[BITList] Philately got him everywhere

[John Feltham]

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visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2010-12-02



Gibbons,  (Edward) Stanley  (1840-1913), postage stamp dealer, was born on 21 June 1840 in Plymouth, the youngest child in the family of three sons and two daughters of William Gibbons (d. 1867), pharmaceutical chemist, and his wife, Elizabeth Langridge, of Portsea, Hampshire. He left Hallorans' Collegiate Establishment, Plymouth, at the age of fifteen to become a junior clerk in the Naval Bank. On the death of his eldest brother only a few weeks later, he was apprenticed to his father as a chemist.

Already interested in the new hobby of stamp collecting, he started to trade in stamps in 1856 from a desk in his father's shop. He began trading as E. S. Gibbons, then as E. Stanley Gibbons, and later as Stanley Gibbons & Co. A lucky deal in 1863 caused his business to take off: he bought two sacks of Cape of Good Hope triangular stamps for £5 from two sailors who had won them in a raffle in Cape Town. He later claimed to have made £500 on the deal. In November 1865 he issued a sixteen-page price list and catalogue, the forerunner of Gibbons's catalogues.

On his father's death in 1867 Gibbons took over the chemist's business, and in the 1871 census he was described as 'chemist and dealer in foreign stamps'. He sold the chemist's business in 1872 and moved to new premises at Plymouth Hoe. Here he published his first Gibbons 'V.R.' stamp album, followed by the 'Improved' and illustrated 'Imperial' albums.

In 1874 Gibbons moved to London, first to Clapham Common, and then in 1876 to 8 Gower Street. He started a monthly magazine, the Philatelic Record, which was superseded by the Monthly Journal in 1890.

At the age of fifty, in 1890, Gibbons retired and sold his business to Charles J. Phillips of Birmingham for £25,000. It became a private limited company, continuing as Stanley Gibbons Ltd, and he remained chairman until his death. The firm first moved to the Strand in 1891. In his retirement Gibbons travelled all over the world, visiting San Francisco, Egypt, Japan, Cochin, and the Hanoi exhibition, witnessing the crash of the Orient Express at Tirnova in Bulgaria in 1894.

Gibbons was married five times. His first wife, whom he married in 1872, was Matilda Woon, daughter of a Congregational minister. She died in 1877. He married his second wife, Maggie A. Casey, daughter of a Twickenham publican, in 1887. She died in 1899 and he then married a woman called Georgina, who appears to have died in 1905. His fourth wife, whom he married in 1905, was a widow, Mrs Bertha Barth of Chelsea, daughter of Edwin Boswith, a railway clerk. She died during a visit to Ceylon in 1908. His final marriage, in 1909, was to a widow, Mrs Sophia Crofts, of Kensington, daughter of a wine merchant. Stanley Gibbons died at his home, 4L Portman Mansions, Marylebone, London, on 17 February 1913. He had no children.

G. E. Dixon 

Janette Ryan 

Sources  C. V. Phillips, 'Fifty years of philately: the history of Stanley Gibbons Ltd', Gibbons Stamp Weekly (Jan-April 1906) + J. Holman, Gibbons Stamp Monthly (July-Aug 1990) + Catalogue of Gibbons catalogue centenary exhibition (1965) + private information (1993)
Likenesses  photograph, Stanley Gibbons, London [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £13,172 11s. 4d.: resworn probate, 1 May 1913, CGPLA Eng. & Wales