Talk:Phyllis Pearsall

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:36, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Urgent inquiry

"She claims that she started mapping the next day. This involved walking 3,000 miles to check names and house numbers of 23,000 streets of London, waking up at 5am every day, and not going to bed until after an 18-hour working day." This is referenced to the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography, but access to that requires a subscription which I do not have. I need to confirm whether that source does indeed make that claim. There appears to be some controversy as to whether the claim is true. Not, as I understand, a controversy relating to whether Mrs Pearsall put forward a falsehood but rather the opposite: that this is a myth which she tried to correct in the public record, but which she failed to correct. And now, all these many years later, Wikipedia repeats it as if uncontroversial.

I've been asked to speak on the radio about this case tomorrow morning, and so I'm urgently trying to study it and presume someone here can help me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:44, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

As I continue my research while waiting for someone clever to rescue me, it seems likely that whatever controversy there is here does center on her claiming to have done such a thing as walk 3,000 miles to check names and house numbers, when there are those who doubt it. I've not yet come across any statement that she tried to debunk the urban legend, if it is one.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:48, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

It's sort of in there. It mentions "23,000 card alphabetical index of streets" which she "compiled", and the "18-hour working day". I don't see anything about 3000 miles or getting up at 5am every day. The book she published was entitled "Premier Map of London, Thirty-Five Miles Round London" - that's the only reference to "miles" in the entry.

Email me if you need more specific info or excerpt from the entry.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:01, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Nothing in there about any myths, being corrected or not.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:03, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The stuff about waking up at 5am and 3000 miles apparently came from this source, although the text predates the addition (by an IP) of that citation [1]. The text has been in the article pretty much since its creation [2]. Then somebody monkey up the citation [3] and added a whole bunch of editorializing, although in the process they removed the unreliable source,. It stayed monkeyed up for about a year and a half until someone cleaned it up by removing the left over numbering from the old citations [4] and added the ODNB source.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:13, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Says it's in her autobiography but this blog says it's an urban myth. Raquel Baranow (talk) 15:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Another blog post with more references proving it's an urban myth. Raquel Baranow (talk) 15:31, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that first link is the source that was placed in the article. The funny thing is, that that source (which is not reliable) used Wikipedia as its own source. Someone then went and used it to source Wikipedia back. Circular sourcing.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:37, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The urban myth idea comes from a librarian who was given an inaccurate version of her claim. Obviously the Ordnance Survey mapping was available for the shape of the streets - but they don't give street names or numbers and that was an essential part of the success of the A-Z. I do have access to the ODNB article (which I quoted from) via my local library and could forward the entire article somewhere if Jimbo wants - I can be emailed and will respond. Chris55 (talk) 15:54, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

The Myth

Allen | October 8, 2012 at 19:49 | Reply Not sure if your excellent and accurate blog page will make much difference to the myth (largely drawn up and perpetuated by Pearsall herself). I have written to newspapers and magazines over the past few years pointing out that my copy of a 1925 Bartholomews Handy Reference Atlas of London should swiftly refute her claims. Despite being published in the Guardian and New Statesman, the old canard is still trotted out by lazy journalists.

I have just altered her page on Wikipedia, but I don’t hold out much hope for my changes lasting the night.

Good luck, anyway.

Allen

Source http://greatwen.com/2010/10/25/urban-legends-phyllis-pearsall-and-the-a-z/ Gordo (talk) 08:07, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I notice you haven't changed the article and maybe you didn't need to. The source you quote is as guilty of misrepresenting Pearsall as she might have been romantic. The claim that she invented the first popular street map is I believe defensible; why it didn't prove popular before is probably due to a mixture of a number of different reasons. The article now records her father's earlier British and his American products in the same field and I find it fascinating that she made sure his name was on the credits page until she died. Chris55 (talk) 16:21, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I've just listened to the conversation on BBC Radio 4's Today programme (20 May at around 8.55am) and it's fascinating. For a start, John Humphrys (I think it was), introducing, inflates the distance that Pearsall is claimed to have walked to 35,000 miles and nobody challenges it, including Peter Berthoud whose blog gave rise to the interview. 3,000 over 6 months is 16 miles per day which isn't impossible and appears in Sarah Hartley's biography, as well as 23,000 streets in a recent play in London. Visiting 7-8 streets for every mile walked is less likely but may be possible if at least one end is visited. If the figure doesn't appear in either of Pearsall's autobiographies (which I haven't seen) then one has to dig deeper into where Hartley found the figure. (I've long since returned her book to the library.)

Berthoud depends largely on Peter Barber's ("former head of maps at the British Library") account "There is no evidence she did it and if she did do it, she didn’t need to.” He says that Phyllis’s father, “Alexander Gross, had been a map-maker and produced map books of London that were almost identical to the A-Z in everything but name". What this ignores is that post WWI London was growing very fast, there was a huge amount of relocation going on and previous maps were getting very out of date. Her father's map covered a much smaller area. She claimed to include "9,000 more streets than any similar atlas index". i.e. 64% more. (from a photo in the Hartley book which can't be reproduced in WP.) Whether the claim is accurate I haven't checked.

Finally there's the party story. It's not a big part of the total and if it can be shown to be Hartley's invention then we should probably omit it. Berthoud claims to have checked both the published autobiography and the almost unobtainable "autobiographical novel" and says it's not in either. Anne Pimlott Baker in the DNB version reduces it to "when she got lost one evening in the streets of London and subsequently realized that the most recent street map of London dated from 1919 she decided to produce her own." Is this reasonable?

But anyway, WP didn't come in for snide remarks on the programme. Chris55 (talk) 18:45, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

21st Century Mapping of London, on foot.

See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/London Gordo (talk)

Phyllis Pearsall--Myth vs. Truth

Phyllis Pearsall: Myth vs. Truth

This contribution is entirely aimed at making improvements in the current wiki essay about Phyllis Pearsall and provides specific sources for introducing such changes. We're pleased to see in your "Talk" section the beginnings of a controversy around the alleged exploits of Phyllis Pearsall Gross, especially since we are in a position to shed a great deal more light on this matter.

Who are we? Phyllis's closest surviving blood relatives, whom the author and editors of her purported bio consulted insufficiently or not at all. I'm Alexander Gross (Jr.), her American half-brother, and you will also be hearing from her niece Mary West (Gross) and her nephew Jean-Pierre Gross, both British subjects and children of my half-brother the artist Anthony Gross.

The indisputable fact of this matter is that the current wikipedia essay about Phyllis contains so many errors that it must be totally withdrawn and rewritten. There is not only ample evidence proving this to be the case, but this ample evidence has been fully available on the web for the past four years for anyone who might have cared to take a look. The web addresses provided here should be included in your External Sources.

This evidence was first posted by ourselves in 2014 as a corrective to the then imminent Phyllis "musical," for fear that this musical might take off and spread all the fables about Phyllis even further. The journalist and blogger Peter Watts praised it on his website "The Great Wen:"

https://greatwen.com/2014/01/06/phyllis-pearsall-and-searching-for-truth-in-the-a-z/

and it also led to an article presenting our views in a major London newspaper, I believe it was "The Telegraph." You can also see the contributions of my (and also Phyllis') niece and nephew Mary West Gross and Jean-Pierre Gross, which clearly support most of the conclusions presented in these other sections, here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/family.htm#top

The problem all along has been that the alleged bio of Phyllis contained a remarkable number of errors and actually added new errors of its own, which even its author described as invented. This book further relied almost exclusively for its facts and interpretation on an extremely faulty source: my sister's two highly subjective, self-published attempts at autobiography. Throughout her adult life my sister Phyllis, though competent and highly skilled in many ways, enjoyed a somewhat delicate relationship with the truth.

Feel free at any time to begin your search for the many aspects of the real story behind the A-Z Atlas of London here:

www.untoldsixties.net/a_to_z.htm

For instance, if you would like more information about the many errors in the supposed bio of my sister, look here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/journey.htm#top

For more information about the errors in my sister's family autobiography "Fleet Street Tite Street Queer Street," look here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/fleetite.htm#top

Or the further errors in her book "From Bedsitter to Household Name--The Personal Story of A-Z Maps":

http://www.untoldsixties.net/bedsit.htm#top

There are lots of other sections on this page you may find of interest, all of them adding up to the incontrovertible truth that wikipedia's story currently available on line about my sister is highly questionable.

Curious about our father? You can read something far closer to the truth here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/papa.htm#top

Or about my own intimate experiences with my sister Phyllis over several decades, here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/phyllis.htm#top

About the 2014 Phyllis musical and our family's reactions at the time, here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/musical.htm#top

About my correspondence with the publishers of the bio claiming to represent Phyllis, here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/sands.htm

How critics and the public described this bio, here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/litcrit.htm#top

Reactions to the book from cartographers (plus my own experiences walking US streets in order to map them), here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/mapcrit.htm#top

You can also see the contributions of my (and also Phyllis') niece and nephew Mary West Gross and Jean-Pierre Gross, which clearly support most of the conclusions presented in these other sections, here:

http://www.untoldsixties.net/family.htm#top

More recently my niece Mary West Gross has added the following observation: "Phyllis continues to be talked about over here in connection to the A to Z Guide to London, still in publication and displayed in book shops and stalls. However, as the young generation only use the maps in their IPHONES [Apple] and do not buy guides anymore, Geographers' Map Co. has had to reduce in size as sales have decreased. The reason Phyllis was one of the few early women to achieve fame as a successful business woman in the UK until her death in 1996, was because of her talent at publicity, as well as her very good business sense and dedication. That is, I am sure, why she will not be forgotten."

And many other sections, all of them adding up to the conclusion that Peter Watts was entirely correct on his website "The Great Wen" when he called the whole Phyllis/A-Z story an "Urban Legend."

So no, as one of your contributors pointed out, my sister Phyllis never walked 3,000 nor 35,000 miles to map London. This--along with a great deal else--simply never happened. The contours for most London streets were perfectly available at various borough and county offices. Here's how Peter Watts quotes Peter Barber, until recently chief curator for cartography at the British Library: ‘The Phyllis Pearsall story is complete rubbish. There is no evidence she did it and if she did do it, she didn’t need to.'

Alex gross (talk) 22:55, 15 January 2018 (UTC)Alexander Gross (Jr.) January 15, 2018

http://language.home.sprynet.com/ http://www.untoldsixties.net/

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