Since these are important for both Letters from Watson and Dracula Daily, as well as a chunk of other late Victorian/Edwardian literature, I thought I would share some useful notes on these.
Telegrams were the Victorian form of a direct message sent over the nascent telegraphic network, which was at this point all wires.
Various undersea cables had been laid by the 1890s, allowing messages to be sent across the Atlantic or even to Australia. However, bandwidth was limited.
These messages were by no means instant - you had to wait for them to be passed between operators and that could take a few hours - but they were much faster than post.
They were not cheap - you were charged by the word and there was a minimum charge. Unless you were a diplomat or military officer, messages were generally kept reasonably short. It would be for things like "I'm coming home on the next steamer" or "buy the thousand nunchucks" or "I'd like three rooms at the Golden Krone in Bistritz."
But you could also send someone birthday messages or wedding greetings. Or indeed petition governments.
You would either go to a post office and dictate the message to an employee, or you could complete a form with your message and a stamp to indicate you had pre-paid (books were available), then get your page boy to take it to the post office. Or put it in any letter box.
The telegrams would be delivered to the person's address or could be collected. For example, if you were staying at a hotel, you could get messages sent there and collect them from reception. You will sometimes see characters in old movies asking the receptionist if they have any messages for precisely this reason.
Many of these networks were operated by governments, especially in Europe. This had implications for privacy of course.
To shorten messages and ensure a degree of confidentiality, various commercial code books were available. Common abbreviations would also be used, like FWD, which still exist today.
STOP, COMMA etc. tended to be used by governments and the military rather than civilians.
While the traditional Morse code single key was still very common, various typewriter and other machines were in use by this time that sped up traffic considerably.
baratheonpilled
blakekathryn
discoholicmusic
vaporwave
origamiaround
ellievsbear
pixelskylines
theartofmadeline
