The first issue of the Blackburn Standard was published on 21 January 1835, with eight pages of four columns per page costing 7d. It was published by James Walkden, Bookseller and Printer, of no. 5 Duke-Street, Blackburn. In keeping with other weekly newspapers, page one consists of small advertisements. On page seven, the duel between the Lord Mayor of Dublin and Mr Ruthven was printed under the heading of "Sporting". Issue 37 of Wednesday 30 September 1835, notifies readers of the death of the Earl of Chatham, the elder brother of William Pitt, the Prime Minister who had died twenty-nine years earlier in 1806. The bottom right hand corner of page five features the duty stamp of 4d. By 18 July 1849, four pages of seven columns each were printed. The news on page two included a variety of headings: "Parliamentary Intelligence, Foreign & Colonial, Court & High Life, Miscellaneous, [Editorial]--The Danish War, Friendly Societies".
Listed as a conservative paper by Mitchell in 1860, the circulation is given by Hubbard in 1882 as 10,000 copies.
By 1875, the price of issue no. 2128 of Saturday 18 December had fallen to 1d, with eight pages. Foreign News remains on page two; the whole of page four is devoted to Sales and Public Notices. George Boyden is cited as the Printer and Publisher of the paper. At the end of 1876, the paper changed its title; two further changes occurred in 1888; and then in 1893, it became The Weekly Standard and Express . Coal mining was a feature of many stories over the years. On 14 April 1894, an article summarising coal mining accidents was printed which detailed all those which had occurred from 1819 to 1894. Towards the end of the century, issue no. 3083 of Saturday 23 March 1895 has eight pages and has expanded to eight columns per page. Page two has the now common feature of a serialised portion of a novel, in this case Chapter Eleven of The Bailiff's Scheme or, the Buried Legacy . The printer was William Hall Burnett, for the North East Lancashire Press Company Limited. In 1909 the paper was incorporated with the Blackburn Gazette .
For this newspaper, we have the following titles in, or planned for, our digital archive:
- 1835–76 The Blackburn Standard
- 1877–88 The Blackburn Standard, Darwen Observer, and North-East Lancashire Advertiser
- 1888–93 The Blackburn Standard and Weekly Express
- 1893–1900 The Weekly Standard and Express
