military newspapers | The British Newspaper Archive Blog - Part 2

Blog

Newspapers from the Pandemic – Reporting on the Spanish Flu

What began as rumours from Spain was soon to become a nightmarish reality, as the Spanish flu pandemic began to take hold in the United Kingdom, where it would go on to kill approximately 250,000 people, and 50,000,000 globally. Staff from the Michie Hospital | Graphic | 26 July 1919 In this special blog, as part of medicine month on The Archive, we will take a look at how newspapers from the time reported on the deadly disease, from those first rumours,

Continue Reading

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Irish Newspapers for Genealogy Research

Anyone starting to research their Irish heritage has heard the story: ‘all of their records were destroyed in 1922’.  The destruction of the Four Courts on 30 June 1922, which housed the public records office, was a huge loss… but! with digitisation, Irish family history is getting easier by the day.  Sites like our sister site Findmypast are opening up new avenues of research by digitising a wide variety of sources, and many of their Irish collections are free! Newspapers

Continue Reading

Tags

,

Headlines from History – November military events

American troops

In honour of Remembrance Day, during the month of November, The British Newspaper Archive will be focusing our attention on military in the newspapers.  Coming up this month we will feature blogs about our special military titles, researching military history, women and war, and wartime rationing and fashion, as well as a guest blog about a remarkable Great War discovery from The Archive.  To begin our military month, we are delving into the newspaper headlines through the years for the

Continue Reading

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Employment and Occupation History in the Newspapers

Discover more about specific occupations, industries and the history of working conditions and employment regulations in our historic newspapers.  In towns and villages across Britain and Ireland people plied their trades, from carters and hawkers, to seamstresses and tailors.  As the centuries passed agriculture gave way to industry and the ‘factory-worker’ was born.  Read our blog to discover more about the history of work & occupations. Of Cordwainers, Chandlers & Night-Soil Men There are some historic occupations that are no

Continue Reading

Tags

Newspapers for Family History

Newspapers are an invaluable resource for researching your family history. Contained within their pages are tens of millions of reports, advertisements, and notices that can help you break down brick walls and tell richer stories about your ancestors. The Archive works with the British Library and publishers to bring you 300 years of newspapers from the UK and Ireland.  Get the most out of our historical newspapers with these hints and tips. What newspapers do we have? We add more

Continue Reading

Tags

, ,

Cheryl’s Maritime and Military Ancestors

In this week’s episode of Who Do You Think We Are?, we found out about Cheryl’s four times great-grandfather, John Wood Laing, who was born in Newcastle towards the end of the Industrial Revolution. At the age of 19, he became a mariner’s apprentice and, ten years into his career, became a master, or captain. Since Newcastle was a shipbuilding hub at the time, it was not surprising to discover that there was a branch of mariners in Cheryl’s family

Continue Reading

Tags

, , , , , ,

The Easter Rising: As documented in the British newspapers, 1916

Next month sees the marking of the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. Irish nationalists headed a campaign to end British rule in Ireland during a time when the outcome of World War 1 was uncertain. We take a look at how the events of 1916 were documented in the British press at the time. Search the newspapers News of the Rising started to filter through to the British newspapers on Tuesday, 25 April 1916. A smattering of local papers managed to

Continue Reading

Tags

, , , , , ,

The missing men of Singapore: Remembering the “worst disaster” of British military history

From the 8th to the 15th February 1942, the Empire of Japan invaded Singapore, one of Britain’s largest military bases in the South East. The move, that would see 85,000 British, Australian and Indian troops taken prisoner of war, was dubbed the “worst disaster” in British military history by Winston Churchill. Search the newspapers Back in Britain, the newspapers were filled with reports of missing troops and families appealing for information. Many of these men had been taken prisoner, but

Continue Reading

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Top tips for searching the newspapers

The British Newspaper Archive attended Who Do You Think You Are? Live at London Olympia this month, helping a number of people track down their ancestors in our newspapers. Don’t worry if you weren’t able to attend the family history show – we’ve asked our lovely team to share their top search tips here so that you can take advantage of them too.   1) Put “quote marks” around a name This will tell the website that you only want to

Continue Reading

Tags

, , ,

We’ve Reached 50 Million Pages – Celebrating 50 Fantastic Things About The Archive

Today we have reached a landmark of 50 million pages all now available to search on the British Newspaper Archive. That’s 50 million pages of news stories that span four centuries, from 1699 to 2009, that come from the United Kingdom and Ireland, and beyond. And we’re not stopping here – we plan to add millions more pages over the coming weeks, months and years. When the British Newspaper Archive was launched in partnership with the British Library in November 2011 a goal of

Continue Reading

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,