The lost art of paper pushing

When I first came to Dublin in the 1980s, it was normal to hear young men, at street corners and other prominent places, shouting “Herpes!” at passersby. Herpes was indeed the subject of public concern at the time, as it happens. But contrary to appearances, the street cries were not a health warning.

On closer inspection, the people shouting were newspaper vendors. The sound they were making was a two-syllable contraction of the phrase “Herald or Press” – a fact usually clarified in the follow-up phrase, where the order of the papers was reversed and the names elongated, with emphasis on the “or” in between.

A decade or so later, the Press group disappeared, and the street vendors’ cries were never the same afterwards. Newspapers in general were getting quieter then, with the demise of typewriters.

But information technology was making for even more profound change. Now, the successors of the street vendors hand out free copies of the Metro Herald in silence. Their profession is no longer something to shout about, it seems.

I’m reminded of the Herpes men because, according to a diary of quirky September holidays, today is national Newspaper Carrier Day in the US. There are international versions of this alleged event as well, on various dates. But I doubt much fuss is made of the occasion anywhere, and today’s milestone is interesting only because of the person it commemorates.

The American Newspaper Carrier Day dates from September 1833 and the founding of the Sun, a New York newspaper that between then and its 1950 demise (the latterday New York Sun is no relation) was a populist but respectable rival of the Times and Herald Tribune. It's now probably best remembered for a famous editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", and for a much-quoted definition of news, provided by one its early editors, viz: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But when a man bites a dog . . ."

A more lasting innovation, however, was that from the start, when the more upmarket papers sold mainly by subscription, it was aimed at the man in the street. Thus it established, in New York at least, the concept of the street newspaper vendor. And its first such vendor was a 10-year-old Irish immigrant, newly arrived from Cork, called Barney Flaherty.

It was a tough job. Decades later, a writer would recall the lives of Flaherty and the thousands of other paper pushers, usually boys, often homeless, who followed him: “Formerly, these little fellows suffered very much from exposure and hunger. In the cold nights of winter they slept on the stairways of the newspaper offices, in old boxes and barrels, under door steps, and sometimes sought a ‘warm bed’ on the street gratings of the printing offices, where the warm steam from the vaults below could pass over them.”

It was not a career designed for longevity, never mind wealth or fame. And Flaherty’s pioneering role would probably have gone unmarked, and be long forgotten, except that he escaped it quickly and went on to live the American dream.

Maybe the accidental voice-training stood to him later. In any case, he got a job as an errand boy for a Broadway theatre, rose from that to be an usher, and then forced himself onto the stage, “blacking up” to perform minstrel numbers and later playing stereotypes of his own nationality in the Irish-themed entertainments of the day.

By the 1850s, he was a big enough star to sustain a four-year tour of Europe, revisiting Ireland as a Yank made good. His audiences in Britain included, on several occasions, Queen Victoria. Back in the US, he played for Abraham Lincoln too.

He was better known by now as Barney Williams, his stage name. Under which, in 1873, he made another extended visit to Ireland, performing with his wife as “Mr and Mrs Barney Williams, the distinguished Irish comedian and the original Yankee Girl”.

By the time he died a few years later, he was a wealthy man, albeit only 51. His pallbearers included an army general and a New York Supreme Court judge, among other notables.

I’m not sure where in Co Cork he was born. But if there isn’t one already, somewhere, the city on the Lee might consider erecting a plaque to him. It would serve a double role – honouring both an emigrant son and a now globally threatened species of street vendor, the local version of which was nicknamed aptly – in more ways than one – the “Echo Boys”.

@FrankmcnallyIT