Mayo memories: To whom is Fr. O’Toole speaking!
By Tom Gillespie
WHEN I saw this photograph above, which was posted on Facebook by Alan Mee, it brought me back to the days when we depended on the landline phone service.
The bi-annual production of local telephone directories was a lucrative business in most towns as the advertisements they attracted made it very economical to produce.
While we all remembered the numbers we rang regularly we still had to consult the phone book for all other contacts.
This mobile phone generation would scorn at the prospect of having to ring the operator in the local telephone exchange to be put through to the person you were calling.
In the past this often proved a lengthy process as the operator would have to ring you back, and then you would be put through.
The individual numbers in Castlebar, though, were easy to remember - the post office was 1, garda station 2, The Connaught Telegraph was 7, Castlebar Bacon Company was 16 and 44, T. Lavelle & Company on Main Street, 27, Christy Hoban, grocer, on Castle Street, 88, Robert Kilkelly, The Sound Radio Shop on Main Street, 72, and Thomas F. Durcan, undertaker, on Main Street, was 10.
So backward was the technology then that in some remote villages, householders knew a phone call was for them by the number of ‘rings’ the phone made, house one - two rings, houses two, three, etcetera.
Of course, not every house had a telephone installed. Instead they depended on the public phone boxes that were located outside post offices and at strategic locations around towns and villages.
Probably the one most in demand in Castlebar was the kiosk outside John Heneghan’s Pharmacy on Ellison Street.
To use one you had to insert several coins and then you dialled the required number. On getting through you pressed button ‘A’, and your money fell in, and you had your conversation. Then, if there was no answer, or the number was engaged, you pressed button ‘B’ to get your money back.
There was a small telephone switchboard in the main office of The Connaught Telegraph in Cavendish Lane. It could take two incoming calls at a time and these could be transferred to the newsroom or the typographical department by holding down a red lever and with the other hand twisting a handle to ring the particular phone.
In those days the Connaught was printed in-house and the big printing press was on the ground floor and directly above it was the newsroom.
On a Wednesday afternoon the back section of the Connaught was printed and such was the noise from the press that it was difficult to communicate with anyone on the phone. But we got used to it and became immune to the noise to such an extent that you could hear a door opening.
One Wednesday when the phone on my desk rang I picked up and heard: ‘To whom is Fr. O’Toole speaking!’ The late Fr. Anthony O’Toole was then based in Islandeady but had served in Castlebar from 1953 to ’61.
Those who have a copy of the 2019 telephone directory - hold on to it - because it may prove to be a valuable collectors’ item in future.
After a public consultation, ComReg has now ruled that it will no longer impose a requirement on Eir to publish an annual directory of telephone subscribers.
While now a private business, Eir was previously state owned, and had been required to continuously publish a physical phone book.
In making its decision the regulator said it had taken into account that electronic communications markets were changing rapidly, and that there were alternative methods available for the sourcing of phone numbers, in particular online directories.
Another factor was the low level of demand for the 2019 edition of the telephone directory.
Fewer than 2,400 copies were ordered by members of the public after the regulator had decided in 2018 that a free printed local area directory would no longer be provided to every household in the state with a landline connection.
Where several million copies of directories were once printed annually, ComReg said only 2,800 of the latest edition were printed, including 890 for the 01 Dublin area and just 165 in the 02 Cork area.
The delivery cost of that year’s directory was €4.70, which only 298 subscribers paid, with the remainder opting to collect it at an Eir outlet free of charge.
The discontinuation of the directory has benefits. One that springs to mind is the giveaway sign it presented when one was left on a doorstep for a considerable length of time, indicating there was no one at home - a real invitation for a break-in.
I suppose I always took the phone directory for granted. That was before I encountered a voluminous tome in a hotel room in New York. It must have been seven or eight inches in thickness and I think that was only for phone subscribers in Manhattan.
Over the years telephone lines were put underground in towns and villages, removing poles. One town, however, was well ahead of the posse in having telephone and electrical wires removed from its streetscape.
And that was over 40 years ago with the filming of The Year of the French in Killala.
The television serial, directed by Michael Garvey and based on the novel by Thomas Flanagan, was first broadcast in 1982. It was a co-production by the Irish broadcaster RTÉ, the British television company Channel Four and the French broadcaster FR3, now France 3.