True or not?

I have just had a sneaky Google of this and apparently it's true. I am hopeless at links but there is a site called Jerrychicken and an article came up entitled When Jam Jars Were Currency. You learn something new every day.

My mam used to take jam jars back to the shop because they had a penny deposit on them. The same went for the lemonade bottles we had at Christmas.

Yes, once upon a time recycling meant taking back jamjars and lemonade bottles and getting a small refund on them. It worked! Children would actually offer to take away your jars and bottles and return them (and kep the coppers)

We must all remember returning empty glass milk bottles for washing and refilling too.

When DS2 was a student in Glasgow, sharing a University flat with seven other young males, they had a stockpile of Irn Bru bottles which they used as a savings bank, taking them back to the shop when they needed a cash boost! This was in the '90s - not so very long ago. We certainly used to take lemonade bottles back for pennies when we were kids. Jam jars were saved for home-made jam.

How interesting.

Couldn't happen now, the EU wouldn't allow it. Neither would Health and Safety.

Why on earth wouldn't it be allowed nowadays? I doubt that the HSE would forbid children to take pop bottles back to the shop.

Jam jars were saved in our house as my Mum was an avid jam maker but my DH (also early 70s) used them to get into the Saturday Matinee at the cinema in Stirling. Empty lemonade and other fizzy drink bottles were religiously returned to get 3d back on the bottle.

Another use for jam jars was for catching tadpoles in the pond at the local farm or trying to catch whatever there might be in the pools left behind by the tide up the shore. Usually nothing. Does anyone remember the cloth bags that flour used to come in? We used to thread wire round the top, attach to a garden cane and make a fishing 'net'.

I once kept earthworms in a jam jar.

The jar was full of soil.

I remember collecting pop bottles and taking them back for the deposit but don't remember using jam jars as currency. We paid 3d to get into Saturday morning pictures as we called it in South Harrow. A frozen Jubbly from the foyer was another 3d.

Saturday morning pictures: Flash Gordon, Tex Ritter.

It was bedlam in there with missiles flying about in the dark and lots of kicking the seats in front when baddies came on.

We used to take jamjars to the pictures and get reduced prices, a penny off. I think it was called the Monica, Newland Avenue in Hull.
We also used to take bottles back to the shop and get a penny. This was in the fifties.
When I had a guest house in York, I remember once taking an empty bottle downstairs for recycling, and the man, German but living in Norway, asked me for it back at breakfast the next morning so he could get the money back when he went home. This was probably about five years ago.

We all had to stand and sing the National Anthem before the films started. If any one tried to sit down before the last strains died out, the Manager would make us sing it again.

I used to go to the ABC Minors at the Royalty. We'd queue around the building getting more and more excited. It was chaos and so noisy. Before the show started they would play pop songs and we would all sing along. When Bits and Pieces was played we all stamped our feet so much that the balcony would begin to shake then the manager would come out on stage and tell us that the films wouldn't start until we calmed down. So we would sit quietly for a minute or two until the film started then we'd be whooping and hollering again cheering on the goodies and booing the baddies.

Used to go to the cinema on a Saturday morning for children with my sister. I can't remember the name of the cinema, but it was the only one in Hassocks! Used to have great fun.

The rag and bone man used to come round our village on his horse and cart and would give us a cheap sweet for each jam jar we collected. If they were worth 1d each he probably made a decent profit!

We also used to go on nature walks from primary school, to collect rose hips in jam jars. We were paid 1d for each full jar. I think they went to make rose hip syrup which was given to babies, watered down, in feeding bottles.

Gosh annodomini ! Fancy being allowed to make a toy from the flour bags. My mum used to make our hankies from them !

tiggypro, when my grandpa died, we inherited all his silk hankies, so the flour bags were surplus to requirements. The silk felt lovely and soft on sore noses.

thank heavens for soft paper hankies!

I agree with you rosesarered

My OH remembers paying for cinema with jamjars on Saturday mornings I can't say that I do but maybe my brother does as he was always in charge of the money from mum,I was a member of The Ovaltinnies Club and have still a photograph of us outside the Gaumont in Wallasey Village,sadly all gone now and a Sainsburys in its place.There are loads of clips on youtube about the time spent at the cinema in the early 50/60s with some good stories.

I wouldn't want to go back to the days without tissues when snotty hankies had to be boiled.

Part of our school uniform was knickers with a pocket and we were instructed this was where to keep our hankies.

I could never contemplate using someone else's hanky