Talk:Arthur Newnham

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by TarnishedPath talk 10:09, 27 July 2025 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that Arthur Newnham was born in India, played first-class cricket in England, and served as a military attaché in Moscow?

• Source: Birth: CricInfo is the easiest to use as it also sources his cricket – https://www.espncricinfo.com/cricketers/arthur-newnham-18055

CricketArchive is an alternative, but is paywalled Cricket: as above, or his Wisden obituary also verifies – https://www.espncricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/229835.html Moscow: Victoria Cross Online – https://victoriacrossonline.co.uk/lanceray-arthur-newnham-gc-mc-direct-recipient/

Transcriptions of Indian newspapers also suggest this, but don't flat out say it

• • Reviewed:
  • Comment: Think this is OK. If the sourcing for serving as a military attache is not OK, we have two Indian newspapers which say he was with the Bombay Staff Corps in Moscow when he was married so an alternative ending along the lines of ...and was married in Moscow might be possible

5x expanded by Blue Square Thing (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Blue Square Thing (talk) 05:44, 22 June 2025 (UTC).

• Blue Square Thing, I am rather concerned that I get nothing about this man when I search for him on Google Books. See the results for "Arthur Newnham" "cricket" and "Arthur Newnham" "moscow". It leads me to wonder whether the subject is notable. Are our only sources marriage registers and obituaries? Surtsicna (talk) 10:32, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

There are 14 sources in the article, with the clear indication there are more in printed media that hasn't been digitised. My experience with articles such as this suggests notability is OK with this, but, to be honest, I only submitted this because it was the last article in a list that was being set up to be sent to draft space. I'm perfectly find with it failing DYK if you don't feel that having a book reference makes it dubious. You'd probably need to look in Indian sources fwiw – that's where he seems to have spent most of his working life. After retirement I'm 99% certain he was living in the south of France, but, presumably, returned to the UK at some point, perhaps in 1939. Anyway, I'd sort of forgotten about this, so whatever Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:07, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

A lack of Google Books coverage doesn't equate to non-notability: probably most subjects I write about for DYK aren't written about much in books. If you think the article is non-notable then take it to AFD and place the nomination on hold (though I'll say that the subject looks notable to me); otherwise I don't see anything that should stop this nom. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:56, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

I asked whether there were sources beyond the obituaries and marriage registers, BeanieFan11. Do they seem sufficient to you to establish notability? Surtsicna (talk) 08:06, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

@Blue Square Thing: Are you able to add additional sources? @Surtsicna: If you still think this article is not notable per WP:GNG, can you please bring the article to WP:AfD? Z1720 (talk) 23:27, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

I doubt very much I'd be able to access the sources that people would be looking for. At AfD this is no worse than a redirect to one of the lists that he appears on, but I think there's a very, very strong NEXIST argument that can be made here. There are clearly multiple references to him and his family in Indian newspapers – Allen's Indian Mail, Times of India etc... (I can see, for example, that The Pioneer named him as one of the principal cricketers in India in 1889, but there's no chance whatsoever that I'll be able to find articles from that source digitised not behind a paywall, and the searching looks like it would take a while – I have more than 2000 hits on Newnham with a time restriction of 1880 to 1910 in various Indian papers at Granth Sanjeevani) The only ones that are accessible are those that have been digitised by volunteers. I suspect there will also be references to him in Moscow media which is totally inaccessible to me. And probably from the south of France. I imagine that a full trawl through the Times and other such sources will find refs as well – he's certainly mentioned quite frequently in Cricket (the search function is OK, but not perfect obviously). It wouldn't surprise me to find more detailed references in Malvern archives as well, which are largely not digitised. Ultimately what Wisden says is really quite strong – it doesn't say these sorts of things about most people who got obits. And he played for the Gents v Players – this is pretty notable by itself. Put everything together and you've got WP:BASIC I think – the first bullet.

This doesn't need to go to DYK from my pov. Honestly, I think it's better sourced than at least one of the articles at DYK right now, but I think I've given up trying to work out any of this sort of stuff :-)

I could trawl all the sources but I'll be away for most of the next six weeks. There will be times I can check back here, but I doubt very much I'll have more than a block of two or three days to focus on any articles. There's no way I'll have time to do the leg work to find the sources, if they've actually been digitised. But, and I don't invoke NEXIST frequently, I have no doubt whatsoever that they're there Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:49, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I haven't looked into it much, but I would say the Wisden obituary is SIGCOV, and Blue Square Thing is someone I trust regarding the notability of cricketers (i.e. if he says a cricketer is notable, I would think he's probably right). BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:08, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Long enough, new enough. No QPQ necessary and Earwig is clean. Hook checks out to refs 1 and 11. Let's roll.--Launchballer 01:04, 27 July 2025 (UTC)