‘One Can Only Guess What Might Have Happened if the Worker Had Not Intervened in Time': the Liverpool Vigilance Association,moral vulnerability and Irish girls in early- to mid-twentieth-century Liverpool

In early- and mid-twentieth century Britain, members of the Liverpool Vigilance Association (LVA) unofficially policed those who entered Liverpool's port and railway stations. The organisation feared that Irish female newcomers in particular lacked the social wherewithal necessary to maintain their perceived purity within a city such as Liverpool. Whilst the supposed innocence of Irish women was a respectable quality, the LVA believed it also made them vulnerable to exploitation. Consequently the young, Irish, female traveller was central to Liverpudlian social purists' notions of urban moral danger and their belief in the importance of preventative patrol work.     

Growing up as an abandoned child in nineteenth-century Italy

In the debate over “maternal indifference” and, more generally, over the ways in which children were viewed and treated in the European past, the care of abandoned children has attracted a good deal of attention. Huge numbers of newborns were consigned to foundling homes in past centuries, and attempts to keep the children alive depended heavily on placing them with rural wetnurses and foster families. In general, scholars have portrayed these foster families as having little concern for the welfare of their charges. One consequence of this view is the presumed instability of foster home arrangements for foundlings. Using archival sources, this article investigates the relationships between foster families and foundlings by examining the lives of babies abandoned at the foundling home in Bologna, Italy over the course of the nineteenth century. The study provides grounds for questioning the received wisdom on the subject of foundling care in nineteenth-century Italy and beyond.     

Peasant mobilization and anti‐colonial struggle in Vietnam: The rent reduction campaign of 1953

While Vietnam seems to present an unusually successful case of coordination of national liberation struggle and peasant revolution, the relationship between these two aspects of the movement has been very complex, and the national and class struggles have had contradictory as well as complementary aspects. Following a summary of two poles of a debate on the topic within the Vietnamese communist movement in the 1930s and 40s, the article analyses in detail the relationship between the independence struggle and social revolution during 1953, the year in which the Communist Party systematically introduced mass mobilization for class struggle for the first time during the national liberation war.     

Thermal Imaging as a Lie Detection Tool at Airports

We tested the accuracy of thermal imaging as a lie detection tool in airport screening. Fifty-one passengers in an international airport departure hall told the truth or lied about their forthcoming trip in an interview. Their skin temperature was recorded via a thermal imaging camera. Liars’ skin temperature rose significantly during the interview, whereas truth tellers’ skin temperature remained constant. On the basis of these different patterns, 64% of truth tellers and 69% of liars were classified correctly. The interviewers made veracity judgements independently from the thermal recordings. The interviewers outperformed the thermal recordings and classified 72% of truth tellers and 77% of liars correctly. Accuracy rates based on the combination of thermal imaging scores and interviewers’ judgements were the same as accuracy rates based on interviewers’ judgements alone. Implications of the findings for the suitability of thermal imaging as a lie detection tool in airports are discussed.     

Australia's Children ‘Safe and Well’?1 Collaborating with Purpose Across Commonwealth Family Relationship and State Child Protection Systems

So ubiquitous is reference to collaboration in policy documents that it is in danger of being ignored altogether by service deliverers who are not clear about its rationale, how it is built, or its real value. This is evident in the child and family services context where for example the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children calls for collaboration and a ‘shared responsibility’ across the state, Commonwealth and the non‐government sectors to keep children safe and well. This article describes a project undertaken to analyse and ultimately increase levels of collaboration between state and Commonwealth government family service providers. The research reinforced an important message that levels of collaboration should align with the vulnerability of children and their families: the greater the level of risks to children, the greater the level of collaboration needed within and between systems to keep children safe.     

The legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment: part 2 (Queensland)

This is the second article in a series of three that examines the legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment from adults who lack capacity. This article considers the position in Queensland, including the parens patriae jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. A review of the law in this State reveals that medical professionals play significant legal roles in these decisions. However, the law is problematic in a number of respects and this is likely to impede medical professionals' legal knowledge in this area. The article examines the level of training medical professionals receive on issues such as advance health directives and substitute decision-making, and the available empirical evidence as to the state of medical professionals' knowledge of the law at the end of life. It concludes that there are gaps in legal knowledge and that law reform is needed in Queensland.