The John Bull print­ing set has to be includ­ed here because it was the ini­tial dri­ver for so many hob­by print­ers to enter the craft. The pages of the BPS’s Small Print­er are lit­tered with the accounts of this being the first time some print­ers used types and ink to leave words on a page.

The con­cept is sim­ple: indi­vid­ual types, usu­al­ly made from rub­ber are assem­bled on a wood­en or plas­tic chan­nel, with a han­dle on top. The assem­bled han­dle, chan­nel and types is pushed against an ink pad, inked and then impressed on the page.

Before John Bull

Jacques Baum & Co. of Birm­ing­ham adver­tised a ​‘Print­ing Press’ in the 1870s, which in fact was a fore­run­ner of the John Bull set — a nar­row trough of brass in to which met­al type was set.

One com­men­ta­tor said: ​‘This is a mere toy for print­ing a sin­gle line of type. It is a nar­row trough of brass in which the type is fixed.¹’

Theobald & Co also adver­tised their ​‘Print­ing Appa­ra­tus’ with the word ​‘dab­ber’ sug­gest­ing a sim­i­lar kit to the John Bull offer.

John Bull Sets

The Char­ter Stamp com­pa­ny looks to have been estab­lished in March 1922, to sell both stan­dard rub­ber stamps (like in the com­mer­cial advert here) and toys. Bob Richard­son’s detec­tive work² gives an ear­li­er pos­si­ble date of 1916 when a Wandsworth Sta­tion­er sold a John Bull Print­ing Set, indi­cat­ing that the prod­uct might pre-date estab­lish­ing the com­pa­ny.

The firm applied for their trade mark in 1927² and in 1938 moved to 57 South­wark Street.

Over the peri­od that the firm exist­ed they pro­duced mul­ti­ple sets, each bear­ing a ref­er­ence num­ber that had no con­nec­tion with the scale or size of the set, or even with ear­li­er sets bear­ing the same num­bers!

It appears that the firm made most of its own com­po­nents, includ­ing a spe­cial for­mu­la­tion of ink, so as not to be harm­ful for chil­dren decid­ing to drink it, and cut­ting rub­ber plates con­tain­ing let­ters in to the famil­iar strips that are par­tial­ly divid­ed in to let­ters. This was achieved by tak­ing rub­ber sheets and using two guil­lo­tine cuts — one shal­low to split the types on each line, but leave a join at the bot­tom; and the sec­ond to cut ful­ly each line of type from the next.

The firm also exper­i­ment­ed with oth­er, sim­i­lar, prod­ucts includ­ing a dif­fer­ent type of patent­ed type hold­er in 1946, and in the same year, a card­board hold­er for indi­vid­ual met­al types.

Car­son Bak­er was dis­solved in 1988², but a ves­tige of the prod­uct appeared to live on with a sup­pli­er that had the com­po­nents made in Chi­na. I called their num­ber this week, but found it dis­con­nect­ed.

Criminal Uses!

A search for John Bull sets in news­pa­pers sug­gests that they had a minor role to play in crim­i­nals’ work. It’s easy today to cre­ate a great copy of a doc­u­ment using a PC, but back in the age of the John Bull set, this was per­haps one way to lend a sense of authen­tic­i­ty to a doc­u­ment. In Octo­ber 1976, the Ham­mer­smith & Shep­herds Bush Gazette report­ed on a Social Secu­ri­ty fraud where blank DHSS vouch­ers had been stolen and then been type­writ­ten over then stamped with a John Bull set to allow crim­i­nals to take £28,000 they were not enti­tled to.

As late as April 1996, a Grantham tyre firm was defraud­ed as tak­ings were not being paid in to the bank as they should have been. Some­one was tak­ing the mon­ey home and using a John Bull set to fake the Bank’s rub­ber stamps on the pay­ing in book.

Today’s Sets

Sets are avail­able today, this ​‘Shiny’ kit on Ama­zon look­ing clos­est to the orig­i­nal John Bull sets. A nice devel­op­ment on these is the self-ink­ing kit, and I’m rather fond of this cir­cu­lar DIY self-ink­ing stamp.

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Location

57 South­wark Street, Lon­don; as home to the Char­ter Stamp Com­pa­ny, mak­er of the John Bull sets.

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Head­er Image: ​“John Bull Print­ing Out­fit” flickr pho­to by health­ser­vice­glass­es https://flickr.com/photos/healthserviceglasses/3755557097 shared under a Cre­ative Com­mons (BY-SA) license