Talk:William Harvey (1882–1954)

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Name[edit]

Harvey's profile on the SA Parliament website lists him as having a middle name of "Smith". (This is, for our purposes, very handy as it disambiguates him from William Humphrey Harvey, also a Labor defector in parliament at the same time, albeit having bolted in the previous split.) However, I cannot for the life of me find anything else to back this up - there are zero relevant Trove hits for "William Smith Harvey", "W. S. Harvey" or "W. Smith Harvey" - which is extremely unusual. Every single source I can find refers to him as "William Harvey" or "W. Harvey", which is why he's a heinously difficult person to find information about. On further checking, Dean Jaensch's usually reliable Statistical Register only refers to "HARVEY W", not "HARVEY WS".

Can anyone come up with an explanation for this that isn't that the SA parliament have somehow goofed? And if not, anyone have any suggestions for how to name this article? I feel like it might need to be at William Harvey (1882–1954). The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:50, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I also can't find a source for the SA Parliament's claim that Harvey was a shearer before entering politics. No wonder it took me so long to flesh out the article when this was all we had to start with. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:04, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is bizarre. It's one of those things where you wonder how on earth it happened - I assume it has to come from somewhere. I would love to know what Hansard says when he's sworn in, but of course that's not online. Another key place to look would be the biographical register ([1]). Probably warrants a trip to the library to check these before we do anything - I'll try in the next few weeks but can't guarantee it. (On Jaensch - the statistical register is an absolute godsend when it comes to SA politics, but I wouldn't treat it as gospel. There are plenty of people in it listed without their middle names, although it would be unusual to omit it every time in such a long-running candidate. It is possible he didn't use it much, though - or he may be one of those people with a complicated name situation; my mother spent her entire childhood believing she had a middle name only to discover her father had forgotten to put it on the birth certificate.)

I did find a William Smith Harvey who enlisted in Dubbo in 1915, but that doesn't match with the biographical data we have here. Is it possible that SA Parl is somehow using the biographical details for someone entirely different that they have somehow confused with the MP? If that is so, any information (birth/death?) may be suspect unless otherwise backed up. Frickeg (talk) 11:35, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The birth and death dates seem to be correct - they led me to the obituary, which is how I managed to write the article at all. The Biographical Register suggestion is a great idea - will have to pop into the SLV on my way home later this week. I don't have a lot of experience trawling through Hansard that far back - do you know if they had started including anything useful when swearing in in the 1920s? I also emailed the address on the former members page in case they come back with anything. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:52, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So, I'm sitting in the State Library with a copy of the Biographical Register, and this gets even more confusing:

It refers to him as "William Harvey", no "Smith"
It refers to him as having been a shearer, so at least we know where the SA Parliament got that one
It refers to him as having five sons and one daughter, which is absolutely wrong. He had five living sons in 1941, having lost several (as confirmed in multiple sources)

The amount of contradictory sources on this guy is baffling. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:09, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't suppose the BioReg listed any sources? What a bizarre situation. I hope the SA Parliament gets back to you on this - would be good to solve the mystery! In the meantime I think the move to the new name seems pretty clear. Frickeg (talk) 07:58, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Only just saw this response now - they did, but not very helpful ones - the one newspaper one turned out to be just a classifieds death notice IIRC, and the other two were long-lost pamphlets or ancient Labor books so obscure that I think I'd have to go to SLSA or the NLA to get them. I want to go back and add some more bio reg data to other articles so I might look them up and see just in case. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:06, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you need something from NLA let me know - I don't know when my next trip will be but I have a list of things I need to look up, so I can easily add a few more. Frickeg (talk) 06:16, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Genealogy SA Death index shows William Harvey (no middle name) of Camden died at Adelaide on 15 Mar 1954, aged 71. I don't have access to NSW birth records from a similar source. Ancestry.com.au has several William Harveys born in NSW around the right year, but they all have a middle initial that is not S. --Scott Davis ^Talk 06:01, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the additional evidence! That's really helpful. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:43, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]