Stamp exhibitionat MovieTowne

THE Philatelic Society is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a new stamp issue and an exhibition in the lobby at MovieTowne, Invader’s Bay in Port of Spain. The exhibition runs from today to Sunday. There will be displays related to the new stamps and other important events in TT’s history.

Edward Barrow, who is a member of the society, said the displays include historical stamps that tell of the horrors and humiliations suffered by the West Indian Regiments during World War I (WWI). Barrow also references stamps that highlight the fund-raising efforts of Trinidad women in the Red Cross to assist wounded soldiers.

“The Trinidad Branch of the Red Cross was founded within a month of the start of World War I and was managed entirely by women. Committee members were appointed from all regions of Trinidad to head fund-raising efforts in their respective areas, and these read like a who’s who of society at the time,” Barrow said in a media release.

“They even organised what might have been Trinidad’s first mail shot to over 900 estates, asking for donations (the stamp shows one such letter). In the first year, $33,908.37 was raised, enabling the Red Cross to acquire two ambulances (the stamp also shows one of these),” Barrow said.

The stamps also attest to the women’s other activities during the war and after with programmes such as the Oranges and Limes campaign which boxed and shipped fruit and home-made jam to injured soldiers, Barrow said.

There is also evidence that Trinidadian women served in the Women’s Legion in France, he said, and helped the war effort by taking up positions such as drivers, cooks and nurses so that more men could be sent to the front line.