Firstly we will look at the Secretary’s report, the Secretary being the lady who initiated the whole thing, one Kathleen Hoult.

“In answer to my letters suggesting the formation of a Precancel Stamp Society in Britain, I received most encouraging replies…… It was proposed that Mr Stones should be asked to be the first President, but he felt that we should have a more active Precancel collector and our second in seniority fulfilled that requirement to perfection…… Mr Croker answered the SOS for the post of Treasurer. Feeling that I have the most time to spare, I offered myself as Secretary. Having a good friend, a printer, I was able to get stationery and so on printed quickly. “she wrote round to many other societies advertising the PSS with considerable success. ” We are pleased to know that there are many collectors in this country who regard themselves as “lone wolves”, it is our job to bring them into the pack and I shall be so grateful for any ideas how to reach them and make them welcome”.

Miss Hoult stated her hopes that the Precancelist would survive and that the membership would grow enough to justify carrying on. She made an appeal for approval books for the start of an Exchange Packet and appealed for members not to delay in passing the packet on. She initiated a ‘Wants’ column with a charge of one shilling (5p) for precancel ads and two shillings (10p) for others. She closed with a plea for members to introduce others to the Society.

This report was preceded by a message from the President, Mr Kenneth Rymer-Young of which the last paragraph is very worthy of note:

It may never be my good fortune as President to present the Society’s millionth member with a 1.5 cent bureau coil from Liberty Mo, but surely it ought not to be too long before we can celebrate the advent of the hundredth member. Do not let us forget that the greater the membership the greater the benefit to the members. For this brave new Society “may good digestion wait on appetite and health or both.”

Seven months later saw the second copy of the Precancelist and from hereon it was clear the Society was going to go places. It opened with a resume of the then current Belgian Types from 1938 to 1947 and also welcomed onto the precancel scene the newly formed Belgian Precancel Society. It is interesting to note that a member was discussing his views on mounting stamp collections, which brings home the fact that at that time collecting loosely in stockbooks was virtually unknown. Here, for the first time, was a question posed by the Secretary and I quote: WHAT IS TO BE THE ACCEPTED VALUE IN CASH OF A PRECANCELLED STAMP IN THIS COUNTRY? How many times has this question been repeated over the past 50 years?

January 1948 was the date of the third Precancelist, and there it is recorded that within the first year of its life, the Society could boast 43 members. It also gave the first mention to any large degree, of Canadian precancels with a potted clarification of the various main types. A mention was made of a collector who was an inspiration to early precancel collectors but who died before the formation of the Society. He was a certain Keith Macdonald, a stamp dealer who was known nationally for yet another reason, being one of the BBC ‘Uncles’ to the listeners to Childrens Hour on the radio.

It was decided in the 4th copy of the Precancelist to try and issue 4 copies per year, and in this copy was included a balance sheet of the Society’s finances for the previous year. It was interesting to see that over the previous 3 months the membership had risen to 57 of which 26 were foreign members. Unannounced other than a new member, was a certain R.D. Lee, a name which, after that date of April 1948, was to figure largely and importantly in the future of the Society.

One-upmanship, the likes of which I guess can never be traced in the annals of any other precancel society, was contained in the next copy of the publication. Firstly it welcomed 2 new members from overseas into the Society and then, believe it or not greeted the overall membership of the Society in English, French, German, Dutch and Czechoslovak. (if Polish had been included, I may have thought that His Holiness the Pope was a founder member!).  Another member who was to become well known in our circles contributed another letter. This was H.G. Walburn of Canadian Catalogue fame and currently a correspondent with, and friend of, a number of us. In this copy it is also recorded the first article of any importance on French cancels. It is very important to note in this issue, in addition to the Editorial and the multilingual greeting which covered two of the 12 pages, there were contributions from 19, repeat 19, other members plus the Secretary’s report.

On September 3rd 1948 the first official meeting of any sort of the Society was held in Bridlington at the invitation of the local society. Even in those days it was recorded that only 1 non-committee member attended and where the decision was made to hold the next meeting in London the following year. The formation of the German Precancel Society was also recorded.

The front cover of the February 1949 issue caused me some amusement as it reads “this is the last issue of the Precancelist unless….”. Fortunately this was an enrolment gimmick which ended at the foot of the page “Precancels and the Precancelist are here to stay”. The first article on Luxembourg cancels appeared as a continuation of a series entitled European Precancels by W. Engelhardt. In the September 1949 issue, Reg Lee initiated his Bureau new issue service, a line which he continued without ceasing until the winding down of regular Bureau issues following the last of the 8.4 cent stamps on the Americana issue. At last! March 1950 saw the 100th member in the Society or rather number 100 as there was then no number 13 due to the Secretary’s superstitions. The 100th member in fact was our late friend Ted Coles. Also interesting is the fact that the cash balance of the Society rose from ten shillings and fourpence (about 52p) in 1947/48. By then the Library and the Exchange Packet had been established. By May 1950 Reg Lee was appointed to his first of many offices within the Society, that of Promotional Secretary: also agreement was made that we should consider becoming affiliated to the American PSS Inc.

During the 1951 AGM, Reg Lee was appointed as Secretary to succeed Kathleen Hoult. He soon made an impression by publishing a column entitled Lees Summit, which was soon to cover many points of value and interest to the members. Not least of all, he called for someone to organize a Buro chart, to list all the members and the various levels of their Bureau collections. As of July 1951, no volunteer had come forward for the Buro chart. On a lighter note, following his appointment as Secretary, Reg Lee defied his predecessors superstitions and reallocated membership number 13 to himself, a move which, over the years has not been seen to have caused him any problems! By August, the Secretary had taken on the task of collating the Buro chart entries himself and listed 4 members data. At the time 5863 Buros were listed in the official catalogue, and within our Society, the President topped the list with 5033 different.

The Precancelist continued in its original state, but sadly lacking were the numerous articles and letters from the enthusiastic early membership. The fort however was ably manned by the redoubtable Secretary, Reg Lee, who carried on producing his Lees Summit column in addition to popular chit-chat. Several major articles did appear on such topics as precancels of Canada, Tunisia, Argentina, Netherlands and Belgium. It was therefore very surprising when the Precancelist suddenly failed to appear after No 32 in Jan/Feb 1954. However, within 2 months, Lee had come along again to save the day and retain continuity of some sort of publication, with the first copy of a news sheet entitled not surprisingly “Lees Summit”. This carried much of the Society’s news as before, plus one or two interesting papers including an exceptional one on Canal Zone cancels, along with others of Canadian (including printing methods) and Belgium, the latter in the last of its 6 copies in September 1954.

October 1954 saw Precancels arrive on the philatelic scene, in the shape of a foolscap size, duplicated 6 page publication. In content it followed very closely to its forerunners and was edited by, as one may expect, the Secretary, Reg Lee. In this and subsequent copies, Reg provided a column called The Magpies Nest which contained a wealth of information on all aspects of the hobby, about stamps, catalogues, people related to precancels, new issues, etc. By the second issue yet another countries precancels had been surveyed, this time Hungary. By now the Buro chart was in full swing with 14 members participating and he with the highest number was only 24 short of the then total of 6378, which must have included the rare 1 1/2 cent Liberty MO and all of the experimentals.

Success followed success, and as such Precancels went from strength to strength. Articles still continued to appear adding much to the information already imparted, but even better was the continuing addition of information about cancels of countries such as Danzig and Turkey. Illustrated articles appeared covering the whole Dutch precancel issues which included virtually a copy of the current Dutch Precancel Catalogue. Even Great Britain and the Philippine Island cancels were the subject of articles over this period.

By the end of the 10 year period under consideration, we were to see Reg Lee begging for 2 other members to relieve him of his posts as Secretary and Editor. In the end his hand was forced and he resigned both offices late in the year. Our next period of review will see the Society under 2 new Committee members in these posts.

So to recap, over the 10 year period just covered, great things happened to the Society as it entered the second period with a participating membership of some 113 persons. These members were lucky insofar as they were with the Society at the time of the issue of the Presidential series and at the start of the Liberty issue. The growth of US Bureaus alone over the 10 years was from a total of 5863 in 1946 to 6500 in 1956.