WE'VE heard about newspapers being delivered late - but this one takes the biscuit!

A Poole Advertiser has just turned up in Hamworthy nearly 140 years after it was published, on February 25, 1865.

The paper - a snip at just one penny - was published in the same Poole High Street offices where the Advertiser is written today, and is packed with advertisements, nuggets of news and even a list of visitors to the town.

It was sent to Iris Mountain, from Hamworthy, by her brother-in-law from Buckinghamshire, after a customer brought it into his shop.

"I found it very interesting," she said. "I read the court cases and the death notices, and was very interested in the court case of a man who stole some turnips and was given 14 days hard labour!

"I was quite surprised that the paper hadn't turned yellow after all these years - it still looks quite new."

A name and Uxbridge address is scrawled in pen on the front of the four-page broadsheet.

The paper's full title was the Bournemouth Visitors' Directory and Poole and Christchurch Saturday Advertiser, and it was printed by the proprietors James Tribbett and William Mate, from St James' parish, Poole.

As well as the unfortunate turnip-thief, the report from Wimborne petty sessions records fines being meted out to an Abuzziah Legg for drunkenness, two defendants who stole heath from Ferndown to make brooms and two others for trespassing to poach game.

There is also a record of Queen Victoria's activities and a report on the American president of the time - Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated two months after the paper was printed.

Other big local news included Studland coastguard rescuing three shipwrecked sailors by hauling them with ropes up Old Harry cliff and a fire in farm buildings in Beckley, which killed three horses and three cows.

And a journey from London to Bournemouth would take five hours - passengers would have to take a train to Christchurch and then get a bus the rest of the way.

The Poole Advertiser has archives of newspapers going back to 1860, but many of the older papers are extremely fragile.

First published: August 3