1858 6d dull lilac and 1/- Vermillion

[John Hardinge]

I was scanning Trove for postmark related info and came across an entry that stated "the new stamps have arrived". These would be the 6d and 1/-. Date was Tuesday 14th, which would indicate that the new stamps arrived Monday 13.1.1858. Improves the information in Gibbons which is just "January".

[bill]

Very interesting discovery indeed. Do you have the newspaper reference?

[bill]

I had a look in Trove among Newspapers for January 1858
There was no sign of a report of new stamps arriving.

I have checked the calendar for January 1858 as shown.

January 1858
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
———————— –1 –2
–3 – 4 –5 – 6 –7 – 8 –9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31

{ I got this via the Terminal icon on an Apple Mac laptop
and used the command "cal 1 1858" to get the display,
edited it a bit to improve the result.

Trove agrees that 16 January 1858 was Saturday. }

So 13 January 1858 was Wednesday, not Monday and
14 January 1858 was Thursday, not Tuesday as claimed.
There may be a mistake.

Can John Hardinge please clarify?

[bill]

Through the courtesy of John Hardinge, it is possible to quote the following report
in the Launceston Examiner for Thursday 14 January 1858.

As usual, Trove doesn't always read the text correctly so we must clean up the bugs
by hand. Fortunately, this task is easy. The cleaned up version reads:

HOBART TOWN.
The Mercury states that the new postage
stamps have been received by the
Derwentwater. They are really a very
handsome design-far beyond those hitherto
in vogue amongst us.

Clearly, the new postage stamps referred to in the report can only be
the 6d and 1/- Chalons as the 1d, 2d and 4d Chalons had been current
ever since 1855.