Adelaide Lucy Fenton

Listen to audio.

Adelaide Lucy Fenton was born in Bath in 1825 to Captain John Fenton and Sarah Fenton. She was the first notable female philatelist and philatelic journalist who adopted a scientific approach to philately. From 1863, she contributed many articles to the Stamp Collector’s Magazine and The Philatelist. Her first input was a letter published on the 1st December 1863 entitled ‘The Bahamas Stamp – Yams versus Shells’. On the 1st June 1864, her first article was published, ‘The Morality of Postage Stamps’, where she condemned dealers of forgeries and dealers with questionable financial morality. She wrote under several pseudonyms such as Herbert Camoens, a Portugese poet; Fentonia; Celestina; Virginia and SJV which was an abbreviation of her home in Bristol, St John’s Villa. She was the first female visitor to attend a meeting at the Royal, on the 6th December 1873, where she submitted a paper on ‘The Secret Marks on the Stamps of Peru’ at the invitation of Judge F.A. Philbrick QC. The paper was later published in the Stamp Collector’s Magazine in January 1874. Fenton became a member of the Society on the 19th April 1879, remaining a member for only one season. She attended one meeting on the 17th May 1879 before resigning nearly a year later on the 20th April 1880, allegedly due to ill-mannered treatment by a former Society Secretary and due to the unexpected attendance of a dealer at a meeting. On her death on the 6th February 1897 in Bristol, she bequeathed her collection of stamps to Elizabeth Arabella Nutting. Her annotated copies of the Stamp Collector’s Magazine and The Philatelist were acquired by the Society in 1909 when they were auctioned by Messrs Ventom, Bull & Cooper. In the copies are Miss Fenton’s notes, pasted letters, newspaper clippings and facsimiles of postage stamps and labels given away with each issue. The copies contain Miss Fenton’s bookplate which show her family crest, the name ‘Adelaide’ enclosed in a border and the Latin inscription, ‘Virtue brings its own reward.” Adelaide never married. She was buried on the 10th February 1897 in Bathwick, Somerset. *The oil painting is currently on loan from the family of Miss Adelaide Lucy Fenton. Image with kind permission of the family.*