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1878 Canterbury colonial by-election

By-election in New South Wales, Australia

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 22, 2023
Entity authorityQ99767475 ↗
Source-derived summary

A by-election was held for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly electorate of Canterbury on 10 January 1878 because Sir Henry Parkes was appointed Colonial Secretary forming the third Parkes ministry. Such ministerial by-elections were usually uncontested however on this occasion a poll was required in Canterbury and The Lachlan (James Watson). Both were comfortably re-elected. The other 5 ministers were re-elected unopposed.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1878 Canterbury colonial by-election” is by-election in New South Wales, Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Canterbury, colonial and by-election, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1878—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Canterbury, colonial and by-election is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “by-election in New South Wales, Australia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 22, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q99767475. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1878.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1878 Canterbury colonial by-election”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1878 Canterbury colonial by-election primary sources, 1878 Canterbury colonial by-election archive and Canterbury research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1878 Canterbury colonial by-election”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1878 Canterbury colonial by-election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.