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Gordon Harvey

British politician (1858-1922)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 22, 2021
Entity authorityQ5585252 ↗
Source-derived summary

Alexander Gordon Cummins Harvey (31 December 1858 – 6 November 1922) was a British cotton manufacturer and merchant and Liberal politician.

Career

Gordon Harvey (as he was usually known) was born in Manchester the son of Cummins Harvey who was a partner in the cotton yarn and cloth manufacturing firm of Fothergill and Harvey. Gordon Harvey himself went on to become the head of an important firm of cotton spinners, manufacturers and merchants with mills at Littleborough and with warehouses and offices in Manchester.

Politics

Lancashire County Council

A Liberal in politics, and sometime Chairman of Middleton Division Liberal Association, Harvey was elected to Lancashire County Council in the year after its creation and was later made an Alderman of the county. He remained chairman of the county education committee up until the time of his death. He also served as a Justice of the Peace in Lancashire.

Parliament

Harvey first stood for Parliament at the Khaki election of 1900 as Liberal candidate for Rochdale. The election was fought in the jingoistic atmosphere of the Second Boer War which favoured the Conservatives. Despite taking the anti-war side Harvey still managed to come within 19 votes of beating the sitting Conservative MP, Clement Royds.

Harvey was elected as MP for Rochdale, however, at the 1906 general election beating Royds, who had held the seat since 1895, by 1,463 votes.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gordon Harvey” is british politician (1858-1922). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gordon, Harvey and British, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1858, 1922, 1900, 1906—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1858-12-31. For this dossier, Gordon, Harvey and British is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british politician (1858-1922)” 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

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2021. The linked authority identifier is Q5585252. VIAF identifies the subject as 280621848. The Library of Congress control number is nb2012027642. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1858, 1922, 1900 and 1906.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. 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

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gordon Harvey”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gordon Harvey primary sources, Gordon Harvey archive and Gordon 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 “Gordon Harvey”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gordon Harvey” 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.