This thesis analyses poor law administration in Wigan Union from 1880-1900. The late-nineteenth century is fertile territory for poor law historians, and this study intends to further enhance our understanding of the period. Local studies are vital given that the weakness of central authority ensured a wide variety of practice amongst unions, and are essential to the development of a better informed national picture. With that purpose, the thesis focuses on the important Lancashire industrial town of Wigan. Analysis addresses selected themes that require greater attention from historians in order to facilitate a more developed understanding of the poor law. Chapter one analyses politics in relation to guardians’ elections before and after the democratisation of the boards in 1894. Chapter two explores the role of boards of guardians, both individually and collaboratively, as active political agencies and defenders of the public interest in relation to removal of Irish paupers and in battles over rating with canal and railway companies. Chapters three and four focus on what was arguably the greatest poor law controversy of the period – the ‘Crusade’ against outdoor relief, initiated nationally in 1870. Wigan Union was an apparent supporter of this ‘reform’ movement, but appearances were deceptive. Chapter five addresses the problem of the ‘casual poor’, another major national concern of the period. Analysis illustrates the detail of local practice and the nature of central-local relations between the guardians and the LGB. Chapter six examines the themes of dismissal of union officers and superannuation for those deemed to have given good public service, further illustrating conceptions of professionalism and central-local relations. From this analysis, the Wigan board emerges as a politically engaged institution; financially cautious but with a paternalistic sense of obligation to the poor and pragmatic rather than ideologically driven in its policy and practice. Strong local conceptions of identity, professionalism and public service are evident within a nuanced context of central-local relations.

There has been a considerable growth in research in recent years into the history of both journalism and sport, two hugely influential areas of popular culture. The two fields cover a wide spectrum of interests and there is much ground that is common to both. However, studies of journalism and the growth of the newspaper industry have largely ignored the role of the sports journalist and the place of sport within a developing press. Moreover, studies of the expansion of commercial sport and the games-playing habit, whilst touching on the place of the press in their development, and utilising newspapers as primary source material, have paid little or no attention to the place of the sports reporter in the promotion and recording of the sporting sub-culture. This thesis aims to address the shortcoming in current research with a study centring on the growth of the occupation of sports reporting from the mid-Victorian era to the inter-war years. The thesis notes the adoption of sport as a circulation aid by the popular press, considers the type of recruit attracted to sports reporting, the job's practical aspects, the position of the sports journalist within the editorial hierarchy, and the acceptance of sports reporting as a legitimate specialism within a widening editorial agenda. The career of journalist James Catton is introduced to the study to examine in detail the manner in which occupational trends impacted upon the individual reporter, and in order to trace the manner in which sports reporting could be said to have adopted a 'professional' outlook during the period of this study. The thesis reveals the uncertain standing of the sports journalist within the newspaper industry, the part-time nature of much sports reporting, with sport regarded as an occupational rite of passage for the young and the trainee, and the struggle to rid the occupation of a reputation sullied by a perception of hackneyed journalism. The biographical section of the thesis introduces a contemporary voice, that of James Catton, to let it speak to an experience that might otherwise prove difficult to capture. Catton's working life highlights the possibilities and the demands of a career in sports journalism, and the success that the adoption of a 'professional' approach to the work could secure.

In 1893, an internal schism occurred within the British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA), creating the National British Women’s Temperance Association (NBWTA) and the Women’s Total Abstinence Union (WTAU). The Women’s Total Abstinence Union (WTAU) has since received very limited critical attention, having been historically dismissed as a conservative organisation, only concerned with temperance work, when compared to the more radical National British Women’s Temperance Association (NBWTA). Via a critical examination of the WTAU’s periodical, Wings, from 1892 to 1910, and associated Union materials, this project interrogates the presumptions made concerning the apparently conservative nature, aims and actions of the group and the women within. Contributing to the burgeoning research area of print and periodical culture this project reflects on how women managed the contradictions posed by gender – which shaped women as private domestic individuals – and political identity – when encouraged to undertake reform work outside of the safety of the private sphere. This thesis provides an original contribution to knowledge through utilising an interdisciplinary methodological approach combining periodical culture with a study of community and gender. Its main contribution lies in the study of a neglected group, the WTAU, and their unexplored periodical, Wings. Significant research has centred around radical and/or conservative constructions of nineteenth-century femininity but the voice of the quiet majority in between, and their everyday experiences, remains largely underexplored. This project examines gender constructions within female reform work, specifically temperance, and argues that Union women used a respectable area of social reform work in a potentially progressive way. The WTAU was not solely conservative, nor was it instead radical, rather, its members, aims and actions can be placed on a sliding scale, encompassing conservatism and progressivism alongside radicalism. Moreover, this thesis suggests that this should be replicated for other female reform workers and groups more broadly, in order to provide a better understanding of the sector and how issues of middle-class, feminine respectability influenced women within. It also provides a contribution to knowledge in its methodology, utilising a three layered approach to address the complex issue of readership. It focuses firstly on a broad implied readership, secondly, using census research on a cross-section of Union membership, and finally, undertakes two case-study analyses of Union women on opposing sides of the respectability debate. In examining the Union and its members in three ways, this thesis provides a new way 7 of examining female reform work and periodical readership, and uncovers the complexity of the WTAU, situated within a wider connected world of campaign, print and platform.

<p>Since the early 1980s Holocaust education and genocide studies programs at the primary, secondary and post-secondary educational levels have become commonplace and an accepted element of public school curriculum. As these programs and their curricula gained acceptance within public education, efforts to increase awareness of genocidal events outside and beyond the European Holocaust as well as increased attention paid to ethnic studies programs have also gained traction in public schooling. These efforts manifested themselves in the mid to late 1990s to include the Great Irish Famine (1845&ndash;1852) as a sub-study of greater Holocaust/genocide studies in both the states of New Jersey and New York. More than ten years after the formal adoption of the official state-sponsored Great Irish Famine curricula, their impact, influence and utilization remain unclear. This paper examines the history behind the creation of both New Jersey and New York Famine Curricula, compares and contrasts the two documents, examines their use in both states&rsquo; public schools, and suggests potential revisions to each Famine curriculum. </p>

This thesis fills a manifest gap in the history of end-of-life care in England through an exploration of the circumstances, position and importance of the Friedenheim, Home of Peace for the Dying (1885-1981), thought to be the first proto-hospice in this country. As yet virtually unexplored in published works, the nature of this hospital and the ethos of care provided there are demonstrated through evidence drawn from a multiplicity of sources, including archival records and personal testimony. By definitively establishing the chronological evolution of the institution, its locations and facilities, discrepancies in current lists and commentaries are clarified. Analysis of the nature, scope and influence of this hospital, which offered specialised care only for the terminally ill, illustrates and informs the emergence of specialised care for the dying in England. The thesis tests the accepted primacy of the institution by an examination and comparison of coeval establishments for the sick and dying. The founder, Frances Davidson, sought to provide a place for the poor to die and the space thus provided for clinical, spiritual and social care is explored. The complexities of managing this philanthropic institution and sustaining its financial viability are exposed through consideration of its administration and evolution. Analysis of patient profiles, morbidity data and referral statistics furnishes insight into the evolving nature and place of the hospital within London’s medical and philanthropic worlds. Details of the clinical, social and spiritual attention given to the patients reveal the breadth of care provided for them. Finally, the thesis discloses links with Cicely Saunders and challenges the received assumption that the Friedenheim, by now called St. Columba’s Hospital, played no part in the establishment of the so-called ‘modern’ hospice movement. The extensive and detailed results of this research confirm and justify for the first time the Friedenheim’s accepted place as the London pioneer of dedicated institutional care for dying people and place it at the inception of specialised care in England for those at the end of life.

This dissertation recasts the history of sociology in the United States by focusing on one the discipline’s most surprising and neglected sources: the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819 -1892). Tracing the period in intellectual history—from, roughly, the end of the U.S. Civil War to the country’s entry into World War II—in which sociology emerged from a confluence of reform movements and cohered in the university, I seek to demonstrate how the recirculation of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass across some of the founding texts of social science in the United States helped furnish the conceptual vocabulary for a compassionate, impartial and distinctively “American” sociology. The first half of the project situates the development of Whitman’s poetry in the discursive milieu of nineteenth-century “Social Science”—the movement of intellectuals and activists that applied philosophical ideals to Gilded Age “social problems.” I argue that Walt Whitman engaged and merged the terms and images of social science into his poetry, helping to transform and ferry its rhetoric into concepts then imbibed by modern social theorists. The latter half of the thesis turns to an examination of the poet’s presence in the instituting texts of academic sociology. Fusing the comparative methods of the “history of ideas” with more recent trends in reception theory and book studies, I survey documents from a range of Progressive Era institutions. Plotting interpretations of Leaves of Grass by some of the nation’s earliest social scientists—including Daniel Brinton, Edward A. Ross, Robert Park, Ruth Benedict and Howard Odum—across an array of monographs, lectures, letters, journal articles and protest speeches, I consider the deployment of Whitman against the then-forming backgrounds of cultural anthropology, social control theory and the sociology of race in the early twentieth century. In the end, my project aims to reassemble the literary foundation of American culture’s “sociological imagination” by using Whitman’s presence at its matrix as a case study.

O objetivo principal desta Tese é produzir uma leitura crítica da construção, por Walt Whitman Rostow, do desenvolvimento enquanto ideologia e enquanto política de Estado dos Estados Unidos no contexto da Guerra Fria. O desenvolvimento é concebido como uma política econômica internacional principalmente para resolver o problema da necessidade de expansão internacional do capitalismo como sistema mundial no pós-guerra, sob a hegemonia americana. O confronto político-ideológico capitalismo versus comunismo é certamente relevante, mas secundário. Uma forte ideologia do desenvolvimento se torna necessária para induzir os chamados países subdesenvolvidos a adotar o desenvolvimento como seu objetivo maior, o que a política internacional do desenvolvimento poderia ajudar a promover oferecendo empréstimos internacionais e assistência técnica. Uma vez aceito, um esquema como esse poderia garantir o funcionamento de uma nova ordem capitalista internacional, em substituição ao velho colonialismo. Walt Whitman Rostow é talvez o intelectual mais importante na criação e na promoção do desenvolvimento como ideologia e como política de Estado. Esta Tese é centrada na sua produção teórico-política sobre o desenvolvimento, abrangendo o período que se considera como efetivamente criativo desta produção, ou seja, até a sua definição da seqüência de estágios-de-crescimento em As Etapas do Crescimento Econômico. Um Manifesto Não-Comunista. Também se analisa a busca de W. W. Rostow por uma fundamentação teórica por meio de sua crítica a Marx e à abordagem estrutural-funcional nas ciências sociais. / This Thesis\' main objective is the production of a critical reading of the Walt Whitman Rostow\'s construction of the development as an ideology and as a State policy of the United States in the Cold War context. The development is conceived as an international economic policy mainly to solve the serious problem of the need for international expansion of capitalism as a world system, in the post-war period, under the American hegemony. The political-ideological confrontation capitalism versus communism is certainly a relevant one, but secondary. A strong ideology of development becomes necessary to induce the so called underdeveloped countries to adopt the development as their primary goal, which the international development policy could make easier by the supply of international loanable funds and technical assistance. One accepted, this scheme would guarantee the functioning of a new international capitalistic order, replacing the old colonialism. Walt Whitman Rostow is perhaps the most important intellectual in the creation and promotion of the development as an ideology and a State policy. This Thesis is centered upon his theoretical-political production about the development, covering the effective creative period of this production, that is, until Rostow\'s definition of his stages-of-growth sequence in The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto. There is also an analysis of Rostow\'s search for theoretical foundations by means of his criticism of Marx and of the structural-functional approach in the social sciences. .

O objetivo principal desta Tese é produzir uma leitura crítica da construção, por Walt Whitman Rostow, do desenvolvimento enquanto ideologia e enquanto política de Estado dos Estados Unidos no contexto da Guerra Fria. O desenvolvimento é concebido como uma política econômica internacional principalmente para resolver o problema da necessidade de expansão internacional do capitalismo como sistema mundial no pós-guerra, sob a hegemonia americana. O confronto político-ideológico capitalismo versus comunismo é certamente relevante, mas secundário. Uma forte ideologia do desenvolvimento se torna necessária para induzir os chamados países subdesenvolvidos a adotar o desenvolvimento como seu objetivo maior, o que a política internacional do desenvolvimento poderia ajudar a promover oferecendo empréstimos internacionais e assistência técnica. Uma vez aceito, um esquema como esse poderia garantir o funcionamento de uma nova ordem capitalista internacional, em substituição ao velho colonialismo. Walt Whitman Rostow é talvez o intelectual mais importante na criação e na promoção do desenvolvimento como ideologia e como política de Estado. Esta Tese é centrada na sua produção teórico-política sobre o desenvolvimento, abrangendo o período que se considera como efetivamente criativo desta produção, ou seja, até a sua definição da seqüência de estágios-de-crescimento em As Etapas do Crescimento Econômico. Um Manifesto Não-Comunista. Também se analisa a busca de W. W. Rostow por uma fundamentação teórica por meio de sua crítica a Marx e à abordagem estrutural-funcional nas ciências sociais. / This Thesis\' main objective is the production of a critical reading of the Walt Whitman Rostow\'s construction of the development as an ideology and as a State policy of the United States in the Cold War context. The development is conceived as an international economic policy mainly to solve the serious problem of the need for international expansion of capitalism as a world system, in the post-war period, under the American hegemony. The political-ideological confrontation capitalism versus communism is certainly a relevant one, but secondary. A strong ideology of development becomes necessary to induce the so called underdeveloped countries to adopt the development as their primary goal, which the international development policy could make easier by the supply of international loanable funds and technical assistance. One accepted, this scheme would guarantee the functioning of a new international capitalistic order, replacing the old colonialism. Walt Whitman Rostow is perhaps the most important intellectual in the creation and promotion of the development as an ideology and a State policy. This Thesis is centered upon his theoretical-political production about the development, covering the effective creative period of this production, that is, until Rostow\'s definition of his stages-of-growth sequence in The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto. There is also an analysis of Rostow\'s search for theoretical foundations by means of his criticism of Marx and of the structural-functional approach in the social sciences. .

This thesis examines the internal dynamics of the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone over the course of the civil war waged from 1991-2002. It does so in two parts, looking first at the RUF’s organizational capacity—its ability to emerge and survive as a group; and second, at its material viability—the logistics and procurement of food, weapons, and other resources required to sustain war. The RUF has become a paradigmatic case for the study of war and rebel groups in Africa. Although much has been written on the group and its violence, comparatively little is known about the inner-workings of the organization and how a largely forcibly recruited group of ill-equipped thousands managed to pose a viable threat to the state for over a decade. Through a fine-grained, case-based analysis, this study applies research on the microdynamics of violence in civil war to the structural and logistical mechanics that underpin it. Doing so contextualizes debates about resource wars, collective violence, and mobilization and onset within the RUF’s own strategies for controlling these aspects of war- making. New primary material, including rebel archive documents, describes the extensive military and civilian governance structures through which order and cohesion were established and enforced. Tracking the success and failure of these mechanisms helps explain the disconnect between rebel rhetoric and behaviour. A detailed examination of the RUF’s material capacity applies this organizational analysis to the group’s strategic priorities for survival. It reorients the resource war debate toward what actually fuels fighting on the ground. Food has long been overlooked as the primary requirement for group survival, and ammunition the basic element of military viability. These ‘low politics’ of survival explain the nature of the war and underscore the importance of shifting factors, such as territorial control, in shaping rebel behaviour. Finally, the ‘high politics’ of international arms trades and global diamond markets illumine changes in the RUF’s firepower and personalization of power, returning to the organizational failings that ultimately led to the group’s dissolution.

This thesis questions the generally accepted view that mechanics’ institutes made little contribution to adult working-class education from their foundation in the 1820s to the last decade of the nineteenth century when, finally, government recognised the importance of adult and further education with the passing of the Technical Instructions Acts of 1889 and 1891. It addresses the issue of what impact the mechanics’ institutes exerted upon the adult working classes in a regional context. It has also questioned research previously carried out by a number of historians who hold the view that by 1850 the mechanics’ institutes’ movement was in decline. This thesis argues that in Yorkshire the movement, through no small contribution made by the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics’ Institutes, went from strength to strength and responded to the need for relevant curricula throughout the period of study. It establishes that mechanics’ institutes of the Yorkshire Union (1838 – 1891) were not only to be found in the urban and industrialising towns, but many were also located in the rural and semi-rural areas of the Dales and Pennines. Across the Yorkshire Union as a whole there were similar patterns in growth and development. This thesis establishes that not only did mechanics' institutes support the working classes but they also provided a firm foundation for technical and further education, which was built on through the passing of the 1889 and 1891 Technical Instruction Acts. Several institutes either became technical schools or had established a tradition of adult education which was taken up by the new technical colleges of the early twentieth century. Many smaller institutes either became satellite centres for local colleges or became public libraries and museums. The nineteenth century success of the mechanics’ institutes foreshadowed the later development of adult education.