It looks like one of many adapters that were one used to allow devices other than light bulbs to be connected to a light bulb socket (when that was the only electric power in the house/room). I used to use one for a soldering iron. It was plastic though, not wood.

Looks like lignin vitae.

Does it have contacts on the other end of the screwed off bayonet part? What’s at the other end of the larger part?
I recall snuggling under an electric blanket at my nans plugged into an adaptor in the light bulb socket. And nan always used the same thing for running the iron.

One of my previous houses only had a 5 amp plug socket running off the downstairs lighting circuit. That was all the power circuit we had. Still had to go upstairs with a torch and light the gas mantles. We are proper posh now in our present house (built in 1860) we have real 13 amp power all over the place !

Anyone remember when the man came round in his van on a Friday and swapped over your glass accumulators so you had a fresh set for the weekends radio programs?

Home delivery ? !!! As a 6 or 7yr old youngster in Liverpool I had to carry my nan's 2accumulators to the chemists for recharging and returning with the two pre-charged exchange units. At least they had bored wooden sleeves on the wire handles so one could 'swing' them.
DaveD

Edited By Meunier on 25/01/2018 20:51:07

hey , they really are split pins ! One has screw terminals ,fair enough .. the other holds the wire ends by tightening the cap !

The factory I worked in used to have a wide variety of plugs and sockets. Single phase outlets were of a few types, the standard 13A were for general use but for other production equipment the Dorman Smith with a fused live pin that simply unscrewed to change the fuse. One that made you look twice was the normal 13A plug that had the pins at 90deg to the normal pattern. With two types of 3phase supply in the plant more types were required apart from the normal 415v supply a low voltage 200hz supply for portable tools was generated on site and widely distributed. The tool supply allowed a powerful tool to be built in a smaller frame than a single phase tool and with 110v Center tapped to earth it was safer for the operator. Some of the really old plug tops were wood and red fibre. I think some of the reasons for the obscure plugs was to stop them being liberated and also to stop people plugging their radios and kettles into sockets used for production systems. The hi-cycle power tools did not get stolen either!

Mike

Two pin plugs – check, two pin sockets – taken out in the '60's but as I sit I can still see the witness of where they were on the skirting despite 50 years of paint layers. bayonet to two pin socket – check. 5A socket off lighting circuit upstairs and down – check, still in use. It really puzzled me as a kid trying to work out which fuse they were on as it never occurred to me a socket would be on the lighting circuit.
Can I add the necessary Y bayonet splitters to enable the extra loads to be added to the ceiling pendant. At school we daisy chained power to about 13 desk lamps and my oldest soldering iron still has a bayonet plug from then.

Hi all, before H&S took over the world I taught my daughter basic electrical stuff at around the age of 12, wiring 2 & 3 pin plugs, using socket tester etc, imagine my astonishment when she was regularly asked by male teachers in an all girl school to wire a plug for them!

However, during an office relocation at the firm where I worked, the foreman of the electrical department came upon an office worker fitting a 3 pin plug to a paper shredder, the logic being that the cable had to pass through a hole in the desk top too small to accomodate the plug, said foreman then gently took it from him & cut the first 8 inches off the cable, man says he needs to use the shredder & will report this matter to his office manager, foreman retorts "knock yourself out, we will see what he has to say when i show him that you wired the earth wire to the live pin of the plug,making the machine live at mains voltage" Boom Boom.

Bob

I found a few of those wooden BC adaptors on google images. They turn up on eBay.

Here's a selection of wooden plugs from South Africa:

http://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/SouthAfrica2.html