This list illustrates the connection between the several companies through their common offices; and particularly the proximity of the International Telegraph Company offices in Royal Exchange Buildings to Julius Reuter, and to Nott & Gamble’s office.

The components of the largest of the cable concerns, the Eastern Telegraph Company, the Falmouth, Gibraltar & Malta, the Anglo-Mediterranean, the British Indian Submarine, the British Australian and the China Submarine companies, were all located at 66 Old Broad Street, City, EC, by 1870.

All of the public telegraph companies’ chief offices were adjacent to the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange in the City of London, the financial centre of the country. The Royal Exchange, Royal Exchange Buildings and Gresham House were essentially horizontal blocks of small offices in multiple occupancy.

Post Codes (EC, W, WC, etc) came to London in 1857.

1851 Dover – Calais STC - 25 miles, RSN, England to France
1852 Hurst Castle – Sconce Point IoW - 1 mile, Binks, England to Isle of Wight
1853 Dover – Ostend STC - 76 miles, RSN, England to Belgium
1853 Port Patrick – Donaghadee EIM - 25 miles, RSN, Scotland to Ireland
1853 Orfordness – Scheveningen ITC - 119 miles, RSN, England to Holland
1853 Tay Estuary ETC - 1 miles, RSN, Scotland
1853 Forth Estuary ETC - 5 miles, RSN, Scotland
1854 Port Patrick – Whitehead BET - 26 miles, RSN, Scotland to Ireland
1854 Holyhead – Howth ETC (duplicated in 1855) - 73 miles, RSN, North Wales to Ireland
1858 Orfordness – Haarlem EIT - 130 miles, GEC, England to Holland
1858 Cromer – Emden STC - 280 miles, GEC England to Hanover
1858 Weymouth – Alderney CIT - 69 miles, RSN, England to Channel Isles
1858 Alderney – Guernsey CIT - 18 miles, RSN, Channel Islands
1858 Guernsey – Jersey CIT - 15 miles, RSN, Channel Islands
1859 Cromer – Heligoland – Tonning STC - 376 miles, GEC, England to Denmark
1859 Folkestone – Boulogne STC - 24 miles, GEC, England to France
1859 Liverpool – Anglesey  MDH - 25 miles, GEC, (marine telegraph)
1859 Point Cranstal – Saint Bees IoM - 36 miles, GEC, England to Isle of Man
1859 Jersey – Pirou STC - 21 miles, GEC, France - Channel Islands
1861 Beachy Head – Dieppe STC - 80 miles, GEC, England to France 1861 Rhosneigr - Howth EIT - 73 miles, RSN, North Wales to Ireland (replacing the 1854-55 cables)
1862 Abermawr – Wexford LSI - 63 miles, GEC/SWS, South Wales to Ireland
1862 Cork Harbour & Blackwater at Youghal LSI - 5 miles, GEC/SWS, (part of the line to Wexford)
1862 Lowestoft – Zandvoort EIT - 130 miles, GEC, England to Holland
1863 Cape Clear – Baltimore BIM - 2 miles, GEC, (Irish marine telegraph)
1863 New Passage, across River Severn, BIM - 1 mile
1865 South Foreland – Cap Griz Nez STC - 25 miles, IRG, England to France
1866 Lowestoft – Norderney Reuter - 224 miles, TCM, England to Hanover
1866 South Foreland – La Paune STC - 47 miles, WTH, England to Belgium
1866 Killantringan - Whitehead EIT - 25 miles, TCM, Scotland to Ireland
1866 Valentia – Heart’s Content ATC (two cables) - 3,748 miles, TCM, Ireland to Newfoundland
1868 Newbiggin – Sondervig DNE - 342 miles, RSN, England to Denmark
1869 Peterhead – Egersund GNT - 375 miles, WTH, Scotland to Norway
1869 Lands End – St Mary’s SIT - 27 miles, RSN, England to Scilly Isles

Owners: ATC – Anglo-American Telegraph Co. BET - British Electric Telegraph Co. BIM - British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Co. CIT – Channel Islands Telegraph Co. DNE – Dansk-Norske-Engelske Telegrafselskab. ETC – Electric Telegraph Co. EIT – Electric & International Telegraph Co. EIM - English & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Co. GNT – Great Northern Telegraph Co. IoM – Isle of Man Electric Telegraph Co. IoW – Isle of Wight Electric Telegraph Co. ITC – International Telegraph Co. LSI – London & South-of-Ireland Direct Telegraph Co. MDH – Mersey Docks & Harbour Board. Reuter – Reuters Telegram Co. STC – Submarine Telegraph Co. SIT – Scilly Isles Telegraph Co.

Contractors: Binks – Binks & Stephenson. GEC – Glass, Elliot & Co. WTH – W T Henley. IRG – India Rubber, Gutta Percha & Telegraph Works. RSN – R S Newall. Reid – Reid Brothers.  SWS – S W Silver. TCM – Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Co.

Cooke and Wheatstone have had several biographers over the years, as have many other scientific innovators to electrical progress. I have here included background detail on some of the minor, unsung characters, and also some not so minor. However, little information exists about many of the most important connections of the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company.

Thomas Allan (1812-1883) – electrician, engineer and company promoter. An Edinburgh printer and publishers, owner of the ‘Caledonian Mercury’ newspaper and printer of the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’, he was notable for his submarine “light cable” of 1853, which had an iron wire core and several external unarmoured conductors, the reverse of conventional practice. Allan projected at least a dozen telegraph companies between 1848 and 1867, including the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company and very many cable concerns, to connect with America and to India. He contrarily advocated the adoption of the telegraphs by the Post Office in 1854. Allan also devised improvements in needle telegraphs, electro-motors and automatic telegraphs, continuing to “improve” his light cable, with fourteen patents in several areas to his name. On his bankruptcy in 1866 he took up litigation against the telegraph companies and their directors, this lasted to his death in 1883 and beyond, the last suit (of over ten, all unsuccessful) by his executors was dismissed in 1894.

William Stratford Andrews (1832-1906) – Electrical engineer and telegraph company manager. The son of Thomas Stratford Andrews, a landowner of Westbrook, Elstead, Surrey, he was initially employed on the telegraphs of the South Eastern Railway. In 1852 he became electrician to the Submarine Telegraph Company; by 1855 he had also been appointed Commercial Superintendant in London for the British Telegraph Company, with which the Submarine company was connected. In 1860 he was appointed electrician and shortly after Secretary and General Manager of the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company. He oversaw the United Kingdom company’s national expansion until it was taken over by the State in 1870, including the successful introduction of the Hughes type-printing telegraph into Britain in 1863. As an engineer and electrician Andrews supervised cables laid to Germany and Denmark in 1858-9, devising improved current reversal instruments for underwater circuits, and resin- coated-wood insulators for pole telegraphs in 1860 whilst working with the Submarine Telegraph Company, and later new galvanic batteries for the United Kingdom company. Declining to join the Post Office Telegraphs, in 1871 he became Secretary and then Managing Director of the Indo-European Telegraph Company, and shortly after a Director of the West India & Panama Telegraph Company. He married Annie Lamb in 1869. Their son, Thomas William Stratford Andrews (1870-1923), was also to become Managing Director of the Indo- European Telegraph Company in 1900. More ought to be known about W S Andrews.

William Thomas Ansell (1822 - 1904) - Born in Bromley-by-Bow, Middlesex, but brought up in the West Indies, the son of a medical doctor, W T Ansell joined the Electric Telegraph Company in London on its foundation in July 1846, eventually becoming District Superintendent for North West England in Liverpool. He took leave of absence due to illness between 1858 and 1861, during which period he advised R S Newall on cable operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Returning to the Electric company in 1861 he was appointed General Superintendant for Ireland, located in Cork, responsible for creating its network there during the 1860s. In 1870 he chose not to join the Post Office and became Secretary and Manager of the Falmouth, Gibraltar & Malta Telegraph Company in London, before being appointed Traffic Manager to the Eastern Telegraph Company. He practised as an Electrical Engineer in his later years, retiring to Southsea, Portsmouth by 1900.  Ansell married Sarah Jaques of Bow in 1860, and they had one son and two daughters, all born in Cork, Ireland. He was Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Alexander Bain (1810 -1877) – electrician and inventor, he has his own chapter in this work.

Frederick Collier Bakewell (1800-1869) – a scientific writer, inventor and patent agent. His family came from Wakefield, Yorkshire, and established Bakewell & Company, 13 Tavistock Row, Bedford Square, soda-water manufacturers, in the 1820s. In March 1832 F C Bakewell patented an ingenious “portable apparatus for the production of aerated waters” which continued in production until the 1850s. By the 1840s he was well-known as a writer of books and articles on scientific matters, especially electricity, living at Haverstock Hill, Hampstead, London. In 1847 he was editing  the ‘Spectator’ magazine and was in communication with Alexander Bain (q.v.). In 1848 F C Bakewell patented the “copying telegraph” using Bain’s chemical principles to produce the first distant facsimiles of writing and drawings. This was shown to approbation at the Great Exhibition of 1851 but was never used commercially. He latterly continued as a successful writer and commentator on telegraphy, with a sideline in practising as a patent agent.

Charles Vincent Boys (1825-1900) – Superintendent of the Intelligence Department of the Electric Telegraph Company and the telegraph news combine from 1848 until 1870. The son of John Boys, a merchant of Camden Cottages, Camden, “CVB”, as he was commonly known, was first employed as a clerk with the British Consulate at Frankfurt-am-Main. From 1848, at age twenty-three, he was editor-in-chief for all news telegraphed to the provinces, as well as responsible for the press private wires, and as such was important in the company’s hierarchy and in journalism. A skilled manager, with just three sub-editors, under his management the company’s income from news was four times the cost of collection. With the end of the Intelligence Department in 1870 CVB had a pension from the Post Office and received a widely-reported testimonial from the London press, presented by the Duke of Beaufort and, among others, Julius Reuter. Latterly Boys ran the office of Charles Bright, the famous cable engineer, but was drawn back into press telegraphy, managing the private wires of the Submarine Telegraph Company in London and on the Continent, in the 1880s. CVB lived and died close to the Strand in London; with his widowed mother, Jane, at 6 Cecil Street in 1851, lodging in 1861 at the telegraph office at 448 Strand, and dying at the Adelphi Hotel, after a period living at Ryde, Isle of Wight. Associated with the theatre, music and horse racing, as well as journalism, he was married only briefly late in life. CVB was a long-time member of the Savage Club, populated by authors, journalists and artists.

John Watkins Brett (1805-1863) – The son of William Brett, a carpenter of Bristol in the west of England, he was an artist in his early life and became a notable collector and dealer in works of art. Brett was living in America between 1832 and 1842. With his brother Jacob, and with Thomas Watkins Benjamin Brett, he was involved in promoting electric telegraphy from 1846. John Watkins Brett became justly famous for his advocacy and successful introduction of submarine telegraphy in England, France, Italy, Austria and America. He was promoting companies to further underwater electrical communication as early as the Railway Mania Year of 1845, going on to create the pioneering Submarine Telegraph Company and manage it to success. Brett founded the Atlantic Telegraph Company and was involved with this and the earliest plans for cables to India through the 1850s and 60s. Brett died in a lunatic asylum just before all of his plans came true.

Jacob Brett (1808-1897) – The younger brother of John Watkins Brett, was an electrical engineer whose name appears on several telegraphic patents in the 1840s and 1850s. There was “an appeal in favour of pecuniary assistance” for him in 1882.

The writer of these pages has published a short biography of John Watkins Brett and his brother, ‘The Moving Fire”, on the Atlantic Cable website.

Charles Tilston Bright (1832-1888) – He was employed by the Electric Telegraph Company in their electrical department for five years, before joining the British Telegraph Company for a short period. He became Engineer to the Magnetic Telegraph Company, as it then was, in 1852 until 1860 inventing, among other devices, the Bell telegraph. After forming a partnership with Latimer Clark (q.v.) in 1861 he remained as Consultant Engineer to the Magnetic company until 1868. His achievements for the Magnetic included the first successful Irish cable (after two previous attempts) in 1852 and his very efficient acoustic Bell telegraph which was widely used in its circuits from 1855 onward. His other affairs much reduced his contribution to the Magnetic company’s business after 1861, causing concern by the board. He was also, and famously, promoter and engineer of the Atlantic Telegraph Company from 1856 until 1862; after the failure of the first cables he parted on very bad terms with the board of directors. He was promoter of and consulting engineer to the early cables in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and the West Indies between 1861 and 1873, and later to several in the South Atlantic. He was more accomplished in company promotion than in his technical ability, carefully managing his image as the father of the intercontinental cable through several books and many articles, aided in this by his brother, Edward (q.v.). Bright was Member of Parliament for Greenwich between 1865 and 1868, and was knighted, prematurely, on the apparent success of the second Atlantic cable in 1858.

Edward Brailsford Bright (1831-1913) - The older brother of C T Bright, he was also an electrical engineer, and was Secretary and General Manager of the Magnetic Telegraph Company in Liverpool from 1851 until 1868. As well as being chief executive he devised fault-finding instruments and undertook important research into retardation in cables. For a period after 1870 he was in partnership with his brother as a civil engineer in submarine telegraphy. In the 1870s E B Bright patented a widely-used system of electrical fire alarms. He was, in the 1880s, Chairman of the British & Irish Telephone Company and of the British Electric Light Company. He wrote extensively throughout his life and was an early historian of the telegraph industry and biographer.

John Brittan (1809-1886) - “The first mechanic who was called upon to construct an apparatus for the transmission of signals by electricity and magnetism,” Brittan was employed by Moore Brothers, Clerkenwell Close, to work on W F Cooke’s earliest telegraphic instruments in 1836, in which year he made a mechanical one the size of a “barrel organ”, the very first of Cooke’s designs; during 1837 and 1838 he also made several clockwork machines and electrical alarms for Cooke. Brittan was present at the first demonstration of the telegraph to the London & Birmingham Railway in 1838. This was all confirmed in correspondence with Cooke in December 1867. Britten joined the Electric Telegraph Company during 1849 and rose to become Superintendent of the Instrument Department at their Gloucester Road factory in London, retiring to live in Bath, Somerset, in 1870. He also worked in the 1850s as a clockmaker at 3 Bowling Green Lane, Clerkenwell. His son, Thomas Brittan, became a telegraph instrument maker with his own workshops at 22 Tysoe Street, Clerkenwell.

Colin Brodie (1830-192?) - Telegraph engineer. Born Perth, Scotland, Colin Brodie was employed as “line assistant” to Nathaniel Holmes of the Universal Private Telegraph Company in 1861, rising to become Assistant Engineer in 1864 and Engineer in 1867. Brodie joined the Post Office in 1870 and served as Surveyor of Private Telegraphs until the 1890s. He was also appointed Secretary of the Telephonic Department in 1881, retiring from the Post Office in 1895. He introduced the telegraph exchange in 1865, interconnecting four subscribers in Newcastle-upon-Tyne using the umschalter or switchboard. In 1872 he created a 60 line exchange in Newcastle connecting 40 private wire subscribers and 20 post offices; this was converted to a telephone exchange in 1881. Brodie married his wife Sarah in 1868, they had three daughters and three sons, several of which became telegraph clerks. The family lived in St Pancras, London, between 1868 and c. 1914. He was one of the original members of the Society of Telegraph Engineers.

Sir James Carmichael Bt. (1817-1883) - Sir James Robert Carmichael, 2nd Baronet, was born on 11 June 1817. He was the son of Major-General Sir James Carmichael Smyth, 1st Bt., an eminent military engineer, and Harriet  Morse (no relation!). The Smyth part was dropped in 1841. Joining the British Army he gained the rank of Ensign in the 86th Regiment of Foot, selling out on succeeding to the baronetcy in 1838 to manage his small estate at Oakdene, Edenbridge, Kent. He became acquainted with John Watkins Brett and the telegraph in 1845, probably though their mutual interest in art, and, as an able diplomatist, negotiated for him with government in Britain and Europe. He was a director of the Sovereign Life Assurance Company from its founding in 1846 until his death, and dabbled in joint-stock promotions for a short period in the 1860s, but otherwise confined his interests to the telegraph. Carmichael joined Brett as one of his partners in acquiring the French and Belgian cable concessions, eventually becoming Chairman of the Submarine Telegraph Company and a director of the Mediterranean Telegraph Company. He remained chairman of the Submarine company until his death and was effectively its chief manager. He also was on the board of the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company in the 1860s, but, curiously, was never associated with Brett’s great project, the Atlantic Telegraph Company. Carmichael was a close friend of the writer W M Thackeray and was executor to the estate of John Watkins Brett in 1863. In later years he held the office of Deputy Lieutenant of Kent. He married Louisa Charlotte Butler in 1841, they had three children. The baronetcy ceased with his son, James Morse Carmichael, a Liberal politician and Member of Parliament, who died unmarried in 1902.

Edwin Clark (1814-1894) – the elder brother of J Latimer Clark (q.v.). He worked with Robert Stephenson on the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits between Wales and Anglesey for the London & North-Western Railway. He was Chief Engineer to the Electric Telegraph Company from August 1850 until 1854, managing its construction and mechanical works; being retained subsequently as Consultant Engineer. He obtained several patents for improved telegraph apparatus, railway signalling, the Electric company’s first standard pole insulator and for suspending wire. He was also an accomplished hydraulic and dock engineer, to which profession he reverted in the partnership of Clark, Stansfield & Clark.

(Josiah) Latimer Clark (1822-1898) – younger brother of Edwin Clark (q.v.). He was originally a chemist and later a railway surveyor during the Railway Mania of the 1840’s, and worked for Robert Stephenson on the great railway bridge across the Menai Straits. He became Assistant Engineer to the Electric Telegraph Company in August 1850, and succeeded his brother Edwin as Chief Engineer in 1854, responsible for its mechanical works, especially cable-laying, a post he held until 1861 when he became its Consultant Engineer. From that time he was also Engineer to the Atlantic Telegraph Company. He devised improvements in resin coating of underground wires in the 1850’s, the Clark cell for electric batteries, a new insulator and a pneumatic message-transfer system. He went into partnership as a Consulting Engineer with C T Bright (q.v.) from 1861 until 1868. Clark then formed a partnership with Forde and Taylor in that year as cable engineers and together they engineered submarine cables in the Mediterranean, in the Far East, around Africa and across the South Atlantic.

William Fothergill Cooke (1806-1879) – John Monro provided a concise biography of him in ‘Heroes of the Telegraph’ in 1891 to which all are recommended. Latimer Clark summarised in his obituary; “none but those who were engaged in the early struggle of the English telegraphists know the energy, determination and patience” of W F Cooke.

Maria Craig (1823-188?) – Lady Superintendant or ‘Matron’ of female clerks for the Electric Telegraph Company. Mrs Craig, a widow, was born in Dublin in 1823, and lived in Streatham, South London, with her five children, relying on her elder sister, Margaret, to manage her household. Mrs Craig was responsible for recruiting, training and supervising all women télégraphistes, numbering several hundred, employed by the Company from around 1856 when she came to London, until 1868. She personally trained each new female recruit and saw to their welfare. Two of her sons and one of her daughters were to be employed by the Company as clerk operators. She went on to be senior ‘Matron’ with the Post Office Telegraphs, in her words, “growing grey in their service”. A pioneer in management.

(Alexander) Angus Croll (1811-1887) - “An experimental and manufacturing chemist, a gas engineer and superintendent, and a considerable proprietor of gas works”. Angus or A A Croll was born in Perth, Scotland to a worker in the textile industry. Apprenticed to the family business he built a model gas works in his teen years, which industry became his enduring vocation. In 1836 Croll came to London as a manufacturing chemist, patenting several improvements in gas manufacture. When his business failed in 1843 he joined London’s Chartered Gaslight & Coke Company as an engineer, managing their Bow works. After six years Croll became lessee of gasworks in Coventry, Tottenham and Winchester. In 1849 he became contractor to the Great Central Gas Consumers’ Company in London, running their works at Bow Common, investing in the concern and eventually becoming its Managing Director. The company was created to break the gas light monopoly in the City of London with a cheap tariff and a limit of 10% in dividend.

In 1860 Angus Croll became an investor in and director of the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company, Limited, which had a similar ethic to that of his Gas Consumers’ Company. In 1861 he became Managing Director and the engine of its public image as the “consumers’ friend”. Although in no way as successful as his gas enterprises, the United Kingdom company was perceived as having brought down the cost of public telegraphy during the 1860s. On the appropriation of the telegraphs by the state in 1868, the Company and Croll were singled out by Parliament for having introduced the one shilling flat rate message. A magnificent silver testimonial in the form of a fountain valued at over £1,000 was presented to him in 1871 for his work with the United Kingdom company.

Croll, however, was far more important in reforming and improving the gaslight industry and chemical engineering, with which he continued to the end of his life, as well as with many works for the public good, including prison reform, local government, the volunteer rifle movement and Christian charities.

Richard Spelman Culley (1818-1901) - Telegraph engineer. Son of John Culley, a Norwich wine merchant, he was an early associate of Cooke and Wheatstone in the 1840s. He became Superintendent for the Electric Telegraph Company in his home town of Norwich, Norfolk, in July 1846. Culley was to be one of the most widely experienced managers and engineers in the Company’s service. By May 1848 he was Superintendent at Derby, a vital centre for traffic north and south, and assisting W H Barlow with experiments recording electrical phenomena. In November 1853 he was Superintendent in Manchester for the North West of England, moving once again in 1855 to superintend the works in Scotland. By December 1859 Culley was Superintendent in Bristol for the West of England, where he stayed for seven years. With his experience it is unsurprising that Culley was appointed engineer-in-chief to the Company in January 1866, living for the first time in London. He joined the Post Office Telegraphs in January 1870 as Chief Engineer, retiring in 1877. For the rest of his life he returned to the West of England, dying at Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, age 83.

Culley’s publication of ‘A Handbook of Practical Telegraphy’, a basic reader in electrical technology, in 1863 went through eight editions for over forty years, being recommended by the directors of the Electric & International Telegraph Company, by the Post Office Telegraphs and by the Department of Telegraphs in India; and translated into French, Italian and Romanian.

Richard Spelman Culley was a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, as well as being as a founder member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers. He married his wife Harriett, who he met at Derby, in Manchester in 1853. They had three children, the eldest, William Richard Culley, became a significant telegraph engineer in his own right.

Charles Henry Davis Curtoys (1828 – 1901) – Telegraph company manager. Born in Edmonton, London, he was the son of Charles Lockyer Curtoys, a miller and coal merchant, who brought his family up at Lee Park, Blackheath, Kent. By 1855 Curtoys was working for the Electric Telegraph Company, rising to be District Superintendent for the West-of-England. He was Assistant Secretary in London for the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company in 1860, before becoming Secretary and Manager of the London District Telegraph Company in 1861. Only Curtoys’ determination and imaginative marketing enabled the District company to survive until 1868. He was a close friend of the engineer Charles Bright (q.v.), acting as agent when Bright became Member of Parliament for Greenwich. Retiring from business in 1870 for many years, he became secretary and manager of the Consolidated Telephone Construction & Maintenance Company, licensees of the Gower patents, on its foundation in 1881. Curtoys lived at Heath Lodge, Old Charlton, Kent, near to his family home, for most of his life, and died at Blackheath, Kent. He appears not to have married.

George Edward Dering (1831-1911) - Apparently tutored by the telegraphic pioneer Henry Highton (q.v.) at Rugby School, he was a landowner with an estate at Lockleys, Welwyn, England, and was an inventing dilettante. He acquired twenty patents in Britain between 1850 and 1881 relating to telegraphy, chemistry, iron- and brick- making. His single needle telegraph of 1850 was used experimentally after 1852 on some railways, by the Bank of England and by the Electric Telegraph Company of Ireland. Dering developed in 1853 theories that were said to anticipate radio transmission, although none of his other telegraphic inventions were successful.

Robert Valentine Dodwell (1831-1904) – An interesting career; born in Vauxhall, London; a telegraph clerk in Liverpool in 1851, married in 1857; a very active District Manager for the Magnetic Telegraph Company, Manchester, in 1859, rebuilding the circuits of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway and marketing Henley’s dial telegraph; lecturer and writer on telegraphy, 1861-62; engineer to Bonelli’s Telegraph Company, Manchester, in 1863; patentee of insect repellent, 1863; bankrupt in September 1863; commission agent to the Universal Private Telegraph Company, Manchester, July 1864; consulting telegraph engineer, 4 Blue Boar Court, Manchester, April 1865; probably engineer to the General Private Telegraph Company, 1865- 1866; continued as contractor for private wires until January 1871 when he sold that business to John Bailey & Co., Albion Works, Oldfield Road, Salford, brass-founders and turret clock makers, for whom he managed their new telegraph instrument department; moved to London, compiled ‘The Social Code’, a telegraph code book, with George Ager, 1874; managing director of the Oriental Telegram Agency, Leadenhall Street, London, 1875, which used his abbreviating code to correspond with agents in India, China, America, Australia and Europe on behalf of subscribers; then again an electrical engineer, 1876, on the agency’s failure. After leaving Salford, he lived in Fulham, London, and then Epsom, Surrey, with his wife, Blanche, and their grown-up children, until he died, age 73, in 1904.

James Sealy Fourdrinier (1805-1870) - Secretary to the Electric Telegraph Company between March 1849 and December 1863. Born in the City of London, he was the son of Sealy Fourdrinier, one of partners in the rights to the first paper making machine, through which the family acquired considerable wealth from the early 1800s. The machine patent was owned by John Gamble, the pioneer in canning of foodstuffs. J S Fourdrinier relied on the family fortune until the death of his father in 1847. His tenure as Secretary, though long, was judged unsatisfactory, as he was to demonstrate poor people management and decision-making skills. He was, it has to be said, much older than most managers in the telegraph business. It was also said that he owed his position in the Company to the influence of Douglas Pitt Gamble, son of John Gamble and personal secretary to the chairman, who he had supported in a law suit. J S Fourdrinier was compelled to retire, age 58, in 1863, moving then to Bath, Somerset, where he died in August 1870. He never married.

James Gutteres (1818-1898) - Telegraph manager. The son of M Guttères of Sidmouth, Devon, he studied law and qualified at the Middle Temple, London. Although he practised as a barrister in 1847, by 1851 he was a “clerk” with the Electric Telegraph Company in London. He was appointed Secretary of the International Telegraph Company in 1853 but was dismissed in the same year. Gutteres joined the English & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company and was Superintendent in Cork, Ireland in 1856, and at Leeds in England four years later, being promoted to Manager of the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company’s chief office in London in 1861. Early in 1864 he became Secretary of Bonelli’s Electric Telegraph Company. On the failure of that concern he became a close associate of Charles Bright, late engineer of the Magnetic and promoter of the Atlantic Telegraph Companies, in his many cable enterprises. In 1870 he was Superintendent of the West India & Panama Telegraph Company in Jamaica where he remained for several years with his family. Returning to England by 1880 he became chairman of a number of mining companies. Gutteres died on Jersey, in the Channel Islands, in 1898. He married Susan Gooch in September 1847, they had several daughters.

William Henry Hatcher (1821-1879) – Professional manager, civil engineer, chemist, and telegraph patentee. Born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, the son of Henry Hatcher, a well-known antiquarian and historian, he studied at King’s College, London, Wheatstone’s campus, becoming a civil engineer. He was employed by the Electric Telegraph Company as Secretary and Chief Engineer shortly after its formation in 1846; whilst there he encouraged the Hancock family, then developing india-rubber, to use gutta-percha as a cable insulator in 1847. He also patented an early dial telegraph and the mercury trembler switch. Hatcher was replaced as Secretary in March 1849, but was retained as Engineer until August 1850; keeping up a connection with the company for another year or so. He joined the provisional board of the Magnetic Telegraph Company when it was created in 1851. Hatcher wrote widely on engineering and technical matters in the late 1840s and early 1850s, and was a Member of Institution of Civil Engineers from 1843. He became connected with Price’s Patent Candle Company, Belmont Works, Battersea, London, in 1850 and was its chemical engineer and manager until his death in August 1879.

William Thomas Henley (1814-1882) – electrician. From being a maker of electrical apparatus he introduced the magneto-electric telegraph without galvanic batteries and pioneered underground cables. He patented a wide range of telegraphic apparatus and tools; metallic troughs, pole insulators, chemical telegraphs, improvements in magneto-electric machines and, latterly, magneto- and galvanic-dial telegraphs for private circuits. From being an instrument maker in the early 1840s Henley became a major telegraph contractor erecting Cooke & Wheatstone lines for the South Eastern Railway in 1846. He was the main promoter of the English & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company in 1850. Henley provided materials for the Magnetic company and later for the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company. In the 1860s his firm was manufacturing galvanometers to his design in quantity, as well as military telegraphs for the Army. He expanded his equipment factory into a joint-stock company for producing electrical and submarine cable equipment in 1868. Henley was an inventor not a manager; the works only flourished after he had left them in 1876.

Edward Highton (1817-1859) – a civil engineer, telegraph engineer and company promoter, working in concert with his elder brother, the Reverend Henry Highton. Henry Highton patented a high-tension telegraph in 1844 and the sensitive gold-leaf telegraph in 1846. Edward was to develop from 1848 and patent a simplified, inexpensive needle telegraph using tappers (or keys) rather than commutators, and to make several innovations in overhead wire telegraphy, as well as being an early advocate of resin-insulated subterranean circuits. Edward Highton, having been a civil engineer, was apparently telegraph superintendent of the London & North-Western Railway between 1846 and 1848. He went on to found the British Electric Telegraph Company to work their patents in 1849 but had sold his interest to others by 1855. Born in Leicester St Margaret Edward Highton did not marry; he supported his three sisters. He lived at 5 Gloucester Road, Regent’s Park, from c 1845. The brother, Henry Highton (1816 – 1874), was a minister in the Church of England and was Principal of Cheltenham College from 1859 until 1862, as well as engaging in developing telegraphic apparatus from the 1840s into the 1870s. He married and had twelve children.  Edward Highton's single needle telegraph was one of the most widely used in Britain, but the family’s contribution to telegraphy remains largely unrecognised.

Nathaniel John Holmes (1824-1888) – an electrical engineer. Descendent of a family of leather merchants in London, at age 23 he was both manager of the Electric Telegraph Company’s central station, having designed its electrical circuitry, and manager of its instrument workshops. Dismissed in 1849 he worked with Francis Whishaw (q.v.) for a short period. Holmes journeyed to Glasgow, Scotland, in 1850 to become manager of its Polytechnic Institution in Jamaica Street. In 1853 he set up as N J Holmes & Company, “ornamental draughtsmen, lithographers, embossers and printers” in Cochran Street, Glasgow. The firm failed in November 1856. After meeting Charles Wheatstone at a lecture in Glasgow he took up telegraphy once more, with several patents. Settling his financial affairs, Holmes returned to London in 1859 to work with Wheatstone, for whom he promoted, engineered and managed the Universal Private Telegraph Company from 1860 until 1866. He became, under Wheatstone’s guidance, involved with submarine telegraphy, initially as engineer to the London & South-of-Ireland Direct Telegraph Company in 1862. Holmes also worked closely with the American navigator and inventor, Matthew Maury, developing electrically-detonated torpedoes for the Confederate States in 1865. Holmes later in the 1860s became engineer to the Orkney & Shetland Islands Telegraph Company and then, for many years, to the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Copenhagen. After bitter experiences cable-laying in the Orkney Islands in the 1870s he patented life-saving maritime air horns and instantaneous signal lights, forming the “Holmes Marine Life Protection Association”. Always interested in acoustics, he was in the 1870s famous for his organ music. Holmes became bankrupt again in May 1878. He was married in Croydon, south of London, in June 1850, and lived from 1860 until his demise in 1888 at Primrose Hill, Hampstead, London.  In 1888 he was described as the last of the first telegraphers.

Thomas Home (1825-1898) - the first manager of a public telegraph, between 1845 and 1847. Born in Hadnall, Shropshire, son of an agricultural labourer, Home was an assistant to W F Cooke on the telegraph line between Paddington and Slough in 1843. He became licensee to work the Cooke & Wheatstone patents there paying them a fee of £170 a year until displaced by the Electric Telegraph Company. Although only 19 years old Home worked closely with both Cooke and Wheatstone, for the first time developing the telegraph as a business, widely publicising it in newspapers and posters. By 1851, after a short period in Cheshire, he had become a coal-dealer in Bicester, Oxfordshire, before starting a business as a brick, tile and pipe maker at the Cross Road Kiln, Brill, Oxfordshire, in 1860. Home had married Emma Burge in 1848 and they had ten surviving children. He lived in Brill for the rest of his life.

John Lavender (1829-189?) – telegraph engineer. Educated at Manchester Grammar School, after a period at sea, he joined the British Telegraph Company in 1851. He was an assistant-engineer with special emphasis on erecting and rigging pole telegraphs in the Manchester and Eastern districts; in particular, from 1853, with high masts across rivers and roof tops in cities. In 1858, with the failure of the Magnetic company’s underground lines he started substituting overhead wires on the route between Manchester and London, but was soon relegated to a clerical role and left in 1859. Subsequently he became a “telegraph constructor” in Manchester, employed by railways and by the Magnetic company to build overhead circuits, with his speciality of very high over-house poles of 60 and 70 feet length. Lavender rejoined the Magnetic company around 1866 as a District Superintendant in Leeds and Cambridge. He resigned his position rather than join the Post Office Telegraphs and became Telegraph Superintendent of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company – the British Telegraph Company’s original partner of 1851. Latterly he became involved in the provision of electric light in Manchester.

John Pender (1816-1896) - Merchant, of London, Glasgow and Manchester. John Pender was undoubtedly the most important individual in 19^th Century communications; although his influence on domestic electric telegraphy in Britain was relatively modest he effectively controlled the intercontinental cable business for half a century. Born in Leven, Dumbartonshire, Scotland, he was a successful merchant, trading, primarily in textiles, with India, China and America.

From his business hub in Manchester, in 1852 Pender invested in the newly formed British Electric Telegraph Company, the first concern to challenge the patent monopoly of the Electric Telegraph Company, and became one of its Directors. From this early speculation, an adjunct to his mercantile activities and related to his portfolio of railway shareholdings, Pender became an early investor in the even riskier Atlantic Telegraph Company of 1856. Despite the failure of the Atlantic cable in 1858 he retained confidence in the project to the extent of personally guaranteeing £250,000 for materials used in the successful cable of 1866. Realising the profits to be generated from intercontinental telegraphy he invested subsequently in over thirty cable companies that connected Britain with the entire populated world; from America, to India, China, Australia, Southern Africa, the West Indies and Latin America. The main vehicles for these were the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, the Eastern Telegraph Company and the Globe Telegraph & Trust Company, in which Pender was chairman and controlling shareholder. He also invested in the cable contracting concern, the Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company.

Throughout his career he styled himself “Merchant”, from which trade the bulk of his considerable fortune derived, as well as from many investments in railways in Britain and overseas, and in telegraphy.

Pender married twice and raised two sons and two daughters. His eldest son succeeded him in managing his cable interests. He held property in Scotland and the South of England, and was awarded many honours from countries around the world for the connections his cable companies afforded.

William Powell (1826-188?) – telegraph engineer, creator of two substantial domestic networks in Britain. Born in Kemberton, near Shifnal, Shropshire, Powell joined the Electric Telegraph Company in 1848 in Northampton, eventually becoming Inspector of Works for the Midlands. In 1852 he left to join the newly-created British Telegraph Company as Engineer in Manchester, being responsible for its overhead lines in the north of England. Overlooked in the merger between the Magnetic and British companies in 1857, he took up farming at Aspinal Smithy, near Denton in Lancashire. Powell was to join the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company in London during 1861 as Engineer of its works and oversaw the remarkable expansion of its national network in 1863 and 1864, despite considerable financial difficulties. In the later 1860s he became a consulting telegraph engineer, maintaining his relationship with the United Kingdom company until 1868, having offices at No 1 Circus Place, Finsbury, London. He married in Northampton and had six children.

William Henry Preece (1834-1913) – an electrical engineer. Educated at King’s College, London, he joined the staff of Edwin Clark, engineer to the Electric Telegraph Company in 1852. He rose to become District Superintendent for the Company in Southampton during 1856, where he supervised the works of the Channel Islands Telegraph Company in 1858. His first post of authority was as Telegraph Superintendent of the London & South-Western Railway between 1860 and 1870, where he developed an electrical railway signalling system in 1862. In 1870 Preece was appointed one of the District Engineers in the Post Office Telegraphs and then in 1877 became Electrician for the whole system. Although he did little to advance electrical technology in that job Preece’s lasting claim to fame was his work at the end of his life with Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy. He managed to accumulate an immense fortune whilst working for the Post Office Telegraphs.

His brother, George Edward Preece (1836-1895), was also a significant telegraph engineer, working as submarine electrician and district superintendent for the Electric Telegraph Company, as engineer and electrician of the British government’s Malta and Alexandria cable, and then as chief electrical engineer to W T Glover & Company, the cable makers, in Manchester.

William Reid (1798-186?) – a Scottish-born philosophical and scientific instrument maker whose firm dated from 1820; the first ever telegraph contractor in Britain. He constructed many of the early instruments for Cooke and Wheatstone, and subsequently for the Electric company, becoming a major line-building and maintenance contractor in the early days of both the Electric and Magnetic companies; for example constructing most of the lines in Scotland and Ireland for the latter concern. He was involved with the laying of the first submarine telegraph cables across the Channel and patented several widely-used improvements in subterranean cable-laying to protect the resin insulated wires; he handed over management of his eponymous firm (q.v.) to his sons in March 1856 but lived on well into the 1860s. On retirement he became a critical shareholder in several telegraph companies whose stock he acquired in the course of his business. When he moved from Glasgow he lived initially “above the shop” at 25 University Street, St Pancras, then at 27 Chalcot Villas (a.k.a. 63 Adelaide Road), Primrose Hill. His firm continued trading as electrical instrument makers until 1922.

(John) Lewis Ricardo (1812–1862) - Son of the financier, Jacob Ricardo, and nephew of the economist, David Ricardo. An athlete in his youth he intended to join the Army but the early death of his father caused Lewis Ricardo to take over the family mercantile firm with his brother Samson. He became Member of Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent, an industrial constituency, as a Liberal in 1841; a seat he retained until his death. Ricardo was an active Free Trader, campaigning for the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts that restricted trade. As well as being Chairman of the Electric Telegraph Company for over ten years he was a director of the North Staffordshire Railway, the Norwegian Trunk Railway, the Metropolitan Railway and the London & Westminster Bank. He was fortunate to inherit, through his wife’s family, a large estate in Scotland. When he resigned as Chairman of the Electric the staff presented him with one thousand books for his library in recognition of his stewardship of the company. Then, when he died in 1862 after an eight month illness, the offices of the Electric, Magnetic and District Telegraph Companies closed for a day in commemoration.

The Electrician magazine was to write in 1862; “There can be no question that it was Mr Ricardo who succeeded in establishing the electric telegraph on a firm and successful footing in this country”.

George Saward (1822-1873) – professional manager. From being secretary or manager of a small railway company in 1847, he was successively secretary to the British Telegraph Company and to the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The success of these important concerns owes much to the determination of Saward. Living modestly in Islington, North London, with his wife and family from c.1850, he was out-of-place by 1871. His widow published his telegraphic memoir in 1878. Another unsung stalwart of telegraphy.

(Johannes Matthias) Augustus Stroh (1828-1914) – a mechanician and inventor. Born in Frankfurt-am-Main, coming to London in the Exhibition year 1851. Worked for Charles Wheatstone from then until 1875, making models and manufacturing apparatus; perfecting his universal telegraph in 1863 and his automatic telegraph in 1866. Stroh had workshops at 42a Hampstead Road, London NW in the 1860s, employing fifty-four men and ten boys, then was engineer to the British Telegraph Manufactory until 1881, after which he worked for the Post Office. Like many in telegraphy he was interested in acoustics, devising the disc sound recorder in 1892 and the “phonographic violin” in 1900.

Edward Tyer (1830-1912) – most noted as a railway electric signal engineer. Born in Enfield, London, he was associated with Dalston in east London for much of his life. Tyer was trained as an accountant but by 1851, age 21, he had patented a simple, single needle, single wire railway signal system, which he continually developed until 1870. In 1856 he was engineer to the Railway Electric Signals Company, a promotion of telegraph interests, formed to work Tyer’s new patents “to ascertain the position and distance of an engine or train”, in Britain and France. This firm did not survive and in 1858 he became electrical engineer to the London District Telegraph Company for several years, adapting his patent signal equipment for use as a compact single-needle telegraph and managing their subterranean and overhead works. In 1862 he was in partnership with John Musgrove Norman as Tyer & Norman at 15 Old Jewry, City, with workshops at Sash Court, Wilson Street, City, manufacturing “Tyer’s Train Signalling Telegraph”. Their apparatus was shown at the International Exhibition in London in that year. By 1874 the firm was much enlarged and became Tyer & Company, electric telegraph engineers and contractors, with works at Beech, later renamed Ashwin, Street, Dalston Junction. In 1878 Tyer patented the “Electric Train Tablet” for safely controlling railway traffic. His apparatus was to dominate railway electric signalling in Britain for well over one hundred years.

Cromwell Fleetwood Varley (1828-1883) – Electrician. Born in Kentish Town, London, to a family of artists and engineers. The family were of the Sandemanian spiritualist sect, of the same congregation as Michael Faraday. He joined the newly-founded Electric Telegraph Company in 1846, becoming Electrician for the London region by 1852 and for the entire Company by 1861. He was appointed on the advice of W F Cooke. Varley was appointed to the Board of Trade committee to investigate the failure of the first Atlantic cable in 1858, which led to his appointment as honorary Chief Electrician to the Atlantic Telegraph Company, as well as to the Electric company. Varley devised several major electrical improvements: the ‘killing’ of wire, removing bad parts and preventing springing; perfecting the ‘loop test’ - the localisation of faults in submarine cables; and the ability to make cables “self-repairing”; introducing more efficient current reversal or double current working for the American telegraph; inventing the double coil relay, the translating (relay) system for very long distance traffic, as well as, more prosaically, the Company’s last standard insulator. The “Varley Unit” (c. 23.5 ohms) was the Company’s measurement of electrical resistance. He was long associated with Charles Wheatstone. Varley was an astute businessman and he latterly went into partnership with William Thomson and Fleeming Jenkin to develop their telegraphic patents, which proved highly profitable. 

His brother (Samuel) Alfred Varley (1834-1921) was employed as electrical engineer by the Electric Telegraph Company from 1852 to 1861. He was appointed civilian superintendent firstly of the British Army’s field telegraph in the Crimea and then of the Varna to Constantinople cable during the war with Russia in 1855. He retired from his position as District Superintendent for Metropolitan London with the Electric company to join his father Cornelius Varley in instrument manufacture in 1862 and then, in 1875, he became assistant manager of the British Telegraph Manufactory. He devised the chronopher for accurate time-transmission, and made many other electrical innovations.

Charles Vincent Walker (1812-1882) – Electrician to the South Eastern Railway Company from 1845 until his death in 1882. Prior to this he had been a member of the experimental London Electrical Society from 1838, becoming secretary to that group in 1843. He was editor of the short-lived ‘Electric Magazine’ in 1845 and 1846. With the South Eastern Railway he made several improvements in Cooke & Wheatstone’s instruments, in railway signal telegraphy and in transmitting time-signals. In January 1849 he laid a two-mile lightweight gutta-percha insulated submarine cable, the first “ocean” cable, off a steamer from Dover into the English Channel. C V Walker was one of the few involved in the new industry to realise the need for a public record of its achievements, co-operating fully with journalists and historians.

His brother or half-brother, Alfred Owen Walker (1834-1878), was also employed in the telegraph department of the South Eastern Railway. In 1871 A O Walker was appointed telegraph superintendant of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

Henry (Edward) Weaver (1825-1893) – One of the most important managers in British telegraphy. Clerk-in-charge at Hull for the Electric Telegraph Company in 1854, he transferred to become managing clerk at The Hague and then the Amsterdam offices of the International Telegraph Company in the Netherlands, rising to the position of secretary to the International company and, simultaneously, District Superintendent for London for the Electric company in Britain in 1856. In January 1864 he became Secretary and Chief Manager to the Electric Telegraph Company, leaving in 1868 to become Secretary of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. In 1871 he became General Manager of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, latterly he was Managing Director. He also joined the board of the West India & Panama Telegraph Company. He married in 1853 and had three children, one of which was born in Amsterdam. His eldest daughter was to marry a Hollander.

Charles Samuel West (1813-1881) –  Telegraph cable engineer. Born in Clerkenwell, London, and originally an author, reporter and proprietor of a railway magazine, he advocated india-rubber insulation of electrical wire from 1838. In 1845 he laid the first successful underwater cable, which lasted over fifteen years, in Portsmouth harbour. He gained permissions in England and France along with the Electric Telegraph Company for a circuit from Dover to Calais in 1847, but negotiations were prolonged and the Brett family pre-empted the works. He also successfully laid india-rubber insulated wires in several railway tunnels, including that at Box on the Great Western Railway. Bankrupt as a “manufacturer of insulated wire for electric telegraphs” in July 1850, he became engineer to the Irish Sub-Marine Telegraph Company and several speculative cable concerns. His cables comprised a copper core insulated with india-rubber, protected by a thin cotton and shellac outer, and armoured with plaited iron wire. One such was made to connect England with the Isle of Wight in 1853 for the Electric Telegraph Company. Working with S W Silver & Company (q.v.) in 1859 he perfected the machine for insulating wire with caoutchouc. Known pejoratively as “India-Rubber” West by his peers, he believed that his pioneering of submarine telegraphy was inadequately acknowledged. It is seem that Charles West died a pauper in the Liverpool Workhouse in 1881, in which city he had been a wireworker for the previous 20 years. He married his wife Martha in 1850 when practising as an ‘electric engineer’ in West Mersea, Essex, and they had one daughter, Edith. A telegraphic mystery.

Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) – His personality may be summarised; “Sir Charles Wheatstone was small in feature, childlike to a degree, shortsighted and with a wonderful rapid utterance, yet seemingly quite unable to keep pace with an overflowing mind.” Otherwise the reader is referred to ‘Heroes of the Telegraph’ of 1891 by John Munro for a fine biographical article.

Francis Whishaw (1804-1856) - A civil engineer who had minor roles in several railway projects in the 1830s. In 1836 he developed and publicised a hydraulic telegraph, using a pipe filled with water. He wrote the classic description of the railways of Great Britain in 1840. He became secretary to the Royal Society of Arts & Sciences for a short period, where he presented papers on Cooke & Wheatstone’s apparatus and introduced William Siemens to gutta-percha, before joining the Electric Telegraph Company from 1846 until 1848, creating their message department. He established the General Telegraph Company as contractors and engineers in 1849 where he marketed electrical, mechanical, hydraulic and speaking telegraphs, and fire and burglar alarms; becoming a consultant to the Gutta-Percha Company at about the same time. His advice was sought on introducing the telegraph to India in 1849. Although an engineer by profession, Whishaw’s forte was organising publicity and lobbying; organising exhibitions, writing articles for the press and public speaking. He wrote widely on electric telegraphy from 1840 until his death, and was an early and vociferous advocate of underground circuits insulated with gutta-percha.

Henry Schütz Wilson (1824-1902) - Telegraph Company Manager. One of the fifteen children of Effingham Wilson, the City of London’s leading commercial publisher and stationer, of 11 Royal Exchange, Schütz Wilson was privately educated before working for ten years in a foreign merchant’s business, where he learned  French, German and Italian. He then joined the Electric Telegraph Company as Assistant Secretary in 1853, handling administrative matters before becoming in the 1860s responsible for developing the Company’s foreign connections. He did not join the Post Office Telegraphs in 1870, taking a pension and becoming a prominent critic, essayist and novelist, contributing to many literary journals. Schütz Wilson edited the first editions of the Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers in 1872. He wrote many books, novels and factual works, from 1860 and was a vigorous member of the Arts Club from 1864, and of the Alpine Club. He never married.

Some Minor Characters:
There are several individuals associated with the early telegraph companies whose names briefly appear in the public press of the 1840s, 1850 and 1860s. These are a few of them with their subsequent history:

Frederick Ebenezer Baines (1832-1911) - Post Office bureaucrat. Baines worked as a clerk for the Electric Telegraph Company between 1848 and 1855, working at Founders’ Court, Lothbury, and Seymour Street, Euston Square, as an operator; rising to be clerk-in-charge of the Company’s telegraph at the General Post Office in St Martin’s-le-Grand. He then transferred to the Post Office in 1856 as a clerk, becoming, based on his “experience”, its expert on telegraphy. Something of an eminence gris, he worked in the background advocating the appropriation of the telegraphs, a master of disinformation and ambition, he rose high in the bureaucracy, cleverly avoiding any responsibility for the subsequent financial disaster that cost his superiors their jobs. On retirement in 1896 he wrote widely justifying his work at the Post Office. Baines owed his position in the Company and in the Post Office to the influence of Rowland Hill.

Jacob Thompson Bidder (1834-1874) - Born in Yeovil, Somerset, son of a dissenting minister, JT Bidder had become clerk-in-charge of the Central Telegraph Station at Ducie Buildings in Manchester for the Electric & International Telegraph Company by 1860, managing that office for the rest of the decade. In 1870 he chose not to join the Post Office Telegraphs and moved to London, living in Penge, to become Secretary to the Press Association. J T Bidder married in 1870, having a son and a daughter. He died in 1874 at Croydon, Surrey, and his family moved back to Manchester. No relation to G P Bidder.

Theodore George de Chesnel (1828-1857) - Born in France, T G de Chesnel was grandson of Samuel Bentham, the naval architect, whose daughter, Mary, married a French military officer. At age 20, in 1848 he replaced Thomas Home as manager of the telegraph line between Paddington and Slough on the Great Western Railway as Agent for the Electric Telegraph Company. By 1852 he was styled Civil Engineer and had become District Superintendant for the Company in York and was later District Superintendant for Scotland in Edinburgh. In 1855 de Chesnel became engineer to the Mediterranean Electric Telegraph Company’s lines and cables between France, Savoy, Corsica, Sardinia and Africa, but contracted “ague”, probably malaria, whilst working in Corsica, dying at Genoa in March 1857.

William Charles Daniell (1820-188?) - Telegraph Manager. Born in Dedham, Essex, he was a Clerk in the British Electric Telegraph Company’s office in the Royal Exchange, London, during 1851 and by 1868 had become Assistant Secretary of British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company in London. He did not join the Post Office Telegraphs, but became Agent for the Eastern Telegraph and the Anglo-American Telegraph companies, as well as several insurance concerns, in 1871 at Manchester, trading as Daniell & McGrath. He married Mary Lundy from Kingston-upon-Hull, sister to several telegraph engineers, in 1850.

Alfred Eggington (1841-1917) - Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, son of a solicitor, Alfred Eggington had an exotic career in telegraphy. He joined the Submarine Telegraph Company as a Clerk in 1857, but left them for government service three years later to serve in a cable-laying expedition in the Far East. Shipwrecked in the Malacca Straits he returned to England in 1860 to work for the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company, leaving within a year to join Glass, Elliot & Company as a Clerk at Benghazi, “on the Barbary Coast”, working the Malta to Alexandria cable. In 1865 he became a Clerk on the Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company’s leased line in Italy connecting the Malta cable with France, promoted to Clerk-in-Charge in Turin in 1868. Eggington left to be Clerk-in-Charge of the Brest station of the French Atlantic cable in 1869, but returned to Italy as Superintendant of the Anglo-Mediterranean Telegraph Company’s cables and land lines at Otranto and shortly after to be made Agent in Italy for its successor, the Eastern Telegraph Company. He died in Rome, after being created Chevalier of St Maurice by the King of Italy.

Frederick Evan Evans (1835-1914) - Born in London, F E Evans replaced Basil Holmes as District Secretary of the Universal Private Telegraph Company in Manchester in 1864. He joined the Post Office Telegraphs and was posted to Birmingham in 1871 as superintendent, at which post he remained until retirement in 1900, living in Edgbaston. He married his wife, Helena, late in life, retiring to Salcombe, Devon.

Henry Charles Fischer (1833-1905) - Born and educated in Munden, Hanover, H C Fischer worked for the Royal Hanoverian Telegraph Administration between 1852 and 1856, when he joined the Electric Telegraph Company in London. He managed the Foreign Gallery at the Lothbury station, supervising the company’s entire continental traffic, from 1856 until 1870. Fischer became Controller of the Central Telegraph Office of the Post Office in 1870, retiring from that role in 1898. He married Sarah Sawyer in 1878, from which time they lived in Bromley, Kent. They had two children, one becoming a clerk with the Eastern Telegraph Company. Uniquely for one in middle management, Fischer was awarded a knighthood and was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George for his contribution to international relations.

Charles Alexander Gerhardi (1837-1905) - Born 1837 in Belgium, C A Gerhardi joined the Belgian government telegraphs in 1853, moving to England in 1856 to join the Electric Telegraph Company as a Clerk. He worked for the Atlantic Telegraph Company in 1857 on board the USS Niagara, and at Heart’s Content on Newfoundland between 1858 and 1859. In 1859 he became Superintendent for the Submarine Telegraph Company in St Helier, Jersey, whose island cable connected with circuits in France and Continental Europe, where he remained until 1871. During 1872 Gerhardi became Manager of the Direct Spanish Telegraph Company, and lasted over twenty years in their service.