Nineteenth-Century Communications: A Documentary History, 1780–1918 by McIlvenna, Kathleen; Koehler, Karin; Hopkins, Eleanor;

Short description:

This volume illuminates some of the manifold ways in which Britain’s communication infrastructure affected everyday life in nineteenth-century Britain. Accordingly, it highlights socio-economic, cultural, and material repercussions of selected aspects of mediated communication.

Long description:

This volume illuminates some of the manifold ways in which Britain’s communication infrastructure affected everyday life in nineteenth-century Britain. Accordingly, it highlights socio-economic, cultural, and material repercussions of selected aspects of mediated communication. It covers:

• The rise and role of the communication worker and the Post Office’s status as Britain’s largest employer as well as pioneering employer of women.








• The campaigns surrounding Sunday labour.








• The connections between new leisure opportunities and activities and new media of communication such as the postcard.








• Concerns about morally suspect uses of new media and technologies of communication, e.g. the use of the telegraph for gambling.




• The presence of changing communication practices in material culture, e.g. the increasing popularity of greeting cards and new types of stationery.

Table of Contents:

Volume 3: Cultures of Communication

General Introduction

Volume Introduction

Part 1: Professionalism and Communications Work

1.1 Occupational Health

1.     Augustus Waller Lewis, ‘Medical Officer’s Report for the Year 1857’, in Fourth Report of the Postmaster General on the Post Office (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1858), pp. 68-71.

1.2 Telegraph Operator Handbooks

2.     R. Bond., extract from Handbook of the Telegraph: Being a Manual of Telegraphy, Telegraph Clerks’ Remembrances and Guide to Candidates for Employment in the Telegraph Service (London: Virtue Brothers & Co. 1862), pp 1- 12.

3.     W. McGregor, ‘Questions on Magnetism, Electricity, and Practical Telegraphy for the Use of Students', in Handbook of the Telegraph (London: Lockwood & Co. 1873), pp. 140-45.

1.3 Staff Grievances and Protest

4.     ‘Strike of Telegraph Clerks’, London Evening Standard (9 December 1871), p. 6

5.     ‘The Telegraph Strike’, London Evening Standard (14 December 1871), p. 5.

6.     A.K. Donald, ‘The Revolt in the Post Office’, Time, no. 8, (August 1890), pp. 861-868.

7.     ‘Postal Agitation’, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (13 July 1890), p. 10.

8.     Extract from Henry Cecil Raikes, 37^th Report of the Postmaster General of the Post Office (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1891), p. 3.

9.     ‘A Postmen’s Manifesto’, Liverpool Mercury, 19 September 1891, p. 5.

10.  ‘The Grievances of Telegraph Clerks’, Pall Mall Gazette (7 October 1892), p. 7.

Part 2: Women and Communication Work.

2.1 Women in Telegraphy

11.  ‘Female Clerks of the Electric Telegraph Company’, The Lady’s Newspaper No. 405 (30 September 1854), pp. 193-194.

12.  ‘Woman’s Work at the Postal Telegraph’, Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, vol. 12, no. 85 (1 Jan. 1872), pp. 23-25.

13.  ‘Women in the Civil Service’, The Englishwoman’s Review No. 25 (1 May 1875), pp. 195-202.

14.  Post Office Young Ladies, clippings from the Daily Chronicle

a.     Letter from ‘A.W.K.’, ‘Post Office Young Ladies’, Daily Chronicle (24 January 1882), n.p.

b.     Letter from ‘E. A. S., 25 January 1882’, Daily Chronicle, n.d, n.p.

c.     Letter from ‘A Business Woman’ to the Editor of the Daily Chronicle, 25 January 1882), Daily Chronicle

d.     Letter from ‘One of the Offenders’ (28 January 1882)

e.     Letter from ‘An Ear-Witness' (28 January 1882)

f.      Letter from ‘Fairness’ (28 January 1882)

g.     Letter from ‘An Admirer’ (28 January 1882)

h.     Letter from ‘A Man of Business’ (28 January 1882)

i.      Letter from ‘J. W. S., Postmaster’ (2 February 1882)

j.      Letter from ‘Courtesy’ (2 February 1882)

15.  Illustration: ‘Our Post-Office Pets’, Funny Folks: A Weekly Budget of Funny Pictures, Funny Notes, Funny Jokes, and Funny Stories Vol. 8, No. 376 (11 February 1882), p. 43.

16.  Illustration: ‘Post Office Young Ladies’, Funny Folks: A Weekly Budget of Funny Pictures, Funny Notes, Funny Jokes, and Funny Stories Vol. 9, No. 463 (13 October 1883), p. 323.

17.  ‘‘Post Office Young Ladies on Their Good Behaviour’, St. James’s Gazette (June 14, 1892), p. 12

2.2 Trollope and ‘Young Women at the Telegraph Office

18.  Anthony Trollope, ‘The Young Women at the London Telegraph Office’, Good Words 18 (June 1877): 377–84.

Part 3. Pensions, Benefits, and Working Conditions

3.1 Pensions and Job Security

19.  John Tilley, evidence to the Select Committee on Civil Service Superannuation, Report from the Select Committee on Civil Service Superannuation (House of Lords, 1856), pp. 329-332

 20.  Extract of evidence from Mr Francis Salisbury, Postmaster, Liverpool. in Minutes of evidence to the report of the Royal Commission on Superannuation in the Civil Service, together with appendices and index. 1902. Cd. 1745, pp. 102-105. 2845-2878, 2899-2941.

3.2 Sunday Labour

21.  Illustration: Sunday Rural Posts (Working Men’s Lord’s Day Association, c.1866).

22.  Edward Capern, ‘The Rural Postman's Sabbath' in Poems by Edward Capern (London: David Bogue, 86, Fleet Street). 1856, pp. 18-19

23.  Extract from Report of the commissioners appointed to investigate the question of Sunday labour in the Post Office (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1850), pp. 3-6.

24.  Robert K. Grenville, A Letter to the Most Honourable The Marquess of Clanricarde, Postmaster General, On the Desecration of the Lord’s Day in the Post-Office Establishment (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850).

25.  The Post Office and the Sabbath Question (London: Chapman, 1850).

26.  Anon., ‘The Sunday Screw', Household Words, 1.13 (22 June 1858): pp. 289-292

27.  ‘The Sunday Mail Day: The Bombay Protest', The Times of India, 8 October 1889, p. 4.

Part 4 Cultural Representations of Communication Work

4.1 Rural Postman

28.  Edward Capern, 'The Rural Postman', Poems by Edward Capern (London: David Bogue, 86, Fleet Street). 1856, pp. 158-164.

4.2 Family and Postal Work

29.  Hesba Stretton (alias Sarah Smith), ‘The Postmaster’s Daughter’. All the Year Round, Vol. 2, no. 28 (5 November 1859), pp. 37–44.

4.3 John Critchley Prince, ‘The Postman’

30.  John Critchley Prince, ‘The Postman’, in The Poetical Works of John Critchley Prince, Vol. 2 (Manchester, 1880), p. 226.

4.4 ‘Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer’

31.  Malabari, Behramji M., The Indian Eye on English Life; or, Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company, 1893), p.142-143.

Part 5: Commerce, Consumerism, and Thrift

5.1 House-top Telegraphs

32.  John Hollingshead, ‘House-top Telegraphs’, in Odd Journeys in and Out of London (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1860), pp. 233-245.

5.2 Postal Medicine

33.  ‘Pice Packets of Quinine’, The Indian Forester, 19:11 (1893), pp. 446-447.

5.3 Parcel Post

34.  ‘The Parcels Post’, Saturday Review, 56.1449 (4 August 1884), pp. 140-141.

35.  Illustration: ‘The Man for the Post’, Punch (15 April 1882), page 175. [Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library Ltd].

5.4 Thrift

36.  Henry Fawcett, The Post Office and Aids to Thrift (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1881).

5.5 Pryce Pryce-Jones: Mail-Order Pioneer

37.  ‘Her Majesty and Welsh Manufacturers’, Cambrian News, 12 December 1868, p. 3.

38.  Advert for Pryce-Jones, Kenilworth Advertiser, 29 June 1878, p. 2.

39.  Illustration: Cover for the 1893 Catalogue of Pryce Jones, Royal Welsh Warehouse (Credit: Amoret Tanner /Alamy)

5.6 Shopping by Post

40.  ‘Shopping by Post’, The London journal, and weekly record of literature, science, and art, 27.696 (17 April 1897): p. 338.

41.  J. Henniker Heaton, ‘“Cash on Delivery”, or Shopping by Post’, The Nineteenth century and after: a monthly review 54.322 (1903): p. 981

42.  ‘Shopping by Post for the Small Man: How Local Shopkeepers Might Make Money’, Answers, (23 September 1905): p. 470.

5.7 ‘Communication and the Commerce of Literature

43.  J. C. Loudon, ‘The Effect of a General Penny Post on Periodical Literature’, The Times, 9 May 1839, p. 5.

44.  John Chapman, 'The Commerce of Literature', Westminster Review, 57.112 (April 1852), pp. 552-554

45.  Rowland Hill, Minute recommending ‘the expediency of still further facilitating the transmission of Books or other printed matter by means of the Post Office’.

46.  J. O. Halliwell, ‘To the Editor of the Times’, The Times, 15 May 1851, p. 8 and ‘A Sufferer’, ‘Books by Post: To the Editor of The Times’, The Times, 19 May 1851, p. 8.

5.8 Telegraph and the Stock Market

47.  ‘Gambling by Telegraph’, Pall Mall Gazette (26 August 1886), p. 11

Part 6: Learning, Literacy, and Epistolary Etiquette

6.1 Post Office Libraries and Literary Associations

48.  Extracts from Proposal to Establish a Post Office Library and Literary Association and Report of a Meeting to Establish a Post Office Library and Literary Association (London: Post Office, 1858), pp. 3-35, 44-50. 

6.2 Epistolary Etiquette

49.  Samuel Johnson, extracts from The New London Letter Writer (London: T. Sabine, 1790), pp. 9-11, 20, 41-43, 63-65, 74-75.

50.  Extract from The Comprehensive Letter Writer (Glasgow: Cameron, Clark & Co; London: Richard Griffin & Co, 1858), pp. 3-4, 13-14, 18-19, 55.

51.  Anon., ‘Certain Attentions in Letter-Writing', Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, 123 (9 May 1846), p. 304.

52.  Anon, ‘Idle Letter-Writing', Chambers’s Journal 822 (27 September 1879), pp. 618-619.

53.  ‘The Art of Letter-Writing', Saturday Review 72, 1877 (17 October 1891), p. 439.

6.3 ‘On the Western Circuit’

54.  Thomas Hardy, ‘On the Western Circuit’, Life’s Little Ironies (London: Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co, 1894), pp. 89-122. 

6.4 Language Learning by Letter

55.  ‘How to Learn a Language by Letter, The Review of Reviews, 15 (Jan 1897): pp. 77-78.

56.  ‘Learning a Language by Letter Writing’, The Review of Reviews 15 (Feb 1897): p. 181.

57.  ‘Learning Languages by Letter-Writing', The Review of Reviews 19 (1899): p. 93

Part 7. Crime and Scandal

7.1 The Salt-Hill Murder

58.  ‘Suspected Murder’, The Examiner, 4 January 1845, p. 10.

59.  Charles Maybury Archer, ‘Tawell, the Murderer Taken by the Electric Telegraph’, in Guide to the Electric Telegraph (London: W.H. Smith & Son, 1852), pp. 44-47.

7.2 ‘A Case for the Prisoner’

60.  Edmund Yates, ‘A Case for the Prisoner’, All the Year Round, 10.233 (10 October 1863), pp. 164-168.

7.3 Communication and Crime Fiction

61.  Hesba Stretton, 'Mugby Junction: No.4 Branch Line: The Travelling Post Office', in All the Year Round, Volume 14: Christmas 1865 (10 December 1866), pp. 35-42.

62.  ‘A Post Office Case’, All the Year Around 17.413 (23 March 1876), pp. 307-312.

63.  AED, ‘Trapped by a Telephone’, Bow Bells (May 1890), pp. 426-427.

7.4 The Cleveland Street Scandal

64.  Illustration: “The West End Scandals, some Further Sketches,” Illustrated Police News, 4 December 1889, p. 1.

65.  ‘The Scandal of Cleveland Street’, Pall Mall Gazette (20 November 1889), p. 6

Part 8. Romance and Communications

8.1 Post Office Romance

66.  F. Arnold, ‘A Tale of the Post Office’, Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1872), pp. 162-178

67.  Margaret Westrup, ‘T’rat! T’rat!’, Quiver, (January 1897), pp. 1035-1038.

8.2 Communication, Marriage, and Family Life

68.  Dinah Mulock Craik, ‘An Honest Valentine’, Poems (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860), pp. 37-40.

69.  Illustration: ‘Electric Telegraph for Families’, Punch (1846)

8.3 Romance by Telegraph

70.  C. Sears Lancaster, ‘Valentine or the Electric Telegraph: A Shocking Story’, The Court and Lady’s Magazine, Vol. 30 (February 1847), pp. 125-159.

71.  Josie Schofield, ‘Wooing by Wire’, in Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes, Third Edition (New York: W. J. Johnston, 1882), pp. 93-98.

72.  William Lynd, ‘Love-Making by Telegraph’, The Telegraphist Vol. 1 No. 1 (1 December 1883), p. 4-5.

73.  T.S. Clarke, ‘A Lay of the Telegraph Office’, St-Martin's-le-Grand: The Post Office Magazine, 1 (January 1891), p. 94-95.

74.  Captain Jack Crawford, ‘Carrie, The Telegraph Girl: A Romance of the Cherokee Strip’, Strand Magazine Vol. 11 (1896), pp. 506-512.

8.4 Telephone Romance

75.  ‘By Telephone’, Bow Bells, 38 (16 May 1883), pp. 499-500.

Bibliography

Index