Women Telephone Operators
22 Norman Street
(building no longer standing)
On June 25, 1914, the city of Salem was ravaged by a fire that
raged out of control for thirteen hours. It started with an explosion
at the Korn Leather Company at the corner of Boston and Bridge Streets.
Before it could be brought under control, the fire had burned eighteen
hundred buildings and left more than three thousand families homeless.
It eventually worked its way to within a few blocks of the telephone
office on Norman Street. The operators on duty stayed at their posts
even though the fire was so close to their building the windows
were too hot to touch. When the electric lights and auxiliary gas
lamps went out, the women worked by lantern light. Operators who
were not scheduled to work that day came in to help voluntarily.
As reported in their employee magazine, Telephone Topics,
“everyone was a true heroine of the switch-board.” The
fire was fast approaching, some of the women had been made homeless,
“and yet… these girls… sat at the switchboards with
coats and hats on and answered thousands of calls from excited subscribers
while the great fire raged within 500 feet of the central office
and the lurid flames could be seen more than one hundred feet in
the air.”76 Singled out for
their heroism were Local Chief Operator Blanche E. Ross and Toll
Chief Operator Jeanette M. Curran.
Notes
76. Telephone Topics, Summer, 1914,
1.
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