Jim Shaughnessy, Findmypast

On Findmypast, you’ll find the largest online collection of Irish family history records, which provide an incredible opportunity to trace your family in Ireland and build an excellent family tree. As well as that, there’s the fascinating newspaper collections, including a great rang of Irish newspapers that can help to put your ancestors’ lives into context.

One of the most interesting publications in Findmypast’s newspaper archive is the Illustrated Police News, a penny dreadful that dealt in the salacious and macabre. We’ve explored that newspaper for mentions of your Irish ancestors, and in doing so have made some weird and wonderful discoveries.

An incredible number of articles involving Irish people in the Illustrated Police News involve wakes. However, very few of those wakes are as on fire as this one appears to be.

Not to be seen to be throwing accusations around, but the dog clearly did it!

We’re not sure whether this is a positive or a negative occurrence, but whoever drew that picture had never seen a shark before.

Tracking a man in a coffin, when that coffin is in an undertaker’s, probably isn’t the most complex police work, but its results that matter.

Whatever it is that you think is happening here, that is exactly what is happening here. We’re not sure why the man on the ground is so angry about it, or so incapable of catching a man on stilts.
If you want to explore millions of newspaper pages from all over the world, visit the Findmypast newspaper archive today!