May is the month that the Guardian celebrates its birthday - its first issue was published on 5 May 1821. One hundred years on, in May 1921, the paper celebrated its centenary, and to mark the occasion produced a photograph album depicting the whole of the staff of the paper. The album provides a rare snapshot of life at the paper at this time, as it features staff from all departments of the paper, from the reporters to the cleaners. You can see a number of these photographs on our online gallery.
The photographs demonstrate how much life has changed at the Guardian since the 1920s. For example, the album shows the staff of the stables, a department that certainly doesn't exist at the paper today. In 1921 the Guardian employed around 40 men to look after the horse and carts which delivered the paper to newsagents around Manchester, and to the railway station where the 'newspaper trains' delivered the papers to London and other towns and cities around the country.
Several copies of the album were made for the centenary and the GNM Archive holds one of these in its collections. A copy was also presented to CP Scott and this is held in the Manchester Guardian Archive at the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library.
As well as the photograph album itself the archive also holds a number of the glass plates negatives onto which the original photographs were taken. It is believed that the photographs were taken by the Guardian's first staff photographer, Walter Doughty, who worked at the paper from 1908 to 1949.
In addition to the album the Guardian produced a special supplement to celebrate its centenary which included a detailed history of the paper and the much-quoted article by CP Scott where he outlined the principles of the Manchester Guardian: Comment is Free but Facts are Sacred. There was also a public dinner attended by many senior staff, local dignitaries and MPs - the archive holds the menu and a list of attendees in a collection donated by the Scott family.
