Names on the buses

325 Betty Walshe

Connections with Brighton and Hove : When Brighton and Hove councils merged in 1997, they chose Betty Walshe to be the first mayor of the new authority. She was a Labour councillor who made it her mission to try and create a more just society. Betty Walshe was born in East Grinstead but her father died young. Together with her brother and sister she was sent to an orphanage at Reedham near Croydon. Later she worked in a shop with her mother and she met her husband Timothy in East Grinstead. They married when she was only 18 and had four children. Timothy was badly injured when an airman during the Second World War and needed plastic surgery. The family lived in Chelmsford for a time and later moved to Crawley. After the death of her husband, they moved again to Brighton. Betty Walshe became a shop steward while working in the retail trade and joined the Labour Party before becoming a councillor She continued her community work into old age and died aged 89 after a short illness.

325 Alexander Dennis Enviro - carried name since September 2019. Name spelt wrong for first few weeks.