Page 73 - The Sideways Experimenatal Duplex 1852-1858

TYPE III

Tiris type was first introduced in May 1857. It is of the same appearance as the Type II
hand stamps with the town name at the side and the obliterator facing away from the
date stamp but has a smaller date stamp. The diameter of the stamp measmes
20 or 2 lmm. There were a total of 20 offices that received this style hand stamp
between May 1857 and July 1857.

NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE
All but two of the offices that received this style hand stamp used letter codes.
Tiris hand stamps rarity rating is A.

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An example of this type can be seen above used on a wrapper to France via Ostend.
The strike is on a 6d surface printed stamp paying the postage to France. It is dated 7th December 1859
and shows an inverted 'F' as the code. Inverted code letters are probably the result of the post office clerk
putting the code letter in the wrong way. Tiris also on occasions happens with numeral codes.
There are times when inverted codes are intentional, extra collections being one reason.