Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

Paddington, 10.20 A.M.—Mail train just started. It contains three thieves, named Sparrow, Burrell, and Spurgeon, in the first compartment of the fourth first-class carriage.

Slough, 10.48 A.M.—Mail train arrived. The officers have cautioned the three thieves.

Paddington, 10.50 A.M.—Special train just left. It contained two thieves: one named Oliver Martin, who is dressed in black, crape on his hat. The other, named Fiddler Dick, in black trousers and light blouse. Both in the third compartment of the first second-class carriage.

Slough, 11.16 A.M.—Special train arrived. Officers have taken the two thieves into custody, a lady having lost her bag containing a purse with two sovereigns and some silver in it; one of the sovereigns was sworn to by the lady as having been her property. It was found in Fiddler Dick’s watch-fob.

Slough, 11.51 A.M.—Several of the suspected persons who came by the various down trains are lurking about Slough, uttering bitter invectives against the telegraph. Not one of those cautioned has ventured to proceed to the Montem.

It was afterwards reported that when the train arrived at Slough a policeman, opening the door of the carriage described in the telegram, asked if any passenger had missed anything. On search being made by the astonished passengers, one of them, the lady, exclaimed that her purse was gone. “Then you are wanted, Fiddler Dick,” said the constable to the thief, who appeared thunderstruck at the supernatural discovery. Fiddler Dick surrendered himself, and delivered up the stolen money. It was said that after that the light-fingered gentry avoided “the wire.”

Another placard which was distributed all over London informed the public that “the telegraph, Great Western Railway, may be seen in constant operation daily, Sundays excepted; by this powerful agency murderers have been apprehended, thieves detected, and, lastly (which is of no little importance), the timely assistance of medical men has been procured in cases which would otherwise have proved fatal.”

Yet something more than sensational placards was necessary to impress upon the public mind the utility of the telegraph. “The genius of the English people,” says Smollett, “is perhaps incompatible with a state of perfect tranquillity: if it is not ruffled by foreign provocations or agitated by unpopular measures of domestic administration, it will undergo fermentations from the turbulent ingredients inherent in its own constitution: tumults are excited and faction kindled into rage by incidents of the most frivolous nature.” He goes on to say that in 1753 the metropolis of England was divided and discomposed in a surprising manner by a dispute in itself of so little consequence to the community that it did not deserve a place in a general history if it did not serve to convey a characteristic idea of the English nation. In like manner an incident occurred in 1845 which would not deserve a place here, if it had not been the means of directing public attention to the value of the telegraph. When the first telegraph was started in 1837, England was absorbed in the turmoil of a general election; and all the efforts made for the next eight years to excite public interest in its favour were of little avail, till on the evening of January 2nd, 1845, it played a notable part in effecting the apprehension of a notorious murderer.

Between six and seven o’clock in the evening of that day, a woman named Sarah Hart was murdered at Salt Hill, and a man was seen hurrying from her house in a way that aroused suspicion. The police ascertained that the murdered woman was kept by a Quaker named John Tawell, living at Berkhampstead, who was in comfortable circumstances and respected in the neighbourhood. He answered the description of the man seen near the scene of the murder, and was believed to have hurried to Slough Station and taken the train thence to Paddington. The police accordingly telegraphed to Paddington as follows:

“A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill, and the suspected murderer was seen to take a first-class ticket for London by the train which left Slough at 7h. 42m. P.M. He is in the garb of a Quaker with a brown coat on, which reaches nearly down to his feet; he is in the last compartment of the second first-class carriage.”