Red Cross Postage Stamps

The intersection of the Red Cross and Tuberculosis (TB) campaigns represents one of the most powerful humanitarian movements in philatelic history. Long before antibiotics existed, tuberculosis (then known as the “White Plague”) was one of the world’s deadliest killers. To fund the massive cost of building sanatoriums and providing patient care, humanitarian organizations turned to charity stamps—giving birth to a massive collecting niche known as Cinderella stamps (stamps that look like postage but hold no mailing value, used instead for fundraising or decoration). The Birth of the “Christmas Seal”
The concept originated in Denmark in 1904, when a postal clerk named Einar Holbøll realized that adding a cheap charity stamp to heavy holiday mail could generate massive funding to treat sick children. By 1907, the idea crossed the Atlantic to the United States. Red Cross official Emily Bissell designed the very first American Red Cross Christmas Seal to save a small, failing TB sanatorium on the Brandywine Creek in Delaware. The project was an overnight phenomenon, turning a local $300 emergency into a multimillion-dollar national annual campaign. The Cross of Lorraine: The Official Symbol Against TB
For the first twelve years (1907–1919), these anti-tuberculosis stamps were officially administered and branded by the American Red Cross, featuring their signature Greek red cross emblem.
However, by 1920, the Red Cross handed the entire operation over to the National Tuberculosis Association (now known as the American Lung Association). To differentiate the campaigns, the red emblem changed permanently to the Double-Barred Cross of Lorraine. This double-barred cross became the universal global stamp symbol for the crusade against lung disease, recognized on charity stamps from France to India.