Talk:Ursula Lofthouse

Pseudo-biography

This article appears to be a pseudo-biography about a criminal who is only notable for the murder of her husband and then being executed for that crime. The article is about her crime and its consequences and should be named for the murder not the criminal. See WP:CRIMINAL. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 18:46, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

With really old cases like this, sometimes the sourcing is more perp-focused, and looking at the sources it seems to be the case here. Never really sure how to handle ones like this. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:28, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

The claim for notability given in this article is that the subject was "the last woman to be publicly executed in Yorkshire." In the article about Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, this claim has morphed into "the last woman to be executed in Yorkshire." But that was only added to that article on 12 November 2024. The book cited might very well state this, but the citation only refers to a chapter by title, without even providing a page number where this claim is made. The linked source does not provide any text to verify the claim, either. While one source might make this claim for notability, none of the other cited sources make it, nor can I find this claim made elsewhere. The only reason that she is otherwise notable is because she was executed for poisoning her husband, and while many of the other cited sources appear to be diverse, they all appear to contain summaries of information that appeared in the Yorkshire Gazette between 22 November 1834 and 11 April 1835. Text from these reports has been reprinted in the research by Price, and elsewhere on genealogy websites. None of these sources provides a full biography, but merely repeat the known facts about this person's crime and her execution. Copies of the relevant issues of the Yorkshire Gazette are available on-line, although a subscription is required, so citing the original news reports is viable as a potential source for this article. However, Wikipedia ought to be consistent in its treatment of people who have been executed, and Wikipedia should treat an article about this criminal in the same way as Wikipedia would treat other modern-day criminals. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 22:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

My problem is with these types of cases calling the article something like Murder of Robert Lofthouse seems misleading, because all of the sources we do have, searching on google books, present it focused on her. I don't have particularly strong feelings either way, but we do have a lot of articles that are structured like this, particularly old ones, and pretty much every serial killer. Especially when someone is both notable for doing the crime and for some aspect of their execution being notable as is the case here. I am never sure how to handle these very old cases because while they have the same concerns journalism has obviously evolved in the past century. PARAKANYAA (talk) 09:45, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

What I am questioning in this case, and perhaps, others like it, is who or what is notable here. Is it the person, the crime or just the execution? If what is notable is the person, then having this article is tempting editors to involve themselves in genealogy and original research, and end up with citing websites like [1] and [2]. Incidentally, both of which do refer to this crime as the Murder of Robert Lofthouse when quoting the original newspaper report. Perhaps it is not the journalism that has evolved over the past couple of centuries, but the historians who come after them, who focus on the executions of the criminals rather than the crimes they committed. Wikipedia's notability guidelines are biased against having biographies about murder victims, who are usually only notable for their murder. However, as this article demonstrates, one cannot tell the story of Ursula and her execution, without also telling the story of Robert's murder by poisoning. Almost all the sources I have see, including those used in this article, mention she was executed for poisoning her husband, so I don't think renaming the article would be misleading. Also, as indicated above there are some sources that do call this crime the "murder of Robert Lofthouse". What, I think has happened is that the sources are biased towards naming the criminal, rather than the crime, because that is what their readers want. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 18:49, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

With cases where the crime and the execution is notable I guess it depends on if you think of the execution as its own "event" with an assertion to notability or simply a result of the crime and therefore a subtopic of it. My issue with a lot of pages like that is it feels fundamentally odd to have someone's name in the title of an article when they aren't the most mentioned person in it - this article, in a hypothetical most comprehensive form, would have most of its content about Ursula. But I guess that goes for a lot of murders. And when it comes to bias, if the sources are biased, so are we. I'm generally of the "cover it how the sources do" school. This case isn't the strongest for keeping it perpetrator focused though, just seeing it and your comment made me think of broader questions. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:58, 16 November 2024 (UTC)