Talk:Peter Sutcliffe

Use of Prostitute outdated

Request to change any reference to the word ‘prostitute’ to sex worker unless a direct quote, in which case it should be in quotation marks While sex worker does cover many fields it is perfectly adequate description in the circumstances. The is especially necessary as the police force has been condemned for jumping to conclusions about the victims of Peter Sutcliffe. The way victims has been spoken about is a point of contention and in order to show respect for victims and their families the language used should be updated to meet modern standards. Sexismcorrector23 (talk) 15:04, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

The term "sex worker" was not in use at the time of these murders and is not used in the sources that the article draws from. The term is also ambiguous in that it can refer specifically to prostitutes, or in a more general way to include strippers, lap dancers etc. Within this article, changing "prostitute" to "sex worker" would possibly lead the reader to think some of the victims were strippers or other types of sex workers. --John B123 (talk) 16:31, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with John B123 changing the verbiage to something more ambiguous does not add to the article.--VViking_TalkEdits 19:16, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

We should be using the terms used in the sources that are supplied in the article and not changing to use modern wording just because it is out of date. Keith D (talk) 22:17, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

As I recall, at the root of police failings in the case was their opinion of the victims. Modernising the language to cater to 21st century sensitivities would obscure analysis of the police response.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. -- L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

-- Cabayi (talk) 22:29, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Ran across this page on the edit warring noticeboard and I have to say I'm kinda on SC23's side here. I'm not sure about the ambiguity point, but the "term used in the sources" point is just not true. As an analogy: there are many pages on Wikipedia relating to American black history for which many of the contemporary sources use the word "negro". But we don't use it out of quotes on Wikipedia, because it sounds weird to modern ears. And even past that, it's just an odd consideration in the first place: if we had a page on a French serial killer which cited several French sources, would we refer to the victims in French? Obviously not! Wikipedia uses only information from reliable sources, not their precise wording.

I also don't think the idea that we need to use it because it would obscure the police response holds any water. Jeffrey Dahmer killed mainly gay men, and we know both from common knowledge and from primary sources that police in the 80s didn't exactly have a high opinion of gay men, yet we don't feel the need to repeat any of the things cops were saying about gay men at the time in the article. Loki (talk) 04:02, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Prostitute is still a commonly used term & has accuracy that the much broader term sex worker doesn't. Therefore the analogy with negro isn't reasonable. We wouldn't use transport worker to describe someone whom we know is a train driver, nor office worker to describe someone whom we know to be a secretary. Jim Michael (talk) 09:54, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

We don't use the n word in relation to black history. I feel the replacement with sex worker is appropriate. I just saying because I changed my mind. I get it's contemporaneous. But sadly police attitudes towards women has barely moved on. The 2006 Suffolk murders spring to mind. The way to learn about the past is to visit it. DermotRathbone (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Let's all pretend that US police in the 1950s and 60s always called black people "coloured folks"? And let's move the Pendle witches to the "Pendle pagan wise-women"? The word "sex worker" includes a lot of people who never had to walk the streets of Leeds or Bradford looking for anonymous men to pay for sex with them. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:53, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The term sex worker/sex work is not universally accepted as the 'modern standard'. Those opposed to prostitution strongly oppose the terms sex work/er as it is seen as legitimising what they see as immoral/violence against women etc. The UN and EU agreed upon language is prostitution and people/women in prostitution.

I’m not sure why such narrow wording is necessary, PS would have murdered a sex worker or woman of any kind had they been walking down the street at the exact time. This adherence to such a word further enforces the idea that they were killed because they exchanged sexual acts for money and that even other ‘more innocent’ sex workers would not have been targeted. The type of sex work is irrelevant, especially given that women working in other industries and students were also targeted because they were alone at night. It seems noting more that misogynistic that a small number of influential editors sit on this page an immediately undo edits designed to modernise and correct some of the wrongs done to these poor victims. Sexismcorrector23 (talk) 17:27, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

".. would have murdered a sex worker or woman of any kind"? Not according to Sutcliffe himself, who claimed ".. he had heard voices that ordered him to kill prostitutes while working as a gravedigger". Nor the four psychiatrists who testified that he was a paranoid schizophrenic? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:15, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, there are 37 instances of "prostitute" in the article main body, some of which are embedded in direct quotes. These describe women who earned money for having sex. They were not strippers, or lap dancers, or sex chat line providers, which one might also include in the term "sex workers". Martinevans123 (talk) 10:07, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Reprise, April 2022

User:Wiki2725154 your recent edit here is your only edit to Wikipedia so far. Have you read the discussion here from two years ago? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:25, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Reference 12 is the wrong article

The link after the quote from Sutcliffe’s father that ends “turned his mind” (currently number 12) is a link to an interview with Carl Sutcliffe, a brother, not the father. It’s a good article; just seems to be in the wrong place. tharsaile (talk) 21:32, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. I see the same annotation has been used (again, inside quoted speech) aginst the words "now" (for know) and "as" (for "has"). There is also a "[sic]" after the digit "5" in the quote, and then we get this: "Bradford Clarkes [sic] Trans. Shipley." FWIW, I don't think these are dialect, they are just sloppy mistakes. But that's neither here nor there.

We don't need "[sic]" embedded in a direct quote from a letter at all; it's a direct quote, so if it's not exactly what was written in the letter, then it's subject to deletion as a lie.

The quote is cited to a Home Office index-page for the Lawrence Byford Report, which links to 16 PDFs, which aren't searchable, because they're entirely made from images. So I don't know if the "sic"s are in the report; I'd be very surprised if they were in the original letter. But the report is just the citation; the article says the quote is from the letter.

I guess I'll have a read through those PDFs and look for the place in the report where the letter is quoted. But I still plan to remove the "sic"s; this WP article isn't quoting from the report, it's quoting from the letter (using the report as a source). MrDemeanour (talk) 19:18, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

[sic]

In thr "Early Life" section, it says "I remember Peter were [sic] just standing there — he were [sic] shook rigid."

I want to remove "[sic]" from that. "Were" is a perfectly normal substitute for "was" in the daily speech of a majority of people from the north of England, and a large part of the Midlands. "[Sic]" generally has the connotation "Yeah, he really said that!", as if that form of English is somehow degraded or wrong. We don't generally editorialize like that when people use vernacular English.

I'll take it out of nobody objects in the next day or so. MrDemeanour (talk) 18:30, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. I see the same annotation has been used (again, inside quoted speech) against the words "now" (for know) and "as" (for "has"). There is also a "[sic]" after the digit "5" in the quote, and then we get this: "Bradford Clarkes [sic] Trans. Shipley." FWIW, I don't think these are dialect, they are just sloppy mistakes. But that's neither here nor there.

We don't need "[sic]" embedded in a direct quote from a letter at all; it's a direct quote, so if it's not exactly what was written in the letter, then it's subject to deletion as a lie.

The quote is cited to a Home Office index-page for the Lawrence Byford Report, which links to 16 PDFs, which aren't searchable, because they're entirely made from images. So I don't know if the "sic"s are in the report; I'd be very surprised if they were in the original letter. But the report is just the citation; the article says the quote is from the letter.

I guess I'll have a read through those PDFs and look for the place in the report where the letter is quoted. But I still plan to remove the "sic"s; this WP article isn't quoting from the report, it's quoting from the letter (using the report as a source). MrDemeanour (talk) 19:18, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Done; "[sic]" removed from direct quotes. MrDemeanour (talk) 13:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Mark up question

There are 82 instances of {{spaces}} in the article. Are these useful? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:34, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

They were meant to be {{nbs}}. Swinub changed the template in May. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 21:03, 19 October 2024 (UTC)