Hot Off The Press – New Titles This Week

This week is a special week in newspaper history, as it marks 125 years since the first publication of the Daily Express, which we are proud to publish in full, from 1900 to 1999. Meanwhile, we’ve a special Suffolk focus this week at The Archive, with the publication of one brand new title from that particular county, whilst we have also updated five of our existing Suffolk titles. We’ve added a grand total of 147,575 brand new pages to The Archive, with five brand new titles joining us in all.

Read on then to discover more about the very first edition of the Daily Express, and also to learn all about our new and updated titles of the week.

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So let’s take a look at our brand new titles of the week, and it’s only right that with our Suffolk focus we begin in Suffolk with the East Suffolk Gazette. The East Suffolk Gazette was established in the Suffolk market town of Beccles, in the east of the county, as its name belies. The paper was launched in 1857, and it was owned by Messrs William Clowes & Sons.

Moving away from Suffolk now to the neighbouring county of Norfolk, and our next new title of the week, which is the Cromer & North Norfolk Post. The ‘only paper published in the district’ of Cromer, a town which lies on the north coast of Norfolk, the Cromer & North Norfolk Post was established in 1890. It later joined forces with rival publication the Norfolk Chronicle in 1933, a title which we have updated this week.

Our next new title of the week is the Epping and West Essex Gazette, which began life in 1901 as the Epping Gazette and West Essex Record. Published every Saturday at the cost of just one pence, it covered the news from the market town of Epping.

In 1913 the title became known as the West Essex Gazette, before finally settling on the name of the East London and West Essex Guardian.

Our final new titles of the week are a duo of sister papers, namely the Bedworth Citizen and the Coventry Citizen. The Coventry Citizen was founded in 1982, with the Bedworth Citizen following along. The titles belonged to a series of papers which were delivered to homes and businesses across Bedworth, Bulkington, Coventry, Leek Wootton and Balsall Common.

Appearing every Thursday, the Coventry Citizen was delivered to two-thirds of the city of Coventry’s households. In 2007 the title was relaunched as the Coventry Times, before ceasing publication in 2015.

Moving on now to the eighteen of our existing titles which we have updated this week. We mentioned our special Suffolk focus, with five of our newspaper titles from that particular county being updated. Leading the charge here is the Suffolk Mercury, to which we have added over 4,000 brand new pages from the late 1800s. Meanwhile, you’ll find significant updates to London’s first ever daily finance paper, the Financial News, as well as to one of our Scottish titles, the John o’Groat Journal.

Looking further afield, we’ve updated one of our Irish titles, the Kilkenny Journal and Leinster Commercial and Literary Advertiser, as well as titles from the Isle of Man and Jersey.

The Daily Express Turns 125

This week marks the 125th birthday of the Daily Express, which was first published on 24 April 1900. An exciting new venture, it was the brainchild of journalist and publisher Sir Arthur Pearson (1866-1921). To mark this anniversary, we wanted to take a detailed look at the very first front page of the Daily Express, which, with its seven densely packed columns, appears completely different to the publication we know today.

Daily Express | 24 April 1900

Looking at its very first front page, then, the Daily Express reported how Queen Victoria had won ‘Ireland’s Love’ during her fourth visit to the country, with the elderly monarch described as looking ‘wonderfully well…fresh and bright and alert.’

Daily Express | 24 April 1900

The first ever front page of the Daily Express contained tidings of another European monarch, this time from the ‘German Emperor,’ Wilhelm II. Remarkably, the German monarch gave his best wishes to the new publication, and expressed his desire for future peace:

I offer my good wishes for the success of the ‘Daily Express,’ which, as I understand, proposes to foster that most excellent of missions – the promotion of international goodwill. Tell the British people that my first hope now and always is the preservation of good relations between Germany and Great Britain.

Daily Express | 24 April 1900

Fourteen years later and those good relations had most certainly broken down, but back in 1900 the front page of the Daily Express was mostly devoted to war, namely the Second Boer War. The paper, for example, reports on Lord Roberts’ 60,000 strong army in Bloemfontein, with news of British casualties and Boer prisoners.

Daily Express | 24 April 1900

What is remarkable about the front page of the Daily Express is its concentration on international news. From tidings of ‘fatal forest fires’ in North Minnesota and Southern Manitoba, to news of a plague in Nouméa, South Caledonia, which had caused ‘hundreds of deaths,’ the paper’s focus is firmly beyond British shores. The front page takes a look at the situation in Abyssinia and Sudan, an attempt to destroy the Welland Canal in Ontario, and talks of the stars and stripes being flown over Jerusalem.

Daily Express | 24 April 1900

Delving further into the pages of the first ever edition of the Daily Express you can discover more international news, but also news with a more domestic focus, a range of advertisements, as well as a handy weather forecast.

Daily Express | 24 April 1900

Read the first ever edition of the Daily Express here.

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated 18 of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a free sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.