This week sees 100,598 brand new pages joining The Archive, with updates to fourteen of our existing titles, as well as five new titles joining our collection.

We are delighted to continue to augment our Scottish newspaper holdings, with four brand new Scottish titles added this week. This includes the Ayrshire Post, a weekly title which was founded in 1880 and covers south and east Ayrshire, and another weekly title, the Wishaw Press, which covers north Lanarkshire. Making up our trio of local Scottish titles is the Irvine Herald, which also provides coverage of the Ayrshire area.

Our final new Scottish title this week is a specialist one – namely the North British Agriculturalist. A journal of agriculture and of horticulture, it also describes itself as a ‘magazine of farming, gardening, forestry and rural economy.’ Renowned for its coverage of technical farming details, it was published biweekly and we are delighted to have over 1,000 issues available to search – with more on the way.

North British Agriculturist | 11 July 1850

Rounding off our new publications for this week is another specialist title – Holmes’ Brewing Trade Gazette. This curious journal, published by one Joseph Holmes, a brewer’s chemist from Leeds, was a ‘monthly journal dedicated to the interests of Brewers, Publicans, Wine & Spirit Merchants.’

We have a bumper crop of updates to our existing titles this week too. We have updates to seven of our English titles, with extensive updates to the Staffordshire Sentinel, the Middlesex Independent and the Torbay Express and South Devon Echo. We have also updated seven of our Irish titles, with updates to the Sunday Independent (Dublin) and the Irish Independent. Our specialist sporting publications have also been updated, with pages added to the Football Post (Nottingham) and the ‘Country Gentleman’s Newspaper’ Field.

Holmes’ Brewing Trade Gazette is a fascinating journal, which all at once chronicles the entrepreneurship of its owner, Joseph Holmes, records the goings-on of the brewery and other such trades, and also reflects the social and moral debates of the day.

Holmes’ Brewing Trade Gazette | 1 June 1885

Holmes’ Brewing Trade Gazette is nearly fit to burst with advertisements for Joseph Holmes’ own products, including his various patents for bisulphite lime, hop substitute, and ‘other Brewers’ requisites.’ Holmes announces how he has ‘devoted’ himself exclusively for many years ‘to the study of the requirements of the brewer.’ Published in his journal also are drawings of his Crown Chemical Works, where his patents were produced.

Holmes Brewing Trade Gazette | 1 August 1878

Holmes Brewing Trade Gazette | 1 August 1878

During the Victorian era, temperance was one of the biggest moral, social and religious debates of the day. The temperance movement had its origins as early in 1829 in both Belfast and Glasgow, and by the time Holmes’ Brewing Trade Gazette was published, the movement had gained many supporters, especially amongst religious groups such as the Methodists, Quakers and the Salvation Army, as well as the Church of England.

This movement, however, threatened the livelihood of those readers of Holmes’ Brewing Trade Gazette, and Joseph Holmes himself. A column in a May 1882 edition of the Gazette condemns the ‘utterly idiotic and contemptible slanders of these fanatics,’ namely the supporters of the temperance movement. Canon Wilberforce, grandson of William Wilberforce, is recorded as having said at a rally in Weymouth:

The real people who caused the mischief were not the publicans but the big brewers; he had been told by publicans that the tyranny which they suffered from some brewers was little short of slavery…The brewers wanted to wear nice shirt fronts, diamond studs, and sit in the House of Commons, and the people sent men to represent them, every shilling of whose money was bespattered with the the blood of the wives and orphans of England.

The Gazette labels these comments by Canon Wilberforce as a ‘dastardly attack,’ highlighting his ‘spite and malice’ in making them. It is also ‘clear that he knows nothing about beer.’

This debate, played out in the pages of the Gazette, is a fascinating one, with Victorian morality coming into direct conflict with Victorian enterprise. The debate was to only escalate with the coming of the twentieth century, and was to reach a head across the Atlantic with the introduction of prohibition in the United States. You can find out more about this debate by searching for the word ‘temperance’ in the pages of Holmes’ Brewing Trade Gazette.

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated fourteen of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a FREE sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation

Register now and explore the Archive

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.