The "Quorn Mercury" Newspaper

I spent a while at the State Library this evening and was able to find records from the "Quorn Mercury" newspaper.

It was interesting reading through them and trying to tie up articles from the war years with the men on my list.

The Mercury seems to have improved in quality from 1915 to 1918 but during that time it appeared to follow a fixed format.

It was published on Fridays and consisted of 4 pages. The first page carried the newspaper banner and advertising (this wasn't unusual as other papers I have looked at from that period also followed that format). The last page was taken up substantially by a serialised story and forthcoming events. The inside two pages carried most of the "news" as we would understand it, but it was also liberally spattered with advertorials and other pseudo articles. Luckily, a good number of the letters that soldiers wrote home were printed. I assume the letter recipient made them available to the newspaper for public interest.

As I progress with my Quorn project I will put up some of the letters and other relevant articles I find as well. We will kick this off with a letter written to his parents by Roy Burr. The letter as published ends with a note from the Mercury editors that indicated Roy had been wounded.

Sadly we know now that he was dead and had been for more than two months when his letter was published.