Using the telephone at home in the 1940s and 1950s

In early 1940s war-time Britain, very few well-off families had phones - or were 'on the phone' as it was called. There were public telephones, and shops or businesses might be encouraged in an emergency to let valued customers use their phones.

domestic phones in the 1940s

There was no choice of supplier for phones, and everyone's 1940s phone was identical to everyone elses. These phones were supplied as part of the whole deal of 'being on the phone'. ('Candlestick' phones from before the war were still in use in some businesses and better-off families.)

The 1940s phones were black and made of bakelite (an early plastic). They were in two parts, the handset and the base unit.

The handset was just the right size and shape for speaking directly into the mouthpiece while holding the earpiece to the ear. Although these handsets might look cumbersome compared with today's phones, they were comfortable to hold and had clear sound reproduction. Any lack of clarity was normally due to the line rather than the phone.

The base unit held the dial. There were ten dial holes, each showing reference letters and numbers underneath.

making and receiving a phone call: the dialling process

To start making a call, the caller lifted the handset from its cradle and waited to hear the dial-tone in the earpiece.

Then he or she put a finger into a dial hole and dragged the dial round to the 'stop'. On removal of the finger, the dial returned to its original position, ready for the next number to be dialled. As it returned, it made a clicking sound: one click for the first hole, two for the second, etc.

To call the operator one simply dialled O. Having to dial the operator was relatively common in the 1940s and 50s because something often went wrong with the call that needed to be put right by the operator. Also long-distance calls couldn't be dialled directly.

Telephone numbers were much easier to remember then because they were not just numbers. There was some logic to them, in that they started with the first three letters of the local telephone exchange. Our family number was STO 9804, where STO stood for Stonegrove, which was an area of Edgware where we lived.

To receive a call - or 'answer the phone' as it was called - one just lifted the handset from its cradle. The correct procedure was to let callers know that they had the right number. So our family would simply say into the handset "Stonegrove 9804" and wait for the caller to respond. At that time it was considered bad manners just to say, "Hello", and it would never have occurred to anyone to say their name instead.

Returning the handset to its cradle cut off the call. This was known as 'putting the phone down'.

The telephone cable

The base unit was connected to the handset and the wall socket with a rather ugly long brown cable, known as 'flex'. This consisted of three strands of wire, insulated with cotton or some other fabric and loosely platted together. It seemed second nature to fiddle with it while on the phone and to put one's fingers through it, separating out the three strands. It frayed dreadfully, but no-one seemed particularly concerned.

Phones which became standard some years later had much neater coiled, plastic-covered cable which extended when stretched. The design was also rather more elegant and colour was an option.

It is possible that customers had to pay for these replacement phones, as my parents kept their old-style phone way into the 1960s when the phone company exerted some pressure to make them change.

The location of the house phone

During the 1940s and into the 1950s, being on the phone was regarded as a luxury by ordinary families. Even then, there was only one phone in the house. It was set up in a fixed position which was invariable in the hall or passageway, to provide the easiest access from every room. Consequently there was no privacy from other members of the family. My friends and I developed our own language for talking to each other privately. My mother could not help but overhear and it drove her to distraction. She called the language 'hager-pager' which was really quite apt as it involved saying 'ag' after every consonant and before every vowel. We actually became totally fluent at it.

Some decades later domestic phones became more portable because they could be moved around and plugged into sockets around the house. These first plugs were robust affairs, which served their purpose well.

lines shared with neighbours

My father's work wanted him to get onto the phone as soon as he returned from the war. However, everything was in short supply then, so there was a waiting list for phones. Then when we did eventually get one, we had to share a line with neighbours.

Shared lines caused all sorts of problems because when we tried to use our phone we frequently found someone else talking on it. The accepted polite thing to do was to immediately 'put the phone down' (ie return the handset to its cradle), and then wait a while before trying again. Similarly when we were talking on the phone, clicks on the line would indicate that a neighbour was trying to make a call and could therefore hear what we regarded as our private conversation. With polite neighbours, another click indicated that they had heard that we were talking and were no longer listening in, but it was disconcerting and it disrupted the flow of the call.

This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.

The 1940s and 1950s are also written as the 1940's and 1950's.