Newspapers provide some of the most detailed and fascinating glimpses of our ancestors and are a major source of information. Now that so many newspapers are being digitised and made available online, most notably by the British Newspaper Archive, and can be searched by name or any other category, this has become a major resource for all family historians. Thousands of new pages are added every day, so as time passes by, this amazing site will become even more valuable as a resource to all researchers.

Over the past few years, I have been building up a collection of material which I would very much like to share with our readers. I will continually add to this archive and hope to make comments on some of these entries where we have further information. I would also invite comments from anyone who can add their own contribution, as many of these entries relate to individuals about whom we know very little or, indeed, nothing at all. I have also decided to put each clip of news into a category, such as ‘heroic’, ‘criminal/misdemeanour’, ‘tragic’, ‘humorous’ and so on. Continue reading →