Talk:Lady Elizabeth Hastings

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 07:13, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Lady Betty. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051216043628/http://www.collingham.leeds.sch.uk/index_2.htm to http://www.collingham.leeds.sch.uk/index_2.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 11:19, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Lady Elizabeth Hastings (1682–1739)
A new article was created 15 October 2019, although there was a longstanding, albeit modest, article on this topic (COI: I created it on 1 November 2007, my 20th article, as "Lady Elizabeth Hastings": it was renamed in 2014 by Neelix). For info: Old article as at time of new creation. The new article is splendid and scholarly and well-sourced, but should not have been created as a separate article. I propose that the new content should be merged into the existing article, to acknowledge its editing history. Pam D  06:44, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree. I also think that "Lady Elizabeth Hastings" is the best title. --Bduke (talk) 06:49, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * (after e/c) was just going to add:
 * This came to my attention when the old article, on my watchlist, was today converted to a redirect: I've reverted that change. I would support the move of the much-improved page (after merge) to a better title, either the version with dates as used for the new article, or as primary topic for Lady Elizabeth Hastings, which currently redirects to the dab page at Elizabeth Hastings. And we need to keep the linkage from Lady Betty to USS Lady Betty, which got lost along the way too. pinging a couple of recently-involved editors.     Pam  D  06:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * And just for info, here is a discussion about the redirect from "Lady Elizabeth Hastings", part of a mass of discussions of often-questionable redirects created by the editor Neelix (the person who moved the page away from its original title).  Pam  D  07:28, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for picking this up. The revised article is one part of a rewrite of several others (1688 Glorious Revolution, her father, then her brother etc) and I hadn't yet got around to redirecting from the original.


 * I'm neutral on the exact wording, so long as the main heading isn't Lady Betty, purely on the grounds of visibility. If you search 'Lady Betty', there's not much; if you search for Lady Elizabeth Hastings, there are tons, including the Lady Elizabeth Hastings Charities, the Lady Elizabeth Hastings schools, several books on this individual etc. I was struck by the fact this is an individual at least as significant as (say) Lady Catherine Jones, Mary Astell, Selina Hastings etc but didn't appear on any of them (until I added the links).


 * Not really relevant :) but the only person who ever seems to have referred to her as 'Steele's Aspasia' was one sentence written by Ralph Waldo Emerson (who, lets be fair, wrote thousands of them). I ended up taking it out.


 * Re the USS Lady Betty; happy to leave it with you but if we agree on changing it to 'Lady Elizabeth Hastings', rather than 'Lady Betty', I'm not clear on the need for a redirect or linkage. Although now I look, there is another 'Lady Betty' - Elizabeth Sprague, 18th century Irish executioner :).

Robinvp11 (talk) 09:36, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I think there's a problem of approach here. If an article is at the wrong title (as this one was, I agree: I should have been more assertive and moved it back to its original Lady Elizabeth Hastings after Neelix's move and the redirect discussion), then move it - not by cut and paste, but by the proper "move" process which preserves its history. If there is an existing article, you shouldn't be rewriting it as a new article, but working on the existing one to build on the work of previous editors. Even if much of the text needs to be rewritten, the current article should keep its edit history. This isn't like the situation where a chunk of text is moved from one article into another, and the Wikipedia copied template needs to be used to create links to the earlier history: where there is an article on a topic a new article should not be created on that topic.
 * In this case it might be simplest if you would make changes to the original article - OK, over-write most of the content - and then blank the new one, so it can be deleted (as no-one else has made any substantial contribution to it), and then we can move the existing, augmented, version, to a better title, either the version with dates or perhaps agreeing that she is the primary topic for Lady Elizabeth Hastings and moving her to that title (with a hatnote pointing to the Elizabeth Hastings dab page for the others). Lady Betty should end up as a redirect to this lady (I'm sure she's the primary topic for it), so we will need a redirect hatnote to point to the ship. And if Elizabeth Sprague gets an article (or indeed a mention in an article which refers to her nickname), then we add her to that hatnote or think about a "Lady Betty" disambiguation page.
 * I'm trying to take a bit of a Wikibreak, but logged on to have a look at my watchlist this morning and spotted this. Pam  D  10:33, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * in case it's not on your watchlist, and as some of my post above was aimed at you specifically. Pam  D  10:55, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Ok, moved as requested. I haven't deleted the Elizabeth article as yet to avoid confusion.

Robinvp11 (talk) 11:42, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, I've just deleted it "to avoid confusion", as having two articles on the same person even temporarily might cause problems. And I've cleared away the two merge hatnotes. Well, turned it into a redirect. I've made a request to move this article back to its original title of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, see Requested moves/Technical requests, asserting that to be an uncontroversial move. I hope that's the case! Thanks for your help in promptly doing the merge. I'm not quite sure what happens to Wikidata, as I see that your article with the dates in the title was linked - but let's get the page move done and then get that fixed. We're getting there. Pam  D  14:39, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Change to disambiguation page
Elizabeth Sugrue is commonly known as Lady Betty. In fact, her surname is unknown to most people. If a person were to search for her on Wikipedia, they would undoubtedly search for Lady Betty and would end up on the wrong article, with no indication that the article they are searching for does in fact exist.

I propose changing this to a disambiguation page rather than a redirect. Gatepainter (talk) 07:11, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * To be clear, I'm proposing changing Lady Betty to a disambiguation page. Gatepainter (talk) 07:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Gatepainter I created this article in 2007, originally at "Lady Betty" until it was moved in 2019. You're saying that Elizabeth Hastings is not the Primary Topic of "Lady Betty". After a bit of Googling, I quite agree: I don't remember having heard of the Irish executioner (though I see I mentioned her in the discussion above, 3 years ago!), but there are far more Google hits for her than for the Yorkshire lady. Wikipedia pageviews confirm that the executioner is more read than the lady, with the ship trailing. While "Lady Betty" is a well-known name in and around Yorkshire for this local benefactress, the Irishwoman trumps her for an international encyclopedia.
 * I agree there should be a dab page at Lady Betty, and will do the necessary work: I think it's uncontroversial. There are a handful of incoming redirects, but I'll fix them. Pam  D  07:41, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * All done and dusted, I think. Pam  D  08:04, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Wow that was efficient work! Thank you! Gatepainter (talk) 11:29, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Gatepainter Just for info, I see now that I created the page at this title, and it was moved to "Lady Betty" by the now-blocked editor Neelix before being moved back! A complicated history. Pam  D  12:13, 13 July 2023 (UTC)