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Fittingly for our brand new platform, this week we are delighted to welcome five brand new titles to The Archive, with a total of 261,496 pages joining us in all. That's not it either, from across the UK and Ireland and even further afield, we've updated 46 of our existing titles. And as we voyage into these new waters, using our brand new shipping title, we explore the launches of some notable liners and merchant vessels from the late 19th and early…

Here at The Archive we are delighted to welcome 204,443 brand new pages this week, as we mark 125 years since the passing of the Mines (Prohibition of Child Labour Underground) Act 1900, which banned children under the age of thirteen from working underground in mines. This act, following the raising of the school leaving age to twelve in 1899, represented an important milestone in the eradication of child labour.Meanwhile, we’ve added eight brand new titles this week, which span the length and…

Here at The Archive, we love to learn of the discoveries you have made through our newspaper pages, and how you have used them, whether they have influenced novels, or provided information for dissertations. We were incredibly grateful, therefore, when crime writer and athletics historian Peter Lovesey contacted us with his account of sixty years of researching newspapers. From accessing historical newspapers in their original form, to scrolling through microfilm reels, and finally to searching newspapers digitally on the British…

In October 1823, the Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser asserted:The charge and duty of Government are not merely to increase the numbers of men, but to promote and increase their happiness. Industry is the most powerful engine of this happiness, because it is the spring of all their riches. Government, then, should encourage labour, and by due reward, endeavour to avail of, and augment its useful products…The article, entitled ‘Political Economy,’ goes on to recommend how ‘the power of…

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…

In the month of August, we have looked at occupations and employment through the newspapers.  To finish our theme this month, we are taking a closer look at coal miners, specifically in the 19th century.  An initial search for miners reveals explosions, accidents, and strikes in the vast amount of mines operating across Great Britain.  We will look at these topics in closer detail.The first coal mine was sunk in Scotland, under the Firth of Forth in 1575.  As the…

As we welcome a new month, we at the Archive take the opportunity to delve into historical events that have occurred in the month of May over the years.Lewis and ClarkOn 14 May 1804, Lewis and Clark departed St Louis on their expedition west. It was the first American expedition to explore the western half of the United States. The expedition was ordered by President Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase to, in part, map this newly acquired territory. The journey…

Recently, several people have asked us when the newspaper library at Colindale will be closing and the print newspapers moving to Boston Spa. In June, the British Library confirmed that the Colindale site in North London will close on Friday 8 November 2013.As many of you will already know, the content on the BNA website comes from the British Library’s amazing newspaper collection at Colindale – which contains over 750 million pages from local, regional and national newspapers, as well as periodicals. But…

The Lusitania arrived in New York on 13 September 1907, after completing the crossing of the Atlantic in 5 days and just under two hours – thus just missing out on ‘the Blue Ribbon’, then held by ‘The Deutschland’.To mark the day, here is a newspaper report about this historic event.Read our blog post about the sinking of the Lusitania…

Historical newspaper reports on the sinking of the LusitaniaOn 7 May 1915, the Lusitania was hit by torpedoes fired by the German U-boat U-20, and sank in 20 minutes with the loss of 1,198 lives.To mark the day, here are some newspaper reports about the tragedy.…