Queensland 1 shilling mauve beer duty paper article extract

This is an extract from "Queensland Philatelic Fragments" by Samuel Dalby that appeared in the Philatelic Journal of Great Britain from 1913-15. This extract relating to the Queensland 1 Shilling Beer Duty Paper appeared on January 20 1915, p. 4.

One Shilling, Beer-duty Paper

Though sheets had been supplied to the Parcels Post branch during the last week of August, and dealers had also been able to obtain limited quantities at the Accountant’s  office during September, the one shilling on thick paper was first purchasable by the general public at the stamp counter, Brisbane, on 15th October, 1895. Whilst the writer would hardly go so far as to stigmatise this emission as unnecessary, its sale was certainly strung out for a period which was quite unwarranted by the small quantity printed; it was sold intermittently with the regular paper until late in 1897, a period of over two years.

The shilling on beer-duty paper was printed in pale mauve from the 1883 plate or a reconstruction of that plate. At column 1, line 12 (No. III), was a small white horseshoe-shaped defect which twice cut the dotted border and the outer white oval just above the O of “one"; that and three or four other, less prominent, varieties all appeared in the bottom line, not alone on the beer-duty paper, but also on the normal paper printings of about the same time. In a large unused block from the upper half of a sheet on normal wmk. paper. I found at column 1, line 2 (No. 11) a similar, but not quite identical, horseshoe flaw which did not appear on the beer-duty paper. The writer having no means of fixing the date of this block of stamps, he cannot opine if the fault developed after the printing on beer-duty paper, or if it existed prior to 1895 and had been eliminated by substituting a new cliché of four stamps. 

It may be remarked that both these "horseshoe " damages happened on a type Ill. stamp; one on lower left, the other on upper left, corner block of four. In the thick paper emission on line 4, column 7 (No. 37), the foot of the letter L closely approached the A of " Queensland," in some specimens the letters touched at points; an additional mark of identification was that the second dot in the outer border (above the centre of letter S of "Queensland") had a smaller white dot surmounting it. In the succeeding printing on ordinary crown over Q paper, the LA of this stamp (No. 37), became quite joined similarly to the well known type Il. variety of the 1d., 2d., 5d., and 2/-, but in the solitary specimen of 1/-, the variety occurred on a stamp of type III. In cliché No. 9. owing to the close spacing of the shilling stamps not fitting the Buncle No. 1 comb machine, they were perforated I2 with the Hughes & Kimber single line machine.