This week at The Archive we have achieved an incredible landmark as we have reached over 80 million pages all now available to search. Alongside this wonderful achievement, we have added 425,567 brand new pages in total to our collection over the past seven days, including two brand new titles. Meanwhile, we have updated 20 of our existing titles from across the United Kingdom.
So read on to discover more about our two brand new titles of the week, the Lancing Herald and the Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser, as we celebrate reaching 80 million pages. Also, read on to learn which of our existing titles we have updated, whilst we mark the death of pioneering scientist Marie Curie, who passed away 90 years ago this week on 4 July 1924.
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Helping us to reach the 80 million page mark is new title the Lancing Herald, sister paper to last week’s new title the Shoreham Herald. Covering the news from the large seaside village of Lancing in West Sussex, which lies between Worthing and Shoreham-by-Sea, the Lancing Herald was founded in 1987 having evolved from the Lancing edition of the Worthing Herald, itself established in 1920.
A weekly tabloid newspaper, the Lancing Herald appeared every Friday, and is still published today as part of the Worthing Herald, along with sister titles the Shoreham Herald and the Steyning Herald.
From Lancing now to Lincolnshire, and our second new title of the week, which is the Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser. Founded in the market town of Boston in 1878, by the 1880s this weekly paper claimed to have ‘a lager circulation amongst all classes in the town and district than all other Boston newspapers combined.’
Circulating ‘over the wide area between Peterborough in the South, and Doncaster and Grimsby in the North,’ the Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser had the reputation of being ‘a County Paper.’ With a large guaranteed circulation of 108,000 in the 1880s, the title made claims of being ‘the best family paper in Lincolnshire.’
Appearing every Saturday and filling eight pages, it was claimed that the Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser circulated amongst ‘the Clergy, Gentry, Landowners, Capitalists, Solicitors, Estate Agents, Merchants, Farmers, Graziers, Breeders, Hotel Keepers, Agents, Auctioneers, Tradesmen, and the general Public.’ It was, therefore, ‘unrivalled for all kinds of Advertisements intended to reach the Purchasing Classes of the community.’
However, the success of the Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser would last only for a few decades more. In 1912 it was incorporated into the Boston and Lincolnshire Standard.
That’s it from our new titles of the week, which have helped us reach our impressive 80 million page landmark. Helping us to reach this 80 million page landmark meanwhile are our updated titles of the week. Leading the charge is the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, to which we have added over 90,000 brand new pages, whilst we have added over 27,000 brand new pages to both the Leamington Spa Courier and the Mid Sussex Times.
Meanwhile, we’ve added new pages to some of our Scottish titles, including Witness (Edinburgh), the Inverness Courier and the John o’ Groat Journal. We’ve also added early years to historic title the Belfast News-Letter.
The Death of Marie Curie – 4 July 1934
Whilst we have a lot to celebrate at The Archive this week now that we have reached our 80 million page milestone (with more to come), we thought we’d look back at the death of pioneering scientist Marie Curie, which took place 90 years ago this week on 4 July 1934.
New pages added to the Inverness Courier this week include a report on the death of Marie Curie, or to give her her full name, Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie. The piece was entitled the ‘Late Madame Curie – A Fascinating Personality,’ which was published on 6 July 1934.
As well as providing an interesting profile of Marie Curie, the Inverness Courier presents some intriguing gender politics. For the writer of the piece, Curie’s intelligence is deemed to be masculine, something entirely outside of the usual gender norms.
A sense of this can be gained from the article’s introductory paragraph:
A mystery and a phenomenon are the terms that perhaps one might employ regarding the personality of the late Madame Curie, who died on Wednesday, and yet why should one use the latter term in these days, when women are slowly but surely establishing themselves as a force to be reckoned with in all the various walks of life. The Hitlers and the Mussolinis of this world would like to push us back into our little boxes with hermetically-sealed lids, no doubt, but those efforts would probably prove as vain as those of Canute with the incoming tide.
The piece continues:
A study of Madame Curie’s photograph shows a certain masculinity with its closely-cropped hair, broad, intellectual brow, visionary eyes, and firm and determined mouth, yet it possesses a sensitiveness of expression entirely feminine.
And so, whilst the pioneering physicist and chemist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win two Noble prizes, was possessed of ‘masculine attributes,’ at least her sensitivity was ‘entirely feminine.’
However, the Inverness Courier went on to highlight Marie Curie’s achievements, whilst explaining ‘how her death was due to the work to which she was so intensely devoted, for it was known some time ago that the radium and X-ray with which she had laboured for so many years had attacked her bones.’ The piece lauded Curie as ‘one of the greatest of scientists,’ thanks mainly for her work on the ‘extraction of radium.’
The article described how Marie Curie ‘was the first woman to become a professor in the Sorbonne,’ after her appointment to the Chair of Physics. The Inverness Courier, meanwhile, outlined a special Scottish connection with the trailblazing scientist, the University of Glasgow having ‘bestowed on her the honorary degree of LL.D.’
Finally, the Inverness Courier piece rounded up by concentrating on, of all things, Marie Curie’s relationships:
In spite of her unfeminine reticence and her masculine brain, Madame Curie must have possessed sex-magnetism to a considerable degree, for her name was associated with one of the longest duels ever fought on French soil. This historic combat took place between two Frenchmen, friends of Madame Curie’s, who had no fewer than five encounters to their credit. The last, which took place in a garden in one of the suburbs of Paris, consisted of no less than eleven bouts with swords. One of the duellists was wounded slightly four times, but the other escaped with a scratch.
Discover more about Marie Curie, trailblazing scientists, and much more besides, in the over 80 million pages of our Archive today.
New Titles
| Title | Years Added |
| Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser | 1879-1891, 1899-1908 |
| Lancing Herald | 1987-1991, 1997, 1999 |
Updated Titles
This week we have updated 20 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.
| Title | Years Added |
| Alnwick Mercury | 2003 |
| Belfast News-Letter | 1801, 1805, 1807-1809 |
| Birmingham Daily Post | 1983 |
| Birmingham Mail | 1958, 1965 |
| Bucks Herald | 1996, 1999 |
| Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail | 1996 |
| Huntly Express | 1918-1920 |
| Inverness Courier | 1932-1938, 1942, 1957-1967 |
| John o’ Groat Journal | 1952 |
| Leamington Spa Courier | 1971-1976, 1996, 1998, 2002 |
| Leven Mail | 1964-1965 |
| Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Guardian | 1915, 1917, 1919, 1958, 1962, 1966-1970, 1975, 1977, 1980-1982 |
| Liverpool Daily Post (Welsh Edition) | 1991 |
| Mid Sussex Times | 1977-1978, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003 |
| Newcastle Evening Chronicle | 1996 |
| Northern Chronicle and General Advertiser for the North of Scotland | 1918-1919 |
| Peterborough Evening Telegraph | 1953 |
| Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette | 1995-1999, 2001, 2003 |
| Walsall Observer | 1983 |
| Witness (Edinburgh) | 1850-1851, 1853 |
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.
