According to "The Waterloo & City Railway" by John Gillham (Oakwood
Press 2001)in 1898 passengers were required to pay their 2d single or
3d return fares at the "turnstiles" (presumably at both "Waterloo" and
"City" ends). After about a year (also stated as "1900") the turnstiles
were abolished and tickets sold by travelling conductors on trains.
Plans for c1938 shows proposals for a booking office at Bank between
the two platforms at the buffer stops end and facing outwards towards
the stairs (and today's Trav-o-Later), plus ticket machines; whilst at
Waterloo, two narrow booking offices would serve the ramps of the
departure platform, with six ticket collectors' boxes installed to deal
with arriving trains. In any case on-train ticket sales ceased with the
introduction of new rolling stock in 1940. By 1964 Bank W&C was an open
station with no ticket selling or inspection facility of its own, the
booking office having closed a year earlier. At Waterloo, you could buy
a ticket for Bank from the W&C's own ticket office, then surrended it
seconds later before joining the platform, thence to ride to Bank
ticket-less! The W&C ticket office finally closed in 1967, replaced by
change-giving and coin-operated ticket machines. Though ticket
collectors at the Waterloo end remained for around another 20 years,
they were finally swept away by Network SouthEast when both ends of the
line became "open" stations, and revenue control was allegedly achieved
by frequent on-train checks (did the latter ever happen under NSE?).
More recently, LUL built a small ticket office at Bank to serve the
long corridor linking directly to the Central, Northern and DLR etc
after UTS gates were commissioned at its head, but it seemed rarely if
ever open, and for the W&C as a whole, revenue protection remains a
typical TfL example of hope over experience!