George Robey — Prince of Wales' Boy Scouts Fund

Twelve poster stamps sold in 1921 to raise money for the Prince of Wales' Boy Scouts Fund. They carry no face value and had no postal validity on their own: cinderella labels that could sit beside ordinary postage on an envelope.

In January 1921 Imperial Headquarters was short of funds. The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), already Chief Scout for Wales, gave a personal donation and led a national appeal, including facsimile letters on St James's Palace stationery asking supporters to help the Movement grow. These labels were a public spin-off of that campaign. Each stamp is headed GEORGE ROBEY STAMPS, carries the three feathers of the Prince of Wales in red at the foot, and reads To help PRINCE OF WALES · BOY SCOUTS FUND.

George Robey (George Edward Wade, 1869–1954), the English music-hall comedian known as the «Prime Minister of Mirth», appears on every design in a different stage character, photographed in sepia inside a circular frame set in a pink ornamental border. The sheet is three columns by four rows. The top row shows him three times in Scout uniform with a wide-brimmed hat; the remaining nine designs cover other Robey rôles — among them his bowler-hatted clerical comic turn, a cavalier in a plumed hat, a top-hatted figure, and further theatrical and sports portraits.

The set is catalogued here as the complete sheet of twelve, which is how it was issued and how it usually survives.