Interview with Les Scadden

Les Scadden describes family background, childhood in Blenheim, education, joining the Post Office as message boy in 1912 after working on temporary staff over Christmas, details of the Christmas greetings telegram, the Blenheim Post Office in 1912, discipline, duties, hours, gas lamps in streets, transport, telegram delivery, promotion levels, wages, telegraphists held 'in high esteem', Blenheim as an important telegraph station, telegraph sounders, repeaters, information for horse racing, Cook Strait cable, faults, testing, repairs, postmaster at Blenheim - E H Northcroft, system for keeping statistical records, gender and race of employees, electric current produced on wet cell batteries, testing the circuits.

Explains becoming a cadet for Engineering Branch, Dunedin in 1915, erecting new telephone lines, the telephone rating system, private lines, cadet qualifications, training overseas as infantryman, machine gunner and Signals Corps member during World War I, influenza epidemic of 1918, duties in Engineers' Office, Wellington in 1919, the new automatic exchanges, underground cables, duties as assistant supervisor at Engineers' Branch in 1929, difficulties in recruiting staff, effect of Depression in 1930s, work as paymaster, Engineering Branch, Wellington in 1920s, details of planning route for pay day, security for pay day delivery, duties as examiner at Accounts Branch, Wellington in 1931, work as accountant at Wellington District Office in the 1930s, the Power Samas machine for financial control and staffing requirements, the foreign mail system, rivalry between postal and engineers' branches, taking over the clerical organisation of the Radio Section during World War II, mention of Post Office workers in coastal watching stations killed on Tarawa by Japanese during war, changes in requirements for employees of Engineering Branches, directors general, first radio broadcast, social life at the Post Office, retirement.

Access Contact - see oral history librarian

Venue - Wellington

Interviewer(s) - Hugo Manson

Venue - At Les Scadden's home at Raumati in Wellington

Arrangement: Tape numbers - OHC-000798 - OHC-000800

Quantity: 3 C60 cassette(s). 1 printed abstract(s). 2.58 Hours and minutes Duration.

Finding Aids: Abstract Available - abstracting complete AB 126.

Black and white photographs as follows:. Les Scadden and Albert Scadden, undated. Les Scadden and two sisters, undated

Search dates: 1898 - 1984

Alternative form available: Listening copies available OHLC-006879 - OHLC-006881