Notes for Writers of Historical 1960s British Fiction
1.1 Telephonic communication
In the sixties to locate a person you phoned their home; if they were out you rang later. (Location privacy presents obvious plot opportunities for writers of crime and romantic fiction.)
Red phone boxes (found on most street corners) contained a book listing the names, addresses and phone numbers of absolutely everyone. (Huge potential here.)
Whilst sheltering from the perpetual rain, sixties teenagers enjoyed making prank calls from phone boxes. The false-alarm, reversed-charge call to fraught parents was popular.
All spies and boy scouts were taught to make unlimited free calls from phone boxes, using a crocodile clip and the reverse-dialling method.
Miranda Lewis 2019
It’s Friday already so I’m a bit late phoning in my copy to the Friday fiction party.
All hail to Rochelle who keeps us going through all weathers. And thanks to Susan Eames for the photo.
By the way, all of the above is true and my Dad (a boy scout, not as far as I know a spy) did explain the secret of how to reverse dial with a crocodile clip. (It exploited the fact that emergency calls were free from phone boxes.) However, he was such an upright honest person he only explained once dial phones were obsolete.
PS Did anyone else have a telephone table/bench in their house? Ours was under the open-plan 1960s staircase, with a place to sit, a shelf for the phone and space for phone books.
MJL Stories 
And calls were thruppence (three pennies), and you had to insert before making the call and when connected push a button and you heard the pennies fall.
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Or you phoned your own home and didn’t push the button and listened to your Dad getting annoyed. ‘Hello. Hello! Hello? HELLO?’ (Actually not accurate because my Dad used to say the full phone number followed by his name.)
Thanks for the visit.
PS I used to love thrupenny bits!
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Gosh, a Joe? Not seen one of those for years
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Dear Miranda,
Telephone practices were similar in the States. As a matter of fact we did have a telephone table. I can still see it in my head. Thanks for the memories.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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My dolls-house even had a telephone and table! The telephone was about as big as the dolls’ heads. (I was quite mathematically interested in scale as a child.) So I guess about as big as the first cell phones.
The USA does have the best telephone song ever – Sylvia’s Mother.
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Ah yes! Dr. Hook. 😁
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As I remember it, to locate a person, you sent a footman to their residence with a message
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We usually sent my big brother round. Or sent a coded message in the form of three telephone rings then ring off – this was the signal tea was ready when my sister was round her friend’s house. My brother told me it was actually illegal as it constituted using a phone line fraudulently to send a message without paying so this always worried me a little. (We were an odd family!)
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Nowadays, the children are called on their iPhone and told to come down staurs for dinner. “Aw Mum, can’t you bring it up?’
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Pretty similar here in the states during that era and yes, we had a telephone table in the house I grew up in.
DB McNicol
author, traveler, shutterbug
Author Blog
Personal Blog
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The telephone was clearly a respected object with its own piece of furniture. My Dad made our telephone table at his woodwork class. My mobile phone does have a nice embroidered cover but it’s not the same!
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Interesting, didn’t all the Spy films in the sixties start with a man in a phone box. During WWII, Churchills driver always carried some copper coins in case they had to call back to the office. Those were the days.
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Yes, those spy films! I fell asleep recently to The Ipcress File – there were a lot of phone boxes! I could tell you how to back-dial using a crocodile clip but a) you probably don’t have a crocodile clip to hand and b) I’d have to kill you.
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Fun read. I hate the fact that almost anyone can track your whereabouts now days. And God forbid if you don’t answer your cell phone!
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My parents long ago went on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees with a friend. The friend was supposed to bring his girlfriend along too but he’d somehow missed meeting up with her in Paris. He went walking anyway! Phones can be useful e.g. keeping children safe. But perhaps life was a bit more unpredictable and chaotically interesting without them!
Thanks for the visit. Of course I’m on my phone right now!
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Those were the days my friend…! You brought back such happy memories. Sadly as red phone boxes became less used for making calls they became advertising venues for ladies of the night and even emergency toilets after pub closing time! One near me, however, has taken on a new life as a coffee stall!
My go at Friday Fictioneers!
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I’ve seen one that’s a little free library!
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Nice piece of nostalgia. Our red phone box was just around the corner from our house, making it so convenient it took a while for me to convince my parents to get a phone!
Susan A Eames at
Travel, Fiction and Photos
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Your comment rang a bell (ha! ha!) with my husband whose family also had a phone box close enough to call their own!
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Lovely take on the prompt! I was always supposed to carry enough pennies to make an emergency call if necessary. And do you remember going into phone boxes and pressing Button B in case the previous occupant had failed to get through and forgotten to reclaim his money? I struck lucky several times!
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We did have a telephone table for a time, but it had no seat. I pictured the comic strip “Dagwood and Blondie” in which Blondie often was sitting on the seat of the phone table talking with her friend Tootsie 🙂
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I remember that comic strip from my brief time across the pond!
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I hadn’t heard of the button B trick, Penny! Now it’s too late to try it. Would have been a lucky pocket money boost. (Have just realised your appropriate name for the Button B trick!)
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Hah, oh the memories. We had yellow phone boxes in Germany, and I never heard of the crocodile clip thing, we didn’t have collect calls back then either. But we did do the prank calls, preferrably with teachers, heheh. And we had a small cabinet with shoes on one side and a small shelf for phone books and address books on the other, on top resided the proud ugly grey phone (t’was the early seventies when we got our first phone). Great idea to write this up. I love it.
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Thanks for your memories. I always love the responses to this type of piece.
The crocodile clip thing is very obscure – my Dad was a mad Scientist type of the old school who figured out how things actually worked! Apparently putting your finger in the nine slot on the dial and turning it all the way to the right/clockwise opened some mechanical mechanism to allow a free call from a public phone. (Don’t know about home phones.) The electrical clip was just a way to not let the dial slip all the way back (which then would actually dial the nine) while you dialled the number you wanted in a really weird way. It exploited the fact that it was the anti-clockwise motion of the dial that actually registered the number. Confused? Well that makes two of us!
I am trying to remember the colour of our first phone. Dark green I think and huge.
Thanks for calling!
PS Teacher prank calls too – I remember those!
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Good grief, that sounds complicated. 😀 I have two left hands, I’d never have managed this.
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I remember having a phone nook in the 70s, a space built into the wall to place a phone and something to write on. I also remember in the 90s, the moment someone I knew first got a beeper–it seemed like the beginning of the end for me. Clearly, I had no idea!
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My son was born in 1995 and we contacted the midwife on her beeper! A different world!
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A nice little bit of nostalgia. I have so many memories of the public telephone boxes. I know we’re slaves to our mobile phones now, but I couldn’t bear to have to go back to those times.
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I took a while to get a decent mobile phone. My daughter chose one for me that has a pretty good camera and I love using it! Who’d have thought it?
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Wonderful – we had a telephone table in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs! Before mobile phones did make many things simpler in plotting stories! 🙂
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So where did all those telephone tables go?
I’ve seen some really unbelievable plotting in detective things on television to get around the fact we are so connected these days. I think we do realise now you have to integrate the new technology into the plot and not pretend it’s not there.
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Such a fun story; you had me with the title. VERY clever!
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Thanks Dawn!
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Gone are those days and those phone boxes. In many places we have made a jump from no phone to cell phone.
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Interesting! My nephew lives on Shetland. The internet/phones have made a huge difference, shrinking distances and keeping people connected.
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True, it has.
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