REGARDING COLONIAL POSTMARKS ON REVENUE STAMPED PAPER

Georg Maier

We thank all those who contributed to providing an explanation, in particular Manuel Arango, who we believe has the best explanation for their application. While we entirely agree with him that the documents in question went through the mail we are still wondering why the stamp appears inside the document and not in the beginning where it should be. And this still remains an open question.

Needless to say we are dealing here with Revenue Stamped Paper and not sealed paper as wrongfully suggested. We also want to make clear that during the colonial period a large part of the Province of Popayan was administeres by the Audience of Quito which also included the Provinces of Quito and Guayaquil, something modern day Colombians do not like to admit. The term Ecuador did not appear until the republican period.

We, now, would like to advance another possibility for the application of a postmark inside a document.

Police Eye, Ambato, January 12, 1861

During the republican period, between 1830-1865, there existed a stamped mark called police eye in public correspondence. Although the police eye was wrongly advertised and sold by unscrupolous dealers as postmarks they were not. The police eye was stamped inside a piece of correspondence usually going from one police station to another indicating that the subject matter in question was reserved only for the eyes of the destinatary. One much letter was typycally mailed free of charge with the anotation civiles on the outside to denote its public nature and stamped by a police eye on the inside. These police eyes were of different size and color depending on its origin. Police eyes are rarely see on the front of a cover.

Your comments on the subject.