Information and news can spin around the world in a matter of seconds, or faster sometimes. In 2025 most people in the world have access to the internet, mobile phones and tablets, televisions, radios and more. Very few people read newspapers, the Royal Mail is struggling with providing a cost-effective service because people are no longer writing letters.
So, when a national event happened in the past, how quickly would that news have got around? When Queen Elizabeth II died, the news came to us immediately, depending on where we were or what we were doing. There is an interesting thing associated with my generation which is to be able to ask our family and friends, “do you remember where you were when J.F. Kennedy was assassinated?”. I remember that well, the announcement was made on the 6pm BBC news and I had just arrived at my parish church for choir practice on a Friday evening. The choirmaster made the announcement. We were all shocked because Kennedy had made such an impression on us all. Interestingly, if you asked me where I was when Queen Elizabeth died, I really could not tell you. Probably because it was not shocking news. Given the Queen’s age, she had lived an active life, and it was sad news but news that we were all expecting.
On that occasion, the Queen’s death was announced quickly and the whole population knew about it, as did the world, within minutes of the announcement. Some people knew as soon as Buckingham Palace announced it, such as newspaper offices and news agencies.
Similarly, in the middle of the 20th Century, it would have been the same route. Official announcements made to newspaper offices via, telephone, telegram and then there was ticker tape.
Ticker tape is synonymous with New York parades when offices used it as confetti during street parades. The tape was from a paper reel that was being used for printing out messages that were coming to it on a machine attached to the telephone line. It was like an instant telegram coming from your phone line that was used mainly for stock exchange purposes, but which also found its uses in the offices of British turf accountants and bookmakers.
My father was a licenced bookmaker for nearly 30 years. Initially he was licenced as a turf accountant, an off-course bookmaker, and he operated in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s from the front room of our house in Ladbroke Road, Redhill. He had someone make him a wide desk in the bay window which accommodated about two telephones and his ticker tape machine. Through this machine came the spurt of paper tape with announcements about that days race meetings, the starting prices of all the runners, the all important announcement that the race had started, the results, the ‘going’ on the course and other information that was essential to keep my father up to date with what was happening in the racing world. This business was assisted by my mother when we were all at school.
The ticker tape machine and everything else went down the road when, in the mid 1950’s, my father rented a property at the end of Ladbroke Road close to the Yorkshire Fish and Chip Shop. All these buildings are long gone. His new office consisted of rooms upstairs which became his office and rooms downstairs which he was renting out. From the age of eight I can remember frequently running errands down to this office, especially during the summer when my father had evening racing and I had to take a plated meal down to him. He had four telephone lines by then and he started employing people to assist him with the settling of bets, including a cousin of mine who had just finished his national service in the RAF.
My father’s office at the end of Ladbroke Road, about 1959
All betting off course could only be undertaken legally via credit account and clients would have to phone their bets in and then my father would settle the accounts at the end of the week. Paying out successful clients and receiving money from the unsuccessful ones. It was a normal financial business to all intents and purposes. Then there were his commission agents, his runners, who would collect bets and money, to be put into a small leather pouch which had a small timer watch that was put into the bags and zip locked to prove that the bets had been collected before the race meeting had started. The runners were associated with the larger factories in the area. The notion that all bookmakers were wealthy is dependent upon how successful the punters were.
There was a short spell between 1958 and 1962 when my father changed his work path to go into the pub business, leaving the turf accountancy to my eldest brother to manage in his absence. By 1962 the idea of a betting shop had been agreed by law with very strict regulations about how they were to conduct their business. My brother had sourced a shop for long term rental which then had the licence transferred to. My father returned and this business flourished from 1962 to 1979 until my parents retired.
Most Saturdays while I was still at school, I would sit behind the counter in a corner beside the ticker tape machine which continued to churn out its essential information for me to write down the results and then transfer them onto the result board for all and sundry to see. The tape was continuous, and it flowed into a giant cardboard box. The tape was preserved for another day, just in case my father ever had to consult it for an error or something else. That rarely happened and when it did it was incredibly boring having to unravel and search for information, the endless reams of tape paper.
I have tried to find an image of my father’s ticker tape machine. The only stock photos online that I can find are American and they show the mechanism but not the style of my father’s machine. I believe he rented it, like a phone was rented at that time of the century. It was a tall wooden cabinet like a grandfather clock, and it had lead weights inside which had to be wound up once or twice per week to enable the paper to be fed into the printing part of the machine which was at the top of the cabinet, protected by a glass dome. From a slot in the dome came the ticker tape.
The office with the ticker tape machine in the background, about 1959.
It was a great surprise then when I was looking through my brother’s photo album, that I came across two photos dating from 1959 of my father’s office at the end of Ladbroke Road, and one inside of the office with my sister-in-law on the phone. Behind her is the ticker tape machine, in all it glory. A wooden cabinet and the printer beneath its dome. These pictures were taken for publicity purposes, my eldest brother had taken over the business while my father was entertaining his notion of becoming a publican.
Eventually by the 1970’s this method of communication was replaced with the Tannoy and television screens. Until then, it was the essential tool for the off-course turf accountant to be able to conduct business on a daily basis.
So, what has prompted me to write about the Queen’s death and the speed of information sharing? It is all about ticker tape.
I recently attended a celebratory reception remembering my late brother. He had inherited quite a bit of our parent’s history, tucked away in scrapbooks and photo albums. They contained many items that I had not seen before or forgotten about. One of which was a demonstration of the power of ticker tape.
It is a real time record of the announcement of the death of King George VI who was the father of Queen Elizabeth II.
The announcement of King George VI’s death in 1952, via ticker tape.
The King died on 6th February 1952 and his funeral was on 15th February. He died on the Wednesday which meant that all horseracing in the UK was postponed for a week and a half. It was the height of the National Hunt season and this postponement would have been a dent in the income of a lot of bookmakers as well as the entire horseracing industry itself. Then it is noted that any football matches that were planned to be played before the King’s funeral should be played unless the teams themselves felt it was appropriate to cancel out of respect.
Another interesting historical note at the bottom concerns the postponement of the Waterloo Cup. This was a hare coursing competition that was run over three or four days, attracting thousands of people who came to watch knockout competitions of greyhounds chasing living hares. It had been run since 1836. The League of Cruel Sports campaigned against it, but it was not until 2005 that live coursing was outlawed and that finished the Waterloo Cup. That this meeting was also needed to be publicly postponed because of the King’s death showed how big a sporting event it was.
I am grateful to my father for realising how important the King’s death was to persuade him to preserve the news in his scrapbook. He, of course, would not have realised that the history of the ticker tape was also being preserved.
When I mentioned to my neighbour that I was preparing this piece, he offered me an interesting pub quiz question.
When did Queen Elizabeth become Queen Elizabeth I ? In 1952 when Queen Elizabeth II acceded the throne.
(In memory of Gordon Carver, 1953-2025)