Talk:Count de Werdinsky

Dead links
Nearly all of the source links lead to nothing; the original web-site has disappeared. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.111.100 (talk) 14:08, 23 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I've added a link to an archive of the webpage, but only the first page is archived.
 * Unless there is another archive there is not a lot I can do.
 * I've removed the dead links
 * Much of the information comes from papers etc, which are referenced in the text.Prof.Haddock (talk) 17:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

1830 confused with 1848?
Note 2 suggests a confusion between 1830 and 1848. Here is the relevant part:

"The obituary newspaper accounts commonly state him to have been involved in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and make no reference to his presence in England before then. Some also state he was 'Hungarian'. (In an 1851 census Dr. Beck is recorded as having been born in Hungary.[2]) The association with the 1848 uprising is likely to be an error, confusing the 1848 Hungarian uprising with the 1830 November Uprising of Poles against."

There was no confusion: Werdinsky (the Pole) disappeared from public view after his indictment in January 1851 for a criminal assault on a young girl. Within three months, in the 1851 census, he fetches up in Southampton with a new name (Beck - never previously used by him, though the name of another contemporary and notorious fake Hungarian) and a new identity as a Hungarian. Werdinsky needs a new identity because of the indictment, the very first time a court case for a sex crime actually goes against him. Hungarians are England's favourite refugees in the early 1850s. We know that Beck and Werdinsky are the same person because of what he must have told his "wife" Martha Mariner. She would not otherwise have known to tell the local Hull papers so.

The association with the 1848 rising is no error but part of the life story that Werdinsky spun for himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.207.232.99 (talk) 11:23, 28 October 2020 (UTC)