Curiosities of Civilization Part 18

"Colonel Tulloch has informed me," says Mr. Martin, in his admirable work on the Influence of Tropical Climates on the European Const.i.tution, "that between 1815 and 1855 there died, of European soldiers belonging to her Majesty's and the East India Company's army in India, very nearly 100,000 men, the greater portion of whose lives might have been saved, had better localities been selected for military occupation in that country."

Estimating the value of each soldier in India at 100_l._, this would give a sum of 10,000,000_l._

The barracks and cantonments of India, as regard vastness and solidity, are, perhaps, not to be equalled by any in the world. The military buildings of Burhampore, in Bengal, are said to have cost, during the seventy-seven years they were in existence, including capital and interest, 16,891,206_l._; yet this costly station, like that of Secunderabad, in the Madras presidency, was planted in an absolutely pestiferous locality. All over India the localities of the barracks are bad, and their construction and arrangement extremely faulty. "Nearly the whole station of Cawnpore," says Mr. Jeffreys, "running some miles along the river, was so cut up into small 'compounds,' by high mud walls, that a bird's-eye view would have given it the appearance of a divided honey-comb. These walls, with the profusion of trees they enclosed, seemed as if designed to cut off every current of wind from the inhabitants of the ground-floor dwellings hidden within them." In another case, as if to make stagnation doubly secure, he mentions that there is a square wall within a square wall, surrounding a cantonment. Hence we can easily account for the fearful mortality among European troops in India. As if to make patent to us the folly we commit in constructing these vast bakehouses, the native troops, who hut themselves outside our lines, and thus get plenty of air, present the unique example of a soldiery whose mortality is below that of the population from which it is recruited. In the Bengal presidency the mutiny has cleared away the difficulty; for it has swept the ma.s.s of these pestilential cantonments from the face of the earth. The question, how shall we profit by the loss? is answered by Mr.

Martin in his "Suggestions for promoting the Health and Efficiency of the British Troops serving in the East Indies." He insists that we must station our troops, in future, upon the hills, but not on such stations as we have on the Himalaya and Neilgherry mountains,--positions of 7,000 feet above the sea; for, although they are a security against the fevers of the country, they are apt to induce bowel complaints, which are almost as fatal. His opinion is, that elevations of from 2,800 to 6,000 feet would yield a climate most congenial for European troops,--such, in fact, as we have already found in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. He especially draws attention to the solitary hills,--"those islands of the plains,"--as capable of affording a refuge from the fevers that inundate the low-lying ground. Here the ma.s.s of the British army may be lodged until their services are needed. From these eyries, like the Romans of old, they may watch the champaign country, and be ready, at a moment's notice, to move on any threatened position. There is no intention of recommending the abandonment of strategical points, or large cities which serve as a.r.s.enals, simply because they are not wholesome. There are dangers to be braved in peace as well as in war. Yet our experience of the heroic qualities of the British soldier justifies the a.s.sumption that small bodies of them, placed in strongly fortified positions, could hold out against all comers until succour should arrive from the hill-stations, especially now India is being traversed by railroads and telegraphs. But even these stations are not sufficient to restore patients suffering under chronic disease. These, if possible, should at once be sent home. The sick officer is invalided, and speedily recovers in the air of his native land; the common soldier, on the contrary, is forced to enter the hospital,--too often to die. The men, moreover, should be recruited for a shorter time.

At present they practically serve seventeen years in India,--a period which breaks down the const.i.tutions of the majority. It is the exposure to heat for a great length of time, and not its intensity for a short period, that destroys European life. If we entrap the ignorant labourer by the most unworthy artifices,[31] we should, at least, be merciful to him. Let the term of service be reduced to ten years, and then the stream of stalwart Britons, fresh from the mother-country, would enable us, in conjunction with hill-stations, to keep a powerful and resistless grasp upon the country.

It may well be imagined that, if the sanitary condition of our army is so bad in times of peace, its sufferings in war must be greatly exaggerated.

The experience of the Peninsula, Walcheren, Burmah, and Sebastopol, has unfailingly proved this to be the case, and, in manifold instances, the evils were such as could have been avoided with ease.

"The barracks and the military hospital," says Miss Nightingale, "exist at home and in the colonies as tests of our sanitary condition in peace; and the histories of the Peninsular war, of Walcheren, and of the late Crimean expedition, exist as tests of our sanitary condition in the state of war. We have much more information on the sanitary history of the Crimean campaign than we have of any other. It is a complete example--history does not afford its equal--of an army, after a great disaster arising from its neglects, having been brought into the highest state of health and efficiency. It is the whole experiment on a colossal scale. In all other examples the last step has been wanting to complete the solution of the problem. We had in the first seven months of the Crimean campaign a mortality among the troops at the rate of 60 per cent. per annum from disease alone--a rate of mortality which exceeds that of the great plague in the population of London, and a higher ratio than the mortality in cholera to the attacks; that is to say, that there died out of the army of the Crimea an annual rate greater than ordinarily die in time of pestilence out of sick. We had during the last six months of the war a mortality among our _sick_ not much more than among our _healthy_ Guards at home, and a mortality among our troops in the last five months _two-thirds only of what it is among our troops at home_."

This splendid testimony to the value of sanitary science, exhibited on the largest scale, on an apparently hopeless field, is without appeal. The Commissioners propose a medical officer of health for the army,[32] second in rank to the princ.i.p.al medical officer, and attached to the quartermaster-general in the field. This officer, says the Report, should be the head of the sanitary police of the army, should be answerable for all the measures to be adopted for the prevention of disease, and should report to the quartermaster-general, and to the princ.i.p.al medical officer.

In order to prevent any evasion of responsibility, they further recommend that the sanitary officer shall give his advice in writing, and that the disregard of it on strategical grounds shall be equally recorded by the officer in command. Having thus provided for the army in the field, the Commissioners propose that there shall be a.s.sociated with the Medical Director-General of the Army a sanitary, statistical, and medical colleague. Each of these officers would be at the head of a distinct department--the sanitary officer taking cognizance of all questions of food, dress, diet, exercise, and lodging for the soldier; the statistical department gathering together those invaluable details relative to the health of the army, for the want of which the British troops have so long suffered a mortality out of all proportion to the civil community; while the medical department would serve as a connecting link between civil and military medicine, keeping the latter up to the last word of science, as spoken by the great medical authorities in all countries. Some of these suggestions will require deep consideration before they are adopted.

Nothing, at any rate, must be permitted to fetter the absolute power of the commander in the field, who must have a real as well as a nominal freedom. But every precaution which can guard the health of the soldier without cramping the discretion of the general is demanded alike by humanity and policy. What was so powerfully said in the last century has remained in a great degree true in our own. "The life of a modern soldier is ill-represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and s.h.i.+ps, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless and helpless; gasping and groaning unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits or heaved into the ocean, without notice or remembrance. By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless and enterprise impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted away."

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

If a needle turning upon a pivot were fixed at York, and if, by a wire placed in close proximity to it, the needle could be made to move to the right or to the left through the agency of a power applied at the other end of the wire in London, and if it were agreed that one motion of the needle to the left should signify _a_, and one to the right _b_, &c.,[33]

we should have just such a contrivance as the common needle telegraph now in use.

Such is the dry statement of a problem the more detailed working of which we are about to explain to the reader.

When a schoolboy places a sixpence and a piece of zinc in juxta-position with each other in his mouth, he immediately perceives a singular taste, which as instantly disappears upon their separation; it is an experiment which most of us have performed, wondered at for a moment, and then forgotten. How little did we ever dream that in so doing we were calling into life one of the most subtle, active, and universal agents in nature--a spirit like Ariel to carry our thoughts with the speed of thought to the uttermost ends of the earth--a workman more delicate of hand than the Florentine Cellini, and more resistless in force than the t.i.tans of old!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.]

If now we place a piece of zinc, Z, and of copper, C, in a gla.s.s of acidulated water, instead of in the saliva of the mouth, and if we then attach to the piece of zinc the wire D K, and to the piece of copper the wire B A, and approximate the two ends, A K, until they touch, we shall have the philosophic expression of the contrivance of the boy--a decomposition of the water will immediately take place, and either as its cause or consequence--for scientific men have not yet decided which--an electric current will flow in a continued stream from the zinc plate or positive pole to the copper plate or negative pole of the battery, and this action, provided the plates are kept clean and the acidulated water is supplied, will go on as long as the materials last. If this little instrument, which generates a very small amount of electric force, is combined with others, as in figure 2,--the zinc plate of one cell being connected with the copper plate of the next by a piece of wire--we shall have the celebrated battery invented by Volta in 1800, in which the acc.u.mulated current, after flowing from one cell into another, by means of the little hoops of wire, is transmitted along the large hoop, D K A B, from the one pole of the battery to the other. Within the narrow chambers of some such battery (which may be made of any number of cells, according to the force required), the motive power is generated by which the electric telegraph is worked, and the large hoop by which its two poles are connected represents the telegraphic wire we see running beside the railroad, whose office is to form a conducting pipe for the conveyance of the electricity. Different substances possess this property in various degrees; some, such as dry paper, not permitting the pa.s.sage of the electric fluid to any sensible extent; and others transmitting it with great freedom. Of all known bodies, the metals are the most perfect conductors, and copper is in this respect superior to iron; but the latter, being cheaper and more durable, is commonly employed in the construction of the telegraph. Thus we have two of the indispensable requisites--a constant force and a channel which conveys it from place to place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3.]

There was yet a third thing necessary--some contrivance by which the force could be made instrumental in forming signs or characters at its destined goal; and this final condition was supplied by Oersted's discovery in 1819, that a _magnetic_ needle is deflected by the pa.s.sage of a circuit of electricity through a wire parallel and in close neighbourhood to it. The following cut will explain our meaning:--When the fluid pa.s.ses from the U pole of the battery in the direction of B A K L M Z, and enters V, its opposite pole, "a current," as it is called, is completed, running from left to right, the effect of which upon the needle, N, is to deflect it in the direction of the dotted line (seen in perspective) 2, 3, or to an angle of 90 degrees, with the wire, if the current is sufficiently strong.

If, however, the current be reversed, and the electric fluid made to traverse the wire from right to left, in the direction of the letters V Z M L K A B to the U end of the battery, the needle will immediately reverse its position and place itself at 90 degrees in the opposite direction.

This then is the whole principle and mystery of the needle telegraph, the one still most extensively used in this country. The break that occurs between the letters B U and Z V is intended to show the method in which the needle is made to work. "Whilst the wires are thus apart the circuit is broken," or the fluid no longer pa.s.ses along the wire, but immediately they are approximated the circulation again commences, and the needle "answers the helm." By the opening and closing, then, of this small s.p.a.ce, which is effected by a lever, the needle is made to oscillate at will.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 4.]

The mere fact, however, of an electric current pa.s.sing along a wire in proximity to a magnetic needle was not sufficient to enable any person to construct a telegraph. Would the needle be deflected by a wire, the battery of which was placed at any considerable distance? it would not; therefore, for all telegraphic purposes Oersted's discovery was worthless.

Schweigger, however, soon after ascertained that by pa.s.sing a great number of times round the needle a wire, thoroughly insulated by a "serving" of silk thread, as shown in figure 4, the deflecting powers of the currant were _multiplied_, and the sensibility of the instrument marvellously increased.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 5.]

In the same year that Oersted made his brilliant discovery, M. Arago detected another law, which furnished a second method by which the electric current could be made to tell its tale. He announced to the French Academy the fact so pregnant in its consequences, that the fluid possessed the power of imparting magnetism to steel or iron; and shortly afterwards our own countryman, Sturgeon, invented the first electro-magnet, by coiling around a piece of soft iron a great length of fine insulated copper wire, the ends of which communicated with a battery.

Figure 5 will give a rough idea of this instrument. The wire U B A, when it reaches the cylinder K L, is wound many times round it, and returns to the battery at V. As long as the current is pa.s.sing, the soft iron becomes a magnet and attracts the iron armature P; but directly the circuit is broken its magnetic power ceases, and P, by the action of a spring, flies back. It will at once be seen that by alternately making and breaking the circuit, which can be done as fast as the hand can move the handle of a lever, an up and down movement of the armature P will take place, and this is the principle of action in Wheatstone's electro-magnetic dial instrument and Morse's recording telegraph, so extensively used in America. The general _modus operandi_ of the latter, which is a contrivance of singular merit and efficiency, can be easily understood. At the station at which the message is received, a poised iron lever has a metal pin on its upper surface at one end, and an armature on its under surface at the other end. When the magnet, which is placed beneath the armature, attracts and draws it down, the pin at the opposite extremity is raised, and presses against a strip of paper, which is moved between the metal point, and a roller supported above it, at a uniform rate by means of clock-work. The pin or style will then make a simple dot, or trace lines of variable length upon the paper, according as the electric current is kept up only for a single instant, or for a longer period. "The impressions on the paper," says Dr. Turnbull, "resemble the raised printing for the blind." Out of these dots and lines an alphabet is formed similar to that which we have given in a subsequent page, when speaking of the chemical telegraph at Bain. The instrument of Morse requires only a single wire to work it, and is, says the Abbe Moigno, "an excellent telegraph, very simple, very efficacious, and very rapid in its transmissions. A practised clerk can indent on an average seventeen words a minute, which is consequently as many as a skilful writer could transcribe with a pen. It is, moreover, a great advantage to have fixed on a band of paper the messages which the needle telegraphs merely figure in the air."

Since the year 1821 the principles of action of two of the working telegraphs of the present day were known to scientific men, and the question naturally arises, how was it that it still took so many years to make the telegraph a working fact? The answer is, that the combination of circ.u.mstances necessary to bring it to perfection had not arisen. What interest had practical men in carrying out the dreams of philosophers? No one imagined that it would ever become a necessary social engine, or that it would pay "seven per cent." to a public Company. The patronage of the Government could alone have been looked to by any of the proposers of the new method of telegraphy, and the sort of encouragement received from this quarter may be judged from the fact that when Mr. Ronalds attempted to draw the attention of some of the officials to the working of his instrument, they did not even deign to pay it a visit, but returned for answer, "That the telegraph was of no use in time of peace, and that the semaph.o.r.e in time of war answered all the required purposes." The occasion that suddenly ripened the invention and brought it into practical operation was the introduction of railroads. Were it not for the universal spread of this new means of locomotion, the telegraph might still have remained in that limbo from which so many discoveries have never emerged.

The vast advantage to a railroad of a method of conveying signals instantaneously throughout its entire length was at once seen, and the continuity of its property, together with the protection afforded by its servants, presented facilities for its introduction and maintenance which had never before occurred.

A problem of great scientific interest as well as of practical importance in connection with the electric telegraph had still to be solved. The experiments of Dr. Watson on Shooter's Hill, in the middle of the last century, proved, it is true, that _a shock of electricity_ pa.s.sed along a four mile circuit without any appreciable loss of time, but nothing was definitely known about the speed at which it really travelled. This difficult question was answered by Professor Wheatstone. His beautiful investigations on the subject were made by means of a very rapidly revolving mirror, upon which the pa.s.sage of the electric fluid, at different and distant parts of a severed wire, was indicated by sparks, which appeared as lines of light on the rapidly turning gla.s.s, on the same principle that a bit of lighted charcoal whirled round and round in the air appears as a circle of fire. By this instrument, which we cannot render intelligible to the general reader, but for a fuller account of which we refer him to the Philosophical Transactions of 1834, he made it evident to the eye that one spark or leap of the electric fluid did occur before the other--thus proving that its transit along the wire _was_ a matter of time. The manner in which he took measure of this infinitesimal period was extremely ingenious. By attaching a hollow piece of metal--a metallic humming-top as it were--to the spindle of his revolving mirror, and at the same time directing a current of air against it, he was enabled to test its speed by the pitch of the sound produced: this once known, the measuring of time that elapsed between the different sparks was easy. Thus he forced the lightning to tell how fast it was going. His admirably-contrived apparatus has since proved of considerable use to philosophers in measuring very minute parts of time, and scientific men can now with the greatest ease ascertain the period a flash of light takes to traverse a distance of 50 feet--and light, be it remembered, travels at the speed of 200,000 miles a second!

By this experiment it appeared that electricity travels through a copper-wire with at least the velocity of light through the celestial s.p.a.ce, though the recent experiments made for Professor Bache, director of the national survey of America, have proved that the velocity of the current through suspended _iron_ wires is not more than 15,400 miles per second. The philosophic proof of the marvellous rate at which the electric current moved, doubtless turned many minds once more in the direction of the long sought for telegraph, and it is not surprising that the eminent elucidator of the fact was among the number. A short time after this he insulated four miles of wire in the vaults of King's College, on which he performed most of his subsequent experiments.[34] Thus in the silence of these gloomy vaults, as early as 1836, the lightning that was to flash with intelligence round the world--the nervous system so shortly destined to spread itself through two hemispheres, string together continents and islands, and carry human thought under the wide-spreading seas, was slowly being trained to the service of man by one of the most distinguished of the many philosophers who have contributed to the development of this branch of science.

Following up his experiment, Professor Wheatstone worked out the arrangements of his telegraph, and having a.s.sociated himself in 1837 with Mr. Cooke, who had previously devoted much time to the same subject, a patent was taken out in the June of that year in their joint names. Their telegraph had five wires and five needles; the latter being worked upon the face of a lozenge-shaped dial inscribed with the letters of the alphabet, any one of which could be indicated by the convergence of two of the needles. This very ingenious instrument could be manipulated by any person who knew how to read, and did not labour under the disadvantage of working by a code which required time to be understood. Immediately upon the taking out of the patent, the directors of the North Western Railway sanctioned the laying down of wires between the Euston Square and Camden Town stations, and towards the end of July the telegraph was ready to work.

Late in the evening of the 25th of that month, in a dingy little room near the booking-office at Euston square, by the light of a flaring dip-candle, which only illuminated the surrounding darkness, sat the inventor, with a beating pulse and a heart full of hope. In an equally small room at the Camden Town station, where the wires terminated, sat Mr. Cooke, his co-patentee, and among others, two witnesses well known to fame, Mr.

Charles Fox and Mr. Stephenson. These gentlemen listened to the first word spelt by that trembling tongue of steel which will only cease to discourse with the extinction of man himself. Mr. Cooke in his turn touched the keys and returned the answer. "Never did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before," said the Professor, "as when all alone in the still room I heard the needles click, and as I spelled the words I felt all the magnitude of the invention, now proved to be practical beyond cavil or dispute." The telegraph thenceforward, as far as its mechanism was concerned, went on without a check, and the modifications of this instrument, which is still in use, have been made for the purpose of rendering it more economical in its construction and working, two wires at present being employed, and in some cases only one.

A frequently renewed and still unsettled controversy has arisen upon the point of who is to be considered the first contriver of the telegraph in the form which made it available for popular use. Two names alone are now put forward to dispute the claim with Wheatstone--Steinheil of Munich and Morse of New York.

From a communication of M. Arago to the French Academy of Sciences, it appears that the telegraph of Steinheil was in operation, for a distance of seven miles, on the 19th of July, 1837, the same month in which Wheatstone put his own contrivance to the test upon the North Western Railway. But besides that the patent of Wheatstone was taken out in the preceding June, and was itself founded upon previous and thoroughly successful experiments, there is another material circ.u.mstance which gives him a claim to priority over Steinheil, viz., that the latter published no description of his instrument until August, 1838, that he altered and improved it in the interval, and that the only accounts we have of his contrivance describe its amended and not its original form. It was, however, a very meritorious performance, and, in addition to its other excellences, Steinheil was the first who employed the earth to complete the circuit--a most important fact, which we shall explain hereafter.

Still his telegraph was inferior in its mechanical arrangements to that of Wheatstone, and the inventor himself soon abandoned it in favour of a modification of the instrument of Morse.

Morse dates his claim to _the invention of the telegraph_ from the year 1832, when the first idea of such an instrument, he tells us, struck him as he was returning home from Havre in the s.h.i.+p Sully. A fellow-pa.s.senger, Professor Jackson, it appears, was in the habit of amusing himself, in common with the rest of the pa.s.sengers, with some accounts of the wonders of electricity; and when Morse later developed his contrivance, Professor Jackson not only claimed it as a plagiarism from his own conversation, but added that Morse was so ignorant as to ask, upon hearing the term Electro-Magnetism, "In what does that differ from ordinary Magnetism?" The telegraph was at best, on the part of both of them, a crude idea; and it was not till September, 1837, that Professor Morse was able to exhibit his still imperfect machinery in action. He ultimately succeeded, as we have before stated, in producing a telegraph of first-rate excellence; and, out of 15,000 miles of wire which had been erected by 1852 in the United States, 12,124 were worked on the system of Morse.

The question of priority is, in our opinion, after all, of no sort of importance, at least as regards the rival claims of Wheatstone and Steinheil. When the progress of science has prepared the way for a great discovery, two geniuses will occasionally take the step together, because each is able to take the step of a giant. It was thus that the Calculus was found out by both Newton and Leibnitz, and the place of Neptune in the heavens by both Adams and Leverrier. It was the same with the telegraph.

The investigations of Wheatstone and Steinheil were entirely independent of each other, and it cannot lessen the merit of either that there was a second man in Europe who was equal to the task.

There are some who dispute Professor Wheatstone's claim, by urging that, inasmuch as all the main features of the telegraph existed before he took out his patent, there was nothing left to invent. It is true that much had been done, but it is equally certain that there was much to do. When Wheatstone first directed his attention to electricity as a means of communicating thoughts to a distance, the telegraph was a useless and inoperative machine. He and his partner established as a working, paying fact, what had hitherto been little better than a philosophic toy. To those who now disparage the Professor's labours we think it sufficient to reply by the admirable saying of the French _savant_, M. Biot, "Nothing is so easy as the discovery of yesterday; nothing so difficult as the discovery of to-day."

Let us return, however, to the history of the telegraph in England, from which we have digressed. After the successful working of the mile-and-a-quarter line, the Directors of the London and Birmingham Railway proposed to lay it down to the latter town if the Birmingham and Liverpool Directors would continue it on their line; but they objected, and the telegraph received notice to quit the ground it already occupied.

Of course, its sudden disappearance would have branded it as a failure in most men's minds, and, in all probability, the telegraph would have been put back many years, had not Mr. Brunel, to his honour, in 1839, determined to adopt it on the Great Western line. It was accordingly carried at first as far as West Drayton, thirteen miles, and afterwards to Slough, a distance of eighteen miles. The wires were not at this early date suspended upon posts, but insulated and encased in an iron tube, which was placed beneath the ground.

The telegraph hitherto had been strictly confined to railway business, and in furtherance of this object Brunel proposed to continue it to Bristol as soon as the line was opened. Here, again, the folly and blindness of railway proprietors threw obstacles in the way, which led, however, to an unlooked-for application of its powers to public purposes. At a general meeting of the proprietors of the Great Western Railway in Bristol, a Mr.

Hayward, of Manchester, got up and denounced the invention as a "new-fangled scheme," and managed to pa.s.s a resolution repudiating the agreement entered into with the patentees. Thus within a few years we find the telegraph rejected by two of the most powerful railway companies, the persons above all others who ought to have welcomed it with acclamation.

To keep the wires on the ground, Mr. Cooke proposed to maintain it at his own expense, and was permitted by the directors to do so on condition of sending their railway signals free of charge, and of extending the line to Slough. In return, he was allowed to transmit the messages of the public.

Here commences the first popular use of the telegraph in England, or in any other country. The tariff was one s.h.i.+lling per message. The effect of this low charge was to develop a cla.s.s of business which seems beneath the notice of the powerful company now in possession of most of the telegraphic lines in the kingdom. The transactions of the retail dealers are considered too petty, perhaps, for their attention; but there can be no doubt that the comfort of the public would be vastly increased, and also the revenues of the company, if they would only condescend to take a lesson by the commercial experience of this s.h.i.+lling tariff, the working of which we will ill.u.s.trate by transcribing from the telegraph book at Paddington a few specimens of the messages sent:--

"Commercial News. 1844, Nov. 1, Slough, 4.10 P.M.--'Send a messenger to Mr. Harris, poulterer, Duke-street, Manchester-square, and order him to send twelve more chickens to Mr. Finch, High-street, Windsor, by the 5.0 P.M. down train, without fail.' Answer: Paddington, 5.5 P.M.--'The chickens are sent by the 5.0 P.M. train.'

"Slough, 7.35 P.M.--'A Mr. Thomas B., a first-cla.s.s pa.s.senger, 6.30 P.M. train, left a blue cloak with a velvet collar in first-cla.s.s booking-office. Send it by mail train if found.'

"Paddington 7.45 P.M.--'There are two such cloaks in the booking-office: has Mr. B.'s any mark on any part of it?' Slough, 7.47 P.M.--'Mr. B.'s has the mark under the collar, inside.'

"Paddington, 7.55 P.M.--'Cloak found, and will be sent on as requested.'

"Slough, Nov. 11, 1844, 4.3 P.M.--'Send a messenger to Mr. Harris, Duke-street, Manchester-square, and request him to send 6 lbs. of white bait and 4 lbs. of sausages, by the 5.40 train, to Mr. Finch, of Windsor they must be sent by 5.30 down train, or not at all.'

"Paddington, 5.27 P.M.--'Messenger returned with articles which will be sent by 5.30 train, as requested.'"

The first application of the telegraph to police purposes took place about this time on the Great Western Railway, and, as it was the first intimation thieves got of the electric constable being on duty, it is full of interest. The following extracts are from the telegraph book kept at the Paddington station:--

"Eaton Montem day, August 28, 1844.--The Commissioners of Police have issued orders that several officers of the detective force shall be stationed at Paddington to watch the movements of suspicious persons, going by the down-train, and give notice by the electric telegraph to the Slough station of the number of such suspected persons, and dress, their names if known, also the carriages in which they are."