Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral Now and Then Getting cash to survive

Mainly for the old arses like me, but how did you get cash when times were tough?

Personally, I got up early and went into the tower grounds to search the rides for money that had been lost by the trippers. I made and sold firewood. I used to search the numerous grids for lost change. I tried (usually unsuccessfully) to fiddle the fruit machines in various arcades. I looked for lemonade bottles to take back and get the deposit on.

Probably seems a bit strange in these days of plenty but times were hard and most of us in those dark days did these things.

yes i collected pop bottles off people to take back
for pocket money

I'm not that old, I don't think, but I used to collect old newspapers, well before there was this recycling malarkey. got a few coppers for every bundle from my friends dad. He had a shedfull of papers. No idea how much he got.

Use to search the bushes on golf courses and sell the balls to the golfers,

and collect pop bottles

Nomad

we used to take newspaper to the chip shop and the veg shop ,and walk down to saughall massie and work the milk rounds at silly o'clock in the morning

Under New Brighton Pier at low water. They had slot machines on the pier. Folk would drop their pennies - sometimes a threepenny bit and they would drop through the gaps in the planks. Sometimes enough for an ice cream or two. The biggest haul was (once) I found half a crown below the pier. Yesssssssssssssss !

Alan Sugar ..... you've got NO ideas !!!

Pinzgauer,

Did you ever find the white £5.00 note that I dropped!

Yes indeed ! I'll gladly return it to you of course.


and the number on the note is .................. ???

outside a lot of shops on the pavements in grange Rd used to be grids/gratings? (wonder why) and we used to get bamboo canes and split one end slightly and put a match across the split end similar to a Y
and if we saw anything of interest put the cane down and pushed against the object until the match slipped out and the ends came together and caught it.Also a Saturday job in market,
pop bottles and beer bottles to be returned

Forgot the pier. On a busy day you listened for the cash dropping and then it was a mad search to find it. Strangely you could tell by the ping if if was a penny or silver. I once found half a crown in New Brighton baths. I was rich.

Once found ten bob note in a field and being young asked one of the older lads what it was, It's nothing throw it away
The next day he had a new pair of cowboy guns and holsters.
His mother soon sorted out what had happened though

I used to collect pop bottles and take them back to the shop, that was when we had corner shops that is !.

When i got a bit older i used to sell a few bags of logs to earn a bit of money.

I also once found three crisp one pound notes near our house, a few days later it turned out that my dad was missing three quid from his sunday best pants !!!!. To late i had aready bought a mountain of stuff from the model shop !!!.

Returned pop bottles, medicine bottles to chemist, old newspapers to local chippy in return for bag of chips, pole with soap on the end for retrieving coins from grids/gratings
Best find was 3 x £10 notes (separated)in a packed bookies about 30 years ago - could you imagine the cry if I'd asked who's lost £30 quid!!!

Remember when I was about ten or eleven, just got of the train at Rock Ferry, absolutely bucketing down, waiting for the rain to calm down, saw someone make a dash for it and leave a sream of coins behind them on the path out of the station. The rain deidn't matter so much then - it was more important to get those coins before anyone else did!

Then of course there was carol singing (Well we called it that), snow clearing and penny for the guy. Usually set up outside NB station or one of the pubs. Had a decent guy in those days, not a teddy bear with a mask on. The storm grids outside the Chelsea Reach (Ferry Hotel) were a good place to find money and easy to lift up as well. You could also get a tanner if someone let you take their deck chair back and they gave you the ticket. Dive bomber at bottom of tower grounds used to shower cash all over the place as well.