Southern New England Telephone Operators Practicing their Skills for High Wire Work
Telephone operators employed by the Southern New England Telephone Company fulfilled an important role for the company with their courteous and efficient service at the switchboards, but it is a little known fact that for a short period of time, from 1934 to 1937, many of the operators were also trained to work on the wire crews with the men. This was done as a precautionary measure by the company, so that in case of times of disaster, such as floods or hurricanes, ample staff was available to repair downed telephone lines. Shown here are operators Jeannette Pascal and Eleanor Hennypenny demonstrating their prowess on a catwalk the company strung between their headquarters in Hartford to an adjacent building. Operator Pearl Carpenter, who worked for SNET from 1931 until her retirement in 1968, reported to the archives on a recent visit that during the Flood of 1936, when operators were called to assist the men in line repair, she scaled a forty foot telephone pole in heels and stockings, successfully restoring telephone service to thousands in the Greater New Haven area.
[April 3: If you didn’t realize already, this post, from April 1, was an April Fool’s Day joke. As far as we know operators were not trained to scale the telephone lines, and we know of none who may have done so in heels and stockings. The real story is this: this photograph was taken in March 1936 when flood waters covered 1/5 of the city of Hartford. The streets were so flooded in front of the SNET headquarters that workers were unable to enter the building through the street level entrances, so this catwalk was erected to connect the headquarters building with an adjacent building and operators had to traverse the catwalk to get to the switchboards. We don’t actually know the names of the two ladies in the photograph — I thought the ruse would be more believable if I could pin names to women — and no operator by the name of Pearl Carpenter ever paid us a visit.]