5 Communication: telephone and the 999 system

Effective communication, both internally and with the public, is an essential component of policing. The police were early to adopt new communication technologies. In the nineteenth century, correspondence between stations or divisions relied on police messengers but, by the end of the century, police forces were regularly using the telegraph, which was initially favoured for the permanent record it left.

Figure 8: A police telephone box, designed by Mackenzie Trench in 1928 [Description: A black and white photograph showing a police box possibly located outside a train or bus station – there are a number of vending machines nearby. A policeman wearing a helmet and overcoat is standing by the box using the external telephone. The design of the police box is similar to those used in Dr Who, with a blue light on top and the words ‘Police public call box’ on each side.] Source: https://www.prints-online.com/1950s-childhood/police-public-box-london-4461199.html

The telephone was first demonstrated to Queen Victoria in 1878 and the first police force to install a telephone (Glasgow City) did so just two years later. Most forces in the UK were equipped with telephones from the mid-1880s. Initially telephone technology was used primarily for inter-police communications. The primary function of the police telephone boxes which were developed in the early twentieth century (see Figure 8) were for superiors to contact officers on the beat (and vice versa) but these soon had telephones added to the outside which the public could use in an emergency.

These static police structures had obvious limitations – not least that there were not that many of them. As more coin-operated public telephone boxes were installed, and more businesses and homes had telephones fitted, the 999 system was developed to facilitate police/public communication.

Prior to its development, to contact the police in an emergency the public had to dial ‘0’ for the telephone exchange, be connected to an operator, and then request to be put through to their local police station. Complaints of delays in connection were common. The General Post Office, responsible for the telephone network at the time, proposed that a new standard telephone code be introduced. The 999 system was subsequently introduced in London (covering a 12-mile radius from Oxford Circus) in 1937. Glasgow followed suite in 1938 but other major cities had to wait until after the Second World War. It was not until telephone exchanges became fully automated in 1976 that all telephone lines were able to use the 999 system.