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Calderdale Lives

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the national record of people who’ve shaped British history, from the earliest recorded people on the British Isles to the 21st century. The ODNB currently includes the life stories of more than 60,000 men and women who died in or before 2020.

Of these more than 60,000 people, more than 170 have links to Calderdale.

Here you’ll find some famous (and perhaps less-well-known) Calderdale faces, including Anne Lister the diarist known as “Gentleman Jack”, John Mackintosh founder of the sweets company now know as Rowntree Mackintosh, and BBC Blue Peter host John Noakes. Other notable residents include Percy Shaw, inventor and manufacturer of “Cats Eyes”, and John Christie the murderer at 10 Rillington Place. Click on the images below to read more.


  
  

Who and how? in Calderdale

As well as searching for people by name, you can search through life events and places such as birth, baptism, and burial.

How do I search?

The Oxford DNB includes the life stories of over 60,000 men and women.You can search online for where they were born, baptized, lived, died, or were buried, by date range or location.

  • The advanced search ‘life event’ feature can be used to find people near you—be they men and women baptised in Edinburgh (189), those born in Whitby (28), or those buried in Exeter (133). Used in this way the ODNB is an excellent resource for school projects or family history.
  • Text searching across the Oxford DNB’s 68 million words, you can also make links between people and places: for example, we’ve 102 references to “Clapham Common”, 27 to the “River Trent”, and 51 to “Snowdonia”.

What else does the Oxford DNB offer?


> Read the Oxford DNB, free and at home, using your library's subscription
> More about the Oxford DNB