The 18th century Liverpool newspaper problem... as I understand it

As I plan and scope for my proposed MRes on the subject of Lancaster's trans-Atlantic trade, I have been keeping my eye out for useful sources.

One of the most useful sources for this sort of study is the local newspaper, as one might imagine. While the Lancaster Gazette is very helpful, there is a problem: it only began publishing in 1801. Looking earlier than the nineteenth century, there are a handful of options, including the Manchester Mercury, the Chester Chronicle, and the Cumberland Pacquet, all of which are available to some extent, digitised, online.

But throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, Lancaster acted very much like Liverpool's little cousin. So, I turned my attention to the Liverpool newspapers of the eighteenth century. The two main titles were Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser (WLA) and the Liverpool General Advertiser (LGA)*. So, where can you read these papers?

In any meaningful volume, there is just one place: Liverpool Record Office, where they are on microfilm. They have escaped the major newspaper digitisation projects run by the British Library, although there are some runs of LGA mostly in the nineteenth century on the British Newspaper Archive. If I was to guess, I would guess that the British Library does not have a very good run of these newspapers compared to the LRO.

I had the opportunity to visit the Record Office a few weeks ago where I asked to see the microfilms for both newspapers covering the eighteenth century. For WLA, I viewed microfilms covering 1768-69, 1772-76, and 1779-84. And for LGA, from 1767-72, 1775-84, 1790, and 1793-97. This is less complete than what Alexey Krichtal indicated in his 2013 thesis. In Appendix A (pp. 111-113) he discusses the utility of WLA and LGA to studies of imports. I think I had bad luck on the day, though, and a few of the microfilms were missed out - perhaps they were in use or had just been misplaced temporarily. I did find that LGA, from about 1775 to 1800, reported the details of imports into Lancaster, which is the same year the Manchester Mercury began doing it.

It goes without saying how fantastically useful digitised (and OCR'd) copies of WLA and LGA would be to historians of the Atlantic world, including, specifically, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Black British history. I don't know why Liverpool Record Office hasn't put them online, but if I was to guess, resource constraints. The Record Office and Merseyside Maritime Museum have both had parts of their slave trade collections digitised, but only after private companies approached them to organise it (Microform in the former case, Adam Matthews in the latter). It appears from this blog by Glasgow's Runaway Slaves in Britain project that LGA was not even on microfilm as recently as 2016.

There may also be a concern that if it is digitised, it will remove an important reason for visiting the Record Office and reduce footfall. This ties into the copyright debate, because even if the LRO scan the papers in themselves, the newspapers will be in the public domain. But here's to hoping digitisation is in these newspapers' futures!

P. S. For those interested in Liverpool's newspaper history, keep an eye on the Liverpool newspaper heritage research project. Dr Nick Foggo from that project is delivering the next talk to Liverpool History Society on Friday.

* WLA became Billinge's Liverpool Advertiser in 1794 and the LGA became Gore's Liverpool General Advertiser in 1790.