Category talk:People from London

Subcategories
I notice there are some subcategories for individual settlements now. This causes the problem of what do do for those people who lived before the settlement became part of London as they will be presented via a super/parent cat as Category:People from London. The reverse is true of say The Krays who will be presented as Category:Natives of Middlesex.

Also, the current category system is inconsistent: Category:People from Ealing is in both London and Middlesex super cat, but Category:People from Chiswick only has London super cat. All the districts south of the river e.g. Category:People from Battersea do not mention Surrey.

There is also the problem that places outside the City of London (especially the West End) before 1889 were still considered to be London (or "the metropolis") despite not forming part of the City. Biographical accounts of people who lived around the City seem to change sometime between 17?? and 18?? to describe a wider area as London. I would like to hear suggestions as to at what point and why a wider area became known as "London". 1858 with the postal district? some time earlier? I would guess it was possibly when the built environment expanded. Perhaps in stages? or is this just an error/laziness in the biographies?

Similarly, places outside the County of London of 1889-1965 were thought of as London despite being in other counties (also reflected in biographies). I'm thinking in particular of the county boroughs of East Ham and West Ham but also places such as Leytonstone and Walthamstow. I would suggest this is because of the postal district. Sebastian Coe, Baron Coe, for example is not listed as being born in Chiswick, Middlesex despite being born before 1965.

If we add Battersea to Category:Natives of Surrey, etc. is this confusing for people born in the 20th Century? How should we go forward? Shall we complete the picture by filling in all the historic county categories? If it is all a bit ambiguous perhaps we could present a table summarising the location's position:

Or is this too simplistic to only follow admin history?

Is there another way we should be categorising these folks to make it clearer? Any thoughts? Mrsteviec 19:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I have been adding Template:London people message to these cats to make this clearer and to provide consistency. MRSC • Talk 21:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

People from Battersea, People from London
Does anyone have any objections to removing the parent categories, now we have the sub-cats for individual settlements. This is still inconsistent between articles at the moment. MRSC • Talk 13:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I've been bold and have been adding / removing as appropriate for letters T to Z so far. I am also adding   to the talk pages as well so that project can asses and improve the articles, otherwise they won't find them.  Does anyone fancy agreeing a letter split for the rest? --Regan123 19:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've now completed S as well. Regan123 13:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Alright done E & F here. There are lots of people listed as London though so we need more info on these. Regan123 15:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Description

 * moved from Talk:MRSC

I wasn't quite sure what you meant when you said that Category:People from London and Category:People from Middlesex were in the same tree. The Middlesex category is not a subcategory of the London category, although I can see an argument that it should be (almost everyone from Middlesex was from a place now in London). If you mean that both are in the category tree headed Category:English people by location in England, that is true, but that is a situation where WP:CAT suggests that "the description can also contain links to other pages, in particular to other related categories which do not appear directly as subcategories or parent categories". --Mhockey (talk) 19:09, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * end of section moved from Talk:MRSC


 * All of the London locality articles such as Category:People from Acton have been set up to be within Category:People from Middlesex or the other four counties of the London area. There is no need to add one of them to the description here. One task that is more important is to move the 2,607 articles in this category into more meaningful subcategories, either by more granular location or other factor. MRSC (talk) 05:41, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the first and third sentences, but do you not think that the two categories are related so that you have a better chance of cleaning up the categories if you cross-reference them? It seems to me that anything that helps people navigate their way round large category trees is helpful. --Mhockey (talk) 11:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

born in London, or also notable in London?
Just a quick query... is this category meant only for people born in London, or also for people being notable in London? Best Regards. DynamoDegsy (talk) 09:13, 12 November 2012 (UTC)