A.I.F. censor query WWI

[Tony Walker]

I have the postcard illustrated here.

The picture side shows one of the ships named on the top right corner of the P&O Branch Service.  On the message side is written in pencil 'Berrima' On the picture side the PASSED BY CENSOR mark appears to be printed on the card at the time the card itself was printed - held obliquely to the light the card surface is uninterrupted.  It measures 81mm x 5mm and is certainly not in Gould Volume 1, but falls into the 4C 300 range, again not clearly illustrated in Gould Vol 2.  Question - is this card commonplace?

My suspicions aroused I looked carefully at the message side.  The A.I.F / Passed by Censor No. 25 also looks very 'printed', no surface disturbance visible as one would expect from a hand-applied censor mark.  The same could be said of the message.

The absence of a cancellation and / or a date suggests maybe this was just an advertising postcard and therefore many identical examples should exist ?

Anyone got another one?

Cheers
Tony

[Chris Grimshaw]

Interesting, 

Writer should be reasonably easy to find, J H Salamander If I read it right.

Chris

[Nick Colley]

Or Saleman, Chris?

chrs
N

[Peter Harvey]

Hi Tony,

Let me try to add a little, just a short bit of research, so not confirming anything:

There is a single Saleman in the AIF nominal roll, (no Salamander) and that is 712 Cpl Saleman Jack Herbert (J.H. fits) Australian Flying Corps Enlisted Sep 14 returned Jan 19, so he survived the war.

Th AIF Censor cachet is correct in that it is the same as Bob Emery's reference MCM.1/G with the I over the N and the number included in the print. This is a later type of the cachet, where the number were printed and related to the ship. The number 35 relate to th requisitioned transport A35 the Berrima which was in service 1914 - 1917 at which point she was torpedoed and repaired, becoming a shore stores vessel.

The front PASSED BY CENSOR I am not sure about.

The name John Bly was also familiar to me, if you Google this you will find details of John Bly of the BBC AR fame, but the links to his family and farther in Tring (another John Bly) give lots of history about their antique business.........all interesting.

By th way, I found on eBay the attached picture of the same card, without the Passed By Censor to the picture side.

Peter