I found a few other paintings that depict the way that news was disseminated in the past.

A street news seller goes about his daily business hawking newspapers with shouts that were barely intelligible. In this memory I have highlighted the Suez Crisis of 1956 – often the sight of the news placard or the hawker holding up a freshly printed evening news was the first anyone heard of what was happening in the world when they came off shift in the mills.

The second painting depicts the news girl delivering a paper on her paper round – a much sought-after job that paid fairly well as a pocket money job.
In those days nearly everyone had papers delivered – most people did not have television at that time so it was their only pictorial view of the world and local news – usually well after it had happened. The images in the Press supplemented the audio version of the news that they kept up with on the “wireless” broadcast from the BBC in London. None of the 24 hour repeat-loop news that we experience today. You had to wait until the the allotted time unless there was a very important piece of news like the death of the King or an outbreak of war – in which case your listening would be interrupted by a News Bulletin.

N.B. The only paper in Nelson which was also sold by a man calling out ( as well as in the newsagents) was The Sunday Empire News starting on Saturday night from 6pm onwards.

A third one is of a newsagents shop with children and a man on a bicycle in the foreground. The girl’s hair spreads out in the wind like the spokes of the wheel behind her as she scoots along.

There are more images of newsagents shops on a previous post – see Camden Street Newsagents.