Queensland Beer Duty Paper article

This article appeared in "Notes from the Old Country" by Derek Ingram in the Australian Philatelist, 5 October 1916, p. 25 and discusses the use of the beer duty paper for Queensland second sideface stamps in 1895.

"Beer Duty" Paper.

Mr. Samuel Dalby’s allusion to the beer duty paper ("A.P.,” May, 1916, p. 137), reminds us of a topical subject — topical in two ways: Firstly, because it recalls a previous experience of paper difficulties, and, secondly, because of the present agitation to prohibit the sale of beer altogether in this country during the war. The beer duty, and other provisional papers of 1895-96, were brought into use in Queensland owing to the severe retrenchment forced by the financial stress of 1893, and, in view of this precedent perhaps we shall yet have beer duty paper for the Commonwealth stamps — that is, if the shutters are put up on the beer shops and breweries for any length of time.

Queensland’s "beer duty paper" stamps of the values of 1d. and 2d., appeared, it will be remembered on January 16th, 1895. We all know that its quality of "beer duty" paper was because it was first procured for the stamps needed in levying the excise on Queensland manufactured beer, but why not group it under that convenient head in the catalogues? The paper itself has a most interesting history, in view of its weight and strength — rendered necessary by the law requiring brewers to affix the prescribed amount of excise to each cask before being sent away to retail establishments. In addition to its employment for the ld. and 2d. stamps, we find it in the handsome steel-plate postage stamps of the values of 2/-, 2/6, 5/-, 10/ and £1, which were about the same dimensions as the lower denominations of the excise stamps.

The beermark — beg pardon! Watermark — was a large circular double-lined Q, surmounted by a crown. It seems in sheets cut to the size needed for the pence postage stamps — about 12¾ X 9¼ inches — there were only 90 watermarks in nine columns of ten lines, and of these were twenty which fell, either wholly or in part, on the side margins. In some sheets, one may see twelve stamps with the full watermark, i.e., four stamps each in lines 1, 6, and 11 of the sheet, with only eight having full watermark in other sheets — four each in lines 4 and 9. Several contemporary journals — even the infallible "London Philatelist" — chronicled some of the stamps, when they first appeared having no watermark, as one might do now in the case of the New Zealand King George 1½d. engraved stamp on the “large pictorial" paper, had one not known the nature of the paper when chronicling the stamp.

Many specimens of the Queensland “beer duty paper" stamps have such tiny portions of the watermark that they are easily mistaken for unwatermarked examples.