Nineteenth Century British Newspapers

From the Archives: NarrowBoat, Spring 2017

Joseph Boughey

Joseph Boughey uses an online archive to augment printed information on two canals that were superseded by railways in the late 1800s

When researching waterways history, it is usually published sources that are first considered. In the internet age, however, it is very easy to supplement existing printed information with new findings unearthed from publicly available online archives. In this issue we look at ‘Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers’, a collection, selected from the British Library, of 73 newspapers, representative of various parts of Britain. Some public libraries, like Devon, Leeds and Wirral, have a free subscription to the site, and, like most collections, the key feature is the indexing and search facility.Glasgow, Paisley & Johnstone Canal For researchers of Scotland’s Glasgow, Paisley & Johnstone Canal, the best published source remains Jean Lindsay’s 1968 work The Canals of Scotland. However, this does not draw on newspaper sources and overlooks some aspects of the canal’s short history. Many of the 138 results in the archive on this waterway invol…