Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

The distance from Slough to Paddington being only seventeen miles, there was not much time for telegraphing, and a circumstance occurred which is said to have imperilled the transmission of the message. It was transmitted on one of Wheatstone’s five-needle instruments, which was afterwards preserved by the Post Office authorities on account of the important part it played on this occasion. Among the letters of the alphabet stamped on its diamond-shaped face, there was no “Q;” and when the telegraph clerk at Paddington saw, in the middle of the message, the needles pointing to the letters K-w-a he thought there must be some mistake or fault, as no English word began with these letters. He therefore asked the clerk at Slough to repeat the word, and again came the letters K-w-a. Another repetition threw no fresh light on the difficulty; and it is said that after several repetitions a sharp boy suggested that the sender should be allowed to finish the word. This being done the word came K-w-a-k-e-r, which the clerk recognised as meaning Quaker. Notwithstanding the delay thus caused by the absence of Q, the message was delivered in time, and after a short interval the following reply to it was received: “The up train has arrived, and the person answering in every respect the description given by telegraph came out of the compartment mentioned. I pointed the man out to Sergeant Williams. The man got into a New Road omnibus, and Sergeant Williams into the same.” On arriving at Paddington, Tawell endeavoured to elude observation, but unawares he was watched by the police as he went to a coffee tavern in the City, where he was arrested next day by order of the authorities. He was afterwards tried and convicted of the murder, which was effected by administering prussic acid. In a written confession left after his execution, Tawell said he had made a previous unsuccessful attempt at murder, as he lived in perpetual dread of his connection with Mrs. Hart becoming known to his wife. The account given of his previous life also tended to increase the public excitement. After a career of concealed profligacy, he was sentenced to transportation in 1820 for forgery, but in Australia his intelligence and good conduct induced the authorities to grant him first a ticket of leave, and then emancipation. Eventually he became successful in business as a chemist in Sydney, and at the end of fifteen years left Sydney a rich man. Returning to England, he married as his second wife a Quaker lady, who was thereupon expelled from the Society of Friends, and who lived to see him executed for a crime which startled the whole country, and for which the telegraph was accredited with effecting his arrest.

Another instance of telegraphic speed created both astonishment and amusement in 1845. In a contemporary publication it was reported that “by the use of the telegraph has been accomplished the apparent paradox of sending a message in the year 1845 and receiving it in 1844. Thus, directly after the clock had struck twelve on the night of December 31, the superintendent at Paddington signalled to his brother at Slough that he wished him a happy new year. An answer was immediately returned suggesting that the wish was premature, as the new year had not yet arrived at Slough!”

In April following a passenger, while proceeding from Paddington by the Great Western Railway, discovered that he had lost his purse containing notes and cash to the amount of nearly 1000l. Alighting at Slough in a state of great agitation, he telegraphed inquiries to Paddington, and was quickly relieved of his load of distress by learning that he had left his purse on the counter there, and that it was safe in the hands of the clerk.

In 1845, too, it was thought a telegraphic achievement worth proclaiming, that the entire report of a railway meeting was transmitted in less than half an hour from Portsmouth to London; and that in the spring of 1845 the Queen’s Speech, containing 3600 letters, was transmitted from London to Southampton. This line of ninety miles was then the longest in England. Prior to that the old semaphore system was worked between London and Portsmouth. It consisted in the movement in a preconcerted manner of elevated boards, fans, or shutters, in a way that was visible from one station to another, it being agreed that each particular movement should represent a letter, a word, or a sentence. These semaphore stations had to be on elevated spots so as to be visible to each other; but as the weather often obscured the view, this means of communication was only available during one-fifth of the year. Moreover, it cost 3,000l. a year to work it, and it was worked for the last time on December 31, 1847. For the use of the new electric telegraph to Portsmouth the Government paid 1,500l. a year; and to preserve secrecy they had an alphabet of signals of their own, which could only be read and worked by their own trusted servants.

As the line was also used for the transmission of public messages, it may be noted that the charge for sending a message then was from 3s. to 9s. to Southampton, according to the number of words. By this South Western telegraph a game of chess was played in April, 1845, between Mr. Staunton and Captain Kennedy at the Portsmouth terminus, and Mr. Walker and another gentleman at the Vauxhall terminus. Details of the game were published in the press, and it was said that “the electric messenger” had travelled 10,000 miles in course of the game. Such were the infantine achievements of an agency which in less than forty years was to transmit about 200 million messages per annum, and was to connect the most distant parts of the civilised world.

Although the telegraph made little progress in England during the five years that followed the construction of the line between Paddington and Slough, the capture of Tawell, the Quaker murderer, followed by reports of such incidents as those related above, gave such an impetus to its extension that eighteen months after that event nearly 1000 miles were constructed; and it was thought in those primitive times worth recording that no less than 300 tons of wire, and 5000 loads of timber had been used in telegraph works.

The year of 1847 was a time of great activity in telegraphic construction. It was not till then that the London and North Western Railway Company, on whose line the first working telegraph ever made was tried, decisively adopted it—just ten years after the first experiment. In 1847 the Company considered the commercial advantages of the telegraph to be established beyond doubt, and they arranged for its construction along their entire line. The Midland Company followed their example.

The South Eastern Railway Company, which adopted the telegraph in 1845, had a line 132 miles long in 1846, and that line was then the longest in existence. On September 1, 1846, that railway company announced that messages of twenty words would be sent for the public on payment of 1½d. per mile. The minimum charge was 5s.; and the cost of sending a message from London to Ramsgate was 12s. 6d. Mr. C. V. Walker, who had charge of the line, afterwards stated that the cost of telegraphing was fixed at a Parliamentary fare and a half, because it was suggested by “an authority” that it would not do to make the telegraph rates too low, lest they might reduce the traffic receipts of the Company by inducing passengers to use the wire instead of the trains. That this was no mere fancy appears from a letter published in a respectable weekly journal in September, 1846. The writer of that letter complained that the directors had set such high prices upon telegraphic communications as would entirely prevent their use, and that they would thus by their covetousness defeat their own purpose and interests. Five shillings for a message of less than twenty words to Tonbridge; 7s. 6d. to Maidstone; 10s. 6d. to Canterbury and Folkestone; 11s. to Dover, and 12s. 6d. to Ramsgate—who, he asked, would pay “such a price for a few words’ conveyance when he can send a sheet of foolscap fully written by the post for one penny; or when for the amount they charge he can run there and back in the Company’s own trains, and see his friends or correspond vis à vis, with a ride into the bargain. How different is this from the charges on the Continent! The telegraph on the Brussels and Antwerp line is open, and the charge is 50 cents (about 5d.).”

Events were already in progress which were destined to provide a remedy for such primeval arrangements. On October 1, 1845, Mr. Cooke was introduced to Mr. John Ricardo, M.P., who was so impressed with the value of the telegraph that within three weeks he accepted the terms upon which Mr. Cooke offered to sell it. Mr. Ricardo then became chairman of the newly formed Electric Telegraph Company, which obtained an Act of Parliament in June, 1846. The Company having been thus empowered to acquire and work the telegraphs, gave £140,000 for the patents of Messrs. Wheatstone and Cooke. Professor Wheatstone told some of his friends that when the first patent was taken out for his telegraph he had not the means to pay the cost of it, and hence he had to get the support of others. Nine years afterwards when the patents were sold for £140,000, only £30,000 of that sum went into his pocket, though the original agreement was that he should be “on a footing of equality” with Mr. Cooke as to participation in profits. It was Mr. Cooke who negotiated the sale of the patents.

From a financial point of view the Company at the outset was not prosperous, but under their management the telegraph was rapidly extended; indeed its extension for a time appeared to exceed the public requirements; and Mr. Ricardo had to advance money to pull them through their difficulties. It was stated in 1847 that there were then twenty lines of telegraph in England, while in Scotland, where in 1841 Sir Charles Fox ordered a line to be made on the Glasgow and Cowlairs Railway, there were now three lines. The total length of the lines laid in 1847 was 1,250 miles; but as most of the lines had three or four wires the total length of wire in operation was 6,017 miles. There were 253 stations, and nearly 400 instruments in use. In 1849 the Company completed arrangements with the Post-master General and the different lines of railway for further extensions of telegraphic lines from their office at the General Post Office, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to most of the large towns in England and Scotland, to which messages of twenty words could be sent for 1d. per mile for the first 50 miles, ½d. for the second 50 miles, and ¼d. for any distance beyond 100 miles. In course of their first five years’ operations, the receipts of the Company increased nearly fivefold. In January, 1849, a message was transmitted direct from London to Manchester for the first time.