This week at The Archive we are delighted to welcome brand new specialist horse-focussed title the Trotting World and Horse Review to our collection, alongside three other brand new titles from Leicestershire, London and Lincolnshire. In all, we’ve added 240,324 brand new pages to The Archive, with updates to 32 of our existing titles from across England and Wales. With new pages added to titles from Greenford to Grimsby, from Liverpool to Loughborough, from Newquay to Nottingham, we have a …
Crime and Punishment
This week at The Archive we have been beavering away to bring you 199,116 brand new pages, 17 brand new titles and 28 updated titles from across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We have added five brand new regional titles from England, Wales and Scotland over the past seven days, and we have added twelve titles as part of the British Library’s ongoing Heritage Made Digital programme. So read on to discover about all of the updates we have made this week, as well as to …
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In December, 1811, all London was convulsed with terror at the tidings of the horrible slaughter wreaked at 29 Ratcliff Highway and 81 New Gravel Lane, and soon, from the Prince Regent’s table at Carlton House to the tap-room of the lowest dram-shop in Wapping, the hideous subject engrossed all. Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, 27 August 1887 These murders, now generally referred to as the Ratcliff Highway Murders, represent one of the bloodiest chapters in British crime history, and might have …
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As part of our history of law and crime month on The Archive, we are delighted to featured a very special guest post by author and former probation officer Martin Baggoley, who has written extensively on the history of crime and punishment. In this guest post, Martin describes how he used The Archive to research the tragic topic of infanticide in Victorian Salford, a desperately sad chapter in Britain’s crime history. So read on to discover the methods that Martin …
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Following on from our look at life on board the prison hulks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in this special blog we are going to take a look at what life was like behind prison bars over a century ago. Dartmoor Prison | The Sphere | 10 December 1927 Using our newspapers, we will try to understand what life was like for the men and women sentenced to prison time in the United Kingdom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: …
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On 15 July 1910 the Sheffield Evening Telegraph recorded the anniversaries of the day. One particular entry was this: Prison hulks first seen on the Thames…1776 But what were the prison hulks, and what was life like on board these ‘floating hells,’ as they came to be known? Prison hulk Warrior at Woolwich | Illustrated London News | 21 February 1846 As part of our history of law and crime month here on The Archive, we will take a look at what life was like on …
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This week we have added an impressive 136,680 brand new pages to The Archive. We have added four brand new titles, and updated eight of our existing titles, with new pages spanning the length and breadth of the British Isles. Our new titles this week represent the north and the south of the country. We have two new Scottish titles, which are the Arbroath Guide and the Perthshire Constitutional and Journal. The Arbroath Guide was a local weekly paper, published on Saturdays, covering …
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On the first day of January 1753 maidservant Elizabeth Canning disappeared. She returned to her mother’s house some twenty-eight days later, emaciated and bedraggled, claiming that she had been held in a room against her will. As the case went to court, and her captors were arrested, many came to disbelieve Elizabeth Canning’s tale, resulting in Canning herself going on trial for perjury. In 1754 the Manchester Mercury comments on the question of whether ‘Elizabeth Canning is or is not …
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From its inception to the present day, the transportation and delivery of the Royal Mail has experienced quite the evolution. Its vehicles for transportation have, over the years, made headlines. Sadly, they were not necessarily good headlines to make; from accidents to robberies, our newspapers tell it all. The infamous Great Train Robbery of 1963 received particular attention in the newspapers. The robbery was the largest of its kind, with more than £2 million stolen from a Royal Mail train. …
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Crime stories have filled newspapers since the seventeenth century. From sensational murders to notices seeking the return of stolen property, you will find stories relating to crime in all of our newspapers. While crime-related news can be found in almost every title, we do hold several newspapers dedicated to crime and punishment. Title Years Cleave’s Weekly Police Gazette 1835, 1836 County Courts Chronicle 1847-1870, 1885-1896 Illustrated Police Budget 1899 Illustrated Police News 1867-1938 Lloyd’s Companion to the Penny Sunday Times …