The days before email
11:54am Monday 12th May 2008
My recent feature on the Royal York Hotel in Brighton interested Roger Davies of the Sussex Postal History Society.
He points out the hotel was a telegraph office in Brighton from about 1851 and it was known as the Old Steine Station.
This new method of communication must have seemed as modern and fast to the Victorians as email and the internet do to us today.
An enthusiastic user of the service provided by The Electric Telegraph Company was Lewis Slight, clerk to the Town Commissioners. This receipt by the company is for a message he sent in 1854.
Brighton owes an enormous debt to Slight, for it was through his energy and ability that the town bought the Royal Pavilion.
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