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Pull Tabs
 stamps before pulltabs




From: jmpeller@facstaff.wisc.edu (Jason Pellerin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Interesting pull-tab collection variant
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 16:47:00 -0600

In article <5fn7tf$8tb@panix2.panix.com>, bradham@panix.com (Bo Bradham) wrote:

>Madeleine Page <mpage@panix.com> wrote:
>>Jason Pellerin (jmpeller@facstaff.wisc.edu) wrote an admirable post.
>>Admirable for several reasons.
>
>Me too, um I mean yeah!

Hey, stop it, I'm blushing. And anyway, Tae Kim has newbie of the year locked up, so all your flattery is moot.

[my stuff snipped]

>Wasn't there a Shergold-esque attempt to collect postage stamps
>for a "dying young girl" in the late 1800's? I seem to remember a
>thread about it, but my research assistant is still at lunch and
>I can't find anything on dejanews.

ObHorshack: ooh! ooh! me!

from dejanews:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Subject:      An 1850 Shergoldianism

From:         dave@boobs.eorbit.net (dogmas rivals chide)

Date:         1996/10/21

Message-Id: <54glr1$mp0@twizzler.callamer.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
[More Headers]

Found this in "The Lore & Language of Schoolchildren" by Iona & Peter Opie (Oxford Paperbacks 1967) and thought it was a good early example of a Shergoldian popular delusion:

Extraordinary Postage Stamps Contribution Illustrated London News
18 May 1850, p. 349

Some time since, there appeared in the public journals a statement to the effect that a certain young lady, under age, was to be placed in a convent, by her father, if she did not procure, before the 30th of April last, one million of used postage stamps. This caused numerous persons to forward stamps for the purpose of securing her liberty. In March last, a lady, a member of one of the first families in Derbyshire, residing not many miles from Derby, mentioned the conditions to her friends, and in a short time the lady began to receive packages by post and railway from every quarter, which poured in in such numbers, that, in ten days, during last April, she received parcels containing millions of stamps. The walking postman, who was in the habit of delivering a few letters daily at the mansion where the lady resides, became so loaded with letters and packages containing Queen's heads, that it was necessary to employ another man to assist him. On one morning between ninety and one hundred letters and packets arrived by post, and on another between 120 and 130. These were in addition to multitudes which arrived on other days. Boxes, bales, and packages also poured in by railway; and to such an extent that it became necessary to give public notice, by advertisements and printed circulars, that it was urgently desired no more stamps should be sent, as the young lady had procured the number she required. <<<<<<<<<<<<

[description of big piles of stamps snipped]

So now I'm forced to wonder how much older these kinds of stories get. Did, for example, confused (yet well-meaning) Spartans hoard broken sandal thongs, to save "that nice girl who went to Troy"?

History: chok full of batty pack rats!

jason "not that there's anything wrong with that" p.


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