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The London Philatelist

Brown, Ewen, Giwelb, Hadlow, Mekeel, Morley, Ridpath and Wilson were well-known stamp dealers
who have been included in this category, since it is unclear whether their donations were made in
a personal or corporate capacity. In addition, two early female philatelists are also recorded to have
made donations, Miss A. Cassells, who made two separate donations and Miss Alice Zimmern who
made a single donation. Finally, Captain Charles Louis Norris Newmen, a notorious international
adventurer who left his mark within Africa, Asia and Europe, but nevertheless found time to donate
three items to the collection (Rogers-Tillstone; Birch, 2007; Scofield).

Stamp Dealers Pages Donations
Brown and Skipton 2 1
G. Hamilton Smith & Company 11 1
John Boulton and Company 1 1
Stanley Gibbons Ltd. 27 14
Theodor Buhl and Company 2 2
Whitfield King and Company 1 1
Other Organisations/Institutions
National Telephone Company 2 1
Post Office Department of Canada 2 1
All Soul’s College, Oxford 1 1
Keble College, Oxford 1 1
St John’s College, Oxford 1 1
Queen’s College, Cambridge 1 1
TOTAL 52 26

Table 4. Corporate donors to the Tapling Collection, 1891-1899

A number of corporate bodies also made generous donations to the Tapling Collection. The first
six were major philatelic dealers from whom Tapling had probably made purchases during his
lifetime. Stanley Gibbons Limited made fourteen separate donations to the Museum between 1894
and 1899; Theodore Buhl and Company, which purchased Pemberton, Wilson & Company - Tapling’s
favourite dealer - made two separate donations in 1894 and 1897; the others each made a single
donation. The ‘Brown’ in Brown and Skipton was, of course, the same William Brown that figures
in the list of individual donors.
The remaining six organisations can be categorised as stamp-issuing entities. The National
Telephone Company donated some of its own stamps, missing from the Collection, in 1894. Between
1893 and 1894 the bursars of several of the Colleges forming the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge donated sheets of stamps, used to prepay College mail being delivered by messenger.
Finally, the Post Office Department of Canada made a single donation of New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia stamps on 24 August 1894.
Finally, arranging the data by title, showing the Country or Issuing Authority, reveals the
widespread geographical coverage of the donated items, from sixty-seven different postal authorities
worldwide.
Donations to the Collection ranged from the commonplace to major philatelic rarities. In
addition to issued stamps, donations represented every conceivable format including essays,
proofs, sheets, blocks, pairs, errors, varieties, covers and partials as well as historic manuscripts.
It is well beyond the confine of a single paper to discuss each individual donor and donation
in detail. Therefore, a number of future papers will undertake this task during the coming
months and appear in future editions of The London Philatelist.

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