french-document

Je collectionne des autographes et aussi des timbres fiscaux. J’ai ainsi acquis ce document financier dont vous trouverez des vues en attaché. Les vues fournies ici ne sont pas très bonnes. Si vous le souhaitiez, je pourrais vous adresser ultérieurement de meilleures photos de ce document qui est de bonne qualité.

Ce document porte sur le montant de 200 000 livres sterling (la livre sterling étant choisie comme monnaie internationale - une livre valait, semble-t-il, à ce moment-là un peu plus de 25 francs-or francais). Il est daté du 9 août 1871 et signé du ministre des finances français Pouyer-Quertier. Sur le recto, ce document comprend divers cachets : un cachet sec du Ministère des finances français, un autre de l’Agence financière du Gouvernement français à Londres. Le document est d’ailleurs validé, verticalement, par le délégué du Trésor français (à Londres) le 26 août 1871.

Sur le verso, il y a une réception manuscrite de la Reichshauptkasse du 24 août 1871, signée de deux responsables ; mais il y a aussi un cachet rouge de la London Joint Stock Bank signé du Chief Cashier et enfin les timbres fiscaux, datés à la main du 6. 9. 71 ( ?). Ces timbres fiscaux portent une surcharge « Cancelled TLJSB » ( The London Joint Stock Bank).

Vous-même et des membres de votre association connaissez certainement ce type de document. Je vous serais très obligé de toutes les indications que vous pourriez éventuellement me donner, notamment sur le revenues stamp à 5 £, sur sa date de parution et d’usage, éventuellement, si cela était possible, sur ce type de document.

Dear Secretary

I am writing to you (in French) about an 1871 revenue document, bearing on the reverse a block of 20 Foreign Bill £5 stamps of the United Kingdom.

I collect autographs and also revenue stamps, and acquired this document recently. I am attaching scans, though these are not very good – I can try to obtain higher-quality images of the document if you would like.

The document concerns one of the payments made by the French government to the German Reich after the war of 1870-71, as part of the total ransom of 5 billion gold francs which the French negotiators agreed to pay. This document relates to a payment of 200,000 pounds sterling (the pound sterling being selected as international currency – at this time £1 was worth just over 25 gold francs). It is dated 9 August 1871 and signed by Pouyer-Quertier, the French Minister for Finance.

There are various handstamps on the front, including those of the French Ministry of Finance, the French Government’s Agency in London, and the delegate of the French Treasury (in London) dated 26 August 1871. On the back, there is a manuscript receipt of Reichshauptkasse of 24 August 1871, signed by two officials, and a red handstamp of the London Joint Bank Stock with the Chief Cashier’s signature. This document thus circulated between three European countries.

Finally there are the revenue stamps, cancelled 6. 9. 71 (?) in manuscript and overprinted Cancelled TLJSB (The London Joint Bank Stock).

I think that the payment to which this document attests is exceptionally high – over 5 million gold francs. The total revenue franking is certainly also exceptionally important.

I am sure that you and other members of your society will be familiar with this type of document. I would be very grateful for any further information you can provide about the revenue stamps and the document itself.

Please excuse my not writing to you in English, but feel free to answer in English.

Yours sincerely
François Pétry

What a pleasing document! Certainly of a rarity surpassing, probably of historical interest as well, and worth a good bit to interested Revenue collectors. (Barefoot lists a single used £5 green at £15, so a block of 20 on piece has got to be worth £300 as an absolute minimum, and I would expect it to go for at least double that.) But it seems to be entirely in Ordnung in terms of the levying of (Foreign) Bill duty, though it took my shaky maths a minute or two to work out. Duties requiring the use of adhesive stamps for foreign bills were introduced in 1854 [not universally popular: see attachment from my local paper three years ago], at which happy time all bills worth more than £4000 were taxed at £2.5s. Unhappily for our Franco-German friends, in 1860 the rate was raised to a duty of 10s for every £1000 or part of £1000 in the case of all bills for amounts in excess of £4000. In the case of a bill for £200,000 the duty would thus have been £100 (£200,000 = £1000 x 200, @ 10s per 200 = £100) . There was a further increase in the Stamp Act of 1870, but this affected sums much lower down the scale, though the ruling was re-expressed: if the sum was in excess of £100, the duty was 1s per £100; in the case of a bill for £200,000 the duty would thus have been... still £100 (£200,000 divided by 100 = 2000; 2000s = £100). If only they'd waited to have their war till 1899, when the duty on Foreign Bills (only) was reduced to 6d per £100! But they didn't, and the Stamp Duty paid is (needless to say) exact and tout en ordre, or indeed in Ordnung.

It is very up-to-date. The £5 green used for this transaction was quite new at the time, having been registered on January 27 1871. It was also short-lived, being replaced in April/May 1872 by an identical stamp in (deep) reddish violet, while the shillings tier was re-issued at the same time in green because of problems with cancelling which, in the words of the Inland Revenue, "obliterated the lettering to some extent and ... the effect was more marked in the case of the purple [shillings-tier] stamps than in that of the green [pounds-tier]. As therefore the lettering on the shilling stamps was smaller and consequently more defaced than on the pounds stamps, it was decided to transpose the colours of these two series." In its new colour, and with only a change of watermark in 1881, this £5 design remained in use for the rest of the Victorian era.

As for drafting a reply to M. Pétry, I think that would be far more impressive coming from The Secretary, so je vous permets de lui écrire, soit en anglais, soit en sa langue maternelle. I am not a modern historian, and apart from the participation in the diplomatic niceties prior to the F-P War of my great-grandfather (who family myth maintains delivered the "hard copy" of the Ems Telegram that started the whole thing off: he did work for the Prussian Chancery at the time) my knowledge of it is limited to the little I needed for 'O' Level History in 1957. Please quote as much as you like from my letter, but point out that, for the reasons I've given above, tandis que le montant des timbres fiscaux paraît être exceptionnellement important, en fait et en loi il n'est que tout à fait normal. (While the total value of the fiscal stamps does seem to be exceptionally important, in fact and in law it's no more than completely normal.)

It occurred to me a bit later in the day, or rather night, that M. Pétry might appreciate some pictures. The £5 stamp (also the £2.10s) was introduced for the first time in 1861, following the described rate increases of 1860; these provoked an immediate interim "embossed-adhesive" issue in use for a few months only until the fully adhesive "tall" £5 was ready. My attachments show an 1861 "tall" £5; an 1871 green £5 of the sort used on M. Pétry's document; a violet/purple £5 of 1872 and the post-1881 lilac/purple £5.

It might interest M. Pétry to know that in 1907 these stamps could be bought from a Parisian dealer for the following sums, expressed in terms of the franc-or français (French gold franc): the "tall" £5 could be bought for 2 francs; the 1872 violet/purple £5 for 50-60 centimes; the post-1881 £5 for 15-30 centimes; but his 1871 green £5 would have set him back between 6 francs 50 and 8 francs: already a desirable stamp, alors...

Ce second document dont je vous joins une vue en attaché est de quelques semaines plus ancien que le premier signalé : 26 août pour celui présentant le bloc continu de timbres et 1er août comme date de départ à Paris pour les timbres collés un à un. Ces derniers timbres présentent au moins trois variétés de couleurs. Apparemment dans un premier temps, les employés de la London Joint Stock Bank avaient pris des timbres un à un sur des feuilles de revenues stamps aux couleurs disparates.

This second document (see attached scan) is some weeks older than the first one I sent you: the one with the continuous block is dated August 26, while this one, with the stamps stuck on one by one, has a departure date from Paris of August 1. These last stamps show at least three shade varieties. Apparently at some earlier date the employees of the London Stock Exchange Bank had taken stamps one by one from sheets of (Foreign Bill stamps) printed in different shades.

M. Pétry's reply is most kind, and what he has to say about the colours is interesting. I would call them differences of shade rather than colour, but the idea of different shades reflecting different dates of purchase is a fascinating one, particularly with stamps of such a comparatively limited use and a lifetime, up to August 1, of only seven months thus far.

Avanti! A la prossima!