Telegraph stamp

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Telegraph stamps are stamps specially printed for the payment of telegrams. The customer completes a telegraph form before handing it with payment for the clerk to stick and cancel the stamp prior to transmission of the telegram. The majority of telegrams were paid by means of purchasing normal postage stamps (although many of these are distinguishable from ordinary postally-used stamps by their telegraphic cancels). Some countries issued specific telegraph stamps because the telegraph service had its own administration, or private companies issued their own stamps as the telegraph network was in private hands. UK is a typical example of the development of telegraph stamps, with private companies such as the Electric Company issuing stamps before nationalisation in 1870. Post Office Telegraph stamps were issued in 1876 but were withdrawn in 1881 after which ordinary postage stamps were used. Telegraph stamps are not listed in general stamp catalogues, although they are collected by specialists. Occasionally postage stamps ran out and telegraph stamps were used for letter postage as an emergency measure, for example in Spain in 1879, and these are accepted by philatelists as collectable postage stamps.

One sideline on the story of telegraph stamps is the Stock Exchange Forgery of 1872 which was discovered when old telegram forms came onto the stamp market in the UK in 1898. An enterprising clerk in the Stock Exchange Post Office,London, had supplemented his income by taking the one shilling telegram fees and used forged one shilling green postage stamps on the forms pocketing the money. The culprit was never identified but examples are now sold for ten to twenty times the price of the genuine article.