Brown's, the telegraph, and Kenya

Still prattling about Brown’s hotel and its promotion of new communications technologies, the establishment also provided “news tape” for its distinguished guests.  Presumably, important guests wanted to keep abreast of developments in commerce and government and such news would have been provided via telegraph, to ensure its currency.  The hotel had its own telegraphic address (BROWNOTEL, LONDON); for this personalised address, they would have had to pay a fee to a telegraph company.  They may indeed have had their own telegraph equipment on the premises.  Another aside, telegraphs are, of course, obsolete today in western societies.  The fax machine and now e-mail have hammered the final nail in the telegraph’s coffin.  But you still find telegraphs in full use in other continents.  Many of Kenya’s government ministries still quote their telegraphic addresses on official documents.  I wouldn’t call this a digital divide as such; it’s more of another communications string to their bow.  The telegraph can work with one wire and batteries at each end – handy to know in Africa when you can’t rely on a source of electricity for your computer 24/7.

If you wanted to send a message and not pay a fortune then you needed Low’s Pocket Cable Code.   Published in 1894, it was a cryptic text intended for travellers who wanted to send telegrams.  It listed thousands of individual words and their associated meaning, thus enabling long messages to be sent economically.  For example, “formerly” meant “Diphtheria of a severe form.”  Low’s gives another example using Brown’s Hotel: “Glorify Wednesday Brownotel” translates to “Engage two single-bedded rooms for Wednesday, Brown’s Hotel, London.”  How did the word ‘glorify’ come to signify ‘book two single rooms’?  Beats me.  But it’s fun looking through this code book and seeing just what kind of messages people wanted to send.

Telegram messenger boys

Some of us are just old enough to remember the messenger boys who delivered telegrams; in military-style uniforms, perhaps on a bicycle or motorbike.  For most families, the arrival of a telegram nearly always meant bad news i.e. the death of a relative.  

News, good or bad, is a 24/7 affair and that means telegram boys have to be on call round the clock and prepared to deliver telegrams in any district of the town, however insalubrious it may be.

American commentators in the early 1900s were concerned for the welfare of young boys who were employed on night duty delivering telegrams.  “Patrons” would telephone the telegraph office and ask for a boy to be sent over, but it wouldn’t be because they wanted to send a message.  Instead, the patron would send the boy on an errand to fetch things like alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, fast food or medicine.  The patron might be anyone from a hotel, a bar, or drug store.  Prostitutes were frequent callers, requesting that messengers come to do errands or deposit money.  British telegram boys, on the other hand, didn’t have to deal with molls but rather the bogeyman on freezing moors, as I describe in a previous post.   Admittedly I haven’t searched very hard but I have yet to find accounts of British telegram boys falling into similar dens of iniquity as their American counterparts.

The telegraph office did not ask what the patron wanted the boy for, but even if they did, there was no way they could keep a check on the boy, unless they had him followed.  The patron could use the boy for whatever task he pleased and for as long as he liked.  Of course, the messenger boy was paid for his time.  Greg Downey has written extensively on telegram boys in the US.

There was obvious concern for the welfare of these teenagers who were obliged to associate with call girls, visitors to brothels, and other inhabitants of the underworld.  States gradually introduced legislation forbidding the use of underage minors for night time service.

I sense the welfare agencies and the messenger boys were working at cross purposes.  Remember initially that telegram boys worked the first telephone exchanges: they had to be removed because of their rowdy behaviour and insolence towards subscribers.  The telegraph companies were at pains to keep the boys out of public view while they were hanging around for messages to deliver.  The image of a uniformed boy who was supposed to adhere to military discipline did not tie in well with the reality of seeing the same boy playing cards with his fellows with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.  I also have the impression that the boys themselves were not in the slightest bit concerned about their contacts with city lowlife.  Here was a chance for them to earn good tips and be paid much more than the petty official amounts for each telegram delivered.  What is more, if you were a choir boy who needed some extra pocket money, then you didn’t sign up as a messenger.  This job needed blasé individuals, unfazed by scenes of decadence.

The telegraph companies wanted their young boys to have a squeaky clean, wholesome image – the boys just wanted to earn more money. 

In Britain a certain amount of nostalgia surrounds telegram deliveries, as is to be expected with an extinct practice.  Retired messenger boys in Leicester and Birmingham have maintained contact with old colleagues and established websites with photographic material and first-hand accounts of their duties, training, and experience.  They are striving to keep old history alive.  But these are old men who used to do a job that no longer exists today.  A sobering thought.

Thomas Brennan - his life as a messenger boy, 1910

My previous post talked about the sarcastic instructions for telephone subscribers written in a Judy article of 1898.  In the 1890s the network was sparse and few people had a telephone at home, even among those that could afford one. 

By the eve of the First World War, this situation had not changed that much.  Other technologies (electric lighting, motor cars, cinema, etc.) were prevalent but I get the impression that for many, the telephone was still a bit of a novelty.

Thomas Patrick Brennan was born in 1896 in Liverpool, two years before the Judy article.  He spent his entire working life employed by the Post Office.  His very first job (at the tender age of 14) was as a telegraph messenger boy.  He had six hundred other boys as colleagues working in Liverpool then and he remembers that they were all exceptionally busy because "the telephone wasn't as efficient as it is today."  He recalls that the telegraph was used extensively by the business people in the town. 

Thomas's life as a messenger boy was more akin to that of a soldier's than working for the civil service.  One hour every morning was devoted to drill exercises, marching, presenting arms, target practice and saluting.  The boys had to salute senior officials of the Post Office whenever they saw them, so I can understand the logic of practising this.  And the drills and marching would help keep them fit.  I'm not sure, though, where the rifle practice comes in!

To complete the military lifestyle, the boys had to make sure their uniforms were spotless and that hair and fingernails were clean.  Boots and buttons were to be polished and shiny.  Since boys had a unique number on the collar of their jacket, identifying a culprit with muddy shoes was not a problem.  Any boy that didn't pass muster during the daily inspection was sent home to get clean.  I recall the discipline problems the telephone companies had with telegraph messenger boys working as the first switchboard operators.  Did the Post Office have this in mind?  Perhaps this explains the rigid routines imposed on these young boys: the Post Office didn't want the boys getting out of hand and they were, after all, delivering important telegrams at times.

In 1913 Thomas was sent to work in the engineering branch and it was here that he had his first experience with the telephone.  Naturally, he needed to know how the telephone worked and, more importantly, how to use it.  He was completely in the dark about these things.  An engineer in the office asked him, "Have you ever used the telephone, sonny?"  When Thomas replied in the negative, he was told, "Well, you'd better get onto it."  He then had to crank the handle on the side of the telephone and ring the Edgworth station (which was always engaged) and other places that he knew.  And what did he say when someone answered the telephone at the other end?  "Just ask a silly question just to get into the idea of answering the telephone."  This was one of his new duties!

Thomas wouldn't be alive today, so we can't go and ask him more pointed questions about his early working life.  This is just a tiny extract from his life story which has been recorded by historians (the written transcript runs to eighty-eight pages).  It is precisely this wealth of detail that adds social colour to the dry and sterile (to me) history emanating from company accounts and parliamentary reports.

Citation: see earlier post from November 2010 for details of the oral history project in which Mr Brennan participated.

German empire orders hundreds of telephones

The Journal of the Society of Arts (7 December 1877) reports that the Postmaster-General of the German Empire proposed to install telephones in telegraph offices.  Several hundred telephones had been ordered from Siemens and Halske for this purpose.

In addition, telephones had been attached to either end of a telegraph wire spanning the English Channel (Dover to Sangatte - site of the French end to the Channel Tunnel), for the Submarine Telegraph Company.                       

“Talking could be heard, and also the playing of a musical box on the French coast.”  (How quaint.)

Again, I get the distinct impression that mere conversation or exchange of information was alone not deemed an appropriate use of the new telephone.  When fishing around for a use, the Victorians always seemed to think that the telephone would be a good medium for transmitting musical entertainment.

As said before, the invention of the telephone was built on the technology of the telegraph and it was first seen as an aid to telegraph operators, in communicating with operators in other offices.  It was thought to be quicker than communicating with each other via telegraph.

Telegram delivery boy

A old man remembers his childhood days.  

He was born in 1885 and lived in southern England.  His family took over a post office in 1897: his father became sub-postmaster and his two sisters attended to the telegraph instrument.  To help out, the boy would deliver telegrams.  He had to go on foot since the post office provided no official bicycle and they couldn't afford to buy one.  

Such was the nature of the job that he would deliver telegrams at all hours of the day or night.  He remembers a member of the local gentry in the area who was fond of fox hunting.  The next day's hunt was cancelled (too icy and the ground rock hard - not good for the horses) and a telegram was sent to the gentleman to save him the trouble of calling for his hounds to be prepared.  This poor boy had to walk two miles there and two miles back, in the middle of the night, in freezing fog, alone

Dematerialization of telecommunication

How does "being connected globally" affect local development?

Appearance and spread of telegraph coincided with:
*growing global trade links [connections]
*increasing volume of trade [quantity, volume]

A close link exists between:
*development of telegraph in a region
*the region's position in world trade
            Global spread of telegraphy has positive effects on world trade.

When communications and transport are separated a new virtual space is created.
In this new virtual space, relations between time and space are changed.

A new technology will spread and be adopted only when:
*there is a demand for it
*the new tech. offers clear advantages over the other alternatives
Public demand must be balanced against the effects of "technological inertia" (Mokyr).

Railway expansion created need for telegraph in order to co-ordinate trains.


per Castells
A network has no centre and therefore no periphery.
No single node is essential to the network.
If a node fails, the network reconfigures and works around the failed node.
Some nodes are more important than other nodes.

Telegraphy spreads quickly:
*Railway companies see the benefits and (no longer put off by high costs) erect lines along railway tracks [---> cumulative action of technologies; ---> mutual benefits for both telegraph and railway companies]
*Newspapers exploit telegraphy for obtaining news more quickly
*Law enforcement forces use telegraphy to fight crime -- a telegram is quicker than a murderer!


Parallels can be seen between social networks [connections among people] and telecommunications networks.  In both networks, some nodes are:
*more important than other nodes;
*closer to the flow of information than other nodes.  
A word of caution re. the analogy of social networks for comm. networks.  The connections in social networks only register when interaction/communication between two nodes occurs.  A similar connection between two nodes in a comm. network registers the potential for communication, i.e. the nodes exist but a flow of information may not be present during our examination.  The infrastructure is in place but the information flow is not necessarily present or continuous.


In order to describe a country as a communications centre, it needs:
*an advanced domestic telegraph system
*good connections to other foreign networks

Roland Wenzlhuemer.  "The dematerialization of telecommunication: communication centres and peripheries in Europe and the world, 1850-1920."  Journal of Global History (2007) 2, 345-372.

Anthony Trollope and the telegraph girls

"The Young Women at the London Telegraph Office"
from Good Words, June 1877

Details of the girls' employment used as background info. for Trollope's short story "The Telegraph Girl." 


The impression that comes out is that these young women are lucky to enjoy a position in the Civil Service and all the benefits that accrue.  At this point in time, this is perhaps one of only a few rare occasions where a woman could work in a male/middle-class dominated domain.


Trollope states outright that he is not really interested in the technical side of the girls' work; he is looking for a human-interest story.  He is more concerned with the social aspects of their occupation - what brought them to work at the telegraph office, what is their behaviour like, do they flirt with the the few boys that work in the same room, and so on.  He poses many rhetorical questions of this nature but provides no answers.  I get the impression that what answers he does provide of a social nature, are based on supposition.  He presumably had a guided tour (ordinarily, members of the public are not allowed in, nor are the girls allowed visitors) and his guide would have provided the basics: wages, hours of work, pension scheme.  For the rest, modesty prevented him from questioning the girls about personal matters.


The office is a 'half-way house' and the girls re-transmit telegrams coming from other offices that are destined for elsewhere.  "They live secluded and apart, in a world of their own, harassed by no interruptions from without."  In other words, there is no contact with the public, which makes this job respectable enough for girls from good, respectable families.  Taking their lunch in the company canteen protects them further from public gaze in the high street tea room.


In addition to the entrance exams that test reading, writing and maths, the applicant has to provide three character references.


Lateness is not tolerated and records are kept of late arrival.  A girl who arrives late for work could mean the delayed dispatch of an important telegram.  Trollope's example shocked me: supposing a gentleman wanted his horse brought round so he could go fox hunting and this message didn't get through in time?  He would miss the hounds!!!  Couldn't Trollope have found a less vain example, something to do with, say, closing a business deal, or notice of a sickness/death?


Generally, I am highly suspicious of texts written by authors of fiction, even when they purport to be documentary.  Trollope may present 'facts' but he does so with an eye to a good read and we can never be sure what his true agenda is.