Great Barrier Pigeongram:
VP 3 - "Pigeongram" Overprint

Great Barrier Pigeon Post

1898 - 1904

VP 3 - 'Pigeongram' Overprint

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Both the 'Original Pigeongram Service' and the 'Pigeongram Agency' continued to seek financial assistance from the Government. But for some reason the NZ Post & Telegraph Department were not interested in supporting either venture. Both ventures hoped to be the one that the Department would support (and not the other!) but the Department stayed neutral, or maybe avoided any accountability is another way of looking at it .  

 

The NZ Post and Telegraph bureaucrats were disconnected from reality. When approached by philatelists from London seeking confirmation the stamps were legitimate the Department informed them that the stamps had been produced but that Howie had been asked not to use them and to their best knowledge they had never been used!  Given they'd almost run out of VP1 and were now producing VP2 it might be suggested they were mistaken.  It was apparently an offence under the Post Office Act to produce and sell stamps and any offender was liable for punishment. The VP1 stamps were at this time selling in London for 3/6, not a bad profit for providing no service but a stamp, and it looked like Mr. Bolitho's investment might be working out ok.

 

Mr Biss was the chief Postmaster in Auckland, and he set out to get to the bottom of it.

 

During his meetings with Fricker, Bolitho and Howie he found out the stamps were being used and that the 'Agency' was also about to produce a stamp using the Auckland Star (the rival paper to the Herald!). Negotiations went into overdrive, with the Pigeon carriers offering to carry Government messages for free, place a national penny stamp on each message so the government would not be deprived of any revenue, and Howie suggesting he could get rid of the word 'POST' from his stamps.

 

Howie promptly overprinted copies of the VP 2 'Special Post' stamps with the word 'Pigeongram' to block out any reference to stamps.  When he asked for them to be approved the Department would not, and Premier Gray asked Biss to communicate that, and return the stamps. The stamps were never returned - they were put into a Department file briefly, before then being added to the G.P.O.'s own stamp collection!! 😂

 

The negotiations were to no avail - Howie must withdraw the stamps or his Service would be shut down.  Don't forget Howie is only 19 at this stage - and so it may have been thought that he would fold under the threat. He did not. He refused to comply (thank goodness - otherwise a very rich chapter in NZ philatelic history may have been lost!).  He dug his heels in and was willing to contest the decision in a court of law.  Well, as often happens in the world of Government (even to this day) court cases were not considered the best publicity. The Post and Telegraph Department acquiesced (who knows what pressure they might have been under from the Government and the Premier), but on condition the words SPECIAL POST were removed from the stamps.  While the overprint blocked the words out some, another stamp would be needed - but let's stick with the overprint for now.

 

Fricker was caught up in all this too - he had a vested interest. He tried to back-door Howie and submitted his design and references from key business investors of Great Barrier Island to the powers in Wellington. The Department gave the same ineffectual response to him.

 

Nonetheless they both survived, and Howie produced his third stamp, VP2 overprinted with 'Pigeongram' becoming VP3. It was officially released on 7 July 1899.