The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. Consensus is that the article needs work, but this should be fixed by improvement, not deletion. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:51, 30 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Arthur Colborne Lankester

Arthur Colborne Lankester (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)

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Nothing in this article can be verified. The only source I can find in relation to the existence of this individual is this journal article and a few forum and self published articles related to this individual published after 2022 (which I assume were taken from the journal article). Sohom ( talk) 16:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC) reply

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. CptViraj ( talk) 16:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC) reply
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Religion, Medicine, India, and England. Deltaspace⁴² ( talk • contribs) 16:48, 1 January 2024 (UTC) reply
• Google Books tells me more about Alice Grace Fox Lankester than about her husband from the history books ( ISBN  9780252098802 p. 314, UIP); and the other result is literally a professional directory (Churchill Medical Directory) that gives me this person's telephone number in 1962 (Walton-on-Thames 24862), a bunch of post-nominals, two medical medals, a hospital superintendency, and "Director H.E.H. the Nizam's Med. & Sanit. Dept.". However "nothing in this article can be verified" is simply untrue. I followed up on the source for the tuberculosis programme, for one, and there it was in the source. It's also in the Medical Directory entry as "Special Deputation for Tuberc. Inquiry, Govt. India". The CMS sources cited are not findable by me, but I did find other CMS sources at least listing this person as a missionary, verifying at least that fact in the article too. There is a handful of little sources that do join up. A detailed obituary would definitely swing it, although I've only found a 1-sentence death listing so far. Uncle G ( talk) 17:46, 1 January 2024 (UTC) reply
  • @ Uncle G I agree the "Nothing in this article can be verified." is hyperbole on my part. However, I would assume that there would be a non-zero number of sources on the "Serai System" being talked about here. I haven't been able to find any sources from that period talking about this system that this person invented/created (which makes up a large portion of the article as well as the claim to notability for this individual). Sohom ( talk) 18:30, 1 January 2024 (UTC) reply
    • The Ebrahimi reference goes to some length to describe the Serai system in historical context, the role Lankaster played in developing it and disseminating it, and its origins in the locally recognizable architectures being adapted for a different use and a medical social function. There is a non-zero number of sources. Please see section 4 of the Ebrahimi article. [1] https://brill.com/view/journals/ehmh/79/1/article-p67_003.xml?language=en
    • Breamk ( talk) 02:07, 8 January 2024 (UTC) reply
      • That source is fairly persuasive. Peer-reviewed on-topic journal; in-depth discussion; credentialed historian of architecture. I only looked for sources on the person rather than on that specific work. But there's a lot on the work from that source that complements the rather more sparse sources on the life that together give us enough about life and works to make an in-depth article, which I think can get us over the bar. You can expand upon the wife from the aforementioned UIP book, by the way. A quick look for the hospital shows several mid-20th-century sources mentioning the brother Cecil Lankester in association with it. So there are two things already that the article has scope for further expansion upon. Uncle G ( talk) 08:21, 9 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, asilvering ( talk) 23:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC) reply

• Keep: weak, but sources below meet GNG. (edited 20:35, 26 January 2024 (UTC), see comment below)
• Delete: see below. 09:29, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Source eval:

Comments	Source
Meets SIGCOV	1. Ebrahimi, Sara Honarmand (2022). "Medical Missionaries and the Invention of the "Serai Hospital" in North-western British India". European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health. 79: 67–93. doi:10.1163/26667711-bja10013.
Fails WP:IS	2. ^ Jump up to:a b "Beginnings in India, by Eugene Stock (1917)". anglicanhistory.org. Retrieved 2023-12-09.
Fails WP:IS	3. ^ Jump up to:a b c Oxenham, John (1918). Vernon Harold Starr 1882-1918 and after. London: Church Missionary Society. p. Chpt 2. Retrieved 8 January 2024.
Meets SIGCOV (See below) [2]	4. ^ Jump up to:a b c Lankester, Arthur (1920). Tuberculosis in India its prevalence, causation and treatment (Accessed via googlebooks ed.). London: Butterworth and Co. p. 317. Retrieved 8 January 2024.
Fails WP:IS	5. ^ Jump up to:a b Church Missionary Society (1894). "Register of Missionaries (1804-1894)". Church Missionary Society Periodicals.
Fails WP:IS	6. ^ Lankester, Arthur Colborne (1895). "Annual Medical Mission Breakfast". British Medical Association: 77–81 – via Church Missionary Society Periodicals.
Brief mention, (better link [3])	7. ^ "From Tomb to Hospital: Pakistan Army's Conservation of Peshawar's Heritage Monument". Pakistan Defence. 2023-05-20. Retrieved 2023-12-09.
Fails WP:IS	8. ^ Lankester, Arthur (1912). "The Needs of the N. W. Frontier". Mercy and Truth 16. 16: 297.
Fails WP:IS	9. ^ Jump up to:a b "The Annual Meeting". Preaching and Healing: The Report of the CMS Medical Mission Auxiliary for 1905-1906: 24. 1906.
Fails WP:IS	10. ^ "Keswick Convention Medical Mission Meeting". Mercy and Truth. 106: 296. 1905.
Fails SIGCOV	11. ^ "Henry Martyn-Clark 1857 - 1916". Henry Martyn-Clark 1857 - 1916. Retrieved 2023-12-09.

 //  Timothy ::  talk  08:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC) reply

@ TimothyBlue The 3rd source you mention is written by the subject of this article, "Arther Lankester". That (imo) should be in the "Fails WP:IS" category. Sohom ( talk) 08:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC) reply

• How did I miss that...  //  Timothy ::  talk  09:29, 16 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC) reply

A comment by a grandson

At the age of 82, I am Arthur Lankester's eldest surviving grandchild. I remember him well. I have a type-written copy of his autobiography. I turned that into a paper back book, a copy of which which is now held in the Church Mission Society Crowther library in Oxford.

I realise that I suffer from having a conflict of interest, as does the autobiography. However, it seems a pity if the best available source has to be largely ignored. My initial reaction on reading the article's text and the reasons for deletion was that it seemed a pity to throw away this information but that, unless the text of the article can be made more accurate, it would be best to delete the article.

I need to learn much more about the Wikipedia editing process but it appears to me that the main reasons proposed for deletion are that he was not sufficiently notable, the lack of independent sources, and that the article is an orphan.

Notability I am obviously biased here but he founded the Mission Hospital in Peshawar and was very much involved in the founding of the Osmania hospital in Hyderabad. He was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind medal (Second class in silver) in 1908. (See the Indian Medical Gazette, August 1908 Page 317.) In his position of Director of Medical and Sanitary Services for Hyderabad, he was effectively in charge of the health services of a small country. His book "Tuberculosis in India" is still an important text and the Wikipedia Article could (if corrected provide useful background material to this subject.) (By the way, his job in Hyderabad was not a Government of India post as is stated in the article; he was recruited by the Nizam and his staff.) (See the Englishman's Overland Mail for 5 February 1920, the Times Obituary of 21 November 1963.)

Independent Sources Google provides plenty of sources about his work in Peshawar; there is even a picture of a memorial to him in the Burg Said Khan, which later became the hospital chapel. Of particular note are articles by Dr Ali Jan, a prominent local historian in Peshawar. I will produce a list. There is rather less written about his work in Hyderabad but the best article is in the Englishman's Overland Mail of 5 Feb 1920.

I do not fully understand the problem of the article being "an orphan". Once a Wikipedia page had been produced there are many web pages that could be linked to it.

I apologise for my poor understanding of how Wikipedia works and will return when I have more references. Jim462 ( talk) 18:21, 20 January 2024 (UTC) reply

@ Jim462 I think if you can find links/clippings/evidence to some of the articles by Dr Ali Jan and the obituary, we could put this over notability. Based on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5183017/?page=1 the Indian Medical Gazette source counts as a mention. Searching Dr. A. C. Lankester shows us some sources, however, I'm unsure if they are related to your grandfather? For example, I found this article in the The Lancet on p191-121 is this about the subject or somebody else ? Sohom ( talk) 18:45, 20 January 2024 (UTC) reply

https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_East_and_the_West/ejEMAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Dr.+A.+C.+Lankester&pg=PA222&printsec=frontcover is also another source I found which seems to be a mention of the subject. Sohom ( talk) 08:06, 21 January 2024 (UTC) reply

https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Proceedings_of_the_Church_Missionary_Soc/860_AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Dr.+%22A.+C.+Lankester%22&pg=PA118&printsec=frontcover is another one as well. Sohom ( talk) 08:08, 21 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Hmm, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv27qzr8k provides some context about him and his work on Tuberculosis in India (I think). Sohom ( talk) 08:20, 21 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist to see if additional sources are accessible.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:36, 22 January 2024 (UTC) reply

• Draftify Hi User:Jim462, I'm writing as a history professor and I know something about the history of British India. I think your grandfather was a historically interesting, notable figure. The problem with this article is that it is essentially original research ( WP:OR) combined with a single good secondary source (Ebrahimi 2022). (The Pakistan Defense article link is broken.) I suspect if you did some reading in the historical literature on medicine in British India you would find more references to him, which would support a Wikipedia page on him. Alternatively, you could write a brief paper about him for a historical journal based on your own research - he has other publications in his own lifetime besides those mentioned here - but that original research cannot be the basis for a Wikipedia page. Llajwa ( talk) 18:52, 26 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Some more IS references to him by historians, on JSTOR:

• BRIMNES, NIELS. “Vikings against Tuberculosis: The International Tuberculosis Campaign in India, 1948-1951.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 81, no. 2, 2007, pp. 407–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44452113. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. "The first extensive discussion of tuberculosis in India was written by Dr. Arthur Lankester in 1920, and he estimated that..."
• [Mentioned by User:Sohom above] VENKAT, BHARAT JAYRAM. “To Cure an Earthquake.” At the Limits of Cure, Duke University Press, 2021, pp. 23–76. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv27qzr8k.5. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. "Arthur Lankester , who appears later in this chapter, took a slightly diff er ent view, contending..."
• Bottomore, Stephen. “Early Missionary Filming and the Emergence of the Professional Cameraman.” Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks, and Publics of Early Cinema, edited by Marta Braun et al., Indiana University Press, 2016, pp. 19–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bmznbd.5. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. "Stock noted of Cash’s film of Dr. Lankester of Peshawar that “... the sudden sight of Dr. Arthur Lankester walking down the Khyber Pass among the camels will not soon be forgotten by those who were present that night”. Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society ... vol. 4 (London: CMS, 1916), 503."

Also see:

• Rao, B. Eswara. “From Rajayak s(h)Ma (‘Disease of Kings’) to ‘Blackman’s Plague’: Perceptions on Prevalence and Aetiology of Tuberculosis in the Madras Presidency, 1882–1947.” The Indian economic and social history review 43, no. 4 (2006): 457–485. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/001946460604300403. "In 1915, the Government of India circulated to all the Presidencies a compre- hensive report submitted by Arthur Lankester on the prevalence of the disease along with certain suggestions..."
• Venkat, Bharat Jayram. “A Vital Mediation: The Sanatorium, before and after Antibiotics.” Technology and culture 60, no. 4 (2019): 979–1003. https://muse-jhu-edu.revproxy.brown.edu/article/741380. "As a result of the Lucknow resolution, an ex-medical missionary and Director of the Medical and Sanitation Department for the Nizam of Hy- derabad named Arthur Lankester traveled across Burma and India for eleven months collecting evidence concerning the prevalence of tuberculo- sis on the subcontinent. In particular, Lankester drew on the accounts of women medical missionaries and physicians, whose work in the zenanas made them among the vanguard in detecting tuberculosis among Indians. His informants assured him that there was “scarcely a zenana . . . which has not some case of tuberculosis!”20 Reinforcing the importance of missionary intervention, he noted that women confined to zenanas were usually un- able or unwilling to leave their home in order to seek medical treatment."

Llajwa ( talk) 19:03, 26 January 2024 (UTC) reply

The world expert on tubercolosis under the British Raj seems to be this UCLA historian: [ [4]], who discusses Arthur Lankester in two of his publications I cited above - if you email him at the address given, he might be interested in corresponding with you. Llajwa ( talk) 19:30, 26 January 2024 (UTC) reply

I should get back yo my own work but I've been reading Venkat's prizewinning book on tuberculosis, At the Limits of Cure, which discusses Lankester's work in chapter one - it's quite fascinating. It's free on JSTOR. I hope you will make your grandfather's autobiography available online. Llajwa ( talk) 19:49, 26 January 2024 (UTC) reply

• Comment: I admit I want to keep this article. Strike my delete above based on:

• Meets SIGCOV: [5]
• Meets SIGCOV: [6]
• Meets SIGCOV: [7]. The article alone doesn't meet SIGCOV, but the film it mentions would meet probably meet SIGCOV so together I think this passes.

I didn't look at others because this was enough for me to think it meets WP:N. I rarely use the sources must exist claim, but in this case there probably is more out there. The above discussion I think shows persons interested in the subject and willing to discuss sources and improve the article. If we applied the standards we use for athletes and entertainers to academics this would be a speedy keep.

@ Jim462:, I hope your family is happy and blessed. Greetings from Los Angeles,  //  Timothy ::  talk  20:35, 26 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Thanks for this Timothy. I will continue to follow this up. I have had copies printed of his 220 page autobiography so with that I have not, until now, needed to research him on other sources. The conflict of interest rules of Wikipedia make it difficult for me to correct the page. (As just one little example, my grandparents had 4 children, not one child as stated in Wikipedia. - my father Stephen born in Hyderabad, my uncles Christopher and Arthur Hugh, and my aunt Dorothea all 3 of whom were born in Peshawar.)

Sources about his time in Hyderabad are more difficult to find than those about Peshawar. For example, when ACL left Hyderabad Mr R I R Glancy the Minister of Finance wrote on 23 March 2020 commenting that ". . . the regard of the people which was strikingly exhibited in your election to the Chair of the Hyderabad Municipality, an honour, so far as I am aware, never before awarded to a European. yours sincerely, R I R Glancy". I am sure that this is true but I am equally sure that it will never appear in Wikipedia.

It should only take me a few days to obtain external evidence to prove that ACL was a sufficiently significant figure. The simple facts that he was awarded the Kaiser J Hind Medal (silver) (for his work in Peshawar) and that he was essentially the minister of health for a small country should be enough. However, achieving a full and accurate article will be more dificult.

Regards, John Lankester Jim462 ( talk) 18:27, 27 January 2024 (UTC) reply

• Comment I personally would also support draftification/userification (to Jim462 if they are fine with it, else I'm willing to take a stab at it as well). I think I see enough sources to not support outright deletion. The current article, however, needs to be completely rewritten, based on my understanding, the subject is not that well known for his missionary pursuits, but rather for his medical pursuits with his most notable contribution being not the serai system (as the article current claims), but rather the fact that he conducted the first study on the prevalence of tuberculosis in India and was amongst the first to experiment and develop various methods of treating and preventing the spread of the disease in India. Sohom ( talk) 12:53, 27 January 2024 (UTC) reply

  I have some sympathy with the implication that the Wikipedia page over-emphasises the aspect of the serai hospital. ACL's own words on this subject were a comment on the founding of his first hospital in Peshawar (the predecessor of the current Mission Hospital).

  I was taken by Yahyah Khan to one of these serais which had become vacant and could be rented at a cheap rate. It consisted of a central office room and one large and one smaller courtyard, both surrounded by rooms, connected together by a broad passage in winch was the tomb of a former Moslem Saint. There was a wide opening to a main road of the City. This seemed to me quite ideal for my immediate purpose, and I lost no time m acquiring it. It had been long used as a halting-place by the very people whom I hoped to reach, so was familiar ground to them. Dirty and untidy as were all the rooms they were soon transformed by free use of whitewash: mud floors replaced by cement, and worn woodwork repaired and painted. There was one large room which was transformed into a quite serviceable operating theatre. The smaller serai was a quadrangle surrounded by about 25 rooms; these needed only cleansing and re-flooring, without structural alteration, as it was my intention to let diem be used by whole families with their sick relatives, from which they would not wish to be separated. This was a most successful plan, though not ideal from the strictly “hospital” point of view, and I reproduced it in the new hospital, erected later on. There was a convenient covered space in one corner of the mam serai where patients could gather; and upper storey rooms for use by the resident house-surgeon. Other amenities included a square tank at one corner of the enclosure, with water laid on for washing.

  I agree that ACL's most important work was on Tuberculosis in India. However his missionary work was also important as it founded the existing Mission Hospital. Dr Ali Jan, a prominent local historian in Peshawar, has commented to me that ACL was a "legendary figure" in Peshawar. ACL also made an important contribution in Hyderabad in combating the 1919 influenza epidemic and in some of the planning for the current Osmania Hospital. Jim462 ( talk) 15:31, 27 January 2024 (UTC) reply

  Thank you for your comments. I need to study Wikipedia processes in more detail, and how draftification/userification works especially in an area where one has a conflict of interests. John Lankester Jim462 ( talk) 15:46, 27 January 2024 (UTC) reply

• Comment i’m open to correction on this, but my understanding is that you have the right to edit this article freely, according to the rules and norms of Wikipedia, like any other editor, as long as your relationship to the subject is disclosed, as it is. You are free to correct errors of fact, if you have documentation to support it, and also to remove incorrect or uncertain information which lacks adequate sourcing. Llajwa ( talk) 17:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
• Keep - many people are notable not for one thing, but for a body of work(s). Easily passes SIGCOV of people who lived pre-Internet. I would not oppose userfication. Bearian ( talk) 15:11, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.