One sideline to the story of telegraph stamps is the Stock Exchange Forgery of 1872-73 which was discovered in 1898 by Charles Nissen when examining used stamps from telegraph forms."The Telegraphic Use of Great Britain Postage Stamps" by Andrew Higson & Steve Hiscocks, Gibbons Stamp Monthly, London, June 2007. The stamps were found to be forged due to the absence of a watermark and because they had impossible corner lettering. It is believed that a clerk in the Stock Exchange Post Office, London had been using forged one shilling green stamps on the forms instead of genuine stamps and keeping the fees. The culprit was never identified, but examples of the forgery are now sold for many times the price of the genuine stamps.
