Explore Our Stories: A New Podcast from North East Wales Archives

This week is Explore Your Archive week 2023. It’s a week to encourage everyone to visit, use, celebrate and be inspired by archives in the UK & Ireland. This year, North East Wales Archives are excited to launch Acid Free, a brand new podcast and series of digital stories which explore real life experiences and themes from their collections.

The first podcast focusses on A Rogue’s Gallery: Victorian Criminals in North East Wales and Katie Gilliland, Community Engagement Officer at North East Wales Archives, is joined by Richard Ireland, author and lecturer specialising in the history of crime and punishment. They discuss the lives of Victorian criminals, looking at photographs used by the police, types of punishment and prisons in the late nineteenth century. Listen to the podcast on Spotify – Acid Free: Stories from North East Wales Archives

To mark the start of Explore 2023, the podcast was launched at an event last week at Hawarden branch of North East Wales Archives where guests were invited to a private viewing of one of the digital stories and listened to a lecture by podcast guest, Richard Ireland, who looked further at criminal photography.

To accompany the new podcast, a new series of digital stories have been created in collaboration with volunteer researchers from Glyndwr University. The first two Acid Free stories have investigated the lives and crimes David Francis and George Walters, two criminals featured in the “Mug Shot” books. The Mug Shot books are two unassuming leather bound volumes featuring photographs of convicted criminals alongside physical descriptions and details of their crimes. The volumes are held at Ruthin branch of North East Wales Archives and they are available to view online at www.newa.wales.

The digital stories are available to view on YouTube, below

https://www.youtube.com/@NorthEastWalesArchives/videos

Staff at North East Wales Archives would like to thank all involved in recording and researching the new digital content, with a special thanks to Richard Ireland as the first podcast guest and Neil Johnson, student researcher from Glyndwr University.

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