Post by Matt James on Apr 16, 2009 16:42:41 GMT
With regard to your telegram messenger boys web site you may be interested to know that my mother, then Edith Grenfell, became the first female telegraph messenger in the West of the Country during W.W.I, based at Penzance Post Office.
Born in January, 1900, I think she was sixteen when she commenced duties the day following Whit Monday. As she was the first she became "Tl". Eventually there were seven other female telegraph messengers. I don't know when they left but on a group photograph taken on Peace Day, 1919, there are only men.
The girls delivered telegrams over a wide area including ,Madron, Gulval and Nancledra, lonely and unlit roads. They worked evening shifts in their turn and bicycles were their transport whatever the weather conditions.
Too often they knew they carried the dreaded information to next of kin that a loved one had been wounded, was missing or killed in action. Their great dread was a recipent, either unable to read or too frightened to do so, asking them to read the telegram. These were the only occassions messengers were permitted by the Post Office to enter a recipents house and were expected to call in a neighbour if possible .
Miss E.C.Collins
Daugther
Born in January, 1900, I think she was sixteen when she commenced duties the day following Whit Monday. As she was the first she became "Tl". Eventually there were seven other female telegraph messengers. I don't know when they left but on a group photograph taken on Peace Day, 1919, there are only men.
The girls delivered telegrams over a wide area including ,Madron, Gulval and Nancledra, lonely and unlit roads. They worked evening shifts in their turn and bicycles were their transport whatever the weather conditions.
Too often they knew they carried the dreaded information to next of kin that a loved one had been wounded, was missing or killed in action. Their great dread was a recipent, either unable to read or too frightened to do so, asking them to read the telegram. These were the only occassions messengers were permitted by the Post Office to enter a recipents house and were expected to call in a neighbour if possible .
Miss E.C.Collins
Daugther