The Illustrated London News, the world’s first illustrated newspaper, debuted in 1842. Over the decades, the publishers expanded into the ‘great 8’ titles: Sketch, Sphere, Tatler, Graphic, Bystander, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, and Britannia and Eve. In 1928, the Illustrated London News published an illustration of the interior of their own offices at Inveresk House, ‘a hive of journalistic industry’. Discover more about the history of the Illustrated London News In the image, you can see the offices of the individual …
Throughout the month of October, The British Newspaper Archive will take a closer look at stories of crime, courts, and punishment in the papers. We have pulled together some headlines from the month of October including a riot, a case of arsenic poisoning, a couple of London’s notorious criminals, and a political crime. Register now! 4 October 1936 The Battle of Cable Street took place in London’s East End on the day of a scheduled march by Oswald Mosley’s right wing …
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This week The British Newspaper Archive is thrilled to announce the release of a brand new title, The Atlas or, in its full form, The Atlas and General Newspaper and Journal of Literature. The size of the paper caused a sensation when it first came out. The London based newspapers was printed on 40cm sheets, double the size of average papers, making it the largest newspaper. Its size was reflected in the price of 10d, which would be close to £5 today. The price was …
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During the month of September, The British Newspaper Archive is delving into stories of local history. We have had the pleasure of a guest blog by local Exeter historian David Cronforth and another blog demonstrating how to use The Archive for local history, as well as a webinar about using newspapers for local history research. To continue our theme, we are looking at local English culinary treats including the Yorkshire pudding, Staffordshire oatcake, Cornish pasty, eel pies of London’s East End and …
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The British Newspaper Archive is excited to present a guest blog by David Cornforth. David is the author if Exeter Pubs, which offers a captivating glimpse into the history of some of Exeter’s most famous pubs. He also created the local history website Exeter Memories. When I became interested in local history a dozen years ago, I read many books, and spent much time in local archives trawling bound copies of newspapers and other documents. My interest expanded into a …
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Throughout the month of September, The British Newspaper Archive is taking a closer look at researching local history through the newspapers. Currently, The Archive holds more than 800 titles and many of those are local or provincial titles. These papers reported national and international news, but it was in their interest to report details of local news and events. In our everyday life, we are affected on a daily basis by what happens in our immediate surroundings rather than national events. National events …
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We are thrilled to announce we have reached another milestone in our project to digitise up to 40 million newspaper pages from the British Library’s vast collection of historic British & Irish newspapers. Following the addition of a newspaper title from County Leitrim, our online archive now provides a title from all 32 counties across Ireland. Register now and view 3 pages for FREE The British Newspaper Archive contains more than 21 million newspaper pages from 815 titles from England, Wales, …
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In the month of August, we have looked at occupations and employment through the newspapers. To finish our theme this month, we are taking a closer look at coal miners, specifically in the 19th century. An initial search for miners reveals explosions, accidents, and strikes in the vast amount of mines operating across Great Britain. We will look at these topics in closer detail. The first coal mine was sunk in Scotland, under the Firth of Forth in …
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Emma Willis explored the back streets of Birmingham, uncovered a violent ancestor, and revealed magnificent Irish craftsmanship in her family tree. In this week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, we followed the lives of three of Willis’ ancestors: James Gretton, Richard Fowler, and Michael Kirwan. We will take a closer look at the newspapers and explore what more we can discover about the stories and lives revealed. James Gretton Emma Willis found out that her three-time great …
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On 20 July 2017, many of you joined us for our webinar, Journeys Through Time: Discovering Travel & Migration in Old Newspapers. In the webinar, we reviewed how to find passenger lists, emigration notices, letters from abroad, and so much more. If you were not able to attend the live webinar, you can watch it on demand through our You Tube channel. The theme of this month’s webinar was travel, thus we received many questions about early passport requirements. …