An extract from: A HISTORY OF PURLEY
|
To indicate this service a sign was displayed outside the shop. For the National Telephone Company it was a square enamelled sheet showing a bell (like a church bell) with the initials of the Company. Another sign carried the words 'You may telephone from here'. The earliest examples in Purley were in 1904, at the estate agents Slade and Church -Croydon 386- in Station Approach. In 1905 Tom Houghton, the tobacconist at 2 Kimberley Terrace, offered the facility. In 1908, Slade and Church were at 2 The Exchange—still Croydon 386. By 1911, the directory listed five locations for public use: two in the same shops as in 1908; two in the Post Office (from which trunk calls—long distance—could be made), and an ordinary telephone at Purley Station.
Summoning emergency services was difficult before the introduction of the telephone. There was a call system for the Ambulance, visible in a photograph taken in Godstone Road in 1937. It seems to resemble a fire alarm, where operating a switch rang a bell in the ambulance Station. It had probably not been used for many years. The 1911 London Telephone Directory lists under Purley, 'Fireman (Parish Council Brigade), 11 Bartletts Cottages -Telephone P .0. Purley 402', so that if a telephone could be found the Brigade could be summoned to a fire. The services of the operator were required until the 999 call system came into operation (in 1950 in the Purley area). The introduction of the red coin-box telephone kiosks enabled calls to be made much more easily.
|