The legal status and issues of telegrams
In New South Wales, an increasing imbalance of the power of the telegram in deciding legal status and rights developed in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The situation developed that a mere mention in a telegram became more significant than evidence. An example - of many which could be cited here - is shown by the case reported in the Bell's Life of 16 August 1862:
"There is no scientific or mechanical invention however useful and beneficial to mankind it may be, but is capable of being perverted to the worst uses. The application of chloroform to render a sufferer insensible to pain - the wonders of photography - and even that modern absurdity, Crinoline, have all been made subservient to the vilest and most criminal purposes.
The Electric Telegraph, that astonishing proof of man's genius, has not escaped the perversion of its legitimate uses. In the Assembly on Tuesday Mr. Dalgleish called the attention of the Government to the fact that four men had been arrested in Sydney as absconders from the hired service of the A. A. Co., on no other authority than a "mere telegram." The hon. member expressed himself strongly upon this "most glaring and flagrant breach of the liberty of the subject and very truly observed that "we must be living in a very queer state of society" - a fact we don't pretend to dispute. There can be no doubt of the utility of the Telegraph in assisting the administration of Justice but, in all such cases, its agency should be with extreme care and in no trivial or unimportant case.\
Several arrests have lately been made in Sydney whose only accuser has been the "magic wire". A few days ago a man was brought before the Bench by a detective, having no other authority for his capture but the vague one of a telegram. The Presiding Magistrate, Mr Caldwell we believe, immediately discharged the man.
We trust the Colonial Secretary will as promptly put a stop to this objectionable practice, as he did to the equally improper one of needlessly incarcerating seamen".
See Kapunda TO, SA for who has legal custody. also see http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/94740812?searchTerm=Darwin%20%22telegraph%20office%22&searchLimits=sortby=dateAsc
Issue of a Clerk being able to disclose the contents of telegrams in court. The Yass Courier of 16 July 1859 noted:
"On Wednesday (says the Melbourne Age) the question as to the power of courts of justice to compel clerks in the Telegraph office to produce in evidence, when called upon under a duces tecum, such telegrams as may, in the course of their duty, have passed through their hands, was decided in the affirmative. Their Honors the Judges held that the intention of the Telegraph Act was to prevent unseemly babbling in public of what passed in the office and was not intended to interfere with the power of the law courts to order evidence to be produced before them. It appears, by a case tried a few days ago at Castlemaine, that Mr. Justice Barry holds a similar opinion for he also, in a civil action, directed a telegraph clerk to produce certain telegrams in evidence".