British West Indies Study Circle

Index to BWISC Bulletins Introduction

PREFACE

This index has been prepared following on from the sterling efforts of Victor Toeg, who undertook the enormous task of producing the index to bulletins 1-100, and Michael Wilson who produced 101-127 and 128-151, each published as a separate index. With the advent of the Word Processor the opportunity has been taken to convert these original hard copy indexes into electronic format, to amalgamate them into one document, and to bring the index up to date.

From this point forward future indexing will be relatively straightforward and the index will be updated as each bulletin is published. To those members with a PC it is hoped that ultimately it will be available on-line, alternatively up-to-date hard copy prints will be available on request from the Publications Officer.

The index now provides easy access to an enormous corpus of high quality information covering virtually every topic within British West Indies philately. As the number of subjects covered has expanded over the years it has been deemed necessary to sub-divide the topics under each colony heading into four separate categories, each entry being listed in alphabetical order.

It is heartening to see that a number of the entries have multiple page references, the original representing a query and those subsequent supplying the answer or additional information. This is an essential feature of any study circle, the sharing of knowledge and expertise.

Peter Fernbank

January 2002

Notes: (These notes, made by Victor Toeg in 1987, are still relevant)

Not everything in the Bulletins has been included in the index. I have followed the principle that items involving philatelic enquiries and information in a wide sense should be covered and in addition the affairs of the Study Circle and its members are also shown.

There is a fair amount of overlapping in references, and this is intentional. An item may, for example, affect more than one country, or it may be information relating to the British West Indies generally. In such cases the same reference is included under the several countries and/or under the heading 'British West Indies'.

The original Bulletins numbered 1-7 (both inclusive) for the period April 1954 to October 1955 were, as might be expected, rather simple and crude being produced in pamphlet form in a larger format than that of the Bulletins numbered 8 onwards. Sometime after the present format was adopted, it was realised that the numbers of these early Bulletins were very limited and persons joining the Study circle subsequently would find it extremely difficult or impossible to acquire a complete set of Bulletins. It was decided therefore to print a quantity of Bulletins numbered 1-7 (both inclusive) abridged, to be comprised in one Bulletin in the current format and at the same time the contents were suitably pruned which resulted in the pages being renumbered. Consequently, reference to page numbers in the Bulletins numbered 1-7 will be the original page numbers when mentioned in Bulletin 8 onwards until the printing of the abridged version of Bulletins 1-7 occurred.