On this day … 30 September 1871

The Preston Guardian reported the establishment of a Phonographic Society in the town. Phonography was the name Victorians gave to shorthand, and for them that meant Pitman’s shorthand.

Isaac Pitman introduced his now famous system in 1837 when he was just twenty-four. His system brought him fame and fortune, and a knighthood. His brother, Benjamin, of whom more later, took the system to the USA, where he used it to report the trial that followed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Another brother, Jacob, took the system to Australia.

The Preston society formed in 1871 was not the first in the town and Pitman’s shorthand was not the first form of shorthand to be taught in Preston. In the early nineteenth century, shorthand writers were known as stenographers.

In 1831, a Mr W. Welch advertised the opening of his school in Preston, at which he proposed to teach stenography, along with other subjects including English grammar, reading, writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, mensuration and geography.

Two years later, a Mr Lewis, ‘Writing Master to the Royal Family’, was in Preston for a month offering short-hand:

‘Taught perfectly in six easy lessons of half an hour each, exactly as it is written by all the Public Reporters. Mr. L. discloses to his pupils the three important points which have hitherto been kept entirely secret by the reporters, and without a knowledge of which no person can possibly obtain pre-eminence in this delightful art’

In 1841, Isaac Pitman himself was in Preston to deliver a lecture on his system at the Mechanics’ Institute in Cannon Street, and the word ‘phonography’ to describe that system appeared for the first time in the pages of the Preston Chronicle.

Isaac’s brother, Joseph, was in Preston two years later to deliver two lectures on phonography, followed by classes in shorthand by one of his colleagues. Other Pitman brothers, Henry and Benjamin, were in town over the next few years delivering lectures and offering shorthand classes.

Shortly after Joseph’s visit, a Mr Withers was offering to teach ‘the science of phonography’ at ‘terms that will place the learning of the science within the reach even of the humblest hand-loom weaver’. Mr Withers gave his lessons in an upstairs room at the Buck i’th Vine Inn in Bow Lane.

Shortly after, one of the Pitman brothers, it is not clear which, was instructing ‘the young gentlemen at Tulketh Hall academy in the principles and practice of this art’, as well as giving free lessons in St Peter’s School Room to what the Chronicle described as ‘the intelligent among our operatives’.

Pitman’s system was so well established in Preston by 1846 that there were enough phonographers to launch the town’s first Phonographic Society at a meeting at the Cannon Street institute. Soon the phonographers were even holding phonetic tea parties.

By the end of the century, shorthand classes were so firmly established in Preston, that, in the 1892-3 academic year, the Harris Institute was teaching elementary shorthand to 160 students, and advanced shorthand to 120, .

Those Harris Institute students would probably have been predominantly male, for at that date shorthand and typing were seen as offering a career to young men, as the Earl of Derby noted in a speech given in Manchester in 1893:

‘… in the present day the study of shorthand, to a certain extent of typewriting, and to a lesser extent, though still to a very considerable one, the study of telegraphy were now, so far as young men in commercial life were concerned, held in many parts of the world to be of great and primary importance.’

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Source
The Preston Chronicle, available for free on line to members of Lancashire County Library, is a superb source for the history of nineteenth-century Preston: https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/libraries-and-archives/libraries/digital-library/newspapers-old-and-new/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitman_shorthand