetime was of a cork canceller??? I would think they wouldn't last too long, but I really don't know.

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hy-brasil: Thank you for that example; I thought better of making the same point with up the evil triumvirate: Proctor, Gamble, and the Devil.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

It's obviously going to depend tremendously on how much mail was handled by a particular clerk or post office. And it appears some killers were used for a very short time (broken? clerk tired of the design?) and some were used until they were hardly recognizable fragments of the original design.

If really made of cork, killers would probably last maybe a couple of weeks (that's from my personal use of using wine corks for decoration). Many if not most in the Banknote period seem to be made of wood, probably lasting a couple of months to maybe a year likely made from a harder wood that would last. Known dates of use can be misleading, as some were use intermittently between the currently known date range. Also, there seems to be very similar designs being recreated over and over by the same postmaster or clerk being confused for one single design being used. There are at least a few killers from the Banknote period (a Death Valley, CA skull & crossbones for one) dragged out of the drawer and reused in the late 1920s fancy registry cancel period. So if lightly used (like from Death Valley) they could last a very long time.

To get a strong strike/truly kill the stamp and cancel a stack of mail quickly, cancels would be struck pretty hard. So the eventual switch to commercially made rubber and steel cancels makes sense.

Boxwood was often used, hard to carve but would last a long time.
Don

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Perhaps we forget just how many people back then would, at one point in their lives or another, need to whittle something.

Taking a knife (or other hard tool) to a piece of wood, for one purpose or another, would not have seemed quite so exotic as it might today.

The kid needed a couple of #2 pencils the other day, and sharpeners were nowhere to be found, so I took up a kitchen knife, and had my way with them.

And, then, in my best/worst Cockney, I added: "Aye, this is how we did it in the trenches, Lassie, with Mr Hun's shells bursting all around."

A good time was had by all.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I've no idea how many cancellations one could get out of a typical cork killer, but the series illustrated here -- "Evolution of a Killer" -- is suggestive. Showing the same device at 5 days, then at 30 days, after the first strike. Any idea why the carver might have introduced criss-crossed lines only after some days?

Two different killers, clearly; the middle horizontal space is different. If you compare the first and second covers, the cancel has worn considerably by July 5, with that middle horizontal space and spaces between the vertical bars being more open.

It's always nice to see a sequence of covers like this.

How is it determined that 'wear' is being shown in the two examples above? Is there some way to call this wear instead of two different inkings? Is there some way to determine that this is not just two different strike pressures? Or perhaps that one was cancelled on a softer surface?
Don

I would say that there is no definitive evidence of wear (as opposed to different inking / impression) between the first and second examples. On the other hand, I think it is plain that the third example IS the same killer -- there are too many coincidences otherwise. Look at the similarities at 4:30 (relatively thin ridge), 6:00 (squared-off outline), 7:00 (narrower ridge between two wider ones), 9:00 (wider base tapering to upper right), etc.

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I need to take fly-specking lessons; I don't see (or grasp) any of that.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Elizabethport: Great sequence!! In such a short time, this is not wear, but continued whittling during idle moments ... a widening of the original gashes and then adding more cross cuts.

Show me another sequence of 2 cancels where it was whittled in "idle moments". This was not done the lazy joker that's currently in my local P.O. Why would anyone bother, particularly when no effort was put into JUN 27 to clean it up? The second vertical gap from left is wider in JUN 27 than JUL 27 -- how could that happen? They are different. I suggest someone overlay JUL 27 on JUN 27 to see how well they match.


The full size version of the first 2 cover corners, with contrast and sharpening added.

Can we all agree the strikes are fairly close in strength? Can we all agree the ink color and therefore composition (colorant and oil content) are very close here if not the same? And can we agree that JUN 27 is a very good strike of probably an early state of the bar killer? And also the ELIZABETHPORT townmark is the same one on all 3 covers (dent in circle to right of the "T"?

This is a duplex cancel device. The townmark part is metal/steel and a ring or somesuch is attached to hold a removable (wooden) killer.

In JUN 27 it is clear to me the horizontal cut was made last and was, relative to what we see, made from right to left, leaving whiskers or points on the vertical bars in several places (see point 1 and other spots as indicated on JUN 27). These whiskers are what I mean by "not cleaned up". These are gone in JUL 2. That's wear there, however small. Even if JUL 2 was lightly inked, you'd think that at least one or two of those whiskers would show up.

Weak/light inking of the killer in JUL 2? It's slightly lighter than JUN 27, but only slightly. Comparing townmarks of both dates, they are very close in strike strength. So how can one side of the cancel be underinked and the other not? Further, the killer is completely on the stamp in JUL 2 where it should normally be struck stronger than the townmark; it is not.

In JUL 2, that horizontal gap has opened up relative to JUN 27 (point 2 shown in JUN 27). Also in the JUL 2 killer , the outer rim is almost gone (point 3 shown in JUN 27). Again, if weakly inked, the outer rim would probably catch at least some ink. What's going on here? Think of pounding in a wooden stake into hard ground. That stake end will mushroom, spreading out the end and rounding it out slightly as your hammer will not strike the end dead on every time. And so it is with this wooden killer, struck many times by July 2. It has spread out the killer, most noticeable in the center, and with the rim mushroomed out so it no longer contacts the stamp/cover. I see slight distortion of the vertical bars as well.

Weak inking, especially as weak as the JUL 2 killer is, would show some or all rounded ends to the vertical bars where they meet the horizontal gap. So more ink pooling on the cancelling device than full inking. The bar edges should be among the first places to be inked. There are clear squared-off ends on that killer, though very slightly rounded and are fully inked at the ends, not so much at their sides, especially in the upper row of bars.

And you'd ask "How could this cancel be worn in a week?" If someone has an 1860s PL&R or whatever they had then, or the P.O. report, we can get a rough idea of how many letters went through each month by the monies taken in by each post office. Unfortunately, we don't know how many cancelling devices Elizabethtown had back then. And I would think the majority of mail would come at the end of the month, sending bills, paying bills, reordering from suppliers. A further guess is that the killer was made June 27 to replace a worn one in anticipation of month-end traffic.

Also, one cannot say definitively that the three covers are in sequence. The cancel strikes in general quality and ink color/quality match very well, so I would say it is very, very likely. But without dated contents, docketing or receiving cancels, one cannot say the sequence is absolutely correct.