Stamp Collector

84 MAY 2020 www.allaboutstamps.co.uk If there is one word which springs to mind when one thinks of Lancashire it must be cotton, writes John Scott, as his postal history journey around the country continues Lancashire POSTAL HISTORY E ven in the 1830s Pigot’s Directory tells us that manufacturing in Lancashire was on such a scale that it was possible only to ‘glide upon the surface’ of the materials ‘which have excited the ingenuity and contributed to the wealth of the inhabitants and placed their county in so proudly prominent a position amongst the counties of England’. The names of the pioneering industrialists are like a lexicon of the Industrial Revolution: John Kay’s flying shuttle of 1733, James Hargreave’s spinning-jenny of 1764, Richard Arkwright’s water- frame, Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule and Edmund Cartwright’s power-loom of 1784. Consequently there is a lot of postal history to collect but, as always, it is the story woven into the narrative which elevates the collection to a place where it can be appreciated by a wider audience. Since the postal services offered almost the only means of communication at a distance we have the materials at our fingertips to tell the whole story of the cotton industry from beginning to end. The first link in the chain was the importation of raw cotton from the United States, the prices and sources of which can be demonstrated through the Prices Current which passed through the post at a concessionary rate. Sanford’s ‘Merchants’ and Planters’ Price-Current’ printed in Mobile, Alabama, in 1851 lists the exports of cotton from there to Liverpool with that port accounting for 91% of UK imports and over 40% of worldwide exports from Mobile. At the time Mobile was the third largest port 1. E. Busch’s Cotton Circular posted from Liverpool to Bavaria in 1852 bearing the firm’s 1d Newspaper Stamp as a circular registered with the Post Office. The imitation script saved time in preparing printer’s type 1 2