This article was first published in the West Sussex Gazette on April 13th 2000

In this last episode of four times married Mrs Winifred Berry's memories, the sprightly Worthing 84 year old recounts her days working as a bus conductress:-

'My second husband, Dick Sessions, was a driver on the buses. We married in 1945 when I was 31. He used to be on the Tramocars before I knew him. He was quite a character but his father Steve was more so. He was on the buses as well, a conductor. He used to have the passengers in fits of laughter and always called out every stop you'd come to and he'd always have something to say about it.

When it got to the Post Office he'd say, 'Come on ladies, pension day,' and he'd call out, 'Poultry Lane.'

And an old dear said, 'Excuse me conductor, it's Poulters Lane, not Poultry Lane.'

'Yes,' he'd say, 'but all the old hens live down here,' which caused laughter all round. You never knew what he was going to come out with. Everybody knew him as Steve, a proper lad.
Sometimes when we got to one stop and he wanted them upstairs he'd say, 'Go upstairs and we'll have cups of tea served to you,' to get them up.

He had a special name for the bus stop by the cemetery: 'Here we are, anybody for the Bone Yard,' he'd say!
He used to have us in fits of laughter.

I had a funny experience myself on the buses one day because we'd got as far as the post office. My husband, Dick Sessions, was driving the bus and I was working inside it when the Welsh Guards came on. They'd all got their instruments and everything else and they piled on the top deck, and the rest all on the bottom and you couldn't move.

I said, 'Sorry the bus can't go, some of you will have to get off.' They didn't want to get off so I went round to Dick and asked him to come out, saying, 'This bus isn't going until some of these men get off.'
We sat there for a while and had a smoke.

Suddenly a policeman came over and said, 'You having trouble dear?'
I told him we couldn't move the bus until some of the men got off as there were too many on it and there was no room for me to move as they were standing all the way along and up the stairs and on the top deck and so on.

So he said, 'Tell me how many you want off,' and they got off like little lambs.
Anyway we got over that all right.

Dick, my husband, used to be called the Prince of Wales because he was very much like Edward who married Mrs Simpson.

People used to say, 'Oh we've got the Prince's bus today!'
They used to drop the passengers off in those days where they lived, Wallace Avenue or wherever, letting them get off regardless of whether there was a bus stop. They used to say could we get off here when the bus was outside their house.

The Tramocars didn't do long journeys, just the circular route.
During the war we had a gas bus for a while and we had a trailer behind. The gas was produced from this trailer for the engine. I know one chap went all the way to Horsham with it and they thought that was wonderful for a gas bus to go that far. They weren't all that powerful then and a lot of them were always breaking down.

I know we had one girl on the bus called Sadie, she is still alive, who used to curl her hair up with tongs.
People in the country were very good. They used to do the Horsham run and places like that and would deliver parcels as well in those days. People on the farm used to come to the bus stop and I would hand them their parcels and they gave me half a dozen eggs in return. I did quite well out of that!

I know one time we had another conductress on the bus who thought she saw a dead body in the field! When she got down to Horsham they went to the police and told them and they came back and had a look to see what they had got there; it was a scarecrow!

Fares in those days were pennies and tuppences. We used to get on at the Pier and go to the Thomas A' Becket for 2d, or you could get on at the Post Office and go there for 1d; or all the way to High Salvington for 5d. It was wonderful: there were so many passengers yet you still got to know them all.
I was on the buses for about seven years altogether and thoroughly enjoyed it too. I started on the buses in 1942. I was in digs and my landlady used to look after my son for me while I was working, so it worked out quite well.

A dear old soul she was.'

So ends the recollections of Mrs Winifred Berry's working days. Her childhood was equally colourful for when she was just nine months old her mother died at the young age of just 19. At that time her father was away fighting in the Great War so she was brought up in the Franciscan Convent at Littlehampton (which is still there) till she was eight years old.