Come Here To Me!

The Irish Times, December 20 1884.

I’ve always loved this illustration of two Dublin newsboys from The Irish Times, published in 1884. It is the earliest illustration of Dublin newsboys I’ve been able to find, and shows two ragged youngsters resting in the doorway of a bank premises.

While street selling is an ancient tradition, the idea of the ‘newsboy’ came to prominence in the British Isles in the 1850s, with the arrival of cheap daily and evening newspapers. Writing in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1924, George Wm. Panter noted that:

The newsboy as we know him now is quite a latter-day institution. Lai Brough, the comedian, whom, doubtless, some may still remember, used to tell how in his early manhood he became assistant publisher to the Daily Telegraph on its establishment in 1855, and that while occupying that position he originated the custom of selling newspapers in the streets by organising a staff of two hundred and forty boys for the purpose. We have seen that the custom existed of selling newspapers in the streets previously, but undoubtedly newsboys were first hired for that purpose in 1855.

References to newsboys operating in Dublin can be found in The Irish Times from the early 1880s, with a letter signed ‘Pro Bono Public’ appearing in the paper in 1882 noting the ‘many trials and hardships which the majority of the newsboys of Dublin have to contend with’ and asking ‘would it not be a truly charitable and benevolent undertaking for the citizens of Dublin to provide a Newsboys Home in a central place’ for the use of these young Dublin workers. In the 1880s, Dublin newsboys were presented in newspaper reports as being typically ragged and barefoot, with The Irish Times in 1884 producing the above illustration entitled ‘The Tired Newsboys!’ showing two young, ragged dressed youths asleep in a doorway, with a poem underneath noting that ‘they may perish! of cold or some worse fate!’