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12:15am - morning or afternoon?

Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 7:00 pm
by Robinr
Dear All,

In sorting through some old covers this morning I came across the attached, cancelled at 12:15am (not 12:45 as in the thread - apologies).
For me, this means a quarter past twelve in the morning, ie, 15 minutes after midnight.

Later, I picked up another cover for the same day, 13th May, 1937, that was cancelled at 12:15pm - different sender, different post-office, but I have mislaid that cover for the moment. Is this 15 minutes past noon? Or is it the opposite?

Since the day in question is a critical date for the issue and usage of the stamps, it is more than an idle query.

Help! Please.

Robin

Transfer from previous board: original post 1266

Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 7:05 pm
by mozzerb
Yep, 12:15am is a quarter past midnight -- it's before noon, after all! -- and 12:15pm is early afternoon. A large post office like Birmingham presumably would be cancelling mail in the middle of the night shift (the time slug on the machine wouldn't change throughout the run, of course, so it might have actually been cancelled quite a bit later).

I guess a dealer might be able to get hold of copies of the Coronation stamp early in the morning by favour. Or the main post office in Birmingham might have been open specially, perhaps?

Transfer from previous board: original post 1274

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 7:00 pm
by Robinr
Hi Mozzerb, thanks for your response! That is what I figured.

What was unsaid is that - sometime in the distant past! - I bought a blind bundle of "plain fdc" for the 1937 Coronation. It contained about 100 of these covers, all addressed in the same hand to the same person, hand written in pencil. They were all cancelled in Birmingham, but roughly a quarter each at a different time, the 12:15 was obviously the first, then late morning, mid afternoon and late evening.

As you suggest, the sender must have acquired some stamps (I'd guess a sheet) by favour the evening of the 12th and started to write up the envelopes, going to the post box on the corner after each batch had been done.

Most covers cancelled on the 13th May 1937 bear pm cancellations, with most of the morning ones being at 11:15am and a very few at 9:15am. It would be difficult to imagine anything different since the post offices would not be open to sell the stamps until at least 8:00 and possibly 9:00am. The queues to but the new stamp and get the FDC sent must have been terrible! The 12:15am cover then must be unique (all 25 of them!).

As an aside, I found a cover on which the sender had written in ink across the upper part, "Sent by the very first post after the Coronation!" and it had been cancelled on the 14th!

Cheers,

Robin