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Perforations of the First Sierra Leone 6d:

Line or Comb?

Philip Quirk

The following article first appeared in the London Philatelist of July-August 2010 (Vol 119, p213) and
appears here, slightly revised, with permission of the editor and of the author.

The first 6d design of Sierra Leone was in use between 1859 and 1896, during which time ten despatches of
the postage stamp were made, all printed by De La Rue using typography. The sheet layout was that of the
contemporary British 6d stamp: twelve panes of stamps arranged in four rows of three, with each pane
containing twenty stamps arranged in five rows of four (Ref.1). Although the various shades and presence or
absence of the Crown CC watermark have been well documented (Refs.1,2) and a concordance between
Gibbons and Scott catalogue varieties has been presented (Ref.3), the types of perforation have perhaps
received less attention. I have somewhat revised the original article (Ref 4) to incorporate additional
information which has since become available, but the main conclusions remain unchanged.

Although in recent years Stanley Gibbons catalogues have made more distinctions between line and comb
perforation types (e.g. the Gold Coast 1938 issue), the 2009 West Africa catalogue mentions only the
perforation gauges (12½, 14) of the Sierra Leone 6d (Ref 5). Robson Lowe (Ref 6) cites the last three
despatches as having line perforation, but merely gives the gauges for the earlier sendings. His illustration of
the 6d (p.344, figure 1) is of a line perforated stamp, but this was probably meant to represent only the
printed design, rather than a particular despatch. Support for this assumption is provided by his adjacent
photograph of the first keyplate design (p.344, figure 2); this shows a comb perf 14 stamp, whereas the initial
despatches of that type were line perf 12½ (Refs.6,7).

Identification of line and comb perforation on single stamps is not always straightforward, and I have, where
possible, studied pairs or blocks. Unfortunately, very few pairs or blocks have survived from the early
despatches of the Sierra Leone 6d. In addition, used stamps were normally cancelled with the undated B31
obliterators, so can only be dated when on cover. On the other hand, the gauge 14 perforators provided very
clean perforations (Ref 8, p.219), and the presence or absence of wing margin stamps provides valuable
information on the type of perforator employed for a particular despatch (see below).

For the first despatch of the 6d (1859), Philip Beale writes: "The line perforator that was used was the same
as for the Great Britain sixpence" (Ref.1, p.122). However, his illustrations of blocks of the 1859 and 1865
stamps both appear to show comb perforations (Ref.1, pp.117 and 123). This agrees with the description in
the SG Great Britain Queen Victoria specialised catalogue (Ref 9): "Comb perforation, gauging 14 all round,
was the rule throughout these [surface-printed] issues," apart from the 1867-78 high values. Poole (Ref.10,
pp.9-10) agrees that the perforation of the first Sierra Leone 6d gauges 14 "and was done at Somerset House
by the same machine used for perforating the then current British stamps". This and subsequent gauge 14
comb machines at Somerset House were constructed by Napier and produced wing margins on stamps at the
boundaries between panes (Ref 8). Thus, the presence of a wing margin should be diagnostic of comb
perforation, even in a single stamp. The 1859 block of six illustrated by Beale was offered as lot 1466 in the
2010 Vestey sale (Ref.11).

"Specimen" overprints were applied by De La Rue to 6d stamps from several despatches. The type D2
overprint is recorded for the first despatch (Refs.12, 13), but since this handstamp saw use into the 1870s
(Ref.14), the possibility that it was also applied to later printings cannot be ruled out (Ref.15). A complete
pane of twenty bearing the type D2 has survived (Ref 13). It has wing margins on both sides and appears to
be comb perforated (Ref.16), consistent with having been perforated on the Napier machine. A single stamp
bearing this overprint is illustrated in Beale (Ref.12), one was offered as lot 1463 in the Vestey sale (Ref.11),
and images of two further examples have been seen by the author. Whether or not all of these stamps
originate from the first despatch, they do all appear to have comb perforation (Figure 1).