Victorian call centres

Victorians had qualities which mark them out even to this day: thrift, hard work, a practical nature, a mentality of self-help.  Such qualities, I believe, are borne out of the nature of their society; there was no social security network, for example, to go to when they fell on hard times.  If there was no family to help, then people in distress would have to rely on their own resources.

Widows were especially vulnerable.  Losing a husband meant they had to become the breadwinner overnight.  For women of the lower classes, going out to work was not so remarkable and it was relatively easy to earn money.  The major forms of employment were domestic service or factory work.  For the middle class woman, however, paid employment was simply not an option.  The most she could hope for was a position as governess or companion to old ladies.  Both meant living in and a drop in social status.  And the money earned would have been peanuts.

One highly practical solution for such widows was the practice of giving them a sewing machine as a present.  This was not charity and allowed the widow to become self-sufficient.  Working from home, the widow maintains respectability, and performs a task considered appropriate for women.  She could receive orders for new garments or domestic textiles, or take in alterations.

But why bother with a sewing machine?  Close needlework ruins your eyesight (remember, they only had gas or oil lamps then) and you get a hump back bending over your work.  Some projects would take days or weeks to finish.  A much better alternative to the donated sewing machine is – wait for it – a telephone. 

A writer identifying herself (I think we can safely assume the writer is female) as “Self Help” sent in a suggestion to an 1884 periodical,[1] saying that the gift of a telephone connection to the central exchange is an inordinately better income generator than a sewing machine.  Here are some of the ways the widow can exploit her telephone (and simultaneously exploit her friends):

1. Send out flyers to her lady friends that she can now order goods on their behalf from local traders, who are also connected by telephone.  They might order the following: flowers, fish, theatre tickets, coal, wine.  The writer believes that traders would be willing to pay the widow 10% commission for all orders she puts their way.
2. She could allow merchants and their employees to use her telephone for business purposes.  They pay a few pennies to the widow and telephone the office to say they would be an hour late. 

Given a choice, I would opt for the telephone.  It’s much easier than labouring over a sewing machine that’s not even electric.  Turning your front parlour into a one-woman call centre has a lot going for it – intense networking with friends and local business people; no commuting every day; being at home to look after children.

This idea surfaced during the telephone's first decade in Britain.  It shows amazing entrepreneurial spirit and innovative thinking on how to put a new technology to good use.

I still maintain that the technological practices and gadgets that we consider ultra modern and super digital are not in the slightest bit new or original – they are merely faster/bigger/cheaper versions of what the Victorians did before us.

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[1] Work and leisure: a magazine devoted to the interests of women.  London: F. Kirby, 1884.

"Selling Talk"

I came across another little gem in the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company publication, "Telephone Facts" of 1915.  Remember, this is a journal the company sent out to its business customers (telephone companies) who were in the market for telephones, switchboards, and sundry accessories.

Strategically positioned on the first inside page is a short sales pitch that salesmen can use to market the telephone to potential subscribers.  What is interesting is that the piece does not focus at all on the technical aspects of the telephone apparatus, its durability, technological features, innovation and such like.  Instead, the only selling point the salesman should emphasise is talk.  This is the commodity that the telephone man deals in.  Even more surprising (to me, at least) is the fact that the writer mentions that it doesn't matter if the talk is important or trivial, it is still significant.

Ads such as these link to Claude Fischer's discussion about how American telephone companies suddenly discovered sociability and how, surprise surprise, encouraging people to be sociable was good for business.  We then see a gradual turnaround in telephone companies' attitudes: they ceased promoting the telephone purely for 'serious' business use and stopped berating women who insisted on abusing the telephone for mere trivia.  Now gossip was good.

Everyone involved in the telephone business, from lineman, contract man to operator, was reminded: "you sell talk."

This is all well and good and highly interesting, but what happened in Britain?  It is well known that the telephone service in Britain was grossly under-developed (and dare I even say, backward?) in comparison.  Certainly, in 1915 there was no massive, national advertising campaign undertaken by the General Post Office.  War concerns were more pressing, but even after the war, it would be a long time before any concerted efforts were made to promote the service.  


How the GPO promoted the telephone service is one huge area still awaiting intensive research.  I can't wait to get started!!

 

Wired

"Every journal is like a wire carrying a psychological current which winds its way intricately across and through the country, and it is continually crossed and recrossed by thousands of other wires."

R. A. Scott-James, The Influence of the Press.  London: 1913.

Scott-James was describing the news network of journals and newspapers that spread across the country, which was feeding a voracious reading public.  The use of wires as a trope to describe the connectedness of society seems to be gaining ground.  Not surprising since Britain's towns and country roads were very quickly covered with overhead wires that darkened the skies.  The difference between the 'before' and 'after' scenes would have been very stark.

More to the point, the network of communications is anthropomorphised.  Wires or cables are the nerves of the city, carrying electrical impulses with messages, impressions, emotions.  If a person's central nervous system is damaged, he will be reduced to a vegetable state.  If a city's network of wires comes down, the city is crippled and everything comes to a halt.  Tens of thousands of Brooklyn residents found this out the hard way in 1975 when a fire in a New York telephone exchange burned their connections.  The chaos in telephone service was second only to that caused by the 9/11 attack.

As a visual device, wires dominate in Nevinson's Amongst the nerves of the world, painted in 1930.  Telephone wires dissect the air above Fleet Street into angular blocks, St Paul's is visible in the background.  I like the dichotomy inherent in the wires: they connect and unite people and places, yet at the same time cut and separate the scene into smaller, disparate sections.  A truly modern element, this ambiguous 'same, but different.'  The painting shows not only the nerves of the urban body, but also all the other flows of communications: lines of buses and cars running up and down Fleet Street, flanked by streams of pedestrians.  The painting is exhibited by the Museum of London, together with other works by Nevinson.  Enjoy!

Abuse of the telephone, or cold calling

A reader of the Saturday Review wrote a letter to the editor in November 1937 complaining about the underhand techniques of pushy sales reps.  "Pater Filiarum" had earlier published an announcement of his daughter's engagement.  Weeks later he was bombarded with telephone calls from florists, photographers, hotels, and other businesses involved in the matrimonial 'industry', all fishing for business.  I myself have fallen prey to similar tactics.  So what's new?

He denigrates the callers for wasting his valuable time and disturbing his domestic peace.  He considers various solutions: 

• disconnect the telephone: "not practical";
• go ex-directory: "gives a lot of trouble to one's friends"

He hits on a novel solution in the end:

"What we do is to inform the interrupter that we have black list of all firms who employ this method of convassing, and that we do no business with firms on the black list."

Effective, don't you think?

The following week's edition prints a reply from "Sufferer" who conveniently commiserates with Pater Filiarum.  In his view, the culprit is the telephone book which lists both addresses and telephone numbers (!) making the job of the cold caller a lot easier.  Another bane of modern life is the efficient mail system which delivers "the never-ceasing flood of circulars [...] through the letter-box."  "Sufferer" has even heard of companies ringing up families when there's been a bereavement.

What doesn't fit
Both the writer and respondent remain anonymous.  Other letter writers on the same page supply name and address.  What did Pater and Sufferer have to fear?  Retribution from more cold callers? 


Is this letter something like a 'puff' - ostensibly a reader's letter but really a fix?  If so, what is the magazine trying to sell, what message is it trying to convey?  Perhaps an indirect way of advising affected readers on how to deal with unwanted callers?


Having said this, whether the letter is genuine or written by a journalist, its existence shows a concern for domestic privacy, aggressive (for the period) marketing techniques, and the utility of the telephone.


Why not write to the telephone company, complaining about the companies' misuse of technology?  Or publish (and be damned) this black list of offending companies?


1937 strikes me as a bit late to be complaining about sharp business practices.  By now I would have thought people would be used to them, even if the telephone is still not so widely diffused.


Saturday Review was a magazine with a long history but folded a year after these letters were published.  It had a controversial past (expressed anti-German sentiments), hosted distinguished contributors, had a colourful aristocratic owner (Lady Houston, who died one year before these letters appeared).  Do these elements colour one's interpretation of Pater/Sufferer's letters?


"Abuse of the Telephone."  Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art.  November 1937.

How to untie a telephone tangle

A. H. Hastie(1) wrote in 1898 of the problems that beset the British telephone system.  He admonishes not only subscribers but also government and the General Post Office.

Subscribers themselves are to blame for shoddy service.  When they experience delays in connections, they should report this to the telephone company immediately, in writing.  Hastie considers this a subscriber's "duty" and if he performs his duty, then he can enjoy connections within London within fifty seconds (!)  Otherwise, his requested connection may need up to ten minutes.  Unreported delays remain a secret between operator and subscriber.   In modern parlance, I think we call this 'snitching': put your complaint in writing and then the company will tell the operator - make sure Mr X gets good service, or else.  To give him his due, Hastie does concede that "the telephone girls are only human; their work is most worrying work, and every allowance must be made for them.  He then ruins it be suggesting operators fob off subscribers, saying the called party is engaged, when in reality they are not.



It seems that the upper social ranks felt a little put out about having to answer their own telephones and complaints - satirical and serious - about the interruptions abound.  One such example is detailed in a previous post: a logical solution to this problem would be to get the servants to answer calls.  Anyone who could afford a telephone subscription could certainly afford at least one servant.  So, there are two alternatives here: either subscribers wanted their cake and to eat it (maintain a telephone for business contacts, not be disturbed by calls, not allow anyone else to answer calls); or, reports of putative disturbances are greatly exaggerated - by the press or subscribers, who knows?
 
A second area where subscribers can improve communications is by having two lines into their premises.  One line connects to an internal house exchange - employees can communicate in-house and make external calls.  A second line ensures that clients can ring up without being told the line is busy.  Hastie suggests this arrangement is adopted by private households - a servant should answer the phone and there should be connections in the remaining rooms.  In 1898, I can well imagine the cost would be prohibitive for all but the extremely well off.  Two lines meant having two separate subscriptions.


What about the government's part?  Hastie advocates a monopoly.  One organisation in total control is the only way to achieve good service.  (At the time, private companies provided local, town service and the Post Office the trunk, i.e. long distance, service).  If a town just wanted a telephone service operating within its boundaries, then every town council could set up its own urban service with its own specifications.  The problem arises when towns want to communicate long distance and then there is the matter of compatibility.  This is as much a technical matter as it is economic.

Hastie accuses the Post Office of operating a deficient trunk system.  Subscribers placing a long distance call had to wait up to twenty minutes.  (Why do they find this length of time unacceptable?  Yes, it's longer than making a local call, but when you consider the alternatives available a decade or so earlier in the pre-telephone age, twenty minutes to wait seems fine to me.)  Hastie suggests two trunk lines: the first, expensive and quick, and the second one, cheap and slow.  He stresses that "the business community require an efficient telephone service at once" - no mention here of domestic subscribers.

Interestingly, Hastie urges the Post Office to nationalise the telephones and provide the whole country with telephones (in emulation of the US, where growth was phenomenal in comparison).  His rationale is that the creation of the necessary infrastructure would provide jobs for twenty-seven different skilled trades and countless labourers.  Hastie is silent on how the Post Office responded.




(1) Founder of the Telephone Subscribers' Protection Association

A. H. Hastie.  "The telephone tangle, and the way to untie it."  Fortnightly Review.  December 1898.

"Telephonic instructions and notes," 1898

When she started her shift every morning, the switchboard operator of the early years had to telephone each of her subscribers.  This wasn't to wish him a good morning but to check if the line was still connected and working.  Faults were frequent and lines invariably became disconnected and the only way to test the line was by telephoning the subscriber.  Can you imagine such a thing happening today, and without caller-ID?  I mean the ringing up, not the disconnected lines.

The fact that this custom became the object of satire in contemporary publications, illustrates the strength of feeling against it and its prevalence.  Newspaper cartoons of the day also ridiculed the inefficiencies of the telephone service.  One of the "instructions" provided "not by the National Telephone Company, Limited" (in Judy) advises on Temper:

"Don't be put out if you are in medias rep [sic] with an intricate calculation, and have to descend sundry flights of stairs only to find that the telephone nymph wishes to know if you can hear her all right this morning."

Wouldn't it be more sensible to have the telephone situated in a study or sitting room, instead of the cold and distant hall?
Why not get one of the servants to answer the telephone, especially when it was predictable who was ringing?


Not only does the writer poke fun at the customs and practices involved in using the telephone apparatus ("turn the handle x times as if you were operating upon a barrel-organ") but he makes puns out of the new vocabulary used for telephone terminology: "If the (Official) Receiver is off to the Hook (of Holland), you naturally cannot ring him up."
Such vocabulary (receiver, hook, engaged, exchange, instrument) has now acquired new layers of meaning.  These double meanings are exploited for entertainment value, but also as a stinging critique of the infant telephone service.  The public were presented with a new technology for which they struggled to find a real need and a niche.  The public not only had to find a way to assimilate the telephone into their daily routines, and develop a telephone discourse with which to discuss these new practices, but they also had to deal with telephone companies beset by technical problems and inexperience.  Remember, the companies and their staff were new at this business too.

"Telephonic instructions and notes."  Judy, or the London serio-comic Journal.  9 March 1898.

The danger of giraffes

Mr W L Preece (son of W H Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the General Post Office) reported to the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1915 on the trials and tribulations of setting up a telephone system in the tropics.  Problems with humidity, plagues of insects and quick growing vegetation troubled engineers in establishing lines of communication and keeping them clear and working.  However, the biggest hazard by far was that of wandering giraffes.

"When the giraffes roaming over the wilds of East Africa come up against a telegraph or telephone line, they have not the sense to draw back or duck their heads, but push on, carrying wires and sometimes poles with them."

Silly animals!

"Telephone Troubles in the Tropics."  Journal of the Royal Society of Arts.  28 May 1915

Kleptomaniacs and the man in the moon

The following report was given in The Orchestra (of all places!) in an article “The British Association’s Telephone” (September 1877).  Note that it was around this time that Bell’s invention was demonstrated in Britain.

"But the instrument is still in its infancy, and who can foretell future results?  Suppose, for instance, that by means of a lunar telephone conversation could be carried on between the Man in the Moon and the various lunatics at large or under restraint on this planet: what a flood of light might be thrown on the feelings and inner consciousness of klepto-, dipso, mono-, and poly-maniacs."

All this ahead of Freud and space travel.  Some journalists had a vivid imagination.

"Complaints against women"

Writing in 1894, Miss Agnes Amy Bulley and Miss Margaret Whitley (prefaced by Lady Dilke!) elaborate on the many career choices open to women in the late Victorian era.  One of these areas is clerical and commercial work in the General Post Office.  I have already discussed elsewhere the working conditions and benefits employees could expect.

Not only do the Misses Bulley and Whitley describe careers at the GPO, but they feel it necessary to mention the fact that members of the public have lodged complaints about the shoddy service they have received.  Things got so bad that the Postmaster-General himself (Sir James Fergusson) felt compelled to issue a circular, requiring "greater civility" from the girls when dealing with the public.

Customers experienced "indifference and carelessness" from the telephone girls, who seemed to have forgotten that "important business transactions" were being conducted.  The authors even report that at one exchange, which they refuse to name, the Post Office had to resort to replacing the women with men.  Undoubtedly, everyone in the town would know which office this was; it would have been the only one with an all-male staff working the day shift.  A newspaper editor was always glad when the day shift (worked by women) was over and the night shift (worked by men) came on.  Reading between the lines, the authors merely mention the subject as a warning: 'behave yourselves, girls, or else this new line of work will be cut off to you in the future.'

Young boys were the first telephone operators but they didn't last long.  They kept messing about and had to be replaced by docile, obedient young women.  You only need to look at any contemporary photographs to see rows of young women seated at their switchboards, backs ramrod straight, a matron-figure patrolling behind them and the managers/engineers seated at their own desk to one side or in the middle of the room.  These girls didn't even have a chance to exchange a surreptitious glance with their neighbour, never mind being insolent to a caller.  And, of course, if the call was for business, then the caller undoubtedly would have been male and much older than the operator.

I find it strange that the authors inserted this paragraph ("Complaints against Women") in what is essentially a careers guide for young women, having details of wages, qualifications, etc.  There are many other jobs described in the book (teaching, commerce, textile trade) but nowhere does it mention customers complaining about employees' behaviour.  On the contrary, quite often the authors describe grievances attached to certain professions, such as low wages, long hours and so on.  Readers thus gain an honest picture of what's in store for them.  It's almost as if the Post Office told them to write this paragraph?


A. Amy Bulley, Margaret Whitley.  Women's Work.  London: Methuen, 1894.
 

"This marvellous musical instrument"

"This marvellous musical instrument" is the telephone.  It was supposed to be used to broadcast a live concert given in Philadelphia, to an eager audience in New York.  Another reciprocal concert was broadcast in the opposite direction.


'Technical problems' meant the New York audience had to manage without entertainment.

The London journal, Orchestra, repeats the article published in a New York music journal, in which they describe the fiasco of the telephone concert that never was.  I detect an undertone of schadenfreude on the side of the British journal: they point out that the telephone (an American invention) is suffering setbacks in its home country.  More to the point, the audience should not be disappointed by such failings; as a means of entertainment, the telephone will fail them.

At a time when those in the industry were struggling to find a use for the new invention (1877), the writer shows remarkable foresight, or at least common sense.  He recommends the telephone should remain at home, together with concert-goers.

"The Telephone at Home."  Orchestra, 4:40 (Nov 1877)