I’ve written previously about the telephone being run into High Blantyre Parish Chambers in 1907, but I’ve now found an earlier date when it first appeared in Blantyre overall, back as early as 1903 in Glasgow Road.
On 27th March 1903, the Hamilton Herald newspaper reported, “We are now in a position to state that a telephone service is about to be inaugurated in Blantyre, the National Telephone Company now having completed arrangements for opening an exchange and also a public call office. A number of subscribers have already been got. It is expected this service will be in thorough working order early in April. The call office is to be in a grocers shop belonging to Mr William Izett.”
This must have felt like the future! A revelation in technology and I’m sure residents , shopkeepers and businesses would have had no idea how important the phone would become in future and indeed how readily available it would become for all.
