Communications in 1914

[Serafina]

I feel like I ought to know this but...

How would people in a small, fairly affluent British village find out about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914?

Newspaper? Telephone? I assume not radio as BBC wasn't set up until 1922, and telephones were used instead of radio for most communication in WW1...

Fairly affluent in a 'can afford 'modern' technology' way, though if they live in a village (I'm thinking south of London, on the way to the coast - Burgess Hill, Lewes, Uckfield sort of way) would they have telephones? Would that sort of news be telephone-worthy?

Thank you

[Lord of Fools]

I'd say newspaper. If they've got friends in Europe they might get a telegram or something though, but as that's how newspapers got their international stories, it'll be neck-and-neck as to which gets there first. Overseas telephone calls weren't common, I don't think, even just across the Channel. In the 'Great Gatsby', for instance, Gatsby is getting an important call from the other side of America he can't afford to miss. This is almost ten years later than 1914, in a country that had invested a lot in infrastructure, and he was a ludicrously wealthy guy.

So, yeah, I think newpaper is most likely to be the guy here.

[Tundra]

The wealthy would have telephones in some way, but not like the whole village or something. The rich house would have a telephone and probably the local shop/s. London would find out because they had the politicians and so forth who had to know that sort of thing, and the press and Londoners would find out that way.
And don't forget telegrams! But you have to remember that it would only have been the rich who would have bothered to send telegrams or what have you over something political like this.

[MichaelB]

telegraph wires? (morse code)

[Tundra]

Well yes, but every day people wouldn't have been doing the morse code. That's how telegrams were sent.

[AXJ]

I'm betting someone, maybe the office of the mayor, would get a wire (telegraph) before it arrives via the paper. Though being between close to London, there's a chance someone coming though town might bring word.

[Serafina]

Does this work: news comes to London through telegrams, someone from London (maybe working at a newspaper?) telegrams the post office in the nearby town, telegram is then delivered to family in village...

So a second question that has cropped up:
Could a married woman (with youngish children) work as a nurse on the Western Front? The children have family who would look after them, the eldest son being at boarding school. Woman has probably (so long as I can get the dates to fit) worked as a nurse during the Boer War.

[AXJ]

Yep, I think that would work.

And yes, women were war nurses by then, and even earlier. Consider Florence Nightengale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightengale). Some were probably trained at the nursing school she founded. 8)

[Serafina]

But married women with children? All the nurses I can find are single women, the only married nurse I can find isEvelina Haverfield (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Whaverfield.htm), but she formed her own organisation, which is slightly different.

[Tundra]

If she went, people would find her EXTREMELY strange. And I'm not sure if the organisation would have taken her. She may have had to lie.

[Lord of Fools]

I was suddenly thinking 'comfort mother', but I'm sure that's really not what you meant :P

If she was a nurse during the Boer War though, her children probably wouldn't be all that little by 1914... seeing as women tended to have children early and over 30 is pushing it slightly on the fertility scale, unless she has some older children too. I think the Boer War was in the 1890s, which would give her a minimum age of around 16 then... so she would be in her mid-30s by the time the Great War begins.

Still, anything's possible- it doesn't have to be absolutely 100% historically normal, because crazy things can always happen. You'd just have to have the character really passionate about helping the boys on the Western Front- enough to leave behind those children and lie to the nursing people.

[AXJ]

But married women with children? All the nurses I can find are single women, the only married nurse I can find isEvelina Haverfield (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Whaverfield.htm), but she formed her own organisation, which is slightly different.

War nurses have never been easy to find. If she had the training and the inclination, I seriously doubt that would have turned her away. The army isn't high society; even the British army was governed by military needs first, and stiff victorian propriety a distant second, per everything I've read about that period.

[Tundra]

Yeah. But she would have faced huge amounts of social stigma, even though she was doing war work. Leaving your children and home responsibilities?

[AXJ]

I really doubt she'd get much grief at the front, except perhaps by a few particularly stiff-necked individuals here and there. That's one of the weird things about war - it erases a lot of the normal social rules and boundaries, while you're there. But you're right, she'd definately probably face some harsh disapproval once she gets home.

Of course, a lot of it depends on her social class to begin with. But I guess if the eldest son is at boarding school, they're probably high enough up that it'd matter.

[Tundra]

No, I mean at home, people would be like 'you want to do WHAT??'

[AXJ]

Yeah, srsly. Especially if she'd been otherwise respectable.

I think that in itself could make a neat foundation for a story... sort of exploring how the artifical social rules tend to go away on the frontlines of a war, but they're still waiting for you when you get home.