A newspaper dating from 1895 which is thought to be the first edition of a regional daily has been discovered.

The copy of the Western Evening Herald, now known as The Herald, was found by local women Barbara Davies and Bette Llewelyn and is marked “volume 1 edition 1″.

It is a large single sheet of paper, which is folded to form four pages of news, and reveals tales from across the world, with stories from Texas, China, Japan, Cuba and Germany, as well as articles on local issues.

The Western Evening Herald was launched as Plymouth’s first evening newspaper in 1895 and has changed names several times since then until it became The Herald in October 2006, when its print deadline moved from midmorning to nighttime.

Barbara Davies with the first edition

The first edition was found in a brown envelope as Barbara helped her elderly friend Bette sort through some paperwork at her home in Ivybridge, near Plymouth.

Barbara told the paper: “I was helping Bette sort out some papers and we found it in an unmarked brown envelope. We were very surprised to find it and Bette has no idea where it has come from.”

Bette has lived in Ivybridge for many years with her now late-husband but they were originally from Wales so does not know how she came to own it.

Stories in the paper included playwright Oscar Wilde appearing in court and news about five black people, including two women, being “lynched” in Alabama, for the alleged murder of a young white boy.

Adverts included those for horses and carriages, livestock and poultry, along with “persons wanted” for odd jobs.

The paper was renamed the The Evening Herald and Western Evening News on 17 September 1923 after being bought by Sir Leicester Harmsworth in 1921.

Its name changed again in May 1924 to the Western Evening Herald and Western Evening News, with it becoming the Evening Herald in 1987 when it changed to a tabloid format.