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We know the policy of quarantining plague victims and their families together within their households entailed considerable costs and controversy in early modern Europe. Less clear is the extent to which the authorities implemented the policy in the face of this. This paper presents a novel approach to the measurement of enforcement which relies on linking deceased individuals listed in parish registers into household groups and then measuring changes in within‐household mortality between parishes and epidemics. This provides a more complete assessment of the scale of implementation than would be possible using documentary sources alone. Measuring within‐household mortality allows us to understand patterns of quarantine enforcement in settlements across early modern Europe. Here the focus is restricted to three epidemics that occurred in Bristol – one of England's most populous and prosperous cities. The analysis reveals household quarantine was enforced in 1603–4 with unprecedented vigour. The effects of quarantine are particularly pronounced in the affluent parishes where elite residence was highest. Greater evidence for enforcement is explained by greater elite oversight and control, as well as their desire to protect their own households. The scale of the impact is shocking. Household quarantine could double within household mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the author's experience as a panel member for the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry into the care of children receiving complex cardiac services at the BRI between 1984 and 1995 to describe the process of inquiry and to reflect on recent moves towards a more managed court system, in both civil and criminal jurisdictions. We may begin to question the traditional sharp distinction between adversarial and inquisitorial court processes and to consider the similarities as well as the differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the highlights of the 9th Biennial conference on the European Association of Social Anthropologists held from September 18 to 21, 2006 at Bristol, Great Britain. The global dimensions of particular ethnographic encounters based on the theme of the conference "Europe and the world" is focussed. Various events held at the conference including workshops, presentation of papers and discussions on cultural diversities are mentioned.

Reports on the British Society for Matrix Biology's autumn meeting in Bristol, England. Paper presentations; Key speakers; Event highlights.

Through a case study based in Bristol, this article explores how the ‘law of place’ has transformed multiple heterogeneous city centre spaces into a single homogeneous and commodified privately owned retail site. Drawing on de Certeau, Lefebvre, and humanistic geographers including Tuan, the article explores how law facilitates spatial and temporal enclosure through conventional understandings of private property, relying on techniques of masterplanning, compulsory purchase, and stopping up highways. It suggests that the law of place draws on binary spatial and conceptual distinctions to apparently separate places from spaces, applying different legal rules either side of an often invisible boundary line. The article questions this legally facilitated spatial and conceptual enclosure, particularly as it restricts spatial practices within the public realm. It concludes by rejecting an urban ‘right to roam’ as insufficiently transformative, calling for a broader interpretation of Lefebvre's ‘right to the city’ instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is not to affirm or deny particular philosophical positions, but to explore the limits of intelligibility about what post-mortem harm means, especially in the light of improper post-mortem procedures at Bristol and Alder Hey hospitals in the late 1990s. The parental claims of post-mortem harm to dead children at Alder Hey Hospital are reviewed from five different philosophical perspectives, eventually settling on a crucial difference of perspective about how we understand harm to the dead. On the one hand there is the broadly ‘analytical’ tradition 1 of thinking that predicates the notion of harm on the basis of an existing subject. Since the dead are non-existent persons, it makes little sense to view the dead as being harmed. On the other hand, there is a phenomenological perspective, where the dead, in respect to the experience of grief, are existentially absent. This forms the basis that it is possible to harm grieving parent's experiences of how their dead are treated. The article ends with a short examination of what harming the dead implies for traditional bioethical concerns, namely, obtaining informed consent from significant others when planning medical research on the newly dead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores some of the issues around the agenda for workforce reform as it applies to professionals who work in early years classrooms (4-7 year olds), who work alongside class teachers in supporting learning. Their changing roles, responsibilities and professional identities are examined through a small scale case study of four women, two nursery nurses and two teaching assistants, from an infants school in a suburb of Bristol. Their close professional and personal relationships with the six female class teachers with whom they work are considered. Their stories are analysed for their significance as women whose levels of skill and dedication are undervalued in terms of career structure, salary and job security. Whilst contributing to the debates around the changing roles and the valuable work of teaching assistants, this research endorses the view that these professionals' voices are too often silenced in educational debates and in strategic decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Involving members of the public in setting priorities for health research in becoming increasingly common practice. One method used in public involvement exercises is the citizens' jury. Objective This article examines some challenges and benefits of citizens' juries, including issues relating to process, public engagement and outcome. Design In Bristol, UK, a citizens' jury was held with the aim of identifying local priorities for research into health and social care. This jury is used as an example through which key issues in public involvement and jury processes are explored. Setting and Participants The Bristol Citizens' Jury comprised 20 members of the public (`jurors'), an oversight panel and a steering group. The jurors met at 11 consecutive sessions during 2006 over a period of 16 weeks, which culminated in a written report. All the sessions were audio-recorded, five sessions were observed and video-recorded, and 16 jurors completed written feedback forms at the end of the jury process. Findings and conclusion In this article we discuss degree and timing of public involvement in the process of health research; the role of context; representation of communities; processes of deliberation and knowledge production; and how constraints of time and cost may affect public involvement. It was clear that jurors who took part in the Bristol Citizens' Jury were engaged and committed. This engagement may be related to jurors' belief in their ability to shape future research alongside concern about the relevance of the issues under discussion. Opposing emotions of tension and harmony are a crucial part of the deliberation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on smuggling in Bristol, England during the middle 16th century. Smuggling is recognized as one of the most serious, and certainly most baffling problems in Great Britain. While most studies of the subject have concentrated on the eighteenth century, large-scale smuggling was not a new development in that period. The illicit trade of mid-sixteen-century Bristol is studied through records relation to and generated by merchant-smugglers. By carrying out record linkage between entries in merchant account books and by cross-referencing these to customs accounts and charter parties it is shown that while smuggling was widespread, it was, at least in the 1530-1540s, extremely narrowly defined. In particular it is argued that smuggling, or what contemporaries referred to as 'frauds,' was largely limited to two specific elements of the city's export trade. Nevertheless, it is shown that the great profits achievable in this large-scale and carefully organized trade made this an important business for the city's merchants. It examines the accuracy of the Bristol customs accounts of the 1530s and 1540s by comparing entries in the customs accounts for particular shipments with entries in independently generated commercial records that deal with the shipment of the same consignments. This comparison has used charter parties for part of the exercise.

(1) Data on 1141 foxes from London and 1701 foxes from Bristol were used to describe the demography of two urban fox populations. These data were combined with the results of a mark-recapture study in Bristol and used to construct population models. The results demonstrate that the calculated parameters from the demographic study produce stable populations. (2) The structure and monthly mortality patterns of the two populations were compared.. The total fox population for Bristol was 211 family groups; these comprised 716 adults producing 897 cubs per annum. Of these, 353 adults and 363 cubs survived to the following year. in London a comparable 211' family groups consisted of 578 adults producing 904 cubs per annum; of these, 263 adults and 315 cubs survived to the following year. (3) II is suggested that in London the fox control operations do not significantly reduce the number of fox family groups but reduce the total number of adult foxes and cubs in the population and hence mean family group size. In London, mortality rate in adults and cubs is higher than in Bristol, and a stable population is maintained by increased productivity. This is not achieved by altering litter size but by reducing the proportion of non-breeding vixens and the proportion of dog foxes in the cub and adult populations. (4) In Bristol the fox population structure remained constant irrespective of population density and hence habitat quality. Even in the most favourable urban habitats, when population density approached five fox family groups per square kilometre, sex ratio, productivity and mortality rates remained the same. (5) These data are discussed in relation to current ideas on fox social biology and to a rabies. control campaign in an urban area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) In two areas of Bristol, one 5.5 km [²], the other 3.2 km [²] fox litter counts in two consecutive years were used to estimate the number of fox groups. There were 3.64 family groups/km [²] in the smaller. In parts of the larger area densities of 4-5 family groups/km [²] were recorded. (2) To obtain data on the distribution and relative densities of foxes throughout Bristol nearly 88,000 school children were asked to record fox sightings for a period of one month. Since the absolute fox densities were known for two areas the distribution of recorded sighting could then be used to estimate fox densities throughout the city. By this means it was calculated that there were 211 fox family groups I an area of 116 sq km, a mean density of 1.82 fox family groups/km[²]. (3) Fox distribution in the city was uneven, and fox density was not found to correlate with household density, housing type, age of housing stock, or an other obvious habitat feature. There was a negative correlation (P< 0.001) between the distribution of stray dogs and urban foxes. This was attributed of the fox population by stray dogs. It is suggested that disturbance may be particularly important in the breeding season; dogs were the second major cause of mortality in young fox cubs. (4) Based on post-mortem material, it was calculated that the ratio of breeding to non-breeding vixen was 1:0.35, and so the adult fox population consisted of 211 males, 211 breeding females and 74 barren females. Assuming that all fox family groups breed each year, with a mean birth litter size of 4.80 (calculated from placental scars), the annual cub production would be 1013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]