Talk:Elizabeth Needham
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An entry from Elizabeth Needham appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on January 14, 2007. |
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[edit] Patches on her face
The version I have heard previously is that those patches were from advanced syphillis, not pock-marks? Amity150 06:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
- I think our current text is being diplomatic. Until the small pox outbreak a few years later, pock marks would have been from cankers, and Needham would have to have the disease. Given that women take longer to get visible signs, should would have a very advanced case. Geogre 11:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
- I merely went for the more general "pock-marked" as although it is undoubtedly syphillis (given Hogarth's exuberant use of it in his other works) I couldn't find a reliable source that actually came out and said that. What I shouldn't have done, of course, is link it to the too specific pox virus (so I've unlinked it). Yomanganitalk 01:57, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Duke of Wharton?
One thing to bear in mind, here, is that Wharton was a very, very strident Jacobite (see the article on Nathaniel Mist). Charteris, no doubt, was a rapist, panderer, and john, but I've never encountered solid links between Wharton and that business before. The sentence that mentions Charteris and Wharton has a note and reference: does the reference specifically nail down Wharton, or does it just suggest that Wharton is a reason Charteris can evade arrest for a long time? Geogre 12:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
- It specifically mentions Wharton as a customer (ahead of Charteris), but evasion of arrest due to his influence is only hinted at. I would have preferred another source to back it up, but the material on Needham is pretty thin. Yomanganitalk 01:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
That's interesting. You see, the infamous "Whig history" of the 18th century liked to paint with a broad brush when it came to Tories. Wharton was not just a Tory: he was a pain in the rear Jacobite. Therefore, for the people who wrote the history of the 18th century in the 19th, and chiefly Thomas Babbington Macaulay, he was no doubt a rake as well as a syphilitic madman. These are the people who gave us the "proof" that Swift was insane all his life because of his "undoubted" misanthropy, etc. That might seem quaint, except that the influence of that Whig history is everywhere. It took major researches to undo that stuff, and anywhere a source relies on old sources, you're likely to get it without independent verification. This is not to clear Wharton. For all I know he was a rapist every bit as bad as Charteris. It's just that it pays to ask questions with 18th c. history. (Seriously: the "Tale of a Tub was by Thomas Swift" surfaces as late as 1910. The "John Gay was a bitter hack" shows up as late as the 1890's. It took work to undo that Macaulay shadow.) Geogre 03:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
