Watford became the fifth town in the country to receive the benefits of the new subscriber trunk dialling system on Friday.

At 12.20pm, Miss Mervyn Pike, Assistant Postmaster General and MP for Melton, picked up a bright red telephone receiver in the Watford Exchange.

Then she dialled 0 LE3 20424 and within a matter of seconds she was talking to her friend, Mrs D Russell, The Lord Mayor of Leicester, in her parlour in Leicester Town Hall.

As Miss Pike put it, the call was “untouched by hand”. By courtesy of the subscriber trunk dialling system, she got straight through without the help of an operator.

Their conversation lasted for over three minutes and would have cost 2s 10d.

Under the old system the cost would have been 4s 8d [as] with the old system, subscribers were charged to the nearest minute. With STD they pay for the time they spend “on the line”.

Watford’s MP, Mr F W Farey-Jones, offered a big “thank you” on behalf of the town. “This is a happy day for Watford,” he said, “far happier than we realise at the moment.”

He added that the GPO could not have chosen a better place to inaugurate the system than Watford. “What Watford is saying today, London will be saying in two years’ time,” he commented.

[From the Watford Observer of July 8, 1960]

 

A man who complained to the Berkhamsted Magistrates of assault was asked by the Clerk where his wife was while he was being knocked about. He promptly replied: “Oh, she wouldn’t mind a bit if I was killed. She says that if I do live to draw my pension, I shaln’t live long to enjoy it.”

[From the Watford Observer of July 21, 1928]

 

A number of phosphorous bombs used for ARP purposes during the war were missed from a store at Hemel Hempstead this week.

The police have accounted for a number of these, but there may be others not yet traced.

Through the schools, children have been warned not to touch clear glass bottles resembling lemonade bottles they may see lying about, but to notify the police at once. There is an explosion when a bottle is broken.

[From the Watford Observer of July 18, 1947]

 

Mr Malcolm Pleasants, the Watford man whose hobby is collecting Victorian objects, rode from Marble Arch to Brighton on Monday on an 1880 penny farthing bicycle.

“It was hard going,” Mr Pleasants, who lives in Cassiobury Drive, admitted. “It rained hard, the wind was against me, and I had to get off and push it up all the hills. I wanted to prove that if the Victorians could do it, so could I.”

He completed the 50-mile ride at an average speed of a little under six miles an hour. He wore a frock coat, top hat and red waistcoat.

He is spending the week holidaying in Brighton with friends.
His luggage went down in advance by train.

[From the Watford Observer of July 19, 1963]