Talk:Emily Fowler

Wiki Education assignment: Fashion and Impressionism

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 January 2025 and 15 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): KashHishi06 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Ifercr.

— Assignment last updated by Ifercr (talk) 16:39, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox

I think it would lend clarity to the page to have an infobox. @Ssilvers why do you oppose adding an infobox? AddressingArt (talk) 22:09, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While sports and politician bios can benefit from infoboxes, as a Signpost report notes: "Infoboxes may be particularly unsuited to liberal arts fields when they repeat information already available in the lead section of the article, are misleading or oversimplify the topic for the reader". I disagree with including an infobox in this article because the box would misleadingly emphasize less important factoids, stripped of context and lacking nuance, whereas the excellent WP:LEAD section emphasizes and contextualizes the most important facts about the subject. In addition, as the key information about the subject that was included in the suggested box is already presented more clearly in the Lead and repeated again in the body of the article, the box would be a 3rd mention of these facts. -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:55, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully I disagree. Reserving infoboxes for athletes and politicians amplifies Wikipedia's already strong bias towards profiles of men and grants them more authority by doing so (it makes them appear "worthy" of summary). Male actors sometimes have infoboxes, so I think female actors should as well, especially when the page is as dense as Fowler's. AddressingArt (talk) 04:16, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's a completely straw man argument that holds no water at all, I'm afraid. An idiotbox grants zero "authority" and even less bias. Male actors often don't have IBs either. The opening sentences carry the key pieces of information for readers, and do so in a way that carries more context and information that it ever can in factoid bullet form. There's no need to have a box, and there is no "clarity" to be gained from one. - SchroCat (talk) 06:58, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By that argument, no page should ever have an infobox. Resorting to demeaning names (idiotbox) isn't helpful to your argument. AddressingArt (talk) 12:32, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No it doesn't; they work well with anyone who has held ranks or official positions, or sportsmen whose statistics can be tabulated within them. Putting up straw men arguments doesn't help yours. - SchroCat (talk) 12:37, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Studies have shown that articles about women have fewer and less comprehensive infoboxes than men and that affects their readership.
Isabelle Langrock, Sandra González-Bailón, The Gender Divide in Wikipedia: Quantifying and Assessing the Impact of Two Feminist Interventions, Journal of Communication, Volume 72, Issue 3, June 2022, Pages 297–321, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac004
Summary here.
"Langrock and González-Bailón encourage activist groups and Wikipedia editors to improve the coverage of infoboxes and increase the number of links pointing to newly created content."
Infoboxes allow a reader less familiar with the topic to glean its key facts at a glance. They also offer structured data that will improve search results and discoverability. AddressingArt (talk) 13:07, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Again, still a strawman argument, given the number of male actors without IBs. Any reader can glance at the opening lines to glean proper information at a glance, where it's present in with context and nuanced, not bald, largely ephemeral factoids that give weight to the less essential points of a biography. (And the bit about improved search results is crap: wikidata provides that for the search engines, regardless of whether there is an IB or not. Either way, there's clearly no consensus for inclusion here. - SchroCat (talk) 14:01, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You admit many male and female actors have infoboxes. What is the argument that Fowler specifically shouldn't have one?
The consensus process isn't about giving one group eternal veto power.
The point about search was made in the study: “The divides we analyze in this article have repercussions beyond Wikipedia,” adds González-Bailón, who directs the Digital Media, Networks, and Political Communication Group at Annenberg. “They have an impact on social perceptions of knowledge, but they can also propagate beyond Wikipedia as its contents are leveraged to correct misinformation, feed content to AI devices, or improve search engine results.” AddressingArt (talk) 14:12, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And there are many that don't. No one has said there is an eternal veto, but at the moment there is no consensus. - SchroCat (talk) 14:15, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I had never heard the argument you are making, that idiotboxes (one cannot demean a box!) make an article somehow more impressive. That would be antithetical to the purpose of the encyclopedia to present information in a neutral way, where the quality of the research, writing and illustrations are paramount. If you have good research that infoboxes are skewing that, it would be an excellent argument for removing them. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:33, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Since we can't change: 1) how readers perceive a page, 2) all of Wikipedia, I agree with the researchers in the article that we should counter any bias by adding infoboxes.
The comparison to other encyclopedias actually strengthens the case for infoboxes, as, for example, Brittanica has an analogous quick facts section on their biographies. AddressingArt (talk) 16:43, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What happens on other pages has no bearing on what happens on this one, so why would what happens on an unconnected site make a difference? If it did, we could look to the ODNB where there is no dumbing down of rich complex aspects of life to crass factoids stripped of context and nuance. I would refute the laughable assumption that IBs are somehow gender related - that's rather ridiculous. - SchroCat (talk) 16:52, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The study I linked to found that there is a bias. Your objections both seem to be categorical (no one should have infoboxes on any actor biography page) and so we alone won't come to consensus.
Note I do think the term idiotbox is meant to be demeaning, not to the box, but to those who read them and thus I think is inappropriate.
The ODNB has articles written by individual experts and is aimed at a more limited paying audience. Wikipedia is more accessible, democratic, and, theoretically, more welcoming to all kinds of readers.
My position and KashHish's is that an infobox here would lend clarity to an already dense page. I know students often look at the info box first and I also find them helpful. Finally research has shown there is a bias on Wikipedia toward articles profiling men and those pages (of politicians and "sportsmen" to use the language above) tend to be more comprehensive and feature infoboxes. Researchers have suggested infoboxes should be added to women's pages as well to counter this. Personally I think it'd be helpful to have them on all pages, but my argument here is particularly aimed at Fowler's page. AddressingArt (talk) 00:53, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Info-boxes become idiot-boxes when they do not do what info-boxes are meant to do, namely to summarise key facts about the subject.

As it happens, I created a new article yesterday and included an info-box because the basis of the subject could be clearly set out there. But for this actress there's no useful information one could add. Name, date of birth and death, profession are all clearly stated in the lead. Had she been famous for one or two roles in particular it could possibly be helpful to mention them in the "known for" element of a box, but even so, that should be prominent in the lead. Saying that x was an actress known for acting makes Wikipedia look silly and helps nobody. – Tim riley talk 07:27, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In this case I disagree as she was not solely an actress, but also manager of two different theaters, which was highly unusual for the day and could easily be overlooked in the dense write-up. Similarly she married three times and her years active were intermittent, all of which an infobox would helpfully summarize. Linking to the theaters she managed in the infobox would highlight that role in a clear way. Here it's not even a separate section and so the entire article must be read closely to discover it was not merely one theater but two. AddressingArt (talk) 13:29, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we have a consensus not to include. - SchroCat (talk) 13:33, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No response to my points at all?
3 to 2 is not really a consensus. It's a majority at this moment. AddressingArt (talk) 13:35, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Contrariwise 2:3 is not a consensus for change. You are quite wrong that it was unusual for women to run theatres and theatrical companies, by the way. And do you seriously imagine that people will visit this article to find out about her husbands rather than about what she is modestly famous for? Come on! Tim riley talk 13:42, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Forgive my ignorance. It was unusual in the French context, where my expertise lies. It hardly seems so commonplace that it should only be mentioned in passing in a single sentence solely on her biography page? I might agree if the pages on the theaters included lists of managers, but they do not. AddressingArt (talk) 13:56, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The differences between the Parisian and London theatres of the late C19th are considerable, and your ignorance of the latter is by no means reprehensible. But as this topic exchange is evidently going nowhere, any useful contribution you are able to make to the rather more important factual questions in the next section will be welcomed. Tim riley talk 14:07, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Like many of the actor-managers of the 19th century (and, yes, many were women), Fowler's off-again, on-again theatre management was merely a means of promoting and facilitating her acting career. Thus, it should not get a separate section in the article, and it would be highly misleading to emphasize it in an idiot box, where, as I said at the beginning of this "discussion", it would lack nuance, as would wasting space at the top of the article redundantly highlighting her unimportant marriages. This is a very good illustration of why so many infoboxes, created by people who have never done serious research about the subject matter, actually make articles about the arts less useful for readers. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:28, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I find the expectation that everyone reading the page should already understand the details of 19th cent. British theatrical production to be profoundly unwelcoming to the lay reader, who is the most common audience for a wiki page. A brief explanation and link to the actor-manager page would clarify that especially as it varies across theatrical contexts. Sarah Bernhardt's management of her own theater was a tremendous undertaking. AddressingArt (talk) 14:39, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I find your impulse to amplify incorrect assumptions through an infobox to be unencyclopedic. The topic of theatre management is not important to this article. Her management was so episodic that I hesitate to consider her an actor-manager. More like "sometime" actor-manager. In any case, not very important. The point is that the infobox would emphasize unimportant factoids, whereas the Lead section contextualizes the most important information about this person in a much more useful way for readers. The infobox would be misleading, which is to say "profoundly" unhelpful. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:59, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well then perhaps the lead should be revised as it currently gives equal weight to her acting, singing, and managing and though the article that follows does not. AddressingArt (talk) 15:14, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I do think the Lead should be expanded a little. The key thing to understand about this actress was her move from prominent early roles in Victorian burlesque (particularly those of Gilbert) and other musical roles in comic opera and pantomime to contemporary drama, Shakespeare, Sheridan and other classic drama, which the Lead already mentions but could be clarified. -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:20, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Date of death

On a more important note, I have read Gänzl's interesting article on Fowler but struggled a bit with his paragraph on her death. I entirely concur that the absence of any obituary notices - none even in The Era - is remarkable and puzzling, but I can't find her in the June 1897 quarter deaths listings for Shoreditch available via Ancestry.com, and I see that in the Obituaries section in Who's Who in the Theatre 4th edition, 1922, p. 1188, Parker gives her date of death as 1 December 1896. Parker usually gives the individual's age at death alongside each entry but for Fowler he doesn't, and I don't know what to make of that. Needless to say, following the lead in Parker I checked the newspaper archives for 1896 as well as 1897 and she isn't in either. Tim riley talk 08:44, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's an unreliable source using a potentially misleading source. The death certificate records just show that someone name Emily Fowler living in London died at that time, but there is nothing to say that this is the right Emily Fowler who died then. - SchroCat (talk) 09:24, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
True. And to be on the safe side I ran separate searches in Ancestry and in the press archives under her final married surname too, and found nothing. Should we go nap on Parker's 1 December 1896? Tim riley talk 09:38, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Probably for the best. The Morning Post of 20 February 1899 calls her "the late Miss Emily Fowler", but I can't pin down any news report that we can accurately identify as the right lady for several years before that. - SchroCat (talk) 10:00, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I twigged belatedly that as our lady's given name was really Susannah I should search under that as well, and lo!, the official records have her. A Susannah Fowler was born in Rochdale in July 1847, daughter of Samuel and Sophia Fowler, and married John Frederick Fenner and later Walter Latham Cox. This can only be our "Emily" (who had, incidentally, a younger sister who really was called Emily, as well as the three siblings mentioned in our article). According to the baptismal record the date of birth was 22 July (not 31 July) 1847. She was baptised at St John's, Smith Square if you please! They didn't seem to be in any rush to get babies christened in those days: the service was in 1849, and other children taken to the font that day were born in 1841, 1844 and 1846, as well as more recent arrivals.
Not sure where we get the statement that our lady took her stage forename in honour of her grandmother. From the official records accessible through Ancestry it is clear that her paternal grandmother was called Susanna and her maternal grandmother's forename is unknown.
In sum, I suggest we change d.o.b. to 22 July 1847, date of death to 1 December 1896, delete the reference to her grandmother, and include the pukka Emily in the list of her siblings. I have downloaded Susannah's baptismal record and a census form mentioning the real Emily. – Tim riley talk 10:35, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent work Holmes! I agree with the suggested changes, which seem appropriate. - SchroCat (talk) 10:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yet more! (Sorry about this.) I've looked her up in The Dramatic List, 1879 (forerunner of Who's Who in the Theatre) and she gives her birth details as "Born London, July 22 1849". It was par for the course in those days (and later!) for an actress to knock a year or two off her age, but the day of the month now looks pretty solid. But why London? Her eldest sister, Clarissa, was born there, but Samuel, Susannah, Emily and Sophia were all born in Lancashire, as the census records show. I thought I should mention this, but I suggest we stick with place and date of birth as Rochdale and 22 July 1847. @Ssilvers, you're the majority contributor to the article: what think you? Tim riley talk 11:00, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the weight of the evidence is Rochdale, 22 July 1847. Would you kindly make the change, Tim riley, and drop a footnote about the minority sources? -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:18, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Leave it with me. Tim riley talk 14:27, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now done. Tweak ad lib, natch. Tim riley talk 10:04, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sojourn in Paris?

Fowler was seemingly photographed by Disdéri in Paris in 1867. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/286628

Perhaps it was her honeymoon. I haven't found any further trace of her in Paris in that period. AddressingArt (talk) 14:22, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is interesting. Her entry in an almost but not quite reliable source, The Dramatic List, 1879, says, "At an early stage appeared on the continental stage as a dancer in ballet and spectacle" before coming to London in 1868, though that doesn't quite square up with the other dates mentioned in the article, but it looks convincing to me, given the link you have provided. Tim riley talk 14:39, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking more closely, I'm not sure the pictures at the metmuseum site are actually of Fowler. The shape of the face and general physical build are quite different. Tim riley talk 09:43, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even the images on the second row? The top row is another woman. AddressingArt (talk) 12:38, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, but both are, how to phrase this courteously?, robust figures and not, to my eye, like the delicate figure now seen as Princess Katherine in our article. Tim riley talk 14:20, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is this the page you're looking at?https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/286628/631055/main-image
I think the woman in the second row (the one id'ed as Fowler) looks quite a lot like the exisiting wiki photo. These IDs were written in the period and so I've found them all to be accurate thus far. AddressingArt (talk) 14:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No it isn't. I was looking at the ones in your earlier link. This second, b&w, set looks very much like EF to me, and I suppose she looks young enough to have been photographed in Paris before returning to England aetat fifteen (if we believe the date in the press profile, which I'm not sure I do). Tim riley talk 14:32, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah the Met link is confusing, you have to flip through the pages to get to the correct one. I'm glad you agreed it looks like Fowler as the resemblance was striking to me. I've been working to confirm IDs on all the women in the album and they've been accurate this far. The fact she's in the Demimonde album also makes it likely she appeared on the stage. AddressingArt (talk) 14:35, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Music hall and other things

  1. I've removed the statement that she was on the halls before going on the West End stage. I think Gänzl may have mixed her up with Emma Fowler, who was a serio-comic on the halls at that time. Admittedly I have found one reference to an Emily Fowler as a music hall performer: "the ballads of that improving vocalist Miss Emily Fowler", (from "London Music Halls", The Era, 3 January 1864, p. 5) and the venue is Deacon's, much mentioned in Gänzl's article. All the same, that's the only press mention I can find of an Emily Fowler on the halls, and this one may not be our gal. I may be wrong, of course. Thoughts invited.
  2. Likewise I'd like to see Gänzl's evidence for saying EF was in the chorus of Black-Eyed Susan before being promoted to play Gnatbrain.
  3. I'm not proposing to examine the arithmetical implications of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News's " She came to England when fifteen years of age, and was engaged for the Royalty Theatre by Miss Oliver, making her London debut in Black-Eyed Susan", as the piece doesn't say she made that début immediately after returning to England. Tim riley talk 10:02, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  4. And the bibliographical elements of the citations could do with a wash-and-brush-up. Any objections to my giving them one? Tim riley talk 10:36, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Objections? No. Grateful thanks? Yes! BTW, you mention Beeton: Samuel Beeton is given as "editor" of the book, though the text may be by his wife. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:36, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Will do. Samuel must be right, I think. Mrs Beeton died in 1865, ten years before the book came out. Tim riley talk 10:10, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
References now tidied up. Tim riley talk 11:02, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Barrington

Ssilvers (and anyone else who may be interested): I'm puzzled by Barrington's statement, "we remained good friends long after she retired from the stage, though we only met once a year on the roof-stalls of the grand stand on Derby Day". I don't see how this stacks up with the known chronology. Her first retirement was in 1880, after which she was with her soldier husband in far-flung parts of the empire until 1893 or 1894, so couldn't have met Barrington annually at Epsom. Her second retirement was in 1894 after her abortive return to the West End and she died two years later, so there wasn't a "long after" she retired. I think we should blitz this sentence. Tim riley talk 16:20, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed and done. Barrington's remark wasn't very illuminating, regardless of which retirement he meant, even if she and her husband were back and forth between the two. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:06, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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