Chris Knight:
"This title was only to be found at CCC and meant that you worked the overseas cables.

Working on the overseas cables I still remember the leg 'twitch' The leg would be slightly raised at the heel with the toes touching the floor and the leg would then twitch up and down in relation to the speed you were typing! There were also 'slugs' which were small, short pieces of metal containing three letters which belonged to each operator When you were on the sending / receiving circuits you would put your personalised 'slug' into the time stamp to prove that you had dealt with that message."

Larry in Australia has a suggestion:

"Hey, I know this. RQ was for "I want to RQ you a question". That's easy. Now BQ. There's 2 close meanings that I've been told about since starting as a telegraphist in the year dot but have yet to decide which is the right answer.

1) BQ was taken from the olde English word Boggle-Quest which means to be evasive when confronted with a problem. This is exactly the attitude a service clerk took when trying to work out strangely worded RQs. It probably has roots in the Latin word Bexaltavit which means What the devil are you talking about son and would fit a BQ perfectly.

2) This meaning is the most likely explanation that BQ was really a nickname for the originator ie Antoine Henri Becquerel. He was a physicist and won a Nobel prize in 1903 so was ideally gifted to become a telegraphist and have worldwide praise lavished on him and remembered in history books as being the person who conquered the question of what abbreviation to give to the answer to an RQ." !

The Porthcurno Telegraph Museum & Archive have told Chris that "RQ and BQ were used by ETC and C&W for 'Request' and 'Answer to Request' but again, we don't know why BQ was chosen."

However a definitive (sourced) answer has come from David J. Ring, Jr. ex- Radio Officer and operator at Morse station WSC Tuckerton, NJ:

RQ as you have correctly means "Request"
BQ - you do not have this answer - means "Bequest"

RQ is a request for answer, and BQ is the answer to a request.

Source is ITU Appendex B - Addendex for Manual Morse by aural reception - both for wired and radio Morse. 73

(12/7/2010)

On that circuit we had to make sure that everything that appeared on the cable was sent but we all made sure that whatever routing instructions were there strangely 'disappeared' and were substituted by 'Via Commercial'.

There were also lines to our other London offices as well as PQ and Great Northern. Then there were also the 'Eastward' and 'Westward' filing systems and lockers full of bundles of messages which were held there for about a month before they went to the bundle room in the basement.

There was also the Traffic Chiefs desk, Supervisors desk, Adrema (which was a big metal framed unit that you more or less sat in with it around about 50% of you disappearing from view and it contained probably about a thousand small metal plates that slotted into a metal stamp. Upon receipt of a cable, and if you knew the telegraphic address was filed on the Adrema, you would slot in the appropriate plate and bang it down onto the cable and that printed all the details of the telegraphic address onto the cable itself i.e. name of firm, telegraphic address, phone, telex no's and any form of special delivery instructions. So imagine all that going on and the noise being created and on top of that there were people talking, shouting and generally making mayhem.

Later CCC installed what became referred to as 'the organ' which was a desk whereby the operator could sit down and look after four incoming circuits through glass panes and actually switch the messages through to whatever area he wanted to i.e. the printers for the South East area or trip them through to the offices in other parts of the country. These incoming messages were also stored on a tape loop in a Perspex container and you had to keep an eye on the length of the loop to make sure that you didn't erase some of the incoming cables if the backlog became too much as it would overprint others.

All in all I spent about 11 years in the London offices of CCC both at the Wormwood Street and Bastwick Street locations but for me the Wormwood Street offices had the character and the 'lived in' appeal from the depths of the Bundle Room in the basement all the way to the top of the building where the canteen was housed. It was, without doubt, one of the happiest periods of my working life.

On the New York circuits all outgoing (Westward - WWD) circuits had the 'I' in the middle i.e. AIA, BIB with the incoming (Eastward - EWD) circuits had the 'I' at the beginning i.e. IAA, IBB.

During the afternoon the Montreal LZ stamp was taken to the TD and when an arbitrage message had to go out the operator switched a green light on which also shoed in the IR on the Montreal circuit and the operator there let the TD operator in. After transmitting the LZ the operator in the TD switched out and the Montreal WWD operator in the IR carried on.

TD / TDN

R & SR (Arbitrage) – tripped in on the AIA circuit from the TD J (Telex traffic) and P (eastward provincial traffic) – went to New York traffic for operators in New York to switch into their telex room just as we received P on eastwards for operators in London to switch to provincials.

MM (Arbitrage)

Trip ins and outs – SSS and FFF

Later when we had to move to Bastwick Street it was the end of an era as the new office had no character and was really an 'office box' which we fitted into. Gone were the nooks and crannies, back stairways, architectural quirks and the general feel of an old building that we had, to some extent, grown to love as many of us had grown up there during our working lives. Above all, Wormwood Street had character written all over it and that was something that could not be replaced.

The building consisted of a small sub basement, basement, and, if memory serves me correctly four further floors and atop that another narrow stairway led to the canteen facilities.

The sub-basement contained the locker room and the bundle room where all the previous messages from heaven knows when were stored.

The basement contained toilets, rest room for the messengers who would be out hand delivering the messages around the City during the day, a larger rest room for all staff to use, the mechanics room where all the repairs to the equipment were made plus the engineering rooms that delivered the services to the rest of the building.

I always remember that both the sub basement and the basement was always shrouded in gloom as there never seemed to be enough lighting down there.

A small lift with sliding, open gate style doors, ran between the basement to the fourth floor and, if not mistaken, when I joined there was a liftman employed as well.

The front entrance to the building was up a few steps into the vestibule area where the main counter was to your right, the lift being to your left, the main stairs in front of you and a smaller set of stairs next to the lift which led down to the rear entrance and the basement areas. If you followed these small stairs you would be led out into a small parking area at the back and then access to a small, narrow walk through to the main streets of the area.

Turning right past the counter there were some small offices on your left (one of them was taken over by the Union and editorial staff of the CCC in house magazine "The Venture") and at the end of the short corridor you would enter the telephone and delivery departments. Leading from the delivery department was a set of gloomy stairs that would lead up to the next floor.

Going up the main stairs they would bring you to all the main floors.

On the First Floor was the Superintendents office, the Superintendents staff office and the Instrument Room

On the Second Floor was (from memory) all the offices belonging to Management.

On the Third Floor was the accounts, more toilets and staff rest rooms.

Perched above this floor was a narrow set of stairs which led to a small rest room and the canteen.

The Porthcurno Telegraph Museum & Archive have told Chris that "two of our expert volunteers who worked for C&W in the 1960s [say] that the term SKINS was originated and used by the Eastern Telegraph Company but they don't know why they were called SKINS."