I was reading a newspaper article from 1967 about how cigarette machines at 1 Stonefield Road, kept getting broken into and robbed. They would be refilled, but the next week, again broken into. This continued for quite a time until eventually they were removed.
I don’t have a photo of the machines, but I think they were here at this location at the junction of Stonefield Road and Glasgow Road. The photo is from 1979, some 12 years after this story, by which time large billboards and hoarding had been put up. During the early 1980s, the billboards were removed and the triangular plot of land was landscaped with some small railings, benches and gravel.
Do YOU remember the cigarette machines? Ever use them?
I certainly remember them and when the ladies in our street, including my mum, were cajoled into leasing them for our homes.
A great idea, put a shilling (it seems a lot for a ciggy, may be wrong) in and out pops a ciggy! Well, when money ran out, some bright spark learned how to open the back and retrieve a coin to release another ciggy. Come collection day when the salesman came to empty the money box and refill the cigs, the women in our street were up and down borrowing money to replace what they’d used. Or buy a pack of cigs between them to replace the cigs ..what a carryon and the power of addiction. They didn’t last long before everyone decided not worth the stress….