Mobile phones, FaceTime, WhatsApp, social media…It’s hard to imagine the world without instant communications, but if you ask anyolder person, they will tell you that staying in touch has not always been as easyas it is today.
The Dawn of Modern Communication
Let’s go back 150 years to the middle ofthe reign of Queen Victoria. The 1800s was a century of change and innovation.Industry, transportation, commerce, and medicine all saw rapid advances, and sodid communications. How did people stay in touch in the late 1800s?
A new communication system was SamuelMorse’s telegraph, a system of electrical pulses sent along a wire. The pulses– dots and dashes – formed an alphabet called Morse code. A specially trained telegraphisttapped the message onto the wire and, at the other end of the wire secondslater, another telegraphist transcribed the message. The number of wordsdetermined the price of the telegram, so they were often abruptly short. Deliveryof the message cost an additional fee. People found telegrams expensive andinconvenient, so they didn’t take off as a common means of staying in touch inthe 1800s.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell’s freshlypatented telephone entered the communications scene. This new-fangled deviceallowed for instant, real-time, person-to-person communication across adistance, but it took another fifty years for telephones to become common inhomes, changing forever how people communicated.
Sample of Copperplate By George Bickham - The Universal Penman,
published by Dover Publications, Inc., New York, Public Domain
The Heyday of Handwritten Letters
So how did nineteenth century people stay connected?They sent handwritten letters through the post. What we call “snail mail” todaywas then surprisingly quick – more like “hare mail.” Mid-century reforms enhancedthe British postal system, making it cheap, fast, and very convenient.
Up until the late 1830s, a letter was paidfor by the person it was addressed to, and the pricing wasn’t easy to calculate.In 1840, a teacher named Rowland Hill suggested big changes to the postalsystem: the pricing should be simplified, and the sender of the letter shouldpay. He invented prepaid, adhesive postal stamps called Penny Blacks, whichcost one penny for a letter under half an ounce sent anywhere in the UnitedKingdom. Pillar boxes were introduced, making letter sending very convenient,and trains shortened delivery time across distances. From 1897, mail wasdelivered to houses, not just to local post offices.
Penny Black sheet of six (wikipedia public domain image)
These reforms started a correspondencecraze. By the turn of the twentieth century, the General Post Office handled anestimated 2,740 million pieces of mail – a ginormous increase from the 76million pieces of mail sent back when Penny Blacks were first introduced.
The mail was delivered between six andtwelve times a day in big cities like London. That’s a lot of postie visits! Itmeant someone could post a letter to someone across town, and they could receiveit about two hours a later. There was enough time for them to post a reply, andhave it delivered in the same day. It’s not instant messaging, but it’s prettygood!
International mail was a different storyback then. For example, letters sent to India or Australia in the early 1800s couldtake months. Imagine getting important news from home – like a job offer, a birthor a death – late by a few months!
This Victorian love of letter-writingspawned things like illustrated greeting cards, post cards, and Christmas cards.Beautiful handwriting was prized, and a lovely, loopy script called Copperplatewas popular. Victorian pens were fitted with metal nibs that were dipped inbottled ink.
Queen of the Handwritten Word
Queen among the letter writers of theVictorian Era is Queen Victoria herself. No one knows exactly how many lettersshe wrote in her lifetime, but some of her surviving correspondence has beenbound into over sixty volumes (books). Between her mountain of mail and herdaily journaling, it is estimated that she wrote an average of 2,500 words aday – or approximately 60 million words in her time as queen. That’s a lot ofletter paper and ink!
Queen Victoria Writing with Abdul Arim (Wikipedia. Public domain)
Queen Victoria is the HM in Her Majesty’sLeague of Remarkable Young Ladies, a book set in 1889 London and starring WinifredWeatherby, a 14-year-old wannabe inventor. The story includes lots of differentforms of correspondence: calling cards, letters, telegrams, Morse code, newsarticles, and something called a telautogram.
Telautograph (National Museum of American History;
Smithsonian Institution, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
The Telautograph was an extraordinary butforgotten Victorian invention that reproduced and transmitted copies ofhandwriting and line drawings across telegraph wires. Invented in 1889, Elisha Gray’sTelautograph was an early forerunner of the 1980s fax machine. Read the book todiscover if this amazing invention helped or hindered Winifred in her role asgadget maker for Queen Victoria’s league of young lady spies.
Writing Challenge 1: Snail Mail
Snail mail is super fun! The best way toincrease your chances of GETTING a letter is SENDING a letter.
Your challenge is to write a real letter topost to someone you know. It’s a good idea to pick someone who is likely toreply. (Hint: Grandparents and older people are usually thrilled to receive aletter and to write back.)
The only rules are:
Write your letter by hand. It doesn’t haveto be long!
Use traditional letter writing conventions:
A traditional salutation: Dear _____, / Mydearest ____, / etc.
A message (Ideas: something about you,questions about them, something you’re proud of, etc.)
A traditional closing: Yours truly, / Yourloving (grandchild), / Warm regards, / etc.
Your signature: Can you do a Copperplatestyle signature with lots of lovely loops? Have a go!
Address the envelope and affix a stamp. Youmight have to ask for help if you don’t know the address. And you might need toask for a stamp from your parent or carer. Don’t forget to write your returnaddress on the envelope!
Post it in a Royal Mail pillar box andsmile because your letter will brighten someone’s day!
Challenge Two 2: Code Cracking
(International Morse Code alphabet (Wikipedia: Public domain)
Can you decode this Morse code message?
.. - / .. ... / ..-. ..- -. / - --- / .--.-. .. - . / .-.. . - - . .-. ...
I T / IS /
[It is fun to write letters]
Try writing your name in Morse code.
Alison D. Stegert has worked as an innovative school counsellor, a bumbling waitress, and an intrepid English (EFL) teacher, but writing kids’ books is her dream-come-true job.
Her latest book,Her Majesty’s League of Remarkable Young Ladies, was published in the UK in July 2023 and released in Australia by Scholastic in 2024. The book is the result of Alison’s 2021 win of the international competitionThe Times | Chicken House | IET 150 Prize.
Aussimerican Alison is a long-term resident of Queensland, where she serves as state director of the Queensland branch of SCBWI Australia East and the chief scribe at the Sunny Coast Writers’ Roundtable.
Instagram & Threads: @alison_stegert_kidlit
X:@Alison Stegert
website: ali-stegert.com
