Lock seals were required by law to be used in securing untaxed distilled spirits in distillery warehouses and proprietors’ bonded warehouses. So we stray just a little farther to some items that have been enthusiastically collected by the devotees of revenues. In my own research (still unpublished) on the lock seals, I ran into an inquiry of Robert S. Hatcher (a stamp collector!) to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in the late 1880’s. So collector interest in the lock seals goes back more than a century.

There are six known basic types of lock seals, two glass types used by the U.S. Customs Service and three paper types used by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, and another paper type that was used in the late 1860’s by Internal Revenue inspectors. I shall confine myself here to the three paper types inscribed U.S. Internal Revenue. During the later years of National Prohibition the responsibility for alcohol was transferred first to the newly created Bureau of Prohibition and then to another new creation, the Bureau of Industrial Alcohol. These two bureaus used Slaight lock seals with new inscriptions. However, they otherwise resemble the lock seals of Internal Revenue used both during the early years of Prohibition and after repeal of the 18th amendment.

Lock seals did not have a monetary value and did not indicate that either a tax had been paid or that an item was tax exempt. Neither was a fee paid for their use. So why should they be considered as revenue stamps? Their traditional inclusion among the revenues is justified by their use to insure the integrity of the system for assessing and collecting the taxes on certain goods. In addition their use was required by the very acts that levied the taxes.

The same act which brought about the first paper distilled spirits taxpaid stamps in 1868 also required the use of seal locks on distillery warehouses. These locks required that at the time of closing something be inserted into the lock which covered the keyhole to discourage tampering with the lock. Plain paper seals were initially used with the storekeepers encouraged to mark the paper with a secret mark (to be changed frequently). It was not until 1872, when the patented seal lock of Thomas L. Slaight of Newark, New Jersey was adopted, that lock seals were printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The brass Slaight locks, with only a few improvements over the years, were to be used continuously until 1951.

The Slaight lock seals themselves underwent some changes over the decades of use. The earliest seals used a four digit serial number with an alphabetical letter appended to the serial number as either a prefix or a suffix. The discovery of the thirteen letters of the alphabet that were used remains unpublished, but later this year a more full story of the early Slaight lock seals will be published. The increased demand for the lock seals led the Bureau to abandon the letters when a five digit serial number was introduced about 1880. Further increased demand led the Bureau to add a printed series designation which used 22 letters of the alphabet (omitting the use of I, J, O and Q). During these years the Slaight lock seals were printed from engraved plates.

The economic pressures of the early twentieth century led the Bureau to switch to offset printing of the Slaight lock seals beginning in 1913, one of the earliest conversions of revenues from intaglio to offset printing. The low denominations of documentary, proprietary, and wine stamps for the Act of October 22, 1914 were all printed by the offset method. Offset was used for the Slaight lock seals until the use of this lock was abandoned after 1951.

Seal locks were not abandoned, however. A larger seal (designated as the Series of 1952 by the Bureau) was introduced which in overall design was similar in appearance to the former Slaight lock seals. The Series of 1952 seals continued to be printed until 1970.

The third type of paper lock seal was for the Caton lock. It was introduced in 1878. Although the first government pronouncements indicate that it was to be a replacement for the Slaight locks, the continued production and delivery of Slaight lock seals throughout the 1880’s indicate that this did not occur. In fact, it was the Caton lock that was abandoned after 1893, when deliveries of the Caton lock seals ceased. A search of government records has not turned up the reasons for either the introduction or the abandonment of the Caton locks and seals.

The best listing of the lock seals to date was the Priester listing in the April, 1986 issue of The American Revenuer. The listing follows the practice of early catalogers by listing them alphabetically by color. This practice was adopted because of the paucity of information on the order of issuance. This situation should be remedied by the publication of my own research.