The communication practices of the Victorians ... spiced up with a scandalous divorce

I have trawled through a handful of etiquette manuals, looking for advice to readers on telephone use.  All in vain.  The British publications pointedly avoid any mention of the new invention, even those published in later years after 1910.  The contents of these manuals are oh so predictable – visiting, invitations to balls/dinners/teas, weddings, funerals.  It seems these were the core events in one’s social calendar and members of the monied classes had to be able to negotiate their way through this minefield.  These were fixed, long established rituals which people observed in order to maintain the traditions of their class.  (Whether these were ‘invented traditions’ à la Hobsbawm is a subject for another thesis.) 

Why should lords and ladies incorporate the upstart telephone into their routines and upset tradition?  The people who read conduct manuals were probably the ones in a position to own a telephone, but that doesn’t mean they would use the instrument to conduct their social affairs.  It might be useful for ringing up one’s business premises or for ordering coal, but such an instrument, ‘tainted’ as it were by business matters, was inappropriate for inviting guests to dinner.  I think remnants of this attitude are still visible today.  There are some aspects of social business that you just don’t conduct over the telephone: wedding invitations, for example, or ‘Dear John’ letters.  I’ve never heard of a ‘Dear John’ telephone call or of someone being notified of a forthcoming wedding by telephone.  Well, they might, but they always send a fancy card by post later.

Lady Colin’s manual is no different to all the others of the era.  It makes no mention whatsoever of the telephone.  It is as if it didn’t exist.  She readily acknowledges, however, that modern life is hectic and that there is little time to devote to letter writing.  How much time she would save if she used the telephone. 

Regarding domestic use, telephone companies said it was alright to ring up traders to order supplies for the household.  Not so Lady Colin.  She advises writing a short letter, and even provides an example: “Mrs. Maitland will be obliged by Mr. Scott sending her 6lb. of tea.”  Admittedly, this method is not as speedy as a phone call, but if you can send a boy round to the shop with the note, you would still get same-day service.  And you would avoid the unpleasant necessity of having to actually converse with tradespeople.  Good houses had separate tradesmen entrances for deliveries, out of sight at the back of the building.  So we don’t want to invite tradesmen directly into our parlours via the telephone.

The writer makes further mention of post cards.  Towards the end of the century sending postcards became a popular form of communication among ordinary people.  Postage for a card was cheaper than a letter and with multiple deliveries in many large towns, it was possible sometimes to send a card and receive a reply on the same day.  You could say that post cards were to Victorians what Twitter is to us today.  Space was limited (you couldn’t add an extra sheet, as with letters) so messages had to be concise.  Lady Colin, however, advises against them for personal matters: post cards are only to be used for business transactions. 

Privacy was a major concern for these people.  Post cards entering and leaving a house would be seen by servants and the information written on them freely visible to all and sundry.  Even more paranoid, to my mind, is Lady C advising letter writers not to write their return address on the backs of envelopes.  Why?  Because servants at the receiving end would know who was writing to their employers.  Compare this with today’s business correspondence: every bill or official letter I receive is blazoned with the sender’s full details. 

I written a lot about communication and correspondence but very little about the telephone.  That’s okay because we are gradually building a picture of how people at the turn of the century communicated with each other and what attitudes they held towards each method.  Given what we now know about, say, letter writing or postal services, it’s easy to envisage how difficult it was for promoters of the telephone to convince the public of its utility. 

I suspect that the telephone eventually caught on, not so much because people realized it was a good communications device, but rather because the other means of communication deteriorated. 

A final comment about the author – Lady Colin was a victim of the hypocrisy and double standards of the day.  Wikipedia has all the sordid details and there’s also information here written by Lady Colin’s biographer.

Her divorce proceedings caused great agitation in high society and the same society ostracized her for her transgression.  Instead of quietly retiring into obscurity, Lady C took to writing and journalism and mixed in literary and artistic circles.  How fitting then that she should edit a book dictating good manners to the people who vilified her.  

Lady Colin Campbell.  Etiquette of Good Society.  London: Cassell and Company, 1893.

G. M. Young, on motor cars and trains

Talking in 1952, the historian of Victorian Britain, G. M. Young, remembers his life as a young man in Britain in 1902, the year of Edwardian VII's coronation.

“The political changes, the social changes, yes, even the scientific achievements of the Victorian age had left the outer fabric of our life very much what it always had been.  Trains went faster, of course, but not very much faster, and the station fly still clopped-clopped to the country inn with straw on the boards – I suppose to keep your feet warm.  The motor car was a toy … and the aeroplane, well, that, of course, was a fairy tale: something for H. G. Wells to write stories about."

Young sees no earth shattering changes following the appearance of so many new technologies: life went on as before.  He was also old enough at the time (20) to appreciate the realities surrounding these new achievements.  In criticism, one could charge Young with forgetfulness that comes with advancing years, in his account of his past youth.  Was he viewing his past through the lens of nostalgia? - most people after middle age do seem to go on about 'the good old days.'  I like to think this is not the case.  We cannot imagine life without our motor cars, or telephones, or microwave ovens, or whatever.  And when we try to picture such a life, we feel we are reverting to a primitive state.  I think that we transfer this feeling to past generations and wonder at how they could possibly manage in the pre-tech era.  There is a tendency to inscribe past technological achievements with too much 'revolution' where none existed.  

Unknown to us, our predecessors did manage and quite well, too.  For them, horse-speed was quick enough for their needs.  If they needed, say, one hour to get across town, instead of today's ten minutes, then they set off in good time.  As and when new technologies appeared, people gradually assimilated them into their social practices - assuming, of course, they had the inclination, opportunity, and the money to do so.  Otherwise, they carried on as they had done before; old and new ways proceeded in tandem.


Young believes that England then was a good country for gentlemen to live in.

"And it all rested on two things – an income tax so moderate that it was hardly felt; and an unlimited supply of cheap efficient domestic service.  Pull those pillars down and that social hierarchy topples.  That also we could not foresee …" [my emphasis]

But putting it bluntly, this all boils down to money (again).  Low taxes and cheap servants ensuring life is comfortable means, yes, a good life for the privileged.  I am struck by the reference to cheap domestics.  It reminds me of the Postmaster General's explanation of the new telephone's slow dispersal: 'we have so many messenger boys ready to take messages, that's why we don't need a telephone.  The Americans, on the other hand, have no domestic servants, so they do need a telephone service.'

The cost of domestic servants

More thoughts on the costs involved in getting a telephone installed at home.

Yesterday's post on "the telephone tangle" referred to Hastie's idea about having two lines into businesses and homes, to ensure better chances of connection.  In real terms, this was a luxury that few could afford.  Even London business people, for whom the telephone was a boom, were slow to adopt the new technology; they had other lines of communication.  To put things into perspective, let's compare some prices.

Annual subscription charges
c.1879 - £20
1896 - £18 (Glasgow)

1897 - c.£14 (London)
1904 - £34 (Glasgow)

I haven't reached the stage yet where I can conduct analytical research into how much a telephone connection would have cost the Victorian gentleman.  The figures above were gleaned from various articles and give only a very rough idea.  


Looking now at servants' annual wages, we can build up a general picture.

Pageboy/Footboy, unliveried - £8-18
General female servant - £12-18 (without allowance for tea, sugar, beer!)
Butler - £60-80
[figures are suggested wages, derived from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1888 edition]


By comparing amounts, we see just how much a family was prepared to lay out for a butler (and from a certain social level and above, everyone had one) but out of that group, few households had a telephone connection.  Secondly, there is little substantial difference between a telephone subscription and a lowly servant's wage.  Why not just have the subscription?  My cynical answer is that a telephone can't sweep the floor or fetch coal.

When looking at Victorian domestic arrangements, we see that householders were slow to instal plumbing, for instance, or change from coal to gas.[1]   It was as cheap, or cheaper, to keep a domestic to do household chores in the old way, rather than pay to make the changeover.  Who cares if the servant had to work harder?  I think it is precisely this mentality that was also applied to the telephone.  These people were not so quick to adopt every new gadget and technology that came along, when they could manage fine with the old ways (unlike today).  Not so much a fear of change per se, rather an attitude of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'


My conclusions?  If you could afford to keep a servant, then you could afford to have a telephone.  But few who could afford a phone, got one.


[1] Peter Williams "Constituting class and gender: a social history of the home, 1700-1901." In Thrift, Williams, Class and Space: The making of urban society. 1987



p.s. I have yet to come across a late C19 drama, musical, story, etc. (in which the telephone is a prominent feature) that depicts a servant answering the telephone.