TRADE NAMES:Three generations of Boltons have been selling newspapers on the city's streets but their trade is fast becoming a thing of the past.

FOR A FIRST-HAND, from-the-streets account of Dublin for most of the last century you won't get many who have been as close to the coal-face as Christy and Liam Bolton. The capital's streets, roads, houses and one bridge in particular have formed the landscape of their lives, and the lives of Boltons before them, for three generations.

The Boltons, uncle and nephew, are among the last of the city's street newspaper sellers. They're walking historical records, both of them. But "my paper round will die with me", Liam Bolton predicts. And so, too, will something precious in the city's fabric.

It would take a book to record the life and times of the Boltons but, for now, a summary. Christy Bolton is the one with the earlier memories.

"My father William (Willie) Bolton was born in Holles Street Hospital in 1903 and lived in Cottage Place, Boyne Street, at the back of Westland Row. They were little white-washed cottages against a wall. He went to Pearse Street school until he was 13 and his father, also William and a stoker on the Queen Mary, was killed in the Battle of Jutland.

"My father made a living for his mother carrying cases for passengers in Westland Row. At 18 he applied for the Labour. To get it you had to work a three-day week without pay so he worked on Sally's Bridge on the canal and in Dublin Zoo, building the big aviary there. He got married at 19 to Dina Murray of 2 Peterson Lane, off Townsend Street and started selling newspapers. That was in 1922."

Newspapers were in the family. Puck Murray, brother of Dina Bolton, nee Murray, sold them on Pearse Street. Willie Bolton set himself up on the bridge at Ballsbridge.

"You had to be a licensed street seller," Christy says, "wear an armband with a number on it. My eldest brother and sister began giving him a hand when they were six and seven, wheeling the papers in a pram and running up and down steps to deliver them."

Willie and Dina Murray had 11 children and lived in Boyne Street flats. Their sons, Michael and Patrick, died sadly young but, along with Christy (the youngest), there were Maisie, Bridget, Johnny, Kathleen, Billy, Theresa, Julia and Anna to help with paper selling and deliveries throughout Ballsbridge before and after school each day.

"Maisie was the one who brought me into the world," Christy says, "she was home from London, where she was in the Wrens, and delivered me. We were all born at home. The women would leave it to the last minute and then shout when it was time for a woman across the road to get hot water and newspapers."

It was another way of life and tough. "We were deprived but didn't know it. People used look after one another. As children we'd race home from school to get a chair at the table! My father used stand at the bridge in Ballsbridge in the evenings and at Sweepstake Lane in the mornings. The family would do the gates of the sweep in the evenings; 1,300 women would rush out when the gates opened. They'd be ready with their hats and coats on and they'd fly out and we'd have papers piled up and waiting. On Sunday mornings we went with papers in the pram all around Bath Avenue, Lansdowne Road.

"On Fridays we'd collect money and once a month my father would collect from the likes of Lord Killanin on Lansdowne Road and from the Killeens. People used set their alarm clocks by my father in the mornings! His night out was a Sunday and on Monday mornings he'd get me up at 5.30am. If it was raining he'd put brown paper in my boots and on my chest and back, to keep me dry and keep in the heat. We'd put the papers in the bike carriers and go along, delivering every two minutes, to Boland's Mills, pubs, houses, hotels. At 7.30am we'd call into Owen Connolly, caretaker of the Veterinary College and dead and buried like most of the people from those times. He'd have breakfast ready for my father and they'd talk."

William Bolton didn't pay his children for their work. "Never," Christy says. "He'd put 1/= away for our clothes and give my mother 1/= to keep us. Everything used be pawned - even the pram got pawned.

"I was 27 years doing the papers. I married Emily Murphy from Pembroke Cottages. We met in the Ritz Cinema in Ringsend 42 years ago. We were married at 17 and went to live in Leeds but I couldn't settle, got homesick. My son Michael was born in Leeds and daughters Theresa and Elaine born here. We moved in with my mother and father in Boyne Street, into the house I was born in. We're still there. I gave up selling papers when I got a full-time job in the Eye and Ear Hospital. It was money into my hand, no waiting around to be paid. My father took a stroke when he was 57 and Liam's father, his brother Johnny, took over the round when he died in March 1970."

And so another generation of Boltons came into the business.

"I began helping my father 38 years ago, when I was 12," Liam says. "I left Ringsend School when I was 14 to deliver with my father." He grins. "I wasn't given a choice. My father needed someone to help him. I remember delivering to Johnston Mooney & O'Brien, going through the confectionary house, dough loft, slicing room selling the papers."

Liam Bolton grew up in O'Rahilly House, Ringsend, the first of five children born to Johnny and Ellen (nee Egan). "The others (Robert, John, Martin and Catherine) gave a hand but I was the only one went into the business, selling all over Ballsbridge; Pembroke, Lansdowne, Shelbourne and Clyde roads, Sandymount Avenue. I still do those roads and more, delivering to customers individually."

The logistics of the job are simple, though not for the faint-hearted.

Liam Bolton collects the papers, from The Irish Times and Independent to the Wall Street Journal and London's Telegraph, Mail, Financial Times, Mirror, Star, in Princes Street at 3.30am every morning. "The Irish Times and Independent are brought in from Citywest, the rest distributed by Easons from Clonshaugh, north Dublin.

"There are only a few of us there at 3.30am. I have to be there then if I'm to get the papers to people before they go to work. People love their paper. I've had people ring me at 2am looking for their paper.

"My father retired when he was 70, in 1995, so I took over and cancelled the evening papers. They weren't selling and I was on my own. I gave up the Sundays as well, I needed a day off to be with my children, who were young." He laughs: "I don't have time to read the papers myself, though I could tell you what's on the sports pages at the back."

Liam Bolton kept to the Bolton tradition of marrying locally when, 25 years ago, he met Carol Quirke of Townsend Street. Their three children are Sarah, Orlaigh and Sean. Liam's consolidated: "I didn't have time to deliver and stand selling papers and couldn't get anyone to get up at 3am to help me."

He digresses. "You wouldn't believe what I see in the mornings! Unbelievable! It's a concrete jungle out there, dangerous and changed, the structures that made up the city dwindling away. Still, I avoid the traffic being out that early."

Christy says: "It's not Dublin as I knew it and it's changed for the worst. It's all about money. Always was. It'll be all offices eventually with everyone living out of town. We used to live so close to one another."

Liam lives in Donnybrook, which he loves, but says "if I could retire I would. I wouldn't like my son to go into the business."