On the trail of the first Penny Black

AND so to Bedlington. Not the column's usual stamping ground - the term may prove appropriate - but a lovely Saturday afternoon, 90 minutes until kick-off and the chance to enjoy a bit of a dander.

Originally Saxon, the town's in mid-Northumberland, best known for its perky little terriers - 50 years ago America's sixth-favourite family dog - but with several other claims to fame, or to notoriety.

There's even a heritage trail, places of interest marked by a blue plaque. Every town should have one.

One's outside the childhood home of Daniel Gooch, the great railway engineer, another on the wall of the Salvation Army citadel that was Bedlington's Victorian theatre, a third identifies the Trotter Memorial, a fountain acknowledging the local GP, sanitation campaigner, poet and after-dinner speaker.

The second most compelling of all, however, is the VR postbox - how many points for one of those from Big Chief I-Spy? - and, next to it, a plaque claiming that Bedlington was the destination of the first Penny Black.

It's true - and last time it was put on the Penny Black market, worth at least £50,000.

The world's first pre-paid adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black was officially introduced on May 6, 1840.

Four days earlier, however, someone in London sent correspondence to Mr A W Blenkinsop at Bedlington Iron Works - using one of the new stamps and a special wrapper designed by the artist William Mulready.

Though Blenkinsop had been dead for nine years, it was something for which the Royal Mail could hardly be blamed. At any rate, the letter was forwarded to his family in Carlisle - the May 6 date still further enhancing its value.

Contrary to popular belief, however, the Penny Black itself is by no means rare. Ten-a-penny, it might almost be said. Getting on 70 million were printed in just over a year, and while a stamp in mint condition might sell for up to £3,000, a used one can be had for a fiver.

It was replaced in 1841 by the Penny Red, the colour changed because a red cancellation frank on a black background was hard to distinguish. The Penny Red survived until 1879, hardly worth the paper it's printed on - unless, of course, you're a stamp dealer seeking approval.

Perhaps the most gruesomely fascinating of all Bedlington's blue plaques is on the wall outside the Sun Inn, scene in April 1913 of the murder of two police officers and of the pub's new landlady.

The culprit, alas, was one John Amos, known as Jocker and emphatically no relation.

Upset at being evicted, the unfortunate Amos produced a Winchester rifle to warn off intruders, including the removal men with their flat cart. When the constabulary was summoned he shot Sgt Barton, PC Mussell and Mrs Grice, the new landlady before fleeing into the fields behind the pub.

The countryside was being "scoured", reported the following day's Echo, talking also of the officers' "fatal pluck". Amos was eventually found hiding in a conduit.

Despite a nationwide 60,000 name petition for clemency - and the Echo's insistence that he was a member of a well known Northumberland cycling family - he was hanged at Newcastle Jail in July the following year.

AFTER the Penny Black the Black Pig, and 50 years this year since Captain Pugwash set sail on the crest of an airwave.

The Black Pig's motley crew, it may be recalled, included Pirate Barnabas, Pirate Willy - from Wigan - and Tom the Cabin Boy, who was the brains of the organisation.

They'd launched in 1950 as a comic strip in the Eagle, sailing off to the Radio Times before happily anchoring on children's television.

We mention all this because yesterday's Eating Owt column referred to the Nobel Peace Prize, due to be announced on Friday and won in 1995 by the Pugwash Peace Conference, named after the small Canadian town in which it was first held - also in 1957.

John Ryan, the pirate's creator, read about Pugwash in a newspaper. Unlike Oldham, which billed itself "Home of the tubular bandage", Pugwash was proclaimed "Home of the thinkers".

Several wholly unfounded urban legends have since attached themselves, barnacle-like, to the Black Pig's hull. A more appealing story is that Ryan was an old boy of Ampleforth College, in North Yorkshire, which has a traditional rivalry with Sedbergh school, in Cumbria.

Hence Pugwash and his merry men wear Ampleforth's black and red while the villainous Cutthroat Jake and his crew appeared in Sedbergh's brown and yellow. Colour check, anyone know if it's true?

THE reunion movement flourishes, happily and nostalgically. The only trouble is that, at a time when all anyone wants to do is talk about the good old days, organisers will insist on booking a turn. It happened again at Crook on Friday - no offence to the lass, a very canny singer, but so unnecessary that someone quietly threatened to do a damage to her amplification equipment. It could have been the first known example of miconoclasm.

LAST week's piece on military middle names - beginning with Sir Redvers Buller VC, a hero of the Zulu War - reminded Bob Williams that at the start of the 20th Century, "Christmas" was also a familiar middle name for men.

Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland even had a relative called Mary Christmas, but we'll return to them in a moment.

As Bob suggests, you can't be too careful with names - something the unfortunately monikered Alfred Hart (Gadfly, July 25) would also confirm.

Bob had a school friend called Albert Duckett, inevitably shortened to Bert and then turned around to become Dirt Bucket, which ordure unfortunately remained.

Paul Dobson also had forebears called Richard Garibaldi Bell and Richard Baden Powell Bell, though his favourite great great uncle may have been Scorer Haswell. "With a name like that he should have played Northern league football, or worked down the pit. The second bit, at least, was true."

BOOKS arrive by the shelf full; a column or two may have to be devoted to them. Don't Go There, a collection of 1,001 rude things said about places in Britain (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, £7.99) includes nothing of Bedlington but a Guardian writer's view of Bedford as "a place pumped full of returning commuters whose wildest aspirations extend to the crazy heights of an early night, with the 2.4 kids staying over at nan's".

Colin Plinth, the compiler, also revives Daniel Defoe's 18th Century assertion that Darlington offered "nothing remarkable, but dirt". The old town, happily, has much cleaned up its act.

WE hear also that the latest book from Alan Sillitoe - he of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - will be called Gadfly in Russia, an account of his Soviet travels in an elderly Peugeot.

It should be made clear that there is no connection. This week's column has been largely in the black, not the red, though it's unlikely that we'll return to stamps. As someone remarked before, philately gets you nowhere.