c.] The European & American Electric Type-Printing Telegraph Company was another successful early, if short-lived, competitor to the old company. In January 1852 it became the second company, after the Electric, to commence constructing a circuit to connect London with the north of England, starting to lay wires next to the obsolete coach road by way of Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester, completing its line in May 1854 just before the Magnetic company’s.

The European concern, the first real national challenge to the Electric company, originated not from within Britain but in France. On August 19, 1849 the government of France granted Jacob Brett monopoly rights to construct underwater electric telegraph cables between the two countries for a period of ten years. Under French law the concession had to be constituted as a Société en Commandité (effectively a limited-liability joint-stock company authorised and supervised by the government). This led to the formation of la Compagnie du télégraphe sous-marin, supported by the Rothschild and Lafitte banks. Its authorised capital was 1,250,000 francs, in 5,000 shares of 250 francs. In England it was to be known as the Submarine Telegraph Company between France and England, represented by J Brett, Toché & Co., concessionaires, a private partnership, whose gérants or managers comprised Sir James Carmichael Bt, Francis Edwards, Charlton J Wollaston, John W Brett and Mons. F Toché. Its capital was effectively secured by its absolute monopoly in telegraphy between England and France. The capital of £100,000 was primarily subscribed for in London; but it had to have an Anglo-French directorate based in Paris. Technically and operationally the company was always headquartered in London. The chairman in Paris was Edgar Aimé, its chairman in England was Lord de Mauley; latterly its driving force was Sir James Carmichael, Bt., who succeeded to the chairmanship in 1856. The Company’s engineers were Thomas Crampton, a civil and locomotive engineer, and Charlton Wollaston, an electrician. 

The Submarine company successfully laid the first underwater electric telegraph cable between Dover in England and Calais in France on September 25, 1851. It initially used the Foy-Breguet instrument in its circuit; this used a small black arm working in jerks from the centre of a white dial, so as to describe angles of 45o and 90o, with a fixed vertical line passing through the centre. Rotating a handle and arm in a very quick rotation indicated letters by various angles to the centre line.

The Foy-Breguet instrument imitated the action of the Bonaparte-era Chappe mechanical semaphore telegraph, an optical device with rotating swing-arms on tall posts, used for several decades in France, the Italian states and other European countries until the 1840s. The Submarine company had tested the Foy-Breguet and the Brett type-printer, settling on Cooke & Wheatstone’s two-needle telegraph in 1852, until finally adopting the American telegraph in 1855, which was by then used throughout Europe.

Its original London office in 1851 was at 9 Moorgate Street, on the opposite side of the road to the Electric’s ‘house’. It moved in the same year to 30 Cornhill, City, where it had an instrument room on the upper floor. The Submarine company’s official headquarters was at Place de la Bourse 10, Paris. The location of these offices shows its reliance on the mercantile community.

Between November 19, 1851, when it opened its circuits to the public, and June 30, 1852 it handled 9,045 messages, receiving £6,889 13s 9d in income.

If connection with the state-owned telegraph monopoly in France was straightforward, circuits at the English end were to be problematic.

As has been mentioned, the partnership of Cooke & Wheatstone had granted a licence to the South Eastern Railway Company to work an experimental circuit on one of its branches in November 1841. This had been extended in September 1845 to cover its main line between London and Dover, as well as the rest of its system in Kent and Sussex. Unfortunately, the South Eastern company resisted a common circuit with the Submarine company. It was already sharing technology with the Electric company; in addition, although lacking permission to land wires in France, the railway company’s telegraph department was experimenting with a lightweight underwater cable of its own in the English Channel off Dover. So, for a short period, the Submarine company was without direct connection with the rest of England – messages were hand-carried between the two telegraphs in Dover town and transcribed from one system to the other.

To overcome this isolation the Submarine proprietors in London projected a new company in 1851 under English law, the European & American Electric Type-Printing Telegraph Company, with a capital of £200,000, in 40,000 shares of £5, of which £93,000 was soon paid-up, to connect London, Liverpool and Manchester by one mainline (Dover, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool). It was to be laid underground to be free atmospheric interruption or maintenance (under contractor's guarantee) for 10 years at £112,000 on 300 miles. Its principal promoter was John Watkins Brett, managing director of the Submarine company; his brother Jacob owned (among several other assigned telegraphic patents) the British licence for the original type-printing telegraph patent of Royal Earl House, an American, which the Company acquired. The company and its capital was authorised by Special Act of Parliament during 1852. It chief offices were shared with the Submarine company at 30 Cornhill, City.

The European’s original Board of Directors had nine members. The chairman was Lord de Mauley, also chairman of the Submarine company, A Anderson MP, chairman of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, W J Chaplin MP, chairman of the London & South-Western Railway, Samuel Laing, chairman of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, John Masterman Jnr of the Submarine company, Sir James Carmichael Bt of the Submarine company, Ernest Bunsen of the Submarine company, and Admiral Richard O'Connor KCH. The original secretary was W M Shaw, he was replaced quickly by GL Parrot.

The European Telegraph Company (as it was generally, and mercifully, known), unlike all other potential competitors for the Electric’s business, had a real commercial advantage – it had for the moment sole access to the Continent of Europe through the Submarine company’s Dover cable and worked as one with it.

The European became the first effective challenge to the Electric company. It had quickly laid six resin-insulated wires eighteen inches deep underground in kyanised (rot-proofed) wooden troughs, with test boxes at every mile alongside of the old London to Dover coach road, by way of Greenwich, Gravesend and Canterbury. Two of these wires were planned for the Paris circuit, two for Brussels and two for a prospective Mediterranean line. These circuits, it was claimed, were laid by between 200 and 300 men working at the rate of one-and-a-half miles a day during the summer of 1852. The line was constructed by Frend & Hamill of 44 Bedford Row, London, a small and short-lived firm of general public works contractors. Their workmanship was not of the first quality and the Dover cables had to be thoroughly renovated by W T Henley, the telegraph engineer, after just three years.

The South Eastern Railway Company vigorously opposed the construction of the new circuits. It proved in the Exchequer Court on January 16, 1854 that the European’s “digging and boring under the railway at the point where the highway crossed” for its roadside underground wires at Canterbury was trespass. This precedent overturned the powers all telegraph companies assumed in their authorising Acts of Parliament regarding rights-of-way along public highways. They could not cross railways without permission.

The European company opened its office in the City, the financial district of the capital, on November 1, 1852; with a direct circuit between 30 Cornhill, London, and place de la Bourse 10, Paris.

Within the short period of two years the European Telegraph Company was to lay underground wires to Birmingham, in the midlands of England, completed on August 8, 1853, reaching Manchester, the north’s principal industrial city, by way of Wolverhampton, Stafford and Macclesfield on March 1, 1854, and the great Atlantic port of Liverpool on May 6 1854. It also obtained a contract of the Royal Navy to connect the Admiralty in Whitehall, London, with the dockyards to the east of London at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, Deal and Dover, all on its roadside route, by leasing it a wire.

 

The first messages from its office at 1 Market Place, Manchester to Paris and Brussels via London were sent at 7 o’clock in the morning on May 12, 1854.

Most of its business was for the Submarine line to cities and towns on the Continent, but domestic traffic within England was increasing. In the latter half of 1853 there were 24,382 messages (earning £2,789) by the first half of 1854 this had become 31,332 messages (£3,572). Rental from the Admiralty for connecting its Kentish naval stations was £1,000 per annum. It paid a modest 3% dividend in its first full year, 1853.

The European Telegraph Company in May 1854 had offices at 30 Cornhill, London; 43 Regent Circus, London; House of Commons, during the session; 23 Castle Street, Liverpool; 1 Market Place, Manchester; 104 New Street, Birmingham; 45 The Terrace, Gravesend; 303 High Street, Chatham; 36 High Street, Canterbury; 7 Clarence Place, Dover; and 100 Beach Street, Deal.

In an agreement confirmed on September 20, 1854 the British Telegraph Company acquired the capital of the European Telegraph Company by an exchange of shares and a cash sum. The remarkably effective European company vanished from history after just four years existence. The British and European companies immediately merged their circuits, abandoning the complex Brett-House type-printing apparatus for the simple Highton single-needle telegraph.

d.] The Submarine Telegraph Company between Great Britain and the Continent of Europe. The owners of the Submarine company had in the meantime negotiated another telegraph cable monopoly, this time of the Belgian Government, to which end it cloned itself to create the parallel, elaborately and confusingly titled Submarine Telegraph Company between Great Britain and the Continent of Europe. It was a company, unlike the original, created in Britain and secured limited–liability protection for its shareholders by means of a Royal Charter on April 14, 1851. In London the two companies had identical boards and to all intents and purposes were one organisation. The new cable between Dover in England and Ostend in Belgium was completed on June 20, 1853 with an office in Brussels at Place de la Monnaie, using Wheatstone’s two-needle telegraph and then the American telegraph. 

The three linked Submarine companies, the ‘French’, the ‘Belgian’ and the European, effectively united their managements and operations, though not their capitals, in a set of agreements dated August 19, 1852. This arrangement lasted only for two years.

Before the first telegraph conventions of 1855, which formalised the transmission of messages between national systems, the Submarine companies had offices for Continental correspondence at the offices of the European company in England; London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Gravesend, Chatham, Canterbury, Deal and Dover; and from its own premises at Calais, Paris, Brussels and Antwerp.

When the British company absorbed the European concern the ‘French’ and ‘Belgian’ cable firms henceforth traded simply as the Submarine Telegraph Company, although having separate capital, trading from its original office at 30 Cornhill, City.

 

The chartered ‘Belgian’ Submarine company obtained permission to land and work underwater cables in Hanover, from Cromer in East Anglia to Emden, 280 miles, completed on November 4, 1858, and in Denmark, from Cromer by way of the British North Sea island of Heligoland to Tonning, 374 miles, laid on July 14, 1859; neither of these concessions were monopoly rights. And neither of these cable connections was to be lasting. The Magnetic company constructed a dedicated long line from London to Cromer in December 1858.

The French authorities on January 12, 1859 authorised the Submarine company to lay two new cables, from Folkestone to Boulogne and from Jersey in the Channel Island to Coutances in Brittany.

In 1859 the Submarine company possessed six highly-profitable cables; two to France, Dover – Calais (24 miles), and Folkestone - Boulogne (25 miles); one to Belgium, Dover – Ostend (70 miles), one to Denmark, Cromer – Heligoland (a British island) – Tonning (380 miles), one to Hanover, Cromer – Emden (80 miles) and one between Jersey in the Channel Islands and Coutances in Brittany, France (30 miles). Unfortunately for a long period in 1859 only the two cables to Boulogne and Hanover were working, the others being damaged or under construction.

It then employed 127 staff, all men, and was working the American telegraph as made by Digney of France and Siemens & Halske of Prussia in all of its circuits.

The Electric Telegraph Company, in an attempt to break the Submarine’s monopoly to France, proposed a new cable from Newhaven to Dieppe, just as the Company was renegotiating its concession in 1859. The French renewed the concession for another thirty years but insisted that the Submarine build the new cable to Dieppe, which it completed in 1861.

In 1860 the Submarine Telegraph Company between Great Britain and the Continent of Europe, reported to the Government that it and its ‘French’ equivalent had a paid-up capital of £340,000; £75,000 for the Dover – Calais works, £80,000 for Dover-Ostend, £150,000 for Cromer-Tonning, and £35,000 for Folkestone-Boulogne and Jersey-Coutances. Their receipts in 1852 from 96 miles of wire and 3,049 messages had been £4,632 and expenditure £1,922, in 1859 with 2,366 miles of wire and 122,969 messages it received £26,995 and expended £14,121. In both years they declared a 6% annual dividend, although in the intermediate years 7%, 7½% and 8% had been paid.

Table 9
The Submarine Telegraph Company
Message Traffic to Europe and Dividend 1852 - 1859

 

1852…………..3,049……………6%
1853…………..34,616 ………….8%
1854…………..26,931…………..7%
1855………..…50,200………….6½%
1856…………..71,290…………..7%
1857…………..84,146…………..7½%
1858…………..100,196…………7½%
1859……………122,969………..6%

 

The opening of the International Telegraph Company’s England to Holland cables early in 1854 clearly affected the Submarine’s Continental business. 

 

The Submarine Telegraph Company had its monopoly concession with France extended for thirty years on January 2, 1861 till 1890. It sent and received a total of 230,000 messages in 1861, rising to 310,595 in 1863.

In 1863, after it laid the new line from Newhaven in England to Dieppe in France the Submarine Telegraph Company had 887 miles of line containing 2,683 miles of wire in circuit, worked by 51 instruments and carried 345,784 messages to and from Europe. The capital of the ‘French’ element was then £100,000, of the chartered or ‘Belgian’ part, which included the cable concessions to Hanover and Denmark, £300,000.

 

The concession to Hanover was forfeit in 1865 and the Company’s German cable from Cromer to Emden abandoned. The rights were to be acquired by Julius Reuter.

 

When the domestic companies were appropriated by the government in 1870 the Submarine company had possession of the following cables:

• Dover – Calais, completed September 1851, with 4 circuits and a length of 24 miles

• Ramsgate – Ostend, completed May 1853, with 6 circuits and a length of 70 miles

• Folkestone – Boulogne, completed June 1859, with 6 circuits and a length of 25 miles

• Jersey – France, completed January 1860, with 1 circuit and a length of 30 miles

• Beachy Head – Dieppe, completed June 1861, with 6 circuits and a length of 78 miles

• Dover – La Paune (Belgium), completed November 1867, with 4 circuits and length of 47 miles

• Beachy Head – Le Havre, completed September 1870, with 6 circuits and a length of 69 miles

It then had in its direct ownership a total of 33 circuits to Europe, 343 miles of cable in all. Its other cables had either been replaced or had failed; the Company’s long cable between England and Denmark by way of Heligoland had been terminally “interrupted” by the Danish – Prussian war of 1864. The profits from the directly-owned circuits were divided between the original or “French” Submarine company and the later “Belgian” company in proportion to their capital; in 1870 this was £75,000 (16.8%) and £370,806 (83.2%).

Subsequently it also was to lease from the Post Office the two cables to Holland, previously owned by the Electric & International Telegraph Company, and the Norderney cable lately the property of Reuter’s Telegram Company. For these an elaborate rental was arranged: one quarter of gross receipts was set aside for repairs, one-fifth of gross receipts from London, two-fifths from English and Scottish country towns and one-half from Irish towns was retained by the Post Office, the balance being divided equally between the Company and the Post Office. This formula effectively doubled the Company’s dividend.

 

e.] The Electric Telegraph Company of Ireland was promoted in December 1851 as the “Irish Channel Submarine Telegraph Company” and registered in January 1852 before adopting the new title in the middle of the year.  It sought a capital of £500,000 for lines from Dumfries in Scotland, where a connection was to be made with the mainland circuits, to an underwater cable between Scotland and Ulster, and by a line “thence to Belfast, Dublin and other places in Ireland”. The chairman of the company was Rear Admiral Sir William Henry Dillon, RN, KCH, the balance of the Board might be best described as speculators. The Secretary was S F Griffin, the son of one of the directors. It intended to apply for a Royal Charter during 1852. Money was apparently tight and it soon reduced its anticipated capital needs to just £40,000.

By May 1852, the Ireland company had started entrenching a two-core gutta-percha insulated but otherwise unprotected underground land line along the road from Dumfries to Port Patrick, intending to have it complete by June 31.

 

On July 18, 1852 the Reliance under Captain Edward Hawes RN, the Admiralty’s general superintendent at Port Patrick harbour, set out from the Scottish coast with S F Griffin, now styled engineer, W L Gilpin, the contractor, G Dering, the electrician, and J Fletcher, the company’s superintendent of works, on board. The Reliance, accompanied by a steam tug from Belfast, carried twenty-five miles of underwater cable; it successfully laid and electrically-tested seven miles of wire out from Port Patrick. Captain Hawes then decided that strong sea currents were setting in and continuing cable-laying could only proceed after the spring tides were over. The line was marked by buoys.

On the Saturday morning of July 24, the Reliance returned to grapple the cable-end, which the crew did with immense difficulty, as it had fouled an abandoned ship’s anchor. The ends were joined and the vessel continued towards Donaghadee at three miles per hour, succeeding in laying a further fifteen miles. It reached Ireland at ten o’clock at night in heavy gales. The cable was tested, found electrically sound and, then as it was not possible to land it, buoyed-off in the sea.

The principal length of the Ireland company’s first underwater cable was described as being of two copper wire cores insulated with gutta-percha protected by a thick covering of hemp rope. The cores had been manufactured by Christopher Nickels & Company, of Lambeth, who also made the Company’s land-lines. For the vulnerable shore-ends at Port Patrick and Donaghadee, which were subject to wave action and abrasion, W Küper & Company, wire-rope makers, of Camberwell, London, were to have made two short armoured cables but money for these apparently ran out. A temporary shore connection was made with unarmoured insulated wire and worked for a matter of days, but eventually the long hemp cable had to be sealed and buoyed-off in the sea at both ends. 

At the moment of this failure in July the Ireland company was in direct competition with the Magnetic Telegraph Company which had been similarly active with cable works over the same short stretch of water to Ireland during May and June.

There was a hiatus in the Company’s initial rush of activity during the following months. It was not until August 1852 that William Lawrence Gilpin of Bayswater, London, a civil engineer and partner in a wire mill at Aston, near Birmingham, agreed to complete its entire works in Scotland and Ireland for £27,000.

On December 27, 1852 the Board of Directors reported that the 69 miles of two-core underground cable in Scotland were completed and they were working messages on the 42 miles from Dumfries to Newton Stewart. It had also received a report by Captain Hawes that the isolated six-month-old underwater cable was still in good condition. With 16,000 out of 40,000 shares already applied for, it had decided to apply to Parliament for a Special Act to authorise its works, rather than obtain a Royal Charter as originally planned.

The Electric Telegraph Company of Ireland eventually obtained a Special Act of Parliament to authorise its formation, its cable and its circuits in Scotland and Ireland on August 4, 1853, with a modest capital of £40,000 in shares of £1 and £8,000 in debenture debt that could be incurred once all of its share capital was called-up. However only 27,000 of its 40,000 £1 shares were taken up, and not all of the shareholders could be got to pay their calls into its account with the Royal British Bank in London. It was not associated with its English namesake, the original Electric Telegraph Company of 1845, and, as it was limited by its Act to circuits in Ireland and Scotland, it apparently intended to connect onward from Dumfries by transcribing messages to the circuits of the British Telegraph Company.

The Ireland company used George Edward Dering’s single-needle telegraph, patented in 1851, in all of its circuits. Although reported sound the first underwater cable was not to be put in circuit and was abandoned and the Company adopted Dering’s curious theories regarding insulation in 1853 for a replacement cable.

Dering described his theory on underwater cables in his patent of 1853 as follows “I have discovered that a metallic circuit formed of wires, either wholly un-insulated or partially so, may be employed for an electric telegraph, provided that the two parts of the circuit are at such a distance apart that the electric current will not all pass direct from one wire to the other by the water or earth, but that a portion will follow the wire to the distant end.” He apparently successfully demonstrated this discovery across the river Mimram on his estate in Hertfordshire, England, for the Company’s board of directors.

The new bare wire cable was shipped to Belfast on September 23, 1853, it was a single No 1 gauge galvanised iron wire instead of a twisted strand wire which Dering had recommended. It was, he said later, poorly made with many bad welds, but it was tested and the weak parts removed. It was then tarred for its whole length and loaded into the contractor’s vessel, the Albert. The cable was to be laid on November 21, 1853 from Donaghadee to Port Patrick by the Albert, escorted by HMS Asp. A half-mile shore-end wire was initially laid, then on November 22, in foul weather, the 28 miles of main wire was joined and a further 3½ miles laid before it broke. On November 26 another attempt was made by the Albert, this time 12 miles were laid before the wire broke again in 82 fathoms of water. After several attempts to grapple the underwater wire by the Albert it too was abandoned.

 

Its 200 miles of two-core gutta-percha underground cable circuits were all manufactured by Christopher Nickels & Company, of 20 York Road, Lambeth, London, which traded also as the “Gutta-Percha Company of Lambeth”. Nickels was a large-scale manufacturer of india-rubber and gutta-percha goods, and was a licensee of Charles Hancock’s patent wire-covering machine.

The Ireland company made a brave face at the Irish Industrial Exhibition in Dublin between May and October 1853, working traffic from the halls to its office on Eden Quay and north towards Belfast with 120 miles of roadside subterranean line. Its much larger competitor, the Magnetic Telegraph Company, which already had a submarine line to Britain, completed in May 1853, did not even have a stand. During 1853 the Ireland company was also supplying news to papers in Dublin and Belfast.

After laying 192 miles of underground line with 400 miles of wire in Scotland and Ireland, but being without the intermediate cable, the Ireland company was in severely difficult financial circumstances, having raised and expended £26,255 in share capital and, despite not having Parliamentary authority to do so, having raised £16,560 in loans; whilst still owing money to its contractor, W L Gilpin, to Nickels’ Gutta Percha Company of Lambeth for its land-lines, and having judgements for other debts made against it. Gilpin agreed to forgo all of his claims against the Company and surrender the works and materials still in his possession in July 1854 in return for a final payment of £600 and the writing-off of a debt of his of £2,000 to the Royal British Bank used to buy materials. The Ireland company’s new secretary, James Troup, and three directors had to find the money among themselves to settle his claim.

The Company closed its offices on July 31, 1854 after working at a continuous loss. The shareholders finally resolved to wind-up the Company on May 7, 1856 and its assets and rights were sold-off. The auction, on August 27, 1858, by order of the Court of Chancery of 196 (sic.) miles of line, as well as its plant and materials, connecting Dublin, Belfast and Newtownards, and Dumfries and Port Patrick, ended with a bid of just £500.

As a final nail in the Ireland company’s coffin, its bankers, the Royal British Bank, collapsed in criminal disgrace in September 1856. Richard Hartley Kennedy, once a director of the competitive Magnetic Telegraph Company was Deputy Governor of the bank.

The British Telegraph Company subsquently promoted its own underwater cable from Scotland to Ireland which was successfully completed on July 9, 1854.

 

f.] The Irish Sub-Marine Telegraph Company had been first promoted in January 1852 and incorporated by Royal Charter on May 15, 1852, with a capital £100,000 in shares of £5, with power to increase that to £200,000, however only £20,000 was called-up. It was under the chairmanship of Lord Erskine, with C P Roney as Managing Director in Ireland. Its secretary was William Morgan, and its engineer was Charles West.  The Charter covered not just a long submarine telegraph between Anglesey in North Wales and Ireland, from Holyhead to Howth, the most direct route from England to Ireland, but also included additional powers for connecting London and Dublin and various towns in Great Britain and Ireland, and with the Submarine Telegraph at Dover. The Earl of Howth donated the cable’s landing site on his estate at Howth. It negotiated an exclusive connection with the Electric Telegraph Company in Britain for Irish traffic and was to have a dedicated circuit on that company’s lines between Holyhead and London.

The Irish Sub-Marine company’s land line to Dublin city was planned to run from Howth on the coast to the Amiens Street terminus of the Dublin & Drogheda Railway just as the British end ran to the Holyhead terminus of the Chester & Holyhead Railway. Its engineer, Charles West, manufactured an experimental length of two-and-three-quarter miles of underwater cable, of four cores insulated with india-rubber covered in spun yarn and armoured with plaited iron wire early in 1852. The Company rejected this innovation; so different from the existing, successful, gutta-percha insulated, spiral-wire armoured cables made by R S Newall & Company.

As the dispute continued R S Newall, without a contract from the Company, manufactured a very light, single-core underwater cable for use between Holyhead and Howth in just four weeks to the design of Thomas Allen. It was laid on June 2, 1852 supervised by Henry Woodhouse for the Irish Sub-Marine company, using the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company’s steamer Britannia, accompanied by HMS Prospero. Connected with the Irish Sub-Marine company’s land line to Dublin and to the Electric’s to London, it failed three days later. The connection did not affect Woodhouse’s career; he went on to be engineer on submarine cables in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

The Irish Sub-Marine Telegraph Company then came to an arrangement with the Electric Telegraph Company to transfer its landing and other rights on September 25, 1852, by which the old company acquired £16,000 of its £20,000 capital. It then ceased to exist.

The Electric inherited Charles West’s original but abandoned cable from the Irish company. It had been left in the maker’s yard since 1852. The two miles or so of stock was used for the Isle of Wight cable and for several lines in land tunnels.

After a second attempt to connect the two countries by way of Holyhead failed, a heavy single-core cable was eventually completed on September 4 and 5, 1854 by the International Telegraph Company, who worked the long underwater cables of the Electric company. A second single-core cable between Holyhead and Howth was successfully laid by the International company in the following year, on June 13 and 14, 1855. Edwin Clark was engineer to both of these cables.

g.] The International Telegraph Company - In 1852 the Electric company negotiated sole rights of the Netherlands Government to lay underwater cables between the two kingdoms; to run from Orfordness in eastern England and Scheveningen in Holland, hence by pole telegraph to The Hague and Amsterdam. In London it claimed it was to connect Amsterdam, Breda, Rotterdam, Haarlem, Dordrecht and The Hague in competition with the newly-formed state-enterprise, the Rijkstelegraaf. But apart from the circuit from the coast to Amsterdam the other lines were not built. Its concession to Holland was for 20 years, expiring in 1873.

The Electric Telegraph Company’s subsidiary, the International Telegraph Company contracted to lay four separate single-wire underwater cables between England and Holland, one each on May 30 and 31, June 16 and 17 and September 8 and 9, 1853, and then on September 29 and 30, 1855. The Company’s engineers, Edwin Clark for the first three and his brother, Latimer Clark for the last, managed the laying operations rather than letting the cable-makers carry out the work, using the Company’s own steamer, the Monarch.

It used the Cooke & Wheatstone two-needle device in its circuits until 1854 when that was replaced by the American telegraph of Siemens & Halske allowing di-rect electrical connection through to the rest of Europe.

The International Telegraph Company, an apparently independent new concern, working from the ‘Continental Telegraph Offices’ at 1 Royal Exchange Buildings, London, separate from the Electric’s, was projected to placate Dutch sensitivities to an English intervention, to own and work these foreign circuits. The International company was not formed by Act of Parliament (it did not need to as it used the Electric company’s circuits in Britain) but was incorporated by Royal Charter on June 13, 1853 on the same day as the British Telegraph Company, so was able to offer its shareholders in England and Holland limited liability. Its original Secretary and Manager was Douglas Pitt Gamble, who had tried to introduce Nott & Gamble’s dial telegraph until sued by the Electric company. The International had a short independent existence; it and Electric were in common circuit and had a common shareholder base; Parliament formally permitted their merger in 1855. 

 

The International Telegraph Company adopted as its motto Nec nos mare separat ingens; the wholly appropriate objective “great seas shall not separate”.

When the International company opened its circuits to public messages on December 1, 1853 it offered charges to the Continent from Brighton, Bristol, Holyhead, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow the same as from London. It initially worked only to Holland, North and South Germany, Prussia, Austria and Tuscany. It claimed that its charges were 25% cheaper than any competition.

 

To generate business the International company offered Julius Reuter, on September 14, 1853, as a “collector and transmitter of messages” for others, a commission of 7% to use only its circuits to the Continent. When he commenced his foreign news agency it offered him a rebate of 50% on all messages sent or received containing public intelligence on January 12, 1854.

 

The International Telegraph Company, as has been previously noted, when an independent entity and as merged as a trading name, was to manage the Holyhead to Howth cables as well as those to Holland for its parent the Electric & International company. 

 

In 1857 Henry Weaver became Manager of the International Telegraph Company, as well as being Superintendent of the Electric’s London District. Weaver had previously been Chief Clerk of the Company’s Amsterdam station.

The Dutch government’s Rijkstelegraaf acquired the Company‘s land lines and stations in Holland during 1859.

Consolidation - In a logical consolidation, in 1857, in the face of the ever-expanding and combative Electric company, its two main competitors, the ‘new’, combined British company and the English & Irish company, merged their capital, interests and circuits to form one concern.

h.] The British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company was created on April 22, 1857 under the new Joint-stock Companies’ Limited Liability Act of 1855. This Act allowed, for the first time, joint-stock companies to be formed limiting the liability of shareholders without Parliamentary approval, merely by legal registration. The original statutory powers possessed by the merged English & Irish and British concerns passed seamlessly to the new, enlarged firm. It continued to be known to all as the ‘Magnetic’.

The Magnetic’s new motto, a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, was Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris? This conventionally translates as “Which part of the world is not filled with our sorrows?” - a sentiment with which the Company’s shareholders, after its subsequent adventures in Atlantic cables, might have had sympathy. The preferred interpretation was “Which part of the world is not filled with our toils?”

On its formation by merger in April 1857 the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company possessed 3,441 miles of line and carried 423,772 messages in that year. It connected the 340 major cities and towns in the country and had ten offices in London: 72 Old Broad Street, 30 Cornhill, Royal Exchange (under the Clock Tower), Stock Exchange, 22 Mincing Lane, 82 Mark Lane, 22 Chancery Lane, 7 Charing Cross, 43 Regent Circus and the House of Commons.

 

The Company’s head office was still in north-west England, at 2 Exchange Buildings, Liverpool; the offices of the ‘old’ Magnetic company. It had wayleaves over fifty-four railways in Britain and Ireland; it also possessed the two cables between Scotland and Ulster and a News Exchange for provincial newspapers. The Company adopted the same message tariff as the Electric except on its circuits to Ireland, where the latter was only just starting to compete.

 

Edward Brailsford Bright continued as the Company’s Secretary and General Manager. The Assistant Secretary, residing in London, was Edward Moseley; he was later replaced by a local Manager, James Gutteres.

By 1859 the Magnetic had expanded its circuits to 4,196 miles of line and carried 550,772 messages. It then had 350 stations in Britain, including 10 in London, and 83 in Ireland.

By then the Magnetic had had built a new Central Office at 58 Threadneedle Street opposite the Bank of England in the financial district of London; in design much like the Electric’s at Founders’ Court, with a small alley-like frontage and a large public hall squeezed in behind, with “a rather fanciful and very ornate French Renaissance façade, crowned by a lofty clock-tower. There was a good deal of very well executed carving in the front; the roof with its dormer windows made a leading feature in the composition.” The architect was Horace Jones. 

 

Its new system of overhead insulation, using porcelain insulators devised by C T Bright, allowed it to telegraph Dublin direct from London by way of the northern underwater cables and Belfast, a distance of 700 miles, without any form of relay. The primary exceptions to the new system were the continuation of underground circuits between London and Dover and London and Manchester.

In 1859 the ‘new’ Magnetic company had sole access to the six cables of the Submarine company into France, Belgium and Hanover, in which it had invested heavily. These cables contributed a disproportionate amount to its income, reflecting the success of this investment.

The new combined Magnetic company’s capital was £284,847 for the ‘old’ Magnetic, and £297,130 for the British company. Another £110,368 was acquired and spent between 1857 and 1860; to make £692,345 in all.

Its dividends on the share categories were:
  
Year………………1857……..1858 …….1859
Class A……………5½%........5%.........4¾%
Class B…………….7%...........7%.........7%
Class C…………….4%...........4%.........4%

The new Magnetic was committed to a shareholding of £137,760 in the Submarine Telegraph Company and a substantial £107,210 in debenture debt in 1860.

John Watkins Brett and Charles Tilston Bright of the Magnetic company were to be the driving force for submarine telegraphy in the Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean; being the promoter and engineer respectively for virtually all such works for over twenty years.

The Magnetic’s management was to be distracted for many years from 1857 by its expensive involvement in the Atlantic cables; it owned the land-line from the Atlantic cable-end in Ireland as well as providing the bulk of its capital and engineering support. The Board of Directors, guided by John Watkins Brett and Charles Bright, expected the Atlantic Telegraph to contribute to its income to an even greater degree than its investment in the Submarine company. The great cable’s immediate failure substantially hindered the Magnetic’s domestic growth and innovation. It, like the Electric, only gradually expanded its coverage in the 1860s but it was not able to introduce the same sort of cost-saving efficiencies through technical advances as the Electric.

 

Compounding this, unlike the Electric, the Magnetic company did not gain immediate income from foreign circuits to the continent. These circuits were in the hands of its close associate the Submarine Telegraph Company, which retained the extra-domestic revenues. This also meant that it had no opportunity to create relationships with overseas telegraph administrations.

It was also struck with the “sudden decay” of the gutta-percha insulation in subterranean circuits that comprised most of its capacity during 1859. The Magnetic’s directors had to declare that “gutta-percha utterly failed underground” and had to start to replace its underground circuits with overhead lines. The great cost was met in someway by selling off the valuable copper cores of the old lines.

The underground wires in Ireland were also attacked by more substantial vermin in November 1860. Over 1,400 lbs of copper wire was lifted from its main Dublin to Belfast roadside cable by thieves at Dunleer in County Louth, destroying its primary revenue-earning circuit in the island. Most of the metal was recovered within the month by the City of Dublin Metropolitan Police from dealers there.

The Company was not, however, unaware of its social obligations to Irish culture and welfare. The Magnetic supported the "Queen's Institute for the Training and Employment of Educated Women" in Dublin when the establishment commenced in 1861. It supplied teachers and apparatus to the Institute to train telegraph clerks, and made grants-in-aid to the less well-off women that it later employed.

 

Starting in 1858 the Magnetic began to replace its long-line and urban underground cables with roadside overhead circuits. John Lavender, its engineer, had undertaken similar work for the former British Telegraph Company before the merger, and began to connect London and Manchester with roadside poles, starting with isolated sections at Poynton, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stony Stratford. High poles were also introduced into cities, starting with Manchester in 1862, connecting its central station at Ducie Place with the Salford railway station by sixteen wires. By 1864 poles were also being used in the city centres of Stockport, Newcastle and Coventry. The poles in the cities were 60 and 70 feet tall, formed to Lavender’s specification by splicing together two 30 and 40 foot poles, as ship’s masts were constructed.

Lavender left the Magnetic in 1870 to become Telegraph Superintendent of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company – the British Telegraph Company’s original partner of 1851.

 

Table 12
British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company
Growth 1857 - 1859

Year……….Miles of line……….Stations……….Staff.………Messages
1857……….3,441……………………230………………-……………423,772
1858……….3,655……………………327………………-……………433,583
1859……….4,196……………………353…………….1,044……….550,168

Figures from the Parliamentary Report on the State of the Telegraph Companies in Britain, 1860

 

The Magnetic company had been lax in advancing electric timekeeping, which had served others well in publicity. In 1857 it acquired the patent of Robert Lewis Jones of Chester for regulating electric clocks, and began to use Jones’ clocks in its offices. The public appreciation of such clocks it measured from the large electric clock it had in the window of its office at Exchange Buildings, Liverpool, controlled by the local Observatory. On February 4, 1861 it counted the number of people who “took the time from the clock” between 6am and 5pm – the number totalled 1,860.

 

Professor Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, introduced the Time-Gun to Mill’s Mount Battery, Edinburgh on January 29, 1861. In this one of R L Jones’ electric clocks and a clock-trigger, regulated by a circuit from Edinburgh Observatory, fired a blank charge in a 12 pounder artillery piece at one o’clock every day. The time-gun could be heard over a distance of twenty miles. By 1864 the Magnetic company was providing signals from Edinburgh for time-guns in Newcastle, North Shields, Sunderland, Glasgow, Greenock and Dundee. Liverpool Observatory used the apparatus for its own time-gun on the Mersey. The time-gun and clock-trigger devised in Edinburgh were widely adopted throughout the world, in competition with the more sedate, quieter time-ball advocated by the Electric Telegraph Company

The Magnetic grew gradually from 4,196 miles of line with 464 offices in 1863 sending 827,424 messages, through to 4,329 miles with 479 offices in 1864.

By 1865 it possessed 4,401 miles of line, 18,668 miles of wire, with 491 stations, 1,042 instruments and had improved its working greatly to 1,252,265 messages.

 

Like all of the companies the Magnetic had to make huge repairs to its pole circuits around London after the storm of January 11, 1866, which cost it over £1,000.

At part of its opposition to the campaign for Government appropriation of the telegraphs during in 1867 Edward Bright, the Company’s chief manager, published a revised version of the widely-circulated book, ‘The Electric Telegraph Popularised’ of 1855. He added a section comparing the continental systems to that in Britain, to the considerable disadvantage of the former.

At the end of the decade the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company had the following offices in London, Chief Office, 58 Threadneedle Street, opposite the Royal Exchange; Baltic Coffee House; Stock Exchange; 27 Leadenhall Street; 82 Mark Lane; Corn Exchange Chambers, Seething Lane; 22 Mincing Lane; Lloyds; 7 Charing Cross; 43 Regent Circus; and the Central Lobby, House of Commons (during the Session). It was also in circuit with the stations of the London District company. For most of its existence the Magnetic maintained a large factory for instruments at Bolton, in Lancashire; with another, rather smaller, at 46 City Road, Finsbury in London, acquired and expanded from the old British company’s works.

Edward Beresford Bright was General Manager to the end. He was assisted in London during 1867 by W D S Alexander, the assistant secretary, and William Walsh, its District Superintendent there. Walsh had been District Superintendent in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1858 before coming to London in the mid-1860s, and was later to become Secretary to the West India & Panama Telegraph Company.

During 1868, at the passing of the Government’s appropriation Act, the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company had a total capital of £779,259 with 4,696 miles of line (19,235 miles of wire). Its 647 clerks and 433 messengers then sent 1,530,961 inland messages and 212,764 foreign messages.

 

 

Table 13
The Telegraphs in 1859

Miles of Line………….......……..10,186
Miles of Wire…………........…….48,990
Telegraph Stations….....……….953
Instruments………….......………4,085
Public Messages…….......………1,320,086

From Government returns for public telegraphs dated January 1, 1859 from the Electric & International Telegraph Company, the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, the South Eastern Railway Company and the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway Company

i.] The London District Telegraph Company was organised on January 4, 1859 by the management of the Magnetic company with a capital of £60,000 in 12,000 shares of £5, one-fifth of which was called-up. It was intended to have one-hundred offices in the metropolis within a four-mile radius connected to a central or interchange station. Messages were promoted as costing 3d for twenty words – in the event they were to be 4d and then, in 1861, 6d for fifteen words. It relied on roof-top poles and wires that required laborious negotiation with individual householders and landlords. As with local Post Offices its stations were to be within the premises of other businesses, hotels, public houses, shops, etc, worked with a single lady clerk between 9am to 7pm, six days a week.

The District planned for a large central station in circuit with ten district hubs each with nine telegraph stations. The hubs were to be located at Mile End Gate, Kingsland Gate, the ‘Angel’ at Islington, at the junction of Highgate and Hampstead Roads in Camden Town, at the junction of the New Road and Edgware Road, at Charing Cross, at the north end of Sloane Street, at the ‘Elephant & Castle’, at Camberwell Green and at Greenwich. In the event its circuits were more ad hoc.

It intended to have a station no more than five minutes walk away from any household and to deliver its messages within half-an-hour from their receipt.

The District was to be the only radical domestic innovation of the Magnetic company’s management. Its message circuits were worked in concert with those of the larger concern and with those of the Submarine company, sending and receiving messages on their behalf throughout London. However with these it only retained the income from the segment borne by its own circuits.

Its Board of Directors in 1860 comprised seven members, chaired by Samuel Gurney, a major money-dealer and financier, and a director of the Magnetic and Submarine Telegraph companies; it included Charles Kemp Dyer, a member of Magnetic’s board, Robert Taylor, a useful member of the Metropolitan Board of Works (effectively the municipal authority in the capital) and a balance of City-men, merchants and financiers, Alexander Greig, William A Rose, Charles Reynolds, and George Sheward. John Watkins Brett and Edward Bright of the Magnetic company were later involved in its direction and management for short periods as it struggled through several crises. Its first secretary was Alfred Ogan. Latterly, from 1860 until 1870, the position of secretary and manager was occupied by Charles Curtoys, who had previously been Assistant Secretary to the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company.

The Company called-up 50% of its capital during 1859 when it opened its first 22 telegraph stations.

Initially it lodged at the Magnetic’s Threadneedle Street office, but in late 1860 took its own head office at 90 Cannon Street, City, later renumbered 101. Its next busiest office was at 7 Charing Cross in the West End; this was also owned by the Magnetic company.

In 1860 it joined the seethingly busy wharfs of the London and Commercial Dock companies to the City and offered ship-owners and merchants a substantial discount on its basic message rate for regular traffic by an annual rebate. In that year, too, it made an agreement with the Astronomer-Royal to convey a time-signal from the Greenwich Observatory to all of its offices.

As of February 1860 it had 33¼ miles of line in circuit with 11½ miles building and 20½ miles contracted for. Of these lines 2½ miles were laid underground. The Company’s difficulties were compounded by the failure of its contractor; it took the overhead construction works into its own management. Even so it handled 73,480 messages from 52 stations, 73 miles of line and 335 miles of wire during the whole of 1860, with an operating loss of £2,200.

In comparison to London’s 52 district stations in 1860; Paris then had just ten telegraph offices, with another at the Palais législatif open, as with that at the Houses of Parliament, when it was in session; and New York had a central telegraph office at 21 Wall Street and nine other City offices, to serve ten separate lines.

The Company had constructed 78 miles of line with 350 miles of wire by 1861. It contracted with the new West-End of London & Crystal Palace Railway in 1861 for circuits to its suburban stations at Balham, Battersea, Norwood and Crystal Palace. But to June 1861 it had accumulated a working loss of £5,672 on an expended capital of £43,231.

Charles Bright, chief engineer of the Magnetic, was Consultant to the District. Its own engineer was Edward Tyer who is best known for the development of a system of railway signal telegraphs. He founded his own equipment manufacturing company in Dalston, London, that lasted well into the next century.

Although it used simple Highton single-needle instruments, the over-house circuits were difficult and expensive to acquire and construct, vulnerable to the elements and consistent in losing money. During 1862 it sent 250,000 messages, just 10 per day per station, but reduced its annual operating loss to £894.

 

Always vigorous in its marketing, the District offered in 1862 one hundred of their 6d message stamps for one pound; this reduced the charge for a fifteen word message to 2½ d. Its message capacity in 1862 with 83 stations was said to be one thousand per hour; but it rarely achieved one thousand messages in a day.

With this discounting the Company was able for the first time to develop the “social” nature of messaging. It became aware that there was considerable increase in traffic about great public and social events, such as the Derby horse race and the Queen's opening of Parliament. The greatest number of messages was sent on the on the day before the new Princess of Wales arrived in London, when 1,500 were transmitted by the public arranging seats and trips to view her cavalcade.  

 

Common ‘domestic’ messages sent on the District’s circuits included booking theatre and opera tickets, calls for doctors, for forgotten door keys, and ‘I am on my way home’, as well as ordering coal and other deliveries. Suburban tradesmen placed daily orders for perishable fish and poultry with Billingsgate and Leadenhall markets. Travelling salesmen sent orders to their principals in the City. Doctors and barristers were enabled to learn of the need for their services in different hospitals and courts during their day’s work.

 

Never short of ideas to gain additional revenue, the District printed paid advertisements on the back of its received message forms, rather than the usual list of stations, and on their envelopes. It was the only telegraph company to do this.

The coverage of the Metropolis even in 1862 by the London District Telegraph Company’s public stations is shown in this list taken from ‘Kelly’s Post Office Directory’ of that year, showing over ninety locations:

90 Cannon Street;
45 Ernest Street, Albany Street, Regent’s Park;
Baltic Coffee House, Threadneedle Street;
Railway station, Battersea;
3 Norfolk Place, Battersea;
2 Inverness Terrace, Bayswater;
30 New Weston Road, Bermondsey (Leather Market);
Royal Hotel, 26 New Bridge Street, Blackfriars;
455 New Oxford Street, Bloomsbury;
68 London Road, opposite ‘Elephant & Castle’;
8 Great Dover Street;
21 High Street, Bow;
14 Commercial Place, Brixton;
15 Rose Terrace, Fulham Road, Brompton;
Camberwell Green, west side;
Cambridge Heath, opposite Gate;
12 Cornwall Terrace, Camden;
32 King Street, near Camden Hall;
22 Chancery Lane;
7 Charing Cross;
153 Cheapside (near Peel’s Statue);
29 Sloane Square, Chelsea;
10 High Street, Clapham;
Dock House, Plough Bridge, Rotherhithe;
3 Heath Place, Commercial Road;
Commercial Sale Rooms, Mincing Lane;
Jerusalem Coffee House, Cowper’s Court, Cornhill;
Tavistock Hotel, Covent Garden;
30 Crawford Street;
Crystal Palace railway station;
DeBeauvoir Town, corner Downham and Kingsland Road;
Post Office, Broadway, Deptford;
Doctors’ Commons, corner Godliman Street;
1 Commercial Street, Shoreditch;
94 Grand Junction Terrace, Paddington;
72 Euston Square, corner Seymour Street;
‘Eyre Arms’, St John’s Wood;
15 Finsbury Place north, Finsbury;
102 Fleet Street, the ‘Dial’ newspaper office;
159 Goswell Street, near Wilderness Row;
24 Gracechurch Street, corner Lombard Street;
47 Gresham Street;
Guildhall Law Court;
Haverstock Hill, opposite Adelaide Road;
255 Upper Street, Islington;
284 High Holborn;
5 Hercules Terrace, Upper Holloway;
House of Commons Central Lobby;
Isle of Dogs, near Pontifex & Wood’s factory;
7 Rufford’s Buildings, High Street, Islington;
The ‘Horns’, Kennington;
8 Windmill Row, Kennington;
1 Somerset Terrace, Campden Hill, Kensington;
8 New Chapel Place, Kentish Town;
10 Morton Terrace, Kentish Town;
1 Dalston Lane, Kingsland;
4 York Place, Mansfield Street, Kingsland;
65 King William Street;
3 Adelaide Place, London Bridge;
21 Parkside, near Albert Gate, Knightsbridge;
2 Leadenhall Street;
Clock Tower, London Bridge;
Railway Station, Norwood;
6 Maida Hill East;
82 Mark Lane;
7 Mile End Road;
Railway, New Wandsworth;
24 High Street, Notting Hill;
Old Bailey Criminal Court;
Old Jewry, corner of Poultry;
326 Oxford Street, corner Regent’s Circus;
Bishop’s Road, opposite ‘Royal Oak’, Paddington;
Peckham Rye, at Mr Miller, chemist;
43 Regent Circus, Piccadilly;
Victoria Railway Terminus, Pimlico;
78 Gloucester Street, Pimlico;
134 High Street, Poplar;
Railway Booking Office, 11 Southampton Street, Euston Square;
Commercial Dock House, Rotherhithe at Thames’ Tunnel;
Corn Exchange Chambers, Seething Lane;
1 Commercial Street, Shoreditch;
South Kensington Museum;
16 Southgate Terrace, DeBeauvoir Town;
Commercial Road, Stepney;
1 Stockwell Place, Clapton Road, Stockwell;
337 Strand, opposite Somerset House;
Commissionaires’ Barracks, Exchange Court, Strand;
58 Threadneedle Street;
1 Bridge Foot, Vauxhall;
Vauxhall, next Arrival Platform, South Western Railway station;
4 Wellington Place, West India Road;
3 Myra Place, West Ham;
Great George Street, Westminster;
18 Great Smith Street, Westminster;
Westminster Palace Hotel, Victoria Street

Several of the ninety-five stations listed above were shared with the British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company and with the Submarine Telegraph Company; the District only claimed eighty stations of its own in its returns to the Board of Trade. The District had public telegraphs at the stations of the West End of London & Crystal Palace Railway (shortly to be acquired by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway) and, from 1863, at the underground stations of the Metropolitan Railway. All could access the Magnetic’s national and the Submarine’s foreign circuits by transcription at the chief office in Cannon Street. 

 

By 1863 the District had constructed 107 miles of line and 430 miles of wire across the metropolis; in 1864 115 miles of line and 454 of wire. As its stations dropped from 81 to 80 so the number of instruments in circuit also fell from 192 to 191.

 
As well as public telegraphy the District company from its inception in 1858 offered individual subscribers private wires to connect offices and residences: for example it connected docks and dock-offices, post offices and fire stations. These private circuits used Siemens magneto-electric dial telegraph, which sent and received the plain alphabet, for use by ordinary people, rather than trained clerks. Each circuit consisted of a single wire and two dial instruments, or multiples of this set where several places were to be connected.

Latterly, in 1867 the District listed 116 stations, some shared with the Magnetic and Submarine companies, in the Post Office Directory. In competition with these the Electric company then had a further forty-five and the United Kingdom company ten public stations in London, giving the capital a total of 171 telegraph offices.

The District altered its name and structure to the London & Provincial Telegraph Company, to encompass a wider catchment area in 1867, and increased its capital to £70,000. In that year it recorded another operating loss but, with a new 1s 0d for twenty words tariff, in the next year it was at least able to pay the 10% dividend on its £10,000 of preference shares, the other shareholders once again got nothing. The District was the smallest of the public telegraph companies and was never an economically-sound business, although it set a world-wide precedent for intense urban telegraphy.

The London & Provincial Telegraph Company had a final paid-up capital of £66,350 and possessed 345 miles of line. It had 114 clerks, almost all of whom were women, and 66 messenger-boys, who transmitted 183,304 messages in 1868.

 

j.] The United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company in 1861 finally acquired sufficient capital to commence operations. It had been formed by Thomas Allan, an engineer, ten years previously to work his patent instruments and a flat-rate system irrespective of distance, similar in pricing to Post Office letter-carriage, in that every twenty-word message would cost one shilling (12d). The 1s rate did not include porterage. The Company’s board admitted in 1861 that the cost of a twenty-word message including delivery four or five miles from one of its offices should not be more than 2s 6d or 3s, and even more if for immediate delivery.

The flat-rate message was regarded as a great challenge to the existing companies’ business; especially when the United Kingdom company launched itself noisily in 1861 with a pamphlet with the headline ‘Cheap Telegraphs; or, Telegrams for the Million’. 

Although it had originally acquired rights in an Act of Parliament in 1851 with authority for a capital of £250,000 to lay subterranean telegraphs beneath public highways these were challenged in the Courts by its competitors and the Company initially was compelled to erect overhead poles alongside of canals with a reduced capital of £100,000 in £5 share. It launched its new prospectus in August 1860.

The United Kingdom company’s populous board of twelve in 1860 consisted of an admiral, a railway company chairman, four bankers, Frederick Doulton, the potter, James Pilkington, the glass-maker, A A Croll, a major gas entrepreneur, and, to add some style, Lord Alfred Churchill.

Having abandoned use of the telegraphic system of its initial promoter, Thomas Allan of Edinburgh, during 1861, the United Kingdom company adopted the American telegraph. The American instrument was used on all of the lines it erected until 1863. Thomas Allan became involved with underwater telegraphy, devising armouring and insulation for cables.

 

Then, during 1862 the Company acquired the patent for David Hughes’ type-printing telegraph and began to gradually install this complex device in its busiest circuits. The Hughes apparatus, which printed the alphabet on a paper tape, was to be the exception to the needle telegraph then used almost universally in British telegraph circuits.

With the eclipse of Allan, William Andrews, an American, was appointed electrician and engineer to the Company, and then promoted to Manager. He had previously been employed in the engineering department of the Submarine Telegraph Company.

During its first year of operation the United Kingdom Telegraph Company had 305 miles of line and 1,968 miles of wire. Its 16 stations possessed 65 American telegraph instruments and worked 11,549 messages. In that first year, 1861, it constructed lines  between Liverpool and Manchester and London and Birmingham, with the company seeking local shareholders to finance the intermediate route between Manchester and Birmingham. All of these were by the side of canals.

This crucial line between the centres of English industry and population was completed in August 1862 at a cost of £35,000. Connecting the principal centres of trade and commerce in England it gave the Company a vital flow of income, enabling it to acquire capital and hence to expand.

During 1861, too, the Company came under the vigorous chairmanship of Alexander Angus Croll, late Managing Director of the Great Central Gas Consumers Company of London, a man who had a long history of challenging monopolies. Under his control it became to be seen as the ‘people’s company’.

Challenged as to its rights to use roadside circuits it quickly and cheaply erected lines on tow-paths by the side of waterways between 1861 and 1862; most of these canals and navigable rivers were near-abandoned after the arrival of railway competition for freight. The main circuit connecting London, Birmingham and Manchester commenced alongside of the Grand Junction Canal from Brentford in West London to Braunston in Northamptonshire, reaching the populous towns of Leicester and Northampton on canal branches. It acquired wayleaves northwards along the Warwick & Birmingham Canal, through the Birmingham Canal Navigation and on to the Trent & Mersey Canal. From the latter waterway it used the Duke of Bridgwater’s Canal and the Leeds & Liverpool Canal for access to Liverpool and Manchester. From the canal terminal basins overhead and underground lines had to be made by the side of roads to access the city centres.

The United Kingdom company reached the important industrial towns of Blackburn, Bradford, Burnley, Leeds and Wigan in northern England using the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. It accessed the docks of London by means of the Regent’s Canal, leading from the Grand Junction at Paddington.

Unlike the railways who had a mutual interest in having the telegraph alongside of its tracks for signalling and messaging the canals did not, and charged substantially for the wayleaves.

 

During 1862 the Company had opened six offices in London, all working the American telegraph: 237 Gresham House, Old Broad Street, EC; Hercules Passage, 82 Old Broad Street, EC; 7 Mincing Lane, EC; 200 Fleet Street, EC; 20 Cockspur Street, SW; and Oxford Circus, Regent Street, W.

Then, after acquiring new powers from Parliament in 1863 authorising roadside lines, it rapidly expanded and reached Plymouth in the far west of England in 1865 and Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland during 1867 with overhead pole circuits alongside of coach- roads and turnpikes. It never reached Ireland, only working circuits on the British mainland.

Economy was always a primary consideration for the Company; it installed Hughes circuits – with its expensive type-printers – only where traffic would bear the cost, using the simple American telegraph with the key-and-inker elsewhere.

Its messages off the Hughes circuits, uniquely in Britain for the period, were printed and delivered on a paper tape. By this system the directors claimed that “errors are almost entirely obviated”, important to its principal category of customers, the mercantile class.

During 1863 it had 831 miles of line and 48 telegraph stations, handling 226,729 messages; a year later it had 1,343 miles and 100 stations, with 518,651 messages; by 1865 it had 1,672 miles of line, 9,506 miles of wire, 125 stations and 358 instruments, and was working 743,870 public messages. 

By 1866 as well as its Chief Office at 237 Gresham House, Bishopsgate Street, City, within what would now be called a block of offices, it had stations at 20 Cockspur Street, Charing Cross; 59 Cannon Street, City; 284 High Holborn; and 7 Mincing Lane, City, in London, working the Hughes type-printer. These effectively covered the residential and retail West End, the banking centre, the legal centre and the produce markets of the capital. In addition it had stations working the American telegraph at 2 Hercules Passage, Old Broad Street; 200 Fleet Street; 51 Mark Lane; 40 Gresham Street; and 64 New Bond Street.

It achieved a total of 1,676 miles of line and 9,712 miles of wire in operation by mid-1867.

Always regarded as a risky investment given the well-established competition; the United Kingdom company financed its 1,700 miles of overhead line primarily with fixed-interest preference shares and with perpetual bonds on which a substantial 7½% interest was paid in telegraph message stamps. The ordinary shareholders received very little over the life of the Company. It had had to borrow nearly 40% of its capital, an enormous burden in interest payments, although a third of this was paid in its own stamps.

After six years operation, in September 1868, the United Kingdom company achieved its maturity, and gained a valuable new source of income, by connecting its circuits with those of Continental Europe through a cable between Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in north-east England and Jutland in Denmark owned by the Dansk-Norsk-Engelske Telegrafselskab A/S, and in the following year by another between Norway and Scotland belonging to the Norsk-Engelsk Unterjøiskstelegrafselskab of Christiania (now Oslo), both of which were shortly afterwards absorbed into the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Copenhagen.

Eventually the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company obtained a capital of £352,247 with 1,692 miles of line (10,001 miles of wire). In 1868 its 270 clerks and 207 messengers handled 776,714 inland messages and 30,441 foreign messages.

 

k.] Reuter’s Telegram Company was the last domestic company to be formed, on February 15, 1865 with an initial paid-up capital of £80,000, before the British state took over. This did not offer direct public access as it was projected as a speculation by Julius Reuter to acquire his telegraphic news agency and, more importantly, the 30 year rights to a new underwater cable between Lowestoft in Eastern England and Norderney in Hanover, on the North German coast. Reuter displaced the Submarine Telegraph Company who previously had the Hanoverian landing rights. To fund the new cable Reuter’s capital rose to £250,000.

The 224 mile long Norderney cable was engineered by Fleeming Jenkin. Construction of its four-wire circuit was let to the Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company, who took one-quarter of the cost in shares, and then sub-contracted the work to W T Henley’s Telegraph Works Company. It was a massive cable, the main part weighing 10½ tons to the mile, the 20 miles at the shore ends, 20 tons a mile; completed and in circuit on October 3, 1866 at a cost of £153,000 including its landlines in Hanover. Reuter’s company also possessed rights over lines connecting Norderney with the towns of Hanover, Hamburg, Bremen and Cassel granted by the government of the then independent German state of Hanover. After Prussia absorbed Hanover in July 1866 the concession was renewed but the cable head office had to transfer to Berlin. Reuter contracted with the Electric company to send and receive public messages for Europe and the Orient using one-quarter of the cable’s capacity, in concert with that company’s own Holland cables, for a period of five years from its completion.  
 

The enlarged Company was something of a speculation; its board of directors comprised John Dent, Sir John Dalrymple Hay, Bt, MP, FRS, Col James Holland (London & South Africa Bank), John Sydney Stopford (Agra & Masterman’s Bank), and Julius Reuter. Its secretary was Frederick J Griffiths.

 

It is not immediately clear why Reuter’s Telegram Company was included in the government’s appropriation scheme, as it had no circuits in Britain. It is probably sufficient to say that Julius Reuter and the other proprietors knew a good thing when they saw it. They were to receive a total of £725,000 for a company capitalised at £250,000.

 

Alone among the companies appropriated by the Government Reuter’s Telegram Company was reorganised in 1868. It then reverted to being a foreign news agency, with its original capital of £80,000. As a point of detail, there has never been a Reuter’s “Telegraph” Company; the firm’s only name change since 1865 dates from 1916 when it became Reuters Limited.

 

l.] Det Store Nordiske Telegrafselskab A/S – This was the only foreign-owned telegraph company to access British circuits (if one excludes the French-registered Submarine Telegraph Company with its predominantly English capital); providing the Continental connection of the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company. Known then and now as the Great Northern Telegraph Company, it was a merger of the Danish, Norwegian & English, the Danish-Russian and the Norwegian & English Submarine telegraph companies, incorporated in Copenhagen, Denmark, on June 1, 1869, with a capital of £400,000. The engineer responsible for its works was the Englishman, Nathaniel John Holmes. Its seal (above) featured the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted.

The Danish, Norwegian & English Telegraph Company had been established on January 10, 1868, with a capital of £100,000 and the assistance of R S Newall, the makers of the original Channel cable, to connect those three countries with two cables. It also had financial support from the Danish government, without which it would not have been able to proceed. A few months later, on August 12, 1868, the Danish-Russian Telegraph Company was created in Copenhagen with a capital of £75,000. This series of cables in the Baltic Sea was enabled by a subsidised message rate from the Russian government, making it economically viable, to ensure that it had access to Britain and the rest of the world without passing through Prussia or France. The Baltic cables were made and laid by W T Henley of London.

The Norwegian & English Submarine Telegraph Company had been formed in Christiania, Norway, to connect to Britain without passing through Denmark; the closest point, incidentally, being in Scotland, not England! This, too, was made by W T Henley.

The cores of all of the Great Northern company’s early cables, before armouring and laying, were manufactured with india-rubber insulation by Hooper’s Telegraph Works Company of London.

The Great Northern Telegraph Company owned on its formation six underwater cables: the Danish – Norwegian, the Moen – Bornholm (Denmark to a Baltic-Danish island), the Bornholm – Libau (to Russia), the Norwegian – Scottish (with a cable-end at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire) and the Swedish – Russian underwater cables; as well as the original Danish – English cable (the cable-end being at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Northumberland). As much of its capital originated in Britain it maintained an administrative office in London.

The Company’s English cable was opened on September 10, 1868 and the Scottish cable was completed on August 21, 1869. Within Britain, the Great Northern also built and owned a 33 mile overland circuit from the cable-end at Newbiggin to the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England, and a 30 mile land circuit from its cable-end at Peterhead to Aberdeen in Scotland.

In 1870 the Great Northern company leased a land line of the Russian government from Moscow across Siberia to Lake Baikal and Kiachta on the Chinese border and hence to Posietta Bay on the Pacific coast from where it had Hooper’s Telegraph Works Company of London lay a 1,200 mile underwater cable to Shanghai and one from there 1,100 miles on to Hong Kong in 1870; anticipating another cable from Posietta to Japan. The Company obtained a 30 year concession of the Imperial Russian authorities in return for 40% of its extension’s income. The message charge was to be 100 francs or £4 for twenty words from St Petersburg or Moscow to any station in China or Japan.

 

The Great Northern’s land lines and cables were worked throughout from the beginning with Wheatstone’s automatic telegraph and Varley’s repeaters.

The Great Northern Telegraph Company is the only telegraphic concern mentioned in this work that still operates today.

 

m.] The Indo-European Telegraph Company – was founded in 1868, just as the Government was legislating to appropriate the domestic telegraph companies. It was almost certainly intended to be a successor-enterprise for the proprietors and management of the Electric & International Telegraph Company. The Chairman of the ‘Indo’ was Robert Grimston; the Secretary and Manager was Henry Weaver, who had identical positions at the Electric. Its head office was at 16 Telegraph Street, next to the General Offices of the Electric company. Julius Reuter also had a substantial interest.

The Indo-European Telegraph Company was incorporated under the Companies Act 1862, as a simple joint-stock limited-liability company with a share capital of £450,000 in seventeen thousand shares each of £25 to construct an overland telegraph to India by special lines, in connection with the Government of India cables, through the Persian Gulf. An annual income of £85,000 was expected from 200 messages a day, which would provide a yearly dividend of 20%.

This capital compares with the £2,500,000 raised by the domestic telegraph companies, the £1,200,000 of the British-Indian Submarine Telegraph Company and the £250,000 of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company.

The Indo-European Telegraph Company was registered and projected on April 8, 1868 to complete a line from London to Calcutta in competition with a planned all-submarine route. The circuit extended from Lowestoft to Emden in Prussia, then to Berlin to Thorn on the Vistula river in West Prussia, into Russia to reach Warsaw, Zhitomir, Odessa, Kertch, Suchum, Tiflis, Erevan, then to Djulfa in Persia through Tabreez to Teheran, then to Bushire on the Gulf, underwater to Kurrachee, through India to Calcutta on the Gulf of Bengal. Of the capital of £450,000, 80% was taken up in Britain and 20% by the Siemens companies in London and Berlin. Siemens financed their shareholding through the Rothschild, Schaafhausen and Mevissen banks.

The Siemens family were the power behind the Indo-European: they involved their three manufacturing companies, in Berlin, St Petersburg and London. They had used their close relationships with the director of the Royal Prussian Telegraphs, Colonel of Engineers Georg von Chauvin, and the head of the Russian telegraph administration, General of Engineers Karl Karlovich von Lüders to facilitate the concessions in those countries for the line in 1867. In addition the concessions for circuits through the dangerous territories in the Caucasus were negotiated by members of the Siemens family. Werner, Walter, Otto, Karl and William all visited Georgia in connection with the telegraph lines in the Caucasus from Tiflis to Kutaissi, Poti and Djulfa, and the separate wire from Tiflis to Baku. Siemens were to be paid £400,000 for the construction of the Indo line and £34,000 a year subsequently to maintain its length.

The Russian Vice-Royalty of the Caucasus was on the margins of the Empire; it had been nominally subdued in a vicious war in the 1830s but was in a constant state of tribal unrest. The Russian Army had a substantial presence and required communications. Lüders had managed the creation of a basic military telegraph from Moscow to Tiflis in Georgia and Erevan in Armenia. Although this had been relatively inexpensive to construct, just a single wire on wooden posts, it was expensive in money and lives to maintain. Lüders was convinced that this militarily-essential telegraph could be made more efficient by having the English mercantile interests in London and India pay for a replacement, effectively subsidising Russian communications. The risks of wires through the Caucasus were such that Siemens proposed an in-shore underwater cable between Kertch and Suchum rather than land-lines in the interior. The gangs erecting the line in the Caucasus and in Persia were given an armed escort of cavalry.

Although Walter Siemens was initially unsuccessful in Teheran after several months of talks, Georg Siemens eventually convinced the Persian government to accept 12,000 Tomans per annum on January 11, 1868 as the price of the wayleave, as well as a share of the cost of each message sent through its wires.

The commitment of the Siemens family to the Indo was total; Walter Siemens, on his way home from Persia in 1868, and Otto Siemens, supervising the construction works in 1871, both died of illness in the South Caucasus and are buried at Tiflis in Georgia.

The whole line from London to Calcutta was to be 6,900 miles in length. Of the 3,725 mile segment of this circuit between Emden and Teheran the Company were required to build 2,900 miles as new through Russia and Persia, as well as the 110 mile submarine cable in the Black Sea between Kertch and Suchum. For part of the line, through the wild Caucasus and Persia regions, cast-iron poles with iron capped insulators for its overhead wires were used. The bulk of the materials were provided from Britain by Siemens Brothers.

The Indo directly owned only the circuit between Emden and Teheran, it leased circuits from the Electric in England, from Reuter in the Norderney cable from Lowestoft to Hanover, Persian overhead lines south of Teheran, the 1,400 mile long British-Indian cable from Bushire to Kurrachee, and across India to Calcutta. As part of its concessions the Indo provided an extra third circuit in its Black Sea cable, as well as through the Caucasus and on its Persian overhead lines for Russian and Persian domestic traffic.

Of the new construction, the isolated Persian sector between Djulfa on the Russian border and Teheran, 480 miles, was opened by the Indo on August 1868, connecting to Erevan and Tiflis.

The circuit was completed after two years construction throughout to Calcutta on April 12, 1870.

The short underwater cable was almost immediately broken by an earthquake on July 1, 1870, and had to be replaced by a coastal land line during 1871.

The Company adopted Siemens adaptation of Wheatstone’s automatic telegraph for its circuits and Varley‘s relay that allowed point-to-point transmission on its very long lines. It advertised that all of its messages were received on recording inkers for accuracy and that it used the English language with English operators throughout its system.

A twenty word message from London to Calcutta was estimated as costing £3 10s, this was to be split between the Electric Telegraph Company and Reuters Telegram Company 3s 3d, Prussia 1s 9d, Russia 3s 6d, Persia 8s 0d, the British India cable between Bushire to Kurrachee 16s 3d and for the Indian telegraphs 8s 8d, totalling £2 5s; the balance going to the Indo-European Telegraph Company. The agreement for these rates was negotiated with the recalcitrant Prussian and Russian members of the International Telegraph Conference by William Siemens personally.

In 1870 messages could be sent from any office of the Electric & International Telegraph Company or from the offices of the Indo to Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and all places west of Chittagong. Messages reached Teheran by automatic relay in just one minute; Calcutta was reached in twenty-eight minutes.

The Department - The Indo-European Telegraph Company is often, and unsurprisingly, confused with the Indo-European Telegraph Department of the British-Indian Government. The Department worked overland telegraphs in South Persia to connect the lines of the Ottoman Turkish system and the British cables to India. It was based on a convention between London and Teheran dated February 6, 1863. A line was erected by Government engineers between Khanaquin on the Persian-Ottoman border by way of Hamadan and Kermanshah to the British-Indian cable head at Bushire on the Gulf coast. This was opened for messages on March 1, 1865. As messages on the Department’s line had to be transcribed twelve or fourteen times, by Armenian, Greek, Turkish, French and Italian clerks, the messages in that year took an average of 6 days, 8 hours and 44 minutes to travel from London to Kurrachee.

A further convention in April 1868 allowed the Department to build an overhead line from Bushire along the Persian coast to Gwadur in British India which was connected to Kurrachee so as to avoid reliance on the underwater cables.

 

The average message times for telegraph messages between London and India, showing the improvements in the Ottoman circuits and, in particular, the effect of the Indo-European Telegraph Company, were:

 

via Turkey……..Days……….. Hours…….Minutes
1865……………..6……………..8……….……44
1869……………..5……………..14…….……..13
1871………………1……………..17……………55
1873……………..0……………..19……………12

via Russia……..Days………...Hours……..Minutes
1865……………..17……………..5…………….5
1869……………..9………………10…………..39
1871……………...0………………8……………37
1873..……………0�