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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…

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 Archive1. An Army of…

On Christmas Day 1906 the city of Sheffield in the north of England saw the ‘heaviest Christmas snow for 25 years,’ as the Sheffield Daily Telegraph reports:On the evening of Christmas Day the snow began to fall, and yesterday morning the city was covered in a beautiful mantle of the purest white. Snow lay on the ground to the depth of about six inches, and, except in the streets, so remained until last night, when there was a further fall.Long…

In this special blog we use the remarkable photographs and illustrations contained in our Newspaper Archive to trace the tradition of the May Queen over one hundred and fifty years, as well as exploring the origins of this fascinating ritual.We start out at Wymering, just outside of Portsmouth, in 1867. It was here, in the ‘latter part of the month of merrie May’, that a May Queen was crowned. The Illustrated Times tell us that the event is looked forward…

One of the features of The British Newspaper Archive is the OCR editing tool.  This allows every user to contribute to the improvement of The Archive.  OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition– the process we use to transform millions of digitised images into searchable text.   The computer takes an image of the page and then turns each line into text.  However, as many of us have encountered, the text is not always correct and needs improvement.  As a group, we…

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 dayOne 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 the United States was dedicated…

Of witches and witchcraftAs 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 passed the law…

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…

Valentine’s Day in its present iteration is inexorably linked to both romantic love and commercialism. It inspires strong feelings, both for and against this day of chocolate boxes and heart-shaped cards. However, the day and its traditions have not been static. In performing a simple search for ‘Valentine’s Day’ on The British Newspaper Archive, you can start to see the ways in which the holiday — and its reception — have changed (and, occasionally, stayed the same) over the years.An 1845 description…