Talk:Littlehampton libels

Comments as requested

Apart from the sentence beginning "The GPO detectives had a periscope mirror", which I didn't understand at all, it all seems fine to me. Tim riley talk 07:46, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Wonderful. Thank you! - SchroCat (talk) 08:35, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Apols: two more points:

• "The letters continued to be delivered, including by Gooding's husband". He received rather than delivered his letters presumably, so perhaps "...continued to be received..."?
• "The Swans moved house away from Western Road" - shouldn't this be "The Goodings..."? Tim riley talk 11:10, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Lovely - thanks for catching those. - SchroCat (talk) 11:23, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 00:29, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that in the Littlehampton libels, Edith Swan fooled three juries and two judges, had another woman sent to prison twice and was declared not guilty before finally being convicted?

• Source:
  • Hilliard, Christopher (2017). The Littlehampton Libels: A Miscarriage of Justice and a Mystery about Words in 1920s England. Oxford University Press. pp. 5–7. ISBN 978-0-1987-9965-8.
  • Humphreys, Travers (1946). Criminal Days. Recollections and Reflections. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p. 129. OCLC 2617004.

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/What A Merry-Go-Round

Comment:

Created by SchroCat (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 8 past nominations.

SchroCat (talk) 08:47, 3 October 2024 (UTC).

• Will review this. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:48, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Interesting subject. Article looks good. Nice work. (On a minor note, I changed the hook from had another women sent to prison twice to had another woman sent to prison twice, as it appears to have been a typo.) BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:31, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Littlehampton libels/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: SchroCat (talk · contribs) 09:12, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 21:06, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I was going to take the DYK nom, but then I saw it was up for GAN. Comments within the week. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:06, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Excellent - thanks so much for picking this up! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 02:52, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I was slightly off on the time frame, but here's the first bit. I assume this is going to to go FAC at some point, and I'd be commenting there anyway, so I'll just do this like a FAC review.

Lead & Background

• "She tried to implicate her neighbour" it's possible this is a BrEng thing, but don't you generally implicate someone in something?
• "the judge instructed the jury to find her not guilty". This is not consistent with the body, which says he made a statement that if he were on the jury, he'd not convict, and the prosecutor bailed after that
• I know this is serious, but the image of all these detectives and investigators peeking into mailboxes with periscopes is like something out of a farce
• "Relations between Gooding and Swan were cordial until Easter Sunday, 1920." this sentence is redundant to the first sentence in this paragraph. Can they be revised or combined? Otherwise I've got no notes for the Background section. I feel like this is going to be complicated so it's nice to have all the details of who's who summed up there

Events

• Is there any indication as to why Swan made the first false report, if they were friends (or at least friendly)?

  None at all, unfortunately. - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• Since we know Boxall was serving in Iraq, it might be more consistent to say that rather than Mesopotamia, when you mention it earlier

  I've swapped the second reference to Mesopotamia too, as that was the name of the area at the time - Iraq only came into existence the following year as Mandatory Iraq. - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• "Swan had brought a witness..." do we know who, and/or why they lied for her?

  We know the name, but they're not referred to again in this article, so I haven't named them. As to why, the source doesn't know it was a lie or whether the witness was confused, mistaken or had bad eyesight. - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• "The police phoned Edward Wannop..." This sentence feels very complicated, with both a dashed aside and a semicolon. Could it be split or revised?
• "Avory said they would not be able to obtain one at this stage of the case" what is wrong with these people
• For Swan to lose one notebook may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness - any idea what's up with that?

  None in the sources. My opinion—purely guesswork and OR—is along the lines that she wanted to be found out by that stage (a little like serial criminals who leave deliberate clues, wanting to be stopped), but I'm not a psychiatrist, so this could all be complete waffle. - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• "Mrs Gooding and her sister ... have both had illegitimate children" ah, now I understand what's wrong with these people. I spent a lot of time thinking it was nuts that everyone was so keen to believe Swan over Gooding, especially with Gooding being physically out of town, but the difference in class/respectability makes it clearer. Is there any sourcing that emphasizes this angle? If so, I might lean on that a little more, since it's not necessarily obvious to a reader who doesn't come from the same background
• In footnote e - was Wells arrested for breaking the bank? Also, suggest linking instead to Men who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, since "breaking the bank" isn't necessarily a common phrase. At the least, I'd change Monte Carlo to Monte Carlo Casino.

Aftermath and legacy

• Is there any academic analysis of this case? Its impact, what it meant, what caused it to go quite the way that it did?

  Unfortunately not. From a purely legal point of view there's nothing new or novel in the caselaw. The legal people who have written about the book are mostly in memoirs, and dwell on their roles in the affair, but not much beyond questioning Swan's mental health. - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• Was there ever any indication of Swan's motives, aside from her being a right cow? I was able to look at Hilliard's book, and the epilogue discusess some speculation about her mental health.

  There is a tiny bit on Swan's mental health in a couple of the sources, but I've held off from including them as they are from a lawyer and a historian, looking at it many years after the events, rather than from a psychiatrist with a proper case history - I'm always a bit wary of such guesswork (similar to the Goldwater rule about requiring personal examination). - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• Are there any details about the modern case? Is it still going? Any suspects or convictions?

  It's only came to light about three weeks ago in the national press, so still very much ongoing. There's been no further news since then. - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• If the Shiptonthorpe letters had been going for two years, you might want to revise the previous sentence to say something like "in 2024 it was reported", since it can't have started in 2024 and be ongoing for 2 years.

That's all I've got in terms of prose commentary. It's a confusing case at times, with Swan pretending to be Gooding writing letters to Swan, but I think you've made it as easy to follow as it's going to get. In terms of the other GACR, I find no issues with broadness or neutrality, no CV or close para. Analysis isn't necessary for GA - I wouldn't hold up promotion based on that - but I would ask about it at FAC.

Just jumping the gun slightly so I can look into it pre-FAC, where would you want to see analysis - Swan's motives, or elsewhere? - SchroCat (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, your response saying there wasn't much analysis in the sourcing kind of makes it a moot point. That being said if you were to find a source that gets into Swan's motives in a more verifiable way (I take your point on the Goldwater rule), that would be worth expanding on. And also, some further emphasis on the class/respectability differences that underpinned everyone disbelieving Gooding despite evidence. But that's really a FAC thing, not to hold up GA promotion.

The majority of spot checks (mainly Hilliard and Cockayne as the most-used sources) turned up no issues. One exception - the use of ref 30, Hilliard 54, 56–57, is slightly confusing to me. I read those pages a few times and I couldn't see where it covered the content it's attached to. Specifically, Swan's witness who swore he witnessed Gooding posting a letter to Swan. If that's referring to Reuben Lynn's testimony, he says "the little girl Gooding", not Gooding herself. I also don't see where it mentions Swan's testimony about witnessing Gooding post a letter and then bringing it to her solicitor. Is that in Humphreys? I can't get hold of that one.

Yes, good catch on the 'Dorothy' point: now added. Yes, the bit about dropping the letter and Swan picking it up are in Humphreys. - SchroCat (talk) 05:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Images are PD-old and appropriately tagged. Captions are relevant and there is alt text. No concerns there.

Overall, as always, a really interesting little slice of British history. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:45, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks PMC. All sorted in these edits, hopefully successfully. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 05:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

All the changes look good to me, happy to see this go up to GA. Ping me when you FAC it and I'll pop back in :) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:09, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.