Meat lozenges and custard: advertising during World War One

Ilka Heale pores over advertisements found in the Library's Special Collections.

---

We've all seen this advert on the side of a building near Monk Bar in York:

Bile beans sign by Andy D'Agorne
Used under a Creative Commons license

Purporting to keep you "healthy, bright eyed and slim", Bile Beans was a laxative and tonic first marketed in the 1890s. Amongst other cure-all claims, Bile Beans promised to "disperse unwanted fat" and "purify and enrich the blood". Something after a winter of comfort eating, we could probably all do with!

Although the manufacturer claimed that the formula for Bile Beans was based on a vegetable source, its actual ingredients were commonly found in pharmacies. In 1905, a court case in Scotland found that the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company's business was based on a fraud and had been conducted fraudulently. Nevertheless, Bile Beans continued to be sold until the 1980s.

The following photographs of advertisements have been taken by our own University photographer, Paul Shields, from the Library's collection of the Illustrated London News.

The Illustrated London News (ILN) was the world's first illustrated weekly news magazine. The first issue appeared on Saturday, 14 May 1842 and was published weekly until 1971. The magazine continued less frequently with publication finally ceasing in 2003.

These photographs are from issues published during the First World War.

They show the change in the advertising pages to reflect the preoccupations of war. Before radio and television, the engravings and illustrations published in the weekly illustrated papers were often the only images people in Britain could see of the events unfolding. Some advertisements are targeted to families looking to buy a gift for the soldier at the Front and others for the families left at home.

Ever heard of Brands meat lozenges? No, me neither but this advert claims they are a 'meal in a vest pocket'. Who knew?

If that doesn't sound appetising, how about Bird's Custard? Apparently, 'served with any stewed or tinned fruits, it makes a feast fit for a King'!

Finally, these advertisements are aimed at planning for the future, when the war was over.

The newspapers are in the University Library's Special Collections and can be consulted in the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

For other titles on advertising, search YorSearch, our Library catalogue.

The Library also has a large collection of UK and international newspapers available in either print, microfilm or electronic formats. For further details on the titles held, please see About our collections on the Library website.

Read all about it!

With many newspaper websites now placing content behind paywalls as they seek to make up for the dramatic decline in print sales, Martin Philip, Academic Liaison Librarian for Economics, Law and Politics, explains how you can get the article you need using Nexis, part of the Library's E-resources collection.

---

Most, if not all, newspapers have websites nowadays, however the exact type of content they provide via this medium can vary considerably from publication to publication. The Times, for example, provides readers with a preview of articles, in most cases the first paragraph, before asking you to log in to its subscription service, costing £26.00 per month. Compare this with the Guardian's website which provides free access to all content published from February 1999; however if you require content before this date you will need to log on to a subscription-only archive, which the University subscribes to:

• Guardian archive

To simplify this arrangement, the University subscribes to Nexis, a database that provides full-text access to over 34,000 publications including more than 12,000 news sources. These include UK and worldwide daily and regional newspapers, current affairs magazines, and professional journals. Nexis is updated daily and includes back issues, although archives vary by title.

The interface may not be as intuitive as others, however Nexis has improved over recent years and allows users, as soon as they've logged in, to enter keywords and/or phrases into the search box on the home page.

Nexis home page: copyright LexisNexis

A great feature in Nexis is the ability, whilst searching or reading articles, to add results to a My Documents folder. This folder is only available for 24 hours but lets you organise anything useful you come across into a list that you can then print, download or email to read later on. Just remember to do this before you log off, or it will all vanish!

Newstand (detail) by Martin Hearn
Used under a Creative Commons license

Nexis also provides the ability to export the article's bibliographic data to EndNote or equivalent bibliographic software. One feature not seen in many academic databases is Google Translate allowing you to read any article, whatever the language.

As well as Nexis, we also have subscriptions to Financial Times, The Times, American Historical Newspapers (includes New York Times and Washington Post), Daily Mirror Digital Archive, Guardian and Observer Archive, and the Times of India Archive. You can access Nexis and all of our other newspaper subscriptions via the E-resources Guide:

• E-resources: newspapers

We also provide a guide to get you started using Nexis:

• Nexis UK: quick user guide