1941-1952 SLOPER WARTIME PROVISIONALS

Roy Gault

Charles Jennings, in his ‘History of British Security Stamps’ published in 1968, acknowledges Keith Rymer Young as the discoverer of the so-called ‘Sloper Wartime Provisionals’.
Found mainly on the light colour issues of King George VI, these Perfins are characterised by the irregular placement of letters making up the perforated set of initials.

Early in the second World War, Sloper’s offices/works at 22 Budge Row, where the stamp perforation business was carried out, was blitzed during an air raid on London during the night of 10th May 1941. As a result, virtually all of their stamp perforating dies were destroyed.

Given the wartime shortages of manpower and materials, and the prevailing spirit of ‘make do and mend’, the simple remedy of improvisation using single letter dies would have been an obvious short term solution to the problem of keeping the stamp perforation business going. Patterns involving combination of letters could still be produced by passing sheets of stamps several times through the perforating machine using a different letter die at each pass. Inevitably, due to the very nature of the process, poor alignment and uneven spacing of letters resulted, and on occasions letters may be found to overlap. In extreme cases the final arrangement of the letters was not as originally intended! Such dies have the suffix ‘p’ added to their catalogue number. Slowly, over the next ten years or so after the blitz, the dies that were destroyed were replaced by ‘regular’ dies. The last ‘Wartime Provisionals’ were produced c1952.

Earliest known date: 15th May 1941 on “NB/ICo” (N0350.04p).
Latest known date: 3rd July 1952 on “K/CC” (K0300.02p).

Note:
The definition of a Sloper Wartime Provisional is a pattern of letters created using multiple strikes of (usually) different dies after Sloper’s premises were bombed in May 1941. The use of this particular production technique before that date (e.g. “FH/MB” F1830.01v, …), or after 1952 (e.g. “SR” S6210.02v) are given the suffix ‘v’ to signify ‘variation’ in letter positions.

For more details see ‘The Perfin Society Catalogue of Sloper’s Wartime Provisionals’ which can be purchased from our Publications Page or borrowed by members from our library.

CLICK HERE for the official list from the Catalogue Editor of all Wartime Provisionals currently known

Request for information!

Perfin Society member Michel de Beukelaar is interested in the relative scarcity of the Sloper Wartime Provisional dies, stamp details, and of course, post-towns and dates.

Furthermore Michel would like to record details of all known variations in positioning of the letters for this group of Perfins.

If you are interested in helping, please contact Michel for details:
or email wartimeprov at gmail dot com (with the appropriate symbols for at and dot)