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Newspaper Archives

Katie Bee

Katie Bee

LostCousins Member
The latest Lost Cousins Newsletter (second March one) contained information on The British Newspaper Archives which I have had a look at and I have found some wonderful articles about some of my ancestors.

My great grandfather was caught with with fifty-six poached rabbits in his cart! He was fined £2.
My great great grandfather was wrongly imprisioned for stealing a watch. Some tramps found the watch and he was given his liberty.

The archives are also at Findmypast
 
The London Gazette is another useful free resource, especially for military promotions, civil service appointments, bankruptcy and death/probate.

Pages can be viewed, downloaded or printed.
 
I found The British Newspaper Archives much easier to use than the equivalent on Findmypast.
The British Newspaper Archives highlight your search keywords when you look at an image, so it is easy to find the relevant section of the page.
Findmypast do not highlight the search keywords, so you have to check the title of the article and read through it to find the relevant section.
If you download an image, The British Newspaper Archives use a unique file name, but Findmypast call every download A4 which is not very helpful.
 
I have bookmarked the page...after realising i had registered ages ago! it's funny how you forget what sites you use. I haven't found anything about an ancestor as yet but will keep looking :D
 
Katie Bee said:
I found The British Newspaper Archives much easier to use than the equivalent on Findmypast.
The British Newspaper Archives highlight your search keywords when you look at an image, so it is easy to find the relevant section of the page.
Findmypast do not highlight the search keywords, so you have to check the title of the article and read through it to find the relevant section.
If you download an image, The British Newspaper Archives use a unique file name, but Findmypast call every download A4 which is not very helpful.
Click to expand...
Also I find the BNA search system is more able to pinpoint which article you want. If you have a FMP subscription I'd recommend using BNA for the search, and when you've found what you want, FMP for the download.
 
GrahamSimons said:
Also I find the BNA search system is more able to pinpoint which article you want. If you have a FMP subscription I'd recommend using BNA for the search, and when you've found what you want, FMP for the download.
Click to expand...
Yes, I found an article in the BNA, but the newspaper its in doesn't seem to be available at FMP :(
Any suggestions?
 
Tim said:
Yes, I found an article in the BNA, but the newspaper its in doesn't seem to be available at FMP :(
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
The lastest findmypast newsletter says that they are adding thousands of new pages every day.
So maybe just keep on checking daily!
I wonder how long it will take for your article to be added?
 
Tim said:
Yes, I found an article in the BNA, but the newspaper its in doesn't seem to be available at FMP :(
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
There are two possible reasons: one is that Irish newspapers aren't included in the Full subscription at findmypast; the other is that whereas pages are being uploaded to BNA on a daily basis, they might only copy them across to the findmypast servers at intervals. I don't know that's how it works for the newspapers, but I do remember that Ancestry was always a few months behind FreeBMD with their GRO indexes, even though FreeBMD provided them with the data, so I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Incidentally - this also explains why, although most transcription errors are fixed by findmypast within 24 hours, some aren't fixed for a couple of months.
 
Katie Bee said:
The lastest findmypast newsletter says that they are adding thousands of new pages every day.
So maybe just keep on checking daily!
I wonder how long it will take for your article to be added?
Click to expand...
Hmmm, not long I hope. This is the article I want to read.

FUNERAL OF DR. CHARLES STEELE

Friday 25 September 1914 , Western Daily Press , Bristol, England

I want to see if it mentions his wife's name and if there were any children. It's for the Birthday Book Challenge
 
Tim said:
Hmmm, not long I hope. This is the article I want to read.

FUNERAL OF DR. CHARLES STEELE

Friday 25 September 1914 , Western Daily Press , Bristol, England

I want to see if it mentions his wife's name and if there were any children. It's for the Birthday Book Challenge
Click to expand...
I think you'll find this is for Charles Steele senior, Charles Francis Steele's father, who died 20 September 1914.
 
Actually, I think that's the dad of the Charles Steele that we're interested in. The Charles we want died in 1911.
I'll keep looking.
 

Really looking forward to having the time to look through these three links - just the 'ticket' to Australia!
 
Tim said:
Actually, I think that's the dad of the Charles Steele that we're interested in. The Charles we want died in 1911.
I'll keep looking.
Click to expand...

Had a quick look at the BNA site but there doesn't appear to be an entry for a Steele funeral in 1911 (or 1912).

If you are not registered with the BNA at the moment, there is an offer of 15 free credits if you do so "to help get you started" as the site says BUT it's not 100% clear whether you actually have to stump up money to take advantage of this (cheapest offer is £6.95 for 500 credits over 2 days) - but I suspect you might not want to do this!
 
Heilan Lass said:
Had a quick look at the BNA site but there doesn't appear to be an entry for a Steele funeral in 1911 (or 1912).

If you are not registered with the BNA at the moment, there is an offer of 15 free credits if you do so "to help get you started" as the site says BUT it's not 100% clear whether you actually have to stump up money to take advantage of this (cheapest offer is £6.95 for 500 credits over 2 days) - but I suspect you might not want to do this!
Click to expand...

Hi Heilan Lass,
The Free offer is FREE. I took advantage of it and all I had to do was register, no money or credit card or anything.
15 credits give you 3 newspaper images. A great starting point.
 
If anyone is wondering what AnneC and Tim are talking about, it's all to do with the Birthday Book Challenge I set at Christmas.

Anyone who is longing to solve 'brick walls' (whether their own or those of others) should head over to the Birthday Book wiki to sharpen their skills and learn some new techniques. It's the most complex challenge I've ever set, and possibly one of the most complex anyone has attempted.

And yet, we're so tantalisingly close to an answer - perhaps a fresh pair of eyes is all that is needed?

Note: if you want to post anything on the Wiki you'll need to register there, but you can view everything as a guest.
 
peter said:
If anyone is wondering what AnneC and Tim are talking about, it's all to do with the Birthday Book Challenge I set at Christmas.

Anyone who is longing to solve 'brick walls' (whether their own or those of others) should head over to the Birthday Book wiki to sharpen their skills and learn some new techniques. It's the most complex challenge I've ever set, and possibly one of the most complex anyone has attempted.

And yet, we're so tantalisingly close to an answer - perhaps a fresh pair of eyes is all that is needed?
Click to expand...

Has everyone now given up with the Birthday Book Challenge? I was hoping that with all the activity on the Forum we may have come across some descendants of those mentioned in the book. I did contact someone on Ancestry who had several of the names in their tree and told them about the Birthday Book, but unfortunately didn't get a reply.
 
Funnily enough, I was just thinking about that this week.

I've been a bit busy but hopefully we could revive it.
 
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