As it’s the height of spooky season we’re exploring the history of Halloween at The Archive, with the help of the 93,381 brand new pages that we have added to our collection over the last seven days. Meanwhile, we’re delighted to welcome one brand new newspaper title to The Archive, which is the Middlesex & Surrey Gazette, whilst we have made exciting updates to some of our existing titles from across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. So read on to …
Halloween
This week at The Archive we have been busy adding an incredible 167,444 brand new pages to our collection, with nineteen new titles added in all. And this week’s new titles have an especially Scottish theme, with a lucky thirteen new titles added from Scotland alone over the past seven days. Meanwhile, we have added six historic London titles, digitised as part of the British Library’s Heritage Made Digital programme, and updated fifteen of our existing newspaper titles, including pages from Wales and the 1700s. So read on to discover about …
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Nowadays, we tend to think of Halloween as a thoroughly modern phenomenon, an American Hallmark holiday. But using newspapers from the Victorian era, accessed through The Archive, we will discover in this blog how Halloween is a thoroughly ancient phenomenon. We will look at the ancient origins of the October festival, and explore its traditions, some of which have lasted through to this day, like bobbing for apples, and others that have fallen by the wayside, for example the day’s …
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With spooky season now upon us, we thought we’d scour the pages of The Archive to find some of the most spine-chilling ghost stories ever published in our newspapers. So settle in and prepare to be scared by tales of ghostly armies, inexplicable apparitions and portents from the afterlife, all of which have been featured in the pages of the newspapers to be found on The Archive. Want to learn more? Register now and explore The Archive 1. An Army …
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This week we have added 66,564 new pages to The Archive, with two brand new titles joining us this week, as well as updates to seven of our existing titles. Our two new titles this week have a particularly Highland flavour. With this in mind, we are delighted to welcome the Huntly Express to our ever-growing collection of Scottish titles. The Huntly Express is a weekly newspaper covering local events, and initially started life as a Saturday publication. The town of Huntly was formerly known as Milton …
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While we overwhelmingly mark 31 October as simply the celebration of Halloween, we wanted to highlight some other events that have occurred on this day over the years. On this day One event that had an overwhelming and lasting impact took place on this day in 1517: Martin Luther posted on the door of Castle Church, Wittenberg, his 95 Theses. The ever-expanding United States admitted its 36th state on 31 October 1864: Nevada. One of the earliest transcontinental highways in …
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Halloween in communities How Halloween is viewed varies from place to place and its traditions are just as diverse. A sense of how Halloween is treated in a given place can be glimpsed in its portrayal in cinema, music, and literature. Treat yourself to a poem written on the topic by John Mayn, printed in 1805 in The Scots Magazine. A notice in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News mentioned a Halloween tradition practised in ‘olden times’ in Scotland. Another Halloween tradition we …
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Of witches and witchcraft As we kick off our Halloween celebrations and delve into the history, contained within the newspapers, of witches and witchcraft (and supernatural beings), it is imperative that we preface this — perhaps unnecessarily — with an important disclaimer and reminder: witches, in the sense of practitioners of malevolent powers to do evil works, never existed. Those persecuted during the sixteenth century and onward were, more often than not, local healers and midwives. In 1562, Queen Elizabeth …
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With Halloween approaching, we wanted to see what we could find related to the topic of hauntings in The British Newspaper Archive. Of children and hauntings Often the origins of a haunting myth are rooted in death and loss. Sometimes the myth grows and morphs to such a point where its origin is indeterminate. Other times, the sad truth of its origin is unexpectedly revealed, as with the ‘grim discovery’ at a ‘haunted house’ in 1921, reported in The Scotsman. …
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In our Cookery Corner this month, we are diving into comforting pie dishes. Whether sweet or savoury, there is nothing better than the smell of a freshly baked pie. In our Local English Fare post last month, we found a recipe for an eel pie. This month we will look at other savoury pie recipes as well as a few sweet treats too. Finding recipes for pies was incredibly easy. Simply by searching for +pie +ingredients we received thousands of results …