The COLLECT facility was available to users of the telegraph system to send a telegram and charge the cost to the recipient of the telegram. This facility was referred to as COLLECT TELEGRAMS.
Such a use was not unusual and the practice was adopted in all Australian Colonies as well as being continued well into the Australian era - and of course with more watchfulness and more forms.
In Colonial days, all the Colonies provided the COLLECT facility by simply requiring a sender to annotate the transmission form with the word COLLECT. The Operator would calculate the cost and add that to the message on the transmission form after the added word. The recipient of such a telegram would then be notified that a telegram had arrived for them or a messenger would bring it to the address shown and the recipient would pay the required amount before being able to access their telegram. If the potential recipient of a Collect Telegram refused to pay the cost, the sender had to pay together with any other costs.
There are always those in the community who wish to rort any system for their own greedy interests. The Collect system was sometimes used to advertises goods and services to people who paid the fee necessary before realising what the message was. The Week of 13 July 1894 reported the following:
"On Thursday Mr. W. Mooney received a collect telegram from Maryborough, purporting to be signed by "Robert Gibson" asking for the loan of £1. Gibson being a well known jockey and trainer, Mr. Mooncy wired him the money at once.
An hour or so later, Gibson went into Mooney's shop, when he was asked with some surprise "how he got down from Maryborough so soon"?
"So soon'" said Gibson, "why I haven't been in Maryborough for a week, why do you ask"?
"Because I have just received this telegram" said Mooney, showing it, "and sent your £1 by way of answer".
The police are on the forgers track at Maryborough. Mr. M. Sheehy received a similar telegram the same day also signed "Robert Gibson" but before he got it, he had seen Mr. Mooney, and was heartless enough to decline the loan".
Amazing that we still have to put up with the descendants of these scammers - and read daily about their exploits 130+ years later!!!!
1. Queensland regulations:
Queensland was late in their acceptance of the COLLECT procedure but, as reported in the Brisbane Courier of 25 November 1876:
"in the Legislative Assembly, on the 15th instant, Mr. Thorn being hard pushed by Mr. Palmer and Mr. Stevenson promised, apparently with all the sincerity of which his generous nature is capable, to make immediate arrangements by which a "collect" telegram might be sent without prepayment by the sender, if of fair reputation.
Yesterday an individual of extreme moral rectitude did call at the Telegraphic Office, and tender a telegram in reply to another under the supposition that it would be sent along under terms of the Premier's promise. A genial and more enlightened person in the way of a clerk there took a very different view and, after murmuring something about " never putting any trust in princes" remarked that "it would not wash" explaining in good English afterwards that it was just as easy to forget a promise as to make one.
That clerk seemed to us a splendid judge of characters, especially Premiers, and if some of the other Civil servants have similar views they will not be greatly surprised if the prospective increase to their salaries so freely promised vanish as do the gray mists of a summer morn".
Another interesting interpretation for the payment of "Collect Telegrams" as an economy measure possibly to be enacted by the Colonial Government in Queensland is described in the Rockhampton Bulletin of 15 December 1876 (on page 2, column 3). "Instead of payment of members we are now to have payment by members".
Certainly the attitude in the community towards "Collect Telegrams" was positive and seen as a quick way to support decision making. An excellent example was shown by the article in the Darling Downs Gazette of 17 December 1883 concerning a special meeting of the Darling Downs Cricket Association:
"We hold a Committee on Tuesday evening next, re the visit of the Australian Eleven this season, and I shall be very glad to receive a communication from you, as to the probable assistance we may expect from Toowoomba in the event of the eleven playing there ...
I think, and hope, that a visit from the best representative cricketers of Australia, if not of the world, should be welcomed by the Downs players, and trust that satisfactory arrangements can be concluded with the Association. Mr. Alexander proposes for the eleven to play eighteen of Queensland in Brisbane, and would probably meet a larger number (up to twenty-two) at Toowoomba, if you wished.
If you have not time for a letter before Tuesday and can send me a collect telegram to read at our meeting, will you kindly do so".
Change to Reply Paid telegrams.
After so many problems with the system of COLLECT telegrams - especially problems resulting from mis-use and scammers - the facility was abolished in 1884 and replaced by REPLY-PAID telegrams,
A letter to the Editor of the Queensland Figaro and Punch of 7 November 1885 reveals the murky implications for Telegraph Office employees of the Collect system in Queensland. It also underlines the poor conditions which were borne by these people without much complaint at all:
"One Shilling Collect.
An issue or two since, Figaro contained an article under the above heading, exposing and condemning an abominable system of fining the overworked slaves of bottled lightning who have often to work till all hours of the night and morning when the line is "crowded", must nevertheless be at the office again at 8.30 a.m., and are expected to be as precise and correct as if they had cast-iron constitutions and were a sort of Babbidge's mechanical calculator.
I have received the thanks of a large number of telegraph officials for my interference with a tyrannical regulation. Here is a sample one (we'll suppose that it comes from the centre of Tartary):
" Dear Figaro
I am very much pleased to see that you are taking up the cause of us poor devils in the Telegraph Department in respect of the 'collect' telegrams issued by the head office to any operator, who thereby has to pay his shillings into the till at his own office and is thus virtually fined in a cruel and unjustifiable manner. If the public knew all about these 'collect' memoranda, they would, to a man, insist on such infernal Russian tyranny being abolished. I have often gone for three months and not made a mistake in my checks and some morning have made the mistake of a penny or so; along will come this abominable 'collect' message and I have to put my shilling into the cashbox of my own office.
I and every officer in the Telegraph Department fully endorse all you say. If an operator makes a mistake in a telegram or commits some grave error or offence, he deserves to be punished, but not for trivial accidents that do not affect any one beyond the correction of the check in the office. If I am out on line duty and my wife, who is my assistant, makes an error in the checks, she is fined 6d.; and the smallest punishments of this sort make considerable inroads into the miserable pittance she is allowed for assisting me with the telegraph office and for being postmistress and keeping the Money Order Office and Savings Bank. With a large family to look after besides, it is little wonder that, when I am compelled to be away down the line, she makes an occasional mistake in the checks, but I think it is a burning shame that she should be fined for an error of perhaps a penny, and which can be rectified when the first batch of messages is sent our way.
The 'collects' forced out of poor devils of operators and assistants amount, on an average, to nearly one thousand a month, simply for slight errors in routine. I call it a robbery.
Yours, &c.—A Sufferer."
It is a robbery. No private individual, who was an honest man, would dream of treating his clerks in that outrageous manner. All human brains, especially if severely strained, must and will err in trifling details. Who has, for instance, never forgotten where he laid some document or other and had to recast some memorandum, thus giving a few minutes extra work to his office? Is such a one to be imposed upon by his employer with a shilling fine for such an accident? Are telegraph operators such more brainful beings than anyone else that they can never make a mistake? Or is it that no one but an absolutely perfect machine, which never gets out of gear, is to be a telegraph clerk.
The reasonable rule is simple enough. If a telegraph official is worth keeping, he's worth his salary. If he's worth his salary, he should get it in full — God knows it's pitiful enough! If he makes an accidental error of such consequence as to involve a strain on the department or any of the public, and his services are even then still worth retaining, let him, in such instances and such instances only, be fined and reprimanded.
But to harass men for the slightest mistake and to jew them out of part of their salary is not only dishonest and tyrannical, but it is also foolish, because it irritates the officers into a more confused state of mind and multiplies the liabilities to the commission of error a hundredfold.
Why not stop such fooling?
Problems with COLLECT telegrams.
It is not aways possible to reach down far enough to get to the lowest common denominator when it comes to people who might abuse and scam any system for their own selfish gain. The Week of 13 July 1894 reported the following incident related to Collect telegrams:
"On Thursday Mr. W. Mooney received a COLLECT telegram from Maryborough, purporting to be signed by "Robert Gibson" asking for the loan of £1. Gibson being a well known jockey and trainer, Mr. Mooncy wired him the money at once.
An hour or so later, Gibson went into Mooney's shop, when he was asked with some surprise "how he got down from Maryborough so soon"? "So soon'" said Gibson, "why I haven't been in Maryborough for a week, why do you ask"?
"Because I have just received this telegram" said Mooney, showing it, "and sent your £1 by way of answer".
The police are on the forgers track at Maryborough. Mr. M. Sheehy received a similar telegram the same day also signed "Robert Gibson" but before he got it, he had seen Mr. Mooney and was heartless enough to decline the loan".
Similarly, the Morning Bulletin of 15 January 1894 described a situation showing the quiet opposition by many members of the public to the COLLECT annotation when it was a deliberate attempt to save funds improperly:
A few weeks ago, says "Shaughran" of the Star, a resident of Bundaberg won a prize of £1,000 in a Brisbane lottery. The prize consisted of a block of land in the metropolis.
Next day telegrams were arriving wholesale, among them half-a-dozen (more or less) from Brisbane solicitors offering their services to set the necessary transfer of deeds effected. All these telegrams bore the legend "COLLECT" and had to be paid for on delivery. The limbs of the law evidently did not like to risk a shilling on the chance of getting the job, though doubtless each and all of them gloated on the prospect of by-and-by sending up a bill of costs beginning:
This formed a vision of bliss to the struggling legal limb and had hopes that some Bundaberg sugar had a chance of finding its way into his pocket. This was good.
But the legal fraternity reckoned without their host. The lucky winner has a father and a father who knows his way about. The collect telegrams were handed to him and, without much consideration, he scudded down Burbon Street to the Telegraph Office where he immediately took possession of one of the little compartments prepared for the public, over which for an hour or two hovered the angels of faith, hope and charity listening eagerly to the verses of scripture and combinations that floated on the circumambient air.
The telegraph clerk on duty was astonished a few hours later to have thrust into his hand a number of COLLECT messages addressed to Brisbane lawyers which displayed no evidence of an intention on the part of the sender to abbreviate. They began thusly:
" Dear Sir, I am in receipt of your COLLECT wire of this day's date in which you ask whether, &c, &c In reply I beg (verse of scripture), &c., &c." Winding up with "COLLECT". The messages came to about 15s. each and the biters were properly bitten. They will try no more collect messages on that family".