Right, so where was I?
Ah Yes, that’s right, moving on from my little negative
rant… After I got a little perspective on the whole situation and had a “that
would make a good blog” moment, it was time to hit the next archive and see
what else it could reveal in my hunt for new information on Mr Jamrach, to use
in both my upcoming talk and exhibition. The great thing this time however, was
that I needn’t even leave the comfort of my own home for this archive is all
online.
For a reasonable subscription fee members of the public are
able to sign up to the British Newspaper
Archive (BNA) and access over 400 newspaper titles, spanning from 1710 to
the 1960s – an invaluable resource for any researcher, both professional and
amateur. I fast became a fan of this archive, for what a fantastic resource it
offers its users! It’s easy to use and offers a wealth of material and I’ve
really enjoyed navigating my way around and uncovering new little gems. Part of
me wants to divulge some of that material, but then again, “spoilers”!
Previously the access I had to online newspaper archives
came through the online e-resources access I had the luxury of using as a
student at university. The Times Digital
Archive and the 19th Century British Library Newspapers were both resources I used a lot when it
came to working on both my undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations and had
offered up some really interesting snippets of information. However once I’d left
university, I lost that access and it forced me to look elsewhere. Hence I
rediscovered the BNA, an archive I’d never
really thought to utilise
before. “Rookie error” I hear you cry!
Launched in 2011,
the BNA is a partnership between the
British Library and findmypast to digitise up to 40 million pages of the British Library’s
vast collection of newspapers, over the course of the next 10 years (1). This
enables researchers to search through thousands of articles by keyword, name,
location, date or title, and see immediate results. Gone are the days of pain
staking scrolling through microfiche and actual hard copies of papers - which
can be a nice experience once in a while, but when researching on a large scale
this resource is a genius one. And that is actually, exactly why I found myself
putting aside a couple of days and dedicating that time to a thorough search of
the archive. Before, had I had to do it ‘manually’, I’m not sure whether it
would have been worth the time, unless of course I’d known exactly what I was
looking for - a specific article or edition – and I think I could quickly have
got disheartened with it. But there is no need for that with this archive; you
can just explore it without that clear idea. I was able to find new snippets of
information I had no previous idea about within seconds, and that made for a
really exciting couple of days.
The Site
I found it to be a
really user friendly database, offering users different ways to filter the results
from announcement types to publication titles, date (YYYY/MM/DD) and even
public tags (the sorting of articles into additional categories or topics such
as news, classifieds, crime, art etc.). The technology used to recognise search terms also works well at picking
out those key words for both basic and advanced searches. And the character recognition software (OCR) is
generally spot on, but some of the transcriptions, especially on the older
stuff, can be a bit hit and miss. It does however, appear that the BNA acknowledge this limitation and do
offer users the opportunity to correct the OCR errors with the ‘Edit Article
Text’ option; therefore offering users a way to improve the quality of the database.
How many people have used or will use this feature is, I guess, is open to
speculation. Only those articles looked at will have any chance of being
corrected, we’d hope correctly but there is no guarantee, and also, how will
this be kept on top of as new material continues to be added? There are lots of
unanswerable questions here, but I think the approach is definitely one to be
commended.
In terms of the images
of the papers, they are of a high quality and are easily manipulated by users –
zooming in/out and navigating around the page. It was worth, what I expect, was
an extra expense, for the quality of images this resource provides is not
always matched by its contemporaries. I have had a few experiences where I’ve viewed some online documents and the
images have pixelated when enlarged, or been slow to load when navigating
around a page. But like I say, I didn’t experience any of those problems here. Upon
viewing an article, your attention is also easily drawn to your original search
term, which is highlighted by a blue box around the word and the article tends
to be a lighter shade than the rest of the page. This is hugely helpful given
that each article appears within the full page view of the original document.
One particularly
good aspect to this feature is that fact that it gives you the full context in
which the article is appearing. You don’t view it in isolation and this really
helps with understanding the article and what else was going on at the time. For
example, one of the most well-known stories about Charles Jamrach relates to
the escape of a tiger from a shipment, onto the Ratcliffe Highway, where it
proceeded to attack a young boy named John Wade, in October 1857. Interestingly,
one particular article which documented this event, featured just below another
article that discussed Imperial Rule within India subsequent to the Indian
Mutiny– and in a way it makes a subtle reference to the symbolism that the
event of the escaping tiger evoked.
However, with
this feature also comes a slight drawback when it comes to downloading or
printing articles. As copies of the entire page view, the PDF’s that are produced
are large, complete files, when in actual fact you might only want a small
snippet or single article. And, from what I could see, there wasn’t the option
to print or download just the single article; a feature I’d particularly liked
when using 19th Century British Library
Newspapers in the past. So I took to print screening the smaller articles,
so as to just get the bit I wanted. Where this wasn’t possible, I did save the
large ones but am wondering what I will do as and when I decide to print them.
It could be a mammoth cut and paste exercise!
In terms of my
own research, what can I say? At first I was really excited to see over 1,800
results bought back for my first search term, but very quickly realised that an article published in a national
or regional paper would be published numerous times in smaller, local and
provincial papers and so there was a fair bit less to look at than I had first
anticipated. But I found this to be interesting in itself and quickly noticed a
pattern in terms of which sort of articles were published at various times and
also, reused at later dates. As you’d expect, the tale of the tiger featured
heavily and appeared in over 300 articles, some of which appeared in the
October or November of 1857 but some dated later and covered the court case,
when Jamrach was sued by Wade’s parents for compensation, and others just
reflected on that incident some 10 or 20 years later. So, just by observing that
pattern, I was able to reconfirm how dominate that event was in forming
society’s view of Charles Jamrach.
One thing I had
been a little concerned about when subscribing to this archive was that there
might be a usage cap on how many articles you can view in one session/month.
But I did a bit of research and was relieved to find that this doesn’t appear
to be the case. I was free to mosey about looking at what I wanted and really
enjoyed the process of doing so.
Conclusions
The BNA has really opened up the
collections of the British Library to a much wider audience and I think that
can only ever be a good thing. In many ways it is democratising research and offering researchers of all
kinds, access to an invaluable resource that can be at their fingertips in
minutes – although, at a cost. I hope that this is a sign of more good things
to come and wonder, whether there is scope for the project to run for longer if
funding and resources can be found?
So….I know you’re
probably all dying to know – what new gems did I uncover? Well it was a bit of
a mixed bag really. Sadly, I discovered news reports dating from the 1870s that
describe how Mr. Jamrach, “the well-known dealer in wild beasts” was charged at
the Thames Police Court with assaulting his wife. (Whether this was Mr Jamrach
Snr or Jnr thought, I have yet to determine). One particular report in the Leeds Times goes on to describe details
of the two cases which were put to the court, Mrs. Jamrach’s informing of the
violence to which she was inflicted, but then it being implied she was actually
having an affair with the character witness and medical examiner in the case. The
case for the defense was then put forward and the judge told of the “wretched,
miserable life [he suffered] at the hands of the complainant”. In the end the
summons was dismissed and the judge ruled that Mrs. Jamrach “keep the peace
towards her husband for the next three months”. Would we expect any other judgment given the
time?
Then, there is
one other final snippet that I will share with you, which is one that really stood
out for me, partly because of its ludicrously, but also because it shows how
present Jamrach’s was in the consciousness of society during the later half of
the nineteenth century. I was very surprised to find a couple of articles
dating from 1888 speculating as to the culprit behind the Whitechapel Murders
and that actually implicated Jamrach’s. Having been compared to, or perhaps
inspired by, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Murder in the Rue Morgue”, it appears
it was actually suggested that the Whitechapel crimes were being committed due
to the “same agency” as that in the story and that “it might be worthwhile...
for the police to inquire at Jamrach’s and other dealers in the White-chapel
Road and the neighborhood, if any large monkey has escaped”; while another directly
claimed it could be down to “one of Jamrach’s Gorilla’s armed with a knife” (2).
I had to laugh. It really does seem that Jamrach managed to get himself caught
up in all sorts of new stories of the day! I’d say more, but would like to keep
something back for those upcoming events – that’s after all what is has all
been in aid of.
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