Lovers of local history can usually turn to their local paper to trace back for very old stories.

But now the British Library has brought 19th journalism to the masses by digitally archiving 100 years of local and national newspaper news which went live today.

The database features 49 titles some of which are still going strong today such as the Cardiff-based Western Mail, Darlington’s Northern Echo and the Glasgow Herald.

Other now defunct titles are available such as the Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle, London Dispatch and Northern Liberator in Newcastle.

There are over 2m pages, all searchable using keywords, as well as illustrations, maps, tables and photographs.

A selection of articles from titles such as the Aberdeen Journal and Hull Packet and East Riding Times are downloadable on the key news topics of the time including slavery, the Crimean War, Whitechapel murders and Napoleon.

On 19 February, 1813, the Liverpool Mercury carried a report of the sentencing of Samuel Samo, the first slave trader to be convicted under the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.

And on 30 September, 1823, the Morning Chronicle published an account given at a meeting of the Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery throughout the British Dominions.

It reported: “A master of slaves…..in Kingston, Jamaica, exercised his barbarities on a Sabbath morning, while we were worshipping God in the chapel.

“This man wanted money, and one of the female slaves having two fine children, he sold one of them, and the child was torn from her maternal affection.

“In the agony of her feelings she made a hideous howling and for that crime was flogged. Soon after he sold her other child.”