I've been studying the relatively early history of the electrical telegraph in England. Especially right around 1850-1851 when the Great Exhibition was taking place. This would have potentially been the first time that the lower classes could have come into first hand contact with electrical devices. It's probable that they would have known what a telegram was but would they have had any understanding of the mechanism behind it?
Basically I'm trying to understand how the very uneducated would react to electrical phenomena. I think we're a bit far along for people to call it witchcraft at this point, but would there have been some skepticism, fear, wonderment? I know a lot about the technology but very little about the social aspects.
Electric batteries were well known by the 1850s, and the telegraph was in wide use then. In my studies of telegraph history, I have found no record of industrialized peoples considering it witchcraft or being unable to comprehend the function.
The vulgar-elite dichotomy is one of the most pervasive in historical study, and it is also one of the ones which has proven most demonstrably false time and time again.
The first point is that the wonder at this fantastic device wouldn't be confined to any particular class or educational sphere. Only an incredibly wealthy person would have a personal telegraph by 1850, if I remember correctly, and there was no such thing as widespread use of such technology, even in cities. A don at Oxford in Classics would be considered very well educated indeed, but there would be no reason to assume he would have a better grasp on the workings of such devices than a Scottish highland farmhand.
This ties into the second point - very few people would have understood the reality of how the device functioned, nor would they need to. How well do you think everyday people today understand telephones, never mind their iPads or whatever?
So, in short, you have a problem because the question you constructed presupposes a reality that did not, in fact, exist.
I'm going to expound on my original answer here some.
By the time of the Great Exhibition, the telegraph was in widespread use throughout the world. Several different models, including printing telegraphs, and the first successful submarine cable were displayed there
As for how the very uneducated would have reacted to it? I truly cannot say. I can state that I have studied the history of the telegraph to no small extent, and while I can find some curious accounts regarding Native Americans and the telegraph, I haven't found anything regarding a total ignorance or misunderstanding of the telegraph among European or American peoples. Which is to say, the principals behind the technology were widely discussed and disseminated in newspapers and lectures.
You'd have to go back to the late 1700's at the dawn of electrical experimentation to find the sort of reactions from the uneducated public you might be thinking of.