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Back in June 2022, we wrote a blog covering the formative, contentious years of the Pride movement in the United Kingdom. Looking through our newspapers on The Archive, we were able to piece together a historical trajectory from 1972-1992, demonstrating how Gay Pride rallies and marches drove both cultural and political expansion in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Tracing the narrative of Pride’s inception, we saw how members of Gay Pride protests, marches, and riots were met with widespread hostility and intolerance.…

This week at The Archive we have added 211,776 new pages to our holdings. With a mighty 53 updated titles, and 9 brand new titles added, we take you from the complex underworld of women’s clothing design in London, to the threatening notices posted on gates and chapel doors in Hexham. Additionally, continue on to discover the swan scandal in Linlithgow that shook the town, and contributed to the wider conversation of human-related pollution in lochs across Scotland.Register now and explore The…

This week at The Archive we are marking St Patrick’s Day with the addition of five brand new Irish titles, and updates to 29 of our existing Irish titles, as we delve into a potential Oscar Wilde work, where all is not as it seems. Furthermore, in all, we’ve added 215,303 brand new pages to our collection, as The Archive continues to grow.So read on to discover more about our new and updated titles of the week, and also to read…

This week at The Archive we’re delving into the history of prohibition across Scotland and its impact on local distilleries. As well as exploring a time when parts of Scotland went dry for a bit longer than just the month of January, we’ve added 74,458 brand new pages to The Archive, as well as updating twelve titles from across England, Scotland and the Isle of Man.So read on to discover which of our titles we have updated this week, and…

1889 was the year of the Cleveland Street scandal, in which a male brothel was raided in Cleveland Street, in London’s West End. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and those who visited the house of assignation on Cleveland Street faced prosecution. However, due to the high social standing of many of the clientele of 19 Cleveland Street, only a few men faced prison time, as the British government were accused of covering up the scandal in…

At The Archive we are delighted to welcome guest blogs from our users, which highlight a wealth of different research interests. This month, we are excited to feature a blog on researching queer history by Staffordshire researcher Rebecca Morris-Quinn.My name is Rebecca, I am a queer woman living in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. I’ve been interested in genealogy and history for many years, since I found out that I share a birthday with a great-great aunt, Olive (albeit over 100 years ago).…

This week has been another record-breaking week here at The Archive, as we have now reached another milestone of over 57 million pages all now available to search as part of our collection, with 633,752 brand new pages joining us in all over the past seven days. Meanwhile, we’ve added three brand new newspaper titles to the site this week, two of which illuminate the religious climate of the mid to late nineteenth century, whilst another shines a light on local news…

On 1 December 1900 the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette reported on ‘The Death of Mr Oscar Wilde:’The Paris correspondent of the Dublin Evening Mail telegraphs that Mr Oscar Wilde died yesterday at three o’clock in the Latin Quartier. He had been suffering for some time. Two days ago he became unconscious. Six weeks ago he underwent an operation, which appeared to have been successful, but a complication which followed proved fatal.The death of the poet, playwright and novelist…

In March 1954 news broke that former Second World War fighter pilot and racing driver Roberta Cowell (1918-2011) had become the first known British transgender woman to undergo gender affirmation surgery, an important part of British LGBTQ+ history.Roberta Cowell, or Betty as she was known to her friends, soon became the ‘most talked of woman in England,’ making headlines across national and regional newspapers. And the way that Roberta used print media to tell her own story is a story in…

The events of the early hours of 28 June 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York, where LGBTQ+ patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back against police violence, would reverberate not only across the United States, but the world, and mark an important turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.The Stonewall riots in turn led to the birth of the Pride movement, where members of the gay and lesbian community took to the streets to demand an end to discrimination. This…