First Telephone

[Yatesy]

Anyone remember having a party-line telephone?

I'm only (?) 55 but can vividy remember my parents getting their first telephone when I was 16 or so (late 60's). It was what was called a part-line, in that we shared a line with a distant neighbour some house further up Woodlands Road .. you couldn't hear or share a conversation but neither could you use the phone when they were using it and vice-versa (I think).

When you compare that with the technology at 16 year olds fingertips these days!!! Blows your mind.

[kes]

Yatesey you could here there converations, mine was a party line when i moved up to Billinge in 69, it was so bad every time i picked up the phone the other party were on theirs. I told BT to take it out as i was sick of this , people listening to every word i say was not on. Inside a wk i had a private line.

[brunty]

i dont believe it, youre not telling me that you didn't listen to their conversations you bloody eavesdropper.

[Alan]

Before I got married my dad had a party line. A complete disaster. The other party, who lived in Lingholm Road, a good 500 yards walk from our house in Harris Street, had two toddlers who were forever playing with the phone

[Griffin]

Never had an intentional party line; but, when I lived up the hill at Llwyn y Brain, there was a house across the lane occupied by an old fellow called Lloyd. Our telephone lines terminated at the same pole in the field beside my property, and some sort of fault developed which enabled me to listen in when he was on the phone (and presumably vice-versa). It gave some indication of the shortcomings of a proper party line. It was interesting (but sad) that, when an elderly man was knocked down in Newton Road in 1940 (a lookup I was doing), it took so long to find a telephone that the poor chap was lying in the road for 25 minutes. You wonder if he would have survived with today's technology to summon help. I bet every single house in Newton Road now has a phone, to say nothing of mobiles and radios in bus cabs.

[Dave]

The old phones were pretty bad. My mate's dad won the pools and they moved into a new house up Haydock - and they had a phone - wow! Anyway, I don't know if it was a party line, but we discovered that if you kept pressing the buttons (where you put the phone down) in a random fashion, you could sometimes let go and you'd be in the middle of somebody's conversation. I wasn't really into it myself, but there was some fun to be had by joining in with the chat.

[Olliebeak]

My dad refused pointblank to get a phone installed until AFTER us three girls had all got married and left home! I'm sure that I don't know what he was worried about .

 

When he did finally get one, he had one of those phone-lock thingys put in the no.1 on the dial - to stop our younger brother and his mates from using it during the day (peak rate plus nobody in the house to supervise). Then he realised that it also meant that in an emergency nobody could get any help as 999 couldn't be rung.

 

That was when he had his brainwave! He moved the phone-lock to the no.2 on the dial. Apparently 22121 was the old phone number for St.Helens Central Police Station - so we could still use the phone to get help. Crafty bgr was our dad!

[kes]

There was a lad worked with me would bring his phone to work, to stop his kids useing it , his kids were mutch more streetwise than he thought, they got their own phone,!it was months before he found out.

[stephen nulty]

I remember being excited when we got our first phone installed in 1972. This quickly disappeared when I realised that I didn't know anybody else who had a phone and so couldn't use it anyway, apart from phoning all those numbers for the weather forecast and stuff, cos I think they were free.

[stonehenge-2006]

We got our first phone in 1977 and as it was the Queens Jubilee Year, my Mum ordered it in red, white and blue, oh how we laughed !!!

 

It was still in a cupboard when we cleared the house out in 2003, I wish I had kept it now

[gypsygeoff]

It would have been 1973 when we got our phone,we got one o they slimline phones,two tone green.

[Dave]

It was probably in 1975 after we'd moved house. It wasn't worth having one installed at the previous place because of the imminent demolition. Remember how you had no choice other than to rent the phone from the GPO? There were no plugs and sockets back then and you'd have to put up with the same old phone for years.

[Madge]

My first job was at Plessey and I had to visit the old telephone exchange in Tontine Street. When someone made a call, you could see and hear loads of relays all clicking through the place - it was fascinating to watch how they connected one number to another. We used to be able to make free calls by tapping on the line rather than dialling the number

 

Happy days!

[Griffin]

Banks of uniselectors. Amazing things. They probably still had the Creed teleprinters then.

[Tony J]

We got our first phone about 1975, at least it meant you didn't get a PC knocking on the door when someone in the family died! that takes me on to second point, I found a memory card of my great grandfather who died in 1915. the funeral arrangements were by H Helsby undertakers, phone no St Hel 4. I wonder who had St Hel 1?

[trolleybus]

Banks of uniselectors. Amazing things. They probably still had the Creed teleprinters then.

 

We got our first phone about 1975, at least it meant you didn't get a PC knocking on the door when someone in the family died! that takes me on to second point, I found a memory card of my great grandfather who died in 1915. the funeral arrangements were by H Helsby undertakers, phone no St Hel 4. I wonder who had St Hel 1?

 

I worked in the telephone exchange in the 1950s. The automatic equipment was on the 2nd floor and the switchboard and operators on the 3rd (top) floor. The front door was actually in St Mary Street, not Tontine Street, and the teleprinters were actually situated in the old Head Post Office at the corner of Church Street and St Mary Street. At that time all the numbers were 4 digit so I don't know who had the original No 1.

[jvy20]

At that time all the numbers were 4 digit so I don't know who had the original No 1.

 

 

 

St Helens 1 was the Town Clerk's Office in the Town Hall

 

regards

 

John