Hamilton Spectator Collection

Boxing at St. Mary’s Boxing Club, 1959-04-07

In 1978, the Executive Editor of the Spectator newspaper arranged to begin transferring their reference files of photographic negatives and news clippings to Local History & Archives [then Special Collections]. The arrangement was that the Spectator would only hold the most recent five years worth of negatives and all negatives older than that would be transferred.

Over the years other material has been transferred including:

Hamilton Spectator Daily Negatives

The negatives taken by staff photographers for the daily edition of the newspaper. They are filed chronologically by the date the photograph appeared in the newspaper. There is no master index; therefore, to find the image required, you must know the day the photograph appeared in the newspaper. Many of these daily negatives have been printed and added to the mounted photograph collection by subject.

These files start in 1955 and continue until 1998 with gaps.

"S" Files

These are special negatives which were removed from the daily files because of special interest or subject matter, and filed separately by title (ie. Football, Politics, People, etc.) or date range.

Murdoch Collection Listing

From November 4, 1950 until August 28, 1965, Bruce Murdoch (ca1893-1966), a Spectator photographer, wrote and illustrated a weekly series of articles about small towns in Ontario. There is a complete index of this part of the collection.

Spectator Collection Antiquarian Photographs

40 antiquarian photographs (most late 19th and early 20th century) of Hamilton and area. All have been copied and added to the mounted picture collection.

Finding Aid: R019 HOU CESH