Working with telegrams

There are quite a lot of things you need to watch out for when using telegrams as sources. Try to complete the tasks in this resource to help develop your skills when using this type of source.

Key Stages
This resource is suitable for students in Key Stages 3-5.
Connections to Curriculum
Working with historical primary sources
Key stage 4:
OCR GCSE Germany 1925–1955: War and its legacy 1939–1955Key stage 5:
AQA History GCE The impact of War, 1939-1945Edexcel History GCE: Mass media and social change in Britain, 1882–2004: Mass media: mirroring or moulding society? Mary Whitehouse and the NVALA.Edexcel History GCE: Britain transformed 1918-1997.

Useful links

Find out about the earlier 19th century history of telegrams using this link about Queen Victoria’s first transatlantic telegram.Learn more about menu image

Black and white photograph of a group of people holding pieces of paper and approaching a counter.

Telegrams being sent from the Post Office in Guernsey at the end of the Second World War. Wikimedia Commons, National Archives Records Administration.

Introduction

There are quite a lot of things you need to watch out for when using telegrams as sources.

Task 1: What can we find out from a telegram?

Part 1: Read this telegram and check the answers to the questions below for practice with this type of source.

Task 2: Examine a telegram from the Second World War

Telegram sent by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, 5 November 1942, Catalogue ref: CAB 65/28 This telegram contains some specialist language codes so check the glossary to find out what they mean.

Task 3: Examine a telegram to the BBC in 1967

Telegram from Mary Whitehouse to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, January 1967, Catalogue ref: HO 256/719 In telegrams the word “STOP” was frequently used instead of a full stop to end a sentence as each punctuation character cost the same as an entire word.