Talk:Edward Mylius

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Untitled[edit]

I'm going to find the cutting from The Times of the 1910 court case.

That anonymous declaration of a quest, as yet unaccomplished, seems to date from 2006. "Freedom's Frontier" ISBN 978-0-7195-5733-0 2007 by Donald Thomas calls Mylius "an English assistant editor". He was in England, that's why The Authorities were able to Deal With Him. "Edward" does not seem the conventional French spelling.--SilasW (talk) 21:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

he was not French[edit]

I have removed the word "French" from the first paragraph, as there are multiple indications that this is incorrect. This is related to earlier comments here.

The only reference (ref 1 as I write this) indicating that he was French is the BBC article "History of Scandal", 7 June 2002. The BBC article refers to "French reporter E.F. Mylius". This was obviously just shorthand, as the item for which he was sued was published in a Paris publication, The Liberator. Various sources on the web say he was born in Belgium. He is often referred to as the agent, distributor, or correspondent of The Liberator. Nowhere except in this BBC article is there any indication that he is French. It appears that a WP editor took the phrase in the BBC article too literally.

Though he was apparently born in Belgium, there is evidence that he was actually American. This evidence, at least so far, is not solid, but is further suggestion that "French" is wrong. He went to the US after his release from prison, and was at times associated with Margaret Sanger. (This is easily found by a web search, which returns quotes from Sanger's papers.) I also have a family connection with the name Mylius. It is a Latinization (common among the university-educated four centuries ago) of Müller. Because of this synthetic origin, everyone in the world with the last name Mylius is related, though we don't always know how. Based on available information, Edward Mylius was probably my first cousin thrice removed -- such a cousin is indicated in genealogical records my late mother compiled, but without sufficient details to make a certain connection. If this is correct, his father immigrated from Germany to the US and married in Ohio to a woman who was born in Pennsylvania. This does not contradict the evidence that Edward Mylius was born in Belgium, as his parents could have traveled there. Paleolith (talk) 20:26, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I contacted the BBC regarding the information on their web site. Their response was

However your complaint appears to reflect a degree of uncertainty over his nationality and given that this is a minor reference in an article over a decade old we are unable to investigate further.

In other words, the reference has no support. Or in still other words, it's just a news article, not a reliable reference for any statement that does not begin "the BBC claimed". (And I'd be inclined to say that this applies to any reference on the BBC, just as for any other news reference.) Paleolith (talk) 22:27, 15 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mylius certainly wasn't American, because he was initially refused entry to the US as an alien owing to his criminal conviction. After US radicals got up a fighting fund, he won his appeal because the court found that criminal libel wasn't a 'crime of moral turpitude'. https://cite.case.law/f/203/152/ At the time of his trial he said he was a British subject, though born in Ostend. His father, Henry F Mylius, was British and, when young, Edward lived with an uncle and aunt in Hammersmith. https://anthonyjcamp.com/pages/anthony-j-camp-edward-mylius-re-george-v It's likely that the Liberator article 'Sanctified Bigamy' was written by Edward Holton James, not by Mylius (the false 'morganatic marriage' rumour had always been much bigger in the US press than in England, and James was American), but Mylius was prosecuted for publication of libel because the police had watched him posting packets of the Liberator on several occasions and the Post Office detained one packet as legal proof of the contents. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/10093821 In New York in 1921, Mylius worked as bookkeeper for Max Eastman on Eastman's own radical paper, coincidentally also titled The Liberator, but a much better-produced and written publication than James's. Unfortunately Mylius absconded with $4,500 in Treasury bills from the paper's safe-deposit account, apparently spending the money on stocks and shares. https://www.nytimes.com/1921/12/03/archives/max-eastman-replies-to-ef-mylius-letter-editor-of-the-liberator.html He only paid a few hundred dollars back. As a result of this disgrace he seems to have gone by his new young wife's surname, Boskin, for some years before reverting to Mylius. He was last registered on a 1942 draft card, still living in New York, in his sixties and listed as unemployed. https://www.fold3.com/document/285117074/ He may have died in 1947 at the age of 68, but the parental names given for that Edward F Mylius are the wrong ones. Khamba Tendal (talk) 14:11, 7 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]