Alastair Owens

Knowledge and information needs of informal caregivers in palliative care: a qualitative systematic review

Objectives: To review current understanding of the knowledge and information needs of informal caregivers in palliative settings. Data sources: Seven electronic databases were searched for the period January 1994–November 2006: Medline, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Embase, Ovid, Zetoc and Pubmed using a meta-search engine (Metalib®). Key journals and reference lists of selected papers were hand searched. Review methods: Included studies were peer-reviewed journal articles presenting original research. Given a variety of approaches to palliative care research, a validated systematic review methodology for assessing disparate evidence was used in order to assign scores to different aspects of each study (introduction and aims, method and data, sampling, data analysis, ethics and bias, findings/results, transferability/generalizability, implications and usefulness). Analysis was assisted by abstraction of the key details of each study into a table. Results: Thirty-four studies were included from eight different countries. The evidence was strongest in relation to pain management, where inadequacies in caregiver knowledge and the importance of education were emphasized. The significance of effective communication and information sharing between patient, caregiver and service provider was also emphasized. The evidence for other caregiver knowledge and information needs, for example in relation to welfare and social support, was weaker. There was limited literature on non-cancer conditions and the care-giving information needs of black and minority ethnic populations. Overall, the evidence base was predominantly descriptive and dominated by small-scale studies, limiting generalizability. Conclusions: As palliative care shifts into patients’ homes, a more rigorously researched evidence base devoted to understanding caregivers knowledge and information needs is required. Research design needs to move beyond the current focus on dyads to incorporate the complex, three-way interactions between patients, service providers and caregivers in end-of-life care settings.

The meanings of cancer and perceptions of cancer services among South Asians in Luton, UK

Recent research has suggested that there is limited awareness of and information about cancer and cancer services among South Asian communities. This study explores the meanings of cancer and perceptions of cancer services among South Asians living in Luton. Six single-sex focus groups were conducted among the three main South Asian groups in Luton: (1) Punjabi-speaking Muslims originating from Pakistan (Pakistani Punjabi); (2) Sylheti-speaking Muslims originating from Bangladesh (Bangladeshi Sylheti); and (3) Punjabi-speaking Sikhs originating from the Indian Punjab (Indian Punjabi). Overall, it was found that the information relating to cancer for South Asian communities was limited. Participants in the study expressed a keen desire for this information to be made available via their community social networks. This lack of information resulted in low levels of awareness about cancer and related issues. Cancer was often perceived as an incurable disease, a reflection of the fact that access to appropriate services had been experienced at a relatively late stage of the illness. Informed education, therefore, is clearly essential to influence how people manage cancer and access cancer services. This paper describes the challenges that service providers and users face in ensuring effective and informed awareness.

Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain, c. 1870–1935

This article explores the widening ownership of stocks and shares in Great Britain between 1870 and 1935. It demonstrates the extent of that growth and the increasing number of small investors. Women became more important in terms of the number of shareholders and value of holdings. Factors that encouraged this trend included the issue of less risky types of investments, and legal changes relating to married womens property. We examine the ‘deepening’ importance of stocks and shares for wealth holders, arguing that the growing significance of these kinds of financial assets was as important as the growth in the investor population.

Fragments of the Modern City: Material Culture and the Rhythms of Everyday Life in Victorian London

Lining the shelves of a Museum of London warehouse are thousands of boxes of the broken and fragmented belongings of Victorian Londoners. But how might such evidence – the product of recent archaeological excavations across the city – contribute to our understanding of the social and cultural worlds of Victorian Londoners? Can it take us beyond the familiar tropes of social investigation, or past the enduring literary narratives that have so powerfully influenced the historical imagination? Does it allow us to grasp the ‘actualities’ of life in the modern metropolis that are otherwise obscured by a pervasive bourgeois gaze that saturates other historical sources? Taking inspiration from methodological perspectives developed by North American and Australian historical archaeologists, this article deploys an ‘ethnography of place’ approach to demonstrate and evaluate the contribution of material evidence to the study of the nineteenth-century city. Sifting through a rich assemblage of objects discarded by a...

Metropolitan Estates of the Middle Class, 1800–50: Probates and Death Duties Revisited

This article compares the nature of probate records with the death duty registers and explores some of the ways in which these data can be used to analyse wealth-holding in London in the first half of the nineteenth century. Shortcomings of the probate data are discussed and suggestions made as to how such data can be interpreted in relation to wealth-holding in the urban middle class. In the context of London, the paper demonstrates how probate records can be used to examine the geography of wealth, the relationships between occupations and wealth, and the role of gender.

Geographies of wealth

This article explores the composition and geographies of individual wealth holding in England and Wales in the late nineteenth century. It draws on various forms of death duty records to determine the individual ownership of wealth including both personal property and real estate. By combining information on these different kinds of property, it is possible to explore how different strata of wealth holders accumulated specific forms of wealth at the time of their death. The article then examines how the composition of that wealth varied according to the wealth holders location in the urban hierarchy and distance from London. It points out important geographical differences in both the scale and nature of wealth holding and raises questions about the implications of these findings.

Geographies of Wealth: Real Estate and Personal Property Ownership in England and Wales, 1870–1902

This article explores the composition and geographies of individual wealth holding in England and Wales in the late nineteenth century. It draws on various forms of death duty records to determine the individual ownership of wealth including both personal property and real estate. By combining information on these different kinds of property, it is possible to explore how different strata of wealth holders accumulated specific forms of wealth at the time of their death. The article then examines how the composition of that wealth varied according to the wealth holders location in the urban hierarchy and distance from London. It points out important geographical differences in both the scale and nature of wealth holding and raises questions about the implications of these findings.

Nature, technology and the modern city: an introduction

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Nature, technology and the modern city: an introduction Simon Gunn, Alastair Owens

At Home with Collaboration: Building and Sustaining a Successful University–Museum Partnership

There are many similarities between museums and universities. Both are places where knowledge is made and disseminated; both employ creative people who are allowed considerable freedom to generate new ideas and pursue their own projects; at the same time, both are increasingly responsive to wider public agendas and commercial imperatives which require them to think strategically about how they are distinctive and to prove their worth in the context of shifting political priorities and economic pressures. This chapter is about a partnership between a university (Queen Mary University of London) and a museum (The Geffrye Museum of the Home), located just two miles apart from one another in East London.

Peter K. Andersson’s ‘How Civilized Were the Victorians?’: An Introduction

We are excited to be publishing this roundtable, a response to Peter K. Andersson’s recently published Journal of Victorian Culture article ‘How Civilized Were the Victorians?’. Andersson’s piece invites scholars of the nineteenth century to rethink the ‘civilizing process’ and to reconsider the disciplinary parameters of Victorian Studies more generally.1 We have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have engaged with this article. To date, over 3600 people have downloaded it, making it our most read article of 2015–16.2 This roundtable captures some of the dialogue that has emerged in response to the article. Many of the pieces that appear in this roundtable were first published on our accompanying site, the Journal of Victorian Culture Online.3 Invited respondents have been asked to expand their initial replies. Taken together, the essays offer an interdisciplinary conversation around the constitution of Victorian Studies, a conversation that we at the Journal of Victorian Culture have been proud to promote in our journal’s pages. Andersson’s article comes at an important juncture in Victorian Studies. As a field, we are increasingly trying to consider how we should study our Victorian past. We are engaging with an increasingly vibrant public interest in the past which is introducing new audiences to Victorian Studies. At the same time, there is a growing unease around the value of the humanities in universities and more widely in both the US and UK. A bold (and at times controversial) assertion from the US-based Victorian Studies collective V21 tells us that we should move in the direction of a more theoretical and politicized Victorian Studies.4 The thought-provoking pieces in this roundtable invite readers to think more about the direction and future aspirations of our field. Rather than seeing Victorian Studies in flux, these stimulating and wide-ranging reflections point to the successes and methodological diversity of our subject area. The publication of Andersson’s article also coincides with a wider aspiration we have to unite our digital activities with our journal’s printed content. By asking authors to