Вендор журнала Big Issue в Уимблдоне Джейн Бернс скончалась после 20 лет работы

Big Issue is sad to announce that much-loved Wimbledon vendor Jane Burns has died. The long-time seller once described herself as a “local landmark” in Wimbledon, so synonymous she was with her pitch outside the South London station. She came to Big Issue in 2002 after injury and illness left the trainee accountant homeless. Burns sold the magazine from her wheelchair after losing her right arm in a motorcycle accident and her right leg to MRSA. “I had a motorbike accident back in 1986 when I was still working,” she told Big Issue in a My Pitch interview. “I had nine years of hospitalisation but when I eventually went back to work I collapsed and was signed off for life by the local authority I was working with. I was very vulnerable and ill with anorexia, then I met a man and got married. I found out too late that he wasn’t very nice, things went downhill and that’s what led me to homelessness.” Burns had to give up her two sons, aged one and three, for adoption due to the complications in her marriage. In recent years, she was able to meet them again for the first time. Burns’ association with Big Issue started when she met a vendor in Clapham Junction. It would go on to last more than two decades. “I offered to give him a hand. I found out I could sell papers!” she previously told Big Issue. “It gave me a boost and I thought, there’s a way out of this. This is something I can do. That was a turning point for me.”