Chronicling the journey of the telegraph in Jamaica

• Title: The Story of the Telegraph in Jamaica
• Authors: Rae Davis, Martin Henry and Martin MacLeavy
• Publisher: Arawak Publications
• Reviewer: Paul H. Williams

The 19th century was a great era for the invention of communication technologies, and The Story of the Telegraph in Jamaica, written by Rae Davis, Martin Henry and Martin MacLeavy, focuses on one of them, the telegraph

With a foreword from Patrick E. Bryan, Douglas Hall Professor of History at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies, this 132-page paperback, published by Arawak Publications, looks at the birth, evolution and death of the telegraph, and how it changed life in Jamaica and the rest of the world.

Part One, The Telegraph in Jamaica, consists of nine chapters of which I find two and five to be very interesting. Chapter 5, Telegrams and Life, looks at the impact of the telegraph service on Jamaican life by way of anecdotes, such as the following one on page 39:

"Angry residents in the village of Tickey Tickey near Christiana in Manchester telegraph the chairman of the Manchester Parish Council, S. E. Brooks, complaining that a bulldozer working on the new road in their district was to remove to Silent Hill to work on lands owned by Councillor Alexander. 'We are irate and demand an immediate investigation, failing which we plan an early protest march on your office at Mandeville,' they warned." This was on February 16, 1958.

The telegraph service itself has faced many strikes by its workers for better working conditions and pay, and was at the mercy of angry protesters, as the following paragraph from Chapter 2 explains:

"Telegraph works were subject to damage during riots and protests. In the upheavals of May 1938 workers protesting for higher wages cut telegraph lines in several places across the country ... Three years earlier, newspaper reports said rioting banana workers in Oracabessa, St Mary, had blocked roads and cut power and telegraph lines."

Chapter 2, Post Office Telegraph Rules 1925, discusses the conditions under which telegraph clerks, single females, had to work. They were required to live on the premises of the telegraph stations as they had to provide emergency services outside of the regular working hours.

But, in the 1940s the rule governing long working hours and that against clerks being married were softened. Yet, in 1955, the illustrious Alexander Bustamante could not help himself.

Davis, Henry and MacLeavy say that after Bustamante returned from a midnight visit to Sir Harold Allan at Nuttall Memorial Hospital, he went to Cross Roads Post Office and woke up the postmistress to send a telegram to six leaders of the then recently formed Farmers' Party. The telegram said, "From a layman's point of view, Allan is dying."

"When asked why he was sending this telegram at that late hour, Bustamante replied: 'I hope these gentlemen will be awakened from their beds to get the telegram.' According to him, reports of the speeches at a recent Farmers' Party meeting had reached Allan while he was recuperating at the mineral bath in St Thomas and had caused him to collapse."

Part Two looks at The Telegraph and the World through the following chapters on: historical background to telecommunications, invention of the telegraph, scientific principles of telegraphy, early telegraphic equipment, commercial telegraphy in Britain and the United States, wiring the world for telegraphy, and the end of telegraphy.

My only suggestion to the writers of this very informative book is that Part One should be Part Two, and vice versa, since Part Two is generally about the history and demise of the telegraph. It lays the foundation of The Story of the Telegraph in Jamaica, which should be an excellent source for social historians and students of communication technology.