The London Problem: What Britain Gets Wrong About Its Capital City

Abstract

accounts of the ‘rigorous monitoring’ postal employees endured (111). These attempts at socially engineering a better sort of telegraph boy involved a meticulous ‘weeding out’ process, which saw the dismissal of candidates who had failed the physical examination and home inspection aspect of recruitment (138). These details are significant, as they strengthen the book’s examination of the GPO’s methods of class surveillance. Chapters 7 and 8 lastly examine the ‘gender reversals’ witnessed in telegraphy offices in the late nineteenth century. Telegraphy declined with the rise of the telephone, and women telephone operators were admitted as a new class of GPO employee (159). Using contemporary journals such as the Telephone Women, Hindmarch-Watson argues that the characteristics of women workers were harnessed by GPO administrators, who saw them as effective mediators and ‘public handmaidens of loss’ (157, 175). However, she notes that articles in the Pall Mall Magazine (1911) and Judy (1904) had opposing views, and instead mocked women’s ‘inadequacies’ (169). This final chapter effectively demonstrates the ‘telemisogyny’ that women telegraphists and telephonists experienced during their careers (169). Ultimately, Hindmarch-Watson provides a rich and informative study of the intersections of class and gender within the GPO’s telegraph sector. This study should benefit specialists in the history of medicine, whilst also providing persuasive discussions for historians who specialise in gender and queer history studies.