Rowntree & Co. Ltd.

Joseph Rowntree was born on May 24th 1836 at his father's shop in Pavement, in the centre of York. He was the second of five children: his older brother being John and the other siblings, Henry Isaac, Hannah and Sarah Jane. His parents held strong Quaker beliefs, as had several generations of his family.

England, at this time was still a place where only one man in six had the vote and two thirds of the population worked in the countryside. Farmers and their families used to come into the market centre of York, known as the Pavement, to sell their animals and produce and to stock up with groceries.

The Rowntree's shop was central to this trade and Joseph was apprenticed to his father at the age of fifteen. This was to provide Joseph with the basic business acumen, which served him well in his career that was to last for the next 71 years.

After a brief period in London when he was 21, to broaden his grocery experience, he returned to the Pavement and became a partner in his father's business. He married but his first wife died due to poor health, leaving one daughter. His second marriage produced five children.

In 1868 he joined his brother Henry Isaac who then owned a cocoa,chocolate and chicory works at Tanner's Moat near the river Ouse. The business developed slowly until in 1879 a Frenchman, Claude Gachet, introduced French gums to Joseph and Henry and in 1881 'crystallised gum pastilles' were sold by Rowntree's. In 1883 twice as many people were employed as in 1881, largely due to the introduction and popularity of these gums. Henry Isaac died in 1883 leaving Joseph alone in developing the business. This he did with a move to a larger specially built factory at Haxby Road. In 1897 Rowntree & Co became Limited, with Joseph Rowntree as Chairman. When Joseph retired in 1923 he had seen his company grow from a staff of 12 to over 7,000 in the space of 55 years.

From the outset of his career he had always adopted a democratic attitude with his workforce and was always aware of their welfare. He introduced pensions, clubs, as well as profit sharing, which helped to develop a warm and close relationship with his employees. In 1918 he introduced an annual week's holiday with full pay. At the time of his death in 1925 the company was established as one of the major manufacturing forces in England and the foundation for greater success was set.

Rowntree’s was synonymous with Jelly and many of the ten flavours used in 1923 are still in use today. The popularity of Rowntree's jelly has not waned but increased and in 1983 thirteen times the amount manufactured in 1923 was produced.

In 1969 Rowntree & Co Ltd and John Mackintosh & Sons Ltd became Rowntree Mackintosh Ltd. In 1987 the company changed its name to Rowntree Plc and the following year, 1988, Nestle SA bought the company.

By Paul Green

Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, which is usually known as P&O, is a British shipping and logistics company which dated from the early 19th century.

In 1822, Brodie McGhie Willcox, a London ship broker, and Arthur Anderson, a sailor from the Shetland Isles, northern Scotland, went into partnership to operate a shipping line, primarily operating routes between England and Spain and Portugal. In 1835, Dublin ship-owner Captain Richard Bourne joined the business, and the three men started a regular steamer service between London and Spain and Portugal--the Iberian Peninsula--using the name Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, with services to Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon and Cádiz.

The company flag colours are directly connected with the Peninsular flags: the white and blue represent the Portuguese flag in 1837, and the yellow and red the Spanish flag.


In 1837, the business won a contract from the British Admiralty to deliver mail to the Iberian Peninsula and in 1840 they acquired a contract to deliver mail to Alexandria in Egypt. The present company, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, was incorporated in that year by a Royal Charter, and its name therefore includes neither "Plc" nor "Limited".

Mail contracts were the basis of P&O's prosperity until the Second World War, but the company also became a major commercial shipping line and passenger liner operator. In 1914, it took over the British India Steam Navigation Company, which was then the largest British shipping line, owning 131 steamers. In 1918, it gained a controlling interest in the Orient Line, its partner in the England- Australia mail route. Further acquisitions followed and the fleet reached a peak of almost 500 ships in the mid 1920s. In 1920, the company also established a bank, P&O Bank, that it sold in 1927.

Eighty-five of the company's ships were sunk in the First World War and 179 in the Second World War.

After 1945, the passenger market declined to India but boomed to Australia with the advent of paid-passages for literate & healthy European immigrants. P&O built 15 large passenger liners, including SS Himalaya, SS Chusan, SS Arcadia (1954), and SS Iberia (1954), culminating in SS Canberra, its last & largest in 1961. By 1968 over 1 million immigrants had arrived--many via P&O and Australia ended the program. P&O entered the cruise market and began to sell & scrap many of these liners. It concentrated mainly on cargo ships. It entered the tanker trade in 1959 and the roll-on roll-off (RORO) ferry business in the mid 1960s.

Over the last quarter of the Twentieth Century P&O diversified into construction management (through the Bovis companies, which it owned from 1974 to 1999), property investment and development, and a variety of service businesses including exhibition and conference centres, but most of these activities were disposed of following the company's decision in March 1999 to concentrate on maritime and transport. Its P&O Ports and P&O Cold Logistics divisions developed from P&O's operations in Australia, where it has a leading position in these fields.

On Sunday October 30, 2005 The Sunday Times reported that P&O was in takeover talks with Thunder FZE, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, in February 2006 shareholders voted in favour of the offer from Dubai. The combined group is the world's third largest ports operator.

Following its sale in March 2006 to Dubai Ports World for £3.9 billion, it became a subsidiary of DP World; however, the P&O brand has been retained. The company was headquartered in London, in the United Kingdom; it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

By Paul Green

Ref.: Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company

National Maritime Museum

It is a little surprising that a company could use commercial overprints from the Victorian era through to the 1960s, and yet be rare through all of that time.

Edward & Thomas Pink

Edward and Thomas Pink was a wholesale confectioner and marmalade and jam manufacturer. The business was established by Edward Pink when he opened a jam and pickle factory in Bermondsey, South East London, in the late 1880s.

Edward Pink was a highly principled man whose aim was to produce good quality food made with real, pure ingredients. It was a time before health regulations and all the food safety rules that are the norm today. For example, chalk or other white powders were often added to flour, and meat was often from animals that were diseased. Tea could be adulterated with sulphate of iron and lead, and mercury could be present in confectionery.

Pinks' factory was soon producing pickles, jams, confectionery, candied peels and spices. By the end of the 19th Century, Edward and Thomas Pink was said to be the largest manufacturer of marmalade in the world. Records show that during 1897 the company produced 3,400 tons of marmalade which required 1,950 tons of oranges and 1,800 tons of sugar. During The First World War, the firm had a contract to supply Pinks' Plum Jam to the British troops.

Edward and Thomas Pink was acquired by the food manufacturer Crosse & Blackwell around 1920. The Bermondsey factory was demolished in 1935.

By Mark Matlach

Pinks had an interesting history of commercial overprint usage. You can follow the from the founding of the company through to the time when Thomas' name was added, and finally to the simplification of the company name to simply Pinks'.

Frederick Gorringe

Frederick Gorringe was a silk mercer and draper who founded Gorringe's department store.

In 1858 Frederick Gorringe opened a small drapery shop in Buckingham Palace Road, London. The shop soon became popular with the nobility and gentry and was patronized by the Ladies of Queen Victoria's household. Gorringe's business prospered and by 1869 occupied three shop premises, which were eventually replaced by a large department store.
There were tiny rooms at the top of the store where unmarried sales assistants lived. Gorringes had a strict dress code for its sales staff: women wore black dresses and men pin-striped suits. Sitting down behind the counter was not permitted. The customer was always right and politeness was the byword--a complaint from a customer would often lead to an instant dismissal.

Gorringes remained a well-known, fashionable department store until its closure in 1968.

By Mark Matlach

The Gorringe overprints of the Victorian era have noticeable variations in the spacing and positioning of the words in the pattern.

The latest Gorringe issue I am aware of is SG370, which was first produced in 1921.

Maple & Co. Ltd.

In 1861, 16 year-old John Blundell Maple went to work at his father's small furniture shop in Tottenham Court Road in London's West End. The young man had exceptional business skills and was running the company within a few years. By the 1880s Maple & Co. had become the largest furniture store in the world selling everything required to furnish a house. The firm became a limited company with a capital of £2 million in 1890 with John Blundell Maple as Chairman.


Maple & Co. Ltd. manufactured their own luxury furniture in a warehouse so vast that in 1890 it occupied an area where once 200 houses had stood. The warehouse was regarded as one of the sights of London and was constantly visited by tourists.

Maple & Co Ltd. supplied furniture to everyone who was anyone in Victorian society. They furnished palaces all over the world, including Tsar Nicholas's Winter Palace, the Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna, all the great hotels, and town and country houses. Prestigious British embassies were all furnished by Maples.

The Maples furniture business continued for many years, until it went bankrupt in 1997 and was taken over by the retailer Allders.

By Mark Matlach

I am not aware of Maple overprints outside the range of stamps shown here. Despite the long history of the company, these overprints seem to be surprisingly scarce--which is unfortunate because the receipts are very interesting:

Kodak S. A.

This is the first Spanish commercial overprint I have encountered, and it appears to have been used in a way that I have not seen in commercial overprints from other countries.

"The Royal Order of March 24, 1897, created a series of TIMBRE MOVIL ESPECIAL (special adhesive stamps (sometimes translated as "special handling" stamps)) whose denominations were 10 centimos, 5 centimos, 2 centimos and 1 centimo. The 10 centimos denomination was used on all duplicate and triplicate sheets of declarations of importation." The stamp you see here was issued in 1904.

The overprint identifies two cities where Kodak S.A. was located, which makes sense as the stamp was used in customs declarations.

By Michael Behm

Pontings

In 1863 Tom Ponting, one of four brothers from Gloucester, opened a fancy draper's shop in Westbourne Grove. His three brothers, Sidney, John and William bought no. 125 High Street, Kensington, expanding to 123, 123a and 127 and also to Scarsdale House formerly the mansions of the Curzons of Kedleston.

They soon established a good business in retail fancy goods and silks, everything for art needlework, and even a Needlework School.

The original premises were replaced by a High Victorian building, designed by Sherrin.

In 1907 John Barker and Co. Ltd. bought the business. Pontings is known to have used commercial overprints on the 1912 issue, when it was a part of the Barker holdings.

The premises were demolished in the early 1970s and a new complex of shops built in their place.

By Paul Green