Talk:Lord William Russell (aristocrat)

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Yesterday I created this article at Lord William Russell (murdered), which I agree is an awful title, but really he didn't do anything except get murdered (and that only once), so I was at a loss. (I do think he is an encyclopedic subject, as his murder made the Newgate Calendar and was famous enough seventy years later to be mentioned in E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case.)

But I'm not thrilled by "Lord William Russell (aristocrat)", either — doesn't the "Lord" part imply the "aristocrat" part? And, more importantly, the tag does nothing to distinguish our subject from Lord William Russell (executed), which was my primary goal. (According to the page history, someone merged the two articles in error and then reverted, or something; I can't really tell what happened!) Obviously, finding out the two gentlemen's middle names would be helpful, but assuming that's unlikely to happen, does anyone have any suggestions? --Quuxplusone 18:02, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was just trying to disambiguate the MP for Surrey, but this led me to investigate this fascinating article. Having tied up the politician and the murder victim, both because the dates of birth and death were the same and through tracing references in The Times, we now see that Russell was quite a prominent public figure. So prominent that the journalists did not think it necessary to mention his lengthy political career when the murder took place.

As to the article title, given the number of Lord William Russell's in the family of the Duke of Bedford I would suggest leaving it as it is. It does disambiguate, however tautological it may be. --Gary J 05:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)