Piecesofuk

Hi!

I found that on James Greenwood (Q4149605) you marked 1929 explicitly as an incorrect value for the date of death.

The same death year also appears in the foreword to a Russian 1975 edition of one of his books that I have at home, so OpenLibrary.org is not the only source that there is for this year of death.

The sources for 1927 as the year of death are BNF and Oxford DNB, both of which give very brief data, and Spartacus Educational, which is quite detailed, but described as not so reliable in the English Wikipedia.

I don't have a strong reason to think that either 1927 or 1929 is correct. Oxford DNB is respectable, of course, but the brevity of the entry gives me some doubt.

Do you happen to have any other sources about this?

Now that I take a closer look at the sources, the date of birth appears to be even murkier than the date of death:

• Spartacus: 1831
• BNF and OpenLibrary.org: 1832
• The Russian book I have at home (and the Russian Wikipedia): 1833
• Oxford DNB: 1835 (but it's bap., not "born")

I've just added all of these.

It's weird. But it also kind of corresponds with what that Russian book says about this writer: That after a short period of popularity, he was forgotten in his native land, but remembered and loved in Russia.

The Chelmsford Chronicle obituary says this "JAMES GREENWOOD we were surprised to read in The Daily Telegraph last Saturday of the death of James Greenwood, who was one of the best-known journalists in England a generation ago. It is thirty years since we met him and we thought he had long quitted this earthly scene, but he was living in the London district until last week when he died in his 97th year. He was the " Amateur Casual' and the "One in the Crowd," whose articles in our contemporary always aroused great interest. The Telegraph says it is difficult now to realise the nation-wide attention which his writings excited in the days when much social evil was ignored or unrealised."

Hi, I've just checked the British Newspaper Archive and I found a few newspapers reporting his death in August 1927, no date given, the Chelmsford Chronicle of Friday 19 August 1927 has his obituary and states that his death was reported in "The Daily Telegraph last Saturday". As a double check I looked at the death registrations between 1927 and 1929 on FreeBMD and the only likely match, given his age at death was about 96/97, was in the July to September quarter of 1927 https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?r=157330093:9516&d=bmd_1620111208, hope that helps.

Thanks!

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Hello Vunj8xv2gura4gkq,

Really sorry for the inconvenience. This is a gentle note to request that you check your email. We sent you a message titled "The Community Insights survey is coming!". If you have questions, email surveys@wikimedia.org.

You can see my explanation here.

Thanks for looking into this one. I'm a bit cautious about how reliable Historic Hansard is for exact end dates, though - I've had to correct or alter a lot of them. In this case, the end date they have is just "the day before the by-election" so is probably an arbitrarily-chosen one.

I hadn't originally been able to find when the writ was issued (the Journals aren't available for that year) but I've gone back and dug around some more; this notice suggests the writ was issued in the first week of Feb (it arrived at Totnes on Sunday 9th). I'll set it to "Feb 1834".

No problem, I did look at the next one on the list and their end date was just a year on Hansard, so thought Hansard might have had more reliable information for Cornish.

Yeah, it's a bit hit-and-miss. I did the initial import for 1832-2005 from them, but I think I had to correct some quite interesting errors (several people sitting for the same place at once, people sitting years after they died, etc). Hopefully at some point we'll be able to get the WD data used to update the Hansard list...

I was meaning to add as well - thanks for all the work you're doing with parties. I see it showing up on all the reports I run and it's greatly appreciated!

just spotted Robert Bagshaw (Q26272449) - for ones like this, probably easiest just to replace the values in the existing statement, rather than deprecate and create a new one. As noted, HH is pretty shaky on dates, and I think if we keep deprecated statements for every time they're in error it would get very very confusing :-)

Your parties work is looking great! I think we are complete on parties back to about 1945 now, and steadily inching forward (although all the interwar Liberal factions give me a headache...). I'll try and find some time to go through all the mid-term changes in the near future.

I have tended to deprecate rather than delete if the statement is referenced (can errors be fed back to the Hansard database?). The edit I made to Henry Jervis-White-Jervis (which you corrected) was based on Hansard. So I'll probably just overwrite the Hansard data if it's wrong now. I was going to edit all the Essex constituency MPs back to the start of the 19th Century but I was unsure about the Whig, Radical and Liberal distinction so I'm concentrating on editing WWI cabinet ministers at the moment.

I am hopeful that the data we're building up here will eventually feed into what's in Hansard (and into the Rush data) - I don't think they've got the capacity to take in individual corrections at the moment, though.

Liberals... AIUI after 1859 they're all Liberals (unless they're Liberal Unionists, etc). Before that, I am not sure how precise we want to be. Some sources seem to group everyone as a Whig, others distinguish Radicals and Whigs, some distinguish several different factions - eg in Who's Who of British MPs, Q7529041 is given as "a Reformer" but Q24239146 is "a Liberal"; the one before them, Q5080191, is "of Whig principles". All are "Whig" in WP, and tables of election results etc seem to just give a single total for "Whig" (or sometimes "Liberal").

I am conscious I am a bit out of my depth here, but maybe it would be reasonable to label everyone in that broad grouping a Whig, taking the 1859 general election as the cut-off date for switching to Liberal? We can then go back and update to Radical etc if it seems appropriate.

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