As we have seen, there was a requirement for each and every stamp to be individually cancelled to prevent attempted re-use of stamps.

The vast majority of stamps were correctly cancelled although some pairs and larger multiples do exist with fewer that the required number of cancellations.  These are known as “cancelled contrary to regulations”.

Such usage with red ink is extremely rare; there are four known examples of pairs of 1d blacks with a single red Maltese cross and two known examples of pairs of 2d blues with a single red cancellation.