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The telegram service grew out of developments in the field of electric telegraphy and revolutionised high-speed communication. And it was the pioneering inventors of 19th century Britain who led the way. The first commercial electric telegraph was patented by William Fothergill Cooke and Professor Charles Wheatstone in May 1837.
The first commercial electric telegraph was patented by William Fothergill Cooke and Professor Charles Wheatstone in May 1837.
Their “double-needle” system used markers on a board that could be moved to point to letters. The extension of the railway network provided the stimulus for the equally rapid development of telegraphy.
“The need for some means of communication faster, not merely than the horse, but the train itself became clear,” explained author JL Kieve.
In May 1843, the world’s first paid public telegraph service opened on completion of the 20-mile Great Western Railway Telegraph line from London’s Paddington station to Slough in Berkshire.
The flat fee per telegram was 1 shilling (5p), irrespective of the number of words. People could send their messages from telegraph offices at either terminus.
Teams of uniformed messengers delivered the telegrams to any address in London, Windsor, Eton, Slough or surrounding districts.
The first telegram ever shared with newspapers was sent from Windsor Castle in 1844, informing the world of the birth of a son, Prince Alfred, to Queen Victoria.
From this embryonic, localised service, the system soon became a national one. By September 1847, both a northern and southern telegram network had been established.
They were connected in November that year, meaning you could now send a telegram from Dover to Edinburgh.
Then in 1858, after the completion of the Atlantic cable, a transatlantic service was introduced. At £1 a word, it didn’t come cheap so, unsurprisingly, the first telegram to the US was succinct.
Businessman John Cash’s message to his company’s representative in New York simply said: “Go to Chicago.”
In 1870, the operation of the UK telegram service came under the control of the General Post Office.
In early days, domestic rates depended on the distance but from 1870 payment became word-based, again encouraging brevity, long before Twitter and its character limits.
The charge was 1s for the first 20 words, then three old pennies for each additional five words or part of five words.
There were no “smileys” or other emojis but symbols could be used. For being concise it’s hard to beat the alleged exchange between French novelist Victor Hugo, in exile in Guernsey, and his publisher over sales of Les Miserables.
Hugo’s telegram read: “?” His publisher replied: “!”
Despite its limitations, telegrams became so popular that by 1913, a staggering 82 million were being sent Britain each year.
The service worked simply and efficiently. In larger Post Offices telegram desks were provided with special dispensers to hold the blank forms, with the instruction: “Write Your Telegrams Here”.
Forms were handed in with payment to a cashier and the message would be transmitted along telegraph wires to the nearest telegraph office to the intended address.
The telegram would be taken from the office by teams of uniformed delivery boys, at first on foot or bicycle, but later by motorcycle.
In 1910 there were 14,000 telegram delivery boys employed by the GPO, many of whom had entered the service straight after 14 leaving school at 14.
Important events in the history of the world were announced by telegram or “cable” as the technology came to be known in the US.
It was by a cable that the Wright Brothers announced to their father that they had made the world’s first sustained and controlled flight in a powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903: “Success four flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one-mile wind”, the telegram began.
Telegrams changed world history. In his book The Victorians, A N Wilson notes how telegraphy played a “crucial role” in the establishment of the British Empire, and also its maintenance.
It helped administrators quell local uprisings and enabled those in London keep in touch with colleagues in authority in far-flung outposts.
During the First World War, the Zimmermann telegram was a secret coded communication from the German Foreign Office proposing a military alliance between Germany and Mexico.
Intercepted and decoded by British Intelligence, the communication, when revealed, caused outrage in the US, generating public support for America declaring war on Germany.
Telegrams were also the means by which many Britons learnt of the death of their loved ones in combat and, consequently, the sight of a telegram delivery boy approaching the front door was something people came to dread.
Domestic rates at the outbreak of the First World War were nine words or less for six old pennies, with one penny for each further word.
The gradual extension of telephone ownership in the 1920s did impact on usage but, in 1935, the introduction of greetings telegrams gave the service a major boost. These communications – subject to a 3d surcharge – were delivered in a special festive form enclosed in a golden envelope.
In his New Shell Book Of Firsts, Patrick Robertson records how in February 1936 alone, 50,000 people sent Valentine’s Day telegrams. One young Romeo concluded his message: “And now I’ve asked you to be mine – By gosh! It’s cost me eight and nine!”
Beautifully designed greetings telegrams were produced for special occasions, such as Christmas and the 1937 Coronation of King George VI.
But the most coveted telegrams of all were those sent by the ruling monarch to subjects celebrating their 100th birthday or 60th wedding anniversary.
The tradition began in 1917 with King George V. His message read: “His Majesty’s hope that tmy the blessings of good health and prosperity may attend you during the remainder of your days.”
Back then there were only 24 recipients of the royal 100th birthday telegram. But as life expectancy increased, Buckingham Palace’s telegram budget grew bigger.
Subjects of the Crown in other countries received them too. In August 1939 there were pictures in the newspapers of 100-yearold William Pritchard, of Adelaide, South Australia, reading a cable from the King and Queen with a cigar in his mouth.
The Whitaker’s Almanack of 1940 informed readers: “Telegrams may be handed into a Post Office, or if prepaid and enclosed in an envelope marked ‘Telegram’, posted without a stamp or handed to a rural postman.”
Despite the bombing of the Central Telegraph Office in London during the Blitz, the Second World War, like the First, gave the service another shot in the arm.
Evacuated children were given one free telegram a month to keep in touch with their parents.
The number of telegrams sent rose from 50 million in 1939 to 63 million in 1945. But in post-war years use of the service dramatically declined.
While 42 million telegrams were still being sent in 1950, as domestic telephone ownership increased, the number had fallen to 7.7 million by 1970.
Writing in 1973, JL Kieve, author of Electric Telegraph: A Social And Economy History, observed: “The situation has been reached where most people probably never get a telegram brought by a messenger from one year’s end to another.”
“If they do, it is assumed that their relatives have been struck by lightning, or that they have won the pools.”
In the early 1980s, the privatisation of British Telecom, which had taken over the running of the service from the Post Office, marked the telegram’s death knell.
BT introduced a new Telemessage service in 1981 using the Telex system and, on September 30, 1982, closed down the domestic telegram service altogether.
It was the end of almost 150 years of history. Royal telegrams are no longer sent to centenarians and those celebrating significant wedding anniversaries but cards instead.
However, telegrams have survived in Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, China, Japan, Russia and Turkey.
Telegrams may have to be paid for at the point of sending but, let’s face it, who hasn’t sent a text or email they later regret in haste?
And could it be that in this post-telegram era we are simply communicating too much?
The sheer volume of communications in the smartphone age – it was calculated that more than 40 billion text messages were sent in Britain alone in 2021 – can be overwhelming in a way that telegrams never were.
So perhaps, 40 years after the last domestic telegrams were sent, it’s time to consider reviving them? Or, as Victor Hugo might have put it: “Telegrams ?”
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