The cash is conveyed in hollow wooden balls, running along inclined tracks. The top one slopes down from sales point to cashier and the bottom slopes the other way. The gradient is 5/16ths of an inch to the foot. Note the ball approaching a "switch" (point) - the switch was set by the size of the ball so that it arrived back at the correct sales point. (The picture on the Introduction page shows a controlled switch incorrectly installed on the upper track.) There is a big separation between the outward and return tracks at this end. The system is well described in an article from the Belfast News-Letter of 1885.
This photograph shows the 8-station system installed at Alexander Moon Ltd in Galway in November 1894. In later years it was difficult to obtain replacement balls - Lamsons used to make them at Hythe Road out of substandard mangle rollers. In 1965 it was replaced by Paragon Registers and was acquired by Lamsons.
(Lamson News, Christmas 1965)

Photograph © Leicester City Museums Service, 2001

Immediately in front of the assistant is the hoist to raise the ball to the upper track for sending to the cashier. On its return to the service point, the ball drops onto a leather pad (to the right of the hoist). Sometimes a twisted "sock" was used to break its fall - as at Beamish Museum.

One reported fault of the system was that the ball sometimes fell off the track and broke the counter case below it (Murphy, Modern drapery).

A cash ball system in the hosiery department of a store, taken from "Modern draper" (London: Caxton, 1924)

A late survivor into the 1970s was Topliss drapers of Louth. This is Miss Lorraine Parrish at the top of the lift to the first floor.

© This England, 1975