Science in the pits: Michael Faraday,Charles Lyell and the home office enquiry into the explosion at Haswell Colliery,country Durham,in 1844∗

Abstract

The explosion at Haswell colliery in September 1844 in which ninety five men and boys were killed has attracted considerable historical attention. This is in some measure due to Michael Faraday and Charles Lyell taking part in the inquest and writing a subsequent report on the cause of the explosion and how to prevent such explosions in the future. Using evidence not used before, this paper examines the context in which the explosion occurred, the inquest process, the political pressure which led to the involvement of Faraday and Lyell, their role at the inquest, their subsequent report and the way in which it was dealt with by the Government of Robert Peel.     

Visualizing the directional bias in property crime incidents for five Canadian municipalities

There are three interconnected and fundamental elements that define the spatiality of crime: places, distances, and directions. Over the past 180 years, research has flourished for the first two fundamental elements with relatively little research on directionality. In this article, we develop a visualization technique allowing for the display of the directional bias for a large number of offenders that aids in subsequent analysis. We show that a directional bias in criminal activity is present overall, but is not monolithic. Consequently, urban form and understanding place play a strong role in criminal directional biases for moving through our environments.     

Design for rural development

Elliot R. Morss, John K. Hatch, Donald R. Mickelwait, and Charles F. Sweet. Strategies for Small Farmer Development. Volume I: 347 pp., tables, maps, no index. $20.00. Volume II: Case Studies. 444 pp., maps, no index. $20.00. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, Westview Special Studies in Social, Political, and Economic Development, 1976.     

Framing the Poor: Media Coverage and U.S. Poverty Policy, 1960–2008

Public policy toward the poor has shifted from an initial optimism during the War on Poverty to an ever‐increasing pessimism. Media discussion of poverty has shifted from arguments that focus on the structural causes of poverty or the social costs of having large numbers of poor to portrayals of the poor as cheaters and chiselers and of welfare programs doing more harm than good. As the frames have shifted, policies have followed. We demonstrate these trends with new indicators of the depth of poverty, the generosity of the government response, and media framing of the poor for the period of 1960–2008. We present a simple statistical model that explains poverty spending by the severity of the problem, gross domestic product, and media coverage. We then create a new measure of the relative generosity of U.S. government policy toward the poor and show that it is highly related to the content of newspaper stories. The portrayal of the poor as either deserving or lazy drives public policy.     

Research note: The Scottish household survey

Abstract

My personal recollection of the ‘relevance revolution’ in the 1970s is that it was a reaction to a quantitative geography that was overly-focused on technique and under-concerned with real-world issues. The consequent search for relevance took the form of a commitment to liberal- and left-leaning ideologies and issues. This differed from concepts of relevance as pertinence/timeliness, or as applied geography. Postmodern thought is significant in current debates on relevance in all three of its manifestations: relevance as commitment, pertinence and application.