Edward Denny Bacon

Sir Edward Denny Bacon (29 August 1860 – 5 June 1938) was a British philatelist who helped with the enlargement and mounting of collections possessed by rich collectors of his time and became the curator of the Royal Philatelic Collection between 1913 and 1938.

Early life

Edward Bacon was the son of a London malt producer, and worked in his father's factory until its closure in 1895.

Philately

After 1895 he decided to become a full-time philatelist. His two main collections were of Japanese stamps (later acquired by Philipp von Ferrary) and of postal stationery (later in the ownership of Thomas Tapling).

He joined the Philatelic Society, London in 1880, in which he served in all the principal positions. He was elected president in 1917.

He was known to help some British collectors to manage their philatelic possessions. The first one was Thomas Keay Tapling; when Tapling bequeathed his collection to the British Museum, Bacon mounted the ensemble and wrote its description, a task he undertook for an exhibition in February 1897, after Tapling's death in 1891. After that, he managed Henry J. Duveen's collection, and published in 1911 the catalogue of the Crawford Library. In 1907 Bacon was the first President of the Philatelic Literature Society. Bacon was also a member of the Fiscal Philatelic Society.

The Royal Philatelic Collection

A week after John Alexander Tilleard, "Philatelist to the King", died in September 1913, Bacon was invited by King George V to be the Curator of the Royal Philatelic Collection. He accepted and travelled from his residence in Croydon to Buckingham Palace two or three times a week until his death to work on the collection, to buy stamps, to receive items from the post offices in the United Kingdom, and the British Dominions and colonies, and to mount all this in uniform red stamp albums, while Tilleard had accumulated and mounted only when the King was preparing an exhibition at the Royal Philatelic Society London. Nevertheless, John Wilson, Keeper of the Collection after Bacon's death, criticised the way Bacon added new hinges without removing old ones.