Calvert’s Cash Carrier

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Every town has its signature store, and for Cambridge it was Calvert’s.  Buttons, bows, material, menswear, frocks, furniture, curtains, carpets – it was all there.  If you were coming to Cambridge to shop, you almost certainly needed something from Calvert’s on Victoria Street. Adverts regularly appeared in the local newspaper, the Waikato Independent.

Advert for Calvert and Co, Waikato Independent, Dec 1926 Image Source: PapersPast

To buy what you needed, you had to be served at the appropriate counter.  The sales assistant would write out a sales docket, the cash would be handed over, and that’s when things got interesting.

Above your head were wires that connected each counter to the cashier’s office located at a slightly higher level in the store’s centre.  The sales assistant placed your docket and cash in a small wooden cup and pulled a handle.  The cup shot across the wire with a “whiiiiizzzz, BANG!” as it slammed into a hook near the cashier.  The cashier returned the receipt and any change by releasing the hook, and letting the cup run back to its original position.  This was Lamson’s rapid-wire cash carrier.

So who was Lamson?  He was a shop owner from Massachusetts who thought there must be an easier way to transport cash than by tying it up in a handkerchief and throwing it – a method he was using in the 1870s.  He designed a cash-ball system where the cash was placed inside a ball and run along rails.  He soon discovered other patents of which he took control, including pneumatic tubes and the rapid-wire system like the one at Calvert’s.

Calvert’s operated from 1913 when George Calvert took over an existing drapery business.  It closed in 1985 under the management of George’s son Maurice who said he would never forget the thousands of customers and many fellow workers he had met over the years.  The press described it as the end of an era.

Cambridge Historical Society member Eris Parker noticed the cash carrier being dismantled in 1988 and acquired it for our museum. A Lamson Engineering in Auckland installed it in 2003, and it now astonishes new generations of fans with its simple yet effective design.

• Accession Number: CM2920/1
• Maker: Lamson Engineering NZ
• Where: USA
• When: This model was first sold in 1894
• Materials: Metal, wood, textile