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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1211
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 5:07 pm: |       |
I harp back to a previous thread concerning Catherine Eddowes and my wacky idea that the police would have been able to communicate from Scotland Yard with outlying police stations by telephone - the implication being obviously that certain policemen at Scotland Yard with a vested interest in the incarceration of Kate would have been well aware of her movements that fateful night - and at the time my idea was shot down because telephones did not yet ring at the midnight hour in police stations.
Well, we forgot the ‘atmospheric railway’ and that was certainly ringing loud and clear by 1888, as these two quotes will show:
The spread of railways stimulated communication, and Rowland Hill's standardisation of postal charges in 1839 saw a boom in mail services. But this was nothing compared to the revolution of the telegraph. If you think the internet is big (and given you're reading this online the chances are you do) then just imagine how much bigger it would seem if you had never before seen a computer or telephone. That's what the telegraph was to the Victorians. If rail travel shrank the country, the telegraph crushed it. It opened in the 1840s and soon went stratospheric - within ten years exchanging telegrams had become part of everyday life. By the mid 1860s London was connected with New York and ten years later messages could be exchanged between London and Bombay in minutes.
It was not until the development of the 'double sluice valve' by J. W. Willmott in 1870, that significant networks of telegram conveying tubes developed. The double sluice valve overcame the problems associated with more than one message in a tube at one time. By 1874 an extensive system of tubes was in place, linking the Central Telegram Office at Martin's le Grand in London, with London's district post offices [2], distributing around 4.5 million messages annually [1]. By 1886 London had 94 telegram tubes totalling 34 1/2 miles, powered by 4 50 hp engines.
If one takes the time to examine Metropolitan Police files of 1888 it soon becomes apparent that the Metropolitan Force was indeed using the ‘atmospheric railway’ to communicate between Scotland Yard and certainly ‘H’ division, so I see no reason why the scenario I set out using the telephone is not quite plausible when one considers the ‘atmospheric railway’.
Records are kept - for instance the Guildhall Library has an extensive collection as do other similar institutions - and I could see an enterprising researcher finding some real gold dust in this direction. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1213
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 5:37 pm: | |
Telling Bones 1884:
'This 'liberalisation' by the Postmaster-General also brought about the birth of the public call office. Telephone companies were now allowed to establish telephone stations which any member of the public could use. There were little more than 13,000 telephones in use at this time and the Postmaster-General's decision allowed access to the telephone to a whole new sector of society to whom the new technology was largely only a rumour. The new 'call offices' were soon advertised in the national and local press. They were at first located in 'silence cabinets' found in shops, railway stations and other public places.
London's first trunk telephone line was opened with Brighton on 17 December.'
Oh, I do love to be by the seaside.
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Donald Souden
Inspector
Username: Supe
Post Number: 259
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 6:56 pm: | |
AP
That Holmes fellow who "lived" on Baker Street at that time was an inveterate user of the "atmospheric railway" and was clearly convinced that such messages would go back and forth almost instantly. Perhaps Lestrade or Gregson brought the ease of telegraphic communication to the attention of the Yard.
Don. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1215
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 4:17 pm: | |
PROSPECTUS.
This Company was registered on the 30th June, 1859, under the Joint Stock Companies Act, with limited liability, for the establishment in the Metropolis of lines of Pneumatic Tube, for the more speedy and convenient circulation of despatches and parcels; and an Act of Parliament received the Royal Assent on the 13th August, 1859, empowering the Company to open the streets and lay down tubes for the purpose, within the limits of the "Metropolis Local Management Act, 1855."
The Directors having satisfied themselves and the Shareholders of the complete mechanical success of the Company's system of transmission, by experiments upon a short line of tube at Battersea, and of its economy and peculiar applicability to the purpose in view, determined on laying down a permanent tube of thirty inches gauge between Euston Station and the North Western District Post Office, Eversholt-street. This tube, with the stations, machinery, and appliances, is now completed, and is found to work most efficiently; and the Post Office authorities have notified their readiness to make an immediate trial of it for the transmission of the mail bags between those points.
As regards the general Mail Service, the Department, in a communication from the Secretary, dated the 10th May, 1860, thus expressed its intentions :-"This Department must refrain from binding itself by any positive agreement with the Company; but in the event of their scheme being successfully completed and brought into operation, the Post Office will be quite willing to consider the question of extending to the Mail Service any advantages which the Company's plans are capable of affording; provided those advantages can be secured at a reasonable cost."
The Directors have also concluded negotiations with the London and North Western Railway Company in reference to the parcels and small goods' traffic between their Camden Town and Euston Square Stations, and the City, under which the Pneumatic Despatch Company may undertake a large portion of those extensive services upon very profitable terms. They have further entered into a beneficial arrangement with Messrs. Pickford and Co., and with Messrs. Chaplin and Horne, for the appropriation of a sufficient portion of the adjoining premises of those large carrying firms, in Gresham Street, for the purposes of a Pneumatic Station for the collection and delivery of goods and parcels; and they are in communication with other influencial parties for similar objects.
To give effect to these arrangements the Directors propose to lay down forthwith under the powers of their Act, the line of 48-inch tube, shown upon the annexed plan and to form Pneumatic Stations in immediate connection with (1) the Camden Town Station of the London and North Western Railway; (2) the Euston Station; (3) a Central Site in High Holborn; (4) the Smithfield New Markets; (5) the site above mentioned, in Gresham Street, and the General Post Office; as well as with (6) Covent Garden Market and (7) the New Terminus of the South Eastern Railway at Charing Cross-points so important that it is unnecessary to dwell upon the magnitude of the traffic that must naturally arise between them; and they are assured that the entire line, which, with its branches, will be about 5 miles in length, may be completed and brought into practical use within a year from the commencement of the works.
(map to follow) |
Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi
Post Number: 1055
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 5:05 pm: | |
God AP
This is soooooo good !!!!Wish I could remember the first words said over the phone by Bell cos I'd have used 'em!
I know after all these wonderful posts this'll sound a tad naive but am sure (ish) that the dog and bone was in use with the upper echelons (sp!)
Shurely 'The Old Bill 'had some form of communication between what passed for 'stations' or maybe not!
Mr Holmes certainly used it a lot and of course we all know that he was on the case!
sorry if this sounds a bit fatuous! god AP all that was soo impressive! Congrats!
Best
Suzi |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1216
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 5:18 pm: | |
more:
The Central Telegraph Office
There is nothing, exteriorly, to indicate that the lofty building facing the General Post Office is the Central Telegraph Office, in effect, the earth's great Nerve Centre.
The Foreign Cable-room is in direct communication with all the capitals of Europe, and indirectly with those of every country in the world where the telegraph runs, which means that it has "running powers" over 170,000 miles of submarine cables that have cost £50,000,000 to construct.
On the upper floor is the great T-shaped Instrument-room, where thousands of instruments are incessantly clicking, worked by two thousand operators, of whom a large proportion are women.
Most impressive it is to watch the duplicating machines, each one sending or receiving messages at rates of anything up to four hundred words a minute.
These instruments are for the dispatch of messages that, word by word, have to be sent to two or more places, and the multitude of such messages is astonishing.
Stock Exchange quotations, racing, cricket, all news handled by the great agencies, supplying the eager newspapers in every quarter of the kingdom; in fact, practically everything requiring to be duplicated is forwarded to its destination through the medium of these wonderful Wheatstone automatic machines.
The Telegraph Department of the General Post Office is full of wonders.
The visitor can see the Delany Multiplex sending off six or eight messages over one wire, at what appears to be - but by some ultra-minute fraction of a second is really not - the same time; and is shown all sorts of "impossible" things being done as though they were not matters of marvels, but everyday trifles.
There is a room for short suburban messages, mostly in charge of women, where there are no multiplexes or automatics, and where no great speed of fingers, or straining of the operator's brain is required.
In a third room are the mouths of the pneumatic tubes that run under the thoroughfares of the City and the West Central district, and deliver to the branch offices the dispatches as put in, saving the time of passing the words over the wire.
In the open courts in the centre of the building are the engine-rooms - whose tall chimney-shaft is not discernible from the street - and the great battery-rooms deep down in the basement; but neither of these departments is shown to visitors.
The statistics of the Telegraph Department are bewildering.
In 1898-9 over 87,000,000 telegrams were dispatched in the United Kingdom; but the telephone messages reached the astounding total of nearly 640,000,000, i.e. there were seven and a half times more telephone-calls than "wires" sent.
I do believe our understanding of instant communication in the LVP is a little bit off base.
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1217
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 4:55 pm: | |
recommended reading:
What Was the Victorian Internet?
The Telegraph!
Reviewed by T. K. Maloy
In the nineteenth century there was no television, airplanes, computers, or spacecraft; nor were there antibiotics, credit cards, microwave ovens, compact discs or mobile phones.
There was, however, an Internet.
Online Bookstore -- Click here
And thus starts Tom Standage’s compelling history book, The Victorian Internet, which could be said to take as one its basic premises the old adage -- “The more things change the more they remain the same.” In the last century a worldwide communications systems was invented that allowed individuals, businesses, and governments to communicate; which fostered a global spread of news and information; played host to such facilities as online business and personal meetings and even marriages, and also was used for purposes of fraud and malfeasance, not to mention the online transmission of stock quotes. Sound familiar? It should.
But, of course, the Victorian Internet being referred here is none other than the telegraph. In its day, The telegraph was an electric communications system that eventually spanned the whole world and allowed for instantaneous information dispatch from point-to-point, or point-to-many points.
During Queen Victoria’s reign, a new communications technology was developed in effect shrinking the world faster and further than ever before, writes Standage. “A worldwide communications network ….[that] inundated its users with a deluge of information.”
And like with our own online world today, this book brings to light the myriad of larger-than-life scientists, inventors, and oddballs, who were the online pioneers of the last century. Standage feature such notable characters as French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet, who conducted early experiments with electricity that lead to the telegraph; and gentleman amateur-scientist Samuel F. B. Morse, an American, who created the first workable telegraph network in 1837 and the communication system that become the standard (Morse code) for the industry.
In the case of Frenchman Nollet, this book begins with retelling of the somewhat comical experiment where a mile-long line of Carthusian monks were given a simultaneous electrical shock through a steel wire to test the transmission properties of electricity.
And there is the tale of how Morse sought early financial backers for his telegraph network only to be rebuffed by, among others, the U.S. Congress.
But backing Morse and the telegraph does eventually get -- and in spades. During the 1840s, which is the first decade of existence for the telegraph, the U.S. and British telegraph companies begin to show marked profits. By the 1850s, the growth of this technology is explosive.
By the time the book is through, the telegraph has spread over the face of the earth, revolutionizing communications and in turn how persons of the Victorian-era live.
Standage, also takes pains to show that while the telegraph wrought great change in the sphere of human affairs, it did not lead to some grand, global utopia. And nor may the Internet for all the great strides that it has allowed.
We at The Internet Newsroom highly recommend this history of technology book, for both educational purposes and for enjoyable leisure reading.
The Victorian Internet
Tom Standage
Hardcover - 224 pages
$22.00
Walker & Co; ISBN 0802713424
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1218
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 5:10 pm: | |
I like this one!
Shades of Sherlock Holmes and the Cutbush clan, but this is reality TV folks:
An experimental line, with a sixth return wire, was run between the Euston terminus and Camden Town station of the London and North Western Railway on July 25, 1837. The actual distance was only one and a half mile, but spare wire had been inserted in the circuit to increase its length. It was late in the evening before the trial took place. Mr. Cooke was in charge at Camden Town, while Mr. Robert Stephenson and other gentlemen looked on; and Wheatstone sat at his instrument in a dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at Euston. Wheatstone sent the first message, to which Cooke replied, and 'never,' said Wheatstone, 'did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before, as when, all alone in the still room, I heard the needles click, and as I spelled the words, I felt all the magnitude of the invention pronounced to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute.'
In spite of this trial, however, the directors of the railway treated the 'new-fangled' invention with indifference, and requested its removal. In July, 1839, however, it was favoured by the Great Western Railway, and a line erected from the Paddington terminus to West Drayton station, a distance of thirteen miles. Part of the wire was laid underground at first, but subsequently all of it was raised on posts along the line. Their circuit was eventually extended to Slough in 1841, and was publicly exhibited at Paddington as a marvel of science, which could transmit fifty signals a distance of 280,000 miles in a minute. The price of admission was a shilling.
Notwithstanding its success, the public did not readily patronise the new invention until its utility was noised abroad by the clever capture of the murderer Tawell. Between six and seven o'clock one morning a woman named Sarah Hart was found dead in her home at Salt Hill, and a man had been observed to leave her house some time before. The police knew that she was visited from time to time by a Mr. John Tawell, from Berkhampstead, where he was much respected, and on inquiring and arriving at Slough, they found that a person answering his description had booked by a slow train for London, and entered a first-class carriage. The police telegraphed at once to Paddington, giving the particulars, and desiring his capture. 'He is in the garb of a Quaker,' ran the message, 'with a brown coat on, which reaches nearly to his feet.' There was no 'Q' in the alphabet of the five-needle instrument, and the clerk at Slough began to spell the word 'Quaker' with a 'kwa'; but when he had got so far he was interrupted by the clerk at Paddington, who asked him to 'repent.' The repetition fared no better, until a boy at Paddington suggested that Slough should be allowed to finish the word. 'Kwaker' was understood, and as soon as Tawell stepped out on the platform at Paddington he was 'shadowed' by a detective, who followed him into a New Road omnibus, and arrested him in a coffee tavern.
Tawell was tried for the murder of the woman, and astounding revelations were made as to his character. Transported in 1820 for the crime of forgery, he obtained a ticket-of-leave, and started as a chemist in Sydney, where he flourished, and after fifteen years left it a rich man.
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1219
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 5:19 pm: | |
I don't want to hear anyone else tell me that the police of Whitechapel and Scotland Yard could not have had instant and constant communication:
On the night of April 8, 1886, when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill for Home Rule in Ireland, no fewer than 1,500,000 words were despatched from the central station at St. Martin's-le-Grand by 100 Wheatstone transmitters. Were Mr. Gladstone himself to speak for a whole week, night and day, and with his usual facility, he could hardly surpass this achievement. The plan of sending messages by a running strip of paper which actuates the key was originally patented by Bain in 1846; but Wheatstone, aided by Mr. Augustus Stroh, an accomplished mechanician, and an able experimenter, was the first to bring the idea into successful operation.
This two years before the crimes of Jack.
If you want more I got it.
But the brandy bottle is waving at me. |
Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 1018
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 5:23 pm: | |
I can a multitude of ways this would have been helpful ---had there been concern about Catherine Eddowes and who she could name for instance.Possibly someone[Charles Cutbush?!!!] could have wired nephew Thomas about "softening her up" that Saturday when nobody knew where she was.Then "wired" the same person the information that she had been freed at 1am!What you have demonstrated is that all this would have been possible in 1888.What we need though are the telegraphs!
Natalie |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1221
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 5:38 pm: | |
I'm concerned about communication between head office and outlying stations here, Natalie, and just trying to show that it was possible, in fact, normal.
That's it.
Just a point.
The telegraphs are probably available.
But not as available as the brandy. Good night. |
Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 1019
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 5:50 pm: | |
OK AP understood.Its hugely helpful to know such an "internet existed nevertheless.But yes head office could easily have contacted outlying stations.
Enjoy your brandy!
Natalie |
Alan Sharp
Chief Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 642
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 7:41 pm: | |
Suzy - Bell's first words were "Mr Watson, would you come here please" spoken to his assistant. Andy Aliffe wrote an excellent article about this in Ripperologist, either the last issue or the one before.
Interesting trivia - Bell recommended that there should be a standard greeting by which one should answer the telephone, and his suggestion was that it should be "Ahoy-hoy!" If you watch the Simpsons you will note that this is how Monty Burns always answers the phone.
"Everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise." |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 530
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2004 - 7:50 pm: | |
For a truly fascinating and thoughtful account of Bell and Watson and the telephone's creation and its impact both technologically and philosophically back then and here now, see Avital Ronell's challenging work, The Telephone Book, Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Among other things, you'll learn some interesting details about Bell and Watson talking to ghosts.
Enjoy,
--John |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 2785
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 4:57 am: | |
AP, I don't know if this helps, but I found this person (not of course Thomas Hayne) in the circulation office of the Post Office. From the Post Office London Directory 1895, Official :
Robert |
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