Talk:Ernestine Mills

Black Friday

It seems unlikely that the woman in the Black Friday image is Ernestine Mills. Most reliable sources, including scholarly sources, identify her as Ada Wright. Georgiana Solomon identified her as Ada Wright on 17 December 1910 in a letter to Winston Churchill.

Ada Wright has herself given an interview and said it was her (see Antonia Raeburn (1973), The Militant Suffragettes, pp. 170–171). Sylvia Pankhurst, who knew Ada Wright, described Black Friday in The Suffragette Movement (1931), and wrote (p. 343):

I saw Ada Wright knocked down a dozen times in succession. A tall man with a silk hat fought to protect her as she lay on the ground, but a group of policemen thrust him away, seized her again, hurled her into the crowd and felled her again as she turned. Later I saw her lying against the wall of the House of Lords, with a group of anxious women kneeling around her.

This is significant not only because Pankhurst knew Wright, but also because Herbert Mills (the husband of Ernestine Mills and supposedly the man in the top hat) was, at the time of Black Friday, the Pankhurst family doctor (see Crawford, p. 554). Sylvia refers to him in The Suffragette Movement as Dr. H. H. Mills. She would therefore have recognized him, or at least would have been able to check with him easily after the fact.

My understanding is that the source that says it might be Ernestine and Herbert Mills in the image is the National Archives (here), but it only says "possibly" and it doesn't cite a source. Is there any other authoritative source that says it was them? SarahSV ^(talk) 07:31, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Sarah, Just to correct your last point, as I am unsure why you keep ignoring information I provide you: I have already provided you with a link to the National Archive page where it does cite a source: a Home Office document, and it does not use the word "possibly". You can't just ignore things that you've been shown just because they don't agree with other things. Both have to be treated and weighed equally. - SchroCat (talk) 08:04, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

That National Archives page is just a teaching aid for schools. It refers to two things (a) the Black Friday photograph and (b) a suffragette poster. At the top it says: "A photo taken outside Parliament on 18 November and a handbill publicizing a demonstration at Parliament on 22 November 1910 (Catalogue ref: a. COPY 1/551, Alpha Picture Library; b. HO 144/1106/200455)." Underneath that it refers to the photograph as 2a and the poster as 2b.

I understand that to mean that the source for the photograph is the Alpha Picture Library, COPY 1/551 (the National Archives catalogue number for the photograph is "COPY 1/551/264"). And the source for the poster is the National Archives Home Office papers at HO 144/1106/200455. That file is "Home Office. Suffragette disturbances at Westminster. 1910–1911".

The National Archives catalogue page for the photograph places the names in square brackets, doesn't cite a source, and says "possibly".

Against this we have (a) the suffragettes themselves saying it was Ada Wright, including one in a letter to Churchill shortly after the event; (b) Ada Wright confirming that it was her; and (c) scholarly sources saying it was her. We should therefore remove that it might have been Ernestine Mills until we find out why the National Archives page raises it as a possibility. In the meantime, we should get hold of that Home Office file or make contact with people who have seen it. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:04, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Way too much SYNTH and OR in there for my liking, simply to force a point that doesn't need to be forced. - SchroCat (talk) 19:53, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

There's no SYNTH or OR. We have several contemporaneous primary sources and scholarly secondary sources saying it was Wright. Against that, there is one entry on a webpage that says it was "possibly" someone else but without citing a source. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:19, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

No, the NA states it straight (not possibly), and does give a source. Again, this is pushing a point that doesn't need to be pushed. - SchroCat (talk),

National Archives "Catalogue description ... Reference: COPY 1/551/264: "'Photograph [of] lady lying on ground, policeman looking at her, other figures near'. [Suffragette movement. Black Friday demonstration, 18 November 1910. Possibly Mrs Ernestine Mills prone and Dr Herbert Mills in top hat]" (bold added). [1] SarahSV ^(talk) 20:57, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

HO 144/1106/200455 - SchroCat (talk) 21:08, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

There appears to be a dispute about what the sources say about identification of the woman in the photograph. I may be just a lowly IP, but let me try to help pour oil on the troubled waters. Feel free to ignore if it does not help.

If I may say so, there appears to be a degree of you talking past each other. So perhaps it would help to clarify positions.

SchroCat, are you saying that the identification as Ernestine Mills comes from that Home Office document? HO 144/1106/200455? Do you have access to it, or a copy? Have you read it?

That index page gives a list of relevant people: "People - Asquith, Herbert; Churchill, Winston; Cobden-Sanderson, Annie; Dawson, Albert; Drummond, Flora; Gladstone, Herbert; Hardie, Keir; Leigh, Mary; Lytton, Lord; Ormsby-Gore, William; Solomon, Mrs Saul; Troup, Sir Edward; Wright, Ada" (links - look! article on all of them - and emphasis added)

Notably, Ernestine Mills is not on the list.

For what it is worth, I agree with SlimVirgin's analysis of the sourcing given here - it seems to be saying that document (a) (the photo) comes from the Alpha Picture Library, and that item (b) (the poster) comes from the Home Office document. (Not a good quality source, that National Archives page, in any event.)

SchroCat appears to be disagreeing with that analysis. So I guess we need the view of someone who has read the Home Office document.

Other than the National Archives page, is there any other reliable source identifying the woman as Ernestine Mills? 213.205.240.209 (talk) 09:51, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

No, I am not saying the identification comes from the HO document. I am saying that we have an extremely reliable source, the National Archives, have said that the person in the photograph is Ernestine Mills (one reference is "possibly", others state it outright). They refer to two documents, neither of which anyone has seen. As an encyclopaedia, we have to have to remember that "When reliable sources disagree, maintain a neutral point of view and present what the various sources say, giving each side its due weight". This is one of our core policies. I am not saying that the image is definitely Mills, any more than I am saying it is definitely Wright: I am saying that there is disagreement between the reliable sources and we have to reflect that. - SchroCat (talk) 10:27, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

OK, good. So you are basing your position on the two National Archives pages, not the Home Office document, which it seems no one has seen, so that may be a bit of a red herring (from the index, it does not appear to mention Ernestine Mills anyway).

The second page at National Archives - a much better source than the teaching aide - does say "possibly". I wonder if that qualifier was missed off somewhere in the teaching materials. Something to ask National Archives to confirm or correct, possibly? There is no clear source for the [parenthetical comment] making the identification, and no other sources. How peculiar, and how unsatisfactory.

I am sure we are all entirely happy with reporting what the reliable sources say. That said, it seems to me that the weight of evidence currently available is clearly pointing away from Ernestine Mills and towards Ada Wright. 213.205.240.209 (talk) 12:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

There are more pointing towards Wright, yes, but that doesn't make it certain: it is far too easy for circular references to be created (which is how urban myths and historical falsehoods take root). My point is, as our policy makes extremely clear, to reflect what both reliable sources say, otherwise we get into grounds of WP:OR and/or WP:SYNTH. When a reliable source examines the various documents at the NA to ascertain what is mentioned there, we can't just pick and chose what sources we want to use or not. - SchroCat (talk) 12:27, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Things are rarely certain in life. One has to exercise judgement. We can exercise editorial discretion about what to include, and we don't have to repeat every fact (pro or contra) stated in any source.

In this case, the preponderence of evidence points to Ada Wright, and I would suggest that the possible identification of Ernestine Mills in one source (the teaching aide is not independent) should be treated with great care. But I will leave that to your editorial discretion.

(There is a form on the National Archives page asking for feedback, so they can easily be asked to check or clarify what they say.) 213.205.240.209 (talk) 14:28, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

"the teaching aide is not independent"? On what grounds can you claim that to be the case?

Either way, we have an extremely reliable source that has, in more than one place, identified the woman in the photograph as Mills, while other equally reliable sources identify it as Wright. Our policy is to reflect what the reliable sources say, not just cherry pick the facts we want to present and ignore those that are inconvenient. - SchroCat (talk) 14:54, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

To compare a webpage written by an anonymous researcher (perhaps an intern) with multiple primary and scholarly sources is odd, as is the claim that editors here are cherry-picking to ignore facts that are "inconvenient". Why would it be "inconvenient" for it to be one woman rather than another? SarahSV ^(talk) 19:36, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

213.205.240.209, thank you for your comments and for pointing out the HO 144/1106/200455 index. Given that the weight of evidence points toward Ada Wright, it's a violation of UNDUE to award more coverage to that National Archives sentence by relegating all the other sources to a footnote. We don't know who the author is of the sentence in square brackets. No author, no source, no explanation. And the teaching-aide page is not an RS at all. Against that, we have historians and the suffragettes themselves, including Ada Wright. And, by the way, when I wrote "possibly" in the article, it was a quote, not scare quotes. It shouldn't have been changed.

WP:UNDUE (bold added):

Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[3] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects.

I've emailed the National Archives to ask if someone there can help us track down their source. In the meantime, all we know is that someone added a sentence naming Mills "possibly", in square brackets, to their catalogue's webpage. If I were writing this alone, I wouldn't even mention the image in this article until I knew what the National Archives source was. My recent edits were an effort to reach a compromise until we know more. SarahSV ^(talk) 15:03, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

If this article was about Wright or the photograph, then yes, the information should be in the main body. It's not: it's about Mills, and it's excessive to have so much tangential information in the body (that really is UNDUE). Again, you can't ignore references from the National Archives just because you don't like them, and claiming that something from the NA is not a reliable source is laughable. I know the word possibly is on the NA page, but we really, really don't need to use scare quotes for one very common place word, simply saying that 'the NA have possibly identified it as such' is sufficient. There has been way too much time wasted on this point, so I'm stepping away from this; my time really is too limited to have to deal with points being pressed which do not need to be pressed. - SchroCat (talk) 15:29, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Re: "references from the National Archives". It is one unsourced sentence in square brackets on a catalogue webpage, describing the photograph (COPY 1/551/264):

'Photograph [of] lady lying on ground, policeman looking at her, other figures near'. [Suffragette movement. Black Friday demonstration, 18 November 1910. Possibly Mrs Ernestine Mills prone and Dr Herbert Mills in top hat].

Copyright owner of work: London News Agency Photos Limited, 46 Fleet Street, London, E.C. Copyright author of work: Victor Consul, 46 Fleet Street, London, E.C. Form completed: 23 November 1910. Registration stamp: 1910 November 23.

It looks as though "Photograph [of] lady lying on ground, policeman looking at her, other figures near" may have been taken from the back of the photograph. The square brackets around the text beginning "Suffragette movement" mean (or would usually mean) that those words were added after the fact. The question is who added them and on what basis. SarahSV ^(talk) 15:41, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Another day, another IP. The National Archives have amended their description of the photograph at [2]. As I understand it, the parenthetical text was added in 2014 but the source is not clear, and at that time there was known to be some doubt, hence the word "possibly".

The educational page seems to pre-date that (the National Archives "Learning Curve" was in place by 2008, and probably several years before that). There are credits here so perhaps worth trying to find the author Ian Coulson to clarify where his identification comes from but unfortunately Ian Coulson died in 2015 (in memoriam) so it is going to be difficult to ask him, and no one left at the National Archives seems to know. 213.205.198.235 (talk) 07:54, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi, thank you very much for posting this. I wonder whether they changed it as a result of my emails. I've emailed three people so far; one a generic address and two named people, but no one has replied. I explained the issue in two of the emails and (as I recall) linked to this page. Their change is puzzling:

There is some dispute over the identity of the parties depicted. Some sources have identified Mrs Ernestine Mills prone and Dr Herbert Mills in top hat. However, there is contemporary testimony to the effect that it is Ada Wright prone.

They don't indicate who the "some sources" are. The only source I've found is this National Archives page. By contemporary evidence regarding Wright, I assume they mean the contemporaneous correspondence. Several sources say the Mirror itself named Wright. Diane Atkinson (Rise Up Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes) cites:

the Daily Mirror, 19 November, pp. 1, 4, 10–11, and 22 November 1910, p. 7; a WPSU handbill "Plain Facts about the Suffragette Deputations"; and Ada Wright Biographical Notes, Group C, vol. 2, Museum of London

But it's not clear which part of the citation supports that the Mirror named Wright. I've seen pages 1, 3 and 4, which don't name her, but not 10–11. To complicate matters, there would have been several editions of the newspaper.

Can I ask how you know that the parenthetical text was added in 2014? I looked in the Internet Archive, but their latest archived copy of that page is from 2018. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:27, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Possibly your emails, possibly feedback provided as I suggested above.

Reading between the lines - always a dangerous activity, but I'm going to do it anyway - the impression I have [pers.comm.] is that the statement on the educational page led someone to suggest a change to the catalogue page, but the curator was not sure it was correct and did not have to sources to hand to say one way or the other (hence "possibly"). And the author of the educational page is now rather difficult to contact.

What is most frustrating is that someone, at some time, clearly thought they had enough evidence to identify the person as Ernestine Mills. Perhaps they were mistaken, but perhaps there is something out there we just have not found yet and might never find.

This sort of small but important detail is an example of the kind of thing it is possible to sort out, given enough time and patience, and a focus on the sources. 213.205.198.235 (talk) 19:03, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that it can be sorted out, and I find it very interesting. What concerns me is that the National Archives would spread this without a solid source, and that editors would assume that an anonymous, unsourced comment in square brackets is a reliable source. There's a simple rule for sources like this for anything contentious: either it's the sole source, in which case don't use it, or there are other reliable sources, in which case there's no need to use it. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:56, 8 June 2018 (UTC)