Talk:Dorothea Bennett (novelist)

Date of birth/death

The death-date of 1985 is almost certainly likely wrong as the newspapers had her still alive when Terence Young died in 1994. The 1914 DOB is more plausible (this source says she was born in 1924 but that is almost certainly wrong as she was married in 1935). FOARP (talk) 14:23, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Having looked at this, especially the claims that she died in 1985, are not totally implausible and it may be instead The Times that is wrong (but they usually check this kind of thing, so I'd still lean towards them being correct). I do see at least this source saying she died in 1985 (though it says Terence Young was a Major in the army, when all other sources say he was only a Captain, so this doesn't seem so reliable). The reason why I'm not ruling it out is there also appears to be some sources saying Terence Young married again, with no mention of a divorce. The 1924 birth date is very implausible and certainly wrong despite it being repeated everywhere. She would have been 11 years old when married the second time in 1935 according to this - and the date of the second marriage is relatively certain as it was the one used in court proceedings. Since the Age of Marriage Act 1929, the maximum age at which anyone can marry in England & Wales has been 16 (and this with parental permission) so childhood marriage is out of the question. The act also covered Scotland.

It would be great to find the source of the 1914 date of birth. Foofbun - you added it to the article, can you remember what the source was? I also see disagreement in the sources over her place of birth (some sources say Burma, others refer to her "native Ireland"). FOARP (talk) 08:54, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

• Nice to meet you FOARP. I honestly can't recall (at this time, my life is like the old film noir amnesia films, bits come back at a time) about Ms. Bennett. I have found this, if it helps

https://www.geni.com/people/Dorothea-Bennett/6000000173253584931

Foofbun (talk) 09:18, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Foofbun. I think probably Bennett actually was the source of the 1924 birth-date since it is repeated in so many places, despite it making no sense - it leaves us with the choice of either using 1924 as the birth date despite knowing it's wrong, or just leaving the birth-date blank. At some point in the future the 1931 census will become public and likely she'll be on it, allowing her DOB to finally be clarified. There is a Dorothea Bennett on the 1921 census listed as born in 1914, but it's not clear that it's the same person. FOARP (talk) 13:15, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

• I suppose if she was competing with Sabine Sun (and no doubt a few other actresses on Terence's films) she may be wishing to fib about her age. I do think you'd have to get out the cables and jump start your brain after talking to Sabine as opposed to Dot. Foofbun (talk) 09:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

• • So I'll be able to sleep at night...how did you become interested in Dorothea-Bennett? Your blog is interesting.Foofbun (talk) 22:19, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

    Watched a 007 film with my son, then went down the rabbit-hole when I saw some details on Terence Young's bio that didn't make any sense. Yeah, wish I had more time to update my blog nowadays but that's life. FOARP (talk) 19:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

    Thanks @Ingratis. Can you tell us the original source so we can quote it in the article in a non-Copyvio fashion? Which register are we talking about? I also note there was news coverage of Bennett being on trial (she was acquitted) for seriously injuring someone in a car crash in Cornwall around that time so it seems to check out. FOARP (talk) 04:44, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

    BTW - the simple DOB of someone is not copyright-protectable. Copyright protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. I’m not sure what you quoted, but if it was just the DOB, then there was no COPYVIO. FOARP (talk) 04:49, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

• @FOARP: I must apologise for not thinking more carefully before adding what I added - I'm not well and my thinking is not as clear as it should be (and in fact I'll shortly be retiring from Wikipedia for that reason). The 1939 Register - here - is freely available to consult at the National Archives in Kew, so the relevant entry is publicly accessible there, but that presumably = original research. In digital form it's available online at Ancestry, Findmypast and MyHeritage: these are all subscription-only access and all their content is explicitly protected from being made public. Whether this is strictly speaking a copyright issue or a licensing issue - and once again, apologies for being confused - it's clear that information from these sites is not for dissemination. However, I wonder if you're aware of the death registration in Westminster, May 1985, of Dorothea Alice Young (born 28 January 1914)? available here? Ingratis (talk) 10:32, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  It's a primary source. Articles should not be based entirely on primary sources, but in the case it is the only possible source as the biographies all include the obviously-wrong 1924 birth date. If the death registration is genuinely her then this provides support for the 1985 death date. It is odd that The Times got this wrong, but it is possible they mixed things up with whoever Young's second wife was (if he had one).

  I don't know what the terms of the subscription are, but this is publicly-available information, and I cannot imagine that any court could enforce anything against the already-public disclosure of the mere date of birth of a person long dead. FOARP (talk) 16:35, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

All the genealogical sites have the same condition, which is that their information is for subscribers only and for private research use only, not for publication. Part of the reason for this is the expense of compiling the copyright databases and indexes which make the data searchable. The National Archives don't charge for access, although they too have restrictions on publication, if I remember correctly. Ingratis (talk) 08:47, 25 September 2023 (UTC)