Neil Ross McKinnon

Neil Ross McKinnon KC ( – 26 April 1909) was a British barrister resident in British Guiana (now Guyana). He was the president of the Board of Superintendence of New Amsterdam, and later the first mayor of that town. A stamp collector, he once owned the British Guiana 1856 1c magenta stamp, the only known copy of that stamp, which he bought from a local schoolboy for six shillings and sold five years later in England. The stamp sold in 2014 for US$9,480,000.

Early life and family Neil McKinnon was born in the mid-nineteenth century of Scottish descent. He qualified as a barrister of London's Middle Temple around 1885 and married Eugenie Bath Tait in London in 1887. They had three children, the third of which, Eileen Alice Kate, died of typhoid in 1906 at the age of 13.

Career

McKinnon practised in British Guiana. In 1905 he was appointed King Edward VII's counsel for the Colony. He was also appointed Acting Solicitor General.

He was the president of the Board of Superintendence of New Amsterdam from 1889, and the first mayor of that town when it became a municipality on 1 September 1891; he framed the Town Council Ordinance and was the town's Financial Representative.

He was a member of the Royal Colonial Institute and a Freemason.

Philately

McKinnon was a collector of the stamps of British Guiana. In 1873 he bought the British Guiana 1856 1c magenta stamp for six shillings from a local schoolboy, Louis Vernon Vaughan. Vaughan had found the stamp among the effects of his uncle Andrew Hunter who had recently moved to Barbados. The stamp was probably on some sort of cover, possibly a newspaper wrapper, and soaked off by Vaughan. McKinnon initially did not want the stamp due to the clipped corners but changed his mind when he learned that Vaughan wanted to use the sale to buy other stamps that he had been sent on approval from England.

In addition to the 1c magenta, McKinnon owned all four known single used copies of the 1850 2c "cottonreel" stamps on rose-coloured paper.

After selling his collection, McKinnon apparently did not continue to collect stamps.