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Air Raid Shelter Ticket

Peg Monkey

Peg Monkey

master brummie
Hi Folks, I found the precious ticket in my mother's papers after her death some years ago but did nothing with it, then the other day it re-emerged and I thought this is too important to be kept under wraps. Can't be sure who used it, but I can narrow it down to my Grandmother, Grandfather or Mother (not my father because he hadn't met my mother in 1941. Harrowing thought: Ticket States Not transferable, your name was taken when you entered the shelter and the authorities needed to know exactly who was down there in case the shelter took a direct hit. Consensus of opinion is Trinity Road Station is most likely to be Aston Station now, only thing is, as I recall, Aston Station is at quite a high level (track crosses Lichfield Road), maybe it had a subway that was used as the shelter?
Regards,
Peg Monkey.
A R S Ticket.jpg
 
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thats very interesting...never seen an air raid shelter ticket before in fact i did not realise you had to have one....peg it says london transport on the ticket so it cant be trinity road in birmingham as you thought..i could be wrong here but could it have been a london underground station..there is a trinity road in london....it certainly must have meant something to your mother if she kept it all those years..

lyn
 
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many thanks alan...and a lovely photo as well of trinity road underground to go with pegs ticket...

cheers

lyn
 
You certainly did not need a ticket to enter a shelter in Brum during the war, more than likely a warden would be yelling you to get in! I speak from experience. Eric
 
thats what i was thinking eric...run for the nearest shelter..having said that maybe it was different for the underground stations...very interesting though and a snap shot of our history

lyn
 
Astoness said:
thats very interesting...never seen an air raid shelter ticket before in fact i did not realise you had to have one....peg it says london transport on the ticket so it cant be trinity road in birmingham as you thought..i could be wrong here but could it have been a london underground station..there is a trinity road in london....it certainly must have meant something to your mother if she kept it all those years..

lyn
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Radiorails said:
It is indeed Trinity Road, in London, as Astoness suggests. It mentions 'board' on the conditions side and of course that would have been the name of London Transport Passenger Board as it was then called. The station was renamed in 1950 as Tooting Bec.
https://www.architecture.com/image-...ding-on-the-east-side/posterid/RIBA50313.html
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Lyn and Alan many thanks for solving that mystery; I did pick up on the London element but, mistakenly, believed London Transport may have had an umbrella role during the war years for other cities/towns. It also helps with the second mystery, who owned the ticket?, it certainly looks like my grandmother, grandfather and mother are out of the frame. I come from generations of Brummies who considered if you moved more than 2-3 streets away from where you were born it was as as good as emigrating. But the mist might be starting to clear, my mother was the youngest of 11 children and the oldest sister broke the mould and moved to London to live and work, she married whilst she was there, worked at the Bourn and Hollingworth Store, (I thought it was Bourn and Hollins, must have got that wrong) and lived, I think, near Marble Arch. So there is a chance the ticket was hers, only thing is, isn't Tooting Bec on the outskirts of London? Regarding how my mother came to have it - one explanation is, towards the end of her life my aunt moved to sheltered housing in Rocky Lane, Aston and on her death the ticket could have been retrieved from her belongings (my mother lived close-by).
Now here's a thought, these Air Raid Shelter Tickets were person and night-specific and must have been issued in their thousands and thrown away in almost equal numbers, most would have been discarded as people left the shelter (if you emerged to extensive bomb damage your first priority wouldn't be to look for a litter bin) so do I have another Holy Grail? If so the ticket belongs in a museum.
Does anybody have a view?
Thanks, Lyn, for the suggestion to start another thread.
Regards,
Peg.
How do you plead.jpg
 
cookie273uk said:
You certainly did not need a ticket to enter a shelter in Brum during the war, more than likely a warden would be yelling you to get in! I speak from experience. Eric
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Hi Eric, thanks for your contribution, am I correct that if you didn't comply with the warden's instructions you could be fined?
Regards,
Peg.
PS If you take a look at the Harry Lucas School thread, I have posted a plan of the school and on it I speculate two buildings of unknown use may have been air raid shelters - what do you think?
 
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Peg Monkey, I have heard you could be fined, whether it was true and whether anybody was fined I do not know, I was only 10 in 1940 (the worst year of the bombing) to young to understand, it was all a big adventure to me and my 2 younger sisters (now both in their 80's). Twice we were in town shopping with our Mom when the sirens sounded and we used a surface shelter near Lewis's (some times it was a false alarm but you still had to wait for the 'all clear' before exiting the shelter. Incidentally I doubt if they would stand up to a direct hit! Eric
 
Some very obvious items detailed in the small print of those tickets is that the LPTB claimed admittance was not guaranteed by possession of a ticket and they did not accepted any claims for ANY losses - life or personal effects. The refreshment trains were most welcome I am sure - tea, biscuits, maybe sandwiches, certainly no burgers or other take away fatties of present days! :eek:

I see the Lewis store mentioned (I mentioned this myself some while ago on a thread here) and I recall going to their basement shelters on a couple of occasions, similarly I am sure the Edward Grey had similar facilities. I wonder if they had notices or any other forms of disclaimer? My Nanny, who was my guardian, was not comfortable with shelters - maybe she was afraid of being buried - so I think we braved it out elsewhere. However I get the feeling that most raids were at night by which time we were back in the sticks. There were it seems less air attacks as the war progressed. Whilst the cities of Britain got their fair share of bombing the countryside and outer suburbs were not spared. Tip and run plus poor visibility for aircraft crews often meant their intended target was not reached.
 
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Radiorails said:
Some very obvious items detailed in the small print of those tickets is that the LPTB claimed admittance was not guaranteed by possession of a ticket and they did not accepted any claims for ANY losses - life or personal effects. The refreshment trains were most welcome I am sure - tea, biscuits, maybe sandwiches, certainly no burgers or other take away fatties of present days! :eek:

I see the Lewis store mentioned (I mentioned this myself some while ago on a thread here) and I recall going to their basement shelters on a couple of occasions, similarly I am sure the Edward Grey had similar facilities. I wonder if they had notices or any other forms of disclaimer? My Nanny, who was my guardian, was not comfortable with shelters - maybe she was afraid of being buried - so I think we braved it out elsewhere. However I get the feeling that most raids were at night by which time we were back in the sticks. There were it seems less air attacks as the war progressed. Whilst the cities of Britain got their fair share of bombing the countryside and outer suburbs were not spared. Tip and run plus poor visibility for aircraft crews often meant their intended target was not reached.
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I wonder if London was the only place that operated an air raid shelter ticket system and if so why?
Regards,
Peg.
 
cookie273uk said:
Atkinson Brewery in Queens Road allowed people into their basements during a raid, no tickets required. Eric
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This does raise the question of how many industrial companies, that were not on vital war production work and running a night shift system, allowed the public into their more secure and safe places for shelter during air raids particularly in the denser populated parts of the city?
Another BHF member search I guess. :D

An interesting article which many may not have read before, especially members living away from the City:
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/nostalgia/75-years-devastating-luftwaffe-raid-10469472
 
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Initially we worked two twelve hour shifts, 6 am to 6 pm and 6 pm to 6 am. We all used to clock in and out. When on the night shift, at 9pm we would put our gas masks and clothes ready at the end of the jigs so that we could grab them when the sirens went off. We would have to run to the air raid shelters. The shelters were underground and huge. There were benches each side for sitting. There were no bunks for sleeping. The men used to play cards down one end of the shelter. There must have been some lighting but there were no facilities for making a drink or anything to eat. We would have eaten any food we had taken to work long before. We would then have to stay there until the all clear was given and we returned to our work.
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The above paragraph is from Megan Ree's story about working in the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory.
There is a link to her full story in a forum post here
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/the-spitfire.3182/page-17#post-584626
ps ... sorry read your post using my iPhone and did not notice the underlined 'not' ! I will have to start using a proper computer .... :)
 
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Before the days of privatisation I worked at the Central Electricity Generating Board's Midlands Region HQ in Shirley, a "Bomb proof" building, a few minutes drive away, at that time was being used to store old documents but originally I understand its primary use was as a secure command centre for the co-ordination of electricity supplies in times of war. It was a large building but difficult to judge how many people it could hold because it was filled with storage racks loaded with lever arch files. There was a dog-leg entrance with a pair of sturdy steel doors and totally windowless, the standing saftey rule was, even though the building had lighting, a torch had to be carried at all times in the event of a power failure - complete darkness is a strange sensation, you feel like you can almost touch it.
Regards,
Peg.
 
- complete darkness is a strange sensation, you feel like you can almost touch it

As any firefighter will confirm........;)
 
Hi Folk, anybody got their very own shelter at the bottom of their garden? My friend has, it was a mixed blessing (he lived near the Robin Hood, Hall Green) it was the most secure garden shed imaginable. A surface building (don't know if it had a lower level) no windows of course or power. He got quotes for removing it but they were all so prohibitively expensive he decided he would just have to live with it. I wonder if there was a choice when it came to their installation? - I'm guessing not. To practicalities - You could be sheltering, shoulder to shoulder, for hours, what happened when you needed to pee, or worse? I suppose some shelters have listed building status, I wonder how many have been turned into habitable dwellings?
Regards,
Peg.
 
Hi Folks, the ticket that started this thread has its 76th Birthday this coming 8th May, I think it's time to find a safe and permanent home for it and my first thought was the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, but as we now know the ticket is a Londoner, so should it be the London Transport Museum? Or even the Imperial War Museum?
All views valued.
Regards,
Peg.
 
Without doubt my choice would be the London Transport Museum as it was their property that was used by possession of the ticket. I must admit bias as I was a member of the LT Museum. ;)
 
Peg Monkey said:
Hi Folks, the ticket that started this thread has its 76th Birthday this coming 8th May, I think it's time to find a safe and permanent home for it and my first thought was the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, but as we now know the ticket is a Londoner, so should it be the London Transport Museum? Or even the Imperial War Museum?
All views valued.


Regards,
Peg.
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thats a lovely idea peg..i guess you could contact both organisations to see who would benifit most from the ticket..please will you keep us updated...

lyn
 
Hi Folks, I am happy to report that the the Star of the Thread, the Air Raid Shelter Ticket, has been safely lodged at the London Transport Museum.

I fear we will never know who was the owner of the ticket and why my mother felt compelled to keep it safe for all these years, but the London Transport Museum people are on the case - trying to trace the owner from the number, who better qualified?

I'll keep you posted.

Regards,
Peg.

London Transport Museum Blue BG version 2.jpg
 
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