Telegraph Wire and Oasis Jewellery May 15, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Governments and multi-nationals have long had problems with locals (particularly criminally-inclined locals) stealing their wire. Most collectors get out their pliers because, say, copper is worth a lot of money. But in the early years of electricity and telegraph wire there were other reasons for stealing: more principled and practical reasons. Take Thomas Stevens’ description of the constantly broken telegraph wire between Tehran and Bushire in the mid-late nineteenth century: Stevens published his reflections some years later in 1888. The first problem was that the camel men walking and riding the desert trails ‘looked on the long lengths of nice strong wire strung all along their route almost in the light of a special dispensation of Allah’ for mending their pack saddles and as improvised harnesses. (That must have been something to see.) Apparently they were forever shinning up telegraph poles in the middle of the dunes. The caravan men also took to shooting at insulators and wires for wagers: if you can snap it I’ll give you a pint of camel milk etc etc. They would even gamble on how many shots it would take to fell a large telegraph pole: something that made them extremely unpopular with British administrators. The biggest problem though was the jewellery market.
The nomads of Persia are much given to embellishing their charms of person by means of thick wire bracelets. Copper or silver wire is their preference, but they have no objection to bracelets of baser metal, especially if they can obtain them without pay. To stretch a telegraph wire through their country was about the same thing as placing a pot of jam where it can be easily reached by a boy. Nomads who had caught on went strutting about the country wearing a wealth of telegraph wire bracelets that made the eyes of their less lucky tribes bulge with astonishment.
Soon the bracelets were being sold to these less lucky tribes and the British operators were tearing their hair out. At this point the Empire put pressure on the Shah who let it be known that anyone wearing telegraph wire was to have his hands removed in the market place: things are so much simpler in the orient. Several sentences were carried out before you could say Ayatollah Khomeini desert telegraph wires became inviolate… Other wire stories or perhaps even a photograph: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com This account reminded me of a famous Portlandia sketch.
