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Nicknamed the ‘Idle Women,’ although they were about as far from idle as anybody could possibly be, the women canal workers of the Second World War performed vital war work which is all but forgotten today, some seventy years later.Some of the ‘Idle women’ arriving at a canal dock | The Sphere | 15 April 1944The curious name of ‘Idle Women’ came from the badges that these pioneering women wore, with the initials ‘IW,’ which stood for ‘Inland Waterways’. This moniker, given…

This week we have added 48,988 pages to The Archive, with new pages covering both England and Scotland. We’re delighted to have updated four of our Scottish titles, with additions spanning the years between 1879 to 1981. We’ve also updated the Newcastle Journal, the Manchester Evening News, the Lichfield Mercury, the Wells Journal, and finally the Reading Evening Post.One of our Scottish titles to be updated this week is the Aberdeen Evening Express, to which we have added the years 1939-1945 and 1980-1981.Eighty…

The British Newspaper Archive holds over 70,000 pages from Liverpool newspapers (and counting), making it an unrivalled resource when it comes to tracing the history of the city and its surrounding areas.Register to View Liverpool NewspapersOur clever search tools allow you to focus your search by looking at papers from Liverpool only and offer the ability to narrow by date, recent additions and more.To focus in on Liverpool titles only, while searching, use the place filter to select…

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 hauntingsOften 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.This…

Whether your ancestors were royalty or the servants of royalty, it can be just as satisfying and surprising to learn where you come from. Last night’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was no exception, when Ricky Tomlinson learned that he came from a hardworking line of carters in Liverpool.The New York of EuropeIn the 1800s, Liverpool was a major port city that depended on carters to transport goods from the docks into the city. As…

To mark the hundred years since the signing of the Armistice on Monday 11 November 1918, which ended the First World War, we take a look at the poignant images published that historic day across our various publications.A significant theme running throughout, of course, is that of peace, and freedom, at last, as featured in the Nottingham Evening Post and the Liverpool Echo.Nottingham Evening Post | 11 November 1918Liverpool Echo | 11 November 1918Other newspapers, such as the Evening Despatch and the Sheffield Independent…