The Bristol Royal Mail Part 9

The real facts on which this incident is founded were, that the horse (not mare) remained in the Post Office yard quietly from 11.10 p.m.

until midnight on one particular night only, and not generally, and when the loading of the van commenced the horse became restive, the final slamming of the van doors causing it to start off for the street.

In consequence of a repet.i.tion of this restlessness on another night, and "kicking-in" the front of the van, the horse was taken off the Royal Mail Service.

CHAPTER XIII.

TELEGRAPHS, TELEPHONES, EXPRESS DELIVERY.

The Saxon King, Edmund I., doubtless never conceived, when he held court (A.D. 940-946) at his palace in the village of Pucklechurch, seven miles from Bristol, that in generations to come there would exist, as there does now, a telegraph office within a few yards of the site of his castle, whence a question could be wired to the ends of the earth, and a reply obtained in the short s.p.a.ce of a few hours. Probably at that remote period a journey from Pucklechurch to the north of Scotland would have been considered as great an achievement as that in recent days of Dr. Nansen in his endeavour to get to the North Pole.

The first actual working telegraph was erected in 1838 between Paddington and West Drayton on the Great Western Railway, and in the following year Wheatstone and Cook constructed a telegraph line from Paddington to Slough. Mr. Brunel then wished to extend the line to this city, but the shareholders would not support him to that extent. In 1852, however, the Great Western Railway Board had the line constructed through to Bristol. By means of it messages could, at that later date, be forwarded to and from most parts of the kingdom from the office at the Bristol Railway Station. Arrangements were put in progress for extending the wires into the centre of the city, in order that greater facilities might be afforded to those parties who might wish to avail themselves of the means of inter-communication, and before the end of the year the wires were laid from the railway station to the Commercial Rooms, and subsequently three telegraph offices were opened in the city, viz.: the Electric and International, on the Exchange; the Magnetic, in Exchange Avenue; and the United Kingdom, in Corn Street. A telegraph line was laid to Shirehampton, and the committee of the Commercial Rooms subscribed 30 a year towards its maintenance.

It is recorded that in 1859 the firm of Messrs. W. D. and H. O. Wills, tobacconists and snuff manufacturers of this city, laid down an electric telegraph wire between their warehouse in Maryport Street and their manufactory in Redcliff Street, whereby the partners and employes, although engaged in different parts of the city, were enabled to converse with each other as readily as if occupying the same counting-house. The wire was used solely for their own business.

In 1862 a turnpike road telegraph was spoken of as being in course of construction between Bristol and Birmingham.

Mr. James Robertson, the senior a.s.sistant superintendent o the Bristol Telegraph Office, during his forty-two years' service, thirteen of which were pa.s.sed in the employment of the Electric and International Telegraph Company, has had many experiences. He has culled from his "ancient history" the fact that the amount of telegraph business transacted by the E. and I. T. Co. at Falmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, and London (Lothbury, head office) on March 10th, 1858, at the respective times of day stated, was:--Falmouth, 8 messages, handed in by 10.20 a.m.; Plymouth at 10.36 had managed to transmit 7; Bristol, at noon, 39; and Lothbury had received 116 by 12.17 p.m. Plymouth transmitted for Falmouth, and Bristol for Plymouth. Bain's chemical recorder was the system used on the Falmouth wire, the double needle on the Plymouth and Bristol, and "Bains" and needles on Bristol-London circuits. The average delay on messages at Plymouth was eighty-three minutes and at Bristol fourteen minutes. The charge at the time from Falmouth to London was four shillings for twenty words, addresses free. The present proprietor of _Lloyd's Newspaper_, Mr. Thomas Catling, records an incident in which Mr. Robertson was concerned. Mr. Catling was the only London newspaper reporter who visited Windsor on the eventful night when the deeply lamented Prince Consort breathed his last on 14th December, 1861. On reaching Windsor by the last train from London he learned that His Royal Highness had pa.s.sed away about twenty minutes previously. Having obtained at the Castle particulars of the sad event, Mr. Catling hunted out the residence of the clerk of the Electric and International Telegraph Company. On ringing him up, the clerk pleaded that before going to bed he had been taking gruel and hot water to get rid of a bad cold. He, however, got up and proceeded with Mr. Catling to the telegraph office in High Street, whence intelligence was wired to London. Mr. Catling preserved the receipt of that message as a souvenir of the occasion. Mr. Robertson was the telegraph clerk who arose from his bed to perform the service in the dead of night.

On the transfer of the telegraph business from the companies to the State early in 1870, the Post Office, Bristol, engaged sixteen clerks from the Electric and International Telegraph Company, five from the United Kingdom Company, and six from the Magnetic Company. Additional clerks were employed by the Post Office as soon as the volume of work could be gauged, but in the meantime the transferred clerks had to do practically double duty. The officials taken over from the companies were located in the Small Street Post Office, but it was not until January, 1872, that room could be found there for the entire staff, which had then grown to be ninety clerks and fifty messengers. The telegraphic system soon after the Government took to it was extended in this district to twenty of the princ.i.p.al villages. In the first year of Post Office working there were 450,000 messages dealt with here, and now the yearly number is 3,500,000. The sixpenny telegram was introduced in 1885. The local telegraph service now has a staff consisting of a superintendent, 23 superintending officers, 140 male and 44 female telegraphists, eight telephonists, and 155 telegraph messengers.

Telegrams are delivered from the head office, two branch offices, fifteen town sub-offices, forty rural sub-offices, and four railway stations. The head office has 600,000 messages delivered from it annually, the branch and town sub-offices 220,000, and the rural districts 74,000. Of the latter (74,000), about 8,000 are delivered at distances of from one to three miles, and 350 at distances over three miles. After 8.0 p.m. all the messages in the town area are delivered from the head office. The Duke of Norfolk's 1897 concession of free delivery of telegrams for all distances under three miles has been appreciated by all those concerned.

The telegraph gallery has direct telegraphic connection with the undermentioned towns: Bath, Birmingham, Bridgwater, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Chippenham, Clevedon, Cork, Exeter, Glasgow, Gloucester, Guernsey, Jersey, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newport (Mon.), Oxford, Plymouth, Reading, Southampton, Swansea, Swindon, Taunton, and Weston-super-Mare, and thirty-two smaller towns.

Bristol plays a not unimportant part in the Post Office telephone trunk line system, commenced in 1896. It has direct trunk lines to Bath, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter, Gloucester, London, Newport, Sharpness, Taunton, and Weston-super-Mare. The conversations held by the public through the medium of these lines number 4,000 weekly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT ROOM, BRISTOL POST OFFICE.

_From a photograph by Mr. Protheroe, Wine Street, Bristol._]

The well-ventilated and well-lighted telegraph instrument room is on the upper floor, and extends from end to end of the building. In it there are 102 telegraph instruments of various kinds in use, viz.: 5 A.B.C.'s, 19 double-plate sounders, 30 sounders, 28 duplexes, 5 quadruplexes, 5 Wheatstone sets, 7 repeaters or relays, 2 concentrators and 1 hexode.

Divested of technicalities, it may be said that telegraphing on the A.B.C. instruments is effected by alphabetic manipulative keys, which are depressed by the fingers of the left hand of the sender at the same time that a handle is turned with the right hand, and a corresponding effect is produced on the dial plate of the receiver. The double-plate sounder is read by sound from two small metal hands striking right and left against two pieces of metal. In sending, the working is by means of keys manipulated by the hand. The sending upon the sounder instrument, which is that chiefly used, is done by a small key with handle being depressed and released according to the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet. The signals by which messages are received and read by the ear are produced by a bar of soft iron striking upon a steel point placed between two coils of wire. With the A.B.C., double-plate sounder, and sounder, only one message can be sent or received on the wire at one time; but the duplex sounder instruments are so constructed that two messages can be sent on the wire--one in each direction--at the same time. Double-current duplex instruments are in use for telegraphing to busy towns such as Plymouth, Exeter, Cardiff, Swansea, &c., &c. The quadruplex consists of two duplex sets upon one wire. Upon these circuits two distinct messages may be sent simultaneously from each end. The hexode has six instruments at each end of a single wire, enabling twelve clerks to operate at the same time--six at each end,--and thus admits of a single wire doing so much work as six wires worked with the ordinary sounder instrument.

At times of pressure when race meetings are going on, or during the cricket and football seasons, the ordinary methods of working are supplemented by extraordinary means, thus: the duplex working between Bristol and Manchester is augmented by Manchester connecting there a Bristol wire with a Newcastle wire: Newcastle in like manner further connecting the line with Glasgow, Glasgow with Edinburgh, Edinburgh with Dundee, and Dundee with Aberdeen. Then at the Bristol end, instead of working by means of the ordinary keys, Wheatstone working is resorted to, viz.: the messages instead of being "keyed" are "punched," the punching process being performed by means of iron punching sticks upon an apparatus called the "perforator." The sticks are rapidly worked by skilful operators upon three steel keys, which, when struck, mechanically draw a strip of white paper tape, at the same time perforating holes which indicate signs in accordance with the Morse alphabet system. These slips thus "punched"--which, by-the-by, very much resemble the perforated slips used in connection with the organette instrument--are pa.s.sed through a Wheatstone "transmitter," and buzzed through so rapidly that 400 or 500 words can be sent in a minute. The signals are simultaneously reproduced upon blue slips in the form of dots and dashes at Manchester, at Newcastle, at Glasgow, at Edinburgh, at Dundee, and at Aberdeen. The message recorded on the slips is broken off at about every hundred words to form a "press" page at the receiving offices for writing up by the telegraphists, a large number of whom can be employed on the work at the same time. When this process is resorted to the battery power for the wire has to be greatly increased. The repeater instruments are worked in like manner, except that the system is permanent instead of occasional. The concentrator is a recent invention, and is used for the purpose of economising force and apparatus, and of minimising delay and table s.p.a.ce. By its means the wires for eighteen to twenty offices, which use the same form of telegraphic instrument, are led into a special switch-board, and each wire as it is required is "switched" through to a telegraph instrument, at which a clerk is ready to send or receive the message. Thus the telegraphist is "fed" by the operator at the concentrator, and has to send a message to any one of the thirty towns instead of, under ordinary working, to only three or four towns.

In place of over 700 batteries with 3,500 cells of the Bichromate, Daniel and Leclanche type in use at the Bristol telegraph office for many years, a system of acc.u.mulators or storage batteries has been brought into operation. The power for charging the acc.u.mulators is generated on the spot by a Crossley's gas engine driving a dynamo. The acc.u.mulators number 250, and each has seven divisions. The hexode instrument between Bristol and London requires a voltage of 400 dry cells. There are two complete sets of acc.u.mulators, each with separate connecting wires to the instrument room. One set is in use at a time.

The system of acc.u.mulators has been introduced for the purposes of economy and saving of s.p.a.ce.

It may be interesting to the uninitiated to learn that in telegraphy the earth plays the part of a return wire; thus the circuit between Bristol and Birmingham is rendered complete by earth. The wires connected with the two towns indicated are brought into the test boxes at the respective places, and there connected to a single wire at each town which finds earth by means of a zinc plate buried some twelve feet in the soil near or under the Post Office buildings.

Occasionally when people have been out for a drive or a cycle ride, and their eyes have been delighted with the grand scenery to be found around Bristol, they look, as they journey homewards, to the Government poles and to the many wires therefrom suspended, and wonder which are telegraph wires, which are telephone wires, where they all lead to, and between what points messages are sent and conversations held. Such travellers returning to Bristol by way of Almondsbury would see the wires on the one side (telegraphs), which run from Bristol to Falfield, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Gloucester, Liverpool; London to Swansea, Newport, and Cardiff; Birmingham to Exeter; Plymouth to Liverpool; and (telephones) Bristol to Birmingham, Gloucester, Cardiff; and on the other side of the road (telephones) Horfield, Fylton, Almondsbury, Newport, Cardiff, Gloucester and Birmingham. In some instances there are two or three wires for the same place. The telegraph, and telephone wires cross and recross each other at frequent intervals along the road, and the whole sets of wires cross from side to side of the road between Fylton and Almondsbury.

Alternative routes for the wires are adopted where practicable, so that in case of a break-down on one line communication may be kept up on the other.

By way of ill.u.s.tration of such alternate routes, it may be mentioned that the two wires from the Head Post Office in Small Street for Swansea run underground to Stapleton Road, at which point they are brought above ground and diverge, one running to Wee Lane, thence to Ashley Hill, Horfield, Almondsbury, Alveston Ship, Falfield and Berkeley, up to the Severn Bridge; and the other branching off at the end of Stapleton Road, and carried along the Fishponds and Chipping Sodbury roads nearly to Yate, and down the Tortworth road to just beyond Falfield, where it joins the other Swansea and South Wales wires, and pa.s.ses over the Severn Bridge into Wales.

The telegraph and telephone wires in this district are chiefly erected and maintained by soldiers of the Royal Engineers. Sixteen military telegraphists, members of the Royal Engineers, are attached to the Bristol Post Office, and kept in training for telegraph service with the army. Twelve of them are now--November, 1899--in South Africa on active service, in connection with the troubles in the Transvaal.

In the great hurricane which occurred in January, 1899, the telephone and telegraph wires radiating from Bristol were blown down in all directions. In consequence Bristol was entirely cut off from direct telephonic communication with Birmingham for 21 hours, and had only one wire instead of two for 9-1/4 hours; from Bath for 18 hours, and had only one wire instead of two for 5-1/2 hours; from Cardiff for 18 hours, and had only two wires instead of three for 10-1/2 hours; from Weston-super-Mare entirely for 24-1/2 hours; from Taunton for 28-1/2 hours; from Exeter for 27 hours; from Sharpness for 26 hours. There was only one wire instead of two to Gloucester for 26-1/4 hours, to London for 6 hours, and to Newport for 20-3/4 hours.

The trunk telephone lines were more or less interrupted for a week, caused by the working parties engaged on repairs.

The telegraph wires for the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, Monmouth, Warwick, Shropshire, Worcester, Wilts, Devon, Cornwall and Lancashire were those chiefly deranged.

It is believed that there is only one telegraph cable in the Bristol district, and that cable does not belong to the Postmaster-General. It crosses the river Avon at a point adjacent to Pill and Shirehampton, and was used by the Commercial Rooms in connection with reports of the arrival of vessels. Up to the time of its introduction, as already stated, "warners" were employed. The last of the old running "warners"

were Gerrish and Case. These men lived at Pill, and on hearing news from pilots-men of the arrival of a ship in the Bristol Channel they started off on foot to Bristol and _warned_ the merchants and wives of sailors of the vessel's arrival in the Channel, getting, of course, fees for their trouble,--a guinea from the merchants, and so on, down to the shillings of the sailors' wives,--and fifty years ago these fees were willingly paid, and the heavy postages too. The runners were men of some little mark.

The Post Office at Avonmouth, a Bristol sub-office, is much used for telegraph purposes by persons on board vessels pa.s.sing up and down the Kingroad in the Bristol Channel. The Bristol Corporation placed outside the port a large white notice board with "TELEGRAPH OFFICE" painted upon it in black letters, to attract the attention of mariners. The messages are chiefly received from vessels with cargoes consigned to Sharpness, which in neap tides have often to lie in the roads for days.

Telegrams for vessels lying in Kingroad are often taken out by boat at midnight or in the early hours of the morning. This is often in consequence of the tide not serving, or being too strong for the boatman to go out at seasonable hours.

Lundy Island, in the Bristol Channel, is connected with the mainland by a submarine cable, which is considered to be one of the most perfect of its kind. Letters for Lundy, from Bristol and elsewhere, are carried across by boat from Instow once a week. The nearer small islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm have cable telephonic communication with Weston-super-Mare. The telephone, which is carried into the Weston Post Office, is rented by the War Office Authorities, who allow the islanders the use of it. Letters from Bristol for the Flat Holm are conveyed by way of Cardiff. The island is rented from the Cardiff Corporation by a farmer who resides upon it. His son, who lives in Cardiff, daily visits the island in a yacht, and conveys the letters for the Trinity House officials and residents. For the Steep Holm, Bristol letters are sent from Weston-super-Mare; the services to the island being tri-weekly--Tuesday, Thursday and Sat.u.r.day,--and are performed by a contractor, who goes across on behalf of the War Office. The Steep Holm is inhabited by military men only. In a ma.n.u.script of 30th March, 1825, it is described as "Stipe Holme." One of the first serious efforts in connection with the plan of telegraphing through s.p.a.ce without connecting wires was conducted between the diminutive island of Flat Holm and the sh.o.r.e, a distance of about five miles; and between Penarth and Brean Down, a distance of nine miles. An interesting ill.u.s.tration of the system of wireless telegraphy was given, under the direction of Mr. W. H. Preece, C.B., F.R.S. (now Sir W. H. Preece, K.C.B., F.R.S.), at the Clifton College conversazione, held in honour of the learned British a.s.sociates during the meeting of the a.s.sociation at Bristol in 1898.

The telegraph staff have seldom had their skill and smartness more thoroughly tested than on the memorable Monday evening in February, 1893, when press messages of great length relating to the introduction of the Home Rule Bill were sent over the wires. Twenty minutes after Mr.

Gladstone rose to speak in the House of Commons the first instalment of the special summary of his speech reached this city. The conclusion of the summary was received at two minutes to 7. The verbatim report commenced to arrive at 4.49, and the last instalment reached the Bristol Office at 8 o'clock. The total number of words in the messages sent to Bristol was nearly 40,000.

During the early potato season telegraphing is very brisk with Jersey.

Bristol is the only large office besides London which has direct communication with the island. Some idea may be gathered of the extra labour entailed on the telegraph service from the fact that in the month of June, 1899, no fewer than 20,904 telegrams pa.s.sed between Bristol and Jersey, the normal number being only 5,800 monthly. Five or six telegraph operators are usually sent during the season to Jersey from Bristol.

In Bristol about 700 firms use abbreviated telegraphic addresses.

The telegraph money order system, started in 1889, is exhibiting marvellous developments in the local service.

The express letter delivery service, which came into operation in 1891, is very useful to the public. By means of this agency the Post Office distributes by express messenger 300,000 letters and parcels annually.

Of that number Bristol contributes 7,000 services. Bicycles and tricycles are now delivered for the public from any telegraph office in Bristol and district by special messenger at a fee of 3d. per mile, without any charge for weight. The messengers are not permitted to ride upon the cycles, except by the permission of the senders, but will wheel them up to a distance of three miles.

An express delivery messenger has been used, ere now, for the convoy of a traveller from point to point in a town unknown to him or her. The Post Office is often required to a.s.sist even more closely in the domestic relations of life. Recently a gentleman from America wrote to the Clifton Post Office to enquire whether a certain near relative of his could be found, as he was very anxious to see her before return to America. He enclosed a shilling stamp for a reply by telegraph, and begged for urgency. The relative was found and her address given. The applicant's ardour to see his relative cooled, or his stay in the country was abridged, for instead of paying the proposed visit, he begged the Post Office officials to expend five shillings, which he sent, in the purchase of cut roses for his relative. Of course, this was outside the round of Post Office duties, but the clerks obligingly attended to it, with the aid of a telegraph messenger who was off duty at the moment.

Occasional mistakes are not to be wondered at when people write illegibly. Through the improper formation of the capital letter, D, in the proper name Dyster, has in telegraphing been turned into O, and the name made Oyster, with the result of misdelivery of the telegram to a firm of fishmongers having "Oyster" as an abbreviated address. It must have been extremely painful to an anxious parent to receive a telegram summoning him to a nursing home far distant, in terms that his "sow was worse," and begging him to come at once; the telegraphist having made the slight mistake of transcribing "w" for "n." The gentleman who sent a telegram to his town house in the West End of London asking that his covert coat might be forwarded to him was no doubt considerably astonished when his butler returned the telegram to him by post asking for an explanation, and he found that the text of it was "Pigs, 9/3, 8/9, and 8/-." The error was occasioned in connection with the use of multiple addresses for a bacon-trading firm's telegrams. In another instance a curious complication resulted through imperfect s.p.a.cing on the part of the signalling telegraphist, thus:--A telegram written by the sender as "To ----, Fore St., Northam, Bideford. Be in attendance Public Offices," was transcribed thus:--"To ---- forest, Northam, Bideford. Be in at ten dance Public Offices," and, owing to the number of words counting the same as the number signalled, the inaccuracy was not discovered until a repet.i.tion had been obtained from the office of origin on application of the addressee. It was printed in a Midland newspaper that at the presentation of a sword of honour to the Sirdar the Common Councilmen attended in their "margarine gowns," and, of course, the error of using "margarine" for "mazarine" was put down to the carelessness of the telegraph clerk. A telegram was sent indicating arrival at 8 Mostyn Crescent, in a favourite North Wales town. At one stage in transmission "Mostyn" became converted into "mostly," and at the next office of transmission "Crescent" became "pleasant," and the telegram when delivered read "Arrived 8 mostly pleasant." The Prime Minister who had informed his audience that "there was no prospect of an immediate general election, that they had a working majority, and the Government was of good cheer," would not have been pleased had he seen that the last word in the telegram posted up in the Bristol Commercial Rooms had been transcribed as "of good cheek."

A telegram, "Have arranged for Sunday. Dening," with the first two words struck out, and "arrangement complete" subst.i.tuted underneath, was handed in at a telegraph office by a well-known and much respected Bristol clergyman. At the forwarding office the message was unfortunately read "For Sunday Dinning arrangement complete," the erasure and addition not having been properly understood and the proper name misspelt. At the delivering office the message again suffered alteration, and became "For Sunday dining arrangements complete." It may readily be supposed that the addressee was somewhat astonished at the peculiar text of the message.

The following is from the Bristol _Times and Mirror_ of February, 1893, and has reference to a little inaccuracy on the part of a telegraph a.s.sistant employed at a Bristol sub-post office. The incident itself is correctly reported:--"Garraways, 12 o'clock. Dear Mrs. B.--Chops and tomato sauce. Yours Pickwick," settled the hash of a well-known character; and a wire, "Going to Bath to meet girl. Not back to dinner,"

had, very nearly, a similar effect on the domestic relations of one of the smartest solicitors in our city. The telegraph has had, in its time, much to answer for, "but never aught like this." When Puck said: "I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," he little thought what mischief he might do. It was only the other day we read how a stray dropped line destroyed a horse, killed a cow, and cut off the head of a n.i.g.g.e.r; but these accidents were a trifle compared with what might have happened if the message first quoted could not have been explained. The learned gentleman it appears has a brother, by name Gilbert, familiarly known in the circle as "Gil." The latter, having business in Bath, wrote asking his relative to dine with him at the "Christopher." The learned advocate at once accepted; but, being a thoroughly domesticated man, telegraphed to his better-half: "Going to Bath to meet Gil; not back to dinner." Then came in the "cussedness" of the wire which subst.i.tuted "girl" for "Gil," and hence the temporary ructions when the happy husband, having succeeded with his latchkey, sought repose.

CHAPTER XIV.

TELEGRAPH MESSENGERS.

The telegraph messengers in uniform employed in the Bristol district number about 160. They have a literary inst.i.tute, a drum and fife band, hold swimming cla.s.ses, etc. That there is need of night cla.s.ses may be inferred from the following specimens of telegraph messengers'

orthography and syntax:--