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Mrs Caudle first appeared as a character in Punch magazine in 1845. She was portrayed as the archetypal nagging wife, always telling her husband off for something.The West Kent Guardian reveals the real Mrs CaudleThis article from the West Kent Guardian reveals that the real-life Mrs Caudle was also a woman not to be messed with. The newspaper published the following court report on Saturday 26 July 1845.West Kent Guardian – Saturday 26 July 1845Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.…

Gordon Martin recently got in touch to show us what the newspapers have helped him find out about his great-great-uncle Charles Alfred Martin.We love hearing about your finds, so please do let us know what you’ve discovered by emailing [email protected]**************Charles Alfred MartinI had long known the existence of great-great-uncle Charles, the youngest child of a seaman born in Magdeburg, Prussia who served on HMS Achille at the Battle of Trafalgar of 1805. His father had arrived in England…

The Huddersfield Chronicle reported that John Hetherington wore the first top hat on this day in 1797. The article stated that he was arrested for breach of the peace after ‘several women fainted at the unusual sight’:View the whole newspaper pageHuddersfield Chronicle – Tuesday 24 January 1899Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.…

‘Tell all France that I am innocent’ – Alfred DreyfusIn Paris on 5 January 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on ‘Devil’s Island’.Here is a newspaper story published on 7 January 1895 entitled, ‘The Degradation of Dreyfus’, that reports on the utterly humiliating ceremony at the Ecole Militaire to strip Dreyfus of his rank and dignity.The words that Dreyfus shouts immediately after the degradation ceremony are very poignant, moving and truthful.We’ve also…

‘A black vicious ugly customer as ever I saw, whale-like in size, and with as terrible a row of incisor teeth as ever closed on a French frigate’ – Charles DickensHMS Warrior, the Royal Navy’s first ocean-going ironclad warship, was launched in London on 29 December 1860. Included below is a report of the launch that was published in the Liverpool Daily Post of 31 December 1860 and an illustration of the vessel as she appeared just after completion.…

‘Pardon me sir, I meant not to do it’ – the last words of Marie Antoinette (after stepping on the foot of the executioner)On 16 October 1793, Marie Antoinette, the widow of Louis XVI, was executed at the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris – she was 37.The Hampshire Chronicle published the details of the event on 28 October 1793.Hampshire Chronicle | 28 October 1793…

On 6 March 1836, the Battle of the Alamo ended, following a 12-day battle between the Texan rebels and President General Santa Anna’s Mexican army. The battle resulted in the death of all the Texian defenders.  To mark the day, we’ve posted below two newspaper stories from May 1836 that report on the end of the famous battle.The first tells us about the battle.A second article promoted the cause of Texas.Discover more about the Battle of the Alamo…

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the country lawyer who became a revolutionary, died at his estate at Gorki settlement on 21 January 1924.  We trawled through The British Newspaper Archives new stories that reported on Lenin’s death, and the reports are far from complimentary – which is, of course, revealing in itself.Reflecting on Lenin’s death, Churchill wrote: ‘Their worst misfortune was his birth, their next worst – his death’.  There are hundreds of interesting stories about Lenin’s death in The Archive. We have pulled out…