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L. B. Billinton

British engineer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ6456346 ↗
Source-derived summary

Lawson Butzkopfski (or Boskovsky) Billinton (4 February 1882 – 19 November 1954) was the Locomotive Engineer of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway from 1912 until the company became part of the Southern Railway in 1923. He joined the LBSCR in 1900 as an apprentice. By the end of 1907 he was a district locomotive superintendent at the railway works at New Cross. From February 1911 Billinton was locum tenens, or caretaker, for Locomotive Engineer D. E. (Earle) Marsh at Brighton works whilst Marsh was on leave of absence due to ill health. Earle Marsh resigned in July 1911. Billinton was promoted to Locomotive Engineer at the beginning of 1912.

In 1917 Billinton was commissioned as a temporary lieutenant colonel in the Royal Engineers, and he served on military missions to Romania and Russia. He retired from the SR aged 40 in 1923, taking up fruit farming at Bolney in Sussex. Billinton died in 1954 at Lyme Regis in Dorset.

Early career

Lawson Billinton was born in Brighton, the third son of R. J. Billinton, who later became the LBSCR's Locomotive Engineer in 1890.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “L. B. Billinton” is british engineer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Billinton, British and engineer, 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—1882, 1954, 1912, 1923—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1882-02-04. For this dossier, Billinton, British and engineer is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british engineer” 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 Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6456346. VIAF identifies the subject as 19471476. The Library of Congress control number is no2007134535. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1882, 1954, 1912 and 1923.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. 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.

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 “L. B. Billinton”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow L. B. Billinton primary sources, L. B. Billinton archive and Billinton 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 “L. B. Billinton”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “L. B. Billinton” 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.