Photographs

Peterborough Museum

Shops

CAMBRIDGE. Co-op. "The fascination of the Co-op was to watch, thumb in mouth, the intricate whizzing overhead, to and fro, of little suspended money pods on wires from counters to a mysterious chamber set high at the back of the shop." Late 1940s/early 1950s. (Malcolm Hensher)

CAMBRIDGE. Co-op, Burleigh Street. Wire system shown in photograph of Central Grocery Department (Cambridge Chronicle, 27 June 1928, p.7). In early 1960s, grocery department had wire system with small office in the corner. Clothing and furniture shop next door had pneumatic tube system. (Posting to uk.rec.subterranea newsgroup, 8 Mar. 2000)

CAMBRIDGE. Co-op, Victoria Road branch. Wire system. (Photographs of interior and exterior in Cambridge Chronicle, 27 June 1928, p.7)

CAMBRIDGE. Eden Lilly. Cash carrier. Lisa White in posting to Facebook

CAMBRIDGE. Mathew & Son, The Stores, Trinity Street. Cash ball system. (Photograph of provision department in Cambridge Chronicle, 13 Dec. 1922, p.4 - not very clear)
• "For children .. the great excitement of shopping at Matthew's was the overhead cash system... For many years Matthew & Son used a cash railway... Matthew & Son used the ball system... 'The children looked up in awe,' recalls Mrs Alice Zeitlyn... Matthew's continued to use theirs until the mid twentieth century." Judy Wilson. Cambridge grocer: the story of Matthew's of Trinity Street, p. 128

CAMBRIDGE. Sainsburys. "The original Sainsburys in Cambridge where I worked as a Saturday girl." Sheila Barnes in posting to Facebook, 8 Mar. 2021

CAMBRIDGE. ? "By order of the proprietors. Messrs. W.H. Cork and Co. will offer for sale by auction, upon the premises, 41 Petty Cury, Cambridge .. Lamson's cash railway, for 15 assistants." Saffron Walden Weekly News, 15 Jul. 1927, p 3

MARCH, Cambs. A haberdashers. Wire system. Cambridge Library staff

PETERBOROUGH. Armstrongs, 29-33 Cowgate. Gipe system with two lines. Still there in 1980 but not in regular use. GLIAS Notes and News . Photograph of exterior

PETERBOROUGH. Burlington Stores, Cowgate. "Much interest was evinced in the installation of a system of pneumatic tubes by the Lamson Pneumatic Tube Co., which was admirably explained by Mr. W. Miller, the superintendent of construction. By this system cash can be rapidly transmitted from each department in the two Stores to the cashier's desk in the basement of the new premises... The motive power is a rotary blower driven by an electric motor of 4 h.p. The carriers, it is claimed, will travel from two to three thousand feet a second, and the system is said to be rapdly superseding the old cash railways, which, in these busy days are regarded as too slow and unsightly." Peterborough Standard, 22 Feb. 1902, p. 8

PETERBOROUGH. Co-op. Cash carrier. Diana Yates in posting to Facebook

PETERBOROUGH. Glass's (dept. store), corner of Market Place. Pneumatic tube system in 1960s. (Ian Carr)

PETERBOROUGH. Gough Bros., 375 and 379 George Street. "We have the right goods - goods that have a way of walking over the counters and tables, keeping the cash railway delivery on the jump and the till full." Daily Evening Review (Peterborough), 21 May 1897, p. 2

PETERBOROUGH. ?Hodgsons (haberdashers), Bridge Street. Wire system in 1960s. (Ian Carr)

WHITTLESEY. Co-op. "Co-op (loved the overhead cash system they had)." Irene Henson posting to Whittlesey Now and Then on Facebook, 16/11/13

Museums

PETERBOROUGH. Museum, Priestgate. Formerly one line of Rapid wire system with two propulsions in reconstruction of provision merchants. No longer on display, April 2017.