Remembering George Walker (13-iii-1803 23-iv-1879)

[John Upham]

Remembering George Walker (13-iii-1803 23-iv-1879)


https://britishchessnews.com/2020/04/23 ... 3-iv-1879/

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[John Townsend]

I have just looked on familysearch.org and found two baptism entries for George Walker, the son of George Walker and Ann, both on 17 April 1803.

The first, apparently the register for St. Marylebone, gives date of birth as 20 March 1803.

The second, which I take to be the Bishop's Transcript for the above, gives date of birth as 21 March 1803.

What is the source for 13 March 1803 (the date of birth given in the title of this thread)?

[John Townsend]

I see P. W. Sergeant gave 13 March 1803, but I don't see how that can be correct, considering the parish register entries which I mentioned above.

[Tim Harding]

I have just looked on familysearch.org and found two baptism entries for George Walker, the son of George Walker and Ann, both on 17 April 1803.

The first, apparently the register for St. Marylebone, gives date of birth as 20 March 1803.

The second, which I take to be the Bishop's Transcript for the above, gives date of birth as 21 March 1803.

What is the source for 13 March 1803 (the date of birth given in the title of this thread)?

20 March 1803 is the date usually stated for Walker's birth so thanks to John for providing evidence backing that up; I too would like to see what was your source for the alternative date.

Furthermore, I find it very disappointing that your under-researched article repeats (by quoting the Oxford Companion article without any correction) the common mistaken attribution to Walker of the early chess column in The Lancet.
I debunked that in my doctoral thesis and the detailed proof was repeated on pages 23-24 of my book British Chess Literature to 1914, in which I traced the source of the error back to a mistake in Walker's Illustrated London News obituary, presumably contributed by Duffy.
Hooper and Whyld probably got it from there.

Such propagation of error needs to be stamped out every time it appears.

Among other points, you might quote from the December 1876 Westminster Papers portrait of Walker, which included a brief memoir by Walker himself. Neither the WP editors nor Walker himself made any mention of The Lancet which Walker never claimed to have written. Maybe Duffy misunderstood something Walker once told him.
The true author of the Lancet column was the founder-editor of that medical paper, Thomas Wakley, as stated in his biography by S. Squire Sprigge who knew his subject personally.

Your article, as it stands, does further damage by linking to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article on Walker, brief as it is (at least it doesn't mention The Lancet) contains a different error where it says:

"Walker used his column in Bell's Life in London to propagate organizing the international London 1851 chess tournament, the first international chess tournament."

This is the opposite of the truth,
On the contrary, the London Chess Club (of which Walker was a member) was so miffed at Staunton rejecting its proposal to be involved in the organisation that it ran its own rival event. (Dr Adrian Harvey has written in detail about this row.)

Walker went so far as to use his column to attack Staunton's tournament as the "mock national tournament"; see especially Bell's Life in London, 19 October 1851.