HOW THE COMPANIES WORKED
The telegraph companies in their public presence were retail concerns.
Originally they operated through their own telegraph offices at railway stations, then eventually during the 1850s, and more often, in the high streets of Britain’s cities and towns; effectively these were all ‘shops’.
The Electric Telegraph Company sent Telegraphic Despatches, the early British and English & Irish companies did not give their messages a special title, and the later British & Irish, London District and United Kingdom companies were to use the neologism Telegram in their businesses.
The public entered the office and handed over a message forwarding form at a shop counter; behind the counter were shelves with the telegraphic instruments and the batteries of electric cells. The clerks received the messages and worked the telegraphic instruments.
The degree of public service was variable; for instance, even in quite small towns the company’s telegraph offices were open twelve hours a day, from 8am to 8pm, six-days-a-week, but the offices at rural railway stations, not all of which on the line had telegraphs, were open, along with the ticketing offices, only at the times when trains were due. The bulk of public telegraphic traffic, estimated in 1867 as between three-quarters and four-fifths of all business, was communicated between the hours of 10am and 4pm between twenty offices in the largest cities.
It was not until the 1860s that some telegraph offices were open on Sundays, and then only for limited hours in the morning and late afternoon. Where the service was available there was a 1s 0d additional charge for Sunday messages.
The general public only gradually frequented the telegraph; in Liverpool in early 1854 of 4,993 messages examined, rather impertinently, by the Magnetic company only 201 or 4% were personal or domestic in nature, the balance were all sent on business, although 233 did relate to betting, which might or might not be personal. When the exercise was repeated by the Magnetic thirteen years later in February 1867, with an analysis of 1,000 messages through Liverpool, 124 or 12½% were defined as personal, and just one involved betting – indicating at least a moral improvement? Again the balance was related to commerce.
Another survey, of a thousand messages, by the Magnetic in 1853 showed that the speed of a message from the sending counter in its stations to the receiving counter averaged from 4½ to 5 minutes.
The dependence on the commercial and professional classes for revenue is best demonstrated by the proximities of the telegraph offices in London. As well as their Stock Exchange and Royal Exchange branches, the several companies’ closely-adjacent stations in Lothbury, Threadneedle Street, Old Broad Street and Cornhill were next to the banking, financial, mercantile and shipping firms in the City. Those in Mincing Lane and Mark Lane in the east of the City were for the produce and commodity markets. The legal profession, and latterly the press, were served by the telegraphs in Holborn, Chancery Lane, Strand and Fleet Street. Only the common offices in Charing Cross and Cockspur Street could be said to serve a purely ‘public’ market.
The Telegraph Office at Nine Elms 1844
Two Needle and Dial Telegraphs at work during an electric chess match
At the counter or, at larger offices, to one side in little partitioned writing booths, were pre-printed message-forms on which the sender had to inscribe their communication, along with the customary ink-wells, pens-on-chains and pencils. The counter clerk wrote-in the charges to pay and a unique message number. On the reverse the form listed the contractual obligations of the Company; the form had to be signed by the sender in agreeing to these.
The larger offices “had counters at a height suitable for writing, when standing, and sub-divided into spaces, with fluted glass screens between each, to prevent any person seeing another’s message”.
In return for the message forwarding form the clerk provided a numbered receipt to the sender detailing the recipient, the destination station and the charges paid or payable on delivery. Pre-payment was generally insisted upon for all public messages, but regular customers were permitted a daily account which had to be settled in cash each evening.
For people who could not write the clerk would fill-in the message form and read it back to the sender, ensuring after that they made their “mark” of recognition.
All of the telegraph companies in Britain accepted messages in foreign languages, but at the sender’s risk.
The message number was entered on to a list and the form passed to the instrument. Once the message had been sent the form was returned to the counter clerk who crossed it off the list and set it aside for filing. If, by reference to the list, the message had not been sent and returned within fifteen minutes it was chased-up.
Originally no one was allowed free messages; the directors and shareholders of the telegraph companies paid the same message rate as the public.
There were two other printed forms used by the office clerks: the message delivery form, used for received messages, and the message transmission form, used within the larger offices for transcribing or copying messages from one circuit to another. Each sort of form was printed on different coloured paper.
Odd stationery included Advice Notes left at addresses by messengers to show a message had to be collected; an Indemnification Note to be signed by the sender if a message might render the Company liable to action; a Number Sheet that the instrument clerk had to fill-in each day logging his work; and a Transmission Note where a message had to be transcribed to another company’s circuits. There was also a pre-printed Funds & Share List that just had to have the numbers added next to the appropriate stock title.
The companies distributed a Card of Rates from most large towns as part of their publicity.
The telegraph companies were periodically criticised in the press for errors and delays in transmission of messages. However in the mid 1850s only one in 2,400 messages was found to contain error, and two-thirds of these were due to the “indistinct writing” of the sender. The number of messages “lost” in transmission was, over the companies’ lifetime, in single figures. Delays of over one hour in sending on national circuits were reported by messenger to the sender with the options of cancellation and a refund or sending when possible.
However in 1853 a telegraph clerk in London incontinently added an extra zero to a merchant’s order for £8,000 sent from Manchester. Fortunately it was questioned by the merchant’s agent at the Founders’ Court station and the error immediately discovered without reference to his distant principal as it had been recorded on the tape of a Bain printer.
The Correspondence Department, the largest in the Company, managing the message traffic, consisted of District Superintendents, Cashiers, Chief Clerks, Counter Clerks, Instrument Clerks and Messengers. In minor stations the role of chief clerk, cashier and counter clerk might be combined.
The Counter Clerk, probably the most important individual in the Company’s structure, received messages, computed charges, received payments, enclosed messages in envelopes and despatched them by messenger. Except in the largest offices where there were Instrument Clerks dedicated to working apparatus, the Counter Clerk also sent the messages.
The Cashier was employed in large stations or in District offices to record income and disbursements.
The Chief Clerk kept the diary, the complaints-, the mail- and the general order books. As the station manager he was also responsible for the Messages Forwarded Book, the Messages Received Book, the Porterage Book, the Postage Book, the Gratuities Book, the Petty Cash Book, and the Pay Bill. Each month there was a Balance Sheet to compile and summaries of the office books, as well as a Weekly Instrument Report and a Weekly Signal Report on the state of the circuits, and Monthly Returns comparing the last three months and the year-on-year figures for head office. For offices at railway stations there were also Railway Message and Railway Signal Books to maintain. Messages there were carefully divided into Commercial and Railway.
One of the more arcane functions within the telegraph office was that known as translating. This involved the rewriting of the sender’s message into an abbreviated telegraphic script before being passed to the instrument; and the reverse function at the receiving end. The companies in Britain reduced each of its station addresses to two-letter codes; in addition letters, syllables and portions of words were excised, with conventionalised instrument signs introduced for full-points, paragraphs and underlining to shorten the message.
Common words such as ‘the’, ‘from’, ‘and’, ‘to’, ‘you’, ‘yes’ and so forth, and terminations such as ‘-tion’, ‘-ing’, and ‘-ment’, were reduced to signs.
Francis Whishaw, who managed the message department from 1845 to 1848, devised a translating system for business traffic sent by the Company similar in principle to short-hand. Codes were prepared for shipping, horse racing, share lists, corn-market prices, and so on. The sending clerk signalled the code being used and the common phrases and words for that special traffic were substituted by arbitraries, as in short-hand. This translating system reduced message length on a ratio of five to three, five hours work might be done in three.
As a cautionary note, the word “translating” was used in telegraphy at the time to represent several other functions including forms of electrical relay.
Special signs were also used unofficially between the clerk-operators by 1848 to represent emotions such as laughing and astonishment. The adaptability of human nature to this the most revolutionary of technology was remarked on at the time.
The Electric’s C F Varley noted in 1859 that “telegraph working generally causes great nervous irritation, and the clerks are very prone to quarrel”. He cited delays caused by impatience with repeated errors by distant colleagues leading to electrical arguments, and to clerks refusing to work with those on some lines.
Every message had a Prefix consisting of two or three letter codes. The first was the Message Type: free, special express, government, chairman’s, duplicate, ordinary, danger, transmit on, engineer’s, urgent, insured, repeated, train report, company and private. This was followed by two letter Station Codes, the “calls”, LY for Lothbury, EN for Euston Square, WV for Wolverton, RY for Rugby, YK for York, for example, to identify the originating office and the destination, and a two or three letter Time Code.
After the message was an Affix, also in the form of short letter codes usually dealing with delivery: acknowledgement paid for, answer not paid for, forward by boat, forward by cab, forward by best means, forward by omnibus, forward by train or another telegraph, to be called for, completion of address, forward by first train, forward by cab or messenger up to three miles, instructions to follow, porterage not paid for, forward by most rapid conveyance without regard to cost, forward by special express, forward by post, reply paid.
There were arbitrary responses signalling Engaged, Engaged to all business and Now Un-engaged; for Repeat all, Repeat from, Repeat word after, Repeat word before, Repeat words from/to, Word Number incorrect, Wait, which indicated an error in transmission, and All Right, when the error was corrected. There was a “collate” signal inserted into messages that indicated the next word was to be repeated back to ensure accuracy. There was also the End signal at the termination of the message, and the all-purpose Good signal (GD) which was the British equivalent of OK.
Interruption of messages was forbidden; the reason for the signalling of the Wait code from the receiving station had to be documented.
In the early days of the Magnetic company each word had to be confirmed as it was received by the instrument clerk to ensure accuracy.
Business customers were allowed use commercial Telegraphic Vocabularies that substituted words and numbers for most common phrases. These were published with the object of shortening messages for economic reasons rather than to conceal the content. The Magnetic company estimated that one message out of four was encoded in 1853.
However, stockbrokers, produce-brokers, merchants, banks and betting-men used codes and ciphers, commonly called a Private Key, for their confidential messages from the earliest days. The words in their Private Key, or code book, could not exceed two syllables to prevent abuse of the tariff and confusion in sending. Banks also used an authorising code phrase that preceded the text of their business messages. The phrase changed each day. Such messages related to delicate subjects such as the returning of bills-of-exchange and the stopping of local bank notes. Remittances between banks of £20,000 and £30,000 were regularly authorised this way by telegraph in the 1850s. The banks also “enquired as to the respectability of parties” by wire in that period, keeping the “party” waiting in the bank parlour until the reply was received.
Receiving bulk traffic, news messages, for example, required two clerks; one to read the instrument, the other to write down the script in a manifold book of alternate flimsy sheets and carbon-paper. The original was delivered to the recipient, the facsimile kept for the record. The sending of such messages required considerable concentration, flicking attention from script to instrument, sending letter-by-letter without translation. It was this traffic that, in the earliest days, the Bain and American writers were intended to mechanise and render more accurate especially on long and busy circuits.
Whether sending or receiving, the unique number and the hour and minute of commencement and completion of each message were recorded, and signed-off by the clerk. All of this detail and the message content was entered into the books of the Company, along with the charges paid, for accounting purposes and in case of any dispute with the sender or recipient.
As well as news all other messages were written out by the receiving clerk on a manifold writer (i.e. copying by carbon paper) and a duplicate copy of every message sent by telegraph was forwarded by rail to the Central Station at Lothbury to be compared with a copy of the original; through this process it was said that the clerks had to be particularly accurate, and the public efficiently protected from error. The copies were parcelled-up, placed in hampers and kept under lock-and-key for two years before being pulped.
From the earliest systematic use of telegraphy in Britain the clerk-operators could recognise the telegraphic hand of their regular sending colleagues hundreds of miles distant, and engaged with them in private, unofficial electrical banter, to management’s disapproval.
A Messenger of the Electric Telegraph Company
ETC monogram on cap, collars and pouch
The other principal category of employee in the office was the uniformed messenger, a young boy, who carried the received message forms to addresses within one mile of their office in, as the Company stated reassuringly, carefully-sealed envelopes. For messages received on the type-printing telegraphs of House and Hughes the printed tape was cut into short lengths and glued to the ordinary received message form, for the convenience of business people who filed them as letters, before being folded-up and inserted into the envelope; only the outer address was hand-written. In the United States the printed tape was simply put in the envelope.
In Britain and the United States messages were always sent out in envelopes. In most other countries the message sheet was folded several times, the address written on the outside of the message form and one edge sealed with a small adhesive telegraph label.
Each messenger carried a book of numbered receipts that recorded the message’s number, sending and delivery times and any charges to pay on delivery. The messenger had to obtain the recipient’s signature on the receipt. No tips were permitted.
Where no messengers were employed, in the smallest offices, the message was passed to a self-employed porter or a railway porter at the sender’s risk, or put into the Post Office mails for delivery.
The Electric Telegraph Company issued a number of manuals for the guidance of its staff: the principal of these were the General Regulations. Originally in 1850 these were in two parts, for clerks in stations and for inspectors and linemen. But these were eventually combined into a single 72 page volume. There were also Tariff Books, especially for continental traffic – which ran from 37 pages in 1859 to 89 pages in 1866 as the foreign connections developed. Instrument galleries used the 12 page General Code Book listing the two-letter arbitrary substitutes for words and syllables. The Company printed one-sheet Double-Needle and Single Needle Alphabets for training.
At its busy Founders’ Court and Charing Cross offices in London the Electric Telegraph Company, as a charitable gesture, allowed red-coated boys from the Saffron Hill Ragged School’s “Shoeblack Brigade” to earn an income carrying messages and packages for patrons.
It formed, too, as a benefit for its clerks on distant stations a Travelling Library to provide the latest popular and educational books, which would otherwise be beyond their expense.
The common telegraph office in a medium-sized provincial town employed only two or three people, the clerks mainly young men, usually called ‘boys’ or young women, always termed ‘ladies’, and the messengers, working long ‘shop’ hours, six-days-a-week, in small, often shared premises.
Clerks and messengers worked either nine hour days or eight hours during the evenings and nights. Only older, male clerks were permitted to work at night.
Table 12
Telegraphic Apparatus
The instruments and apparatus used in telegraph offices were limited in number. The assembly included:
• Telegraph – the sending and receiving instrument, commonly a single-needle instrument in circuit with the line and the battery
• Galvanometer – a small desk-top instrument for measuring the current in the line circuit; a portable galvanometer used to test battery and external circuits was called a Detector
• Bell – in the line circuit to call the attention of the clerk to activity on a message circuit
• Relay – used in the message circuit to automatically forward messages and to maintain any loss of current by using its own battery
• Turnplates – small rotating switches used to direct circuits between instruments and between batteries and apparatus, also termed Commutators
• Switchboard – used in large offices to manage message or battery circuits instead of turnplates
• Battery – a set of chemical cells that produced the current, usually in a secure place as they contained volatile chemicals, the battery circuit ran to the telegraph instrument and to the relay
• Lightning Protector or Paratonnerre – a device in all offices inserted in message circuits between the line and the instruments
• Screw Connectors – small brass devices used to join circuit wires together
Circuits – In the simplest terms the original electrical circuits for telegraph comprised a main and return; these were both wires until the earth return was introduced. Other than for two-needle instruments each circuit was then essentially a single wire.
The several telegraph stations were all, at first, connected to the same circuit. Each sending and receiving instrument had an alarm attached so that once current was applied the bell rang on all those in circuit to attract the clerks. The alarm was originally continuous and then just a series of single beats. The sending clerk would signal a short two-letter “call” message with the intended station’s identification code; the clerk at the appropriate station would then acknowledge the call and take the incoming message whilst the others ignored it. The sending clerk had to repeat the call announcement until it was acknowledged.
All of the stations in the circuit could read the through traffic to other destinations.
With the coming of more intense traffic the ringing of all the bells on the circuit was an unnecessary nuisance as the ticking of the needle became sufficient and the alarm became an accessory only in branch stations. With traffic over great distances or to branch lines where there was no continuous circuit the ‘call’ signal would be received at a large office, acknowledged, and diverted through to another line using either simple switches or a switchboard to create a circuit. Once this was connected the ‘call’ signal would need to be repeated again until it was acknowledged. The message could then, after a delay, be sent.
Where no switching for a through circuit was possible the message was transcribed, re-written, at the intermediate station and re-sent at a later time (if pressure of work was the cause) or taken to another instrument on the correct circuit, if no direct connection existed. The traffic between the busiest stations soon required separate or dedicated circuits, either a direct, point-to-point, line, or one with only a limited number of intermediate stations in parallel with the existing ones. The planning and constructing of these separate circuits was a critical issue in the telegraphic business.
By 1852 the ordinary lines were divided into Divisions of between four to six stations, between two larger offices, between London and Birmingham for example. These could then only have direct internal access. The messages in or out of the Division had to be switched or transcribed at the larger offices.
Women - As was often mentioned at the time, the telegraph companies were substantial employers of women. From its commencement the Electric company employed women as clerk-operators; competition for these positions was often embarrassingly high. Although paid less than male clerks their working conditions were far more attractive than factory, domestic or other common female employment. The Electric had separate female management, welfare, social and “toilette” facilities for the hundred women that worked in their own instrument galleries at Telegraph Street.
The employment of women as clerks by the Electric company was publicly advocated by its original director and largest shareholder, G P Bidder, initially as a cost-saving measure. The success of this innovation in both cost-saving and in public goodwill was reflected in the general employment of women, or rather ‘ladies’, as clerks both at their counters and in their back-office galleries by all subsequent domestic telegraph companies. The London District company, in particular, depended entirely on a female work force.
Before G P Bidder advocated the employment of women clerks J L Ricardo, the chairman, had introduced use of young boys from the Orphan Asylum as clerks; he noted that they could manipulate the two-needle instruments well after just one weeks’ practice.
In December, 1858, a great political meeting was held one evening in Manchester. The 'Times' paper, in giving a report of that meeting afterwards, said: “It is only an act of justice to the Electric and International Telegraph Company, to mention the celerity and accuracy with which our report of the proceedings at Manchester on Friday night was transmitted to the 'Times' office. The first portion of the report was received at the telegraph office at Manchester at 10.55 on Friday night, and the last at 1.25 on Saturday morning. It may be added that the whole report, occupying nearly six columns, was in type at a quarter to three o'clock on Saturday morning, every word having been transmitted through the wire a distance of nearly 200 miles. Some of our readers may be surprised to hear that this report was transmitted entirely by young girls. An average speed of twenty-nine words per minute was obtained, principally on the printing instruments. The highest speed on the needles was thirty-nine words per minute. Four printing instruments and one needle were engaged, with one re-ceiving clerk each, and two writers taking alternate sheets. Although young girls in general do not understand much of politics, there was hardly an error in the whole report.”
Demand for the work was such that, in 1860, Maria Rye established the Telegraph School for Women at 6 Great Coram Street, London; one of several organisations she established to further female employment. Rye had previously published ‘The Rise and Progress of the Telegraphs’ in 1859. The secretary of the Telegraph School was Isa Craig, the Scottish poetess.
Women clerks were repeatedly recorded as being much preferred by the public in comparison to the “insolent boys” that had been previously employed behind the counters. So much so that during the 1860s the companies’ belle télégraphistes even had a popular music-hall song written about their magnetic charms.
The Telegraph Song
George ‘Champagne Charlie’ Leybourne
‘With a tap, tap, tap and a click, click, click’
‘All day they sing and laugh’
‘With a click, click, click and a tap, tap, tap’
‘As they work at the telegraph’
The Submarine company, which handled continental traffic, did not employ women; similarly the Electric’s Foreign Gallery was worked entirely by male clerks.
Many telegraph offices in Britain continued to be located in regional stock and produce exchanges in the larger cities, as the bulk of ‘public’ messages were actually related to business and news; others were often, but more accessible to the real public, within city hotels. In London the District company’s stations were simply rented counter space in all manner of shops, where the sole telegraphic employee was almost always a woman working long hours.
News-rooms - In its formative years the Electric company opened news-rooms in the major towns it served. These were comfortable private saloons furnished with sofas and easy-chairs open to individual subscribers where local newspapers might be read, cigars smoked and coffee taken. During the day news messages, commodity and share prices were received by telegraph, announced by a clerk and circulated confidentially within the room, usually from a wall-mounted board.
These rooms raised the public profile of telegraphy by demonstrating the immediacy of its news delivery; and absorbed much of the early spare capacity in the Company’s circuits. As public use of the telegraph grew others, especially hotel-owners and commercial exchanges, opened both public and private news-rooms for their customers and the Company gradually closed its own subscription rooms at Founders’ Court, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Stockport during the 1850s.
Pre-Paid Message Forms – From the earliest days of telegraphy books of blank message forms with the contract terms printed on their reverse side were made available free-of-charge for business users, and for the general message-sending public in news-rooms and hotels. For the Great Exhibition of 1851 the Electric company introduced pre-paid message forms in three denominations based on distance; under 50 miles, under 100 miles and over 100 miles. They were bound in perforated books and made available for sale at stationers, booksellers, hotels and other outlets in London. These forms might be retailed individually for private use to hand over at the telegraph office after inscribing one’s twenty-word message or re-sold in their bound-books at a discount to businesses with a large telegraphic correspondence.
Telegraph Stamps – The Electric Telegraph Company introduced large adhesive labels, called Franked Message stamps, to replace the pre-paid forms on June 1, 1854 at the suggestion of its engineer, Latimer Clark, for use nationally. They were large enough to have a summary of the Company’s rules on their face and had to be signed by the sender, but could be stuck onto plain paper as well as pre-paying the official forms for a message of twenty words. The big Franked Message stamps were sold in £10 blocks with a 20% discount given in stamps, so that the purchaser received either 250 1s 0d covers for distances under 50 miles, 100 2s 6d covers for distances over 50 miles or 50 5s 0d covers for distances above 100 miles.
Small Frank Stamps similar in size and appearance to postage stamps were reportedly introduced by the English & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company sometime late in 1853; this may have been later as they were not mentioned in management reports published during 1854. Similar sized Telegraph Stamps were adopted by the Electric Telegraph Company in 1861. Most other inland companies were to issue several values of telegraph stamps to pre-pay their ordinary public message forms to cover virtually any message length and distance, but these could not be used on plain paper as all messages had to be signed by the sender indemnifying the companies from errors.
Stamps were issued by Bonelli’s, the British & Irish Magnetic, the British, the Electric, the English & Irish Magnetic, the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, the London District, the South Eastern Railway, the Submarine, the West Highland and the United Kingdom lines. Railway-worked telegraphs did not, with two exceptions, adopt the convenience of stamps.
The value of telegraph stamps was so high that they all had individual control numbers printed on their face as with bank notes. The impecunious United Kingdom company also paid bond interest with its message stamps. As examples, the:
• Electric Telegraph Company had Telegraph Stamps denominated at 3d, 6d, 1s 0d, 1s 6d, 2s 0d, 2s 6d, 3s 0d, 4s 0d and 5s 0d.
• British Telegraph Company had Frank Stamps, with 2s 0d and 4s 0d values.
• English & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company had Frank Stamps, of 1s 0d, 1s 6d, 2s 6d and 4s 0d.
• British & Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, also had Frank Stamps, valued at 3d, 6d, 1s 6d, 2s 0d, 2s 6d, 3s 0d, and 5s 0d.
• London District Telegraph Company had Message Stamps, valued at 3d, 4d and 6d.
• Submarine Telegraph Company sold Uninsured Message stamps at 4½d, 3s 9d, 4s 0d, 7s 6d and 8s 0d.
• United Kingdom Telegraph Company, had its Uninsured Message stamps, valued at 3d, 6d, 1s 0d, 1s 6d and 2s 0d.
The message stamps of the Electric Telegraph Company always bore its original title, without the awkward “& International” addition. Uniquely, from 1855 its directors were provided with Director’s Message stamps that could frank telegraph messages of any length without pre-payment; unsurprisingly several thousand of such were issued to and used by its board members.
Telegraph stamps were more popular with the general public and more flexible than the Electric’s pre-paid forms in that both distance and message length could be allowed for by combining denominations.
Promotional Messaging - The London District Telegraph Company sold its 6d message stamps bound into small books with ten pages of six stamps in 1861. This was the first use of booklets for retailing any form of stamp, telegraph or postal. The District was to introduce many other promotional ideas into its business; it offered the public one hundred 6d stamps for one pound (240d) for a period in 1862, a rate of just 2½ d for fifteen words.
It had previously offered tradesmen a similar deal in which customers could place orders by telegraph free-of-charge, the tradesman paying in advance for one hundred messages for £1. This encouraged Maurice and Arnold Gabriel, trading as “Gabriel, the Old Established Dentist”, to send out advertising telegrams from their practice, which had been founded in 1815 at 27 Harley Street, London, to a mass of people including government ministers, leading to public uproar at what was seen as a vulgar misuse of the new medium.
The General Private Telegraph Company in Manchester imitated the District company in May 1864. It, too, offered tradesmen “franked or free message forms” for use on its single circuit at the suburban railway stations between Manchester and Altrincham so that their customers might place orders. The facility was used by Richardson, Roebuck & Company, “Grocers & Purveyors to the Queen” in Manchester.
Money Remittances – The Electric company introduced money remittances by telegraph in January 1854, in return for a small per cent of the amount. This speedily transferred sums between its largest offices, where it maintained a substantial cash-float - from London to Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and from Birmingham, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sunderland and York to London. In many countries the telegraphic money order is the last relic of telegraph business.
Wayleaves - Railway companies exchanged the right of the telegraph company to carry their public wires alongside their lines for private wires for their own use in signalling and internal message traffic. This was particularly so with the Electric company who by this means avoided wayleave (rental) payment for these rights. In Ireland the Magnetic company was similarly dominant over the railways, but, except in the North country where it was founded, it had to use road-side underground wires and poles on most of the English mainland. Whilst the companies acquired Parliamentary approval to lay wires alongside public roads, the municipal and turnpike authorities were still able to bargain for wayleaves. In England the new United Kingdom company was initially compelled to use canal-side overhead wires for the backbone of its system, in 1861 which the original Electric Telegraph Company had to do in Ireland a few years later.
Due to the manner in which rights-of-way were acquired by the several companies around one-half of telegraph offices were located at the local railway station. This was not necessarily the most convenient place for the public as the newly-constructed railways were made on the outskirts of many towns rather than through their expensive built-up areas; and, as has been mentioned, railway stations at the time were often closed between train arrivals. The telegraph company, in major cities, would frequently open a town office with a road-side overhead or underground branch wire from the railway station.
In London, by 1855, the Electric possessed nineteen telegraph offices – ten at railway stations, five in the residential West End and four in the business centre in the City. There were also other offices open ‘part-time’ at periodic cattle markets and in the Houses of Parliament for when the two houses were sitting. In the following year it had opened twenty-four telegraph offices in London. As noted, to gather messages in bulk the Company introduced small-bore pneumatic tubes from busy branch locations to its central office in 1853.
The other large cities in Britain, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and Dublin, had just two or three offices; these were in either in the business districts or at the railway stations.
Several substantial railway companies, the South Eastern, the London, Brighton & South Coast, the London, Chatham & Dover, the Lancashire & Yorkshire, the North British and the Caledonian being the principals, chose to work their own public telegraphs in circuit with one or other of the telegraph companies, using that company’s electrical system but with their own clerks and offices, so keeping the local revenues. Some were to take this option on renewing their previous contractual relationship with the telegraph company. Where this was the case the extension of wire beyond the railway’s property into town centres was neglected and led to considerable public annoyance. In a few instances the public were served by neither railway nor telegraph, or, more often, the railway station was at some inconvenient distance from the town centre.
By 1868 railway companies directly managed 22% of the public telegraph lines but only carried 6% of the traffic. This inefficiency was a factor that led to the call for state intervention.
Management - It wasn’t until the 1860s that a specific class of management appeared independent of other business disciplines: Sir James Carmichael and John Pender of the Magnetic, Robert Grimston of the Electric, and Richard Glass of Glass, Elliot, were among the very few who came to prominence as strategic directors rather than technicians.
This group of strong personalities eventually was to dominate the world-wide cable network created between 1865 and 1900. None were to be associated with the Post Office telegraph monopoly.
Others left the stage early; William Ponsonby, Lord de Mauley, chairman of the Submarine Telegraph Company, and a considerable force in its ultimate success died in 1855, aged 68. John Watkins Brett, the pioneer of world-wide submarine telegraphy, was sadly to die in 1863, aged just 59.
The monogram of The Electric Telegraph Company
Engraved and cast on to equipment, hardware, buttons and badges,
and embroidered onto uniforms from 1846 until 1868
Although “officially” the Electric & International Telegraph Company
from 1855, it was permitted in law to retain the old title and used
this monogram until the end
Labour - Experienced male clerk-operators in the three principal telegraph companies earned between 14s and 25s a week in 1860. This was well-above the average wage of the period. Women clerks, 19% of the total in 1868, were paid between 10s and 14s per week for essentially the same work.
For example, a nineteen-year-old male “learner” with the Electric company in 1852 was taken on unpaid probation. After a month, once he reached a proficiency of sending twenty words and receiving fifteen words a minute, he was appointed junior telegraph clerk at 14s 0d per week and received his Book of Instruction, giving all of the Company’s rules and regulations. This pay continued for two years, with an additional 3s 0d a week when posted away from home and with 4d an hour paid for work overtime. At age twenty-two years he was appointed telegraph clerk and was paid 20s 0d a week, this increased later to 22s 0d, his overtime rate increased correspondingly. At twenty-four he began working on the foreign circuits in London at 26s 0d a week, increasing to 30s 0d. At age twenty-five in 1858 he was appointed chief telegraph clerk at a provincial station at 40s 0d a week.
Male clerks could be taken on at fourteen years of age, so were quite literally ‘boys’. Women were employed from age eighteen years.
There were deductions from salary for negligence; one-eighth of a day’s pay for illegible or careless writing; for playing, absence without leave, errors in figures and dates, and disorderly conduct; and for insubordination. For miss-spelling and special errors, one-quarter of a day’s pay; for gross message errors and loss of message a whole day’s pay. They were liable to be transferred between offices at the will of the Directors, but the Company paid the expenses incurred.
In balance to this there were premiums paid for special services, such as working important messages, government proclamations and some foreign news, for example. The fast and accurate transmission of the Queen’s Speech on the opening of Parliament each year was one of these, the speed of this often being mentioned in the press. Fourteen days holiday were allowed each year and clerks were additionally rewarded for holiday relief and other overtime working. Should a customer require a clerk to work longer than their duty hours they had to pay for the time and the clerk kept the entire amount as a gratuity, this had to be recorded in the books.
As it required an unusually large number of clerks in London, the “Electric Telegraph Company’s Boarding House” at 3 Albion Place, Blackfriars Bridge, was opened in 1854 to lodge single men in its employ and kept in use during the 1860s. It was a short walk over the bridge on the river Thames to Founders’ Court.
Telegraph company clerks working at railway stations shared the privilege of railway employees of having free third-class travel over their particular system.
The Company sponsored a voluntary benefit society to which clerks might contribute to receive sums in sickness, old age and on death in service.
Messengers were employed from age ten years. They received 7s 0d a week in 1862. They were not allowed gratuities in duty hours but might keep all payments received from recipients, for cabs and so forth, for work overtime. They were encouraged to take an interest in the telegraph with a view to them becoming clerks.
Every clerk was appointed by the Board of Directors through the Secretary’s office. They had to sign a Declaration of Secrecy before entering service. The messengers were appointed by the Chief Clerks at stations or by the District Superintendents, but even such a junior post had to be confirmed subsequently by the Board.
In the District company the lady clerks were paid nothing during their training. On achieving five words a minute on the single-needle instrument they were paid 5s 0d for a six-day week; eight words a minute was rewarded with 8s 0d a week; up to a maximum of 10s 0d for ten words a minute. From this pay 1s 2d was deducted for sickness benefit (10s 0d a week and a doctor’s attention) and 5d a week for a £10 death-in-service grant. Two weeks annual leave was allowed.
The boy messengers working for the District were originally paid 4s 0d a week. This was changed in 1861 to a piece-rate of 1d a message. They could, it was said, then earn between 2s to 3s a day.
The replacement of the telegraph companies’ clerks and messengers by Post Office officials provoked a number of code books for use by the general public. The reason is given in the introduction to Robert Slater’s ‘Telegraphic Code, to ensure secrecy in the transmission of telegrams’ that appeared in 1870 – “those who have hitherto so judiciously and satisfactorily managed the delivery of our sealed letters will in future be entrusted also with the transmission and delivery of our open letters in the shape of telegraphic communications, which will thus be exposed not only to the gaze of public officials, but from the necessity of the case must be read by them. Now in large or small communities (particularly perhaps in the latter) there are always to be found prying spirits, curious as to the affairs of their neighbours, which they think they can manage so much better than the parties chiefly interested, and proverbially inclined to gossip.” As well as Slater’s, there appeared within a few years ‘Watt’s Telegraphic Cypher’, the ‘ABC Universal Code’, ‘Banking Telegraphy’, the ‘Three Letter Code’, and the “most comprehensive and voluminous” of them all, ‘Bolton’s Telegraph Code’ of 1871 with a thousand pages.
