This post was written by Jenny Pearce, Senior Marketing Manager for LibraryOn at the British Library.

2025 sees the 175th anniversary of the Public Libraries Act 1850. The Act was an initial step in providing universal free access to information and literature. Most of us have a library locally. You might have used one once, or intermittently throughout the years. You might be an avid user, or never have stepped foot in one. However, when the Act was first passed in England and Wales (and later in Scotland and Ireland in 1853), feelings were mixed about civilising the “dangerous classes”, and they worked very differently to how they do today… 

Illustration of Shoreditch Free Public Library in the Penny Illustrated Paper, 13 May 1893, p.300

A new pastime

Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper reported the success of Salford Public Library, which proved so popular that a second reading room had to be opened after 250 members of the public took to using the library daily. The newspaper states “at least half used formerly to spend their leisure hours at dog-fights, or in the gin-shop. Does not even sensible selfishness teach that the population of every town in the kingdom would be made safer, as well as better, by such an institution as this?”

Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper, 19 October 1850, p.2

Public libraries are still seen as essential and crucial community spaces, offering a safe environment to those who use them.

Cost of living

However, not everyone was in favour of the Public Libraries Act. Close to the British Library’s home, the parish of St Pancras rejected the act in 1856: “Mr. Hall, who announced himself as a sweep, neither could nor would pay additional taxes for the sake of having a few books to read. What did the people want? He could get as much reading as he liked in the penny newspapers.”

Metropolitan, 28 June 1856, p.5

Haslingden, Lancashire, rejected adopting the Act in 1857 due to objections from the public about the increase in taxes to build, staff and stock a library. The Preston Chronicle quotes one vivid appeal: “Would not the blush of shame mantle on your cheeks, when reading books and newspapers purchased with money wrung from the reluctant grasp of famishing workmen and workwomen who reside on the borders of this extensive parish, and who procure a scanty and precarious living by hand-loom weaving?"

Preston Chronicle, 10 January 1857, p.7

Another speaker at the public meeting argued that “he sincerely believed that the proposed public library would benefit all classes, the rich and the poor; those who lived near the library itself and those who where [sic] far off.”

Today, many people see the library as a way to save money, allowing people to borrow, instead of buy, with libraries being free at the point of use. The public library is now seen as a cultural institution, worthy of being funded and an asset which shouldn’t be lost.

Plague worries

In 1908, Blackpool Town Council also rejected the Act. As reported in the Barrow News, a Town Council member condemned public libraries as “plague spots” and “cause of the spread of disease in all towns through the circulation of the books in infected houses”.

Fortunately, the plague isn’t a challenge libraries have to consider today! In fact, during the pandemic libraries were lifelines for many, allowing books to be delivered, materials to be used for research and events to be made available online. Some even acted as vaccination centres, underlining their adaptability and importance in times of crisis.

Then v now

The Act only applied to municipal boroughs with a population of more than 10,000 and relied on local referenda, with a two thirds super-majority required for establishment.

Funding, until 1855, was also limited to one halfpenny per pound of rates (local taxes) collected. This funding (which was very little) was not allowed to be spent on books, only buildings, furnishings and staff. Books were expected to be donated.

Fiction fears on morals

Many libraries favoured non-fiction. Hertford Free Library focused on education, with an emphasis on morality. From the Hertford Mercury and Reformer in 1856: “There was not a single book […] which was not calculated to improve the mind or which had the slightest tendency to excite or gratify morbid or immoral tastes.”

But many also saw the benefits of fiction. Lord Stanley stated in the Belfast News-Letter in 1865 that preferring works of fiction to maths and history books was not cause for alarm; he opined that they were “harmless and certainly not altogether useless works.”

Belfast News-Letter, 09 September 1865, p.4

While education and information is still crucial to a public library’s offer, the popularity of fiction endures today. Many of the top loaned book titles and authors are fiction writers. Not only can people borrow physical books, but e-lending is also popular. Many libraries offer e-books, audiobooks and digital versions of popular magazines, newspapers and periodicals.

Different experiences for different members of society

Library spaces were often segregated by class, sex and age, very different from the open access spaces we have today. This was an effort to limit contact between the different groups and maintain the power divides of the Victorian era.

To use some lending libraries, such as in Manchester, people had to be vouched for by two “respectable” guarantors. ‘Magazine’ or ‘Ladies’ Reading Rooms catered to perceived preference in reading materials; periodicals, magazines and newspapers. Men sometimes had separate conversation, games or smoking rooms. The main Reading Rooms were often seen as being reserved for the more serious students. These library spaces started to be seen as opponents to drinking in pubs, with an 1885 edition of The Graphic saying “free reading-rooms form the strongest opponents to the public houses, and one of the most valuable and popular aids to education.”

The Graphic, 28 February 1885, p.219

Francis Place, a campaigner for the working class, agreed that "the establishment of parish libraries and district reading rooms, and popular lectures on subjects both entertaining and instructive to the community might draw off a number of those who now frequent public houses for the sole enjoyment they afford".

Until the 1890s, a closed access system was used, where reading materials were kept beyond the reach (and sometimes sight) of the public. Clerkenwell Library was the first public library to break from the tradition. It took another decade before other libraries saw the benefits, as previously it was thought an open library system would allow “chaos, crime and inappropriate fraternisation”.

A century on

Edinburgh Evening News, 14 August 1950, p.4

By 1914, 62% of England’s population lived within a library authority area. By 1950 there were 23,000 libraries, serving 12 million readers, who read 300 million books a year. A 1950 edition of the Edinburgh Evening News stated that “Britain has the best public library system in the world” and has been of “incalculable benefit to the people.”

An article celebrating a century of Liverpool's public libraries. The Sphere, 19 August 1950, p.280

According to the ONS Access to local amenities in England and Wales: October 2024 report, 78% of the population are now within a 30-minute walk of a public library. To find your nearest library, visit LibraryOn’s website. Their interactive map also lets you filter to find public libraries which have access to the British Newspaper Archive.

And no, you don’t have to ‘shh’ if you want to use your local library today!

We have all seen images of the joyful street parties and triumphant newspaper headlines that greeted the end of war in Europe on 8th May 1945. As the UK prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day in 2025, we explore the British Library's newspaper collections to see how VE Day has been covered by the British press on its significant anniversaries across the decades.

The early anniversaries of VE Day were subdued affairs as the country grappled with the aftermath of the war, and this is reflected in the newspaper coverage. On the first anniversary in 1946, the continuing struggles of rationing and the fragile nature of newly-established peace in Europe were cited by the Dundee Evening Telegraph as reasons for a lack of celebratory atmosphere around VE Day. Food rationing only officially ended in 1954, so wartime hardships were still fresh in the minds of Britons on the tenth anniversary in 1955. The Scotsman described the 1955 anniversary as a moment of remembrance and reflection rather than of celebration.

The Scotsman, 9 May 1955, p. 6

International relations played a role in newspaper coverage of VE Day in 1975 and 1985. The 1975 anniversary occurred a few weeks before the UK's EEC membership referendum, a time of great debate in the media. VE Day and the ensuing years of peace in Europe were evoked in adverts and articles promoting a “Yes” vote, such as this pro-EEC article which was reprinted in several regional newspapers. In January 1985, a reluctance to offend West Germany prompted the government to consider cancelling VE Day celebrations for that year. The Daily Express reacted furiously to this prospect, asking “Why should we surrender Britain’s proudest moment?”

Daily Express, 15 January 1985, p. 8

Public outcry prompted Margaret Thatcher to change course and announce that celebrations would go ahead after all. Newspapers of this period also featured some of the wartime nostalgia that would become prevalent in 1995 and beyond, such as this advertisement for a VE Day dinner dance from the Ripon Gazette.

The fiftieth anniversary of VE Day in 1995 was marked by street parties, parades, and 1940s nostalgia. Many newspapers featured multi-page spreads with photographs from the various parades and events that took place across the UK, such as the Skegness Standard below.

Skegness Standard, 12 May 1995, pp. 18-19

Food was a key element of newspaper coverage in the run-up to VE Day 1995. Newspapers often displayed a sentimental attitude towards the days of rationing; they offered readers simple, old-fashioned recipes to hearken back to the wartime period, as can be seen in the below article from the Burton Mail.

[The Weekender], Burton Mail, 29 April 1995, p. 1

The Cambridge Evening News offered special VE Day coupons for a local department store in the style of a “Ministry of Bargains” ration book, further demonstrating the trend towards wartime nostalgia during this time. This shift from remembrance to nostalgia may reflect the fact that by 1995, many of those celebrating had not lived through the war themselves.

Fast forward to VE Day 2020: the UK was in Covid-19 lockdown on the seventy-fifth anniversary, thereby curtailing any mass celebrations like those seen in 1995. VE Day street parties were held at a social distance and many commemorative events were held online. The Hinckley Times below shows how neighbours and communities found new ways to mark the anniversary.

Hinckley Times, 13 May 2020, pp. 42-43

The Daily Mirror provided a two-page spread with advice on how to mark the occasion at home, from dressing up in 1940s-style garb, to baking “Winston Churchill’s fruitcake”. Like many other newspapers, the Mirror drew parallels between wartime sacrifices and the “very different war” being fought against Covid-19.

Daily Mirror, 7 May 2020, pp. 28-29

Finally, a common feature seen in newspapers throughout the decades were contributions from readers sharing their memories of VE Day 1945. In 1965, the Peterborough Evening Telegraph ran a two-page feature on readers’ memories of the day, encompassing a variety of viewpoints from across the community. In 1970, the Sunday Express awarded a reader a £100 prize for her letter in which she recalled her five-year old son asking her whether he would now be able to sleep upstairs in a bed, having slept in a shelter all his life. In 1995, the Hayes and Harlington Gazette interviewed a woman with the noteworthy name of Violet Edith Day about her memories of the 1945 occasion.

Sunday Express, 3 May 1970, p. 7

Most of the articles mentioned above are available to view online via the British Newspaper Archive, which is now free to access on your own device in British Library Reading Rooms. You can also use the British Newspaper Archive in many public libraries around the country for free. Visit LibraryOn’s website to find your nearest library with access.

Please see below some other VE Day-related blogs from the UK Web Archive:

• Digital Memory and the Militarised Past
• Marking 80 Years

and our partners at Find My Past:

• Discover VE Day
• VE Day at 80

 

Claire O’Halloran, Curator Newspaper Collections

2022 marks a special anniversary for the Newspaper Collection at the British Library. 200 years ago, in April 1822, the British Museum’s Department of Printed Books began systematically collecting newspapers. From that foundation the Library’s newspaper collections has continued to grow, and now comprises more than 36,000 titles from the UK and overseas, or 60 million individual newspaper issues. 

The Old Newspaper Reading Room in the British Museum, Bloomsbury. Sell's Dictionary of the World's Press 1893

Like many of the British Library’s collections, newspapers were originally part of the British Museum’s Department of Printed Books. However, from the Museum’s founding in 1753, until the 1820s, news publications were not seen as a distinct collection in their own right, and weren’t part of any concerted collecting effort. The impetus for changing this came in 1818, when a large collection of early newspapers, compiled by Dr Charles Burney (1757-1817), was purchased by the Museum. The Burney Collection of newspapers 1603-1818, when added to the Thomason Tracts (a collection of newspapers and news-books from the English Civil War period, which had been purchased for the museum by George III in 1762), formed a significant collection of early newspapers; enough for the museum to start considering the form in its own right.

In April 1822, after negotiations by Henry Baber (1775-1869), Keeper of the Printed Books, the British Museum began to collect newspapers in a systematic fashion. This was achieved via an arrangement with the Stamp Office, who at the time collected all newspapers published in Britain for purposes of registration and taxation. They kept the newspapers for two years, in case they were needed for legal cases, but agreed to pass them on to the British Museum after this period had elapsed. The first newspapers to arrive at the library were London papers for the years 1818 and 1819, and the first consignment contained sixty complete sets for these years, and twenty-one imperfect sets. Provincial newspapers were added to those deposited by the Stamp Office in 1832, and Scottish and Irish newspapers were sent from 1848. 

British Museum Trustees Standing Committee: Minutes of Ordinary Business, 13 April 1822.

There are very few surviving records of this early arrangement between the Stamp Office and the British Museum. The image above, showing a short notice of thanks to the Stamp Office after the first consignment of newspapers arrived, which was recorded in the minutes of the Trustees Standing Committee. This is the only know record held at the British Museum/British Library, and there is no list of which newspapers arrived in that first delivery. Records for this period from the Stamp Office do not survive. Therefore, we have no certainty about which newspapers were the first actively collected by the British Library, but we can make some educated guesses. Below is an image of the front page of The World, which began publication in January 1818. This newspaper has annotations, including the publishers name and address, which were made by clerks at the Stamp Office. This indicates that it was originally the Stamp Office copy, and it was published in one of the first years deposited at the British Museum, so it is likely that this is one of the titles handed over during the first year of the arrangement.

The World, Vol. 1, No. 1, 4th January 1818.

Newspapers arrived at the British Museum from the Stamp Office via this arrangement until 1869, when Legal Deposit laws were introduced. From that date onwards a copy of each newspapers produced in the country legally had to be deposited at the library by the publishers. The British Museum was now entirely responsible for its own newspaper collecting, and began building up a sizeable and (mostly) comprehensive collection of British newspapers.

The rate of newspapers publication from the late nineteenth century quickly led to storage problems for the British Museum, and from 1905 many newspapers were stored offsite at Colindale in north London. In the early 1930s this offsite newspaper storage depot was expanded, and a reading room was added, with the new Newspaper Library at Colindale opening to readers in August 1932.

In 1973 the British Library was established, and while newspapers, along with the other collections of the Department of Printed Books, were transferred to the new institution, they continued to be housed at Colindale until 2013. Newspapers then travelled up to Boston Spa, a site that had been used by the British Museum and then the British Library since 1962. A dedicated newspaper reading room was open at St Pancras in 2014, and the state of the art National Newspaper building designed especially for storing newspapers was opened in 2015.

Newspaper continue to be an important part of the British Library’s collections, with around 1,000 newspapers added to the collection each week. Alongside this, the Library now collects radio, broadcast, and internet news, creating the national news collection. Curators also continue to work to preserve and make accessible the newspapers from the Museum’s earliest days of collecting. Many of the first newspapers to arrive in 1822 have been recently digitised as part of the Heritage Made Digital project, and are now freely available to view via the British Newspaper Archive.

Sources:

Esdaile, Arundell. The British Museum Library. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1946.

Harris, P. R. A History of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973. London: The British Library, 1998.
                        The Library of the British Museum: Retrospective Essays on the Department of Printed Books. London: The British Library, 1993.

Gaskell, Beth and McKernan, Luke. ‘British Library News Collection’. In Breaking the News: 500 Years of News in Britain. London: British Library, 2022.

 

Beth Gaskell, Newspaper Curator