Repatriation, Family Feuds, and Child Removal

In the Spanish Civil War, hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes to other areas in Spain or abroad. By December 1940, around 340,000 adults and children had returned from the country. Many youngsters returned to find their parents or relatives dead, in jail, or deeply impoverished. Accordingly, they became vulnerable to further displacement or removal. Left-wing men returning to Spain also became involved in custody battles, particularly if their wives had been forced to survive by living with other men or had followed a different political path to their husbands. Court staff frequently viewed such women as depraved and removed their children. Grandparents and other relatives became involved in similar struggles. Mothers and girls who transgressed gender norms also proved especially vulnerable to removal. The pain and suffering experienced by removed children and their parents comes across in the archival record.

Masculinity, Madness and Empire in Kipling’s ‘Thrown Away’ and ‘The Madness of Private Ortheris’

Institutional records suggest that the grounds for anxiety about insanity in late-nineteenth-century India were many and varied. Amongst other causes, one might have been rendered insane by sunstroke, fever, head injury, strong drink, and inherited tendency, the loss of money, grief, jealousy, anger, sexual excess, excessive joy, or (perhaps disturbingly) excessive study.1 With such a panoply of anxieties to explore, it is scarcely surprising that Rudyard Kipling’s Indian fiction abounds with characters who experience madness of various kinds and degrees. This paper focuses on two short stories collected in Kipling’s 1888 volume Plain Tales from the Hills: ‘Thrown Away’ and ‘The Madness of Private Ortheris’. These two stories offer particular insight into madness, its relationship to masculinity, and its consequences for the social order of British India. As Jonathan Saha has pointed out, madness in a colonial context was doubly significant. Since insanity ‘could strike anyone, rulers and the ruled, men and women . . . madness threatened to undermine the colonial racial boundary and disrupt the established norms of masculinity and femininity’.2 Both ‘Thrown Away’ and ‘The Madness of Private Ortheris’ explore or expose a psychological crisis that takes the form of a deviation from gender norms and is resolved by an enforced return to those norms. Reading the stories alongside asylum records, this paper contextualizes their representation of gender and madness and argues that the fiction offers a glimpse of what might fill important gaps in the archival record.

Alan Turing and Oxford

Did Alan Turing OBE FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), the celebrated mathematician, codebreaker, and pioneer computer scientist, ever visit Oxford? He is well-known for his connections with the University of Cambridge, Bletchley Park, the National Physical Laboratory, and the University of Manchester, but there is no known written archival record of him ever visiting Oxford, despite it being the location of the University of Oxford, traditionally a rival of Cambridge. However, surely he must have done so.

The relationship between insurance and health outcomes of diabetes mellitus patients in Maryland: a retrospective archival record study

Background Past studies examining the health outcomes of diabetes mellitus (DM) patients found that social determinants of health disparities were associated with variabilities in health outcomes. However, improving access to healthcare, such as health insurance, should mitigate negative health outcomes. The aim of the study was to explore the association between four types of health insurance, namely, Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS), Medicare Managed Care (MC), Private FFS, and Private MC plans, and the health outcomes of DM patients, controlling for patients’ social determinants of health. Methods This is a retrospective cross-sectional archival record study to explore the relationships between types of health insurance and health outcomes of DM patients who were at least 65 years old, or the elderly. Data was drawn from the 2012 Maryland Clinical Public Use Data and received an exempt status from our Institutional Review Board. Elderly Maryland residents with chronic DM were included in the study, resulting in a sample size of 43,519 individuals. Predictor variables were four types of insurance and health outcome variables were length of hospital stay (LOS), 30-day readmission, and end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Control variables included hospital characteristics, patient characteristics, and social determinants of health. Student’s t-tests determined the statistical differences for the control variables between the types of insurance. Multiple hierarchical regression analysis was applied to test the association between insurance plans and LOS, while logistic regression analyses were applied to test the association between insurance plans with 30-day readmission and ESRD. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results t-test results indicated minimal statistical differences between the health statuses of patients enrolled in different insurance plans. After factoring out the control variables, regression analyses indicated that Medicare FFS patients had the worst outcome for LOS, 30-day readmission, and ESRD rates. Although patients on Medicare MC plans had lower LOS, 30-day readmission, and ESRD rates compared to those on Medicare FFS, patients enrolled in Private MC plans had the lowest odds of a 30-day readmission and patients enrolled in Private FFS had the lowest odds of an ESRD. Conclusions The data suggests that insurance plans were related to the health outcomes of elderly DM patients after considering their social determinants of health. Specifically, DM patients enrolled in managed care and private insurance plans had better health outcomes compared to those on Medicare FFS plans.

‘Poisonous Flowers on the Dust-heap of a Dying Capitalism’

This chapter revisits the failure of negotiations for a United Nations Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations—the final blow in the attempt to create a New International Economic Order to facilitate equitable resource distribution in the world economy in the final quarter of last century. The chapter invites us to consider failure in international law and to rethink the parameters through which law comes into being. Drawing on the archival record of the Code negotiations, the chapter details the battle between states’ representatives to agree provisions and reconsiders what disagreement meant in this context, and what this can tell us about the struggle to create international law at any moment. It argues that the proceedings shed light on a dissensus present in international law that is often overlooked and framed as consent. By revisiting these proceedings, readers are invited to consider the uncertain certainty provided by international law as both necessary and contingent: it allows the greatest space for state representatives to determine how international law will operate (contingency) yet it is precisely what enables international law to come into being as law (necessity). Pondering this uncertainty gives international lawyers pause for greater reflection on the possibilities contained within international law (and by extension, international lawyering) at any given moment in time.

“A consummate actress, hampered by beauty”

The chapter explores the archival record of Vivien Leigh’s stage and screen craft. It considers how the archive illuminates her struggle to position her performative talent and craft in the “right” way relative to her status as glamourous star body. The chapter interrogates material in her archive at the V&A, her papers at the British Library, and connected archives of those performers and directors with whom she worked. Key case studies include her written correspondence with Laurence Olivier during the filming of Gone with the Wind, which illuminates her approach to male mentorship more broadly across her career. The chapter also focusses on two key aspects of her stage and screen craft often singled out for criticism in the reception of her performances: her voice and physical stamina.

POPIS ŽUPA I NASELJA ŠIBENSKE BISKUPIJE IZ SREDINE 15. STOLJEĆA

The text discusses the archival record from the mid-15th century, which is known in the literature as a “catalogue” or “list” of parishes and villages of Šibenik diocese. It is not preserved in the original, but in transcripts from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. After introductory reminiscences of the existing literature, a review of the dating and provenance of the transcript and the manuscript tradition is given, followed by the analysis of the record content. Finally, the text brings the problem of its reception in the recent scientific and non-scientific public.