Help

Find newspapers by typing keywords in the search box. These should relate to the title of the newspaper and the date.

All dates are record as day(number) month (word) year (number) eg '1 January 1890'.

Once you have found the issue you need, click the 'View newspaper' link, Depending on your browser settings, it will either open up the PDF in a new tab in your browser or download it to your device.

FAQ

Can I search for keywords within the text of the document?

No. You can only search for newspapers by title and date.

Many of these newspapers have been scanned with OCR (optical character recognition) software, so you may be able to search for keywords within a newspaper once you have opened the PDF in your browser. However, OCR software is very inaccurate when applied to historic materials, so only a small proportion of words within the document will be accurately recognised.

Why is the image quality so poor on some documents?

These newspapers were scanned from microfilm copies of original newspapers now held at the Keep. Some of these were photographed over thirty years ago, so we cannot make any guarantee of the image quality.

Why do you only publish newspapers that are over 100 years old?

This is to comply with copyright protection.

By law, literary works are protected for 70 years from the author's death, or 70 years from publication or creation if the author is unknown. Most of the content in historic newspapers tends to be unattributed so the 70 year rule generally applies. But there can be elements in a newspaper (eg readers' letters or extracts from other published works) where the author is known. As a result, there is no simple way of working out whether an entire newspaper is in the public domain or not.

As a pragmatic rule, we generally only publish newspapers that are over 100 years old. At this point it is highly unlikely that elements created by attributed authors are still protected by copyright, so we are prepared to consider the newspaper public domain.

If this is contested by a rights holder, we will withdraw the newspaper in question in accordance with our IPR and Copyright Policy.

There are a few exceptions to this, such as early 1920s editions of Brighton Season and the Pavilion Review. But in these cases we are either confident about the lack of rights issues to make an exception or we own the copyright.

Is there any fee for using this website or the newspapers?

No. This service is provided free of charge and the newspapers are public domain and free to use.

However, Brighton & Hove Museums is an independent charity that relies on donations and commercial income. If you find these newspapers useful, please consider making a donation to support our work.