Talk:Ohio Penitentiary

Untitled
Those pictures should probably be a gallery, not all to the right side, descending ridiculously lower than the actual article.--Bedford 04:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject Prisons
If anyone is interested, a new wikiproject has been proposed for the creation and improvement of articles regarding specific prisons, internment camps, and detention centers here.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 02:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Ohio Penitentiary. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20060519012500/http://columbusretrometro.typepad.com/columbus_retrometro/city_scene/index.html to http://columbusretrometro.typepad.com/columbus_retrometro/city_scene/index.html

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 01:27, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Final warden (superintendent)
The article says
 * The last warden was T.D. Taylor.[citation needed]

It's probably true, but I cannot find a WP:RS saying so. Terry "TD" Taylor's (probably family-written, so not a WP:RS ) obituary says "Terry held a variety of positions with the ODRC including with London Correctional Institution, old Ohio Penitentiary (last warden), Orient Correctional Institution and Central Office."

As head of the facility, one would expect him to be the named respondent in a lot of prisoner lawsuits, and he was:
 * Steele v. Taylor, 697 F. 2d 128 (6th Cir. 1982);
 * Richter v. Taylor, 925 F. 2d 1465 (6th Cir. 1991).
 * Penix v. Taylor, no. 81-6957 (1982) at 46 (cert. denied)

So there are reliable sources saying that a guy named Terry or "TD" Taylor was a head of the facility as it neared its end; but I can't find anything other than the obit that says he was the final head of the facility at the time it closed.

I'm leaving this comment in the hopes that it will spark something someone else can follow up on. A few things to bear in mind for anyone else who wants to run on this:


 * The guy's actual name was "Terry Taylor" and that may find things "TD Taylor" or "T.D. Taylor" does not. (And for what it's worth, nothing pertinent turns up for me searching on a "Terrence", "Terrance", "Terence" or even "Terance" Taylor.)
 * By the time the facility closed, it was no longer named the Ohio Penitentiary; it was the "Columbus Correctional Facility", a factoid I just added to the article.
 * The job title by the time of closure was not "warden" but "Superintendent".

I'm giving up, but this may help someone else (maybe someone with a newspapers.com subscription) find it. If it's worth keeping; if it's so hard to find, that means no one else has bothered documenting it, and maybe Wikipedia ought not to be the first place doing so. TJRC (talk) 02:49, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I can take a look soon. The obituary is noted to have been published by the Dispatch, a very reputable source, I would think for obituaries as well... Nevertheless, I can look on newspapers.com and elsewhere; the news database is available via the Wikipedia Library, by the way! ɱ  (talk) 02:57, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * This is as good as it's going to get: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/58494008/telegraph-forum/ ɱ  (talk) 03:08, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you're right; that's as close as we'll get.
 * By the way, I didn't mean to suggest that the newspapers in which these family-written obituaries are published, like the Columbus Dispatch, are not, in general, reliable sources. I'm distinguishing between those obituaries that are staff-written and published by the newspaper as a matter of news of a prominent death (like you often see in the New York Times, for example); as distinguished from those obituaries that are basically extended "death notices", generally supplied by the family of the deceased and published by the paper as both a service and a source of revenue. The one I noted above falls into the latter category, and would not be a WP:RS. TJRC (talk) 18:32, 2 September 2020 (UTC)