Talk:John Foster (MP for Northwich)

Birth

Comparing the ODNB, Who's Who, and Foster's father's entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography points up something quite interesting -

• ODNB - Foster, Sir John Galway (1903–1982), lawyer, was born in Paris on 21 February 1903, the only child (he also had a half-brother and two half-sisters) of Brigadier-General Hubert John Foster, Royal Engineers, military attaché at the British embassy in Washington, and a woman whose surname was Galway, an Irish Canadian. No birth certificate can be found.

[The original 1990 version of the article in the DNB is vaguer - Foster, Sir John Galway(1903/4–1982), lawyer, was the only child (he also had a half brother and two half sisters) of Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert John Foster, Royal Engineers, military attaché at the British embassy in Washington, and a lady whose surname was Galway, an Irish Canadian.]

• Who's Who - Foster, Sir John (Galway) - KBE 1964 - Born 4 Nov. 1904; s of late General Hubert John Foster; died 1 Feb. 1982

• ADB - He married Mary Agatha Gough, née Tobin, at the British consulate, Venice, Italy, on 16 January 1904. [...] He was survived by his wife and their son, (Sir) John Galway Foster, who later became a member of the British House of Commons.

My reading of these is that the chain of events went something like -

1. JG Foster is born in Paris to Colonel Foster and Ms. Galway, February 1903
2. Colonel Foster and Ms Gough marry in January 1904
3. JG Foster, in later life, presents himself as born November 1904, a safe nine or ten months after his parents marriage.
4. This is not completely unknown - whoever wrote the 1990 DNB article was aware of it - but pretty much everyone quotes the 1904 date

I am pretty confident the ODNB is accurate - it's the most recent source (revised 2004) and is the one I would tend to prefer over the others. I've updated the article accordingly. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:54, 29 December 2017 (UTC)