Our newspaper Archive contains many thousands of obituaries and death notices, which can help you unlock fascinating information and stories about your family history. In this special blog, we present your guide to obituaries on The Archive: how to search them, where to find them, and how to make the most of them for your family history research. But first, what is an obituary? Register now and explore the Archive What Is An Obituary? An obituary, according to the Cambridge …
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This week at The Archive we have been immensely busy adding 397,534 brand new pages to our newspaper collection, with the addition of four brand new titles from Kent, Suffolk and Manchester. Meanwhile, we’ve been busy updating our existing titles from across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. So read on to discover more about all of our new and updated titles of the week, and also to find out about the burning of Parliament in October 1834, where London witnessed its biggest fire since 1666. Register now and explore the …
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This week we’ve added 320,174 new pages to The Archive. We have added a baker’s dozen, 13, brand new titles. We are delighted to have added new titles for England and Ireland this week. We’ve added to our Sports Titles with the Football Gazette (South Shields), the Sports Gazette (Middlesbrough), and, for Ireland, Ireland’s Saturday Night which covered football, cycling and athletics. As always we’ve added more pages to our existing titles, both old and new. Forty-nine titles have had …
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Using newspapers from The Archive, in this special blog we take a look at the history of Charter Fairs, from their inception in the medieval period to their continuation in twentieth century Britain. In his June 1955 article for The Sphere, entitled A Partial Eclipse of the Fair, Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald notes how ‘Fairs are of very ancient origin,’ and have been part of British life for thousands of years. A Charter Fair was a fair endorsed by the Crown. Crown-issued …
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This week we spent some time consolidating our existing titles. We have updates to ten existing titles including the ever popular Lloyd’s List. We have added 97,426 pages in the last 7 days. We have added one brand new title to The Archive: The West Middlesex Herald. With over 1,500 issues spanning 1855 to 1895 this is a valuable addition to The Archive for the mid to late Victorian period. We have this paper from its first edition on …
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It’s 1841 and Josiah Mister is on trial in Shrewsbury for attempted murder – committed at the Angel Inn in Ludlow. The victim was William Mackreth, a trader from Bristol who was in the town for the summer fair. In the early hours of the morning, he was brutally attacked by someone who’d been hiding under his bed. He managed to fight him off and his assailant escaped; a trail of blood led to Josiah’s room and he was arrested. But did …
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We’re happy to bring you word of the latest additions to The British Newspaper Archive. Three new titles have joined the site along with updates to ten existing titles. Our new titles are from Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland; Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England; and Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England: Jedburgh Gazette, Wisbech Standard, and Hunts Post, respectively. You can learn more about each of the titles we have added to this week by clicking on their names below. On each paper’s title page, you can learn more …
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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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As autumn gets truly underway, the warm clothes come out and the knitting needles start clacking. Knitting has a long tradition. This versatile skill could be utilised at anytime — and often was. Printed in the Illustrated War News in 1914, a group of women were photographed knitting in a wine cellar during bombardments in Rheims. Womanly sympathy with the soldiers is taking the practical form on the Continent, and in our own country, of knitting “comforts” for them, but the …
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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 …