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At The Archive this week we are delighted to announce that we have hit another milestone, as we are now at over 97 million pages all available to search, as we embrace spooky season and find out how to throw a 1950s style Halloween party. That’s not all, we’ve added another 256,448 brand new pages to our collection, with five brand new titles and updates to seven of our existing titles from across the UK.And so, read on to discover more…

As it’s the height of spooky season we’re exploring the history of Halloween at The Archive, with the help of the 93,381 brand new pages that we have added to our collection over the last seven days. Meanwhile, we’re delighted to welcome one brand new newspaper title to The Archive, which is the Middlesex & Surrey Gazette, whilst we have made exciting updates to some of our existing titles from across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.So read on to discover more…

Reading like a tabloid’s dream, or the script of a film noir, the shooting death of racing car driver David Blakely at the hands of his model girlfriend Ruth Ellis revealed the seedy underbelly of 1950s society.From the smoky, dim-lit cocktail bars of West London, to extramarital affairs and illicit weapons, this is the story of a young woman and what drove her to shoot her lover in broad daylight on Easter Sunday, 1955, as told by our newspapers. The…

This week at The Archive we have been busy adding an incredible 167,444 brand new pages to our collection, with nineteen new titles added in all. And this week’s new titles have an especially Scottish theme, with a lucky thirteen new titles added from Scotland alone over the past seven days.Meanwhile, we have added six historic London titles, digitised as part of the British Library’s Heritage Made Digital programme, and updated fifteen of our existing newspaper titles, including pages from…

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…

This week at The Archive we are delighted to have added 115 years’ worth of historic headlines, with two brand new titles joining us over the past seven days. In total, we have added 103,686 new pages, with substantial updates to one of our national titles. Read on to discover more about this week’s additions.Register now and explore the ArchiveKicking off our new titles this week is the Runcorn Weekly News. Published in the Cheshire town of Runcorn, this ‘politically…

We continue to celebrate Pride Month here at the British Newspaper Archive with this special blog exploring gender identity from the 1700s right up until the 1960s. Using newspapers taken from three different centuries, this blog will show how gender identity has always been fluid, and how members of the LGBTQ community have faced both persecution and prosecution for expressing their identity through how they dressed and presented themselves.‘Extraordinary Discovery – A Woman Dressed in Man’s Clothes’ | Illustrated Police News | 2…

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…