Twitter: https://twitter.com/RuthaSymes
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Searchmyancestry/
Amongst family papers,
you may come across carefully preserved telegrams offering congratulations at a
family nuptials. Telegrams had been sent for all sorts of business and official
reasons from as early as the late 1840s, but the fashion for sending messages
for a wedding - or a Silver, Ruby, Diamond or Golden wedding
anniversary – was most popular between the 1920s and the 1970s. Indeed, newspapers
in the 1930s, reported that it had become twice as common at that time to send
a telegram of congratulation as it had to send a telegram importing bad news.
 |
| Telegraph Machine |
Before the advent of fast, modern aids to travel such as a localised
rail network, cars and aeroplanes, relatives who lived at a distance were often
unable to make wedding celebrations in person and had to communicate their good
wishes in other ways. After the advent of telephones – few ordinary people had
telephones in their own homes until after the Second World War - a well-wisher
might have sent a telegram dictating a message over the phone to a telegraph
operator in one of a countrywide network of telegraph offices. Alternatively, customers
might appear in person at a telegraph office and write their message on a blank
form. In either case, a telegraph operator would then render the message into
Morse code and then transmit it as a series of electrical impulses over long
distances via a telegraph machine. Very early telegrams were
then deciphered and written out by hand by a telegraph operator at the
receiving end, but by the 1930s, most modern post offices had a tele-printer.
This printed incoming messages onto strips of paper which were then stuck on to
a card and delivered to individual addresses by messenger boys on bicycles. At
the wedding, it was customary for telegrams -
often judiciously edited - to be
read out by the Best Man after the other speeches were finished.
 |
| General Post Office - Telegraph Office |
Telegram
rates varied depending on the distance the message had to be sent, the speed
with which it needed to be delivered, and its length. Because they cost more than a straightforward
letter or postcard, telegrams indicate a certain degree of affluence on the
part of their senders and by association on the part of their recipients. It’s
worth checking local newspaper accounts of family weddings to see if telegrams
are mentioned. The following example shows how a useful snippet of information
may be gleaned in such a way. On the Golden wedding celebrations of Mr and Mrs
William Blackwood, of 4 Roselea Terace, Church Street, Ladybank, the Dundee Courier, 15th
December 1942, commented: ‘Telegrams of congratulation were received from
friends in Ladybank, Culross, Newburgh and Liverpool, where Mrs Blackwood’s
sister resides.’
But
telegrams at weddings did not always bring messages of congratulation, and
newspapers, of course, revelled in those occasions where a telegram in one way
or another broke up the happy proceedings. A particularly heartbreaking case
reported in the Framlington Weekly News
of 15th December 1934 told the story of Ivy May Holton aged 22 of
Stretham who had returned from the hairdressers on the morning of her wedding
to find a telegram from her fiancée, Richard James Baldock, an invoice Clerk,
aged 23, simply stating, ‘WEDDING CANCELLED, COMING UP, BALDOCK.’ Whether or
not Baldock ever in fact ‘came up’ to explain himself is unclear but the
wedding did not go ahead, Such an experience was the interwar equivalent of
being ‘dumped by text’ and its repercussions were dramatic as the newspaper
continued: ‘You can imagine the state
of mind of a young woman receiving such as message within an hour of her
wedding. The shock was terrible. She became hysterical and, as a result, was
ill for three weeks… at one time there was a serious risk that her mind would
become unhinged by the shock.’
In
another intriguing case, The Dundee
Courier reported on January 8th 1923, that a London wedding
between Mr Howard Elliott Booker, an American citizen and director of several
London dance clubs, and Miss Ivy Featherstone, had been delayed because Miss Featherstone’s
brother had received a telegram alleging that the groom was already married to
a named woman. The groom begged to be allowed to visit the American consulate.
This he did and it was proved that the woman mentioned in the telegram was in
fact not married to him but was the wife of an American army officer. The
marriage to Miss Featherstone went ahead with the bride asserting that she had
never for one moment doubted her prospective husband!
Tips for thinking about your
family wedding telegram
Dates and
other factual details - As far as the family historian is concerned,
telegrams may present a double boon – evidence of the date, time, location of
the marriage and the names of the participants, and evidence of the whereabouts
of the sender at that particular time. Bear in mind that wedding telegrams were
often addressed to the Best Man or Maid of Honour rather than the groom.
Wording - Telegrams were priced (in
part) by the word, so senders tended to be succinct. Hyphens, speech marks and
the like were generally omitted as each counted as a word and had to be paid
for, and individual words were usually not more than seven letters long. Conventional
terms of politeness were also often eschewed in telegrams as a means of cutting
costs. Fortunately for family historians, the messages in telegrams tend to be
very clear and unambiguous, written in capital letters, with numbers spelt out
in full, for example. After World War One, the word ‘STOP’ instead of an actual
full stop was commonly used for clarity.
Cryptic Wording - Latin, Italian and French were
commonly used as a method of keeping messages secret from prying telegraph
operators and some telegrams were written in code (‘cablese’). Regular telegram
users could purchase code books which enabled them to convey a great deal of
information in an abbreviated form, rather like the acronyms used in text
messaging today. A couple of examples show how guesswork might not be enough to
help you decode your old family telegram: EMOTION = ‘think you had better wait
until…..’ and NALLARY = ‘it is not absolutely necessary, but it would be an
advantage’. To help you, try purchasing
such a code book (eg. The Telegram Code
(1880) RareBooksClub, 2012)) from an online bookstore such as www.abe.com or www.amazon.co.uk.
Useful Books and Websites
www.britishtelephones.com/histuk.htm - The history of telephones in
the UK
www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph The history of Morse Code and
the telegraph system
Kieve. J. L., Electric Telegraph: A Social and Economic History, David and Charles, Newton Abbott, 1973.
Marvin. Carol, When Old
Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late
Nineteenth Century, OUP, 1988.
This article was first published in Family Tree Magazine UK 2016
For women's history and social history books - competitive prices and a great service - visit:
#ancestors'personalwritings #ancestors #familytree #familyhistory #telegrams #familyhistorybooks #weddings #births #marriages #deaths
No comments:
Post a Comment