stamp paper

[Coffee Break]

I read this expression, "stamp paper", but am finding it difficult to understand it. Could you please let me know what it means? Here is the excerpt:

With a slight air of mystery, and a touch of guilt she would go to the small cupboard by the window, open it, and reverently draw out her bottle of port.

It was Dick who always stuck a narrow strip of stamp paper down the side of the bottle: who carefully drew the twelve pencilled lines across it at even distances apart. He did it as a joke originally, calling the port her medicine, and telling her to take a dose each night. But it was much better than a joke: it was a very good idea. There were twelve evenings through which the bottle had to last, and the wine-glass supplied by Mrs. Huggett could only be filled to the brim ten times. It was essential to have some kind of check on it to avoid the bottle giving out before the last evening, and in the opposite way it was necessary to avoid stinting herself each night, and finding some left over at the end.

- R. C. Sherriff, The Fortnight in September, Chapter 29

This is a novel published in 1931, which describes a fortnight in September in which an English family consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, Mary, Dick, and Ernie go on a holiday. During the holiday, Mrs. Stevens always drank a bottle of port, measuring it out evenly each day in a fortnight, because a doctor had said that a bottle of port was good for her tiredness.

In this part, I wonder what this underlined expression means.

All I could find about "stamp paper" on the Internet was this, but I am not sure it is a correct meaning in this context:

Stamped paper - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Stamped paper is an often-foolscap piece of paper which bears a pre-printed revenue stamp.[1][2]

So I am vaguely guessing that it might mean a sheet of paper, with check-marks (=stamps)... though I am not sure.

 

[Barque]

Nowadays stamp paper refers to a sheet of paper with a pre-printed revenue stamp, as you said, which is used to print legal/official documents on. So it can't be that.

Earlier when postage stamps were used much more, you could buy stamps in a sheet, like a sheet of paper, with perforations between the stamps. There was usually a strip of paper at the edges of the sheet which could be cut away and disposed off. I think Dick might have cut one such strip off a sheet of stamps and stuck that on the bottle.

Photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamp_paper

 

[Tarheel]

Well, it's not an expression. It's just a two word noun phrase.

I'd have probably just filed that under "look that up later". Why? You knew the important stuff anyway.

I learned something new! (Sort of.)

 

[Coffee Break]

@Barque and @Tarheel,

Thank you so much for the explanations and the link!
Wow, I could never have imagined by myself that this "stamp paper" refers to the blank thin line that remains after a user tears off the stamps therefrom!
I learned a new thing all thanks to you. What an insight!

So Dick recycled the thin strip of paper that remains after stamps are used from the whole sheet of stamps, to mark the twelve equal lines with a pencil, to let Mrs. Stevens know the exact amount she should consume each night.

I sincerely appreciate your help. My mystery is solved all thanks to you!

 

[Barque]

I could never have imagined by myself that this "stamp paper" refers to the blank thin line that remains after a user tears off the stamps therefrom!

This is very possibly the answer, but I'm not absolutely sure. I just can't think of anything else it could be.

 

[SoothingDave]

Unless it was possible to buy blank sheets of such paper, for one's own use.