One of the gems of the National Science and Media Museum’s collection is the Daily Herald Archive. It is a rich photographic record that provides a snapshot of British life from the early twentieth century.
The Daily Herald launched in 1911 as a strike bulletin for London printing unions who at the time were involved in labour disputes to improve working conditions and pay. The bulletin was so successful in helping the trade unions that the paper became a daily newspaper.
The Daily Herald relaunched as a daily newspaper in 1912, but it continued to suffer financially until it received investment by Odhams Press in the 1930s. The new owners increased circulation and by 1933 the Daily Herald
became the world’s top selling daily newspaper.
Throughout its 50 years of publication, the Daily Herald
archived over three million photographs of significant social and political events providing a rich visual record of the first half of the twentieth century.
The photographs captured major events like the Spanish Civil War, the abdication of Edward VIII and the General Strike, as well as significant people like Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill.
In the mid 1960s, following increasingly declining sales, Mirror Group Newspapers assumed ownership of the Daily Herald
. In 1964, the Daily Herald ceased publication and was relaunched as The Sun, with the slogan ‘A Paper Born of the Age We Live In.’
This rich photographic archive is held by the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. The archive provides a rich visual history comprising prints from press agencies and freelance photographers alongside works by Daily Herald
photographers.
Malcom Eckley, a pig breeder from Shropshire is serenading "Harry", whose real name was: "Elaccia Field Marshall 26th", a giant pig. They were rehearsing for a children's TV Show.
This picture was taken in a cucumber seed house in Cheshunt which holds 1,000 cucumbers. Each cucumber has about 200 seeds and each seed can produce an average of 70+ cucumbers. This single greenhouse would produce around 1,920,000 cucumbers a year!
About 20, 000 pickers from the East End of London enjoyed their annual hop-picking holiday on farms in Kent.
Here Dawn Nathan (15) on left and Linda Blaker (14) listen to records as they pick the hops at the Whitbread Farm in their finest holiday hats.
Martin Hulme was sent some beans attached to a birthday card from his aunt in Yorkshire. After three years the beanstalk had grown to 16ft tall. Neither his aunt, his mother, Mrs. Trudy Hulme, or the company who printed the card could explain what species of plant it was.
Mr Elms, the Herald Gardener, said the species must have come from abroad to have grown so high in three years.
Drama students dressed as chicks visited homes in about 300 towns and asked "are you eating an egg?" If you were, you got a £1 premium bond, if not you, were given six eggs. This campaign was part of the Egg Marketing Board’s first national publicity promotion.