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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It’s been a busy week at the Archive. We’ve added 191,119 pages to the archive. We have 13 brand new titles to share with you, and have updated 18 existing titles. With the addition of The Leitrim Advertiser this past week we are delighted to say that we now have a newspaper for every county in Ireland. This brings the number of titles we have for Ireland to 150. This week we also added The Portadown Times for County Armagh …
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This week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? with Fearne Cotton delved into the difficult subject of conscientious objectors during World War I. The episode also exposed the precarious nature of success in nineteenth century Britain. The episode made extensive use of newspapers, and as always we have taken the story further with our own investigations into the topics covered using the newspapers in the Archive. Fearne began her journey by looking to her Welsh roots. As a …
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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 …
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This week we added 93,698 new pages to the Archive. We added two brand new titles and additional pages to 14 existing titles. For our brand new titles this week we are particularly delighted to announce the addition of The Illustrated War News for the First World War. We have also added the Colchester Gazette for Essex, a paper still in circulation today. Our additions this week included adding new years to several of our Welsh titles, and to the …
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In this week’s episode, singer Lulu traveled to her home-town of Glasgow, Scotland, to discover more about her mother’s family. Having been sent to live elsewhere as a baby, Lulu’s mother did not have a relationship with her parents, and so Lulu knew very little about the family. With the help of archivists, historians, and historical sources, Lulu was able to reconstruct the story of a family struggling to make love work across religious divides in 1920s Glasgow. We used …
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In thinking about using newspapers to discover more about the vast array of occupations that have existed over the centuries — some of which still exist while others have been lost to annals of time (bunters, decretists, and gummers, to name a few) — it’s inevitable to end up thinking about the innovators and inventors who have made headlines over the years. Don’t miss a thing, follow us on Instagram! Lasting power Some inventions have lasting power and others, sadly for …
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This past week we added significantly to our most recently added titles. We added 112,987 pages to nine existing titles, and published three years (1890-1892) of the short-lived Scottish newspaper, the Brechin Herald and Angus and Mearns News. This paper covers both the historic eastern counties of Angus and Kincardineshire. Local titles, such as the Brechin Herald and Angus and Mearns News, could often have very short runs. In a nineteenth century version of the .com boom the latter half …
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With the end of summer rapidly approaching, you’ll want to make sure you eat up all your ripe fruit before their season ends. Blackberries Blackberry-based recipes make the perfect end-of-summer treats; some of the most prevalent blackberry-themed treats we’ve found numerous recipes for are blackberry-and-apple-based jams or jellies, blackberry fool, and blackberry shortcake. The Linlithgowshire Gazette assures us that the efforts gone to in picking blackberries are well worth it. They also include recipes for blackberry jam, blackberry and …
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Over the past seven days, we’ve added 17,122 pages to The British Newspaper Archive. These additions include three brand new titles as well as additions to three existing titles. For the first time ever, we offer articles from these three English papers: Alcester Chronicle (published in Alcester, Warwickshire), Eastern Daily Press (published in Norfolk, Norwich), and Ripley and Heanor News and Ilkeston Division Free Press (published in Ripley, Derbyshire). Register today and view 3 free pages! By clicking on the titles below, you can …