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Research dossier · History & Society

1939 Griffith by-election

Australian federal by-election

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, 2025
Entity authorityQ5608930 ↗
Source-derived summary

A by-election was held for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Griffith on 20 May 1939. This was triggered by the death of Labor Party MP Frank Baker.

The election was won by Labor candidate William Conelan by eight votes.

Immediately after Baker's death, there was some speculation that Queensland premier, William Forgan Smith would contest the by-election.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1939 Griffith by-election” is australian federal by-election. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Griffith, by-election and Australian, 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—1939—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Griffith, by-election and Australian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “australian federal by-election” 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

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5608930. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939.

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 “1939 Griffith by-election”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1939 Griffith by-election primary sources, 1939 Griffith by-election archive and Griffith 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 “1939 Griffith by-election”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1939 Griffith 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.