The final cut!

AFTER spending six decades cutting people’s hair for a living, a Northside barber has retired from the job he loved, due to ill health.

In October, the shutters were pulled down on John’s Barbers on Ballybough Road for the last time by proprietor John Moran (74). 

John had suffered a bad fall, and coupled with a condition called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), he could not continue in the trade he started as a 15-year-old.

The barbering skills were in John’s family before he ever picked up a razor. In July 1932, his father, Joseph Moran, opened a gents’ barbers shop at 48 Upper Rutland Street. 

Later a ladies’ salon opened on the same premises in 1950. Several women worked there until it closed in 1981. The business was then in the hands of John’s mother, Susan Moran. 

John started to work in Rutland Street in 1956 and took over the running of the gents’ salon from his mother in 1972 where he stayed until 1982.

Then he moved to 63 Ballybough Road where he remained until October 22, 2015.

John, who now lives on Ballybough Avenue, said it was a wrench to quit the business.  

“I never planned to leave it like that,” he said. “My aim was to keep going as long as I could.

“Unfortunately I broke my hip when I fell in the accident. I tripped outside my hall door, fell off the step and ended up on me back. 

“I’m laid up at the moment but I’m hoping to get back on my feet as soon as possible. At the moment I can’t get out as much as I’d like to because of the bad weather.” John said he met many lovely people over the years through his work and heard some great stories. 

“My customers came from all over the city,” he said. 

“I am so grateful to them all and through the Northside People would sincerely like to thank them for their support over the last 59 years.”

John and his wife Julie have three sons and one daughter, seven grandchildren and five great grandchildren.