This week the staff in our Local and Family History department bring us a wonderful story sourced from a recent customer enquiry and some dogged detective work in our resources… One of the joys of working in the Local and Family History department are the occasionally offbeat enquiries we get, and the many wide and…
Tag: Leeds Mercury
A mysterious diary from the Great War (Part 3 of 3)
We welcome Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill back to the Secret Library this week, for a brilliantly-researched story to mark Armed Forces Day on June 29. This is the third and final part of a three part series that has run throughout June, alongside a full programme of Leeds Libraries events. You can find…
The Leeds Mercury: Making the news, but not yet as we know it
This week we hear from regular guest contributor Tony Scaife, who has been exploring the history of an important local news publication… Leeds’ had two newspapers – the Leeds Mercury and the Leeds Intelligencer – for most of the 18th century. I have been fortunate enough to spend some time with the Local and Family…
Two 19th Century Scoops: Part II – Peterloo, August 1819
This week we hear from Library and Digital Assistant Ruairí Lewis on some fascinating examples of local, Leeds newspapers making their mark on the national stage. On top of our extensive local newspaper collection in the Central Library, Leeds Libraries also have access to the British Newspaper Archive’s 19th Century Newspapers database. This gives library…
Two 19th Century Scoops: Part I – The Spy Oliver
This week we hear from Library and Digital Assistant Ruairí Lewis on some fascinating examples of local, Leeds newspapers making their mark on the national stage. On top of our extensive local newspaper collection in the Central Library, Leeds Libraries also have access to the British Newspaper Archive’s 19th Century Newspapers database. This gives library…
Slavery in Yorkshire
This week on the blog we hear from Library Officer Ruairí Lewis about a heated debate between two leading local men in the early 19th-century… In 1830, the ‘Tory Radical’ Richard Oastler sent an open letter to the Leeds Mercury, owned and edited by prominent Leeds liberal Edward Baines (1774-1848), entitled ‘Slavery in Yorkshire’. Oastler…
Collingham Pageants
This week we hear from Library Officer Karen Downham, who explores a fascinating new addition to our Leodis archive of historic Leeds images… The Local & Family History Library often takes donations of photographs to go onto the Leodis online photographic archive (www.leodis.net), and as often happens when researching the background to images, the trail…
Fake News 21st August 1934
Fake News is a new project, by Tim Knight, which uses Local and Family History’s newspaper archive to publish a fictional front page every month. Curated from cuttings of The Yorkshire Post and The Yorkshire Evening Post—Leeds’ oldest continuous newspaper—Fake News will explore the goings-on, mishaps and miscellany of Yorkshire through the ages. Today’s edition, a…
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