Talk:Madeleine Astor

Spelling
FWIW: her death certificate reads "Madeleine Talmage Dick", her obituary read "Madeline Dick", her middle name is given variously as Talmage and Talmadge (it seems to be the maiden name of either her mother or grandmother). The hyphenated form "Force-Astor" appears frequently on the web but does not seem to have ever actually been used in relation to her in her lifetime. Once it's decided if it's to be kept, might consider whether it should be at "Madeline Astor" or "Madeleine Astor", and make only some of the more obvious redirects: (how many permutations are there for a woman with 6 names, 2 of which can be spelled at least 2 ways!?) - Nunh-huh 05:42, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

August 30: It says that she gave birth the day Titanic was struck by the iceberg....I doubt this as correct information because she was on Titanic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.156.3.36 (talk • contribs) 21:53, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Age at marriage?
If the DOB given (June 19, 1894) is correct, then she would have been 17, not 18, years of age on September 9, 1911. This page gives her DOB as June 19, 1893 but I do not know how authoritative it is. I am changing the DOB to 1893 as that seems to fit better with published accounts I can find. 143.252.80.110 12:02, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * That appears to right, I must have missed it when I rewrote much of the article. MechBrowman 01:38, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

WP Biography Rating
Due to a backlog it is no longer possible to give comment on ratings. Please put any comments/questions on my talk page. GDon4t0 20:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

she gave birth to a son with whom she was pregnant with on the Titanic, and she named him after her husband, John Jacob Astor. this part was by avery christine A.C.P.--24.73.180.34 (talk) 20:34, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Name
Madeleine's legal name was stated as "Madeleine Astor Dick", not Madeleine Astor. Her death notices read "Madeleine Dick" and it is stated she went back to her former married name after divorcing her 3rd husband. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TimothyBanks (talk • contribs) 04:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * What matters most in this matter is her common name. The factor of common name is something that you keep neglecting with your article moves. Just because a woman marries a man does not mean that her article should be of that last name. The article's title about the man or woman, real or fictional, should be their common name, because that's the name that they are mostly known by, called, and also the name that most people are likely to type or look under when searching for that person. The way you go about changing the last name of a woman's article from her common name to her married name, one would assume that Britney Spears' article should have been moved to Britney Spears Federline or Britney Federline while she was married to Kevin (though it actually was moved under the name Britney Federline at one point). But that (was) would be wrong, considering that her common name is Britney Spears and that she did not make the name Britney Spears Federline or Britney Federline common in any way. Flyer22 05:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Strange comment
Because I recently edited this article, I was just asked via e-mail if the photo of the Astors was Photoshopped because it looks unrealistic. Strangely, I know the answer to this, and it's "no": it was manipulated, but decades before Photoshop. It wasn't unusual in the 1910s (edit) for developers working for newspapers to edit photos in the darkroom; although their techniques were primitive (and usually obvious to us), the changed photos often went unnoticed at the time. This image is specifically mentioned as having been manipulated (or "airbrushed", as the term was in the 1980s) in two books on the Titanic I own. It's not the only Titanic-related photo to be manipulated in such a way, either. There's a photo of the ship itself out there that's been just as badly manipulated - it's supposed to be an image of the ship at Cherbourg with all its lights blazing, but in reality the ship reached Cherbourg long before sunset - the "lights" were created in some newspaper darkroom, I suppose to make it seem more dramatic.

I thought I'd mention this on the talk page in case anyone else was wondering. --NellieBly (talk) 00:42, 31 December 2009 (UTC)