Talk:Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby

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date of birth 12. septembre or 12. december??

There are differences between the german and the english version.. -- 80.145.184.164 (talk) 23:52, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've been having a look at this issue.

We say he was born 12 December, but both of the major reference sources we use (The Peerage and Alumni Cantabrigienses) say he was born on 12 September. So there's a conflict there already.
This very detailed page from Cracroft's Peerage also says 12 September.
This says he was born on 12 September 1752 and was registered at Preston on 3 October. That kind of puts paid to any birth in December.

However, it gets worse. From Gregorian calendar#Adoption in Europe:

Britain … adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, by which time it was necessary to correct by 11 days. Wednesday, 2 September 1752 [OS] was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752 [NS].

That is, there were no such dates in Britain as 3 - 13 September 1752. But Lord Derby's supposed date of birth "12 September 1752" fell within this group of non-existent dates.

How can we interpret this?

One possibility is that he was actually born on 23 September 1752 [NS], and someone has calculated that that would have been 12 September in the OS calendar, and the 12th is the date that got reported and has come down through the public records. Only trouble is, the OS calendar ceased to have any relevance in Britain 10 days before this birth occurred (if that's in fact when it actually occurred), and hence such a calculation is meaningless and useless.

More likely is that the adoption of the new style calendar took a little while to bed down, particularly amongst those who saw it as papist evil, and old style dates continued to be used for some some time in some records.

I'd happily agree that an error was made and he really was born on 12 December - were it not for the above cite that shows him being "registered" on 3 October, which presumably means he was alive on that day. Further, if he was born in December, why do all the major reliable sources report a September birth?

Basically, we can rule out BOTH 12 September 1752 and 12 December 1752. So, when was he actually born? My gut says 23 September 1752, but we need more than my gut instinct to go on.

Why has nobody noticed this problem before now? I base that question on my exhaustive trawling through online resources, but it may have been canvassed in biographies I've not seen.

We really do need to get this sorted out. Can anyone help? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 05:18, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]