Talk:William Herbert Wallace

Recent deletions

There has recently (since User:Marktreut's edit of the 15th July, at least) been a spate of deletions to this article, and we have lost headings and references. I would like to reinstate those sections, unless anyone has any concerns regarding reputations of the living. If you have, an anonymous note here would be useful!

To my understanding all the persons named in this article as suspects, alternative suspects or victims are dead, so this article does not fall under the rule of WP:LIVING.

Arguably, case details, book references, and popular culture references should be moved to a separate page.

Ecobun 18:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes I changed my entry on Willam Herbert Wallace because it had been vandalised by another user. The entry dealt with the known facts surrounding Wallace and the murder he was acquitted of in 1931. The vandal who altered it did so by laying the page out in a different style - which I did not object to - but then saw fit to add his own and other people's theories, which implicated another person, now dead, who cannot defend himself. This is grossly insulting to the man's descendants, who have made their displeasure known publicly and, tired of the continued refrerences to the dead man, are in the process of sueing two authors who have published books on the case. It ill suits Wikipedia to permit this slander of a deceased person to appear on it's pages. My 'vandalism' consisted of removing the references to the deceased person and left the article as I had originally written it - a statement of the known facts of the Wallace murder and his later acquittal, nothing more. I have several other articles on Wikipedia, none of which the genius who altered the Wallace one has yet interfered with, though I await this with interest. For Wikipedia to permit factual articles to be supplemented by bar-room theories cobbled together by hack authors and immature contributors with too much time on their hands says much about it's aims and accuracy. I have no interest whether I am banned from contributing or not. There does not seem to be much point in making factual entries, which are then left open for other people to alter with non-proven facts and the changes made permanent by Wikipedia. -- User_talk:86.130.136.240 17:37 (or later), 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Telephone voice masking

• I'll be removing the following text for non-NPOV, non-citation reasons. The text is verbatim at this Talk: page revision. It reads too much like somebody's private opinion to be part of an encyclopaedic article, and I don't want to be weasel-wordy and dress it up with "some modern commentators feel" phrasing, so I'll just say WP:PROVEIT for now and hope that someone can :) Ecobun (talk) 14:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Not enough notice was taken of this alleged attempt by Wallace to 'set-up' an alibi process. The Prosocution claimed that Wallace phoned his friend in the chess club and altered his voice to make the 'Qualtrough' bogus appointment for the following night. However it is virtually impossible for somebody to alter their voice while phoning a friend. Anybody can try this experiment so it is certain that Wallace did NOT make the call. It can only have been the murderer. Another lost opportunity by the Defence.

Agree that the paragraph has no place in the article. Aside from anything else, this was 1932, when telephone calls were of a far inferior sound quality, and so disguising ones voice would have been much easier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.16.139.124 (talk) 23:54, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The Killing of Julia Wallace

Jonathan Goodman, the author of The Killing of Julia Wallace (1969), died recently. In his obituary notice in The Guardian, Wednesday 126 March 2008, James Morton writes that Goodman became convinced that William Wallace was indeed not responsible for his wife's violent death. Together with his friend and fellow crime writer Richard Whittington-Egan, he challenged the man he believed to be guilty.

Mr Morton goes on, 'Although subsequent evidence has shown that Wallce probably was the killer...'

I should be very interested to know what this evidence is since, with my very limited knowledge of the case, I find it inconceivable that William Wallace battered his wife to death with a blunt intrument, having first set up an elaborate alibi so as to escape the consequences.

In addition, I have always clung to the cas and its outcome - Wallace's vindication and release - as a rare example of the English judicial system responding to a self-evident truth.

Wallace

Wallace's Liverpool solicitor, Hector Munro eventually set up a very successful practice in London. He was interviewed not long before his death by a Liverpool journalist who asked him what his views on Wallace were forty years after the case. He replied that he had a great deal of doubt on Wallace's innocence. See: The Final Verdict. Roger Wilkes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.75.41 (talk) 21:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Archangel42 (talk) 18:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I am unaware of such "evidence." Perhaps he is referring to James Murphy's recent (2001) book, which I find highly speculative... RodCrosby (talk) 18:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

The above earlier reference is to a comment, not evidence, made by Liverpool journalist Roger Wilkes in his book, The Final Verdict published twenty years before that of Murphy. Wilkes had the benefit of actually speaking to Munro not long before his death, as well as other witnesses then still alive, something modern authors or those who speculate on the case did not enjoy and who are therefore considerably less qualified to comment on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.228.165 (talk) 12:54, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Miscarriages of Justice ?

Not sure it can really be described as such, as Wallace made legal history with the almost instant quashing of his conviction by the Court of Appeal RodCrosby (talk) 12:06, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

To be charged and then found guilty counts as a miscarriage of justice surely. The fact that the conviction was overturned later shows that it was originally a miscarriage. Peterlewis (talk) 12:57, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It's a fine line, I agree. But the fact he wasn't hanged tips it to my way of thinking, and appears consistent with the article Miscarriage of justice, in that no punishment was inflicted on Wallace. It could in fact be perceived as a Triumph of Justice, rather than a miscarriage! RodCrosby (talk) 14:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

POV

I don't think his article is objective at all, I believe the author is biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.10.46.8 (talk) 14:11, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Overlap with R v Wallace

Overlapping (but not identical) details of the evidence and trial are reproduced in the R v Wallace article. Should the two articles be merged or is there a basis for dividing the content so it is not being maintained in two places? - Pointillist (talk) 08:31, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

No to a merge. The case in notable both in popular culture and as a landmark legal case. While there is obviously overlap, I can't really see what the problem is. RodCrosby (talk)

Apart from the almost total absence of citations, two issues struck me when I read the trial article:

• It contains hindsight that played no part in the trial, e.g. Although contemporary reports indicated that Julia Wallace was the same age as her husband, recent research has proved that she was 17 years older than him, and in fact was almost 70 at the time of her death. and It is now known there was a more credible suspect — a young man and former colleague of Wallace's, with criminal propensities, who was familiar with the layout of Wallace's home and his insurance collections. Wallace and others in fact named him to the Police, but he appeared to have an alibi — an alibi that has subsequently been found to be compromised.
• It talks about possible issues of evidence which came up during the investigation, e.g. no trace of blood was found on Wallace, although the killer would have been heavily bloodstained, without making clear whether such questions were mentioned in either the original case or the appeal.

I'd prefer to remove all commentary and speculation from the sections that describe what happened at the trial and appeal. Such commentary would be OK in separate sections, e.g. about the investigation, criticism of the first trial etc. However I suspect that if the trial article was rebuilt that way, the case for merging it into the main article would be even greater, and perhaps you have other concerns about how workable that would be? - Pointillist (talk) 16:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• R v Wallace is a notable appeal case in itself, because it is the first decision (and still that of very few) in which the Court of Appeal overturned a conviction on the facts ("against the weight of evidence") rather than the law. In this article, it deserves a mention, and some commentary, because the decision is clearly related to the lack of connecting evidence to the crime. As regard this article, speculation does not belong in descriptions of the evidence available in 1931, and that which came later should be very strictly scrutinised for its cogency; like Jack the Ripper, this is "one of those cases" and almost a bandwagon upon which anyone with a vague, or even crackpot, theory will hang his hat. Rodhullandemu 01:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

So it's not just the case's jury that should be shot ?

I believe here, we're discussing merging two sections of W. with similar content and not discussing a man's life or a criminal case !!!

Please keep discussions on-topic!

As I see it, there are the following sensible options:

1. Merge the two sections into one;
2. maintain the two sections distinctly (hence tidying up both to remove overlap) and include links as appropriate between the two.

I favour a merge.

Based on the fact that Wallace's contribution to the world seems to be the criminal case and there seems to be little else noteworthy about him. The result will be 'case-heavy' and therefore I favour indexing/listing under that than the man himself. His personal details are an aside to the case and could be included towards the end of the section.

I therefore propose a merge:

   FOR:  1

AGAINST: 1

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.44.48 (talk) 19:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC) 

Do some bloody work, Tim

Stop reading articles on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.235.28 (talk) 13:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Lack of conviction versus unsolved

The article describes the case as "officially unsolved" following the reversal of Wallace's conviction. I am not an expert in English law, but I believe that claim, which has no citation, is incorrect. "Unproven" and "unsolved" are not equivalent legal terms. For example, the Los Angeles police consider the O.J. Simpson case to be solved; his acquittal in court does not mean they have to pretend it is still a mystery and go find someone else to arrest. It appears that similarly, in this case, the police were quite sure they had "officially solved" it, though they did not ultimately win a conviction. Jtcarpet (talk) 22:10, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, the Liverpool City Police website http://liverpoolcitypolice.co.uk/#/julia-wallace-murder-1931/4552924276 (a tribute site) says "This murder is still recorded as 'undetected'" RodCrosby (talk) 12:37, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Categories

I have added this to Category:1930s in Liverpool due to the significance of the case in the history of the city. Dunarc (talk) 22:50, 9 October 2022 (UTC)