Telegraph Stamps and Stationery of the World

Dr Iain Stevenson

14 April 2005

The electric telegraph, invented in the United Kingdom by Cooke and Wheatstone and perfected in the United States by Samuel B. Morse was the transformational communications technology of the Victorian age. It antedated the reforms in postal systems by a decade and for the first time enabled people to communicate instantaneously to others beyond sight and earshot. The philately of telecommunications is rich and varied: this display hopes to introduce some of this richness. The aim is for breadth rather than specialisation although a few specialist studies are included from favourite countries to indicate what is possible. I hope very much that you find things that are new, unusual and engaging and that you might be inspired to explore this fascinating aspect of philately for yourself.

Frame One: forerunners.

Prior to the electric telegraph, a semaphore system invented during the French revolution by Claude Chappe was widely used in Europe. Shown here are examples of Chappe telegrams from France, Algeria (where the system persisted longest) and Germany. The French official telegram announcing an attack on the life of King Louis Philippe is one of the very few in private hands. Semaphore telegraphs were also used in the UK to communicate between the Admiralty in London and Portsmouth during the Napoleonic Wars.

Frames Two to Four: The Electric Telegraph Company and the British and Irish Telegraph Company

The Electric Telegraph Company, incorporated in 1846, was the earliest private telegraph company in the UK. It issued stamps and stationery, the former printed by Perkins Bacon and Waterlow, many of which are great rarities. Shown here is a comprehensive display of stamps, stamped and delivery stationery, including examples of the only stamped stationery in private hands. The E.T.C. also operated private lines for railway companies and examples of their internal messages are shown. The British and Irish Telegraph Company which provided cable services to Dublin also issued stamps and stationery which are shown here.

Frame Five: The United Kingdom Telegraph Company and other telegraph companies.

The main competitor to the E.T.C. was the U.K. Telegraph Company whose stamps were printed by De La Rue. The interesting issue overprinted "INT'(erest) given to shareholders in lieu of dividends is displayed with a dividend notice. The stamps of the other smaller companies are also shown.

Frames Six and Seven: The Post Office Telegraph Stamps

The Post Office nationalised the private telegraph companies in 1870. Initially postage stamps were used but to keep the accounts separate, special stamps and stationery were introduced. The stamps were transverse in form to distinguish them from postage stamps. Among the items shown are the rare plate 3 of the five shillings and of course the £5 orange on which the later postage stamp was based. A short study of delivery stationery is shown.

Frames Eight to Fourteen: Post Office stamped stationery and associated material.

I have made a particular study of the stamped post office telegraph forms the findings of which have appeared in the recently published GBPS book by Peter Langmead and Alan Huggins. Highlights of this section include the One Shilling Green form of KGV used provisionally in Ireland after 1922, the previously unrecorded 'Elizabethan' form (with Edwards Crown) with an embossed KGVI 1/6d, and the provisional KGV 9d and 3d Stock Exchange form with the only recorded revalued booklet cover for this issue. This section concludes with a group of associated post office ephemera and documents.

Frame Fifteen: The Victorian internet: The telegraph in Nineteenth Century America.

Although a British invention, the elecric telegraph really came into its own in North America. Apart from brief state ownership during the Civil War, telegraphs were always run by private companies whose swashbuckling owners Commodore Vanderbilt and Jay Gould became watchwords of unrestrained capitalism. The frame traces the early history of the system in the USA during the period of the 'Telegraph Wars'.

Frame Sixteen: The Postal Telegraph Company.

The P.T.C. was one of the two main companies to emerge from the nineteenth century 'Telegraph Wars' in the USA. Shown here are stationery, stamps, franks and booklets, and the special stamps issued to American troops in Europe in WW2. The PTC was absorbed by Western Union in 1943.

Frames Seventeen to Twenty: Western Union.

The largest American telegraph and cable company was and remains Western Union. These four frames give a comprehensive showing of its stamps and stationery. Created by the tyccon Jay Gould it was an innovative and predatory company which absorbed smaller lines and introduced new services including greetings and eventually the famous candy, dolly and singing telegrams. Thankfully, the latter are not presented, although you may like to hum along with the tunes indicated on the forms. Examples of the 'dollies' are in the display case in the entrance hall. This section is concluded by a showing of the telegraph stamps of smaller companies absorbed by W.U. The plate proof block of the Federal telegraph tax revenue which introduces this section is the largest known and an excessively rare genuinely used imperforate example is shown in frame sixteen.

Frames Twenty-One to Twenty-Four: Canada

Telegraph development in Canada parallelled that of the United States with a disastrous rate war between the two private companies, Montreal and Dominion, that eventually forced them to amalgamate. Eventually the telegraph system was taken over by the two railway companies, Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk Western (later Canadian National). A wide-ranging display of stamps, franks and stationery is shown, including booklets.

Frame Twenty-Five: Australia

The telegraph was particularly important in binding the isolated settlements of Australia together and developed early. Before federation, each colony operated its own state-owned system although in New South Wales, the British owned Electric Telegraph Company set up a private company which issued its own now very rare stamps. Stationery is shown from NSW, Victoria, South Australia and stamps from western Australia. Australian greetings telegrams are particularly delightful and in the 1920s and 1930s were often issued alongside commemorative postage stamps. The Sydney Harbour Bridge telegram is one of the few printed in line engraving and is rarely seen.

Frame Twenty-Six: New Zealand

New Zealand had an unusually dense network of telegraph offices and this selection shows the range of markings available on inland telegrams and cables. The final sheet shows a modern telegram used in the tiny Pacific island of Tonga.

Frames Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine: Belgium

This is a favourite country of mine and is the first I began collecting in 1966, attracted by the unusual hexagonal stamps. Shown is the unique die proof of the 1866 stamped forms. and a complete study of the stamps, including the rare 5frs mint of 1871 and mint and used examples of the 25frs of 1882. The display is concluded with examples of delivery stationery.

Frames Twenty-Nine and Thirty: France.

As we saw in frame one, France invented the telegraph with the Chappe semaphore. The electric telegraph was slow to develop here because of this and the public were not allowed to use the service until 1860: before then, all telegrams were official. Shown here are forms and stamps from the post 1860 period, including a rare use of a telegraph stamp on "entire" and an example of the photographic film on to which telegrams were printed and sent from Paris during the siege of 1870 on pigeons and then enlarged for delivery. A later innovation is the 'Belinogramme' a electronic process which could send autographs and pictures, the ancestor of the modern fax. The service was little-used because of its high expense and no actual examples of messages have survived since the paper turns completely black after a few months. This section concludes with toy telegrams included in French toy post offices.

Frames Thirty-One to Thirty-Seven: Round the World in Telegraph Stamps

A global survey from A-Z of telegraph stamps from Algeria to Venezuela, including stationery and delivery forms. Latin America provides some particularly interesting issues, especially Nicaragua and Ecuador, where new discoveries are still to be made (some of these new unrecorded stamps are shown here.) This section concludes with two sheets of telegram seals used to fasten delivery forms from around the world which is in itself a fascinating collecting field.

Frames Thirty-Eight to Forty: The Cable Companies.

Up till now, I have been mainly showing internal telegraph material, that is, telegrams delivered within one country. The most heroic and romantic aspect of telegram collecting is that associated with international cables which began with the modest lines to France and Ireland operated by the Submarine Telegraph Company to the great trans-oceanic cables constructed by William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) across the Atlantic and later round the world, culminating in the Commonwealth Cable (COMPAC) in 1963. This field is dominated by the British company Cable and Wireless and its predecessors, Eastern and Imperial Cables, although American companies, Commercial Cable and All-America played significant roles. Greetings telegrams (of which much more later) were introduced by Eastern and Imperial in the 1920s to send seasonal wishes round the British Empire. The invention of radio-telegraphy by Marconi in 1901 revolutionised international telegram sending amd messages sent invisibly through the ether replaced messages sent over wire, hence 'Cable and Wireless.'

Frame Forty-One: Telegrams from Ships at Sea

The Marconi wireless system enabled telegrams to be sent to and from ships at sea. Shown here are examples of telegrams received on ships (here RMS 'Queen Elizabeth) and sent from ships, received at the famous radio station at Portishead near Bristol

Frames Forty-Two and Forty-Three: Telegrams in Wartime

Swift and accurate telecommunications are essential in military operations and military telegraphs are a fascinating collecting area. Shown here are the British military and army telegraphs stamps prepared in the 1880s and 1890s for campaigns in Ashantee, Sudan, Egypt and home manoeuvres. The used examples are among the only examples known and the multiples of the halfpenny 'Army Telegraph' stamps are the largest known. From the later era of WW2 are shown examples of cables that have been censored from troops overseas and the system used by Cable and Wireless to encourage serving personnel to communicate with their loved ones by using a selection of predetermined phrases. This section concludes with a telegram used during the British military occupation of Eritrea, operating the former Italian system. This was a birthday gift from my daughter who knew 'I liked these funny things.'

Frames Forty-Four and Forty-Five: Greetings Telegrams

The most familiar use of the telegram has been to send good wishes and personal greetings for events such as weddings, birthdays, coming of age, and occasionally funerals and other life events. The concept of the greetings telegram was invented in Romania in 1900, developed by New Zealand for Christmas 1908 (examples of both are shown here) and then by the cable companies. During the 1920s and 1930s many countries introduced colourful, beautifully designed and occasionally bizarre special stationery for sending greetings. Examples are shown here from Austria, India, Denmark, South Africa, Mauritius, Sudan Sweden, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Holland and of course Belgium where the 'Telegramme de bienfaisance' achieved high art.

Frames Forty-Six to Fifty: Greetings Telegrams in Great Britain.

Greetings telegrams were adopted late in Great Britain and it was not until 1935 that they appeared here in an attempt to increase dwindling telegram traffic. It worked brilliantly and apart from a short break during WW2, greetings telegrams became an indispensible part of every family event. This section opens with the forerunners, including the Wembley Exhibition souvenir telegrams of 1925 and the Post Office exhibition forms and continues with the brilliantly designed and printed delivery forms following the listing produced by the research of the late Ian Wilkinson. Although the Post Office ceased the telegram service in 1982 (represented here by a rather sad 'last day' telegram from Lundy), it is still possible to send a greetings 'Telemessage' via British Telecom for the modest charge of £17.85 plus VAT thus enabling best men to continue to embarass bridegrooms across the land by reading out risque wedding telegrams.

Frames Fifty-One and Fifty-Two: Telephone stamps and stationery.

Invented by the Scots-Canadian Alexander Graham Bell in 1874, the telephone is of course a form of telecommunications and indeed the British post office argued unsuccessfully that it was a type of telegraph when they wanted to nationalise it in 1880. Telephone stamps are less widespread than telegraph stamps but are equally fascinating. These two frames conclude the display by showing telephone stamps and related stationery from Great Britain, Canada, United States, France, Belgium and a possibly unique example of a local telephone stamp from Denmark.
In the display case in the Hall.

I have shown here a selection of artefacts and material associated with the telegraph service at home and abroad. Included are a telegraph key and sounder (Canada), telegraph insulators (taken from telegraph poles in the USA and Canada and quite a collecting field in themselves), delivery boys' armbands (UK and France), delivery satchels (UK), cable-rate calculators and paper-knives, a Western Union 'callbox' (used to call for a messenger to collect waiting telegrams from offices), A telegram form dispenser (UK). USA uniform badges (including a Western Union belt buckle made by Tiffany), A German telegraph office duplicate book, a cable system map of the 1920s, a W.U. office sign and of course examples of the 'Dollygrams' (with original boxes) from the 1950s.

I hope very much that you will enjoy this display and that it may inspire you to
collect telegraph material.

Please feel free to ask me any questions during the afternoon.