Private Revenue Perfins of Victoria

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Section 2 - Commercial Overprints

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HALL'S/BOOK/STORE.a

User: Halls Book Store

Book Seller

Address: 371 Bourke St, Melbourne, VIC

262 Chapel St, Prahran, VIC

Revenue Use:

1932 Series 3d

1966 Series 3c. Inverted overprint reported

Rarity Scale:

1932 Series 3d R2

1966 Series 3c R2

Background: Sydney Leonard Hall was born in early 1870s and entered the book trade as a lad in the second hand department of the celebrated Cole’s Book Arcade, in Bourke Street. He had risen to manager of the educational book section before opening his first bookshop, at 306 Chapel Street, Prahran, in May 1920.

By January 1922, Hall’s Book Store had three branches, one at 309 Chapel Street, a second at 235 Glenlyon Road, East Brunswick, and a Melbourne city agent at Pudney’s Pen Store. The business dealt in new and second hand books, and schoolbooks, offering to send “lists of 200 good books to any address”.

By June, 1923, Hall’s book shop had re-located to 262-4 Chapel Street, Prahran, (opposite Prahran Town Hall) and advertised as “the largest book store in Melbourne”. In 1927, Hall’s advertised as “the largest second hand bookshop in Australia”. His shelves eventually carried 500,000 books-only 100,000 fewer than the (now) State Library of Victoria.

In October 1932, Hall opened a “new City Branch” at 371 Bourke Street. A branch opened later, in the mid-1930s, at 230 Wyndham Street, Shepparton together with printing works and a publishing department.

Sydney Leonard Hall died in May 1946, leaving a widow, Harriet, a married daughter, and two sons, Reginald and Charles, who continued to carry on the business.

In 1957, Hall’s bookstores were still located at their original addresses, advertising 250,000 school textbooks available. When Hall’s experienced financial difficulties in 1973, the business was taken over by Thomas Nelson (Australia). In April 1975, Hall’s general book business was bought by Robin White, a bookseller from Camberwell. L. & S. Educational Group (a subsidiary of David Syme & Co.) took over Hall’s educational book supply business.

Sydney L. Hall was a benign employer, much loved by his employees, and well known in charity circles and free masonry being a vice-president of No.6 group Masonic Masters.

Device: Preprinted

Related Patterns: Nil

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Herald.a

User: Herald Newspapers

Newspaper

Address: 44 Flinders St, Melbourne, VIC

Revenue Use:

1915 Series 2d

Rarity Scale:

1915 Series 2d R4

Background: *On 1 January 1849, the Port Phillip Herald changed its name to The Melbourne Morning Herald and General Daily Advertiser. It also upped its printing schedule from thrice-weekly to daily. The Argus, which would not yet be a daily until 18 June 1949, scorned its rival's change of schedule with this report on 2 January 1849:

"The commencement of 1849 seems likely to prove an era of some moment, in the annals of the Port Phillip Press. On the one hand we are summoned to attend the funeral of a noxious little publication, with which we have been bored for a few months of a Thursday evening, and are daily expecting a summons for a similar purpose, from a contemporary even more troublesome, from being just as stupid and a little more frequent.

On the other hand we have the still more melancholy duty of waiting upon the birth of a new daily, and it is with but a blank heart, we look forward to the trebled evils attendant upon a trebled issue of so mischievous a publication as the Port Phillip Herald. We are entire disbelievers in the daily publication of such a paper, till yesterday when the first dose reached us, and most sincerely do we condole with the public, upon the deluge of papers with which this province is to be inundated, till that happy day when a Daily Argus will rush in to the rescue, and effectually settle the quarrel as to which of the present Dailies goes to the wall, by quietly finding them a wall a piece. Thank Heaven that day is not far distant."

For twenty years from 1854, a succession of owners struggled to keep the newspaper afloat during the goldrush period. This included two years in which it was reduced to a biweekly. The newspaper changed its name several times before settling on The Herald from 8 September 1855 – the name it held for the next 135 years.

In 1869 it developed stability as an evening daily. Through News Ltd (the Australian arm of international media conglomerate News Corp), Rupert Murdoch purchased the company publishing this daily, The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd. The newspaper became defunct on 5 October 1990, but its name was merged with its morning sister newspaper The Sun News-Pictorial on 8 October 1990 to become the Herald Sun.