PERFIN THEMES

The Board of Trade was the first Government department to use perfinned stamps, which probably started in around 1880.

Many varieties of the design are known and for a long time were assumed to be fakes. However, this may be no more than natural variation between dies of a multi-head perfin. Indeed it has been suggested that they were never forged. However I have seen this perfin on a (mint) KGV 10s "Seahorse" design, which is well outside the period of usage of this perfin which prbably ended in 1905. Certainly I would treat any mint examples, such as those illustrated above, as being dubious.

H.M. Stationary Office

This office is the Queen's Printer of Acts of Parliament responsible for publishing governmental documents and making them available to the general public..

The first perfin design used by the was the "S-crown-O" design, which seems to have been introduced in late 1922. The perforator was to see heavy use as a result of which damaged partial strikes of the perfin are quite common.

The Post Office did not approve of perfin designs that included a crown. However it took them until 1948 to actually notice ! However in response to this the design was changed to the simple "HM/SO" design, of which three minor varieties are known.

Ministry of Munitions

This Ministry was formed in 1915 and issued perfins for use in the National Munitions Factories set up in various parts of the UK during World War 1.

Four dies have been identified, "HM/F" for "His Majesty's Factory", "HM/F/QF" for "His Majesty's Factory, Queensferry" (illustrated above), "NS/FF" for "National Shell Filling Factory" and finally "No2/N.F.F." for "No.2 National Filling Factory".

World War 1 usage means that all of these dies only appear on King George V issues.

Department of Scientific and Industrial Research

The department was set up in 1918 to promote and regulate scientific research. The department began to perforate their postage stamps in around 1937.

This is a fairly common perfin, and the many blocks that have survived that provide evidence that this was a multihead perfin die perforating 12 stamps on one row at a time.

Registry of Business Names

The Registry was set up in 1916 to record and later regulate the names of businesses operating within the UK. However it was not to use perfins until around 1939.

Unlike the previous official perfins, this die was used as a cancellation, tying a stamp to a document.