Talk:Thomas Ashburton Picken

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A fact from Thomas Ashburton Picken appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 5 March 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Thomas Picken's lithograph of the 1834 conflagration of Britain's Houses of Parliament (detail pictured) was created when he was around 16 years old?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Thomas Ashburton Picken.

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How many Thomas Pickens?[edit]

While creating this article on Thomas Ashburton Picken I discovered that there was a pre-existing wikidata authority control setup about a lithographer, under the name "Thomas Picken", which gave minimal and wrong information about him. The source information for this had become so entrenched that when I corrected the information, questions began to be asked as to whether Thomas Ashburton Picken was actually another lithographer.

In response to this, I have made extensive efforts to establish whether or not there were two lithographers by that name. I have put all my research in the form of citations into the article. Most of the citations are secondary sources. Some of the citations are considered primary by WP, but they are there to assist any researcher who would like to double-check the secondary sources, and the sources which support the original wikidata and authority control sources. Yes, there is a lot of background information on him there, but it is there to assist further research on this question.

As far as I can work out, the authority control or identifier sources were carelessly using the artist's flourishing dates (begin career and end career dates) as birth and death date, or just death date. The story that Picken had emigrated to Australia in 1870 and died there is not supported by any evidence as far as I can see. I have found no evidence that there could be two Thomas Pickens who were lithographers; any other Thomas Pickens found in the newspaper or census have very different careers. There is one Thomas Picken (not a lithographer) in the 19th-century newspapers who was arrested for violent crime - who knows, perhaps he was the one who was deported to Australia in 1870 and died there - I have not followed up that lead. But if you look at those old wikidata identifier sources, you will see that they are all based on very little knowledge indeed. It is also apparent that because they knew so little, they have all copied each other. That is why this article is researched independently of the old, incorrect, identifier sources.

There has been some suggestion of keeping the corrected wikidata page as it now exists under the name of Thomas Ashburton Picken (which I'm happy with), but of also re-creating the previous Thomas Picken wikidata page with all its original (incorrect in my opinion) data, on the grounds that there could be two Thomas Pickens who were lithographers. I would suggest that this would be a misleading step, because I have found nothing to support those old previous wikidata sources.

I'm putting this information here so that you may check the facts as you see fit, and respond here if you believe that I am mistaken. Certainly, if you can find evidence that there are two Thomas Pickens who were lithographers working for Day and Haghe (later Day & Son) in London in the 19th century, then I should be pleased to correct the article accordingly. I hope this helps. Storye book (talk) 15:19, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]