Soot

For today's mono Monday I checked to see if I had any interesting stamps that were basically monochrome or would look good in monochrome. This 11p stamp from 1976 is basically creosote and soot coloured so I've imported it from RAW via an Ilford HP5 filter, which has removed the oily brown tinge but basically left it alone.

Apparently Lord Shaftesbury was a bit of a reformer in an age when social reform wasn't that popular. From 1840 to 1875 he fought to introduce a ban on the use of children to clean chimneys. Apparently many were sold into the trade and were basically unpaid slaves until they died of various horrible diseases (e.g. scrotum cancer) or were too big or ill to work and were then dumped on society.

People who rant on about political correctness, health and safety gone mad, Brussels bureaucrats have no idea how horrible working conditions in the UK (and other other so called first world nations) were until very recently. Reforms granting people the vote, the right to be free (not be slaves), not to die horrible deaths at work, have a bit of pension were hard won and we should not let people take them from us, or deny them to others.

I don't remember 1976 very much other than it was very hot and dry in the summer and we had standpipes delivering water because they turned the mains off. I do remember people on TV standing where the water was supposed to be in various reservoirs, and our neighbour being stung while on the beach at Southport by some floating thing... I remember she screamed a lot...