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Bus Tokens

I Remember having green bus tokens to get me to school and back in the mid 60's. I believe they were issued to poorer families. I remember I used to palm mine so no one could see it was a token as I was worried I would be judged by others.
Would not worry me in the slightest now.
Poverty is a family’s best kept secret. People in poverty, were and still are made to feel like failures. Families would do their upmost best to keep their poverty a secret. There was a similar stigma attached to kids on free school meals too.
 
Poverty is a family’s best kept secret. People in poverty, were and still are made to feel like failures. Families would do their upmost best to keep their poverty a secret. There was a similar stigma attached to kids on free school meals too.
i agree morton. it was like the daily mail boots. they were like wearing a flag saying LOOK we are poor.
 
I used to use them from the middle 60s to 1969 from Aston to Kingstanding to go to school and back.

I guess we were poor but it never bothered me much as we just used to get on with life as we knew it and it proved a great grounding being brought up in Aston for the rest of my life.
 
I used to use them from the middle 60s to 1969 from Aston to Kingstanding to go to school and back.

I guess we were poor but it never bothered me much as we just used to get on with life as we knew it and it proved a great grounding being brought up in Aston for the rest of my life.
We moved from Ladywood to Kings Norton in 1956, used tokens for travelling back to St Thomas,s school for about a month until I got fixed up at Brandwood End school. I don,t think you had to be poor to get them every child who used a bus for school qualified for the tokens.
 
both of my schools were in walking distance so i did not need bus tokens however i am the eldest of 6 and although we qualified for free school dinners mom declined saying that there is always someone out there worse off than we were so let the places go to them and so we came home for dinner except on the odd times if mom could not be at home...sad to say that i had a few friends who were only children or who had just one sibling who had awful upbringings never having a holiday or feeling loved.. dad was a grafter who made sure we always had one holiday a year and as we kids got older mom took in out work....we never went hungry our clothes were always clean even though some were hand me downs and we always knew mom and dad did the best that they could for us but above all we were loved and if you have that you can get through the tough times because there was rarely spare money for luxuries but to be honest most of us in our street were all in the same boat but i would not swap my childhood for all the tea in china...this can only be a testament to mom and and dad because having pots of money does not always bring happiness and contentment

lyn
 
We used them when travelling from school which was in Vicarage Road, Kings Heath to our swimming lessons at Moseley Road Baths. They were given out to pupils by our games teacher. We walked from school to Kings Heath and used the tokens on the number 50 bus from there. It always puzzled me why we didn't use Kings Heath swimming baths.
 
I don't know. I just thought it offered a possible reason as the school would most like not want to chop and change venues.
 
We used them when travelling from school which was in Vicarage Road, Kings Heath to our swimming lessons at Moseley Road Baths. They were given out to pupils by our games teacher. We walked from school to Kings Heath and used the tokens on the number 50 bus from there. It always puzzled me why we didn't use Kings Heath swimming baths.
My junior school was Colmore Road Kings heath, that is were a travelled to on the bus
 
We used them when travelling from school which was in Vicarage Road, Kings Heath to our swimming lessons at Moseley Road Baths. They were given out to pupils by our games teacher. We walked from school to Kings Heath and used the tokens on the number 50 bus from there. It always puzzled me why we didn't use Kings Heath swimming baths.
How strange ! I went to Wheelers Lane School, (mid-50s), and we used KH baths.
 
We used them when travelling from school which was in Vicarage Road, Kings Heath to our swimming lessons at Moseley Road Baths. They were given out to pupils by our games teacher. We walked from school to Kings Heath and used the tokens on the number 50 bus from there. It always puzzled me why we didn't use Kings Heath swimming baths.
I suppose baths were allocated to schools jointly by Education and Baths departments of the Corporation. There are more classes than baths, and once one had been allocated (to KH for instance), other schools has to go elsewhere. When I was at George Dixon school in City Road, we used Harborne baths but were taken by coach - I suppose it would have taken too long on the Outer Circle 11 bus which also ran between the two sites.
 
My senior school in Marsh Hill, Erdington used to use the swimming baths in Nechells! We had a hired Birmingham bus to take us.
 
I was at Waverly Grammar Camp Hill in the late 1950s and lived in Tyseley. My friend and I both had one penny halfpenny tokens for the ride home. We would find someone who had actual cash for their threepenny fare, exchange our tokens for a threepenny bit, then walk down the Stratford Road to a café on the left-hand side which had a juke box. There, we would use our threepence to play Tommy Steele's 'Singing the blues', then walk home. We did this day after day. Happy days.
 
When I was at school (George Dixon GS, City Road) we used the former KEFW premises at Five Ways as an 'annexe' and got the green tokens to travel to or from there if using both sites in one day.
 
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