Postmark Definition

MAuritius postmark definition

Abbrevations and explanation of text and characters  used

  • ERD - Earliest Recorded Date
  • LRD - Latest Recorded Date
  • N.R. - Not Recorded
  • S.O. -  Still Open
  • S.U. - Still Used
  • c.d.s. or cds - Circular Date Stamp
  • BONC - Barred oval numeral cancels
  • #      - First or last possible date for a postmark. Generally used for 'A' (last date) and 'B3' (first date)cancellations.
  • Code - i s the time code for a postmark. 'A' is earliest time of a day and 'D' is latest time of the day. Some post offices used numbers instead of letters, where '1' is earliest and '5' is latest time of a day. During the 1950's most offices changed to a readable time, eg '10.30 AM' or '3.30 PM'.
  • No - Cancellation does not have a time code.
  • Notation of dates used on this site:  First numeral is day followed by month and year with 2 figures. "010125" means 1st of January 1925. If 'x' is used it means that, that position in a postmark is unreadable, A '?' is used when no dates are known for a postmark.
  • Cancellation type serial number When more than one cancellation type exist for a post office and they are similar, i.e. they are not distinguished in the definition table above. Then they will get a dash followed by a serial number after cancellation type. If for instance there exist two "C1" cancellation the first will be called "C1-1" and the second will be called "C1-2" in chronological order.
  • If a postmark is used during two time periods with a time gap in between, the first period cancellation will be called 'i ' and second period called 'ii' and so on. If a cancellation "C1-1" is used during two periods the first will be called "C1-1i" and the second will be called "C1-1ii".
  • If there are two postmarks e.g. C1-1 and C1-2 and a new discovery is made in between the two postmarks, it will have an 'a' added in the end of the postmark id. In this case the name of the new discovery will be 'C1-1a'. If another discovery is made it will be named 'C1-1b'.
  • The dates mentioned for each cancellation type originates from the book "THE POSTAL HISTORY OF MAURITIUS" chapter 4 written by Edward B. Proud published 2001. Latest date used is 11.3.1968. The site may contain dates later than that but with a cancellation type defined as used before 11 March 1968.