Cork City Street Newsvendor, Ireland 1969

Newspaper seller John Kelleher dices with the traffic in Cork City to make his living.

John Kelleher, a former Echo Boy, operates from the traffic bollard in the Coliseum Cinema area of Cork City, running back and forth to motorists with newspapers.

From a family of newspaper vendors, John’s mother began selling newspapers in the 1920s and the family have been operating in the Coliseum area ever since. With four children of his own John Kelleher hopes that they will carry on the family tradition.

It’s an honest and good living.

In the late 1940s traffic on Cork’s streets was much lighter when John Kelleher began working and he sold papers mainly to pedestrians. As years passed and traffic got heavier, the corporation introduced a one way traffic system. As a result of the one way system, all traffic has to pass by Coliseum corner in order to get to the city, providing a boost to the newspaper trade.

Operating from the island in the centre of the road John Kelleher navigates the passing cars, trucks, bicycles and buses as he sells the newspapers.

I have to be on my toes and keep things moving.

The work requires a good head for numbers with some of his customers paying cash at the time of purchase, and others paying weekly or monthly. However, he does foresee a few problems when decimalisation is introduced.

This episode of ‘Newsbeat’ was broadcast on 12 November 1969.