United Kingdom

Pulling no Punches! The Punch Historical Archive 1841 – 1992

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Cartoon, No. 1." Punch, vol. 5, no. 105, 15 July 1843

| Dr Clare Horrocks, Associate Professor in Print Culture and Public Engagement, Liverpool John Moores University|
 
Do you have fond memories of sitting at the doctors or dentists and flicking through the latest copy of Punch? Have you ever wondered about the origin of satirical cartoons? The Punch Historical Archive can help those on a nostalgic journey, as well as students and scholars who use it as a gateway to illustrate the past. Published from July 1841, creating the first cartoon ‘Substance and Shadow’ in 1843 (see this blog post’s title image), Punch was the longest running satirical periodical, spanning two centuries. It paved the way for publications like Private Eye and its response to news and current affairs can be seen to have influenced many contemporary television shows like Have I Got News for You.
 
First published in 2014, the Punch Historical Archive was a pioneering contribution to the field of authorial attribution studies. Collaborating with the British Library, Punch Limited and Liverpool John Moores University, it combined digital precision and prowess with a keen understanding of the user experience. I was an Academic Advisor for the project, coordinating the transcription of the Ledgers and ensuring that, for the first time, readers of Punch would be able to identify those who wrote for the magazine. Some of these writers, like William Makepeace Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold, are already well known, but other contributors like P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne less so.
 
This blog starts to look at some of the fantastic projects and discoveries that have arisen in the first ten years since the digital archive was produced. This year, 2026, also marks 185 years since Punch was first published, so it is also a good time to consider where the Punch archive may take us in the future.

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Uncovering New Angles and Arguments with Text Mining

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│By Georgia Platt, Gale Ambassador at Lancaster University│

Six months ago, I knew nothing about Digital Humanities or text mining. It wasn’t really a topic covered in my undergraduate degree in History, and I’d always been a bit unsure of the place technology has in historical research. Then I began my MA in Digital Humanities, which I chose to try and engage with these technological aspects of humanities studies that I hadn’t had the opportunity to explore before. I spent the first ten weeks of this course doing an intensive text mining module, and it revolutionised my approach to historical study.

If you’re curious about text mining but don’t know where to start, or are a digital humanities sceptic looking to be proved wrong, this blog post is for you. I will start with some basic theory of what text mining is and what kinds of questions it can answer, then I’ll put my practical skills to the test with an example from my studies in Victorian crime and punishment.

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Interpreting the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons and Global Security in Declassified British Intelligence

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│By Eleanor Turner, Gale Ambassador at the University of Leeds│

Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence offers unique insight into how governments understand and respond to global security threats. The emergence of nuclear weapons in 1945 fundamentally altered the structure of international politics, leading governments to rethink what military conflict could escalate to and the devastating consequences of deploying nuclear weapons. Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence shows how the British government strategised to overcome these changes.

Joint Intelligence Committee: memoranda 21-41. February-September, 1957.
Joint Intelligence Committee: memoranda 21-41. February-September, 1957. MS Cabinet Office: CAB 158: Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office: Central Intelligence Machinery: Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee later Committee: Memoranda (JIC Series) CAB 158/28. The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom). Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/KBZRTF084274961/TCBI?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-TCBI&xid=36c0c368&pg=137&xty=open

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Discovering American Roots of the Indian Independence Movement through Gale Primary Sources: The Hindu-German Conspiracy Trials in the USA

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Montage of historical images

| By Amandeep, Gale Ambassador at Banaras Hindu University |

Whenever the Indian revolutionary movement outside India is taught in history classes at different universities and colleges, the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 and the revolutionary activities of the Ghadar Movement in the United States certainly bring a thrilling experience to students and teachers. However, over the years, it has become a footnote when it comes to bringing new discourses.

For decades, the revolutionary movements outside India have not been rethought in the ways they should have been. The paucity of primary sources and travel limitations have been among the significant reasons why scholars and students have been unable to rethink and revisit the revolutionary movements abroad, especially in the USA.

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Spanish Flu in the Time of COVID-19

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│By Eleanor Leese, Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

The first half of the 2020s brought with it political and social upheaval on a scale not seen for generations. Nothing touched the lives of more people than the COVID-19 infections that were reported in the opening days of the decade, and led to the deaths of more than seven million people worldwide. To understand these once-in-a-lifetime events, journalists turned to the most recent example of a global pandemic – still just within living memory: the ‘Spanish Flu’.

With the addition of issues for 2020 to 2024 in The Times Digital Archive, it’s possible to research the development of these two in parallel for the first time.

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In Need of Some Good News: Daily Mail Historical Archive, 2017-2021

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│By Emma Harris, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

The period of 2017 to 2021 spanned both my university education and then being thrust into the adult world of work – a turbulent time for any, exacerbated by a period of news headlines dominated with political fallout, freak weather, and global pandemics. This period saw elections, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the likes of Brexit lead to political divides within countries, and not to mention the coronavirus pandemic that absorbed most of our lives considerably from 2020 into 2021.

However, this isn’t to say these years weren’t filled with positive change at all. In fact, there was rather a lot of good news. And when we’re still dealing with the inundation of negative news topics daily – inflation and wars being some of the topics to greet me on the news this morning – sometimes it’s helpful to be reminded of the good news that’s out there too.

So, using the most recent update to Gale’s Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896-2021, allow me to put some joy back into your day with some of the positive news that came from the last decade.

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An Eighteenth-Century Intersectional Feminist? Exploring the Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in Eighteenth Century Collections Online

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│By Leila Marhamati, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

Maybe “Intersectional Feminist” is taking it a bit far, but Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) has certainly been described as a woman ahead of her time. Best known today for the correspondence she maintained while traveling with her husband through the Ottoman Empire from 1716 to 1718, Lady Mary was commonly on the fringes of and often at the forefront of major historical developments in Britain and the Western world. She provided startlingly positive views on non-Western cultures and scientific experimentation at a time when both were viewed with suspicion. And yet, she was still located within a society that embraced hierarchical institutions and systems of oppression.

Using Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), we can trace these many aspects of Lady Mary and, through them, glean insights into the eighteenth century as a whole. This post contains some documents from the forthcoming release Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Part III, available in March 2026.

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The American Civil War: The International Perspective – The First Digital Archive of Its Kind

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│By Emma Harris, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

A fundamental topic in American history, the American Civil War (1861-1865) was a major event of the nineteenth century, not just in America but also in global politics, with ramifications for the future of slavery and ideas of popular, democratic government. Lecturers and researchers have increasingly been looking to study the war in its international context as the trajectory and outcome of the war impacted those beyond just America—especially in Europe.

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Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection: Part II

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│By Clem Delany, Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

In December 2024, Gale Primary Sources released part two of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection, sourced from the British Library. Adding to the original, previously digitised collection of Reverend Charles Burney are an additional 200-odd titles of newspapers, newsbooks, and broadsheets from across the period.

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Marie Stopes and Family Planning

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│By Alison Foster, Gale Technical Support Executive│

‘A magnificent monster,’ as described by Nature magazine in 1992, Marie Stopes (1880-1958) was markedly renown for successfully opening the first birth control clinic in the world, in London, in 1921. This, and subsequent clinics, gave free advice about reproductive health to married women without the sanction of the medical or health community.

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