Incident of the Letter | Newsboys

     After the cruel murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Mr. Hyde became one of the most hated men on earth. Unfortunately, the Victorian people couldn't tweet about this atrocious man (#downwithhyde), nor could they 'share' the murder's juicy CNN article with all of their Facebook friends. Fortunately, the people of the Victorian Era had their own way of spreading gossip and the latest news: newsboys. Mr. Utterson describes the scene of the streets after the murder of Carew as he explains, "The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse along the foot-ways: 'Special edition. Shocking murder of an M.P.'" (Stevenson, pp. 27). Typically, newsboys were the first people that the general public would hear the latest news from (compared to our modern day Twitter or Facebook). But what exactly were "newsboys?" Newsboys were paper messengers to the public and although the position was dominated by young males, it wasn't restricted to their gender (Stevenson, pp. 27). Newsboys were the ones in charge of delivering the paper. Their shifts for the morning paper would begin as early as 6 A.M., often before the break of dawn. Historically, a newspaper boy was the first paying job available to young teenagers.

Over time, the relevance of newsboys has declined and is almost near extinct. One such reason is because of employment laws and the worry of unsupervised children roaming around delivering papers which, in turn, has lead to adults delivering the mail, rather than children (Afterall, it's mailman, NOT mailboy. Interesting, huh?) The decline in paperboys is also due to the expansion of technology and the fact that the majority of newspapers are now available online. Although paperboys have become less popular overtime, they have not disappeared. Today, we still have older children which deliver papers to door steps on Sundays. Newspapers aside, society now has social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. as I have previously mentioned which make the need for written news almost non-existent.