Spoon Cancellations of Great Britain and Ireland
Introduction
Spoon cancels, along with sideways duplex cancels, were the first duplex cancels anywhere in the world.They were part of an experiment to speed up the mail by eliminating the process of using an obliterator on the obverse of a letter and a datestamp on the reverse. It determined the design of postal cancellers in England, Wales and Ireland for the next 25 years, and was probably the first large-scale industrial work-study ever conducted.
Twenty-eight towns in England, one in Wales and thirty-two towns in Ireland were involved. The common factor is an overlap between the obliterator with its town office number and the datestamp, from which the resemblance to a spoon is derived.
The main experiment ran between 1853 and 1859. Most English spoons were re-cut so that there are 137 different varieties.
Some towns such as Cheltenham have only a single type; others such as Manchester have more than 30. Similarly big towns generally employed a large number of codes, while smaller towns employed very few.
A total of 90 Irish spoons were issued but only 82 are actually recorded used.
Dublin spoons have a completely different history to provincial spoons. The experiment started later than in England, but finished at the same time so that Irish spoons are less common than English spoons and through poor cleaning often have inferior impressions.
As a consequence Arundel's information on Irish spoons contains many errors.
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Frame 1INTRODUCTION SPOON CANCELS OF ENGLAND - SERIF LETTERS |
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Frame 2SIDEWAYS SPOON CANCELS OF ENGLAND
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Frame 3HORIZONTAL OVAL SPOON CANCELS OF ENGLAND (cont) |
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Frame 4HORIZONTAL OVAL SPOON CANCELS OF ENGLAND (cont)
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Frame 5SPOON CANCELS OF ENGLAND - PARTIALLY RIMLESS (cont) SPOON CANCELS OF ENGLAND - THE FINAL STAGE - A CIRCULAR DATER REGISTERED LETTERS WITH A SPOON CANCEL
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Frame 6SPOON CANCELS OF ENGLAND - LATE USAGE SPOON CANCELS OF WALES SPOON CANCELS OF IRELAND |
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Frame 7SPOON CANCELS OF IRELAND (cont) |
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Frame 8SPOON CANCELS OF IRELAND (cont) DUBLIN DIAMONDS |
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Frame 9DUBLIN DIAMONDS (cont) |