Talk:John Hetherington

Untitled
The only supporting articles I could find for the outrageous story about John Hetherington' inciting of a riot and his subsequent banishment were all written by John Berendt. Articles supposedly written by this member of the International Formalwear Association are surprisingly common. But they are all nearly identical and deal with the same subject matter. This article may very well be a partial or complete fabrication, and at the very least begs for further investigation.

-Cody Little — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.228.197.234 (talk) 19:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Propose this article's deletion. The article consists entirely of an unverifiable and, frankly, highly dubious story about people rioting at the sight of an article of clothing. For me, this is pretty uncontroversially a non-encyclopedic (and, for that matter, non-factual) article.

-Dylan Rowe — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.113.24 (talk) 08:14, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

i agree, this should go... theres nothing to back it up that i can find and its already been removed from the entry on top hats. why would people run from a hat? (Doughboy 101 (talk) 12:39, 21 May 2008 (UTC))

Proposed for deletion
Believe this is a relatively uncontroversial candidate for deletion. Story is manifestly bogus. Source for the story is a secondary reference in the 1920s to a supposed article published thirty years previous telling a story from a hundred years ago.

Could rewrite to make it an article about the story as an urban legend, but just not noteworthy enough.

Delete. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.234.136 (talk) 04:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The story's bogus nature is made clear in the article and by it being in the "Pseudohistory" category, but it should be retained as it is a very well known piece of pseudohistory which is mentioned in many books, articles, and websites as factual and is still surfacing now and then. Salmanazar (talk) 12:25, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Non-trivial sourcing needed
I've rewritten this article to cover the specific origin of the story which is clearly hokum. However, its appearance in Notes and Queries is said to be copied from a piece in the Hatters' Gazette, which doesn't appear to be online. I found an MA thesis that mentions the Wardown Park Museum as having it in their archives, if anyone reading this fancies a mission. The piece also claims that the event was mentioned in The Times on the 16th of January 1797. That will be verifiable (or not) if someone with a Times subscription could search their archive. —  Scott  •  talk  15:39, 16 January 2024 (UTC)