Talk:Joseph Chamberlain

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Error in Infobox

The Infobox states, "Leader of the Opposition, In office, February 1906 – February 1906". So he was Leader of the Opposition for less than a month then. This seems unlikely. HairyWombat (talk) 05:24, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is entirely accurate. Balfour lost his seat at the 1906 general election. Chamberlain stood in for him as Leader of the Opposition until Balfour found another seat and resumed his post. InfectedWithRage —Preceding undated comment added 12:22, 22 May 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Good enough. It might be an idea to make this clearer in the article. HairyWombat (talk) 18:23, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Joseph Chamberlain/CommentsTalk:Joseph Chamberlain/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Informative, but uncited, with a lead, which IMO does not consist a proper summary of the article. I think it needs a peer-review.--Yannismarou 09:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 09:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 20:31, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Date of Main Photo

Does anybody know where the main photo is from, so that we can verify the date?

1909 would mean it was taken after his stroke - his right hand does look awkwardly arranged, but my understanding is that he could no longer wear his monocle after his stroke (it is of course not entirely impossible that it could have been fixed into place for a photo with a couple of tiny dabs of something sticky).

The 1977 Enoch Powell biog has a photo of him clearly taken after his stroke (although annoyingly not labelled as such) - hand awkwardly arranged with fingers splayed, and not wearing his monocle.

There are few photos of him from the Edwardian period but I saw one in a hotel in Birmingham, taken during his birthday celebrations, and in which he looked aged and exhausted, in line with eyewitness accounts. It's not impossible that the photo in the article was taken much earlier, as he still looks fairly youthful as he did up until about 1900.Paulturtle (talk) 17:49, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's from the Library of Congress, the information about it is here. DuncanHill (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - if the date is right it's not impossible that his face has been overpainted to make him look a bit younger, like they used to do with Soviet photos in the interwar period, and a monocle could have been added at that stage.Paulturtle (talk) 18:27, 30 April 2017 (UTC) And if, as I suspect, the photo has been airbrushed a bit (if it actually dates from 1909), they might also have painted over any signs of drooping on the right side of his face. The only photo of him in public (his only public appearance in fact) after his stroke is his appearance at a garden party at Highbury in late May 1914, his farewell to Birmingham, reproduced on p.665 of the Peter Marsh biog. He looks a lot pointier about the face there and his right hand appears to be clenched into a fist.Paulturtle (talk) 23:56, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, here is another from 1913 with his daughter Ida (published the following year when he announced his retirement - my comment above that the only photo of him in public after his stroke was in May 1914 is clearly incorrect):

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/joseph-chamberlain-liberal-politician-illustrated-london-news-ltdmar.jpg

He looks thin about the face, in line with eyewitness accounts that he looked ill and was ageing rapidly after his serious head injury in the early 1900s, a bit droopy on the right hand side (note the artfully arranged right hand), and of course not wearing his monocle. So that's further circumstantial evidence that the "1909" photo may in fact date from somewhat earlier. The odd-looking arrangement of the fingers on his right hand in the "1909" photo is consistent with the "1906" photo of him standing relatively healthily outside Parliament, later in the article, so is not necessarily evidence of it being taken post-stroke.Paulturtle (talk) 03:56, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Place of death

Although Wikipedia lists Joseph Chamberlain's place of death as Birmingham, the following sources report that he actually died in London: [1] ; [2] ; [3] ; [4] ; [5] ; [6]. Perhaps this should be corrected. ~2025-38316-99 (talk) 22:42, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for spotting that, I have corrected the infobox. DuncanHill (talk) 23:08, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]