LONDON - The newspaper coverage was troubling: London's huge international
showcase was beset by planning problems, local opposition and labor woes - and
the transportation was a mess.

It sounds like the 2012 Olympics, but this was the Great Exhibition of 1851
generating stories of late trains, unscrupulous landlords and dangerous
overcrowding.

Coverage of the event is found in 4 million pages of newspapers from the 18th
and 19th centuries being made available online on Tuesday by the British
Library, in what head of newspapers Ed King calls "a digital Aladdin's Cave" for
researchers.

The online archive is a partnership between the library and digital
publishing firm Brightsolid, which has been scanning 8,000 pages a day from the
library's vast periodical archive for the past year and plans to digitize 40
million pages over the next decade.

A glance at the stories of crime and scandal shows some things haven't
changed - including grumbling letter-writers complaining about disruption caused
by the 1851 exhibition, held inside the specially built Crystal Palace in
London's Hyde Park.

"People were saying, 'This isn't good, I can't ride my horse in Hyde Park',"
said King. One regional newspaper editor complained that the "celebrated fast
train service to London" arrived two hours late and warned visitors "not to
trust themselves to the tender mercies of the numerous private housekeepers"
renting out rooms at exorbitant prices.

The library hopes the searchable online trove will be a major resource for
academics and researchers. The vast majority of the British Library's 750
million pages of newspapers - the largest collection in the world - are
currently available only on microfilm or bound in bulky volumes at a newspaper
archive in north London, where the yellowing journals cover 32 kilometers of
shelves.

"We've got 200 years of newspapers locked away," King said. "We're trying to
open it up to a wider audience."

There will be a cost to download articles online, though they can be accessed
for free at the library's London reading rooms.

Most of the first batch of 4 million pages are from the 19th century, and
include stories about huge international events, freak accidents and local
crimes, as well as articles about Victorian celebrities such as Florence
Nightingale, whose nursing of troops in the Crimean War made her famous.

There are stories of war and famine, crime and punishment, alongside birth
and death notices, family announcements and advertisements for soap, cocoa,
marmalade, miracle cures and treatments for baldness.

Crime columns provide a glimpse at rough 19th-century justice. Newspapers
printed lists of people transported to Australia for stealing money, silver,
cloth, hay and, in one case, "seven cups and five saucers".

The archive includes national and regional newspapers from Britain and
Ireland, as well as more specialized publications. The Cheltenham Looker-On
reported on society, fashions and gossip in the genteel English spa town. The
Poor Law Unions' Gazette contained vivid accounts of workhouse life, and
descriptions of inmates who had absconded.

Library staff have already highlighted a few links to the famous, including
an 1852 appearance in insolvency court by Simon Cowell's great-great-great
grandfather, Michael Gashion, and a local newspaper item about the great-great
grandfather of actress Kate Winslet, who was "embedded in a mass of bricks and
timber" when a hotel facade fell on him in 1903.

Associated Press