Ted Devey
English footballer (1871-1945)
Edwin James Devey (19 March 1871 – 2 September 1945) was an English professional footballer who played as a left half.
Life and career
Born in Aston, which was then in Warwickshire, Devey played for Birmingham Excelsior before signing for Small Heath in 1888. A defensive wing half with strong tackling, he went on to make 155 appearances in the FA Cup, Football Alliance and Football League for the club in the early days of its history. He helped the club win the inaugural Second Division championship in 1892–93 and promotion to the First Division the following year. In 1896 he moved to Burton Wanderers; playing against them in the 1887–88 FA Cup, he had scored four goals in Small Heath's 9–0 win.
Devey came from a footballing family; brother Will played for Small Heath and several other Midlands clubs, and other brothers Jack, Harry and Bob also played for Aston Villa. Another brother, Abel, was a cricketer with Staffordshire.
The 1939 Register lists Devey working as a diesinker and toolmaker and living with his wife, Florence, in the Handsworth area of Birmingham. Devey died in Birmingham in September 1945 at the age of 74.
“Ted Devey” enters the record as english footballer (1871-1945). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Devey, English and footballer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Ted Devey” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Devey, English and footballer provides the most credible route into that argument.
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 Oct 1, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7693136. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1871, 1945, 1888 and 1892.
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.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Ted Devey” 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.