Wrapper (philately)

In philately a wrapper is a form of postal stationery which pays the cost of the delivery of a newspaper or a periodical. The wrapper is a sheet of paper, large enough to wrap around a folded or rolled newspaper and with an imprinted stamp to pay the cost of postage. Some catalogs and reference books refer to a wrapper as postal bands which comes from the French term bandes postale. Still others refer to it as a newspaper wrapper or periodical wrapper.

The first country to issue wrappers was the United States in October 1861, followed by New South Wales (1864), North German Confederation (1868), Victoria (1869), Romania (1870), Great Britain (1870), in total 110 countries issued wrappers.

Charles Knight is considered as the first person to propose the use of stamped wrappers or as the "inventor". He made the proposal in 1834 in a letter to Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Following this in the course of the debate on 22 May 1834, in the House of Commons, Matthew Davenport Hill MP, brother of Sir Rowland Hill, advocating the payment of a penny upon an unstamped newspaper sent by post, stated: "...to put an end to any objections that might be made as to the difficulty of collecting the money, he would adopt the suggestion of a person well qualified to give an opinion on the subject — he alluded to Mr Knight, the publisher. That gentleman recommended that a stamped wrapper should be prepared for such newspapers as it was desired to send by post, and that each wrapper should be sold at the rate of 1d by the distributors of stamps..."

All the countries which issued wrappers have now discontinued producing them due to the declining usage. The US removed them from the official schedule on 9 October 1934 though left over stock was sold for a few years thereafter. Most countries stopped production by 1940, some of the last countries to cease issuing wrappers were Australia in 1980, Ireland in 1984, Barbados in 1990 and Cyprus in 1991.

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