{"id":179,"date":"2024-03-19T21:19:37","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T21:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.larenotierephilately.com\/?page_id=179"},"modified":"2024-03-30T03:38:37","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T03:38:37","slug":"more-and-more","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.larenotierephilately.com\/?page_id=179","title":{"rendered":"1st Baron Stamp,\u00a0GCB,\u00a0GBE,\u00a0FBA\u00a0(21 June 1880 \u2013 16 April 1941)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sir Josiah Stamp in 1935<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Josiah Charles Stamp, 1st Baron Stamp<\/strong>,\u00a0GCB,\u00a0GBE,\u00a0FBA\u00a0(21 June 1880 \u2013 16 April 1941) was an English industrialist, economist, civil servant, statistician, writer, and banker. He was a director of the\u00a0Bank of England\u00a0and chairman of the\u00a0London, Midland and Scottish Railway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life and career<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stamp was born in\u00a0Hampstead,\u00a0London,[1]<\/sup>\u00a0the third of seven children; his youngest brother\u00a0L. Dudley Stamp\u00a0was known as a geographer. At the time of his birth his father owned and managed a provision and general shop in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stamp was educated at\u00a0Bethany School, Goudhurst\u00a0in Kent. He left at 16 and joined the Civil Service as a boy clerk in the\u00a0Inland Revenue\u00a0Department. With a brief interval in the\u00a0Board of Trade, he rose to assistant inspector of taxes at\u00a0Hereford\u00a0in 1903, an inspector of taxes in London in 1909, and assistant secretary in 1916.[2]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Stamp was studying economics as an external student. He was awarded a first class degree (1911) by the\u00a0University of London\u00a0and a doctorate (1916) by the\u00a0London School of Economics. The thesis, published as\u00a0British Incomes and Property<\/em>, became a standard work on the subject and established his academic reputation. In 1919 he changed career, leaving the civil service for business, to join as secretary and director of\u00a0Nobel Industries Ltd, from which\u00a0Imperial Chemical Industries\u00a0developed. In 1926 he became Chairman of the\u00a0LMS\u00a0and was instrumental in getting\u00a0William Stanier\u00a0appointed in 1932 as Chief Mechanical Engineer to resolve the locomotive problems of the company. In 1928 he was appointed a director of the Bank of England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Dawes Committee, chaired by\u00a0Charles G. Dawes\u00a0(Josiah Stamp 7th from left).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stamp was often called to serve on public commissions, committees and boards: he was a member of the Royal Commission on Income Tax, 1919, the Northern Ireland Finance Arbitration Committee, 1923\u201324, the Committee on Taxation and\u00a0National Debt, 1924, the Dawes Reparation Commission’s Committee on German Currency and Finance, 1924, the Young Committee in 1929 and the Economic Advisory Council, 1930\u201339. In 1935, he was a founding member of the\u00a0Anglo-German Fellowship[3]<\/sup>\u00a0and had made low key visits to\u00a0Nuremberg\u00a0in 1936 (when he met\u00a0Adolf Hitler\u00a0\u2013 whom Stamp noted was a “statesman and demagogue combined” \u2013 and\u00a0Franz von Papen), and 1937, to view the\u00a0Nazi Party\u00a0Congress with the unspoken support of the then\u00a0Foreign Secretary\u00a0Lord Halifax.[4]<\/sup>\u00a0Stamp expressed sympathy for Nazi Germany, saying he supported “reasonable counteraction of Jewish domination.”[5]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 1927 until his death Stamp was Colonel commanding the\u00a0Royal Engineers\u00a0Railway and Transport Corps,[6]<\/sup>\u00a0and became Honorary Colonel of Transportation Units in the Royal Engineers\u00a0Supplementary Reserve[7]<\/sup>\u00a0in 1938.[8]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stamp was widely regarded as the leading British expert on taxation, and took an active part in the work of the\u00a0Royal Statistical Society, serving as president from 1930 to 1932.[9]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Grave of Josiah, Olive and Wilfrid Stamp, Beckenham Cemetery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stamp refused to be moved out of his house, ‘Tantallon’, in Park Hill Road,\u00a0Shortlands, during the German bombing of\u00a0The Blitz. He, aged sixty, and his wife, aged sixty-three,[10]<\/sup>\u00a0were killed by a bomb’s direct hit on the air-raid shelter at their home on 16 April 1941. They were buried at\u00a0Beckenham Cemetery. Stamp was regarded to be the second wealthiest man in Britain at the time of his death.[11][12]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honours and awards<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stamp was invested as a\u00a0Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)\u00a0in 1918,\u00a0Knight in the Order (KBE)\u00a0in 1920, and\u00a0Knight Grand Cross (GBE)\u00a0in 1924 and\u00a0Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (GCB)\u00a0in 1936. He was a Knight of Grace of the\u00a0Order of St John of Jerusalem. He also held the Grand Cross of the\u00a0Austrian Order of Merit\u00a0(awarded 1936) and the Afghan Order of Astaur.[6]<\/sup>\u00a0He was raised to the peerage on 28 June 1938 as\u00a0Baron Stamp<\/strong>, of\u00a0Shortlands\u00a0in the\u00a0County of Kent.[13]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stamp was elected an International Honorary Member of the\u00a0American Academy of Arts and Sciences\u00a0in 1933 and an International Member of the\u00a0American Philosophical Society.[14][15]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was first Mayor of the Borough of\u00a0Beckenham, Kent, within which he had settled at\u00a0Shortlands, in 1935. He was made an honorary Freeman of the same borough in 1936 and of\u00a0Blackpool\u00a0in 1937.[7]<\/sup>\u00a0In 1936, he served as President of the Geographical Association; his brother L Dudley Stamp, also became President of the Association, in 1950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Family<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stamp met his future wife, Olive Jessie Marsh, a soprano and student teacher, when he was seventeen. Pursuing their work and studies separately for several years until their marriage in 1903, they engaged in a correspondence (Jones 1964). Between 1904 and 1917 they had four sons,\u00a0Wilfred, Trevor, Maxwell and Colin. It was as a result of this marriage that Stamp, son of a Baptist father and\u00a0Church of England\u00a0mother, converted to the\u00a0Wesleyan Methodist Church.[16]<\/sup>\u00a0A few of his writings (see below), such as\u00a0Christianity and Economics<\/em>\u00a0(1939), discuss the relevance of Christian values to contemporary economics systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stamp’s son Wilfred was killed at the same time and in the same place as his father, but\u00a0English law\u00a0has a\u00a0legal fiction\u00a0that in the event of the order of deaths being indeterminable, the elder is deemed to have died first. Legally therefore, Wilfred momentarily inherited the peerage: and as a consequence the family had to pay\u00a0death duty\u00a0twice. The peerage passed to the second of Stamp’s four sons,\u00a0Trevor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quotes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A well known quote from Stamp (often referred to as Stamp’s Law) is:”The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the\u00a0chowky dar<\/em>\u00a0(village watchman in India), who just puts down what he damn pleases.” (Stamp recounting a story from\u00a0Harold Cox\u00a0who quotes an anonymous English judge).[17]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another quote attributed to Stamp is:”Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.” (Said to be from an informal talk at the University of Texas in the 1920s).[18]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n