Template:Did you know nominations/William Tarrant

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William Tarrant

  • ... that after William Tarrant was sacked from the civil service of British Hong Kong, he became a journalist and ran a 12-year-long vendetta that led to his imprisonment? Source: "Tarrant lost his position in the colonial administration in 1847 as a result of an allegation [against] William Caine ... Excluded from the colonial administration, Tarrant decided to embark on a new career as a journalist ... The end of Tarrant's career in Hong Kong came when he was sued once again ... by his old enemy William Caine, now Lieutenant-Governor, against whom Tarrant had waged what was by then a twelve-year public vendetta. He was found guilty ... and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment." (all parts of the hook are stated in [1])

Created by Nizolan (talk). Self-nominated at 00:31, 12 July 2019 (UTC).

Symbol question.svg Hmm new enough and long enough, no evidence of plagiarism, etc. My favorite sentence in here is "A man of obscure origin, ..." but unfortunately that part is not verified in the source. I don't really want to go through every sentence right now; I'd rather hear from Template:U first. Drmies (talk) 01:23, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Template:Re Thanks for noticing the missing cite—it must have dropped out while I was rearranging references. That should also be from Endacott, who says he was from a "humble family" and that the circumstances of how he got to China were disputed, which hopefully rendering as "of an obscure origin" isn't too big a leap (at any rate there are no sources at all on what he did before 1837). I added the ref. —Nizolan (talk · c.) 01:36, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Nizolan, thanks for that. Usually I'm not so picky, but I will be here: "humble" means something specific here, in terms of class, which makes even more sense with the following comment, that he "served before the mast" (are you familiar with the expression? it's the place for the regular sailors because the officers are all behind the mast--but Ishmael will tell you the air is much cleaner there. see also the less high-falutin' companion volume to Moby-Dick, Two Years Before the Mast). Anyway, I latched on to this also because I just taught Marlowe's Doctor Faustus: Faustus is born, "his parents base of stock...". So "humble", I think, really matters, and it might signal also that his origins weren't "obscure" (that is, unknown), but rather that they weren't worth talking about, for instance. Anyway, I'm checking out the rest of the article. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 13:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)