Jack Dorrington
English footballer (1881-1944)
John Dorrington (2 June 1881 – 9 January 1944) was an English footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He spent his entire 12-year professional career with Birmingham (renamed from Small Heath in 1905), for which he made 106 appearances in the Football League.
Born in Smethwick in 1881, Dorrington played football for minor clubs in that area. While with Soho Villa, he signed amateur forms with West Bromwich Albion, but never played for their first team. After a year with Kidderminster Harriers of the Birmingham and District League, he joined Football League First Division club Small Heath in 1901. The consistency and reliability of Nat Robinson meant that Dorrington made only ten appearances in his first six seasons. He was first-choice goalkeeper for the next two years before injury intervened, then regained his place in 1909–10 before blood poisoning effectively put an end to his career and nearly cost him his leg. He retired from playing in 1913.
Dorrington then ran several pubs, organised charity football matches, and coached the junior teams at Aston Villa. He died in 1944 at the age of 62.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jack Dorrington” is english footballer (1881-1944). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jack, Dorrington and English, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “english footballer (1881-1944)” 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.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6112152. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1881, 1944, 1905 and 1901.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Jack Dorrington”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Jack Dorrington primary sources, Jack Dorrington archive and Jack research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jack Dorrington”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Jack Dorrington” 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.