Post Office: Telephones, Private Companies

This series comprises the records of private telephone companies which were taken over by the Post Office in 1912. It consists of items relating to individual companies, National Telephone Company rules and instructions, staff related records, agreements, judicial proceedings, valuation of assets and a collection of early telephone directories.

Please see BT Archives online catalogue (under TP and TCB ) and The Postal Museum's online catalogue for some descriptions of individual records within this series.

The records in this series reflect a former arrangement and have since been re-catalogued. Please contact BT Archives https://www.bt.com/about/bt/our-history/bt-archives for more information.

Catalogue entries below series level were removed from Discovery, The National Archives' online catalogue, in November 2016 because fuller descriptions were available in The Postal Museum's online catalogue and BT Archives online catalogue.

Note that these records have been rearranged to fit the scheme of arrangement used at BT Archives. The records have been incorporated within TP and TCB and the POST 84 reference numbers are now obsolete.

Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure

Following the introduction of the first telephone of practical value in 1876-1977, a number of private telephone companies were formed, including The Telephone Company (in 1878) and the Edison Telephone Company (in 1879). Other similar companies also sprang up throughout the country. The Telephone Company and the Edison Telephone Company amalgamated in 1880 to form the United Telephone Company and, in 1889, with other companies, combined with the National Telephone Company (NTC). The NTC swiftly became the most prominent of the telephone companies, although following a ruling in 1880 on the legal powers of the Postmaster General under the Telegraph Act 1869, it operated under licence from the Postmaster General, which also began to operate its own telephone service in competition with the NTC. In 1896, the Post Office acquired the NTC's trunk (long distance) network, restricting the company to the provision of a network of local telephone services. In 1905, an agreement was reached between the Postmaster General and the NTC that the Post Office would purchase the NTC's system on expiry of its licence in 1911. The entire UK telephone service (with the exception of the service operated by Kingston-upon-Hull Borough Council) passed to Post Office control on 1 January 1912.