In 1935, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) won a competition for designing a telephone callbox. It wasn't quite how Scott had planned it though. He suggested the box should be made of mild steel and silver-coloured with a bluish-green interior. Instead it was made of cast iron and painted bright red.
Since the 1920s, most upper-class people in British cities owned a telephone. They had to pick up the ear-piece which sent a signal to the exchange and the operator would say, "Number please?" Then the operator would make the connection using the plugs on the telephone switchboard.
Long-distance calls were trickier as they had to be dealt with by a series of operators connecting with each other, and were often almost inaudible. By 1927, there were 56 lines to the Continent and a radio link to New York.
Private Telephones
Phoning cost a fortune. Yesterday's Britain quotes the words of Lydia Scalia, a young telephonist at the Ritz Hotel in London. "The first transatlantic call I did was for a famous singer," she said. "His bill ran to £75 - nearly a year's pay for me - and I was stunned. I ran outside into the cashier's office. He said it was all right."
At this time, 1927, there were 500,000 telephones in Britain but two years later, there were three times as many as automated exchanges took over from the old-fashioned plug switchboards. The first automated exchange in Britain was at Epsom in Surrey in 1912 and the first call box installed at Egham in Surrey in 1919, sixteen years before the popular red call boxes appeared. In 1924, the British Post Office decided that 70 telephone exchanges inside a ten mile radius of Oxford Circus should be converted, but the system did not kick in fully until the modernisation of London's Holborn exchange in London in 1927.
Telephone Snobs
People liked to boast of their social contacts and they also liked to look good by complaining in very posh voices: "Oh, that wretched thing never stops ringing!" They put their phone numbers on their cards to show how important they were, and some people would not dream of accepting a phone call from someone who hadn't first presented their calling card.
Soon Giles Gilbert Scott's coin-operated telephone boxes were everywhere, in railway stations, post offices and other public places, and eventually they became a familiar sight on British streets, along with the matching brick-red pillar boxes.
Sadly, this wonderful icon of Britain's heritage has now become obsolete.
Adopt a Red Telephone Box for a Pound
According Brighton's Argus newspaper, the neighbouring councils of Adur and Worthing had rescued three red phone boxes from being destroyed by adopting them from British Telecom for £1 each. The boxes, at East Street, Shoreham, The Steyne, Worthing and Coombes in Lancing will be repainted by council workers within the next few weeks. The council's cultural project officer, Pamela Driscoll said, "The red phone box is as famous as the red London bus when it comes to symbols of British Heritage."
Now people are talking about finding new uses for this much-loved British artefact and councils are appealing to the public to come up with some new ideas for their use. Some people have turned them into temporary art exhibitions, information centres and book exchanges.
Not bad for just a quid each!
Sources:
- Yesterday's Britain, Edited, designed and publised by The Readers' Digest Association, Multiple Unspecified Feature Writers. 1998.
- Great Events of the 20th Century, Multiple Unspecified Contributors, The Automobile Association, 1989.
- The Argus, Staff Writer (unnamed) Brighton & Hove, 18 March 2011.
Janet Cameron - MA. Cert.Ed. is a retired university lecturer and author of twelve books, women's short fiction and a magazine column.
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