A tangent question to Mrs Wilson

I think you are correct. I'm 1963 you could call 999 for police, fire brigade or ambulance. The service was introduced in 1937 and you could call free from a public telephone box.
Mrs Wilson probably called the priest as she realised that Alex was beyond help.

Google tells me 999 came into operation in the London area in June 1937. It was instigated after a house fire in 1937.

Sorry MiniMoon crossed posts.

fire in 1935

I lived in London in the 60s and had a number of young Irish catholic friends who in conversation used to talk about their local village priests. I was surprised to hear quite how much power and authority they wielded and how over involved they seemed with family life in their parish.
Some of my friends told me that they all lived in fear of the priest calling on them in their homes. they even hid because priests often collected money from them.
Don’t shoot me down, i have no way of knowing if that and the other things they said was true, but had no reason to doubt it. Perhaps this us why mrs Wilson contacted the priest first. Who knows.

What surprised me was that they had a phone in the house, that wasn’t usual at that time and which would be unlikely. Generally it was down to the phone box on the corner, or to the one neighbour who might have a phone...probably on a party line.

Depends where you lived. We lived in a city. Phones were common enough where we were.

Thank you. I remember when my dad collapsed and died at home when I was 12, my mum's first call was to the doctor in the village. But we were quite remote and the nearest hospital was over 20 miles away. No idea where an ambulance would even have come from.

We had a phone for as long as I can remember, long before we had a TV or a fridge.
I remember being taught how to make emergency calls as part of a Brownie badge.

We first had a house phone at the latter end of the 60s. We Lived in a reasonably comfortable suburban town just outside London. One or two friends parents had a phone but the majority didn’t. I remember there was a little wooden box put there so if we made a call we had to pay for it.

Silverlining48
The information about the priests was correct. In fact it's still the case in many rural Irish villages.

We had a telephone in the 1950s. Not a well off family we lived in a heavily industrial area of Birmingham but my grandmother had it installed as she was operating a business from her front room.....selling tea, bacon sandwiches and various home made cakes to the workers.

we had a phone in the early 60's ,our first TV in the mid 50's but no freezer until late 60's .We were catholic and the priest often visited just for tea and a chat.I've never known a priest to ask for money,any money given to the church was through the collections during mass.Our door was never locked( mine still isn't) so the priest and anyone else would knock and enter .I remember one who talked "the horses" with my granny who was raised in Ireland and loved to follow the racing and my Dad who was raised in the Orange Order and converted to Catholicism used to love to discuss the deeper meanings of religion with him .

We got our first phone back in the 1950's. Living in the overflow Council Estate of Harold Hill, near Romford in Essex, and my Dad still working in East London, he felt it was an essential so that my Mum was not totally isolated. One night, with a smog, he walked home from work and telephoned my Mum every half an hour from public phone boxes he passed.
When I got married in 1964, we had a telephone installed in our new home, albeit a party line (which we detested). Did not find the Wilson family, living in the very pleasant suburban semi at all unusual in having a phone.

Mum and dad didn't have a phone until about 1970. When we married in 1975 we couldn't afford a phone. DH used to walk to the box 10 mins away to ring his parents once a week. Finally got a phone in 1977.

Got my first landline in ‘76 Mum and dad got their first one a couple of years before We had a box not far from the house so used to go there after 6 if it was for a chat as it was cheaper after 6 but if there was a queue you d have to be quick

We had a phone in the mid 1950s, before that everyone in the road went to a neighbour who had a phone if they urgently needed to make a call. The television arrived in our house in 1959. We had a washing machine a few years later, the freezer wasn't bought until the 1980s!

All my family had phones as far back as first available.
My great grandfather was a GP working from his home He influenced everyone that a phone would save a life.
A party line was cheaper if cost an issue.

I remember a school friend's mother hiding from the priest.
He collected money through expectation and pressure over a cup of tea.
The collection officially was in Church.

I was surprised in Mrs Wilson, to see a phone on a bedside table that long ago.

For ages it was the norm in all the families we knew, to have just one, usually in the hall, where it was always chilly (if not freezing!) in pre central heating days, so there were never any long chatty calls, even if cost hadn't been an issue. I knew more than one family where the father made everyone pay 3d for each call - there was a box to put the money in.

I remember a (Scottish!) friend who had a wall phone deliberately located in a place you couldn't sit down, to discourage long chats. I can also remember how, when you used a phone in someone else's house, it used to be normal to leavea few pence beside the phone to cover the cost of your call.