Your letters
Immobile phones
The cover photo of FT March issue brings to my mind the various telephone systems which have been used in our family over the last 80 years or so.
When first searching online for my paternal grandfather’s contact details, I found him in a Barnsley telephone list and shown as having the Barnsley number 35. It makes me wonder how many people in Barnsley and surrounding villages now have telephones!
It also made me try to recall the different styles of telephones which grandad and my father have had.
My paternal grandad, Albert E. Wilkinson was a councillor with Hoyland Nether Urban District Council, and the County Councillor for that District on the West Riding County Council. The only telephone I recall him having was attached to the wall in the hall of his house at Cobcar Street in Elsecar, which was part of the Hoyland Nether Urban District, situated just south of Barnsley. It was of a style where the mouth piece was fixed to and projecting out from the board attached to the wall. By the mouth-piece was a sprung lever upon which the separate ear-piece was hung, and connected by a multi-strand cable all woven into once piece. When you made or answered a call, you lifted the mouth piece off the lever, so that the lever lifted up to the horizontal and made the connection. Then you held the ear piece to your ear and spoke into the mouth piece attached to the wall – there was none of this modern style
