Perot (Hamilton, Bermuda) Postmaster's Provisional

A penny box and a problem

In the 1840s Bermuda had no postage stamps. Inland letters were prepaid in cash, a penny an ounce under a local act of 1842, and the postmaster of Hamilton was entitled to keep that money. For the first fourteen years of his appointment it was his only pay; from 1843 he also drew a government salary, £50 that year, rising in steps to £100 by 1858, while still keeping the inland postage he collected.

The postmaster was William Bennet Perot, and he spent most of his day in his garden. When a customer came in, his friend James Bell Heyl, an American who ran the apothecary next door, would call him in. For letters posted after hours, Perot set out a box where people could leave their letters along with their pennies. Too often he found more letters than pennies. He could not tell who was shortchanging him, and he still had to forward every letter. A 2022 study of the stamps notes that his inland postage income rose to £52 11s 6d in 1846 and fell to £47 6s 6d in 1847, perhaps reflecting the cheating.

Heyl, who may have seen the stamps issued by postmasters in North America, later claimed to have suggested the fix: sell labels in advance, so that anyone posting a letter after hours could prepay it, and treat any unstamped letter in the box as unpaid. Nothing in Bermuda law required or forbade such a thing, so Perot went ahead.

Official stamps did not reach Bermuda until 1865. Until then, Perot's homemade labels were the island's only postage stamps.

The postmaster in the garden

Perot was born in January 1791, the son of a Bermuda silversmith and shipping agent descended from a French Huguenot family. He married Susanna Stowe in December 1814, and the family made its home at Par-la-Ville, the Georgian house his father had built on Queen Street. When Bermuda's capital moved from St. George's to Hamilton in 1815, the town needed a post office, and Perot became postmaster. Sources differ on the start date: a 2022 society presentation and a Bermuda philatelic writer give 1818, while the Bermuda Biographies project gives January 1819.

He was a familiar sight. He met ships at the Hamilton docks, collected the mailbag, sorted letters in his office and carried them through town arranged in the crown of his hat. Gardening was his real passion: his five-acre garden at Par-la-Ville was described by the historian Henry C. Wilkinson as the best in the colony, and the rubber tree that still towers over the entrance of what is now Queen Elizabeth Park grew from a seedling he planted in 1847, sent by his son from British Guiana.

Perot was also an alderman who helped Hamilton buy its first fire engine, campaigned for years for a poorhouse, and served in the House of Assembly from about 1860. He and Susanna had eleven children, nine of whom reached adulthood. He retired as postmaster on June 7, 1862, after more than four decades, and died on October 13, 1871, aged 80. The annex he used as his post office reopened in 1959 as Perot Post Office.

How to read a Perot

To make the stamps, Perot took the postmarking handstamp sent out to Hamilton from London in November 1841 and removed the plugs for the month and day, leaving only the year. Struck on a sheet of paper, it produced a circle with "Hamilton" curved around the top, "Bermuda" around the bottom, a cross at each side and the four-figure year across the middle. On each impression he wrote "One Penny" above the year and signed his name below it. The sheet was probably gummed, and the stamps were cut apart by hand; surviving examples are described as cut round, cut square or cut in a rough octagon.

No multiple larger than an almost-severed pair is known, so the sheet layout has never been established. The 2022 study says it seems fairly clear there were twelve impressions to a sheet, and the Bermuda Biographies account says Perot sold the stamps singly or in sheets of twelve. A longtime Bermuda collector, Sir Henry Tucker, believed they were struck in two vertical rows of six, but admitted in a 1962 letter that his only basis was something an elderly collector had told him decades earlier.

Perot made stamps in advance and kept them in stock. He did not cancel them when they were used, probably reasoning that a stamp stuck to a letter could not be used again. The Hamilton office used black ink until May 1849 and red afterward. The 2022 study narrows the change to between May 7 and 16, 1849; a Bermuda philatelic writer says around June 1849.

The entry tracked here is the 1849 stamp in black on bluish-gray wove paper. The census in the 2022 study records two examples. One, cut so close that the tops of "HAM" and much of "BERMUD" are missing, is on a piece of the letter bearing part of the addressee's name, "Henry E." The other is cut close on the right so that the "N" and "D" are touched.

Forgotten for half a century

Perot's stamps were unknown to collectors for nearly fifty years. The first was recorded in July 1897: a red stamp dated 1854, still on the back of a letter addressed in the hand of N.T. Butterfield, the banker who was mayor of Hamilton in 1849 and 1850. A collector in Bermuda sent it to an English stamp dealer, who was suspicious because it bore no postmark and was half hidden under the fold of the cover. Accounts of who found it differ. A Bermuda philatelic writer says Louis Mowbray of St. George's discovered the first three examples in 1897; the Bermuda Biographies project says Mowbray, later curator of the Bermuda Aquarium, found three that had belonged to his grandmother, sold one and gave two to a British officer.

Nine months later the second turned up, and it was an 1849 black. A young Englishman newly arrived in Bermuda found a letter with the crude-looking stamp in its lower left corner. No one in the office thought much of it, so he tore off the part with the stamp and put it in his pocket. He refused a local collector's offer of a few shillings and sent it to his father in London instead. By April 1898 it belonged to the philatelist B.W. Warhurst. A Bermuda philatelic writer says it changed hands twelve years later for £150.

Doubt followed. In July 1898 Major E.B. Evans, who had served in Bermuda and had long advertised in the local papers for old stamps of the colony, questioned whether the stamps were genuine, since none had ever been offered to him. The publicity brought letters from people who remembered Perot using them, and further research by Edward Denny Bacon settled the matter.

More surfaced over the next decades. Five came from the family papers of Miss Frances Trott, found in 1918; in October 1922 her nephew, a Hamilton physician, sold four of them to a London dealer for £50 each. In 1934 an army officer, Captain M.D. James, walked into a London auction room with a pair in his pocket. His grandfather, Bermuda's Chief Justice John Harvey Darrell, had bought them from Perot himself in 1853, and they had lain among the judge's papers until a few months earlier. The pair was separated in 1934, and one half is now in the Royal Collection.

Kings, counts and record prices

Perot's stamps passed through the greatest collections of the twentieth century. The 1849 black that surfaced around 1904 was sold in November 1922 from the collection of Count Philipp von Ferrary, then in 1934 from Arthur Hind's collection for £165, in 1957 for $4,200 from Alfred Caspary's collection, in 1977 for £30,000, in May 1986 for $143,000, and in June 2005 for £116,000.

The very first Perot to be found, the 1854 red on cover, sold for $210,000 at auction in April 1980, which the encyclopedist L.N. Williams recorded as the highest price for any stamp of Perot's first issue. It brought $337,810 with premium in June 1991 and $340,000 in April 1996. The 1856 red, the latest Perot known, sold for $75,000 in 1979 and $77,000 in February 1981.

Three of the eleven are in the Royal Collection, presumably acquired by King George V. In April 2012 Bermudians had a rare chance to see seven of the eleven together at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art: three lent from the Queen's collection, two by the former premier Dr. David Saul and two by a collector from Louisiana. Saul's examples were sold at auction in October 2013.

On December 11, 2015, an 1849 black on bluish-gray paper, attached to a fragment of a letter and described as one of just two known of its type, sold for $75,000 at auction in Geneva. In the same sale the only known unused example of Perot's later 1861 crowned-circle stamp brought about $102,000.

Three postmasters and a footnote to history

Postage stamps are normally a government privilege, and the few individuals who have issued their own are a short list. Three of them were Bermuda postmasters. Perot was the first. Around 1860 James Henry Thies of St. George's issued labels struck from his crowned "PAID AT ST GEORGES BERMUDA" handstamp, and Perot himself switched to a similar crowned "PAID AT HAMILTON BERMUDA" design in 1861, a second issue no one knew about until one was found on a letter in 1946. Perot's successor, Robert Ward, is credited with two more.

The 2022 census counts eleven of Perot's first issue, five of the Thies stamps (one unsubstantiated), five of Perot's second issue and two of Ward's. Perot's name lives on in the stamps, in Perot Post Office on Queen Street, and in the rubber tree he planted at Par-la-Ville.

The numbers

Dates on survivors

1848 to 1856 (first issue)

Known examples

11: three 1848, two 1849, three 1853, two 1854, one 1856

Known of this type

2 (1849, black on bluish-gray wove paper)

Colors

Black (to May 1849) and red (from May 1849); five black, six red survive

Paper

Bluish-gray, whitish, bluish and thick whitish papers are recorded

Separation

Imperforate; cut apart by hand

Sheet

Probably 12 impressions; no multiple larger than an almost-severed pair is known

Cancellation

None; Perot did not cancel his first-issue stamps

Timeline

1. Jan 1791

   William Bennet Perot is born in Bermuda.

2. 1818

   Perot becomes postmaster of Hamilton (one account gives January 1819).

3. Nov 18, 1841

   The postmarking handstamp later used to make the stamps is sent out to Hamilton from London.

4. 1842

   A local act requires inland postage to be prepaid at a penny an ounce.

5. 1848

   Earliest year date on a surviving Perot stamp; the first ones are struck in black.

6. May 1849

   Between May 7 and 16, the Hamilton office switches from black ink to red. This entry's stamp is one of the 1849 blacks.

7. 1853

   Chief Justice John Harvey Darrell buys a pair of Perot stamps directly from the postmaster.

8. 1856

   Latest year date on a surviving stamp of Perot's first issue.

9. Mar 1861

   Perot's second issue, struck from a crowned "PAID AT HAMILTON" handstamp, appears on letters.

10. Jun 7, 1862

    Perot retires as postmaster after more than four decades.

11. 1865

    Bermuda receives its first official postage stamps.

12. Oct 13, 1871

    Perot dies, aged 80.

13. Jul 1897

    The first Perot stamp, a red 1854 on cover, is recorded by collectors.

14. Apr 1898

    The second find, an 1849 black, is acquired by the philatelist B.W. Warhurst.

15. Jul 1898

    Major E.B. Evans publicly doubts the stamps; research that follows establishes them as genuine.

16. 1918

    Five examples are found among the family papers of Miss Frances Trott.

17. 1934

    The Darrell pair surfaces in London and is separated; one half later enters the Royal Collection.

18. Apr 5, 1980

    The first-found 1854 red on cover sells for $210,000 at auction.

19. Apr 2012

    Seven of the eleven known examples are exhibited together in Bermuda, three of them lent from the Queen's collection.

20. Dec 11, 2015

    An 1849 black on bluish-gray paper, one of two known of its type, sells for $75,000 at auction in Geneva.

The world in 1849

• Jan 23, 1849

  Elizabeth Blackwell receives her M.D. in Geneva, New York, becoming the first woman doctor in the United States.

• Feb 8, 1849

  The short-lived Roman Republic is proclaimed; French troops occupy Rome and end it on July 3.

• Feb 28, 1849

  The steamship California arrives in San Francisco Bay, beginning regular steamboat service between the east and west coasts of the United States.

• Mar 3, 1849

  Congress creates the U.S. Department of the Interior and passes the Gold Coinage Act, authorizing the gold dollar and the double eagle.

• Apr 2, 1849

  The German revolutions of 1848-49 fail when the King of Prussia refuses the crown offered by the Frankfurt National Assembly.

• Sep 17, 1849

  Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.

• Oct 7, 1849

  Edgar Allan Poe dies; Frederic Chopin dies ten days later.

• Nov 13, 1849

  Voters ratify the Constitution of California.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Perot (Hamilton, Bermuda) Postmaster's Provisional is number 47 of 100 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 82 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (23 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Perot invented his stamp because people kept dropping letters in his after-hours box without the penny to pay for them.
• He carried the town's mail in the crown of his hat, sorted in delivery order.
• When the second Perot was found in 1898, the young Englishman who spotted it simply tore it off the letter and put it in his pocket.
• A pair of Perots lay unnoticed among a Bermuda chief justice's papers for about 80 years; he had bought them from Perot himself in 1853.
• The giant rubber tree at the entrance of Hamilton's Queen Elizabeth Park grew from a seedling Perot planted in 1847.
• Perot never canceled his first-issue stamps, apparently trusting that a stamp stuck on a letter would not be reused.