Search the blog

As we settle into the new chapter of the British Newspaper Archive, we bring you six standout new titles this week. With 262,076 pages added in total, we will take you on a journey from important resort society in Bournemouth to the Victorian Temperance movement in London. On top of our new titles, we have made updates to forty-three of our pre-existing titles. So keep reading to discover more about our exciting new and updated titles, as you familiarise yourself with…

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…

As part of our ongoing partnership with the British Library, we are delighted to announce that one million more pages on the British Newspaper Archive have now been made free to view on our site, meaning that we now have two million pages in total that can be accessed freely as part of our collection.And we’re not stopping here. We’re planning to release a total of five million free to view pages on The Archive over five years, meaning…

As we move now into February we have been extremely busy here at The Archive, adding 139,438 brand new pages to our collection, with the addition of two brand new titles over the past seven days. Meanwhile, we have made significant updates to a range of our existing titles, with 26 titles updated in all.So read on to discover more about our two new titles of the week, one of which represented the interests of the various Nonconformist Protestant groups of…

With an increase in literacy rates and a growing emphasis on the importance of family, by the mid Victorian era the concept of the children’s corner in newspapers was born.Leeds Mercury | 18 June 1898Often placed amongst the densely packed columns of the daily or weekly local and national newspapers, the children’s corner represented a new development for Victorian editors of the day, and a new market to which they could appeal.And in this special blog, as we explore the…

June is Pride Month. At The Archive, we are delving into the newspapers and pulling out the breadth of LGBTQ history available.Register now and explore The Archive18th Century Gay Subculture18th century London was home to a flourishing gay subculture with Molly Houses at the centre of the social scene. ‘Molly’ was a slur used for effeminate, homosexual men and the term was adopted to describe the clubs, taverns, inns, or coffee houses where they met up in…

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…