No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with the impact of coal mining activities upon the coastal zone of southeast Fife. Coastal changes over a 100 year period from 1894 to 1996 have been evaluated by determining the plan variation of the High Water and Low Water datum recorded on different editions of large scale Ordnance Survey (O.S.) Plans of the area. Deposition and erosion implied by the movement of the tidal datum are related to the longshore dispersal of spoil deposition from the coastal bings (1) and to mining subsidence. Mining subsidence is evaluated using the Surface Deformation Prediction System (SDPS), previously used at sites in the United States, and now applied for the first time to a United Kingdom coalfield. A new technique is developed that enables the subsidence values to be generated along O.S. co-ordinates at 10m intervals. Subsidence values are recorded with an accuracy of ±20% along the tidal marks of 1894, 1914, 1960, 1994 and 1996. Between Buckhaven and Dysart the coastline is found to have subsided with only small pockets having been left unaffected. Indeed, in the West Sands Bay area a subsidence trough with a maximum of 5.7+l.lm is calculated. The extent of recent coastal erosion along the shore can be seen to correlate with predicted subsidence over different mining panels and thus confirms the importance of this factor upon the coastal process in south-east Fife. These results are reinforced by comparing bench-mark heights against subsidence values producing a correlation coefficient of 0.9. The state of the pre-mining coastline is evaluated using historic documents and photographs. This provides a starting point for evaluating the changes wrought on the coastline by the large scale mining activities which commenced about 1898 and terminated with the closure of the Frances colliery in 1984. Following this, the extent of coastal change from the analysis of O.S Plans is presented. Subsequent chapters evaluate the possible factors which may have caused the observed coastal changes including long term changes, land uplift or subsidence following the last glaciation, mining activities and possible sea level changes due to global warming. To ensure the greatest possible accuracy in the determination of coastal changes against subsidence data a rigorous GIS is employed to analyse both map and mining data allowing for registrations to be obtained between the different surveys. This involves the manipulation of both vector and raster data from the O.S. plans and the SDPS software requiring the laborious and lime consuming transfer of data between different computer platforms. Despite this caveat this novel method is demonstrated, in the thesis, to be a flexible and precise method which can be applied to any given site for the accurate prediction of mining subsidence. 1: Bing is the Scottish phrase for slag heap.

Fife coal-owners owned their workers houses and controlled the processes of housing provision and allocation. They were both employers and landlords. As a result the spheres of home and work were inextricably linked. This thesis examines the nature of the social relations arising from this "tied" relationship in the light of both local and national, political, economic and social developments, between 1870 and 1930. The themes of deference, paternalism, community, socialisation and social control, and the residual effects of pre-existing social relations, particularly pre-industrial relations of production, are explored. The empirical research concentrates upon the analysis of two coal companies in particular; the Fife Coal Company Ltd. and the Wemyss Coal Company. These companies operated coal mines in contrasting geographical locations; the former throughout inland west Fife and the latter along coastal south-east Fife. Each company built rows of colliers' houses in close proximity to the mines. At the beginning of the period housing for coal-miners was provided, not by speculative builders on the open market, but, by the coal-owners through their company architects and sub-contractors. Houses were provided as part of the employment contract as a means of attracting and maintaining the workforce. By the end of the period, the State, through the agency of local authorities, was the principal provider of working class housing in mining communities; coal companies had withdrawn from the housing market. The thesis attempts to explain this process in terms of changing social relations of production.

This thesis examines past and present day processes responsible for the morphological development of St Andrews Bay in eastern Scotland. Quaternary glacial events have contributed large volumes of sediment from the Scottish Mainland to the North Sea Basin over the last 3 million years. Since the most recent glacial event, the Late Devensian, which terminated some 14,000 years ago in Scotland, the sediments of the coastal areas have been redistributed by wave and tidal activity. Thus the bathymetry and platform of St Andrews Bay has evolved since that time, although some elements of the morphology appear to predate the last glaciation. The grain size distributions of the bed sediments of the bay show a narrow range of mean sizes between fine and very fine sand. These are indicative of a low energy tidal environment although Quartile Deviation - Median Diameter plots suggest the importance of wave activity in determining their distribution. Current measurements in the bay confirm that the hydrodynamic environment is of low energy with average current speeds rarely exceeding 15 cm s −1 one metre above the bed. Progressive vector plots show closed ellipses during calm weather but meteorological forcing and wave activity generate residual currents predominantly in the direction of wave propagation or down wind. Application of a transfer function to the current data predicts low rates of bedload transport, the residual of which generally accords with the recent pattern of sedimentation at the head of the bay. The rocky platforms of the southern margins of the bay cannot easily be sub-divided into features at different elevations. No firm evidence is presented for a pre-Late Devensian origin of the platform but it is argued that such a chronology explains the morphology of the platform. Offshore sedimentary sequences, up to 30 metres in thickness, are reported from geophysical surveys which have been laid down since the last glaciation. The units identified reflect changing environments of deposition associated with climatic and sea level changes over the last 14,000 years.

This thesis concerns African-American fife and drum band music, a pre-blues genre that was a fixture at summer picnics in the Mississippi hill country from the late nineteenth century through most of the twentieth century. The picnics held a unique place in African-American life, a crossroads of juke joints and churches, blues and gospel, individuality and family. Using the African-American paradigm of a Saturday night / Sunday morning people, I describe the Otha Turner Family Picnic, the last picnic to feature fife and drum band music, locating it and the music in-between the secular and sacred aspects of African-American life from both a musical and a social standpoint.

Thesis (M.A.R.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-139).

No description available.

This thesis is a study-of the contribution of public health administration to the control of Infectious diseases in Fife during the period c. 1855-1950. It is a local study in the social history of medicine which attempts to test the conflicting theories of Thomas McKeown and Simon Szreter about the role of social intervention in mortality decline during the period. It covers the period from the earliest date when civil registration data on mortality from specified causes are available for Fife. During this period mortality from the main infectious diseases in the county declined almost continuously and by 88% from a rate of 608 deaths per 100 000 inhabitants during the years 1855-60. Public health administration is here defined as measures for disease prevention and control administered by local government. Such measures include the provision of adequate water supplies and drainage, improvement of housing, port sanitation, immunisation and the provision of infectious diseases hospitals and child welfare services. The first three chapters of this study include an introduction, a description of the geographical, demographic and economic conditions in Fife during the period and a description of the development of a system of public health administration in the county. This is followed by studies of the main infectious diseases, including smallpox, typhus and typhoid, diarrhoeal disease, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles and whooping cough, influenza and all forms of tuberculosis. The pattern of mortality from each disease in Fife is described. Then from the records of local authorities in the county, the role of public health administration in the attempted control of each disease is described and evaluated. The conclusion assesses the overall contribution of public health administration to the decline in mortality from the main infectious diseases in Fife and suggests the relative importance of different measures in the process of disease control.

During the first half of the eighteenth century the political and social climate of Scotland was becoming increasingly favourable for the expansion of agricultural output and mineral exploitation. These activities generated extra traffic and the growing number of wheeled vehicles created a demand for soundly constructed roads. In contrast with the English parish system, responsibility for road management in Scotland lay with landowners, accountable to their county meetings. A tax on rent financed a selective programme of improvement, and when parish labour was converted to a monetary payment a considerable increase in road works became possible. In Fife, the influence of farmers and coal owners is seen in the planning of roads to distribute lime and coal, while leading landowners were concerned with the national highways which crossed the peninsula. Although one of these became a toll road in 1753, the turnpike system was adopted for the county only at the end of the century. It is the hitherto underestimated activity among road authorities before the imposition of tolls which forms the main theme of this study. The basic pattern of overland connections existing around 1700 is derived from the evidence of settlement distribution and known physiographic constraints. This pattern is checked against the earliest available maps and road records to deduce a putative network. A sequence of maps illustrates the subsequent changes, including the extent of postal and coach services and control of roads by the turnpike trusts. The abandonment of hillside routes, the dominance of the link between the Forth and Tay ferries, and the influence of individual landowners on schemes of improvement are illustrated by more localised studies which emphasise the multiplicity of factors operating during a crucial phase in the development of the modern road network.