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earlier comments

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Bates is called 'Daisy' throughout. I would change it to conform with the convention of using people's surnames rather than given names (do we speak of Abraham, or Lincoln?), but as I am unsure of the Wikipedia convention, and can't find it, I will only mention that I think it seems very odd. Alpheus 11:41, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

De Vries etc

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You should alter much of the early information on Bates to catch up with modern research. A book by Susanna de Vries is about to come out in 2008 which will support this. You will realise she was a liar and a serial bigamist. Firstly Bates was born as Margaret Dwyer in Roscrea, Tipperary on 16 Oct 1859. Her parents were James and Bridget Dwyer. Bates age and birthdate is no longer in doubt elswhere. Her tombstone in N Adelaide gives her age on death (April 1951) as 91 which relates exactly to the 1859 birthdate. Other information points to this birthdate, a birthday book in Streaky Bay museum and also a letter in the Zimbabwe archives to Ramon de Bertodano written in 1945 in which she says "I am approaching 86 summers" (I have a copy). She sailed steerafge on the "Almora" on the 22 November 1882 from Plymouth arriving at Townsville on 15 Jan 1883.There is a diary written by a cabin passager in the Queensland Archive of this voyage in which she is mentioned. Essntially she was very poor and the passages about enjoying the high life and losing money in investments is rubbish. She married Ernest Clark Baglehole on 10 June 1885 at St Stephen's Church Newtown as a spinster and giving her birthplace as ireland and her father as James E O'Dwyer as usual. it is quite possible that she also contracted other marriages in her trip to England 1894-99. ther is much more but hopefully you will amend the article. Joseph West (talk) 09:41, 17 December 2007 (UTC)Joseph West[reply]

Thanks Joseph. I have no objection to you adding the material above WRT to Baglehole and date of birth etc. We need to ensure that everything is reliably sourced and don't start speculating about "possible" other marriages, although I'd also read somewhere about an engagement to a Philip Gipps in 1884/85. If there's anything like that, discuss it here first. —Moondyne 00:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
De Vries has been added to 'further reading' - it might help any further editoras of this article to backup some of the perosnal life issues - also the whole article needs a 'lack in text cites' as well SatuSuro 13:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Attitude to people of part Aboriginal descent and her "erroneous" credit

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I have added the Perth Sunday Times quote in order to make clear why Daisy Bates is not necessarily regarded as a heroine by all indigenous Australians, many of whom are of part Aboriginal descent.--Jbeureka (talk) 06:57, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot find any support for the statement that Bates' remark that "the only good half-caste is a dead one" was erroneously attributed to her. In fact the account in Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert by Bob Reece includes her response to James Harris strong rebuke of her remark, which is difficult to interpret in any other way than her endorsement of the remark. in the absence of any evidence to the contrary I am inclined to remove the reference to "erroneous". Cabrils (talk) 23:56, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed it. The confusion seems to have been over where she made the remark: Not in her June 1921 article but in her reply to Harris. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 03:31, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Daisy's income

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From the article, referring to the 1930s:

Later the Commonwealth Government paid her a stipend of $4 a week to assist her in putting all her papers and notes in order and prepare her manuscript. But with no other income it was impossible for her to remain in Adelaide so she moved to the village settlement of Pyap on the Murray River where she pitched her tent and set up her typewriter.

No other income struck me as a little odd because I would have thought that given her age and poverty she would have been getting the Age Pension. The Australian Bureau of Statistics gives a good roundup of eligibility here http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/b4005c38619c665aca25709000203b8d/8e72c4526a94aaedca2569de00296978!OpenDocument

Depending on her situation with assets, age-wise she would have been eligible from 1919. Or did she reject a pension?

The other thing that I wonder is whether she was receiving any royalties for her book, The Passing of the Aborigines? According to the State Library of Victoria catalogue there were three editions of the book before her death in 1951 - the first in 1939, then 1944 and again in 1947.

Would she not have recieved a pension if she was earning a mite by journalism? Was she receiving any income from The Advertiser, or just given a desk?

I have no idea what the answer is here, I just raise it as a query.

Lenore10 (talk) 14:07, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bias

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this article has bias as seeing Daisy as savior of aboriginal people but sources indicate otherwise especially from the aboriginal perspective "BLACK MAN'S BURDEN". The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954). Perth, WA: National Library of Australia. 10 March 1928. p. 18. Retrieved 15 May 2014. I htink there should be something more substantive about this facet. Gnangarra 12:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation

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Daisy Bates isnt a placename so why is it disambiguated like she is one, surely a more appropriate disambiguation can be used. Gnangarra 14:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NCPDAB says that the disambiguator "is usually a noun indicating what the person is noted for being in his or her own right". I suggest that Daisy Bates (anthropologist) best encapsulates her notability. Mitch Ames (talk) 23:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I would support a move to (anthropologist). AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 00:33, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Her notability at different stages of her life, and since does not make her an anthropologist at all, she has been described as much as a welfare worker and writer - however the ADB article identifies her as such. For most of the time since her death mainstream anthropologists have either ignored, denigrated or downplayed her role and work, and a considerable number of aboriginals have questioned her work. A genuinely neutral NPOV application should identify her as a writer and be less POV JarrahTree 01:40, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I make no comment about the relative merits of "writer" vs "anthropologist", but (per Gnangarra's original comment) either would be better than "Australia". Mitch Ames (talk) 04:03, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved the page to Daisy Bates (Australian author). —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:17, 18 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Moved a second time to Daisy Bates (author) since the only other Daisy Bates with their own article is better known as an activist than an author. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:05, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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Bigamous Marriage(s)

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It has been suggested that Bates's second marriage was not in fact bigamous, as her first marriage was technically illegal due to Morant apparently being underage (see Joe West and Roger Roper, 'Breaker Morant: The Final Roundup' (Amberley Publishing, 2016). I have amended the description of her marriages accordingly, but if any disagreements due to other evidence, please do say ... Jay4283 (talk) 18:02, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Additional source

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This is a recently published work that could be useful for developing the article. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:14, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Self-published source

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This article relies heavily on a book by Brian Lomas, published by CreateSpace, a self-publishing service. Anyone can self-publish anything, hence we cannot use such a source per WP:SELFPUB. If anyone here knows reliable sources for the claims currently backed by Lomas, I suggest to add them. In a few days I'll go through this article and remove any statements not supported by reliable sources.

Lomas's book is also very clearly biased, as the title Queen of Deception already shows. Frankly, that the article relies so heavily on an unreliable and biased book puts its neutrality in question. I'll try to ensure that Bates gets a fair treatment and welcome anyone who'll join me in this endeavour. Any serious reproaches against her are of course to be included, but they have to be backed by reliable sources and must not be given UNDUE weight. Gawaon (talk) 17:27, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Gawaon, I agree that self published sources come with a lot of serious problems.
However, I'd argue that we don't remove the content which has him as a sole source.
Firstly, as to the book's title. Yes 'Queen of Deception' is not a neutral title, however, it is only a title. de Vries book is called "Desert Queen: the many lives and loves of Daisy Bates", Reece's is "Grand dame of the desert" and Salter's is "Daisy Bates: The Great White Queen of the Never Never". None of these titles are particularly neutral, but I wouldn't question their neutrality. Additionally, could you explain what you mean by bias? Are you suggesting that the title suggests that Lomas had some kind of grudge?
When I originally started to edit the article, I found that the two other recently written biographies, one written by Bob Reece (Grand Dame of the Desert, 2007) and the other by Susanna de Vries (Desert Queen, 2008), continued a lot of the myths that were propagated by Bates and Elizabeth Salter in their 1971 biography. Reece and de Vries would sometimes contradict one another, and they are both quite awful in giving citations (I cannot stress this enough), so it was near impossible to write anything that wasn't "Reece says this, while de Vries says this".
Lomas on the other hand is more or less consistent at giving citations (and when he doesn't I've been using other sources and leaving what he said out of the article). To check that he wasn't making things up, I went to the J.S. Battye Library of West Australian History to see that his sources were saying what he said they were saying (I did this a couple times, early on).
Reece in particular has been a massive headache. For example on page 37 he explains that Bates camped at Ma'amba reserve in 1901 and was invited to meet the duke and duchess in 1901 because she organised a corroboree to welcome them on their arrival in Perth. However, this is false because Bates only went to Ma'amba after begin hired by the government in 1904, additionally there are other sources that describe that what was organised in 1901 was not a corroborree and that it was not organised by Bates. Reece seemed to have read Salter's biography of Bates and did little research of his own.
It appears that neither de Vries nor Reece actually read many/most/all of Bates's first articles. For example:
  • They both disagree on what "From Port Hedland to Carnarvon by Buggy" (1901) was about. de Vries thinks that it "covered her observations of the Indigenous people she had encountered" but this is plainly false if you read the article (as I have). Reece correctly says that it was more a travel account (hence why I gave him as a source).
  • They both think that Bates started her enthographic work shortly after arriving in Perth, but there's no evidence of this. They both just trust Bates on this, but if you actually read her papers you see that they have nothing to do with anthropology. Again, Lomas was the only one to actually read the papers himself.
Lomas, while being self published, has done a lot of fantastic research on the topic, combing through old newspapers to corroborate Bates's whereabouts (old newspapers contained the names of folks who arrived at a port), reading through a ton of archival material which is spread over the country (he travelled to Adelaide, Perth and Canberra while doing this).
Because I don't like to be sloppy, I've been checking his citations and reading them when they're available online (and at the WA library a handful of times), and besides a handful of mixed up references, or page numbers off by one or two, he's been quite reliable. I've tried to remain critical of him however, so whenever his citations are sloppy, or other biographers aren't just taking Salter at face-value, I've relied on other sources. He does get overly critical at times (often assuming that Bates outright lied when it could have been an honest mistake), when he does this I don't add that content to the article.
Instead of removing the parts which give Lomas as the sole source, instead I'd recommend you:
  • Remove the content that has been unsourced for extended periods of time.
  • Expand upon the sections that are undeveloped.
  • Add sources to things tagged with 'citation needed'.
However, if you are still unconvinced, please raise which sections you have concerns about here. I can provide quotes and citations from his book, add citations from other sources if they're available, reword or remove things if they're unfairly critical, etc.
I'd appreciate being able to improve the article, rather than much of the past year of work being deleted without constructive discussion. I'm sure I've made mistakes in terms of content and it would be nice to have someone other than myself wanting to improve this article.
FropFrop (talk) 02:40, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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