The presses have not stopped whirring this week on The Archive, as we have added a grand total of 143,898 brand new pages to our collection over the past seven days, covering 110 years of historic headlines.

Read on to discover more about our six brand new titles, which hail from England, Ireland and as far away as Belize. We also have extensive updates to our existing titles too, with added pages  covering Wales, Ireland and England’s north and south.

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We start this week’s new additions with Staffordshire’s Uttoexeter Advertiser and Ashbourne Times. Printed in the market town of Uttoexeter, this title was a weekly tabloid which was founded in 1882, and ran until 2005. It appeared on a Wednesday, one of the town’s market days.

Also joining our collection of local English newspapers is the Bradford Review. This weekly publication was published every Saturday, and first appeared on 16 January 1858. In its first edition, it laid out its intention to be a ‘first-class Saturday Newspaper at a price that will bring it within the reach of all ranks.’ Furthermore, the Bradford Review set its sights on being a ‘perfectly independent and thoroughly liberal journal,’ displaying ‘the earnest advocacy of political and social progress.’ You can read more about the Bradford Review’s early aims here.

Bradford Review | 27 November 1858

We head south for our next addition, as we welcome the Stratford Times and South Essex Gazette to our collection. This newspaper appeared every Wednesday and covered wide areas of East London, including Bow, Bromley, Poplar, West Ham, East Ham, Plaistow, Forest Gate, Victoria Docks, Canning Town, Barking, North Woolwich, Leytonestone, Woodford, Walthamstow, Ilford, Wanstead and Leyton.

Fresh from the Emerald Isle this week is the Dundalk Herald and the Clare Advertiser and Kilrush Gazette. Printed in Dundalk, the county town of County Louth, the Dundalk Herald ran from 1868 to 1921. Meanwhile, the Clare Advertiser and Kilrush Gazette was established in 1856 by John A Carrol. Printed in the coastal town of Kilrush, this newspaper appeared every Saturday.

Dundalk Herald | 17 October 1868

Our final new addition this week is the Colonial Guardian (Belize). However, this newspaper was far from guarding any colonial ideation, as it became ‘the scourge of the colonial administration.’ Read on to discover more about this radical new addition to our Archive.

Meanwhile, we have been busy updating our existing titles. We have extensive updates to Lancashire’s Fleetwood Chronicle, to which we have added over 30,000 new pages, and we have added nearly 40,000 new pages to the liberal Bradford Observer, which later became the Yorkshire Observer. 

Other notable updates this week include those to some of our Welsh titles (Glamorgan Gazette, Carmarthen Journal and Caernarvon & Denbigh Herald), as well as some of our Irish titles (Waterford News Letter and Cork Daily Herald). Full details of all of our new and updated titles can be found below.

Colonial Resistance

Located on the eastern coast of Central America, beside the Caribbean, Belize began to be settled by the British in 1716. Beginning a harrowing colonial legacy, which involved the introduction of slavery mainly for the mahogany trade, Belize officially became a British Crown Colony in 1862.

But resistance to British colonial rule was to come from an unlikely source – Belize-produced newspaper the Colonial Guardian (Belize). Founded by Doctor Frederick Gahne, the son of a Belize-born mother and Cornelius Gahne who fought under Bolivar in the Wars of Liberation, in 1882, its motto was ‘Salus populi suprema lex,’ which translates as ‘The health of the people is the highest law.’

Colonial Guardian (Belize) | 1 April 1882

Aged 15, Gahne had been sent to Scotland for his education, but he eventually returned to his native Belize. In 1882 he founded the Colonial Guardian, acting as its main editor, publisher and contributor from the North Front Street Office in Belize City. As opposed to many other colonial newspapers, the Colonial Guardian eschewed the usual descriptions of colonial high society and advertisements targeting the elite. Instead, it became a substantial opposition newspaper, expressing definite political views within its editorials.

‘Life at St George’s Caye, Belize – Naval Guests from the Mainland’ | The Graphic | 9 October 1886

Through the pages of the Colonial Guardian Gahne campaigned for the development of agriculture, for the development of model farms and industrial schools, funding for roads and railways, and reform on labour laws.

An editorial from 1882 states how ‘the only means of accelerating the development of the resources of the Colony is by inducing agricultural immigrants to settle on, and cultivate our waste lands.’ It also proposes new roads for the new settlers, stating how ‘the cost of construction of these roads ought not to be very great.’

Orange Walk Barracks, Belize | The Graphic | 31 May 1873

Although these improvements did not often materialise, Gahne and his newspaper became a mouthpiece for a voiceless population.

This was evidenced in the newspaper’s resistance to governor Sir Roger Tuckfield Goldsworthy. In an article of 1886, the Colonial Guardian lambastes the governor’s ‘enormous expenditure,’ which created a ‘year of commercial depression for the colony.’ The editorial laments how:

… the result of this criminal waster is that, to-day, we are taxed to an extent far greater than has ever been the case in British Honduras, from the day when the Buccaniers first set foot on her silent and uninhabited shores until that day when the evil genius of the colony sent us Roger Tuckfield Goldsworthy to drive us on the road to ruin and to weaken the loyalty of the most loyal dependency of the Crown.

In 1890 Frederick Gahne helped to found the People’s Committee, which sought for a change in the constitution. Meanwhile, another article from 1886 looks forward to when the ‘day of such men as Roger Tuckfield Goldwsworthy, as colonial governors, will have departed forever.’

Colonial Secretary Henry Fowler and an ‘exploring party’ in British Honduras (Belize) | The Graphic | 24 January 1880

Sadly, the Colonial Guardian ceased publication following Frederick Gahne’s death in 1913. Gahne is remembered as a ‘Belizean hero and patriot,’ and he is memorialised by a clocktower in Belize City. Belize would eventually gain independence from Britain in 1981.

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated nine 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.

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.