J. E. Woolacott
British journalist and activist
John Evans Woolacott (1861 – 31 January 1936) was a British journalist, newspaper editor, and political activist.
Born in Milford Haven, Woolacott was educated at the Menai Bridge School. He became a journalist, and from 1887 was a lobby correspondent for the Central News Agency, later working for the agency in Ireland, Morocco and Egypt.
Woolacott became interested in social matters by reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty. He joined the English Land Reformation League, and later also the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party (ILP). At the 1895 UK general election, Woolacott stood unsuccessfully for the ILP in Glasgow St Rollox, and he was also unsuccessful in Finsbury Central in the 1898 London County Council election.
During the 1890s, Woolacott was editor of the Democrat, which had been founded by William Saunders, and assistant editor of the Weekly Dispatch. In 1903 he became assistant editor of The Economist. He was elected as president of the Institute of Journalists in 1908, but left the post to become assistant editor of The Statesman, in Kolkata, then in 1913 became editor of the Bombay Gazette. This soon closed, and Woolacott returned to England.
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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 Jul 11, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q58815508. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1861, 1936, 1887 and 1895.
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This entry incorporates text from “J. E. Woolacott” 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.