text stringlengths 14 5.77M | meta dict | __index_level_0__ int64 0 9.97k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|
\section{Introduction}
To motivate the discussion, consider an undirected graph $G$ with vertex set $V=\{1,\ldots, n\}$ and edge set $E\subset \{ij: i\leq j\}$. The classical {\em semi-definite (PSD) completion problem} asks whether given a data vector $a$ indexed by $E$, there exists an $n\times n$ positive semi-definite matrix $X$ completing $a$, meaning $X_{ij}=a_{ij}$ for all $ij\in E$. Similarly, the {\em Euclidean distance (EDM) completion problem} asks whether given such a data vector, there exists a Euclidean distance matrix completing it. For a survey of these two problems, see for example \cite{MR1607310, MR1778240, Floudas:2001aa, Netzer:2012aa}. The semi-definite and Euclidean distance completion problems are often mentioned in the same light due to a number of parallel results; see e.g. \cite{MR1491595}.
Here, we consider a related construction: projections of the PSD cone $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ and the EDM cone ${\mathcal E} ^n$ onto matrix entries indexed by $E$. These ``coordinate shadows'', denoted by ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} ^n)$, respectively, appear naturally: they are precisely the sets of data vectors that render the corresponding completion problems feasible.
We note that these sets are interesting types of ``spectrahedral shadows'' ---
an area of intensive research in recent years. For a representative sample
of recent papers on spectrahedral shadows, we refer to \cite{Netzer:2012aa, MR3062007, MR2515796, MR2533752,MR1404832} and references therein.
In this paper, our goal is twofold: (1) we will highlight the geometry of the two sets ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} ^n)$, and (2) illustrate how such geometric considerations yield a much simplified and transparent analysis of an EDM completion algorithm proposed in \cite{Nathan_Henry}.
To this end, we begin by asking a basic question:
\smallskip
\begin{center}
Under what conditions are the coordinate shadows ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} ^n)$ closed?
\end{center}
\smallskip
This question sits in a broader context still of deciding if a linear image of a closed convex set is itself closed --- a thoroughly studied topic due to its fundamental connection to constraint qualifications and strong duality in convex optimization; see e.g. \cite{con:70, MR85e:90057, Duff:56, Pataki:07, GPat:11} and references therein.
In contrast to the general setting, a complete answer to this question in our circumstances is easy to obtain.
An elementary argument\footnote{\label{foot:proofs}The elementary proofs
of Theorem~\ref{thm:maincompl_fixed} and \ref{thm:close_EDM_fixed} were
suggested to us by an anonymous referee, for which we are very grateful.
Our original reasoning, based on more general considerations, appear in
Subsection~\ref{sec:subsec_orig}.} shows that ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} ^n)$ is always
closed, whereas ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ is closed if, and only if, the set of vertices attached to self-loops $L=\{i\in V: ii\in E\}$ is disconnected from its complement $L^c$ (Theorems~\ref{thm:maincompl_fixed}, \ref{thm:close_EDM_fixed}). Moreover, whenever there is an edge joining $L$ and $L^c$, one can with ease exhibit vectors lying in the closure of ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$, but not in the set ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ itself, thereby certifying that ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ is not closed.
To illustrate the algorithmic significance of the coordinate shadows ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} ^n)$, consider first the feasible region of the PSD completion problem:
$$\{X\in\mathcal{S}^n_+: X_{ij}=a_{ij} \textrm{ for }ij\in E \}.$
For this set to be non-empty, the data vector $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ must be a partial PSD matrix, meaning all of its principal submatrices are positive semi-definite. This, however, does not alone guarantee the inclusion $a\in{\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$, unless the restriction of $G$ to $L$ is chordal and $L$ is disconnected from $L^c$ (Theorem~\ref{thm:psd_comp},\cite[Theorem 7]{GrJoSaWo:84}). On the other hand, the authors of \cite{Nathan_Henry} noticed that even if the feasible set is nonempty, the Slater condition (i.e. existence of a positive definite completion) will often fail: small perturbations to any specified principal submatrix of $a$ having deficient rank can yield the semi-definite completion problem infeasible. In other words, in this case the partial matrix $a$ lies on the boundary of ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ --- the focus of this paper.
An entirely analogous situation occurs for EDM completions $$\{X\in{\mathcal E} ^n: X_{ij}=a_{ij} \textrm{ for }ij\in E \},$$
with the rank of each principal submatrix of $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$ replaced by its ``embedding dimension''.
In \cite{Nathan_Henry}, the authors propose a preprocessing strategy utilizing the cliques in the graph $G$ to systematically decrease the size of the EDM completion problem. Roughly speaking, the authors use each clique to find a face of the EDM cone containing the entire feasible region, and then iteratively intersect such faces. The numerical results in \cite{Nathan_Henry} were impressive. In the current work, we provide a much simplified and transparent geometric argument behind their algorithmic idea, with the boundary of ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} ^n)$ playing a key role. As a result, $(a)$ we put their techniques in a broader setting unifying the PSD and EDM cases, and $(b)$ the techniques developed here naturally lead to a robust variant of the method for {\em noisy (inexact)} EDM completion problems \cite{sensor_pre} -- a more realistic setting. In particular, we show that when $G$ is chordal and all cliques are considered, the preprocessing technique discovers the minimal face of ${\mathcal E} ^n$ (respectively $\mathcal{S}^n_+$) containing the feasible region; see Theorems~\ref{thm:cliquesuffPSD} and \ref{thm:fin_term}. This in part explains the observed success of the method \cite{Nathan_Henry}.
Thus in contrast to general semi-definite programming, the minimal face of the PSD cone containing the feasible region of the PSD completion problem under a chordality assumption (one of the simplest semi-definite programming problems) admits a purely combinatorial description.
As a byproduct, we record a striking relationship between the complexity of the general facial reduction algorithm (singularity degree) and facial exposedness of conic images under a linear mapping; see Theorem~\ref{thm:face_red}.
To the best of our knowledge, this basic relationship has either gone unnoticed or has mostly been forgotten.
The outline of the manuscript is as follows.
In Section \ref{sect:prel} we record basic results on convex
geometry and PSD and EDM completions.
In Section~\ref{sect:closedness}, we consider when the coordinate shadows ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} ^n)$ are closed, while in Section \ref{sect:bndry} we discuss the aforementioned clique facial reduction strategy.
\section{Preliminaries}
\label{sect:prel}
\subsection{Basic elements of convex geometry}
We begin with some notation, following closely the classical
text~\cite{con:70}. Consider a Euclidean space $\mathbb{E}$ with the inner product
$\langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle$. The adjoint of a linear mapping
${\mathcal M}\colon \mathbb{E}\to\mathbb{Y}$, between two Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{E}$ and $\mathbb{Y}$,
is written as ${\mathcal M}^{*}$, while the range and kernel of
${\mathcal M}$ are denoted by $\range {\mathcal M}$ and $\ker {\mathcal M}$, respectively.
We denote the closure, boundary, interior, and relative interior of a set $Q$ in $\mathbb{E}$ by $\cl Q$, $\bnd Q$, $\interior Q$, and $\ri Q$, respectively.
Consider a convex cone $C$ in $\mathbb{E}$.
The linear span and the orthogonal complement of the linear span of $C$
will be denoted by $\linspan C$ and $C^{\perp}$, respectively.
For a vector $v$, we let $v^\perp:=\{v\}^\perp$.
We associate with $C$ the \emph{nonnegative polar} cone
\[
C^*=\{y\in\mathbb{E}: \langle y,x\rangle \geq 0~ \textrm{ for all } x \in C\}.
\]
The second polar $(C^*)^{*}$ coincides with the original $C$
if, and only if, $C$ is closed.
A convex subset $F\subseteq C$ is a \textdef{face of $C$}, denoted
$F \unlhd C$, if $F$ contains any line segment in $C$ whose relative interior intersects $F$.
The \textdef{minimal face} containing a set $S\subseteq C$, denoted
$\face(S,C)$, is the intersection of all faces of $C$ containing $S$. When $S$ is itself a convex set, then $\face(S,C)$ is the smallest face of $C$ intersecting the relative interior of $S$.
A face $F$ of $C$ is an \textdef{exposed face} when there exists a
vector $v\in C^*$ satisfying $F=C\cap \, v^{\perp}$. In this case, we say that $v$ {\em exposes} $F$.
The cone $C$ is \textdef{facially exposed} when all faces of $C$ are exposed.
In particular, the cones of positive semi-definite and Euclidean distance matrices, which we will focus on shortly, are facially exposed.
With any face $F\unlhd C$, we associate a face of the polar $C^*$,
called the \textdef{conjugate face}
$F^{\triangle}:= C^*\cap F^\perp$. Equivalently, $F^{\triangle}$ is the
face of $C^*$ exposed by any point $x\in \ri F$, that is
$F^{\triangle}:= C^*\cap \,x^\perp$.
Thus, in particular, conjugate faces are always exposed.
Not surprisingly then equality $(F^{\triangle})^{\triangle}=F$ holds if,
and only if, $F\unlhd C$ is exposed.
\subsection{Semi-definite and Euclidean distance matrices}\label{subsec:PSD_EDM}
We will focus on two particular realizations of the Euclidean space $\mathbb{E}$:
the $n$-dimensional vector space $\mathbb{R}^n$ with a fixed basis and the induced
\textdef{dot-product} $\langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle$ and the vector space of
$n\times n$ real symmetric matrices $\mathcal{S}^n$ with the
\textdef{trace inner product} $\langle A,B\rangle :=\trace AB$.
The symbols $\mathbb{R}_{+}$ and $\mathbb{R}_{++}$
will stand for the non-negative orthant and its interior in $\mathbb{R}^n$,
while $\mathcal{S}^n_{+}$ and $\mathcal{S}^n_{++}$ will stand for the cones of
positive semi-definite and positive definite matrices in $\mathcal{S}^n$
(or \textdef{PSD} and \textdef{PD} for short), respectively. We let $e\in\mathbb{R}^n$ be the vector of all ones and for any vector $v\in\mathbb{R}^n$, the symbol $\Diag v$ will denote the $n\times n$ diagonal matrix with $v$ on the diagonal.
It is well-known that all faces of $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ are convex cones that can be expressed as
$$F=\left\{ U\begin{bmatrix} A & 0 \\ 0 & 0 \end{bmatrix}U^T: A\in\mathcal{S}^r_+
\right\},$$
for some orthogonal matrix $U$ and some integer $r=0,1,\ldots,n$.
Such a
face can equivalently be written as $F=\{X\in\mathcal{S}^n_+: \range X\subset\range
\overline{U}\}$, where $\overline{U}$ is formed from the first $r$
columns of $U$.
The conjugate face of such a face $F$ is then
$$F^{\triangle}=\left\{ U\begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 \\ 0 & A \end{bmatrix}
U^T: A\in\mathcal{S}^{n-r}_+ \right\}.$$
For any convex set $Q\subset\mathcal{S}^n_+$, the cone $\face(Q,\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ coincides with $\face(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ where $X$ is any maximal rank matrix in $Q$.
A matrix $D\in\mathcal{S}^n$ is a {\em Euclidean distance matrix} (or EDM for short) if there
exist $n$ points $p_i$ (for $i=1,\ldots, n$) in some Euclidean space
$\mathbb{R}^k$ satisfying $D_{ij}=\|p_i-p_j\|^2$, for all indices $i,j$. These points are then said to {\em realize} $D$.
The smallest integer $k$ for which this realization of $D$ by $n$ points is
possible is the \textdef{embedding dimension} of $D$ and will be denoted by
$\embdim D$.
We let $\mathcal{E}^n$ be the set of $n\times n$ Euclidean distance matrices.
There is a close relationship between PSD and
EDM matrices. Indeed $\mathcal{E}^n$ is a closed convex cone that is linearly
isomorphic to $\mathcal{S}^{n-1}_+$.
To state this precisely, consider the mapping
$${\mathcal K} : \mathcal{S}^n \rightarrow \mathcal{S}^n$$
defined by
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:defK}
{\mathcal K} (X)_{ij}:=X_{ii}+X_{jj}-2X_{ij}.
\end{equation}
Then the adjoint
${\mathcal K} ^*\colon \mathcal{S}^n\to\mathcal{S}^n$ is given by
\begin{equation*
{\mathcal K} ^*(D)=2(\Diag(De)-D)
\end{equation*}
and the equations
\begin{equation}
\label{rangeK*}
\range {\mathcal K} = \mathcal{S}_H, \qquad \range {\mathcal K} ^*=\mathcal{S}_c
\end{equation}
hold, where
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:centholl}
\mathcal{S}_c:= \{X \in \mathcal{S}^n: Xe=0\}; \qquad
\mathcal{S}_H:= \{D \in \mathcal{S}^n: \diag(D)=0\},
\end{equation}
are the \textdef{centered} and
\textdef{hollow matrices},
respectively. It is known that ${\mathcal K} $ maps $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ onto ${\mathcal E} ^n$, and moreover the restricted mapping
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:isomorph}
{\mathcal K} : \mathcal{S}_c \rightarrow \mathcal{S}_H \text{ is a linear isomorphism carrying } \mathcal{S}_c\cap\mathcal{S}^n_+ \textrm{ onto }{\mathcal E} ^n.
\end{equation}
In turn, it is easy to see that $\mathcal{S}_c\cap\mathcal{S}^n_+$ is a face of $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ isomorphic to $\mathcal{S}^{n-1}_+$; see the discussion after Lemma~\ref{lem:face_iso} for more details.
These and other related results have appeared in a number of publications; see for example \cite{homwolkA:04,MR1366579,hwlt91,MR2166851, MR97h:15032,MR2549047,MR2890931,MR2653818,MR2357790}.
\subsection{Semi-definite and Euclidean distance completions}
The focus of the current work is on the PSD and EDM completion problems, see e.g.,~\cite[Chapter 49]{MR2279160}.
Throughout the rest of the manuscript, we fix an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$, with a
vertex set $V=\{1,\ldots,n\}$ and an edge set $E\subset \{ij: 1\leq i\leq j\leq n\}$. Observe that we allow self-loops. These loops will play an important role in what follows, and hence we define $L$ to be the set of all vertices $i$ satisfying $ii\in E$, that is those vertices that are attached to a loop.
Any vector $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ is called a {\em partial matrix}.
Define now the projection map $\mathcal{P}: \mathcal{S}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{E}$ by setting
\[
{\mathcal P} (A) = (A_{ij})_{ij\in E },
\]
that is $\mathcal{P}(A)$ is the vector of all the entries of $A$ indexed by $E$.
The adjoint map ${\mathcal P} ^*:\mathbb{R}^{E} \rightarrow \mathcal{S}^n$ is found by setting
\[
\left({\mathcal P} ^*(y)\right)_{ij}= \left\{
\begin{array}{ll}
y_{ij}, & \text{if } ij\in E\\
0, & \text{otherwise},
\end{array}
\right.
\]
for indices $i\leq j$.
Define also the \textdef{Laplacian operator} $\mathcal{L}\colon \mathbb{R}^{E}\to \mathcal{S}^n$
by setting
$$\mathcal{L}(a):=\frac{1}{2}({\mathcal P} \circ {\mathcal K} )^{*}(a)=\Diag({\mathcal P} ^*(a)e)-{\mathcal P} ^*(a).$$
Consider a partial matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ whose components are all strictly
positive. Classically then the Laplacian matrix $\mathcal{L}(a)$ is
positive semi-definite and moreover the kernel of $\mathcal{L}(a)$ is
only determined by the connectivity of the graph $G$; see for example
~\cite{BrualRys:91},\cite[Chapter 47]{MR2279160}. Consequently all
partial matrices with strictly positive weights define the same minimal face of
the positive semi-definite cone. In particular, when $G$ is connected,
we have the equalities
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:lap}
\kernel \mathcal{L}(a)=\linspan\{e\} \qquad\textrm{ and }\qquad
\face(\mathcal{L}(a),\mathcal{S}^n_+)=\mathcal{S}_c \cap \mathcal{S}^n_+.
\end{equation}
A symmetric matrix $A\in\mathcal{S}^n$ is a \textdef{completion} of a partial
matrix $a\in \mathbb{R}^{E}$ if it satisfies $\mathcal{P}(A)=a$.
We say that a completion $A\in \mathcal{S}^n$ of a partial matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ is a
{\em PSD completion} if $A$ is a PSD matrix.
Thus the image ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ is the set of all partial matrices
that are PSD completable.
A partial matrix $a\in \mathbb{R}^{E}$ is a
\textdef{partial PSD matrix} if all existing
principal submatrices, defined by $a$, are PSD matrices.
Finally we call $G$ itself a {\em PSD completable graph} if every partial PSD matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$ is completable to a PSD matrix. \textdef{PD completions}, \textdef{partial PD matrices}, and \textdef{PD completable graphs}
are defined similarly.
We call a graph \emph{chordal} if any cycle of four or more
nodes (vertices) has a chord,
i.e.,~an edge exists joining any two nodes that are not
adjacent in the cycle. Before we proceed, a few comments on
completability are in order. In \cite[Proposition 1]{GrJoSaWo:84}, the
authors claim that $G$ is PSD completable (PD respectively) if, and
only if, the graph induced on $L$ by $G$ is PSD completable (PD respectively). In light of this, the authors then reduce all of their arguments to this induced subgraph. It is easy to see that the statement above does not hold for PSD completability (but is indeed valid for PD completability).
Consider for example the partial PSD matrix
$\begin{bmatrix}
0 &1\\
1 & ?
\end{bmatrix}$
which is clearly not PSD completable.
Taking this into account, the correct statement of their main result \cite[Theorem 7]{GrJoSaWo:84} is as follows. See also the discussion in \cite{Laurent:00}.
\smallskip
\begin{theorem}[PSD completable matrices \& chordal graphs]\label{thm:psd_comp}{\hfill \\}
The following are true.
\begin{enumerate}
\item The graph $G$ is PD completable if, and only if, the graph induced by $G$ on $L$ is chordal.
\item The graph $G$ is PSD completable if, and only, if the graph induced by $G$ on $L$ is chordal and $L$ is disconnected from $L^c$.
\end{enumerate}
\end{theorem}
\smallskip
With regard to EDMs, we will always assume
$L=\emptyset$ for the simple reason that the diagonal of
an EDM is always fixed at zero.
With this in mind, we say that a completion $A\in \mathcal{S}^n$ of a partial
matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ is an \textdef{EDM
completion} if $A$ is an EDM.
Thus the image ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{E}^n)$ (or equivalently
$\mathcal{L}^*(\mathcal{S}^n_+)$) is the set of all partial matrices
that are EDM completable.
We say that a partial matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ is a \textdef{partial EDM} if any existing principal submatrix, defined by $a$, is an EDM.
Finally we say that $G$ is an EDM completable graph if any partial EDM is completable to an EDM.
The following theorem is analogous to Theorem~\ref{thm:psd_comp}. For a proof, see~\cite{MR1321802}.
\smallskip
\begin{thm}[Euclidean distance completability \& chordal graphs]
\label{thm:compledm}{\hfill \\ }
The graph $G$ is EDM completable if, and only if, $G$ is chordal.
\end{thm}
\section{Closedness of the projected PSD and EDM cones}
\label{sect:closedness}
We begin this section by characterizing when the projection of the
PSD cone $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ onto some subentries is closed.
To illustrate, consider the simplest setting $n=2$, namely
\[
\mathcal{S}^2_+ =
\left\{\begin{bmatrix} x & y \\
y & z \end{bmatrix} : x\geq 0, z\geq 0, xz\geq y^2\right\}.
\]
Abusing notation slightly, one can easily verify:
$${\mathcal P} _{z}(\mathcal{S}^2_+)=\mathbb{R}_+ ,\qquad {\mathcal P} _{y}(\mathcal{S}^2_+)=\mathbb{R}, \qquad {\mathcal P} _{x,z}(\mathcal{S}^2_+)=\mathbb{R}^2_+.$$
Clearly all of these projected sets are closed. Projecting $\mathcal{S}^2_+$ onto a single row, on the other hand, yields a set that is not closed:
$${\mathcal P} _{x,y}(\mathcal{S}^2_+)={\mathcal P} _{z,y}(\mathcal{S}^2_+)=\{(0,0)\}\cup(\mathbb{R}_{++}\times\mathbb{R}).$$
In this case, the graph $G$ has two vertices and two
edges, and in particular, there is an edge joining $L$ with $L^c$. As we will now see, this connectivity property is the only obstacle to ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ being closed. The elementary proof of the following two theorems was suggested to us by one of the anonymous referees, for which we are very grateful. Our original arguments, based on more general principles, now appear in Subsection~\ref{sec:subsec_orig}, and may be of an independent interest.
\smallskip
\begin{thm}[Closedness of the projected PSD cone]
\label{thm:maincompl_fixed}
The projected set ${\mathcal P} (\psd{n})$ is closed if, and only if, the vertices in $L$ are disconnected from those in the complement $L^c$.
Moreover, if the latter condition fails, then
for any edge $i^*j^*\in E$ joining a vertex in $L$ with a
vertex in $L^c$, any partial matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ satisfying
\begin{align*}
a_{i^*j^*} \neq 0 \quad&\textrm{ and }\quad
a_{ij}=0 \textrm{ for all } ~ij\in E\cap (L\times L),
\end{align*}
lies in $\big(\cl {\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)\big)\setminus {\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$.
\end{thm}
\begin{proof}
Without loss of generality, assume $L=\{1,\ldots,r\}$ for some integer $r\geq 0$.
Suppose first that the vertices in $L$ are disconnected from those in the complement $L^c$. Let $a_i\in\mathbb{R}^E$ be a sequence in ${\mathcal P} (\psd{n})$ converging to a partial matrix $a\in \mathbb{R}^E$. We may now write $a_i={\mathcal P} (X_i)$ for some matrices $X_i\in \psd{n}$. Denoting by $X_i[L]$ the restriction of $X_i$ to the $L\times L$ block, we deduce that the diagonal elements of $X_i[L]$ are bounded and therefore
the matrices $X_i[L]$ are themselves bounded.
Hence there exists a subsequence of $X_i[L]$ converging to some PSD matrix $X_L$. Let $Y\in \mathcal{S}^{|L^c|}$ now be any completion of the restriction of $a$ to $L^c$. Observe that for sufficiently large values $\lambda$ the matrix $Y+\lambda I$ is positive definite and hence $\begin{bmatrix} X_L & 0 \\
0 & Y+\lambda I \end{bmatrix}$
is a positive semi-definite completion of $a$.
Conversely, suppose that $L$ is not disconnected from $L^c$ and consider
the vertices $i^*,j^*$ and a matrix $a$ specified in the statement of the theorem. Since the block
$\begin{bmatrix} 0 & a_{i^*j^*} \\
a_{i^*j^*} & ? \end{bmatrix}$
is not PSD completable, clearly $a$ is not PSD completable. To see the inclusion $a\in \cl{\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$, consider the matrix $X:={\mathcal P} ^*(a)+ \begin{bmatrix} \epsilon I & 0 \\
0 & \lambda I \end{bmatrix}$.
Using Schur's complement, we deduce that for any fixed $\epsilon$ there
exists a sufficiently large $\lambda$ such that $X$ is positive
definite. On the other hand, clearly ${\mathcal P} (X)$ converges to $a$ as $\epsilon$ tends to zero. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
\smallskip
\smallskip
We next consider projections of the EDM cone.
\smallskip
\begin{theorem}[Closedness of the projected EDM cone]\label{thm:close_EDM_fixed}
\hfill {\\ }
The projected image ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{E}^n)$ is always closed.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
First, we can assume without loss of generality that the graph $G$ is connected. To see this, let $G_i=(V_i, E_i)$ for $i=1,\ldots,l$ be the connected components of $G$.
Then one can easily verify that ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{E}^n)$ coincides with the Cartesian product $P_{E_1}(\mathcal{E}^{|V_1|})\times \ldots\times P_{E_l}(\mathcal{E}^{|V_l|})$. Thus if each image ${\mathcal P} _{E_i}(\mathcal{E}^{|V_i|})$ is closed, then so is the product ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{E}^n)$.
We may therefore assume that $G$ is connected. Now suppose that for a sequence $D_i\in {\mathcal E} ^n$ the vectors $a_i={\mathcal P} (D_i)$ converge to some vector $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$. Let $x^i_1,\ldots,x^i_n$ be the point realizing the matrices $D_i$. Translating the points, we may assume that one of the points is the origin. Since $G$ is connected, all the points $x^i_j$ are bounded in norm. Passing to a subsequence, we obtain a collection of points realizing the matrix $a$.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Alternate proofs}\label{sec:subsec_orig}
Theorems~\ref{thm:maincompl_fixed} and \ref{thm:close_EDM_fixed} are part of a broader theme.
Indeed, a central (and classical) question in convex analysis is when a linear
image of a closed convex cone is itself closed. In a recent paper~\cite{Pataki:07}, the
author showed that there is a convenient
characterization for ``nice cones'' --- those cones $C$ for which $C^*+F^\perp$ is closed for all faces
$F \unlhd C$ \cite{BW80,Pataki:07}.
Reassuringly, most cones which we can efficiently
optimize over are nice; see the discussion in~\cite{Pataki:07}.
For example, the cones of positive semi-definite and
Euclidean distance matrices are nice. In this subsection, we show how the results of Theorems~\ref{thm:maincompl_fixed}, \ref{thm:close_EDM_fixed} can be recovered from the more general perspective; originally, the content of the aforementioned results were noticed exactly in this way. (We note that the results
in~\cite{Pataki:07} provide {\em necessary} conditions for the linear image of
any closed convex cone to be closed.)
To proceed, we need two standard notions:
the
\textdef{cone of feasible directions} and the {\em tangent cone} of a convex cone $C$ at one of its points $x$, respectively, are the sets
\begin{align*}
\dir(x,C) &:= \left\{
v : x + \epsilon v \in C \textrm{ for some } \epsilon >0 \right\},\\
\tcone(x,C) &:= \cl \dir (x,C).
\end{align*}
Both of the cones above can conveniently be described in terms of the minimal face $F:=\face(x,C)$ as follows (for details, see~\cite[Lemma~1]{GPat:11}):
\begin{equation*}
\label{eq:fourconessums}
\begin{array}{rclrcl}
\dir(x,C) = C+\linspan F \qquad\textrm{ and }\qquad \tcone(x,C) = (F^{\triangle})^*.
\end{array}
\end{equation*}
The following theorem, originating in
\cite[Theorem 1.1, Corollary 3.1]{Pataki:07} and~\cite[Theorem 3]{GPat:11}, provides a general framework for checking image closedness.
\smallskip
\begin{thm}
[Image closedness of nice cones]
\label{pataki-cl}
Let ${\mathcal M}:\mathbb{E}\rightarrow \mathbb{Y}$ be a linear transformation
between two Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{E}$ and $\mathbb{Y}$, and let $C\subseteq \mathbb{Y}$ be a
nice, closed convex cone. Consider a point $x\in\ri(C\cap \,\range
{\mathcal M})$. Then the following two statements are equivalent.
\begin{enumerate}
\item The image ${\mathcal M}^*C^*$ is closed.
\item\label{claim:2} The implication
\begin{equation}
\label{eqn:unlin}
v\in \tcone(x,C) \cap\, \range {\mathcal M} \quad \Longrightarrow \quad v\in \dir(x,C) \quad
\textrm{holds}.
\end{equation}
\end{enumerate}
Moreover, suppose that implication \eqref{eqn:unlin} fails and choose an arbitrary vector
$v\in \left(\tcone(x,C) \cap \range {\mathcal M}\right)\setminus \dir(x,C)$.
Then for any point
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:av}
a \in \left(\face(x,C)\right)^{\perp} \quad
\textrm{ satisfying } \quad\langle
a,v\rangle <0,
\end{equation}
the point ${\mathcal M}^*a$ lies in $(\cl {\mathcal M}^*C^*)\setminus
{\mathcal M}^*C^*$, thereby certifying that ${\mathcal M}^*C^*$ is not closed.
\end{thm}
\smallskip
\begin{rem}
{\rm
Following notation of Theorem~\ref{pataki-cl}, it is shown in \cite[Theorem 1.1, Corollary 3.1]{Pataki:07} that for any point $x\in\ri(C\cap \,\range
{\mathcal M})$, we have equality
\begin{equation*}
(\tcone(x,C)\cap \range {\mathcal M}) \setminus \dir(x,C) \, = \, (\tcone(x,C) \cap \range {\mathcal M})\setminus \linspan \face(x,C).
\end{equation*}
Hence for any point $x\in \ri(C\cap \,\range
{\mathcal M})$ and any vector $v\in \left(\tcone(x,C) \cap \range {\mathcal M}\right)\setminus \dir(x,C)$, there indeed exists some point $a$ satisfying \eqref{eq:av}. }
\end{rem}
\smallskip
The following sufficient condition for image closedness is now immediate.
\smallskip
\begin{corollary}[Sufficient condition for image closedness]
\label{cor:pataki-cl} \hfill \\
Let ${\mathcal M}:\mathbb{E}\rightarrow \mathbb{Y}$ be a linear transformation
between two Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{E}$ and $\mathbb{Y}$, and let $C\subseteq \mathbb{Y}$ be a
nice, closed convex cone. If for some point $x\in\ri(C\cap \,\range
{\mathcal M})$, the inclusion $\range({\mathcal M}) \subseteq \linspan \face(x,C)$ holds, then ${\mathcal M}^*C^*$ is closed.
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof}
Define $F:=\face(x,C)$ and note $\range({\mathcal M}) \subseteq \linspan F \subseteq \dir(x,C)$.
We deduce
\[
\begin{array}{rcl}
\tcone (x,C) \cap \range({\mathcal M})
&\subseteq &
\tcone (x,C) \cap \dir(x,C)
= \dir(x,C).
\end{array}
\]
The result now follows from Theorem~\ref{pataki-cl}, since implication \eqref{eqn:unlin} holds.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
{\em Alternate proof of Theorem~\ref{thm:maincompl_fixed}.}
First, whenever $L=\emptyset$ one can easily verify the equation ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)=\mathbb{R}^{E}$.
Hence the theorem holds trivially in this case.
Without loss of generality, we now permute the vertices $V$ so that we have $L=\{1,\ldots,r\}$ for some integer $r\geq 1$.
We will proceed by
applying Theorem~\ref{pataki-cl} with ${\mathcal M}:={\mathcal P} ^*$ and
$C:=(\mathcal{S}^n_+)^*=\mathcal{S}^n_+$.
To this end, observe the equality
\[
\mathcal{S}^n_+\cap \range {\mathcal P} ^*=\left\{\begin{bmatrix} A & 0 \\ 0 & 0 \end{bmatrix}:
A\in \mathcal{S}^r_+ \textrm{ and } A_{ij}=0
\textrm{ when } ij\notin E \right\}.
\]
Thus we obtain the inclusion
$$
X := \begin{bmatrix} I_r & 0 \\ 0 & 0 \end{bmatrix} \in
\ri (\mathcal{S}^n_+\cap \range {\mathcal P} ^*).
$$
Observe
$$\face(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+)= \left\{ \begin{bmatrix} A & 0 \\ 0 &
0 \end{bmatrix} : A\in \mathcal{S}^{r}_+ \right\}.$$
From~\cite[Lemma~3]{GPat:11},
we have the description
$$\tcone(X, \mathcal{S}^n_+) =
\left\{ \begin{bmatrix} A & B \\ B^T &
C \end{bmatrix} : C \in \mathcal{S}^{n-r}_+ \right\},$$
while on the other hand
$$\dir(X, \mathcal{S}^n_+) =
\left\{ \begin{bmatrix} A & B \\ B^T &
C \end{bmatrix} : C \in \mathcal{S}^{n-r}_+ ~ \textrm{ and } ~ \range
B^T\subseteq \range C \right\}.$$
Thus if the intersection
$E \cap \bigl( \{1, \dots, r \} \times
\{r+1, \dots, n \} \bigr)$ is empty, then for
any matrix
\[
\begin{bmatrix} A & B \\ B^T &
C \end{bmatrix}\in \tcone(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+) \cap \range {\mathcal P} ^*,
\]
we have $B=0$, and consequently this matrix lies in $\dir(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+)$.
Using Theorem~\ref{pataki-cl}, we deduce that the image ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ is closed.
Conversely, for any edge $i^*j^*\in E \cap \bigl( \{1, \dots,
r \} \times \{r+1, \dots, n \} \bigr)$, we can define the matrix
$$V:=e_{ i^*}e_{j^{*}}^T+e_{j^*}e_{i^*}^T\in
\left\{\tcone(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+)\setminus \dir(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+)\right\}\cap
\range {\mathcal P} ^*,$$
where $e_{i^*}$ and $e_{j^*}$ denote the $i^*$'th and $j^*$'th unit vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$.
Theorem~\ref{pataki-cl} immediately implies that the image ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ is not closed.
Moreover, in this case, define $A\in \mathcal{S}^n$ to be any matrix satisfying $A_{i^*j^*}< 0$ and $A_{ij}=0$ whenever $ij\in \{1,\ldots,r\}\times\{1,\ldots,r\}$. Then $A$ lies in $(\face(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+))^\perp$ and the inequality, $\langle A,V\rangle=2A_{i^*j^*} <0$, holds. Again appealing to Theorem~\ref{pataki-cl}, we deduce ${\mathcal P} (A)\in (\cl {\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+))\setminus {\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$, as we had to show. Replacing $V$ by $-V$ shows that the same conclusion holds in the case $A_{i^*j^*}> 0$. This completes the proof.
$\square$
\smallskip
{\em Alternate proof of Theorem~\ref{thm:close_EDM_fixed}.}
As in the original proof, we can assume that $G$ is connected.
The proof proceeds by applying Corollary~\ref{cor:pataki-cl}.
To this end, in the notation of that corollary, we set $C:=\mathcal{S}^n_+$ and
${\mathcal M}=\mathcal{L}=\frac{1}{2}{\mathcal K} ^*\circ {\mathcal P} ^*$. Clearly then we
have the equality ${\mathcal M}^*C^*={\mathcal P} (\mathcal{E}^n)$.
Define now the partial matrix $x \in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ with $x_{ij}=1$ for all $ij\in E$,
and set $X :=\mathcal{L}(x)$.
We now claim that the inclusion
\begin{equation}\label{eq:Xrelint}
X \in \ri \left(\mathcal{S}^n_+ \cap \range \mathcal{L} \right) \qquad \textrm{ holds}.
\end{equation}
To see this, observe that $X$ lies in the intersection
$\mathcal{S}^n_+ \cap \range \mathcal{L}$, since $X$ is a positively weighed Laplacian.
Now let $Y \in \mathcal{S}^n_+ \cap \range \mathcal{L}$ be arbitrary, then
$Y = \mathcal{L}(y)$ for some partial matrix $y \in\mathbb{R}^E.$ Consider the matrices
$$
X \pm \epsilon(X-Y) \, = \, \mathcal{L}(x \pm \epsilon (x-y)).
$$
If $\epsilon >0$ is small, then $x \pm \epsilon (x-y)$ has all positive components, and so
$X \pm \epsilon(X-Y)$ is a positively weighed Laplacian, hence positive semidefinite.
This proves \eqref{eq:Xrelint}.
Now define $F=\face(X,\mathcal{S}^n_+)$. We claim that equation $\linspan F = \mathcal{S}_c$ holds. To see this, recall that the nullspace of $X$ is one-dimensional, being generated by $e$. Consequently $F$ has dimension $\frac{n(n-1)}{2}$. On the other hand $F$ is clearly contained in $\mathcal{S}_c$, a linear subspace of dimension $\frac{n(n-1)}{2}$. We deduce $\linspan F = \mathcal{S}_c$, as claimed.
The closure now follows from Corollary~\ref{cor:pataki-cl}.
$\square$
\section{Boundaries of projected sets \& facial reduction}
\label{sect:bndry}
To motivate the discussion, consider the general conic system
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:feas_reg}
F:=\{X\in C: \mathcal{M}(X)=b\},
\end{equation}
where $C$ is a proper (closed, with nonempty interior)
convex cone in an Euclidean space $\mathbb{E}$ and
$\mathcal{M}\colon\mathbb{E}\to\mathbb{R}^m$ is a linear mapping.
Classically we say that the Slater condition holds for this problem whenever there exists $X$ in the interior of
$C$
satisfying the system $\mathcal{M}(X)=b$.
In this section, we first relate properties of the image set ${\mathcal M}(C)$ to
the {\em facial reduction algorithm} of Borwein-Wolkowicz
\cite{BW80,BW81}, and to more recent variants \cite{MR3063940,
MR3108446, perm}
and then specialize the discussion to the PSD and EDM completion problems we have been studying.
When strict feasibility fails, the {\em facial reduction} strategy aims
to embed the feasibility system in a Euclidean space of smallest
possible dimension. The starting point is the following elementary
geometric observation: exactly one of the following alternatives holds
\cite{BW80,BW81,MR3108446, perm}.
\newcounter{qcounter2}
\begin{list}{\arabic{qcounter2}.~}{\usecounter{qcounter2} \leftmargin=2em}
\item The conic system in \eqref{eqn:feas_reg} is strictly feasible.
\item\label{item:cirt}
There is a nonzero matrix $Y \in C^*$ so that the orthogonal complement $Y^{\perp}$ contains the affine space $\{X: {\mathcal M}(X)=b\}$.
\end{list}
The matrix $Y$ in the second alternative certifies that the entire
feasible region $F$ is contained in the slice $C \cap Y^{\perp}$.
Determining which alternative is valid is yet another system that needs to be solved, namely
find a vector $v$ satisfying the {\em auxiliary system}
$$0\neq \mathcal{M}^*v\in C^* \quad\textrm{ and }\quad \langle v,b\rangle =0,$$
and set $Y:=\mathcal{M}^*v$.
One can now form an ``equivalent'' feasible region to \eqref{eqn:feas_reg} by replacing $C$ with $C\cap Y^{\perp}$ and $\mathbb{E}$ with the linear span of $C\cap Y^{\perp}$.
One then repeats the procedure on this smaller problem, forming the
alternative, and so on and so forth until strict feasibility holds. The
number of steps for the procedure to terminate depends on the choices of
the exposing vectors $Y$. The minimal number of steps needed is the {\em
singularity degree} --- an intriguing measure of complexity
\cite{S98lmireport}. In general, the singularity degree is no greater
than $n-1$, and there are instances of semidefinite programming
that require exactly $n-1$ facial reduction iterations \cite[Section 2.6]{lev_book}.
\smallskip
The following theorem provides an interesting perspective on facial reduction in terms of the image set ${\mathcal M}(C)$. In essence, the minimal face of ${\mathcal M}(C)$ containing $b$ immediately yields the minimal face of $C$ containing the feasible region $F$, that is in principle no auxiliary sequence of problems for determining $\face(F,C)$ is needed. The difficulty is that geometry of ${\mathcal M}(C)$ is in general complex and so a simple description of $\face(b,{\mathcal M}(C))$ is unavailable. The auxiliary problem in the facial reduction iteration instead tries to represent
$\face(b,{\mathcal M}(C))$ using some dual vector $v$ exposing a face of
${\mathcal M}(C)$ containing $b$. The singularity degree is then exactly one if,
and only if, the minimal face $\face(b,{\mathcal M}(C))$ is exposed. To the best of our knowledge, this relationship to exposed faces has either been overlooked in the literature or forgotten. In particular, an immediate consequence is that whenever the image cone ${\mathcal M}(C)$ is facially exposed, the feasibility problem \eqref{eqn:feas_reg} has singularity degree at most one for any right-hand-side vector $b$, for which the feasible region is nonempty.
\smallskip
\begin{thm}[Facial reduction and exposed faces]
\label{thm:face_red}
Consider a linear operator $\mathcal{M}\colon\mathbb{E}\to\mathbb{Y}$, between two Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{E}$ and $\mathbb{Y}$, and let $C\subset \mathbb{E}$ be a proper convex cone.
Consider a nonempty feasible set
\begin{equation}\label{eq:feas_sis}
F:=\{X\in C: {\mathcal M}(X)=b\}
\end{equation}
for some point $b\in \mathbb{Y}$. Then a vector $v$ exposes a proper face of
${\mathcal M}(C)$ containing $b$ if, and only if, $v$ satisfies the auxiliary system
\begin{equation}\label{eq:aux}
0\neq\mathcal{M}^*v\in C^* \quad\textrm{ and }\quad \langle v,b\rangle =0.
\end{equation}
For notational convenience, define $N:=\face(b, {\mathcal M}(C))$. Then the following are true.
\begin{enumerate}
\item\label{claim:1} We always have $C\cap{\mathcal M}^{-1}N=\face(F, C)$.
\item\label{claim:3_in} For any vector $v\in\mathbb{R}^m$ the following equivalence holds:
$$v \textrm{ exposes } N \quad\Longleftrightarrow\quad \mathcal{M}^*v \textrm{ exposes } \face(F, C).$$
\end{enumerate}
Consequently whenever the Slater condition fails, the singularity degree
of the system \eqref{eq:feas_sis} is equal to one if, and only if, the minimal face $\face(b,{\mathcal M}(C))$ is exposed.
\end{thm}
\begin{proof}
First suppose that $v$ exposes a proper face of ${\mathcal M}(C)$ containing $b$. Clearly we have $\langle v,b\rangle=0$. Observe moreover
$$\langle {\mathcal M}^* v, X\rangle =\langle v, {\mathcal M}(X)\rangle\geq 0, \qquad \textrm{ for any }X\in C,$$
and hence the inclusion ${\mathcal M}^* v\in C^*$ holds. Finally,
since $v$ exposes a proper face of ${\mathcal M}(C)$, we deduce $v\notin (\range {\mathcal M})^{\perp}=\kernel {\mathcal M}^*$. We conclude that $v$ satisfies the auxiliary system \eqref{eq:aux}. The converse follows along the same lines.
We first prove claim \ref{claim:1}. To this end, we first verify that $C\cap{\mathcal M}^{-1}N$ is a face of $C$. Observe for any $x,y\in C$ satisfying $\frac{1}{2}X+\frac{1}{2}Y\in C\cap{\mathcal M}^{-1}N$, we have $\frac{1}{2}{\mathcal M}(X)+\frac{1}{2}{\mathcal M}(Y)\in N$. Since $N$ is a face of ${\mathcal M}(C)$, we deduce $X,Y\in C\cap{\mathcal M}^{-1}N$ as claimed. Now clearly $C\cap{\mathcal M}^{-1}N$ contains $F$. It is easy to verify now the equality
$$N={\mathcal M}(C\cap {\mathcal M}^{-1}N).$$
Appealing to \cite[Theorem~6.6]{con:70}, we deduce
$$\ri N= {\mathcal M}(\ri (C\cap {\mathcal M}^{-1}N))$$
Thus $b$ can be written as ${\mathcal M}(X)$ for some $X\in \ri (C\cap {\mathcal M}^{-1}N)$.
We deduce that the intersection $F\cap \ri (C\cap {\mathcal M}^{-1}N)$ is nonempty. Appealing to~\cite[Proposition~2.2(ii)]{PatakiSVW:99}, we obtain the claimed equality $C\cap {\mathcal M}^{-1}N=\face(F, C)$.
Finally we prove \ref{claim:3_in}. To this end, suppose first that a vector $v$ exposes $N$. Then by what has already been proven $v$ satisfies the auxiliary system and therefore
$C\cap (\mathcal{M}^*v)^{\perp}$ is an exposed face of $C$ containing $F$.
It is standard now to verify equality
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:equality_rep}
{\mathcal M}(C\cap (\mathcal{{\mathcal M}}^*v)^{\perp})={\mathcal M}(C)\cap v^{\perp}=N.
\end{equation}
Indeed, for any $a\in {\mathcal M}(C)\cap v^{\perp}$, we may write $a={\mathcal M}(X)$ for some $X\in C$ and consequently deduce $\langle X,\mathcal{{\mathcal M}}^*v\rangle =\langle a,v\rangle=0$. Conversely, for any $X\in C\cap (\mathcal{{\mathcal M}}^*v)^{\perp}$, we have
$\langle\mathcal{{\mathcal M}}(X),v\rangle=\langle X, \mathcal{{\mathcal M}}^*v\rangle =0$, as claimed.
Combining equation \eqref{eqn:equality_rep} with ~\cite[Theorem~6.6]{con:70}, we deduce
$$\ri(N)={\mathcal M}(\ri (C\cap (\mathcal{M}^*v)^{\perp})).$$
Thus $b$ can be written as ${\mathcal M}(X)$ for some $X\in \ri (C\cap (\mathcal{{\mathcal M}}^*v)^{\perp})$.
We deduce that the intersection $F\cap \ri (C\cap (\mathcal{M}^*v)^{\perp})$ is nonempty. Appealing to~\cite[Proposition~2.2(ii)]{PatakiSVW:99}, we conclude that $C\cap (\mathcal{M}^*v)^{\perp}$ is the minimal face of $C$ containing $F$.
Now conversely suppose that ${\mathcal M}^*v$ exposes $\face(F, C)$. Then clearly $v$ exposes a face of ${\mathcal M}(C)$ containing $b$. On the other hand, by claim \ref{claim:1}, we have
$$C \cap {\mathcal M}^{-1}N=\face(F, C)=C\cap ({\mathcal M}^*v)^{\perp}.$$
Hence a point ${\mathcal M}(X)$ with $X\in C$ lies in ${\mathcal M}(C)\cap v^{\perp}$
if, and only if, it satisfies
$0=\langle v,{\mathcal M}(X)\rangle=\langle {\mathcal M}^*v,X\rangle$, which by the above equation is equivalent to the inclusion ${\mathcal M}(X)\in N$. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
The following example illustrates Theorem \ref{thm:face_red}.
\begin{example}[Singularity degree and facially exposed faces]
\label{ex:facialexp} {\rm Consider the cone $C := \psd{3}$.
Define now the mapping ${\mathcal M}: \sym{3} \rightarrow \rad{2}$ and the vector $b\in\mathbb{R}^2$ to be
$$
{\mathcal M}(X) = \begin{pmatrix} X_{11}\\ X_{33}\end{pmatrix} \quad \textrm{ and } \quad b = \begin{pmatrix}1 \\ 0\end{pmatrix}.
$$
Then the singularity degree of the system (\ref{eqn:feas_reg}), namely
$$\{X\in \psd{3}:X_{11}=1, X_{33}=0\},$$
is one. Indeed $v = (0,1)^T$ is a solution to the auxiliary system, and hence Slater condition fails. On the other hand, the feasible matrix $X=I -e_3{e_3}^T$ shows that the maximal solution rank of the system is two.
This also follows immediately from Theorem~\ref{thm:face_red} since the image set
${\mathcal M}(\psd{3}) = \rad{2}_+$ is facially exposed.
We next slightly change this example by adding a coordinate. Namely,
define ${\mathcal M}: \sym{3} \rightarrow \rad{3}$ and $b$ to be
$$
{\mathcal M}(X) = \begin{pmatrix} X_{11}\\ X_{33} \\X_{22} + X_{13} \end{pmatrix} \quad \textrm{ and } \quad b = \begin{pmatrix}1 \\ 0 \\ 0\end{pmatrix}.
$$
Observe that the singularity degree of the system \eqref{eqn:feas_reg} is at most two, since it admits a rank one feasible solution $X=e_1e_1^T$. On the other hand, one can see directly from Theorem~\ref{thm:face_red} that the singularity degree is exactly two.
Indeed, one easily checks
$$
{\mathcal M}(\psd{3}) \, = \, \rad{3}_+ \cup \{ (x,y,z) \, | \, x \geq 0, \, y \geq 0, \, z \leq 0, \, xy \geq z^2 \, \},
$$
i.e., we obtain ${\mathcal M}(\psd{3})$ by taking the union of $\rad{3}_+$ with
a rotated copy of $\psd{2}$. The set ${\mathcal M}(\psd{3})$
has a nonexposed face which contains $b$ in its relative interior -- this is easy to see
by intersecting ${\mathcal M}(\psd{3})$ with the hyperplane $x=1$ and graphing.
}
\end{example}
\smallskip
An interesting consequence of Theorem \ref{thm:face_red} above is that it is the lack of facial exposedness of the image set ${\mathcal M}(C)$ that is responsible for a potentially large singularity degree and hence for serious numeric instability, i.e. weak H\"olderian error bounds \cite{S98lmireport}.
\smallskip
\begin{corollary}[H\"olderian error bounds and facial exposedness]\label{cor:Holder}
Consider a linear mapping $\mathcal{A}\colon\mathcal{S}^n\to\mathbb{R}^m$ having the property that $\mathcal{A}(\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ is facially exposed.
For any vector $b\in\mathbb{R}^m$, define the affine space
$$\mathcal{V}=\{X:\mathcal{A}(X)=b\}.$$
Then whenever the intersection $\mathcal{S}^n_+\cap \mathcal{V}$ is nonempty it admits a $\frac{1}{2}$-H\"{o}lder error bound:
for any compact set $U$, there is a constant $c> 0$ so that
$$\dist_{\mathcal{S}^n_+\cap \mathcal{V}}(X)\leq c\cdot\sqrt{\max\Big\{\dist_{\mathcal{S}^n_+}(X),\dist_{\mathcal{V}}(X)\Big\}}\qquad \textrm{ for all }x\in U.$$
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof}
This follows immediately from Theorem~\ref{thm:face_red} and \cite{S98lmi}.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Facial reduction for completion problems}
For those problems with highly structured constraints, one can hope to solve the auxiliary problems directly.
For example, the following simple idea can be fruitful: fix a subset $I\subset \{1,\ldots,m\}$ and let $\mathcal{M}_I(X)$ and $b_I$, respectively, denote restrictions of $\mathcal{M}(X)$ and $b$ to coordinates indexed by $I$. Consider then the relaxation:
$$F_I:=\{X\in C: \mathcal{M}_I(X)=b_I\}.$$
If the index set $I$ is chosen so that the image $\mathcal{M}_I(C)$ is ``simple'', then we may find the minimal face $\face(F_I,C)$, as discussed above. Intersecting such faces for varying index sets $I$ may yield a drastic dimensional decrease. Moreover, observe that this preprocessing step is entirely parallelizable.
Interpreting this technique in the context of matrix completion problems, we recover the Krislock-Wolkowicz algorithm \cite{Nathan_Henry}.
Namely note that when $\mathcal{M}$ is simply the projection ${\mathcal P} $ and we set $C=\mathcal{S}^n_+$ or $C={\mathcal E} ^n$, we obtain the PSD and EDM completion problems,
\begin{equation*}
F:=\{X\in C: {\mathcal P} (X)=a \}=\{X\in C: X_{ij}=a_{ij} \textrm{ for all }
ij\in E\},
\end{equation*}
where $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$ is a partial matrix.
It is then natural to consider indices $I\subset E$ describing clique edges in the graph since then the images ${\mathcal P} _I(C)$ are the smaller dimensional PSD and EDM cones, respectively --- sets that are well understood. This algorithmic strategy becomes increasingly effective when the rank (for the PSD case) or the embedding dimension (for the EDM case) of the specified principal minors are all small. Moreover, we will show that under a chordality assumption, the minimal face of $C$ containing the feasible region is guaranteed to be discovered if all the maximal cliques were to be considered; see Theorems~\ref{thm:cliquesuffPSD} and \ref{thm:fin_term}. This, in part, explains why the EDM completion algorithm of \cite{Nathan_Henry} works so well. Understanding the geometry of ${\mathcal P} _I(C)$ for a wider class of index sets $I$ would yield an even better preprocessing strategy.
We defer to \cite{Nathan_Henry} for extensive numerical results and implementation issues showing that the discussed algorithmic idea is extremely effective for EDM completions.
In what follows, by the term ``clique $\chi$ in $G$'' we will mean a collection of $k$ pairwise connected vertices of $G$. The symbol $|\chi|$ will indicate the cardinality of $\chi$ (i.e. the number of vertices) while $E(\chi)$ will denote the edge set in the subgraph induced by $G$ on $\chi$.
For a partial matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$, the symbol $a_{\chi}$ will mean the restriction of $a$ to $E(\chi)$, whereas ${\mathcal P} _{\chi}$ will be the projection of $\mathcal{S}^n$ onto $E(\chi)$. The symbol $\mathcal{S}^{\chi}$ will indicate the set of $|\chi|\times|\chi|$ symmetric matrices whose rows and columns are indexed by $\chi$. Similar notation will be reserved for $\mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+$.
If $\chi$ is contained in $L$, then we may equivalently think of $a_{\chi}$ as a vector lying in $\mathbb{R}^{E(\chi)}$ or as a matrix lying in $\mathcal{S}^{\chi}$. Thus the adjoint ${\mathcal P} ^*_{\chi}$ assigns to a partial matrix $a_{\chi}\in \mathcal{S}^{\chi}$ an $n\times n$ matrix whose principal submatrix indexed by $\chi$ coincides with $a_{\chi}$ and whose all other entries are zero.
\smallskip
\begin{thm}[Clique facial reduction for PSD completions]
\label{thm:PSD_face}
Let $\chi \subseteq L$ be any $k$-clique in the graph $G$.
Let $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ be a partial PSD matrix and define
\begin{equation*}
\label{eq:minfacechi}
F_{\chi}:=
\{X\in\mathcal{S}^n_+: X_{ij}=a_{ij} \textrm{ for all } ij\in E(\chi)\}.
\end{equation*}
Then for any matrix $v_{\chi}$ exposing $\face(a_{\chi},\mathcal{S}^\chi_+)$, the matrix
$$
{\mathcal P} ^*_{\chi}v_{\chi}
\quad \textrm{ exposes }\quad \face(F_{\chi},\mathcal{S}^n_+).
$$
\end{thm}
\begin{proof}
Simply apply Theorem~\ref{thm:face_red} with $C=\mathcal{S}^n_+$, $\mathcal{M}={\mathcal P} _{\chi}$, and $b=a_{\chi}$.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
Theorem~\ref{thm:PSD_face} is transparent and easy. Consequently it is natural to ask whether the minimal face of $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ containing the feasible region of a PSD completion problem can be found using solely faces arising from cliques, that is those faces described in Theorem~\ref{thm:PSD_face}. The answer is no in general: the following example exhibits a PSD completion problem that fails the Slater condition but for which all specified principal submatrices are definite, and hence all faces arising from Theorem~\ref{thm:PSD_face} are trivial.
\smallskip
\begin{example}[Slater condition \& nonchordal graphs]
\label{ex:n4complbndr}{\hfill \\}
{\rm
Let $G=(V,E)$ be a cycle on four vertices with each vertex attached to a loop, that is $V=\{1,2,3,4\}$ and $E=\{12,23,34,14\}\cup\{11,22,33,44\}$.
Define the following PSD completion problems $C(\epsilon)$, parametrized by $\epsilon\geq 0$:
\begin{equation*}
C(\epsilon):\qquad\qquad
\begin{bmatrix}
1+\epsilon& 1 & ? & -1 \cr
1 & 1+\epsilon & 1 & ? \cr
? & 1 & 1 +\epsilon& 1 \cr
-1 & ? & 1 & 1 +\epsilon\cr
\end{bmatrix}.
\end{equation*}
Let $a(\epsilon)\in\mathbb{R}^E$ denote the corresponding partial matrices.
According to~\cite[Lemma 6]{GrJoSaWo:84} there is a unique positive semidefinite
matrix $A$ satisfying $A_{ij}=1, \forall |i-j|\leq 1$, namely the
matrix of all $1$'s. Hence the PSD completion problem $C(0)$ is infeasible, that is
$a(0)$ lies outside of ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^4_+)$. On the other hand, for all sufficiently large $\epsilon$, the partial matrices
$a(\epsilon)$ do lie in ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^4_+)$ due to the diagonal dominance.
Taking into account that ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^4_+)$ is closed (by Theorem~\ref{thm:maincompl_fixed}), we deduce that there exists
$\hat{\epsilon} >0$, so that $a(\hat{\epsilon})$ lies on the boundary of
${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^4_+)$, that is the Slater condition \underline{fails}
for the completion problem $C(\hat{\epsilon})$. On the other hand for all $\epsilon > 0$, the partial matrices
$a(\epsilon)$ are clearly positive definite, and hence $a(\hat{\epsilon})$ is a partial PD matrix.
In light of this observation, consider solving the semi-definite program:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:primaleps}
\begin{array}{cll}
\min & \epsilon \\
\text{s.t.}
&
\begin{bmatrix}
1+\epsilon & 1 & \alpha & -1 \cr
1 & 1+\epsilon & 1 & \beta \cr
\alpha & 1 & 1+\epsilon & 1 \cr
-1 & \beta & 1 & 1+\epsilon \cr
\end{bmatrix}\succeq 0\\
\end{array}
\end{equation}
Doing so, we deduce that $\hat{\epsilon}=\sqrt 2-1, \hat{\alpha}=\hat{\beta}=0$ is optimal. Formally, we can
verify this by finding the dual of \eqref{eq:primaleps} and
checking feasibility and complementary slackness for the primal-dual
optimal pair
$\widehat{X}$ and $\widehat{Z}$
\[
\widehat{X}
=\begin{bmatrix}
\sqrt 2 & 1 & 0 & -1 \cr
1 & \sqrt 2 & 1 & 0 \cr
0 & 1 & \sqrt 2 & 1 \cr
-1 & 0 & 1 & \sqrt 2 \cr
\end{bmatrix}, \qquad
\widehat{Z}
=\frac 14 \begin{bmatrix}
1 & -\frac 1{\sqrt 2} & 0 & \frac 1{\sqrt 2} \cr
-\frac 1{\sqrt 2} & 1 & -\frac 1{\sqrt 2} & 0 \cr
0 & -\frac 1{\sqrt 2} & 1 & -\frac 1{\sqrt 2} \cr
\frac 1{\sqrt 2} & 0 & -\frac 1{\sqrt 2} & 1 \cr
\end{bmatrix}.
\]
}
\end{example}
Despite this pathological example, we now show that at least for chordal graphs, the minimal face of the PSD completion problem can be found solely from faces corresponding to cliques in the graph. We begin with the following simple lemma.
\smallskip
\begin{lem}[Maximal rank completions]\label{lem:max_rank_comp}
Suppose without loss of generality $L=\{1,\ldots,r\}$
and let $G_L:=(L,E_L)$ be the graph induced on $L$ by $G. \,$
Let $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$ be a partial matrix and $a_{E_L}$ the restriction of $a$ to $E_L.$
Suppose that $X_L \in \mathcal{S}^r_+$ is a maximum rank PSD completion of
$a_{E_L}, $ and
$$
X = \begin{bmatrix}
A & B\\
B^T & C
\end{bmatrix}
$$
is an arbitrary PSD completion of $a. \,$
Then
$$
X_\mu :=
\begin{bmatrix}
X_L & B\\
B^T & C+\mu I
\end{bmatrix}
$$
is a maximal rank PSD completion of $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$ for all sufficiently large $\mu$.
\end{lem}
\begin{proof}
We \emph{construct} the maximal rank PSD completion from the arbitrary
PSD completion $X$ by moving from $A$ to $X_L$ and from $C$ to $C+\mu I$
while staying in the same minimal face for the completions.
To this end, define the sets
\[
\begin{array}{rcl}
F & = & \left\{X\in \mathcal{S}^n_+ :
X_{ij} = a_{ij}, \textrm{ for all } ij\in E\right\}, \\
F_L & = & \left\{X\in \mathcal{S}^r_+ : X_{ij} = a_{ij},
\textrm{ for all } ij\in E_L\right\}, \\
\widehat{F} & = & \{X\in \mathcal{S}^n_+ : X_{ij} = a_{ij}, \textrm{ for all } ij\in E_L\}.
\end{array}
\]
Then $X_L$ is a maximum rank PSD matrix in $F_L.$
Observe that the rank of any PSD matrix
$
\begin{bmatrix}
P & Q\\
Q^T & R
\end{bmatrix}
$
is bounded by $\rank P+\rank R$. Consequently
the rank of any PSD matrix in $F$ and also in $\widehat{F}$ is bounded by
$\rank X_L + (n-r), \,$ and the matrix
$$
\bar{X}=\begin{bmatrix}
X_L & 0\\
0 & I
\end{bmatrix}
$$
has maximal rank in $\widehat{F}, \,$
i.e.,
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:rihatF}
\bar{X} \in \ri(\widehat{F}).
\end{equation}
Let $U$ be a matrix of eigenvectors of $X_L, \,$ with eigenvectors corresponding to
$0$ eigenvalues coming first. Then
$$
U^T X_L U = \begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \Lambda \end{bmatrix},
$$
where $0\prec \Lambda \in \mathcal{S}^k_+$ is a diagonal matrix with all positive diagonal elements.
Define
$$
Q = \begin{bmatrix} U & 0 \\ 0 & I \end{bmatrix}.
$$
Let $X$ be as in the statement of the lemma; then clearly
$X \in \widehat{F}$ and we deduce using \eqref{eq:rihatF} that
\begin{eqnarray} \label{ttxt}
\bar{X} \pm \epsilon (\bar{X} - X) \in \mathcal{S}^n_+ \, & \Leftrightarrow & Q^T
\bar{X}Q \pm \epsilon Q^T(\bar{X} - X)Q \in \mathcal{S}^n_+,
\end{eqnarray}
for some small $\epsilon > 0.$
We now have
\[
\begin{array}{rclcl}
Q^T \bar{X}Q & = & \begin{bmatrix} U^T X_L U & 0 \\ 0 & I \end{bmatrix} & = & \begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \Lambda & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & I \end{bmatrix}, \\
Q^T X Q & = & \begin{bmatrix} U^T A U & U^T B \\ B^T U & C \end{bmatrix} & = & \begin{bmatrix} V_{11} & V_{12} & V_{13} \\ V_{12}^T & V_{22} & V_{23} \\ V_{13}^T & V_{23}^T & V_{33} \end{bmatrix},
\end{array}
\]
where $V_{11} \in \mathcal{S}^{r-k}, \, V_{22} \in \mathcal{S}^k, \, V_{33} \in \mathcal{S}^{n-r}$. From
(\ref{ttxt}) we deduce $V_{11} = 0, \, V_{12} = 0, \, V_{13} = 0.$
Therefore
\[
\begin{array}{rcl}
Q^T X_\mu Q & = & \begin{bmatrix} U^T X_L U & U^T B \\ B^T U & \mu I + C \end{bmatrix} = \begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \Lambda & V_{23} \\ 0 & V_{23}^T & \mu I + C \end{bmatrix}.
\end{array}
\]
By the Schur complement condition for positive semidefiniteness we have that for sufficiently large $\mu$
the matrix $X_\mu$ is PSD, and
$\rank X_\mu = \rank X_L + (n-r)$; hence it is a maximal rank PSD matrix in $F.$
\end{proof}
\smallskip
\begin{thm}[Finding the minimal face on chordal graphs]
\label{thm:cliquesuffPSD}
Suppose that the graph induced by $G$ on $L$ is chordal. Consider a partial PSD matrix $a\in \mathbb{R}^{E}$ and the region
\[
F=\{X\in \mathcal{S}^n_+ : X_{ij} = a_{ij} \textrm{ for all } ij\in E\}.
\]
Then the equality $$\face(F, \mathcal{S}^n_+)=\bigcap_{\chi\in \Theta} \face(F_{\chi},\mathcal{S}^n_+)\qquad \textrm{ holds},$$
where $\Theta$ denotes the set of all maximal cliques in the restriction of $G$ to $L$, and for each $\chi \in \Theta$ we define the relaxation
$$
F_{\chi}:=\{X\in \mathcal{S}^n_+ : X_{ij} = a_{ij} \textrm{ for all } ij\in E(\chi) \}.
$$
\end{thm}
\begin{proof}
For brevity, set
$$
H = \bigcap_{\chi\in \Theta} \face(F_{\chi},\mathcal{S}^n_+).
$$
We first prove the theorem under the assumption that $L$ is disconnected from $L^c$.
To this end, for each clique $\chi\in\Theta$, let $v_{\chi}\in \mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+$ denote the exposing vector of $\face(a_{\chi}$, $\mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+)$. Then by Theorem~\ref{thm:PSD_face}, we have
$$\face(F_{\chi},\mathcal{S}^n_+)=\mathcal{S}^n_+\cap ({\mathcal P} ^*_{\chi}v_{\chi})^{\perp}.$$
It is straightforward to see that ${\mathcal P} ^*_{\chi}v_{\chi}$ is simply the $n\times n$ matrix whose principal submatrix indexed by $\chi$ coincides with $v_{\chi}$ and whose all other entries are zero. Letting $Y[\chi]$ denote the principal submatrix indexed by $\chi$ of any matrix $Y\in\mathcal{S}^n_+$, we successively deduce
\begin{align*}
{\mathcal P} (H) &={\mathcal P}
\Big(\{Y\succeq 0: Y[\chi]\in v^{\perp}_{\chi} \quad\forall \chi\in\Theta\} \Big)\\
&={\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)\cap \{b\in\mathbb{R}^E: b_\chi\in v^{\perp}_{\chi} \quad\forall \chi\in\Theta\}.
\end{align*}
On the other hand, since the restriction of $G$ to $L$ is chordal and $L$ is disconnected from $L^c$, Theorem~\ref{thm:psd_comp} implies that $G$ is PSD completable. Hence we have
the representation ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)=\{b\in\mathbb{R}^E: b_{\chi}\in\mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+ \quad\forall \chi\in\Theta\}$. Combining this with the equations above, we obtain
\begin{align*}
{\mathcal P} (H)&= \{b\in\mathbb{R}^E: b_\chi\in \mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+ \cap v^{\perp}_{\chi} \quad\forall \chi\in\Theta\} \\
&= \{b\in\mathbb{R}^E: b_{\chi}\in \face(a_{\chi}, \mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+) \quad\forall \chi\in\Theta\}\\
&= \bigcap_{\chi\in \Theta} \{b\in\mathbb{R}^E: b_{\chi}\in \face(a_{\chi}, \mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+) \},
\end{align*}
Clearly $a$ lies in the relative interior of each set $\{b\in\mathbb{R}^E: b_{\chi}\in \face(a_{\chi}, \mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+) \}$. Using \cite[Theorems~6.5,6.6]{con:70}, we deduce
$$a\in\ri {\mathcal P} (H) ={\mathcal P} (\ri H).$$
Thus the intersection $F\cap \ri H$ is nonempty.
Taking into account that $F$ is contained in $H, \,$
and appealing to~\cite[Proposition~2.2(ii)]{PatakiSVW:99}, we conclude that $H$
is the minimal face of $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ containing $F$, as claimed.
We now prove the theorem in full generality, that is when there may exist an edge joining $L$ and $L^c$. To this end,
let $\widehat{G}_L = (V, E_L)$ be
the graph obtained from $G$ by deleting all edges adjacent to $L^c. \,$
Clearly, $L$ and $L^c$ are disconnected in $\widehat{G}_L.$
Applying the special case of the theorem that we have just proved, we deduce that in terms of the set
\[
\begin{array}{rcl}
\widehat{F} & = & \{X\in \mathcal{S}^n_+ : X_{ij} = a_{ij} \textrm{ for all } ij\in E_L\},
\end{array}
\]
we have
$$\face(\widehat{F}, \mathcal{S}^n_+)=H.$$
The $X_\mu$ matrix of Lemma~\ref{lem:max_rank_comp} is a maximum rank PSD matrix in
$F, \,$ and also in $\widehat{F}.$ Since $F \subseteq \widehat{F}, \,$
we deduce $\face(F,\mathcal{S}^n_+)=\face(\widehat{F},\mathcal{S}^n_+)$, and this completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
\smallskip
\begin{remark}[Finding maximal cliques on chordal graphs]
{\rm
In light of the theorem above, it noteworthy that finding maximal cliques on chordal graphs is polynomially solvable; see e.g. \cite{Laurent:00} or more generally \cite{poly_solve_chord}.
}
\end{remark}
\smallskip
The following is an immediate consequence.
\begin{corollary}[Singularity degree of chordal completions]\label{cor:sing_psd}{\hfill \\ }
If the restriction of $G$ to $L$ is chordal, then the PSD completion problem has singularity degree at most one.
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof}
In the notation of Theorem~\ref{thm:cliquesuffPSD}, the sum
$Y:=\sum_{\chi\in\Theta} {\mathcal P} ^*_{\chi}v_{\chi}$ exposes the minimal face $\face(F,\mathcal{S}^+_n)$. If the Slater condition fails, then $Y$ is feasible for the first auxiliary problem in the facial reduction sequence.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
\begin{example}[Finding the minimal face on chordal graphs]
{\rm
Let $\Omega$ consist of all matrices $X\in\mathcal{S}^4_+$ solving the PSD completion problem
$$\begin{bmatrix}[r]
1 & 1 & ? & ? \\
1 & 1 & 1 & ? \\
? & 1 & 1 & -1 \\
? & ? & -1 & 2 \\
\end{bmatrix}
.$$
There are three nontrivial cliques in the graph. Observe that the minimal face of $\mathcal{S}^2_+$ containing the matrix
$$\begin{bmatrix}
1 & 1\\
1 & 1\\
\end{bmatrix}
= \begin{bmatrix}[r]
-\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\end{bmatrix} \begin{bmatrix}[r]
0 & 0\\
0 & 4\\
\end{bmatrix} \begin{bmatrix}[r]
-\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\end{bmatrix}
$$
is exposed by
$$\begin{bmatrix}[r]
-\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\end{bmatrix} \begin{bmatrix}[r]
4 & 0\\
0 & 0\\
\end{bmatrix} \begin{bmatrix}[r]
-\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\frac{1}{2} & \frac{1}{2}\\
\end{bmatrix}
= \begin{bmatrix}[r]
1 & -1\\
-1 & 1\\
\end{bmatrix}
.$$
Moreover, the matrix $\begin{bmatrix}
1 & -1\\
-1 & \,\,\,2\\
\end{bmatrix}$
is definite and hence the minimal face of $\mathcal{S}^2_+$ containing this matrix is exposed by the all-zero matrix.
Classically, an intersection of exposed faces is exposed by the sum of their exposing vectors. Using Theorem~\ref{thm:cliquesuffPSD}, we deduce that the minimal face of $\mathcal{S}^4_+$ containing $\Omega$ is the one exposed by the sum
$$
\begin{bmatrix}[r]
1 & -1 & 0 &0\\
-1 & 1 & 0 &0\\
0 & 0 & 0 &0\\
0 & 0 & 0 &0\\
\end{bmatrix}
+\begin{bmatrix}[r]
0 & 0 & 0 &0\\
0 & 1 & -1 & 0 \\
0 & -1 & 1 & 0 \\
0 & 0 & 0 &0\\
\end{bmatrix}=\begin{bmatrix}[r]
1 & -1 & 0 & 0 \\
-1 & 2 & -1 & 0 \\
0 & -1 & 1 &0\\
0 & 0 & 0 &0\\
\end{bmatrix}.
$$
Diagonalizing this matrix, we obtain
$$\face(\Omega, \mathcal{S}^4_+)= \begin{bmatrix}[r]
0 & 1 \\
0 & 1 \\
0 & 1 \\
3 & 0 \\
\end{bmatrix}
\mathcal{S}^2_+
\begin{bmatrix}[r]
0 & 1 \\
0 & 1 \\
0 & 1 \\
3 & 0 \\
\end{bmatrix}^T.
$$
}
\end{example}
\smallskip
We now turn to an analogous development for the EDM completion problem. To this end, recall from \eqref{eq:isomorph} that the mapping ${\mathcal K} \colon\mathcal{S}^n\to\mathcal{S}^n$ restricts to an isomorphism ${\mathcal K} \colon \mathcal{S}_c\to \mathcal{S}_H$ carrying $\mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+$
onto $\mathcal{E}^n$. Moreover, it turns out that the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse ${\mathcal K} ^{\dag}$ restricts to the inverse of this isomorphism ${\mathcal K} ^{\dag}\colon \mathcal{S}_H\to\mathcal{S}_c$. As a result, it is convenient to study the faces of ${\mathcal E} ^n$ using the faces of $\mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+$. This is elucidated by the following standard result.
\smallskip
\begin{lemma}[Faces under isomorphism]\label{lem:face_iso} {\hfill \\ }
Consider a linear isomorphism $\mathcal{M}\colon\mathbb{E}\to\mathbb{Y}$ between linear spaces $\mathbb{E}$ and $\mathbb{Y}$, and let $C\subset \mathbb{E}$ be a closed convex cone. Then the following are true
\begin{enumerate}
\item $F\unlhd C \quad \Longleftrightarrow \quad \mathcal{M}F\unlhd \mathcal{M}C$.
\item $({\mathcal M} C)^{*}=({\mathcal M}^{-1})^*C^*.$
\item For any face $F\unlhd C$, we have $({\mathcal M} F)^{\triangle}= ({\mathcal M}^{-1})^*F^{\triangle}$.
\end{enumerate}
\end{lemma}
\smallskip
In turn, it is easy to see that $\mathcal{S}_c\cap\mathcal{S}^n_+$ is a face of $\mathcal{S}^n_+$ isomorphic to $\mathcal{S}^{n-1}_+$. More specifically for any $n\times n$ orthogonal matrix $ \begin{bmatrix}
\frac{1}{\sqrt n}e & U \cr
\end{bmatrix}$,
we have the representation
\begin{equation*}
\mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+= U\mathcal{S}^{n-1}_+U
\end{equation*}
Consequently, with respect to the ambient space $\mathcal{S}_c$, the cone $\mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+$ is self-dual and for any face $F\unlhd \mathcal{S}^{n-1}_+$ we have
$$ UFU^T\unlhd \mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+ \qquad \textrm{ and } \qquad (UFU^T)^{\triangle} =UF^{\triangle}U^T.$$
As a result of these observations, we make the following important convention:
the \textdef{ambient spaces} of $\mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+$ and of ${\mathcal E} ^n$ will always be taken as $\mathcal{S}_c$ and $\mathcal{S}_H$, respectively. Thus the facial conjugacy operations of these two cones will always be taken with respect to these ambient spaces and {\em not} with respect to the entire $\mathcal{S}^n$.
Given a clique $\chi$ in $G$, we let $\mathcal{E}^{\chi}$ denote the set of $|\chi|\times |\chi|$ Euclidean distance matrices indexed by $\chi$. In what follows, given a partial matrix $a\in\mathbb{R}^E$, the restriction $a_{\chi}$ can then be thought of either as a vector in $\mathbb{R}^{E(\chi)}$ or as a hollow matrix in $\mathcal{S}^{\chi}$.
We will also use the symbol ${\mathcal K} _{\chi}\colon \mathcal{S}^{\chi}\to\mathcal{S}^{\chi}$ to indicate the mapping ${\mathcal K} $ acting on $\mathcal{S}^{\chi}$.
\smallskip
\begin{thm}[Clique facial reduction for EDM completions]\label{thm:EDM_face}
Let $\chi$ be any $k$-clique in the graph $G$.
Let $a\in\mathbb{R}^{E}$ be a partial Euclidean distance matrix and define
$$
\begin{array}{rcl}
F_{\chi} &:= &
\{X\in \mathcal{S}^n_+\cap \mathcal{S}_c: [{\mathcal K} (X)]_{ij}=a_{ij} \textrm{ for
all } ij\in E(\chi)\}
\end{array}
$$
Then for any matrix $v_\chi$ exposing $\face\big({\mathcal K} ^{\dag}(a_{\chi}),\mathcal{S}^{\chi}_+\cap \mathcal{S}_c\big)$, the matrix
$$
{\mathcal P} ^{*}_{\chi}v_{\chi}\quad \textrm{ exposes }\quad \face(F,\mathcal{S}^n_+ \cap \mathcal{S}_c).
$$
\end{thm}
\begin{proof}
The proof proceeds by applying Theorem~\ref{thm:face_red} with
\[
C:= \mathcal{S}^n_+ \cap \mathcal{S}_c,\quad {\mathcal M}:= P_{\chi}\circ {\mathcal K} , \quad b:=a_\chi.
\]
To this end, first observe
${\mathcal M}(C)=(P_{\chi}\circ {\mathcal K} )(\mathcal{S}^n_+\cap\mathcal{S}_c)=\mathcal{E}^{\chi}$.
By Lemma~\ref{lem:face_iso}, the matrix ${\mathcal K} ^{\dag*}_{\chi}(v_{\chi})$ exposes $\face(a_{\chi}, \mathcal{E}^{\chi})$.
Thus the minimal face of $\mathcal{S}^n_+\cap\mathcal{S}_c$ containing $F$ is the one exposed by the matrix
$$(P_{\chi}\circ{\mathcal K} )^*({\mathcal K} ^{\dag*}_{\chi}(v_{\chi}))={\mathcal K} ^*P_{\chi}^*{\mathcal K} _{\chi}^{\dag*}(v_{\chi})=P_{\chi}^* {\mathcal K} _{\chi}^*{\mathcal K} ^{\dag*}_{\chi}(v_{\chi})=P_{\chi}^*v_{\chi}.
$$
The result follows.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
\begin{thm}[Clique facial reduction for EDM is sufficient]\label{thm:fin_term}
\label{thm:EDM_facesuff}
Suppose that $G$ is chordal, and consider a partial Euclidean distance matrix $a\in \mathbb{R}^{E}$ and the region
\[
F:=\{X\in \mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+ : [{\mathcal K} (X)]_{ij} = a_{ij} \textrm{ for all } ij\in E\}.
\]
Let $\Theta$ denote the set of all maximal cliques in $G$, and for each $\chi \in \Theta$ define
\[
F_{\chi}:=\{X\in \mathcal{S}_c\cap \mathcal{S}^n_+ : [{\mathcal K} (X)]_{ij} = a_{ij} \textrm{ for all } ij\in E(\chi)\}.
\]
Then the equality $$\face(F, \mathcal{S}_c\cap\mathcal{S}^n_+)=\bigcap_{\chi\in \Theta} \face(F_{\chi},\mathcal{S}_c\cap\mathcal{S}^n_+)\qquad \textrm{ holds}.$$
\end{thm}
\begin{proof}
The proof follows entirely along the same lines as the first part of the proof of Theorem~\ref{thm:cliquesuffPSD}. We omit the details for the sake of brevity.
\end{proof}
\smallskip
\begin{corollary}[Singularity degree of chordal completions]\label{cor:sing}
If the graph $G=(V,E)$ is chordal, then the EDM completion problem has singularity degree at most one, when feasible.
\end{corollary}
\smallskip
\section*{Conclusion}
In this manuscript, we considered properties of the coordinate shadows of the PSD and EDM cones: ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{E})$. We characterized when these sets are closed, related their boundary structure to a facial reduction algorithm of \cite{Nathan_Henry}, and explained that the nonexposed faces of these sets directly impact the complexity of the facial reduction algorithm.
In particular, under a chordality assumption, the ``minimal face'' of the feasible region admits a combinatorial description, the singularity degree of the completion problems are at most one, and the coordinate shadows, ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{E})$, are facially exposed.
This brings up an intriguing follow-up research agenda:
\bigskip
\begin{changemargin}{0.5cm}{0.5cm} Classify graphs $G$ for which the images ${\mathcal P} (\mathcal{S}^n_+)$ and ${\mathcal P} ({\mathcal E} )$ are facially exposed, or equivalently those for which the corresponding completion formulations have singularity degree at most one irrespective of the known matrix entries.
\end{changemargin}
\bigskip
\section*{Acknowledgments}
\label{sect:ack}
We thank the anonymous referees for their insightful comments. We are indebted to one of the referees for pointing out the elementary proofs of Theorems~\ref{thm:maincompl_fixed} and \ref{thm:close_EDM_fixed} presented in the beginning of Section~\ref{sect:closedness}.
\newpage
\bibliographystyle{plain}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 8,724 |
{"url":"https:\/\/www.physicsforums.com\/threads\/the-energy-of-the-first-excited-state-of-the-system.999304\/","text":"# The energy of the first excited state of the system\n\nhidemi\nHomework Statement:\nI used the eq. below, but I can't find the answer.\nRelevant Equations:\n\u03a3 (nx^2+ ny^2) (h2\/8mL^2)\nFive electrons are in a two-dimensional square potential energy well with sides of length L. The potential energy is infinite at the sides and zero inside. The single-particle energies are given by (h^2\/8mL^2) (nx^2+ ny^2) where nx and ny are integers. The energy of the first excited state of the system is\n(A) 13 (h^2\/8mL^2) (B) 22 (h^2\/8mL^2) (C) 24 (h^2\/8mL^2) (D) 25 (h^2\/8mL^2) (E) 27 (h^2\/8mL^2)\n\n#### Attachments\n\n\u2022 1.jpg\n30.3 KB \u00b7 Views: 57\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nWhat did you do?\n\nhidemi\nWhat did you do?\nI know the formula, but I've no idea how to start.\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nI know the formula, but I've no idea how to start.\nIn post #1 you wrote that you used the formula. If you meant that, show how you used it.\n\nhidemi\nIn post #1 you wrote that you used the formula. If you meant that, show how you used it.\n\nI calculate this way as per attached and gives me a matching answer. However, I use the same way to calculate the question below, I don\u2019t have any answer.\n\n#### Attachments\n\n\u2022 \u622a\u5716 2021-02-05 \u4e0a\u534810.46.18.png\n39.4 KB \u00b7 Views: 67\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nI calculate this way as per attached and gives me a matching answer. However, I use the same way to calculate the question below, I don\u2019t have any answer.\nWhat principles are you using to calculate these answers? You haven't said anything about why you are choosing these system configurations.\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nI calculate this way as per attached and gives me a matching answer. However, I use the same way to calculate the question below, I don\u2019t have any answer.\nSo it seems you have now answered the question in post #1, right? but can't see how to use the same principles on the question in the attachment in post #5.\nNow, this is a subject about which I know next to nothing, yet I think I see how it works.\nFor the six in ground state, what do you think their energy levels are? What is the next available level?\n\nSteve4Physics and PeroK\nhidemi\nSo it seems you have now answered the question in post #1, right? but can't see how to use the same principles on the question in the attachment in post #5.\nNow, this is a subject about which I know next to nothing, yet I think I see how it works.\nFor the six in ground state, what do you think their energy levels are? What is the next available level?\n\n#### Attachments\n\n\u2022 1.jpg\n21.4 KB \u00b7 Views: 56\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nI'll name the questions to avoid confusion:\nQ1: the original 5-electron question in post #1;\nQ2: the '7-th electron' question in post #5's attachment.\n\nFrom your postings it is not clear (to me at least) if you have now understood and correctly answered both questions!\n\nNote that Q1 asks for the total energy of the system in its 1st excited state. But Q2 asks for the energy of only the 7-th electron in its ground state. Q1 and Q2 want different things - but you find them in similar ways.\n\nDo you know which (who's) principle you are using?\n\nAs an additional note, multi-electron systems - such as the ones in the questions - have potential energy due to the mutual repulsion of the electrons. But the expression ##(n_x^2+n_y^2)\\frac{h^2}{8mL}## only applies to a single electron with zero potential energy inside the 'well'. So the question is flawed. But you are meant to ignore that.\n\nEDIT: Typo' corrected.\n\nharuspex and PeroK\nhidemi\nI'll name the questions to avoid confusion:\nQ1: the original 5-electron question in post #1;\nQ2: the '7-th electron' question in post #5's attachment.\n\nFrom your postings it is not clear (to me at least) if you have now understood and correctly answered both questions!\n\nNote that Q1 asks for the total energy of the system in its 1st excited state. But Q2 asks for the energy of only the 7-th electron in its ground state. Q1 and Q2 want different things - but you find them in similar ways.\n\nDo you know which (who's) principle you are using?\n\nAs an additional note, multi-electron systems - such as the ones in the questions - have potential energy due to the mutual repulsion of the electrons. But the expression ##(n_x^2+n_y^2)\\frac{h^2}{8mL}## only applies to a single electron with zero potential energy inside the 'well'. So the question is flawed. But you are meant to ignore that.\n\nEDIT: Typo' corrected.\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\n(Attachment in post #8)\nThose numbers lead to answer C, as required: 7th & 8th, 8 each.\n\nhidemi\nhidemi\nThose numbers lead to answer C, as required: 7th & 8th, 8 each.\nSo, my thoughts written in the post #8 attachment are correct?\nIf so, I still don't quite understand the calculation behind it. Do you have a better explanation?\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nSo, my thoughts written in the post #8 attachment are correct?\nIf so, I still don't quite understand the calculation behind it. Do you have a better explanation?\nAs I wrote, I have never studied the subject, so my understanding is based on this thread, and a vague understanding that electrons have no individuality.\nNo two electrons can be in the same state in the well, and such a state is defined by spin and an ordered pair (m,n) of natural numbers, spin being binary. The energy is characterized by the sum of squares of m, n.\nSo for the lowest total energy we fill in two with opposite spins at (1,1), two at (1,2), two at (2,1). After that it gets a bit trickier because you need to figure out that e.g. 22+22<12+32.\n\nPeroK\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nSo, my thoughts written in the post #8 attachment are correct?\nIf so, I still don't quite understand the calculation behind it. Do you have a better explanation?\nHow is it that you are studying QM and basic kinematics at the same time?\n\nThe QM square well, Pauli Exclusion Principle and electron energy\/spin states are a lot more advanced than SUVAT equations!\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nAs I wrote, I have never studied the subject, so my understanding is based on this thread, and a vague understanding that electrons have no individuality.\nNo two electrons can be in the same state in the well, and such a state is defined by spin and an ordered pair (m,n) of natural numbers, spin being binary. The energy is characterized by the sum of squares of m, n.\nSo for the lowest total energy we fill in two with opposite spins at (1,1), two at (1,2), two at (2,1). After that it gets a bit trickier because you need to figure out that e.g. 22+22<12+32.\nYes, this is the Pauli Exclusion Principle. It's the same basis on which atomic orbitals fill up, with at most two electrons occupying each distinct energy state.\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nYes, this is the Pauli Exclusion Principle. It's the same basis on which atomic orbitals fill up, with at most two electrons occupying each distinct energy state.\nIt just dawned on me that if you consider the points with integer coordinates in the first quadrant then the energy order matches the order of distance from the origin,\n\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\n2022 Award\nIt just dawned on me that if you consider the points with integer coordinates in the first quadrant then the energy order matches the order of distance from the origin,\nYes, for a large number of electrons you can map the occupied states to an octant in k-space, were $$\\vec k = (\\frac{\\pi n_x}{L_x},\\frac{\\pi n_y}{L_y}, \\frac{\\pi n_z}{L_z})$$.\nThis leads to the concept of the Fermi Energy and Fermi Surface etc.:\n\nhttps:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fermi_energy\n\nhidemi\nHow is it that you are studying QM and basic kinematics at the same time?\n\nThe QM square well, Pauli Exclusion Principle and electron energy\/spin states are a lot more advanced than SUVAT equations!\nI am reviewing all these topics.","date":"2023-02-05 00:18:58","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.7943304181098938, \"perplexity\": 732.7058045943827}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2023-06\/segments\/1674764500158.5\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20230205000727-20230205030727-00095.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
{"url":"http:\/\/todzhang.com\/posts\/2020-06-21-jpa-notes\/","text":"# Java Pesistence API Notes\n\nJPA\n\nAs you create Session from a SessionFactory, it\u2019s not hard to understand that you use EntityManagerFactory to create an instance of EntityManager. However, because JPA is a standard applicable to Enterprise and Standalone applications, there are a couple of modes for obtaining or creating the EntityManagerFactory itself\u2014one that will be created in a managed environment such as Application Servers or Web containers while the other in a standalone application.\n\nOnce you have the EntityManager (obtained from EntityManagerFactory), the next step is to declare a persistence unit. A persistence unit is a logical group of persistent classes (called entities in JPA lingo), database settings, and relational mappings.\n\nThe JPA specification classifies two types of entity managers: one that runs in a con- tainer-managed environment, and another that runs in a standalone JVM. The former one is typically a Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) container such as an application server or a web container, while the latter is a Java Standard Edition standalone program.\n\nThe EntityManager itself is no different in both types but the EntityManagerFactory that creates the EntityManager is a bit unique in how it is configured and created.\n\nIn a standalone environment, you should create the EntityManager as shown here:\n\nprivate EntityManagerFactory factory = null;\nprivate EntityManager entityManager = null; ..\nprivate void init() {\nentityManager = factory.createEntityManager();\n}\n\n\nYou should pass in the name of the previously defined persistence unit (from persistence.xml) to the createEntityManagerFactory() method. We then obtain the EntityManager by calling createEntityManager on the factory.","date":"2020-10-20 12:24:32","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.4502573609352112, \"perplexity\": 3973.3938668915366}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 5, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-45\/segments\/1603107872686.18\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20201020105000-20201020135000-00148.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
So this extremely late piece will also dig into the obscure of my music catalog. It is the title of a piece by "El Combochorno Express", the house band for Sunshine's Café, a sketch comedy show locally produced in PR during the late 80s (and, if memory serves me, into the early 90s). "Batutera" is a term used in Spanish for band or drum majorette ("batuta" being the Spanish for the baton used in majoring, or whatever the term is). "Batutera Asesina" translates into "murderous majorette".
hilarious!!! sunshine cafe!! ah! the memories!! | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 6,878 |
Today 20 Apr 2019 Abadi Prayer Timings are Fajar 4:38 am, Dhuhur 11:52 am, Asr 3:08 pm, Maghrib 5:56 pm & Isha 7:02 pm. Find Azan and Salat Schedule & 7 Days Timetable.
Abadi Prayer Timings - Daily Fajar (Fajr) timing in Abadi, Dhuhur, Asr time in Abadi, Maghrib Abadi prayer timing in & Isha Abadi Namaz timing. Today's 14 Shaaban 1440 Abadi Namaaz ke auqat (Awqat) with next 7 days Schedule from 20 Apr, 2019 to 26 Apr, 2019 and Qibla direction with Customizable Prayer Time Calculation Methods to calculate proper time for your Namaz. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 2,310 |
# **A Generation of Radical Educational Change**
How much have teachers and their pupils benefited from the top-down, Westminster-led control of policy held in place by a powerful national inspection regime?
_A Generation of Radical Educational Change: Stories from the field_ is an exploration of the revolutionary impact of the greater and continuing involvement of central government in education policy making, which began in 1976 and was accelerated by the 1988 Education Act and subsequent legislation.
In the book, a dozen distinguished contributors from a wide range of sectors explain and reflect on how they worked to do their best for their schools, teachers and pupils in these years of great change. They understand the reasons, explained by Lord Baker in his early chapter, for a National Curriculum in 1988, and also the reasons for a more effective national inspection system. Yet their stories accumulate to become a powerful critique of the top-down policies of the last two decades. These policies, they say, have been too numerous, short-term, incoherent and partisan; governments have been indifferent to professional opinion and serious research, and have relied excessively on measurable outcomes and simplistic Ofsted judgments. Our current system is narrower and less democratic than it was, but evidence is hard to find that English pupils are doing any better in international comparisons.
The combined reflections in this volume are timely in these years of lively educational debate, as are the suggestions for future policy. _A Generation of Radical Educational Change_ is an invaluable read for current and aspiring headteachers, policy makers and those with an interest in education policy and how it evolves.
**Richard Pring** is currently Professor of Education at Winchester University, UK, and was previously Director of the Department of Educational Studies, University of Oxford, UK (1989–2003).
**Martin Roberts** was appointed to the headship of The Cherwell School, Oxford, UK (1981–2002). At present, he is a member of the Academic Steering Committee of The Prince's Teaching Institute.
# **A Generation of Radical Educational Change**
Stories from the field
_Edited by
Richard Pring and
Martin Roberts_
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
_Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business_
© 2016 Richard Pring and Martin Roberts
The rights of Richard Pring and Martin Roberts to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
_Trademark notice_ : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
_British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data_
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
_Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data_
Names: Pring, Richard. | Roberts, Martin, 1941–
Title: A generation of educational change: stories from the field/edited by
Richard Pring and Martin Roberts.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge is an imprint of
the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business, [2016] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015019499| ISBN 9781138941892 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138941915 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315673417 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Education and state – Great Britain – History – 20th century.
| Education and state – Great Britain – History – 21st century. | Educational
change – Great Britain – History – 20th century. | Educational change –
Great Britain – History – 21st century.
Classification: LCC LC93.G7 G46 2016 | DDC 379.41 – dc23LC record
available at <http://lccn.loc.gov/2015019499>
ISBN: 978-1-138-94189-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-94191-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67341-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
# **Contents**
_List of contributors_
_Foreword_ _by Baroness Estelle Morris_
_Background_
**PART I Introduction: setting the scene**
**1 History and overview of changes 1976–2014**
_Martin Roberts and Richard Pring_
**2 The revolution begins**
_Lord Kenneth Baker_
**PART II Schools**
**3 The early years**
_Wendy Scott_
**4 Primary education: can we escape the legacy of elementary education?**
_Tony Eaude_
**5 Secondary education 1976–2015: a shire county view**
_Martin Roberts_
**6 A view from the island: a very personal story**
_Kenny Frederick_
**PART III Higher and further education**
**7 Evolution of teacher training and professional development**
_Richard Pring_
**8 The evolving idea of a university**
_Richard Pring_
**9 Further education and the case for vocational preparation**
_Geoff Stanton_
**PART IV Accountability, examinations, qualifications**
**10 Assessment: the need to 'do nothing'**
_Tim Oates_
**11 Accountability and inspection**
_Pat O'Shea_
**PART V Reflection on policy matters**
**12 From 'optimism and trust' to 'markets and managerialism'**
_Sir Tim Brighouse_
**13 Schools: a shifting landscape**
_Margaret Maden_
**14 1944–2015: towards the nationalisation of education in England**
_Sir Peter Newsam_
**PART VI Role of the media**
**15 Media and education in the UK**
_Peter Wilby_
**Conclusions**
**16 Stories from the field – summarised**
_Richard Pring and Martin Roberts_
**17 The way forward for the next generation**
_Richard Pring and Martin Roberts_
_Appendix: major education acts and reports_
_Subject index_
_Name index_
# Contributors
Lord Kenneth Baker had a distinguished political career as a minister in first the Thatcher and then the Major governments. From Minister for Information Technology in 1981 he was promoted first to the Environment and then from 1986 to 1989 to Education where he initiated the decisive reforms that are the main subject of this book. He then became Chair of the Conservative Party and after that Home Secretary. As a life peer, Lord Baker of Dorking, he joined the Upper House in 1997 and with the late Lord Dearing set up the Baker–Dearing Trust, which currently promotes energetically University Technical Colleges (UTCs).
Sir Tim Brighouse started teaching in schools and was a deputy head by the age of 26. He then moved into educational administration becoming CEO of Oxfordshire via posts in Monmouthshire, Buckinghamshire and the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). After achieving great success as CEO of Birmingham he then, as Chief Commissioner, led the transformation of London's schools through the London Challenge. He was knighted for services to education in 2009.
Tony Eaude is Research Fellow at the Department of Education, Oxford University, and an independent research consultant. After working in special and primary schools he was for nine years headteacher of a multi-cultural first school in Oxford. He has written widely on primary and early years education, notably Thinking through Pedagogy for Primary and Early Years (2011) and How Do Expert Primary Classteachers Really Work? (2012).
Kenny Frederick spent her teaching career teaching in inner-city schools. She has just retired after 17 years as headteacher of George Green's school on the Isle of Dogs, Tower Hamlets. She is passionately committed to an inclusive education for all pupils whatever their needs. A former member of the Executive of the National Association of Head Teachers, she has written frequently for The Guardian and commented on educational issues both on television and radio.
Margaret Maden became a deputy head aged 31 at a time when men dominated senior positions in secondary schools. She soon became headteacher of Islington Green School, and later director of the Islington Green Sixth Form Centre, gaining a national reputation for her achievements. From there she moved first to Warwickshire as Chief Education Officer and then to Keele University to run the Centre of Successful Schools. She has written many articles and books. From 1999 to 2002 she was a member of the National Commission for Education.
Sir Peter Newsam started his working life as a civil servant before spending a few years teaching in Oxford. He then moved into educational administration. Chief Education Officer of the Inner London Educational Authority from 1975 to 1981, he then chaired the Commission for Racial Equality. In the early 1990s he directed the London Institute of Education, before becoming Chief Schools Adjudicator. He was knighted for his services to education and to racial equality. His papers and other publications are now held at the Institute Library and London Metropolitan Archive
Pat O'Shea, from teaching English in a Kent comprehensive school, became a lecturer at the Oxford University Department of Education, and subsequently Deputy Head of Peers School, then nationally famous for its innovative curriculum. She then became a headteacher, first of Bottisham Village College in Cambridge and second of Lord Williams' Thame in Oxfordshire. A much respected LEA adviser and SIP adviser, until recently she was an Ofsted inspector. Jointly with two former headteachers she now runs an education consultancy.
Tim Oates is Director of Assessment, Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment and was appointed in 2011 by the Coalition government to lead the National Curriculum Review Expert Panel. His career has been in educational research at the London Institute of Education, the National Council for Vocational Qualifications and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. His many publications have won for him an international reputation. His 'Could do better – using international comparisons to refine the National Curriculum' has been particularly influential. In recognition of his contribution to education, he was honoured with the CBE in 2015.
Richard Pring retired in 2003 as Director of Oxford University Department of Educational Studies after 14 years, having previously been Dean of the Faculty at Exeter University, lecturer in Curriculum Studies at the Institute of Education, teacher at Goldsmiths College and a London comprehensive, and Assistant Principal in the Ministry of Education. From 2003 to 2009, he led the Nuffield Review of 14–19 Education and Training for England and Wales. Richard Pring is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College Oxford, where Sir David Watson was Principal from 2010.
Martin Roberts was headteacher of The Cherwell School in Oxford for 20 years, in which time it changed from a struggling ex-secondary modern to one of the best-regarded schools in the county. He then helped to create the Prince's Teaching Institute, which is now the leading provider of subject-specific training for secondary teachers. He has written articles and books, the latest of which is in collaboration with Michael Young and others, 'Knowledge and the Future School', 2014.
Wendy Scott, OBE, is currently honorary president of TACTYC (Training, Advancement and Co-operation in Teaching Young Children). Headteacher of a nursery school, she then moved to Roehampton Institute as senior lecturer in early years' education. From district inspector first for ILEA and then for Kensington and Chelsea, she became a registered Ofsted inspector. She has also been Chair and Chief Executive of the British Association of Early Childhood Education and an adviser to the Department for Education.
Geoff Stanton worked for 20 years in FE colleges, as a teacher and subsequently as an FE teacher trainer. For eight years he was Director of the Further Education Unit (FEU), which pioneered pre-vocational courses. He was also Special Adviser to the Commission on Adult Vocational Training and Learning. He is currently a member of the Qualifications Committee of the OCR Examination Board of the Council of the City and Guilds. In the last 15 years he has been engaged in numerous research and development projects, leading to a range of publications.
Peter Wilby helped to run a university newspaper while still a student at Sussex University. He began his adult career at The Observer in 1968, becoming its Education Correspondent four years later. He has become one of the country's leading education journalists, writing also for the New Statesman and The Sunday Times. He has had periods of editing The Independent on Sunday and the New Statesman. Nowadays he writes as a columnist for the New Statesman, The Guardian and The Observer.
# Foreword
Baroness Estelle Morris
Many people teaching today will have witnessed the present education revolution since its start; others will have joined along the way. The careers of longer serving teachers frame the years of this period of change in schools. They will have qualified before the days of the national curriculum, national testing and inspection, and will be able to remember when local authorities, not central government, were at the centre of what happened.
They are the generation who have seen the changes at first hand, but, if change is to be an ally and not a threat, all of us need to understand its context and the journey we are travelling.
The contributors to this book have played key roles at important times in different parts of the education service. Some have been champions of change, others would have preferred a different route, all have had to try to make the changes work. In this sense, these chapters set out the often conflicting views and opinions that have been the background of education policy and practice for three decades and in doing so they come together to build a narrative of the times.
Anyone looking back at this period could describe it as a time of upheaval. School and college structures, curricula, inspection frameworks, qualifications have all been introduced, amended, and often discarded before there has even been time to properly assess their impact. Sometimes the reasons for change have been badly explained; often the initiatives have seemed relentless.
Yet there have been strong strands of continuity as well. The principles of greater autonomy, a national framework offering an entitlement for all young people, the need for teachers to be held to account, the importance of school and college leadership and the impact of high quality teaching have been threads that have stood the test of time.
Education doesn't exist in isolation, and the pressures for change come as much from outside the system as within. It is no coincidence that a period of great change in education has been also a time of significant change in the wider society.
Greater demands on services, less tolerance of failure, the belief that everyone must succeed and the freedom to exercise choice, all characterise the present public attitude to key services – and these too have been some of the pressures for change.
Equally, the speed of development in communication and the opportunities offered by digital technology have transformed our understanding of how children learn, and schools must reflect this if they are to remain relevant to those they teach.
Education has at times led change – the achievement of ethnic minorities, for example – yet in other areas it has been slow to change. Schools embraced educational technology long after most other sectors and they are only just beginning to give it the importance it deserves.
These are not easy times for those who teach but, at its core, education remains the greatest route to freedom, self-respect, fulfilment and social justice. It will always attract the attention of others who share the ambition to change the world for the better and, as a result, it cannot and must not stand still.
Although change will be an ever-present force for those who work in education, we must get better at how we lead it, manage it, evaluate it and take others on the journey. This book is not only a testament to the past but a most valuable source of wisdom for the future. We should all learn from it.
Editors' note: Virtually all the text of this book was written in the months before the General Election of May 2015. We have left it unchanged since, in the few months since then, the Conservative government, which replaced the Coalition, has left the main thrust of educational policy-making unchanged, as exemplified by its drive against 'coasting schools' and its continuing pressure on schools to become academies.
# Background
The 1944 Education Act introduced secondary education for all in a 'maintained system' – that is, a system maintained by local education authorities in partnership with the voluntary bodies (mainly the churches) who owned many of the schools, along with the teaching profession and with central government (which had overall responsibility for ensuring there would be sufficient schools and teachers).
The 70 years since this major Act of Parliament have seen considerable changes:
* to greater government control in the partnership between central, local government and schools;
* in the evolving structure of 'secondary education for all' up to 16 (then education or training for all up to 18);
* in the creation of a teaching profession (through initial and continuing professional education) appropriate for these changes and higher aspirations;
* in the development of a national curriculum;
* in developing systems of testing and examining to reflect the achievements of all;
* in the increasing accountability of schools and of the system; and
* in the world of employment and higher education into which pupils are to enter.
Throughout this period, there have been considerable demographic and economic changes to which schools, colleges and the system have had to adapt, some more successfully than others.
More recently, many of the principles of the 1944 Education Act have given way to a system that:
* puts much greater power in the hands of the Secretary of State (diminishing thereby the powers of local authorities);
* has introduced voluntary, private and for-profit organisations into the control of schools; and
* made accountability much more focused on measurable targets.
The changes since 1976 are very substantial, therefore – indeed, revolutionary.
Much has been written about these developments, but in a fragmented way. What too often are lacking are concrete examples, which give life to successes and difficulties as schools, colleges, teachers, education establishments, examination boards and local authorities navigate their way through the changes.
This book, therefore, seeks to provide cases of the hopes and fears, the successes and failures over four decades in response to national policies. Then, drawing on these accounts and learning lessons from them, the book looks to the future, making a number of proposals for the way forward.
# [Part I
Introduction](content.xhtml#bck_part1)
Setting the scene
# [1
History and Overview of Changes 1976–2014](content.xhtml#bck_Ch01)
Martin Roberts and Richard Pring
## Introduction
The last 40 years have witnessed such radical changes in the educational and training system that few who are now engaged in teaching, and few among the general public, can have much conception of where the system has emerged. But it is important that they should do so. It is important to see how and why a system has changed in order to understand it critically and to see how it might be changed yet further for the better.
This book therefore seeks to provide an account of those changes, not simply through a historical narrative (although such a narrative permeates the chapters and is explicitly provided in this introductory chapter), but also through the experiences of those who have lived and worked through the changes and who have had to adapt, often critically, to them.
In Chapter 17 we draw together some of the major themes that emerge from the following chapters and make some recommendations for the next generation.
## Setting the scene
In particular, the 1944 Education Act preceded our history by several decades. But reference to it is necessary for two reasons. First, it shaped the educational system for 30 years, and the period covered in this book reflects the gradual erosion of that post-war political settlement. Second, such a reference shows starkly how matters have changed.
The 1944 Act created 'a national service locally administered'. It established a partnership between central government (which had ultimate responsibility for overall expenditure), local education authorities (which provided education to all children 'according to age, ability and aptitude'), the voluntary bodies (that is churches and non-denominational bodies that provided many of the schools now entering the national system) and the teachers. The Minister had two major responsibilities – to ensure there were enough school places for all pupils and to ensure there were enough teachers to teach them. The Minister had no control over what was taught or how it was taught – these were regarded as too important to be put in the hands of politicians. After all, a war was being fought against totalitarian governments whose government ministers controlled the schools and what was taught in them.
The Act never dictated how 'according to age, ability and aptitude' should be interpreted. That was in the hands of the local education authorities (LEAs) and the teachers. Most LEAs interpreted this for the new secondary system of education in terms of three types of school fitting (in the words of the 1943 Norwood Report) three types of adolescent, namely, grammar schools for the few capable of abstract thought and interested in ideas; technical schools for those interested in and capable of the application of ideas in technology; and secondary moderns for the majority who were more concerned with practical activities and the immediate environment. However, some authorities – London County Council, West Riding of Yorkshire and Leicestershire – decided to develop schools attended by children of all abilities and aptitudes as comprehensives.
Subsequent years saw the gradual questioning of this threefold division of adolescents and therefore of schools – a questioning that was evolving significantly during the period covered by this book.
Hence, this chapter provides an outline of the political and social changes that impacted on educational institutions between 1976 and 2015, as these have affected the 'national system locally administered'. Our contributors illuminate many of them in the following chapters.
## The political context
### Labour and Conservative governments 1945–2015
In the 70 years since the Second World War, Labour formed governments for 30 years, the Conservatives, including a Tory-dominated coalition, for 40. In our chosen period since 1976, Labour governed for 16, the Conservatives for 23. The sequence was as follows: Labour 1945–1951 (Attlee), Conservatives 1951–1964 (Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home), Labour 1964–1970 (Wilson), Conservatives 1970–1974 (Heath), Labour 1974–1979 (Wilson, Callaghan), Conservatives 1979–1997 (Thatcher, Major), Labour 1997–2010 (Blair, Brown), Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition 2010–2015 (Cameron).
The 1970s were a watershed in British politics. The quadrupling of the oil price after 1973 led to extraordinary inflation, which hit a record 25 per cent per annum in 1975. Simultaneously destructive industrial unrest caused the British economy, already weak, to lurch from crisis to crisis. In 1976, Denis Healey, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to negotiate a huge loan from the International Monetary Fund. The implicit consensus between the two main parties began to break. The final breaking point was the 'winter of discontent' in 1979 when public sector workers, fighting the attempt of Callaghan's government to sustain a pay policy, went on strike. Rubbish piled up in the street. Schools closed. A public sense that something was badly wrong helped Mrs Thatcher to power. Conservative policy after 1979 consciously shook off the One Nation Toryism of Macmillan and Heath. Similarly Blair's New Labour, which emerged in the 1990s, distanced itself in policy as well as in name from the Labour values of Wilson, Callaghan and Attlee, further developing policies initiated by Mrs Thatcher.
### The pre-1970s consensus
In 1954, The Economist coined the term 'Butskellism' to describe the common features of the policies of Butler, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Gaitskell, his Labour counterpart. They both accepted the main achievements of the Attlee government, particularly the welfare state (which meant comparatively high and redistributive taxation) and the nationalisation of the country's major industries. They believed in a mixed economy with both private and public ownership. They were Keynesian in that they believed that the state should increase public spending in times of crisis to sustain overall demand and avoid significant rises in unemployment. They accepted that trade unions mattered and believed in the effectiveness of local authorities.
### The Thatcher/Blair consensus, 1979–the present
The Thatcher government rejected Keynesianism, which it considered to be the cause of serious inflation and the enemy of private enterprise. Influenced by Friedrich Hayek who argued for a diminished role for the state and by Friedman who considered inflation a greater threat than unemployment and whose monetarist doctrine stated that inflation was best reduced by the government controlling the amount of money in circulation, the Conservative government managed to bring inflation under control but at the price of high unemployment, which reached 3.2 million in 1985. Rather than a mixed economy it proved a firm believer in the superiority of private enterprise over public ownership. Major industries were privatised, for example British Gas and British Rail, and where possible market forces were given ever-greater freedom. The 'big bang' of 1986 deregulated the financial markets of the City of London and made possible, for good and ill, the rapid expansion of the City as a major player in global finance.
The Centre for Policy Studies, founded by Sir Keith Joseph in 1974 together with Margaret Thatcher and Alfred Sherman, argued the case for a Social Market economy and privatisation of such public monopolies as education and health – more deregulation and liberalisation. It considered 'educational vouchers' but thought that too big an undertaking. The philosophical thinking of Hayek and Friedman thereby entered into the management of public services in general and education in particular. It was cogently expressed by Sir Keith Joseph, later to become Secretary of State for Education, that:
the blind, unplanned, uncoordinated wisdom of the market is overwhelmingly superior to the well-researched, rational, systematic, well-meaning, cooperative, science-based, forward looking, statistically respectable plans of government.
(Joseph, 1976)
Thatcher's government kept a strict control over public expenditure, capping the funds it made available to local government, which it regarded as bloated and too close to the unions. As for public services, where she could not privatise, Mrs Thatcher centralised.
A new 'management language' was emerging in a series of Government White Papers that straddled the Thatcher/Blair years. The shift in the control and management of public services was explained in a series of Government White Papers from HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office: Modern Public Services in Britain: Investing in Reform (1988, Cm. 4011); Public Services for the Future: Modernisation, Reform, Accountability (1998, Cm. 4181); The Government's Measures of Success: Outputs and Performance Analyses (1999, Cm. 4200); Modernising Government (1999, Cm. 4310). One important consequence of these White Papers (and thus of the 'modernisation' of public services) was what was referred to as 'public service agreements'. These were agreements over funding from HM Treasury, first to Departments of State in terms of overall targets, which were then 'cascaded down' in more precise forms, to the institutions that were the responsibilities of the respective Departments. In education, this was spelt out partly in terms of the pro portion of students at different schools achieving so many GCSEs at different grade levels. But that gradually emerged as a way of rewarding teachers through 'performance-related pay'.
Where possible Thatcher's government cut income tax (for example, Lawson's 1988 Budget, which reduced the tax on the rich to 40 per cent and on everyone else to 25 per cent). As for the trade unions, breaking their power was a Thatcher priority, broadly supported by public opinion. Here 1984 was the key year when Scargill, the Marxist leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, who had humiliated Heath's government a decade earlier, called an all-out strike to end pit closures. The government was well prepared with plenty of coal stocks and police effectively deployed to prevent aggressive picketing. After a year the miners went back to work, totally defeated. The government passed a series of laws that severely restricted the power of the unions.
The Conservatives were able to stay in power for 18 years, but not because their policies were particularly popular. In the general election of 1987, when Mrs Thatcher was at her strongest, she won only 42 per cent of the vote with a turnout of 75 per cent of the electorate. Labour's problem in the 1980s was that it was dominated by the Left and the trades unions, and its moderates had split away to form the Social Democratic Party, which was to merge with the Liberals. Social and economic changes had undermined Old Labour and its traditional working class support in declining industrial areas. More voters thought of themselves as middle class. If Labour was ever to gain power, Blair with his small group of allies – Brown, Mandelson and Gould – decided that the party needed to be rebranded as New Labour and to accept the main Thatcherite policies of privatisation, low taxes, friendly towards business, cool towards the unions and local government, and centralising where public services were concerned. With the UK needing to compete in an increasingly global market, Blair and Brown saw no alternative but to encourage free enterprise. Blair, though he thought Mrs Thatcher a bit dotty, had much respect for her achievements, and she came to regard him as her real successor.
Like Thatcher, Blair's popularity was less well-rooted than it seemed. The main reason for New Labour's success in 1997 was the unpopularity of the Conservatives. He won only 44 per cent of the vote, less than Attlee and Wilson, and the voter turnout was lower too, at 71 per cent. His popularity declined in 2001 to 42 per cent of the voters, with 59 per cent voting. In 2005, his share of the vote had further declined to 35 per cent, with 61 per cent of the electorate voting. Throughout these years of radical reform neither Conservatives nor Labour had the explicit support of more than one in three of the electorate. After 2001 it dropped to one in four. More and more young people did not bother to vote.
Though in many ways the New Labour government had its distinctive policies, particularly with regard to relieving child poverty and support of minorities, the main thrust of its economics was similar to that of its predecessor, so much so that Peter Riddell writing in The Times commented that 'an economist from Mars would conclude that the same government had been in charge throughout the second half of the 1990s'.
## The implications for education of this dramatic political change post-1979
### Erosion of the political consensus
What did this mean for education? Before 1976, the political consensus accepted that schools should have freedom over the curriculum and gave LEAs the funding and discretion necessary to develop systems that best met local needs. Broadly speaking, it supported the end of selection at 11 plus and the spread of comprehensive schools. In the early 1970s Mrs Thatcher, as Secretary of State for Education, oversaw an accelerating comprehensive programme. The Schools Council, an advisory council on curriculum development and examinations, dominated by teachers but abolished by the Tory Sir Keith Joseph in 1984, was set up in 1964 by the Tory Sir Edward Boyle. The universities, expanding after the Robbins Report of 1963, were independent of government controls, their funding coming mainly through the independent Universities Grants Committee (UGC). Further Education (FE) too was expanding but remained the responsibility of LEAs.
However, when Callaghan spoke at Ruskin College in October 1976 this consensus was disintegrating. Within a few years, governments reduced education spending, the powers of local government and the independence of teachers. They encouraged the market through greater parental choice and a variety of schools (for example, Grant Maintained, City Technology Colleges, Specialist Schools, Academies, Free Schools and University Technical Colleges). The main criterion of the success of the education sector was to be seen in the extent to which it contributed to the economic success of UK plc. Ofsted would ensure accountability. And that accountability was expressed and conducted increasingly in the new language of management, that is, in terms of targets and performance indicators.
The key legislation, of course, was the 1988 Education Act, which in effect replaced that of 1944. Now the government was in charge of pupils' learning, establishing a detailed National Curriculum with ten levels of assessment, and funding directly (by-passing the LEAs) the new City Technology Colleges. From a 'national system locally maintained' was evolving a 'national system nationally maintained'.
The Conservatives had a deep-seated distrust of what they tended to describe as the 'education establishment', which in 2013 the Coalition Secretary of State, Michael Gove, referred to less decorously as 'the Blob'. This distrust had in the early 1970s been reflected in the Black Papers, edited by Cox and Dyson (1967–1972) for the Centre for Policy Studies, which attacked in particular the growing attachment to comprehensive schools. They were particularly suspicious of university-based teacher training, as reflected in Sheila Lawlor's paper 'Teachers Mistaught' (Lawlor, 1990).
By the Higher and Further Education Act of 1992, both higher and further education passed under greater government control. Mrs Thatcher distrusted university teachers as much as schoolteachers. A Higher Education Funding Council (HEFC) replaced the UGC and made sure that universities directed their efforts towards national priorities as defined by the government that, again like schools, were to increase the economic competitiveness of the UK. As for further education, the polytechnics became independent of LEAs, were renamed universities and funded through the HEFC. Other FE colleges also passed out of LEA control and were funded through the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) until the new Learning and Skills Council took on its functions in 2001. Both the Labour and Conservative parties in the twenty-first century came to believe that Higher Education (HE) and FE fees were unavoidable, though they argued about the fees' level.
New Labour accepted the main thrusts of Tory education policy, Choice and Diversity (the title of John Patten's White Paper in 1992) becoming a mantra. Blair thought teachers were among the forces of conservatism hampering him in his mission to modernise Britain, as set out in the White Papers referred to above. LEAs fared no better. When New Labour introduced its Academies programme in the 2002 Education Act, they would be directly answerable to the Secretary of State. In other ways New Labour was even more centralising than the Conservatives, enacting many laws and regulations and creating quangos. It was stronger too on accountability, Ofsted swelling in its size and authority after 1997. The influential teacher unions of the 1970s, particularly the National Union of Teachers (NUT), declined, especially after the protracted but fruitless strikes of 1985–1987.
Again there was considerable continuity when the Coalition took over from Labour in 2010. Michael Gove, the new Secretary of State, accelerated the Academies programme, introduced academy chains to establish many more academies run by churches, charities and for-profit companies such as Serco and Capita, and increased diversity and choice by introducing Free Schools. He continued the custom of Secretaries of State, if with unusual passion, to intervene in the curriculum and assessment.
As more women were working and keen to return to work after child-bearing, early years and nursery education gained a higher profile. One of the last Acts passed by John Major's government was the Nursery and Grant-Maintained Act of 1996, the aim of which was to encourage the expansion of nursery schools. A major and valuable initiative of New Labour was the Sure Start Programme, aimed at families living on benefits. It was intended not only to give potentially deprived children a better start in life but to help their mothers back to work. Since 2010 the Sure Start local programmes have become Sure Start Children's Centres and have the theoretical support of the main parties. Furthermore, the Labour government's 2004 Childen's Act Every Child Matters set out five outcomes for all children (be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution to society, and enjoy economic wellbeing). However in the post-2008 austerity, many of the Centres have suffered cuts.
### Examinations and examination standards
GCE O- and A-Level examinations started in 1951. In 1976 schools could choose from syllabuses offered by eight independent boards, which had started as university-run enterprises and had university teachers actively involved in the setting and evaluation of papers. They could also choose CSE syllabuses for their less academic pupils. The Certificate of Secondary Education was introduced in 1962 (first sat for in 1965) to provide a final examination goal for secondary modern students originally intended for the next 40 per cent of the ability range, after the 20 per cent who took O Level. It is worthy of note that, until this time, there were no publicly funded examinations for those not taking O-Level examinations. The CSE was conducted by many regional boards. However, as more schools went comprehensive, this dual system became increasingly clumsy and the two systems merged, with the first exams sat in 1988. GCE boards also merged and so now there are four main ones – AQA, Edexel, OCR and WJEB. Active involvement by university teachers is less. A new examination between GCSE and A Level, AS, was introduced in 2000. Much to the irritation of teachers, pupils and their parents, ministers tinkered frequently with exam details, for example, coursework and the recent proposal to decouple AS Level from A Level (see Chapter 10 for a deeper understanding of these changes).
The English and Welsh exam system has chalked up some impressive achievements. It caters for ever-increasing numbers, setting and marking to a tight timescale each year. Standards appear to be rising substantially over time. In 1976 only 23 per cent of pupils gained 5 A-C O-Level passes and 15 per cent of school leavers gained no grade at all. In 2014, 69 per cent reached the equivalent GCSE score with hardly any candidates failing to get at least one grade. At A-Level in 1976 only about 70 per cent gained at least one pass. In 2014 it was 96 per cent.
However, the question of whether or not present examinations are as difficult as their predecessors is hard to answer. Where A-Level pass rates are concerned, comparing 1976 with 2014 is impossible because in 1976 the results were norm-referenced, allowing only a fixed percentage to pass. In the 1980s the Boards introduced criterion referencing – that is, meeting specific levels achieved, not determined by formerly agreed norms. Some critics ascribe the striking improvements in grades to changes in the format of the exam papers. The syllabuses specify in greater detail how marks are allocated, and teachers have become evermore skilful in getting their pupils to concentrate on these specifications. Many of these critics would then argue that 'teaching to the test' in such a way is not obviously good educational practice. Recently teacher confidence in the reliability of the marking has lessened and the Boards have had difficulty in finding well-qualified markers. Moreover, in the attempts to bring equivalences between different sorts of examination within a single system, a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) was established in the 1990s, superseded by the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) in 2007, intending to show how the myriad of vocational, prevocational, GCSE and A-Level qualifications related to each other in terms of equivalence in standard, even though they were radically different in content and purpose. By deft use of equivalences, schools' GCSE results rose dramatically, as did their place in the league tables.
In 2008 New Labour set up Ofqual to supervise the whole system. Successive governments have used this apparent (though, as indicated above, severely questioned) improvement in exam results, especially at GCSE, to argue that their reforms are working. The jury is out on this case. Not until the late 1990s did the Education Reform Act (ERA) reforms bed down. GCSE results improved rapidly from their start in 1988. Would they not have continued to improve if schools had been left to get on with the job?
### Vocational education and training
In 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, Britain was the leading industrial power whose inventors, engineers and technical prowess were the envy of the world. Soon that status was challenged, first by the USA and Germany and latterly by Asia. Since the nineteenth century, the inadequacy of our technical and vocational education, particularly in comparison to continental Europe, has been a frequent refrain. The Royal Commission on Technical Instruction articulated it strongly in 1884, so did the Spens Committee in 1938. The 1944 solution to the problem, new technical schools, failed because the near bankruptcy of the immediate post-war years meant that only a handful were ever built. Between 1945 and 1976 the best vocational education occurred in some secondary modern schools or post-16 colleges offering examinations provided by the City and Guilds of London Institute (CGLI) and by the RSA.
An important thread of the 1976 Ruskin speech was the need for the education system to respond more directly to the needs of the world of work. The collapse of manufacturing during the 1970s and 1980s and the jump in unemployment as a result of the first Conservative budgets after 1979 made technical and vocational education a priority of every government since then. A priority it may have been but, of all the unequivocal policy failures of the last 40 years, the inability to create a thriving vocational offer for 14–19-years-olds must rank among the worst.
Therefore, to promote more vocational education in schools, the Department for Education established the Further Education Unit (FEU) to develop general education courses and qualifications based on occupation-related interests. The FEU published a series of papers, beginning with A Basis for Choice and Vocational Preparations. These led to a series of ever-changing qualifications – CGLI 365, succeeded by CPVE, succeeded by DoVE, succeeded by 14–19 Diplomas, succeeded by nothing yet.
The Conservative government did get off to a good start in 1982 when it announced TVEI, the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative, which tied in with these pre-vocational courses. Run not by the DfE but the Manpower Services Commission, established in 1974 so as to by-pass LEAs in the promotion and financing of employment-related activities in colleges and schools, it funded local projects where schools, colleges, LEAs and businesses developed their own schemes. The Education Reform Act (ERA) in 1988, with its emphasis on a new National Curriculum, effectively scuppered TVEI, which by 1997 had petered out. The Thatcher government also set up the National Council for Vocational Qualifications which established a system of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and employer-led Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) to take responsibility for local youth training needs. In 1995, Major's government called on Sir Ron Dearing, who had already 'slimmed down' the National Curriculum, to bring some coherence to a messy range of academic and vocational qualifications. He recommended three pathways, (i) GCSEs/A Levels, (ii) GNVQs (General NVQs) and (iii) NVQs.
New Labour set up a new quango, the Learning and Skills Council, to provide a more coherent approach to education and training. However, in its short life of nine years that coherence eluded it. There were simply too many national, regional, local organisations and business interests competing for student-led funds. Experts clamoured for a new approach that would bring 'parity of esteem' between the academic and vocational pathways. In 2004 the Tomlinson Report on the 14–19 Reform seemed to find a way forward with its plan for an overarching Diploma. However, despite its widespread professional support (and the Secretary of State, Ed Balls' claim that this would be the qualification of choice for all 14–18 year olds), Prime Minister Blair vetoed it as electorally too risky as it might seem to challenge the A-Level gold standard. A new big idea of Advanced Diplomas sank under the weight of its ambitions. The essence of the British problem with vocational education was, as Alison Wolf put it in 2002, that it was 'a great idea for other people's children'. The many attempts to design an effective vocational pathway were for the most part designed by civil servants and advisers who themselves had little experience of industry and business and had no thought of encouraging their own children to follow such a pathway. Most pupils, looking at the world around them, decided that their life chances were better if they stuck to GCSEs and A Levels.
The Coalition government abolished the Learning and Skills Council and called in Alison Wolf to review the existing state of vocational qualifications. She recommended a cull of many of the Applied GCSEs and other qualifications that had emerged over the years, endorsed BTEC as an A-Level equivalent and apprenticeships as a good way forward (Wolf, 2011). The government accepted her recommendations. Nonetheless our technical and vocational provision remains poor compared with much of the developed world.
## Social contexts
### Female empowerment
The first challenges to the many post-war conventions, which were to change British society irrevocably, occurred in the 1960s. These conventions included the importance of marriage, the disapproval of sex outside marriage and of divorce and only a limited number of jobs being regarded, at least by the middle classes, as suitable for women. In the 1970s, the pace of empowerment quickened. Germaine Greer's Female Eunuch was published in 1970 and feminist attitudes proved infectious. Also in 1970, the Labour government passed the Equal Pay Act, following the 'Made in Dagenham' strike of female machinists at the Ford plant. The contraceptive pill became available on the NHS in 1975. Women increasingly believed that the opportunities which men had always taken for granted should be also open to them and that they could organise their lives to seize them.
This new ambition was expressed particularly clearly in education. Girls had always done better than boys at 11+ but in the 1980s they did better at GCSE, continued into the sixth form and then on to university. By 1996 women applicants just about outnumbered male ones but, by 2014, when a record number of students (about 40 per cent of the cohort) entered university, women significantly outnumbered men. There remained an issue about choice of subjects, with physics and technological subjects still being male-dominated both at school and university. Nonetheless, though full equality had yet to be achieved, the transformation of British society has been great. Britain had had a female prime minister. Whereas in the 1979 election, 11 women had been elected to Parliament, in 2010 it was 142. Many of the country's outstanding headteachers were female, and England's women's cricket, football and rugby teams often did better on the international stage than their male counterparts. For the most part, schools and universities (even the once proudly segregated Oxbridge colleges) contributed positively to this change.
### Immigration and race relations
Another socially transforming trend has been immigration. Starting after the war with immigrants from the West Indies, others from the Indian sub-continent soon followed. By 1956, the new immigrant population was assessed at about 180,000 and rapidly increased during the 1960s. Governments quietly approved of immigration as its mainly cheap labour boosted the economy. However, immigration caused public disquiet, which was extravagantly though popularly expressed in 1968 by the Conservative MP Enoch Powell in his 'rivers of blood' speech. Successive governments have tried both to limit immigration by a series of Immigration Acts and to encourage racial harmony by such measures as the Race Relations Acts of 1968 and 1976. Efforts to limit numbers have failed. In 1981, the immigrant population had reached more than 2 million, about 4 per cent of the population. According to the 2011 census, the proportion of whites had fallen to 86 per cent, with ethnic minorities rising to more than 10 per cent. They tended to be concentrated in conurbations, especially London and the West and East Midlands. This increase has been due partly to legal immigration (though much unquantifiable illegal immigration has taken place) and people seeking asylum from trouble spots like Somalia, and partly to the higher fertility rates of immigrant families. In recent years, immigration from countries of Eastern Europe that are members of the EU, particularly Poland, has risen sharply. In 2013, though the Coalition government was trying to lessen it to 'tens of thousands', net migration into the UK was c.212,000.
Relationships between the races have often been difficult. Serious race riots occurred in 1981 in Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side (mainly against the police), in 1985 in Brixton and Birmingham, and in 2001 in some northern towns. The Ouseley Report in 2003, Community Pride, Not Prejudice, made strong recommendations on the important role of schools. The worst riots of all in 2011, which started in London and spread to other cities, had racial elements. They were sparked by the police shooting of a black man who they suspected of gun crime, and more than half the rioters were black youths. However, many white youths attacked the police and property, making the rioting more anarchic than racist.
A low point in race relations came in 1993 when a black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, on his way home from school, was murdered by a white gang. The Metropolitan Police botched the inquiry and failed to bring the suspects to justice. The subsequent Macpherson Report accused the Met of institutional racism.
The DfE, LEAs and urban schools have responded to this immense challenge impressively. The impact of London Challenge on the performance of these schools in particular has been impressive. But, much previously, the Wilson government started Section 11 funding to help ethnic minorities. This funding continues as the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG). Almost without exception schools have committed themselves to an explicit anti-racist agenda.
### Religious trends
English people, though most still call themselves Anglican, have largely stopped being practising Christians. Barely 10 per cent attended church regularly in the 1970s and that number has steadily fallen. Though the Church of England remains the national Established Church, it came to look increasingly anachronistic, especially because of its protracted debates about homosexuality and whether women could become priests. On the other hand, it should be noted that the 1944 Act, in order to create a national system, had to include within it 'voluntary controlled' (Anglican) and 'voluntary aided' (Catholic) schools that, at that time, provided education for the majority of pupils. The national system was, and remained until recently, a partnership between the government, the local education authorities and the churches.
Paradoxically, within education, Christian and other 'faith' schools have flourished. In 1976 the only 'faith' schools were Christian or Jewish. They proved popular and tended to show up well in the league tables that appeared in the 1990s. Their supporters argued that their religious ethos gave their schools extra cohesion and purpose; their critics, that they did better simply because their admissions procedures favoured able pupils. By 2014 not only were there more Christian schools (one of which taught the 'creationist' explanation of evolution) and Jewish ones, but in addition 18 Muslim, eight Sikh and four Hindu. Blair's New Labour government particularly encouraged new 'faith' schools though many warned that they were potentially socially divisive.
Governments still required all non-faith state schools to have a daily collective act of worship of a broadly Christian character, a requirement that most, supported by their governors and parents, ignored. When in 2014, a few schools in Birmingham with predominantly Muslim pupils, some 'faith' schools, some not, developed distinctly Islamic traits, the Coalition government quickly drew up a list of 'British' values that all schools had to be seen to foster. The list of values was unexceptional, including respect for English laws, individual freedom and the toleration of other people's beliefs. They do not include any mention of Christianity.
### Minorities
Britain became a more tolerant society. As well as more accepting of different races and religions, the disabled got a better deal. The Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 aimed to ensure that disabled people were treated in a fair and equal way, especially with regard to shops, facilities and services. Wherever possible, disabled people should feel integrated. The Warnock Report of 1981 about Special Needs reflected the same philosophy. Physically disabled pupils and those with learning difficulties should attend mainstream schools. Although the subsequent Special Needs regulations have been strongly criticised by many, including Baroness Warnock, schools and colleges have fulfilled the aims of the report.
Another area of human activity to which Britons generally have become more tolerant is sexual differences. Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967. 'Coming out' grew more common. Eventually, though the Tory Right and many religious groups opposed it, the Coalition government legislated for same sex marriages.
### Inequality, poverty and class
Britain remained one of the most class-conscious nations in the world. Though the class system was more porous and more people thought of themselves as 'middle class' and lived what was seen as a middle-class life style in housing, taste and holidays, an upper or upper-middle class continued to dominate. With the decline of the trade unions, the Labour leadership became more meritocratic while the Tories retained a leadership with independent school and Oxbridge backgrounds. One clear consequence of the Thatcher revolution was increasing inequality. Comparatively high levels of unemployment left many working-class people in poverty and dependent on benefits. Wealth did not obviously trickle down from the rich to the poor, and London and the South East obviously prospered more than the North. Blair and Brown certainly tried to tackle inequality after 1997 but by and large they failed. The 2008 crash and following recession, the worst since the 1930s, made matters much worse, and the popular perception was that the austerity measures of the Coalition after 2010 hit everybody hard except the rich.
That inequality was reflected particularly in education where 7 per cent of the pupils are educated in independent schools, many of which are much more lavishly resourced than those within the state system, reinforcing the class divide.
In education, New Labour tried a number of policies of which Sure Start proved the most lasting. It set up Education Action Zones (EAZs) in 1998 as part of a New Deal for Communities. These to some extent were modelled on the Education Priority Areas that had been created in 1962 and that enabled resources and extra teachers to be directed at schools in deprived inner-city areas. Another initiative, Excellence in Cities, aimed at inner-city schools, was launched the same year as the EAZ's. The EAZ's foundered after a few years but Excellence in Cities proved more effective. Initially New Labour aimed its new Academies at poverty stricken areas. For its part, the Coalition has created a 'pupil premium' aimed at disadvantaged children in order to reduce the attainment gap between them and their peers. Though the evidence is mixed, a combination of such initiatives, of others like the London Challenge of 2003 and the success of many individual schools serving deprived areas, seem to have improved examination results, and more importantly, raised the aspirations of many of our most disadvantaged pupils.
### Youth culture
Youth culture is an amorphous topic but one that obviously affects schools. Often it is defined by activities that interest the media, social problems that schools are expected to solve – drugs, alcohol abuse, knife crime, teenage pregnancies, early sexualisation, lack of respect for authority, racism and so on. Other trends may be more important since they could affect pupils' attitudes more generally: for example, excessive interest in celebrities, consumerism and interactive mobile phones and tablets, disinterest in national or international politics in local clubs and societies, or more positively a greater commitment to educational success. In his Education in Britain 1944 to the Present (2003) Ken Jones detected 'a new student culture emerging in which successful examination performance had a central part'. Pink Floyd's 'We don't need no education' of 1979 resonated less.
However, accounts of education usually neglect the importance of the Youth Service, which serves young people still at school. According to the National Youth Agency in 2010, 28 per cent of all 13–19-year-olds were in contact with some form of youth service, many of them from the most desperate backgrounds in terms of family breakdown and potential abuse. But youth centres suffered worst from the cuts to the education budget at the beginning of the Coalition government. In Greater London, eight of its thirteen youth centres were closed. In some other local authorities there was 100 per cent closure.
### National identity
Britain joined the European Union in 1973. As the years have passed, critics of the EU have grown more vociferous and gained greater public support. Governments have granted greater devolution to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Should England and its regions have greater autonomy is a live question in 2015, so too is how healthy is British democracy? Ethnic minorities, notably Muslim communities, seem to be retaining their own cultural values. Governments have expected schools to contribute to a sense of national identity, whether it was the Conservatives requiring more British history in the National Curriculum, or New Labour introducing compulsory citizenship education, or the Coalition insisting on 'British values' being taught. Such initiatives pose difficult philosophic questions for teachers in a free society.
### The digital revolution
Currently education systems are grappling with the implications of this technological revolution, which began in the late 1970s and has accelerated since then. British governments were swift to respond to it. From 1981 to 1984 the Thatcher government gave £8 million to schools through its Microelectronics Education Programme (MEP). Both primary and secondary schools purchased in large numbers the BBC Acorn computer and Research Machines (RM) products. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) became part of the National Curriculum. New Labour strongly supported greater investment in ICT. It set up the British Education Communication and Technology Agency (BECTA) in 1999 and made £230 million available to schools. ICT and Computer Science courses proliferated. However there were problems. For headteachers, investment in the best technology posed significant problems, partly because of the cost, partly, in the early years, because of reliability and partly because of the pace of innovation. Pupils too often had more sophisticated equipment at home than their schools. Teacher training lagged behind the investment in hardware and in the early twenty-first century pupils reported being bored with their ICT lessons, which focused on the introduction of comparatively undemanding computing skills. The numbers taking GCSE and A-Level courses fell. The Coalition government abolished BECTA in 2010 and in 2014 had the National Curriculum in ICT revised so pupils would gain a deeper understanding of computer technology through learning, for example, what algorithms are and how to create and debug computer programs.
In most schools digital technology is now ubiquitous, with electronic white-boards, iPads and other tablets, an array of computers in staff rooms and departmental offices, and linking parents to the school. As yet the impact on learning remains unclear. Most teachers agree that used well, digital technology improves motivation and is an immediate help with individual project work. It seems to be proving a real help for pupils having difficulty with basic literacy and numeracy. There are however no obvious signs yet of digital technology superseding the teacher at the heart of the learning process.
## Conclusion
Consequently, there have been 40 years of radical political and economic change and of far-reaching social trends, to which schools, colleges and universities have had to respond. The central question on which the contributors to this book reflect is the extent to which the Thatcher-Blair-Cameron consensus has created an educational policy framework that has enabled our teachers to help their pupils flourish to their individual benefit and to the advantage of their country.
## References
Jones, K., 2003, Education in Britain 1944 to the present day, Oxford: Blackwell.
Joseph, K., 1976, Stranded on the middle ground?: reflections on circumstances and policies, London: Centre for Policy Studies.
Lawlor, S., 1990, Teachers Mistaught, London: Centre of Policy Studies.
Wolf Report, 2011, Review of Vocational Education, London: DfE.
# [2
The Revolution Begins](content.xhtml#bck_Ch02)
Lord Kenneth Baker
## Introduction
In 1976 James Callaghan, the Prime Minister, startled the educational world by making a speech that dared to question the quality of education being provided in many schools. Prime ministers were not meant to do this; they should not trample in the sacred vineyard of a school's curriculum. Callaghan's views were strongly opposed by virtually all the different bodies in education: teachers, teacher unions, schools, colleges, local education authorities and the departments of education in universities. Indeed his own Secretary of State, Shirley Williams, opposed his views and so little was achieved, but by the 1979 election he had started the ball rolling.
When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 it was expected that there would be new and innovative ideas introduced on education and some were tried, like school vouchers, but after a short time they were withdrawn. The Assisted Places Scheme gave state pupils a scholarship to attend certain private schools – this was the first measure to be scrapped by the Labour government in 1997. But there were no major radical steps in the development of a national curriculum and by 1985 there was a general feeling that little had been achieved. Indeed Oliver Letwin, an adviser in No. 10 to Margaret Thatcher and who was later to become a cabinet minister under David Cameron, sent a minute to the Prime Minister in 1982 when Letwin was returning from politics to banking, which started, 'Dear Prime Minister, You have failed in education'. He could have softened his minute by saying, 'Your ministers have failed' or 'Your government has failed' but no, he attributed it to Margaret's own personal lack of interest in making significant educational changes.
The whole education scene in the mid-1980s had been dominated by a teachers' strike that had been ongoing for 18 months. In 1986 Margaret decided that she really had to make a change – Keith Joseph, her education minister whom she admired enormously and listened to a great deal, said he wanted to step down. I was lucky enough to be asked by Margaret to become the Secretary of State of Education and Science at a time when British industry was highly critical of the output of schools: many students on leaving school were barely literate or numerate and many were ill-disciplined for the world of work.
## Secretary of State of Education and Science
When I went to see Margaret Thatcher on my appointment in May 1986 I expected to be given a list of things that she wanted done, but that wasn't how it happened. She said to me, 'Kenneth we have the teachers' strike and we must try and resolve it as soon as possible, but as regards policy go away and work up some ideas and come back to me in a month's time'. This was just what I wanted because I had my own ideas as to what needed to be done. She warned me about the Department for Education (DfE) and I remember her saying to Keith Joseph in 1983, 'You have an awful Department'. I set about shaping the changes with discussions, always roundtable, with senior civil servants, the other ministers, and my political adviser Tony Kerpel to agree what changes we would like to see.
There were two changes in particular that I wanted to introduce. I had come to realise that a national curriculum was necessary as the current arrangement meant that every school shaped its own curriculum, and so when you had a good headteacher you had a good curriculum; with a mediocre headteacher a mediocre curriculum; and with a poor headteacher a poor curriculum. Moreover there was tremendous inconsistency all over the country so when a family moved from, say, Northumberland to Devon their children joined a very different almost foreign system of education. I agreed very much with the phrase that Rab Butler once used, that all children should go through 'the common mill of education'. That was the really inspiring justification of the National Curriculum.
I also wanted to establish Technical Schools. Back in 1981 when I was the minister of Information Technology I had visited a college in Notting Hill that specialised in taking 16-year-olds who had left the education system with no certificate whatsoever and training them in computing. It was very interesting to see young people, particularly black students, sitting at computers, enthusiastic to learn and paying great attention. They knew among other things that to make music well they had to master a computer. In the wake of the Brixton riots in April 1981 we established a network of such colleges called Information Technology Centres (ITechs) across the country and I saw real transformation in the experience and life opportunities of their students. I had talked about the possibility of establishing such colleges with Keith Joseph on several occasions but never really got anywhere.
I compiled a list of proposals for the Prime Minister that included:
* The establishment of a national curriculum in a number of basic subjects.
* The provision of testing the achievement of students at the ages of 7, 11 and 14.
* The publication of the results of schools – league tables.
* The establishment of colleges independent of local authorities – City Technology Colleges – focusing upon computer technology, being funded partly by business.
* A system whereby schools as a result of a ballot of parents could move to become grant-maintained, independent of local education authorities.
* Polytechnics to cease being controlled by local authorities and become independent education institutions.
* Probably one of the most important changes: to devolve the management of a school's budget from the local education authority to the management of the head and the governing body. A trial in Cambridgeshire had shown secondary schools could do this and I built on this; and
* Per capita funding for schools and universities so that money would follow the student.
After many ministerial discussions this list was approved and it featured in the 1987 Conservative election manifesto, running over nine pages. It was the most systematic and thorough overhaul of education since 1945. After the election it fell to me to put flesh on the bones. I knew these proposals would be controversial, even to many Conservative local education authorities, so I was at great pains to balance the various working groups with a complete range of views and opinions from Left to Right, from top to bottom. I hoped that some curriculum groups would be free of controversy, like maths, but not at all. Feudal armies seemed to march in favour or against students being allowed to use calculators, to learn tables by heart, or to teach calculus below 16. It took some time to get agreement. I knew that history would be controversial so I took pains to get an outsider involved – Commander Michael Saunders-Watson who owned a stately home with a large educational wing attached to it and who was later to become chairman of the National Library. On English I appointed some of the people on the Right who had written the Black Paper series – very controversial and critical papers of the educational system – in the hope they would come up with a rigorous proposal, but I was to be disappointed – they were not concerned with basic punctuation or grammar. I set up another group, headed this time by an engineer, to produce a much more down-to-earth curriculum.
I also set about selling the idea of City Technology Colleges to groups of businesses. I went to see all the large companies likes Rolls-Royce, ICI, and Shell but they were not interested at all. They wanted the basic state system to be improved, but none were clear how that might be done. Then I turned to entrepreneurs like James Hanson, Harry Djanogly, John Hall, Phil Harris, Stanley Kalms, Geoffrey Leigh and Peter Vardy, who were prepared to put £1 million towards sponsoring a school and get involved with a curriculum that aimed at improving the quality of education and life chances of its students. Eventually, long after I had left the Department, some 15 City Technology Colleges existed, the first of the academies and still some of the most successful schools in the country.
It was clear that the comprehensive system imposed by the Labour government in the 1960s was failing our children. All-ability classes were holding many back and the staying on rate at 16 was one of the lowest in the developed world. Only 12 per cent of our 18-year-olds went on to higher education. The remaining grammar schools, together with the private schools, were creating an elite of very well-educated students. What I wanted to achieve was for state-funded schools to strive to do as well and give to parents the greater choice in deciding which school was best for their children.
The Labour Party said they were opposed to virtually everything I had introduced and they promised to repeal them once in government. It was important therefore for the Conservatives to stay in office as long as possible to ensure that the reforms had bedded down. In the event there was not a general election that Labour could win until 1997 and that allowed the National Curriculum and the other reforms to be established. I am very glad to say that Tony Blair, his first Education Secretary David Blunkett, and their education adviser Andrew Adonis kept intact 90 per cent of the reforms I had introduced. In fact Tony Blair came to develop academies using the City Technology College as his model. He wanted more schools to be independent of local education authorities, and Andrew Adonis encouraged Blair to announce in 2004 that Labour wanted to see a target of 200 academies established. When Labour left office in 2010 there were in fact 273.
The changes were so radical that many Conservative authorities did not like them and sought to continue running their own schools. There was always a number of backbench MPs who tried to weaken the changes, by example setting a very high level of support in the parental elections for Grant Maintained Schools. Throughout Margaret Thatcher gave me her full support and that's what you expect from a great leader supporting one of her embattled ministers.
The overall impact of my proposals was to devolve as much power as possible to the individual schools and colleges. The metaphor I used at the time was that I wanted to move things out from the hub of the wheel to the rim, because at the rim schools could be independent and use their own inventiveness and creativity. I was often accused of concentrating too much power in the centre by creating the National Curriculum but I was quite prepared to defend it – the government was right to create the basis of core knowledge that pupils should follow, and I never attempted to tell teachers how to teach it. There was sufficient choice within the National Curriculum for schools to be as varied and creative as they wished to be.
The big regret I have from that time was that I was unable to extend the teaching day by at least one period. I did not bring in that change because in the eventual settlement of the teachers' strike I had to agree the number of hours that a teacher spent a year teaching. If it was increased by 45 minutes I would have opened up a huge new Pandora's Box of debates with the unions and I was not prepared to undertake another battle with them.
So what did I learn as an education reformer?
* First, if you want to change fundamentally the performance of traditional schools, you must create an institution that can show that it will lead to a better result for students. Parents, students and the local community must be able to see the new institution actively working. We had to get a City Technology College up and running. It was not easy as local authorities were not willing to create competition by releasing an empty school. One of the few education authorities held by the Conservatives was Solihull and they offered a failing and closing school in Kingshurst, and we were lucky to find an outstanding head, Valerie Bragg. The Kingshurst CTC soon became one of the most successful schools in the country, a position it holds to this day. This CTC became an exemplar for a further 14.
* You cannot secure reform alone. To develop CTCs I appointed Cyril Taylor, an independent education expert, who injected dynamism into the team that I had set up in the Department. Tony Kerpel, my personal and political adviser, became a key figure particularly by ensuring that my intentions were understood by the key officials in the Department.
* You do need allies. The educational establishment in the universities was hostile to any politician who wanted something fundamentally different. The teacher unions were predictably hostile, but I remembered Keith Joseph's advice to me: 'Don't make the mistake I made of attacking the teachers'. I decided to get the parents on my side. The publication of school results was key since it gave to parents essential information that could allow them to exercise choice for the education of their children. Parents were also given a vote to decide whether their school should be Grant Maintained. A new variety of schools gave parents for the first time an opportunity to choose.
In 1997 I left the House of Commons and I was pleased that Tony Blair's first government, David Blunkett his first Education Secretary, and Blair's main educational adviser Andrew Adonis decided to accept the reforms that had been implemented since the passing of the Education Reform Act in 1988. The only significant change was the abolition of Grant Maintained Schools, which had to be brought back under the control of local authorities – it was Labour's sop to the Left, but even that was partially reversed with the later introduction of Trust Schools.
## University Technical Colleges
Over the years I had kept in touch with Ron Dearing whom I had first met when he was the Chairman of the Post Office and after his retirement I was the first to offer him a post in education with the Council for National Academic Awards, the body that regulated polytechnic qualifications. The position launched him in a very influential post-retirement career in education – he produced several key reports on student fees, curriculum reform, technical qualifications and foreign language in primary schools, quite apart from actively supporting new Christian academies. We met up again in 2007 and decided that the one thing that was missing in the English education system was good technical high schools.
The model Ron Dearing and I developed we called University Technical Colleges. They were for students from 14 to 18 and we both agreed that Mike Tomlinson's report to the Labour government supporting a 14–18 curriculum was absolutely the correct direction for English education. UTCs operate from 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. for 40 weeks of the year. This extended day and shorter holidays added a whole extra teaching year over the four years. The curriculum would devote 40 per cent of the teaching time for 14–16-year-olds to practical, technical, vocational hands-on learning, and 60 per cent to the basic GCSE subjects – English, maths, the three sciences, a foreign language and a humanities subject. The other key features were that a university would be asked to sponsor the UTC – this meant that the university would go into the UTC to help with teaching and to introduce students to the resource riches of a university. The university would also be partly responsible for shaping the specialist curriculum. In this it would be helped by local companies and employers who knew what skills were needed locally. The Baker Dearing Educational Trust (BDET) expects employers not only to help shape the specialist technical curriculum with the university, but also to provide projects for the students and then help with teaching them.
The BDET is grateful to the Edge Foundation for granting us £150,000 to get started. We used the grant to print a brochure explaining UTCs and to commission Exeter University to produce a report on how all the schemes and proposals to improve technical education since 1870 had failed.
Ron and I then went to see the Schools Minister Andrew Adonis who immediately liked the UTC idea and said that he would provide financial support for two. We were buoyed up by this generous support and decided that I should begin by approaching a university. I rang up Julia King, the Vice Chancellor of Aston University, one of our leading engineering universities, and who is herself a qualified engineer. Julia liked the UTC concept very much and committed her university to support us. We then won the support of Birmingham Council, where the education director and leader of the council, Mike Whitby, provided an empty site very close to the university. We met with several local employers – national and small – who wanted just this sort of school: the Aston University Engineering Academy is today over-subscribed.
Ron Dearing and I then had to make a big decision. Should we proceed with the two UTCs for which we had the government's support by getting them open in, say, two years and then measuring their success after a further three or four years? This would mean if the UTCs were successful we would not find out until 2014–2015. We agreed that the demand for such schools was so pressing we must get as many going as soon as possible, but we also recognised that such a policy had real risks. These were novel and unique schools blending technical and academic education, and while some would succeed there could also be failures. Undaunted we decided to go flat out to establish as many as we could. We managed to get five groups interested to establish the first five UTCs, and sure enough two ran into difficulties. But the next 12 UTCs were infinitely better – some are now outstanding – it was a reminder that the path of reform is never a faultless road.
As an election was approaching in 2010 it was necessary to win the support of the other political parties. I met David Cameron, the Leader of the Opposition, George Osborne, and Michael Gove all of whom liked the UTC idea and committed an incoming Conservative government in their manifesto to establish 12 UTCs. David Cameron picks up new ideas very quickly and saw how UTCs could certainly help with his 'Broken Society' by engaging the disengaged 13–14-year-olds who were fed up with the education they were getting in their comprehensives. I am glad to say that UTCs have gained all-party support: created under Labour and expanded under the Coalition.
The target of all UTCs is to ensure that when students leave at 16 or 18 none should join the ranks of the unemployed – no NEETs. It is a target that we meet. UTCs are major agents of social mobility: we provide opportunities for thousands of young people that they would not have had if they had remained at their previous schools.
One of the extraordinary features of the UTC movement is that it has been left to a charity, the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, to be the main promoter of UTCs and also to help them to become properly established as well as to ensure they meet the criteria of their specialist technical curriculum. This requires our charity to retain a significant team of ex-headteachers and inspectors, and to maintain a constant relationship with officials in the DfE and in some cases with local education authorities. If it had been left to the DfE to promote UTCs I do not believe that by now as many as 60 would have been approved.
# [Part II
Schools](content.xhtml#bck_part2)
# [3
The Early Years](content.xhtml#bck_Ch03)
Wendy Scott
## Introduction
It has been extremely interesting to reflect on the radical change in education over two generations. The trajectory of changes in early years education, as this chapter will show, though as radical as those affecting primary and secondary sectors, is different and more complicated.
I must immediately acknowledge the deep and lasting value of the Froebel training that I undertook between 1958 and 1961. Having refused to go to Cambridge and instead entering the Froebel Educational Institute (FEI) with the intention of teaching secondary maths, I was waylaid by the early years programme. It was taught socratically, and included the philosophy, psychology, sociology and history of education. During the three-year course, we also had lectures from health and social services professionals as well as artists and artisans. Molly Brearley, the FEI Principal, had a strong influence on Children and their Primary Schools, the Plowden Report, which was published in 1967.
Although more recent research has questioned some conclusions of the Report, Plowden's central tenet remains as true for effective education of young children in 2015 as it was in 1967: 'At the heart of the educational process lies the child'. In the early years, children have not yet learned to be pupils. They bring such varied expectations and experience with them to school, that teachers must pay attention to each individual in the context of their families and cultures. The most radical change in education policy since the 1980s is that individual children's needs and broader potential achievements have become secondary to the current standards agenda, directed by political ideology that is aligned with a simplistic economic model.
## Teaching 1976–1981
In 1974, I returned to teaching after seven years at home looking after my two young children. I was appointed to open a new nursery class during the brief period of expansion of nursery provision in Education Priority Areas, introduced by Margaret Thatcher when she was Secretary of State for Education. Given a headteacher with little awareness of or interest in the early years, and a demountable classroom across the playground from his office, I had complete autonomy on curriculum and organisation and was able to work closely with parents and also with health visitors and the probation service. This freedom continued throughout the time I was teaching, up to the mid-1980s.
## Headship 1981–1986
I then became the teaching head of a demonstration nursery school on a university campus. This role involved full curricular, pastoral and management responsibilities in addition to full-time teaching. As headteacher, I had total freedom to design and implement the curriculum in collaboration with outstanding staff, and had control of the budget, apart from the costs related to the premises and staff salaries. The nursery built strong links with lecturers: I believe it was the first school in the country to introduce philosophy seminars for four-year-olds, and our ground-breaking work with the BBC B computer and the remote-controlled 'turtle' was made possible through additional expert support from the college. We welcomed many students and visitors from around the world; at this time, there was global interest in the enlightened British approach to primary and early years education.
Because of the advantages the nursery school enjoyed, we were able to specialise in the education of children with language difficulty and delay, and worked closely with other services. A speech therapist agreed to hold her clinic in an adjoining tutorial room. There she was able to observe her clients in a naturalistic environment through the one-way windows and advise on children where there were concerns. A school doctor came in regularly to undertake health checks. The publication of the Warnock report on Special Educational Needs (SEN) in 1978 provided a framework for our commitment to work on SEN.
I was fortunate in having a headship at a high point for nursery education and consider that this was the time in my career when I was able to have the most effective influence on children, their families, students and other colleagues through respectful reciprocal relationships.
## Some of the main developments in nursery education and the early years curriculum
I left headship in 1986. As I moved to a variety of non-school posts, it will be useful at this stage to outline some of the main national policy shifts in both nursery education and the early years curriculum.
### Nursery education
Historically, the provision of nursery education has been patchy across the UK. The Effective Provision of Preschool Education (EPPE) study showed that highly qualified early years staff make a crucial difference to children's achievement, at least up to the end of Key Stage 2, but although they have by far the highest proportion rated outstanding by Ofsted of any part of the education system, the number of maintained nursery schools in England since the 1990s has fallen by more than 20 per cent. They are often the preferred setting for inclusion and social care referrals for vulnerable children and their families. Sixty per cent of nursery schools in England already offer funded places for disadvantaged two-year-olds and more are in the process of setting this up. Given the difficulty of finding sufficient high-quality places for the two-year-old programme, these placements are a vital resource. Nevertheless, maintained nursery schools are facing an uncertain future as a result of reducing budgets and the drive to a Single Funding Formula across providers in each local authority (LA). Nursery school headteachers now have to manage very complex demands, especially where the school forms part of a Children's Centre. In common with primary and secondary education, the role of headteacher has changed considerably, not least because of the high levels of accountability. The particular demands of work in disadvantaged areas, where outreach to parents is a high priority, are not generally recognised, although the recent introduction of the Pupil Premium, albeit at a much lower level than for school-aged children, will go some way to addressing these problems.
In 2013, the Education Select Committee recommended that government should 'set out a strategy for ensuring the survival of those [maintained Nursery Schools] that remain'. The government response to this recommendation failed to address the issue and showed a worrying lack of understanding of the distinctive qualities of nursery schools led by specialist headteachers.
### Key government initiatives from 1989
Just after the introduction of the National Curriculum for children of statutory school age, the DES published guidance on The Education of Children Under Five, written by HMI in 1989. It provided illustrations of a play-based curriculum expressed through nine interlinked areas of learning and experience, which offered
a broad, balanced, differentiated and relevant curriculum which takes into account the assessment of children's progress, promotes equal opportunities irrespective of gender, ethnic grouping or socio-economic background, and responds effectively to children's special educational needs life.
The Rumbold Report (1990) provided an authoritative guide to provision for the early years, which remains pertinent to this day and informs the principles of the current Early Years Foundation Stage. These are hard to sustain given the increasingly demanding expectations of school readiness and other accountability measures.
In 1992, the government commissioned a discussion paper, Curriculum Organisation and Classroom Practice in Primary Schools, which recommended among other things that the teacher should be an instructor rather than a facilitator and that there should be a more direct emphasis on subject teaching. Written by Robin Alexander, Jim Rose and Chris Woodhead, it became known as 'The Three Wise Men's Report'. Tricia David, Audrey Curtis and Iram Siraj-Blatchford (three wise women), concerned by the focus on instruction and the likely negative effect of this on the early years, countered in 1993 with a well-referenced booklet Fostering Children's Learning in Nurseries and Infant Classes.
In 1996 the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority identified Desirable Outcomes for Children's Learning before Compulsory School Age (DLOs). This was the first time that outcomes had been specified in early years and there was considerable unease among practitioners who feared that teaching would be unduly influenced by expectations of outcomes rather than being seen as extending children's learning in a developmentally appropriate way.
The DLOs were replaced by the Labour government that came into power in 1997, who instead put in place Early Learning Goals as part of the Foundation Stage, introduced in 2000.
As nursery provision expanded through Sure Start (see below), which drew in younger children, Birth to Three Matters was published in 2002 to provide information, guidance and challenge for all those with responsibility for the care and education of children up to the age of three. It valued and celebrated babies and children, recognised their individuality, efforts and achievements, and acknowledged that all children have a need to develop learning through interaction with empathetic people and exploration of the world around them, from birth. The Framework took the child as its focus, steering away from subjects, specific areas of experience and distinct curriculum headings.
The Birth to Three Matters Framework, though based on a thorough analysis of the literature and welcomed across the sector, was discontinued in 2012, following the review of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and the Early Years Profile (the assessment at the end of the Foundation Stage) undertaken by Dame Clare Tickell in 2011. This resulted in a simplification of the Profile, and combined regulatory standards and guidance for children from birth to the end of the reception year. Higher expectations were introduced for literacy and mathematics. These, combined with the downward pressure from the Year 1 phonics check, are leading to a significant increase in teacher-led instruction, making it more difficult to respond to spontaneous events and children's existing knowledge and interests.
The simplified EYFS Profile may become voluntary from 2016, although the Study of Early Education and Development (SEED) project, recently commissioned by the DfE, relies on Profile data for the 5,000 children they are following through to the end of Key Stage 1, and assessments undertaken by the health service are linking with it too. Annual entry to primary school means that a whole class is admitted in the September of the year in which children become five, although the statutory age of entry is the term after a child's fifth birthday. Many children are thus only just four on entry to school. Pre-schools and nurseries, which have proliferated in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector since 1997, lose the influence and example of the older cohort of children, and the children themselves, particularly the youngest in the group, have a major adjustment to make when they enter their reception class.
PVI nurseries and pre-schools are staffed by people with generally lower levels of qualification than obtain in nursery and reception classes in primary schools; this divide between the maintained and non-maintained sectors is a continuing issue. In 2011, the Coalition government commissioned a review of early years qualifications from Professor Cathy Nutbrown. Foundations for Quality was published in 2012. Among other things, it recommended that a specialist qualification should be established for early years teachers, equipping them to work with children from birth to seven. The government response to this was to establish entry qualifications comparable to those for teacher training and to re-badge as Early Years Teachers the cadre of Early Years Professionals who had a graduate-level qualification, without granting them Qualified Teacher Status. This is causing considerable frustration and confusion.
The split in provision for the Foundation Stage in the UK is unusual; most other European countries have a coherent early years curriculum, offered in one setting, typically for children up to the age of six or seven, and staffed by professionals well qualified in early years pedagogy. Downward pressures for more formal approaches are increasing in England. The phonics check in Year 1 and the drive for narrowly defined school readiness as well as the raised standards in the EYFS Profile are resulting in unrealistic expectations of what children know and can do, achieved at the expense of more effective approaches to learning with understanding. Summer-born and premature children are particularly at risk of misdiagnosis of special educational needs. Proposals for on-entry baseline assessment designed to enable measurement of school effectiveness are causing concern as they will take teachers away from their first priority of settling up to 30 new children into school. Accountability is increasingly to a system, rather than to children.
## LEA Inspector and Adviser 1987–1990
In 1987, I became a District Inspector for the Early Years with the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). I had been impressed by papers on the impact of race, class and gender on achievement published by ILEA in the 1980s and was delighted to join the Authority. My role offered unequalled opportunities to learn from expert colleagues and to observe a wide range of practice across nursery schools and classes in four London Boroughs. It involved the line management of an expert group of advisory staff; the induction of up to 100 newly qualified EY teachers annually; links with specialist teachers' centres and experience of inspection as a professional and constructive way of working with schools. It offered the capacity to support new initiatives as well as to make proactive intervention where necessary. ILEA recognised that work in the early years requires specialist expertise and funded any primary teacher who converted to nursery teaching for a term's re-training. Secondary teachers were required to undertake a year-long course.
The unjustifiable abolition of ILEA resulted in the loss of considerable expertise, including specialist Teachers' Centres, among them the Centre for Language in Primary Education (CLPE), which is now an independent UK charity with a global reputation for the quality of its research into literacy and teaching. For many years CLPE pioneered approaches to formative, observation-based assessment, creating the Primary Language Record (PLR). The PLR was recommended by the Cox Committee, which developed the English National Curriculum as a model for a national system of record keeping and is now in use in widely differing systems throughout the world.
## Unitary Authority Inspector/Adviser 1990–1993
In 1990, I was appointed as the primary and early years' inspector in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC). This role demanded broader responsibility across the primary age range, working with specialist subject inspectors on the National Curriculum; supporting and moderating the introduction of Standard Assessment Tasks in Key Stage 1; a strong focus on professional development; and implementation of the Children Act 1989.
It was instructive to move from the largest Education Authority in England to RBKC, one of the smallest. Links with Social Services were close, although the Director of Education at the time turned down the innovative possibility of a combined service. Given the complexity of the role of current Directors of Children's Services, he was perhaps wise, although the implementation of the Children Act would have been more effective given joint working. The Borough was served by two health authorities that had radically different approaches to collaboration. Regrettably, professional boundaries still persist in some areas, in spite of the opportunities offered by Sure Start, and growing political awareness at local as well as national level.
It was during the three years that I worked in RBKC that Standard Assessment Tasks at the end of Key Stages 1 and 2 were introduced. The first tasks for seven-year-olds were designed around active learning, providing challenges to children to design a maths game and to have first-hand experience of scientific experiments. This required a learner-centred way of working, which was better aligned to children's interests than more formal approaches. Although complex to administer, it gave multi-layered opportunities to show what each child understood and could do and was arguably a more informative assessment than current, more limited tests. I learned a great deal in my role as moderator in this and in assessing children's progress in reading and writing.
It is a source of concern as well as regret that the role of local authority advisers and inspectors is now seriously undermined due to the introduction of academies and free schools, as well as heavy budget cuts.
## Ofsted Registered Inspector and Nursery Inspector and Trainer 1993–1998
The establishment of Ofsted in 1992 meant that many local authority inspectors became redundant. I was fortunate to be offered early retirement, as having a pension released me to do voluntary work as well as to undertake Ofsted training as a Registered Inspector and also a Nursery Inspector and Trainer. My first experience as a member of an Ofsted team was the inspection of a large primary school under the guidance of an HMI who led eight of us through a five-day inspection. He insisted that the inspection team and all the staff met together before the inspection started, and explained in detail what we would be doing. His final remarks to the teachers were: 'If you don't feel you have had the best professional development for free by the end of the week, then we will have failed'. As a Registered Inspector myself, I always remembered his words and still consider that it is unprofessional and wasteful not to build constructively on the detailed observation involved in inspection. For several years, I chose to tender for inspections of maintained nursery schools in differing local authorities across the country, as I was interested to see how this non-statutory service was supported, both professionally and politically.
Since then, Ofsted has become a data-driven organisation, which is particularly unhelpful in the early years when assessment and evaluation need to be holistic and judgements must be nuanced, taking into account many aspects of children's lives. Given that inspections are now brief, usually with one unmoderated inspector, it is worrying that Ofsted is deemed to be the sole arbiter of quality across the early years. For a while, early years was not reported on separately in Section 5 school inspections. This has now been reinstated, but there are concerns about the lack of knowledge and relevant experience of some inspectors. It is to be hoped they will be guided by the definition of teaching given in Ofsted's evaluation schedule for inspections of registered early years provision:
Teaching should not be taken to imply a 'top down' or formal way of working. It is a broad term which covers the many different ways in which adults help young children learn. It includes their interactions with children during planned and child-initiated play and activities: communicating and modelling language, showing, explaining, demonstrating, exploring ideas, encouraging, questioning, recalling, providing a narrative for what they are doing, facilitating and setting challenges. It takes account of the equipment they provide and the attention to the physical environment as well as the structure and routines of the day that establish expectations. Integral to teaching is how practitioners assess what children know, understand and can do as well as take account of their interests and dispositions to learn (characteristics of effective learning), and use this information to plan children's next steps in learning and monitor their progress.
## Voluntary organisation
From 1994 to 1997 I was Vice-Chair and then Chair of The British Association for Early Childhood Education (BAECE, now known as Early Education), then Chief Executive, from 1997 to 2000.
Moving to freelance working enabled me to offer voluntary support to Early Education. At that time, Cheryl Gillan, then a junior minister in the Department for Education and Employment, opened discussions on the need for childcare, and plans to introduce nursery vouchers were announced. On behalf of Early Education, I gave evidence to the Education Select Committee on the undesirability of the scheme, which would have made planning and quality control difficult.
## New Labour 1997–2010
In 1994, the RSA published Start Right, a report written by Sir Christopher Ball, which strongly endorsed the importance of the early years, recommending that all children should have access to high-quality nursery education, which should also support parents. With the election of a Labour government in 1997, a strong policy of expansion of provision for young children was introduced that gave powerful impetus to Early Education's work. The growing recognition of the value of investing in the early years enabled the appointment of a Development Officer in each of the four countries of the UK and also a Chief Executive, thanks to grant funding.
When the research into the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) was announced in 1997, I was invited to join the consultative group and am very pleased that they took up my suggestion of including some maintained nursery schools in the project. These emerged consistently as offering the highest-quality provision, with a positive influence on children's later achievement at least until the end of Key Stage 2.
My involvement in the selection of Early Excellence Centres, which were introduced as models for joint working, drew on my varied experience. I also attended meetings in Westminster as a 'Friend of Sure Start', where possibilities were discussed as the Labour government shaped its thinking about early years care and education. It was an exciting time, full of possibilities for improving provision for young children and their families. Day-care mattered, but the focus was very much on children's learning and on supporting parents, in recognition of the crucial importance of the home learning environment.
## 1999 Chair of the Early Childhood Forum (ECF)
Dame Gillian Pugh, the first director of the Early Childhood Unit at the National Children's Bureau, saw the need to bring together different services with varying perspectives so that they could learn to understand each other and to collaborate. She instituted the Early Childhood Education Forum, now the Early Childhood Forum (ECF) in 1993. This brought together the major national organisations concerned with the care and education of young children from the PVI and the maintained sectors. Services for children with special needs, parents, governors, inspectors and local authorities from across the UK were also represented. The over-riding purpose was to speak with a united voice in pursuit of agreed aims. The ECF grew to a total membership of nearly 40 organisations with an interest in early years; observers from the Departments of Health and Education and from Ofsted attended meetings. It was highly influential in the development of Sure Start, and I was honoured to become the first elected chair.
The ECF worked on proposals for an approach to the early years curriculum for some time and published Quality in Diversity in Early Learning in 1998. This is a major piece of work directed by Vicky Hurst, which involved practitioners and academics from all sectors across the country, who put together an agreed framework, influenced by New Zealand's inclusive Te Whariki curriculum, as a guide to provision for children from birth to six. This was superseded by the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, a government-imposed framework, developed in consultation with expert advisers. In spite of this child-centred guidance, the prescriptive Literacy and Numeracy Strategies introduced into primary schools in 1998 resulted in pressure on nurseries and pre-schools to begin to do more formalised work in these areas of learning.
Since the Coalition government came into power in 2010, there has been strong ministerial control of the curriculum and assessment across all key stages. The revised Early Years Foundation Stage sets statutory standards that all early years providers, in the PVI sector as well as in maintained schools, must meet.
An EYFS Profile must be completed for each child at the end of the reception year in primary school. The main purpose is to provide a rounded and accurate assessment of individual children's levels of achievement at the end of the EYFS. The profile describes each child's attainment against 17 early learning goals, together with a short narrative about their learning characteristics. It is increasingly being used by health professionals as a measure of children's achievement, and is included in the SEED (Study of Early Education and Development) research project as a baseline measure, so current proposals that it should become voluntary are of concern, especially as this is allied to the introduction of a baseline measure for all children on entry to the reception year.
The current emphasis on progress rather than on simple measures of achievement is welcome, but is resulting in counter-productive demands on staff due to simplistic expectations of linear progression, which must be evidenced in detail for each child. Assessment now rules practice, and teachers no longer have scope to apply their professional judgement and to ensure that children have a rounded educational experience. The prime areas of learning, namely personal, social and emotional development, communication and language, and physical development are being sidelined in the push for academic achievement. This is disastrous in the early years, where the focus should be on broader intellectual growth.
## Sure Start
Sure Start was one of the most radical policy initiatives undertaken in this country. Norman Glass, who was Deputy Director (micro economics) in HM Treasury between 1995 and 2001, was the person who brought it about, alongside Margaret Hodge MP, Minister for Children. I never imagined that I would attend consultations in the Treasury, let alone meet a civil servant with such sympathy with the aims of the programme and grasp of the issues. As his obituary in The Independent noted, Norman chaired the Comprehensive Spending Review that led to the setting up of Sure Start. He ensured the programme was based on good research evidence and underpinned by core values. He was keen that childcare not be 'captured' simply as a route towards the greater employability of parents: it should be both cost effective and socially just, to ensure that children had the best possible start in life.
Glass went on to lead the Interdepartmental Review, which resulted in the creation of a Cabinet Committee on Children and Young People and a cross-departmental Children's Unit to coordinate policy and administer the proposed Children's Fund. He chaired the official steering group to implement the Sure Start programme, which was designed to narrow the gap in achievement between more and less advantaged children, now an increasing problem.
## Adviser to the Department for Education and Employment 2000–2002
I attended several meetings of the Friends of Sure Start after Labour came into power in 1997 and was appointed to the DfEE in 2000 as part of a team working with the newly established Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships (EYDCPs) across England, helping to develop effective multi-professional collaboration and planning for growth.
The expansion of nursery classes under Thatcher had been short-lived, and provision for non-statutory early years education across the country remained patchy, depending largely on political priorities in different local authorities; indeed, the Pre-school Playgroups Association (now the Pre-school Learning Alliance) was founded in 1962 in order to fill the gaps in the availability of nursery schools and classes. Historically, independent and private providers have also been part of the mix. When the Labour government decided to expand provision, giving an entitlement to 12 hours of nursery education to all three- and four-year-olds and allowing choice as to sessions attended, it relied on PVI nurseries to fill the gaps. The push towards collaboration and multi-agency working was expressed through EYDCPs in each local authority. There was a wide range of existing provision, which was very scarce in some areas. The qualifications of staff in the PVI sector were generally lower than in maintained nursery schools and classes, although staffing ratios were better. A recent proposal to trade improved qualifications for lower ratios of adults to children was rejected by the sector.
As well as considerable professional challenge, this period gave me deep insights into the very different approaches to early years care and education across the south east of England and the influence individual politicians, local authority officers, or practitioners could have, at both micro and macro levels. I also learned a lot about the complexities of a government department.
I already knew that any proposal that took up more than a single A4 sheet of paper was unlikely to be considered and that long-term strategic thinking had little traction as each government made its own decisions. Criticism was not welcome unless accompanied by proposed solutions. I discovered that the timeframe for policy change was shorter than a parliamentary term, as it was conditioned by finances. A Comprehensive Spending Review, when the Treasury allocates funding to each Ministry, takes place every two years, so planning is tied to that. However, the Education Department sees an annual battle over spending priorities between the various divisions, for example schools, special needs, FE and so on. A new initiative such as Sure Start must show that it is effective very quickly, or lose further investment. This explains the rushed implementation, not just of Sure Start, but of other initiatives, for example the Neighbourhood Nurseries or the current push to make provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds. The Sutton Trust has recently advised that this policy should be slowed down until enough places of good enough quality are available, but it is nevertheless proceeding, with schools encouraged to take these very young children into a less than ideal situation.
I saw little evidence of corporate memory in the Department, partly because of the career structure in the Civil Service, where people tend to move on every two or three years. This churn means that continuity is compromised. Governments claim that evidence-based policy prevails and that consultations are meaningful, but my experience, endorsed by subsequent observation, suggests that decisions are largely ideologically based and the use of evidence may be selective, even when drawn from research commissioned by the government itself. I checked recently on consultation procedures, and the DfE confirmed that each submission counts as a single response, even if it comes from a large group. I was told that some are read more carefully than others. It is admirable that an analysis of responses is now put up on the DfE website, but the clear statement that a proposal will happen, although only a minority of people agree, is not very reassuring. It is disheartening that the Minister who advocates direct instruction grounded in prescribed phonics programmes has no experience of the complexity of literacy teaching and is advised by people who gain financially from the policy.
It was refreshing to spend the following year working with the Early Excellence Programme and its evaluation. Just over a hundred Centres were identified as models of good multi-professional practice. In every case, there was dynamic, determined and visionary leadership, and a sympathetic and enlightened local authority also contributed to their success. These Centres were important in addressing the underlying aim of Every Child Matters (ECM), introduced in 2004 with the aim of safeguarding children and giving each one the best chances in life. Now that ECM has been withdrawn and the Department for Children, Schools and Families has become the Department for Education, one has to wonder whether every child does still matter. Recent cuts mean that Children's Centres have been closed, or are accessible for very short hours and only able to offer signposting to declining family support and other services.
## Working as a consultant in China and the Maldives as well as the UK 2000–2007
A very interesting career development emerged just before I moved to work with the government in 2000. I was asked to welcome a high-level delegation of visitors from China who wanted to find out about the British approach to early years education. A professor from the Normal University in Beijing had looked around the world and decided that our approach was what was needed to enable China to broaden its provision so that children could be more expressive and creative. The British Council funded several such delegations over five years and also supported annual visits of English Early Years experts to different parts of China. I have subsequently worked for UNICEF in a post-tsunami programme developing early years provision in the Maldives, where there is a similar acknowledgement of the value of our heritage of high-quality early education. The tragedy is that we are losing our focus on quality in England, as the prime aim of support for children's learning and development is being displaced by the push for affordable childcare, and the pressure for ever-earlier formal teaching is resulting in the loss of children's confidence in themselves and of their disposition to learn.
## Conclusion
The erosion of overarching educational values and ethical principles at policy level means there is no longer a proper context for constructive, reasoned debate. Unrealistic expectations and inappropriate top-down pressures are undermining the stated principles that underpin the statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2012), which covers the education and care of all children up to the end of the reception year. Teachers of all age groups need scope to customise education to individual pupils, not only in order to accommodate cultural differences, but also to take account of the changes and chances that are part of life for us all.
In 2008, Graham Allen MP advised the government on ways of eliminating or reducing costly and damaging social problems for individuals. His report examined how this could be done by giving children and parents the right type of evidence-based programme, especially in the children's earliest years. Allen warned:
If we continue to fail, we will only perpetuate the cycle of wasted potential, low achievement, drink and drug misuse, unintended teenage pregnancy, low work aspirations, anti-social behaviour and lifetimes on benefits, which now typifies millions of lives and is repeated through succeeding generations.
The report stresses that only early intervention can break the inter-generational cycle of dysfunction and under-achievement. Socially and emotionally capable people are more-productive, better-educated, tax-paying citizens who can help our nation to compete in the global economy, and make fewer demands on public expenditure.
In 2010, Frank Field endorsed Sure Start by saying that investment in the Foundation Stage and support for families and parents are the most effective ways of ensuring that young people are able to break through economic and social barriers to achieve in later life.
All political parties appear to be committed to investment in the vital early years as a means of equalising children's life chances at a time when poverty and inequality are increasing. The current political climate and blame culture, the deliberate rejection of expert advice from specialists who have dedicated their professional lives to education, and the highly selective use of evidence are demoralising staff and harming children's life chances. Nevertheless, teachers, with support, can do much to help create a more equal society.
Advice to future policy makers:
* Implement in full the recommendations of the Nutbrown Review of early years qualifications, and provide mentoring for all working in the early years.
* Reform the accountability system, ensuring that it is primarily to children and families, and convert inspection into a positive opportunity for improvement and professional development.
* Take decisions on the curriculum away from politicians and recognise teachers and other staff as professionals.
## Notes
1 Ofsted 2013 Evaluation Schedule for Inspections of Registered Early Years Provision, guidance and grade descriptors for inspecting registered early years provision p. 7, footnote 8.
2 Graham Allen MP, 2011 Early Intervention: The Next Steps, Independent Report to the Government, Ref: 404489/0111 Department for Work and Pensions and The Cabinet Office
## Further reading
Association of Teachers and Lecturers (2002) Inside the Foundation Stage, a report on practice in reception classes. London: ATL.
Blakemore, S.-J. (2000) Early Years Learning: The POST Report. London: Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.
David, T. et al. (2003) Birth to Three Matters: A Review of the Literature. London: DfES Publications.
Department for Education (2014) Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. London: DfE Publications.
Early Years Curriculum Group (1995) Four-Year-Olds in School: Myths and Realities. Oldham: Madeleine Lindley.
Gopnik, A. (2000) The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Goswami, U. (2015) Children's Cognitive Development and Learning. CPRT Research Survey 3.
Save Childhood Movement, www.savechildhood.net/ and www.toomuchtoosoon.org/. TACTYC Occasional Papers, www.tactyc.org.uk/occasional-papers/.
WAVE Trust (2013) Conception to Age 2 – The Age of Opportunity. London: DfE Publications.
# [4
Primary Education](content.xhtml#bck_Ch04)
Can we escape the legacy of elementary education?
Tony Eaude
## Introduction
My career as a primary teacher started in a suburban school in 1976, a few weeks before the speech in which Prime Minister James Callaghan launched what came to be called the 'Great Debate' and about ten years after the Plowden Report (1967), which represented a vision of primary education very different from that of elementary schools before the 1944 Act, where:
* the curriculum involved a narrow emphasis on what Alexander (2010, p. 242) calls Curriculum 1 ('the basics'), with little time for Curriculum 2 ('the rest');
* teaching was mainly based on instruction and transmission of content knowledge; and
* teachers were poorly qualified.
In 1980 I moved to a large school in a new town, becoming deputy head in 1983. I was appointed as headteacher of a first school in 1989, just after the 1988 Education Reform Act, and left that post in 1998 to study for a doctorate. Since then, I have worked independently, mostly researching and writing about young children's education and working with teachers in primary schools and teacher educators. So, my professional life falls neatly into three main periods, with cut off points in 1989 and 1998.
The next three sections describe the key changes in these periods in the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, accountability and school structures and reflect on less tangible aspects such as how these changes were perceived at the time. I then provide an overview of these four decades of change in relation to primary education. The final section suggests lessons for those concerned with policy and practice, if primary education is to escape from the enduring legacy of elementary education.
## From 1976 to 1989
As a primary class teacher, in the 1970s and 1980s, I had considerable autonomy over the curriculum. Teachers were expected to hear children read regularly and do mathematics, much of it practical and working through text books. There was a strong emphasis on art, physical education and what was usually called topic work. I was able to choose a topic for a half-term or a term. The idea of 'good primary practice' was prevalent. Although never clearly defined, this often involved starting from a first-hand experience or an artefact and children writing, drawing, measuring and finding out more about it.
Teachers could, within the constraints of breaks, assemblies and hall times, structure the timetable as they wished. I adopted an integrated day with some separate lessons, especially for maths and handwriting, but most of the timetable was not divided into separate lessons or subjects. The day usually ended with me reading a story. Children were expected to organise their own time, often over a few days. For example, I recall two boys spending most of two days completing a beautiful painting of a fish. My teaching involved relatively little direct instruction and was largely what Alexander (see Eaude, 2011, pp. 14–) calls facilitation, underpinned by a philosophy that children should be allowed to develop at their own pace and that this should involve a broad range of experiences.
The curriculum was largely a matter for the school to decide, prompted but not determined by national policy. The early 1980s saw a greater emphasis on science. Increasingly, from the middle 1980s, our school developed an approach to teaching reading based on 'real books' (as opposed to a reading scheme). Following the Swann Report (1985), which called for schools to cater more for the needs of an ethnically diverse society, my largely white school undertook a great deal of work about racism, resulting in my doing the DES 20-day course on ethnic diversity.
There was little detailed lesson planning and no expectation, except in the first year or two of teaching, that one's plans would be scrutinised. I was on my own for most of the time at my first school, teaching all subjects except music. At my second, team-teaching meant that two teachers were responsible for two classes between them. Support from learning support assistants was usually for only one or two sessions a week, with their role often washing paintbrushes or hearing individual children read. Teachers had no expectation of non-contact time.
There were no external tests. Some teachers tested times tables and spelling regularly. I did neither, though was, at my first school, encouraged to concentrate more on children learning their times tables. Nor was there regular monitoring or inspection. I recall attending a conference in around 1980 on accountability addressed by an HMI, who gave little indication of what this might involve in the future. In 1981, when HMI came to inspect the school, no one seemed worried, and teachers did not change how they worked. The inspectors did not seem to have a clear plan. For instance, I remember one asking a colleague to point him towards any science. I thought that we would be criticised for an approach to teaching reading that left many of our children – mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds – poor readers. No report was published, and no individual feedback was received, though the head said that the school had been judged to be in the top 10 per cent nationally. Nothing seemed to change as a result.
The 1981 Education Act meant that schools were required to identify, and make provision for, children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), helping to provide more consistent assessment of need and provision. The middle 1980s were characterised by industrial unrest, in which I, as the local secretary of the National Union of Teachers, was heavily involved, but there was very little direct interference from government or the Local Education Authority (LEA) affecting how I taught.
I, and my colleagues, worked hard but felt that we were largely in control. Teaching was enjoyable despite all the frustrations inherent in the task. We were fairly sure that what we were doing was on the right lines, and primary education in England was highly regarded. There was a sense of optimism that in hindsight seems more like naïveté. It now seems remarkable the extent to which teachers and schools were trusted and given autonomy, how untouched by external events most teachers were and how little most of us working in primary schools in the 1980s saw what was coming.
One should always be cautious of generalising from personal experience, but my experience illustrates a few wider trends. The research (for instance Alexander, 2010, p. 30 and Campbell and Neill, 1994, p. 177) indicates that progressivism was never as prevalent as often thought and nationally provision was very uneven, with a lack of consistency across the system and low expectations in several respects. The curriculum was largely dependent on the school's, and the headteacher's, priorities. Reading, writing and mathematics were emphasised, but the importance of a broad range of experiences, creativity and catering for 'the whole child' was recognised. There was little external pressure on schools and almost no structural change. Teachers were trusted and mostly left alone, though whether that trust was justified is arguable. It was the age of what Hargreaves (2003, pp. 125–9) calls 'permissive individualism'.
## From 1989 to 1998
In 1989, I became the headteacher of a multi-cultural first school in East Oxford with some 300 children. The first two years were ones of relative calm, although the implementation of the 1988 Act was starting to change primary education. Then, on 15 June 1991, one of the two buildings was severely damaged by fire. As a result, we worked on a split-site with most of the school in temporary accommodation for two years, while the school was rebuilt. I then stayed for another five years. So the second period of my career was as a headteacher, roughly from the 1988 Act until just after the election of the Labour government in 1997.
A key principle underlying the introduction of the National Curriculum was that of entitlement, to try and ensure greater consistency of provision. The 1990s also saw a move towards inclusion, with more children with special educational needs educated in mainstream schools. My main recollection of the first National Curriculum is the huge number of ring binders containing a very detailed, subject-based set of requirements. Primary teachers struggled to understand these and find ways of integrating the contents into coherent plans and topics. Soon, it was clear that the National Curriculum and assessment procedures were absurdly top-heavy. The 1994 Dearing Review led to a slimming-down of content but the structure, based on separate subjects, remained unchanged.
Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) were introduced in English, mathematics and science, involving a mixture of tests and Teacher Assessments, in our school only for seven-year-olds. My most vivid memory is of the chaos of trying to assess how well individual children understood the idea of 'floating' by placing oranges in buckets of water. As a school, we struggled for some while with a cumbersome method of collecting evidence for Teacher Assessment. With the governors' support, I refused to return the school's data, on the grounds that these were simplistic outcome measures which did not reflect what really mattered most, but after two years then complied.
I was not inclined to introduce significant changes in pedagogy to a school that was both popular and good, though some teachers were inevitably better than others. I wanted to retain a cross-curricular approach and trusted and tried to support teachers, recognising and accepting that they had different strengths. In 1995 or 1996, Robin Alexander challenged those attending a headteachers' conference to define good primary practice, reflecting Simon's (1981) and his own (2004) belief that teachers are extraordinarily reluctant to discuss pedagogy. My (silent) response was that of course I could, given a little time. However, increasingly, pedagogy was affected by external demands, based on raising standards of attainment in Curriculum 1.
The most significant changes came in external accountability, particularly with Ofsted inspections and published reports. As headteachers, we were ill prepared for what inspection involved and the consequences of not meeting what was expected. One nearby school, inspected early in the cycle, was unexpectedly put into special measures. As a result, other headteachers took more notice of how to satisfy the demands of inspection teams, with a strong emphasis on (often hastily prepared) written policies. In 1998, my school was inspected and received a reasonably favourable report. However, I remember feeling very resentful that an inspection team who know little of the complexity of the context could produce so definitive a report based on a three-day visit, on criteria with which I disagreed, when I had worked there for nine years and many colleagues for far longer.
The introduction of Local Management of Schools (LMS) affected me as headteacher considerably. The funding formula continued to reflect historic patterns, where primary schools were funded less generously than early years (rightly so) and secondary and tertiary education (for reasons that are less obvious). The workload implications were considerable, not least because this coincided with the time after the fire. Initially, managing the school's budget was exciting, and much of any 'spare' money was spent on employing more support staff, but the process became far more time-consuming and difficult with increasing pressure on school budgets.
The change of culture that accompanied LMS was evident, even at the time, notably with the money that accompanied a child on the basis of being on the register on one day in January. Early on, I delayed the transfer of a child for a few days to help a neighbouring school that was struggling. Once, on the day itself, I suggested that a child transferring to us should start that same afternoon. Worst of all, I remember doing a quick calculation of the financial benefit over several years if a family of four joined the school, though this had no influence on my decision whether to admit.
Structural changes, such as grant-maintained schools, outside local authority control, as part of a policy based on parental choice, affected primary schools less than secondary schools. Locally schools continued to try and preserve the role of the LEA, which had, in my own situation, been very supportive at the time of the fire and subsequently. However, it soon became clear that the LEA's role was changing, with a reduction in advisory services and advisers moving into a more inspectoral role.
As a headteacher, my energy was for most of two years taken up with the aftermath of the fire, when the emphasis was on rebuilding the school and maintaining staff morale. However, my main focus was always based on meeting the needs, as I perceived them, of a varied, ethnically diverse, school community. For instance, this led to the introduction of halal meals, which proved largely uncontroversial. However, when single-sex swimming was introduced to accommodate the wish of Muslim parents, this proved much more so. While national policies were important, local issues remained my main concern, except when inspection was imminent.
The 1990s were a time of frequent, and often exciting, exhausting and unwelcome, change – in the curriculum, in funding, in accountability – all of which had implications in terms of relationships, identity and beliefs. While I tried to remain true to my philosophy, this became increasingly difficult as external demands became more insistent in an age of greater regulation.
## From 1998 to 2015
In 1998, I left headship to undertake a masters' degree and then a doctorate, looking at how teachers of young children understand spiritual development. Since 2003, I have worked independently, researching, writing and working with teachers and teacher educators, mostly in areas associated with spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and primary teachers' pedagogy and expertise. I continued to teach young children until about two years ago. The third period of my career has spanned the 13 years of Labour governments and the five years of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition, in various roles, mostly outside schools.
The most obvious change in relation to the curriculum and pedagogy has been the level of government involvement, with the explicit rationale (see Barber, 2005) that primary teachers needed to be told how to teach, as a route towards 'informed professionalism'. The National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies were introduced in 1998 and 1999, respectively, prescribing not only content but how it should be taught. For instance, the Literacy Hour was based on a model of instruction, with each lesson divided into discrete sections, with teachers expected to plan and follow a largely pre-planned script. A subtle but important change of emphasis occurred from 'pupils should . . .' in the 1988 National Curriculum to 'teachers should . . .' in the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. The Strategies were amalgamated in 2003 into the Primary National Strategy. While adopting the Strategies was not compulsory, only a brave minority of schools did not adopt them.
These initiatives were followed by Excellence and Enjoyment (DfES, 2003) and Every Child Matters (TSO, 2003), which led to the Children Act of 2004. The former called for learning to be more enjoyable, arguing that a dichotomy between that and standards of attainment is false. While this may, in principle, be true, the remorseless pressure for results meant that this was greeted with scepticism. The emphasis on the whole child and interagency collaboration in Every Child Matters was widely welcomed. The 2006 Rose Review on reading signalled the start of a greater emphasis on phonics. The number of new initiatives – and this list is far from complete – was considerable, leading to initiative fatigue.
The Coalition government has given mixed messages, continuing to intervene and exercise control, while saying that headteachers and teachers should have greater autonomy. So, for instance, the prescriptive nature of the 2013 National Curriculum in English and mathematics and the introduction of the phonics test for six-year-olds indicate how reluctant politicians are to trust professional judgement, especially in the primary sector. Teachers are required to use one particular method (systematic, synthetic phonics) of teaching reading and are increasingly exhorted to adopt methods from countries in East Asia to teach mathematics. Academies and free schools, outside local authority control, are not required to teach the National Curriculum, on the basis that this will encourage innovation. However, if so, it seems incomprehensible why this should not apply in all schools.
Since 1997, primary education has been increasingly driven by the demand to raise children's scores in English and mathematics, resulting, to some extent, from the international comparisons in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). The result is a focus on what Ball (2003) calls 'performativity' and is linked to accountability mechanisms where Ofsted judgements are heavily influenced by the data. Assessment of pupils has become very 'high-stakes' and when talking to headteachers and teachers the discourse is often dominated by what Ofsted have said, or will say next time they visit.
The years from 1997 to 2010 saw much more money allocated to young children's education. This was particularly evident in relation to the early years, less so for primary schools, though they are significantly better funded than before 1988. Teachers were entitled to 10 per cent of their time for planning, preparation and assessment and became used to having a second adult to provide additional support. A huge investment in computers was often wasted because teachers were unsure how best to use them to enhance learning.
My interest in recent years has been in trying to answer the question of what really constitutes good primary practice, based on research about how young children learn. In Eaude (2011, 2012), I discuss issues related to pedagogy and expertise, indicating that teaching a class of young children is much more complex than any assessment of one lesson, however 'outstanding', can capture and requires highly qualified teachers and sustained professional development.
The last 17 years have seen government, of whichever party, increasingly legislating and trying to micro-manage, not only the detail of the curriculum, but how it is taught, based on techniques, programmes and 'what works'. Yet ideas such as effectiveness and 'what works' only make sense in relation to aims and depend heavily on context. What works in one respect may have damaging consequences in another, for instance where an emphasis on decoding words may improve test scores but militate against reading for pleasure. Any suggested alternative to a remorseless emphasis on raising scores in literacy and numeracy is treated with scorn and the indication that this implies low teacher expectations. This was epitomised by the immediate dismissal by the government of the Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander, 2010) when it was published in 2009.
The language has increasingly been one of military metaphors and education as a commodity; of standards, targets and delivery, reflecting a greater emphasis on teaching than on learning, and on children as vessels to be filled rather than eager learners to be encouraged. Teachers have been subjected to greater regulation and surveillance through a prescriptive National Curriculum and data on attainment being made public. Accompanying this has been an emphasis on performativity and what the Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander, 2010) calls a culture of compliance – 'just tell us what to do and we'll do it'. Fear permeates the system.
## Looking back
Reflecting on four decades of change risks the dangers of nostalgia for a golden age that never existed and of over-generalising, when the extent and impact of change, inevitably, vary between contexts. My experience is far from typical but illustrates some wider trends.
Much has not changed a great deal. Children of primary age are taught for most of the week by one teacher in a class of about 30, though there is more adult support. Most children behave well most of the time and spend a large part of the week reading, writing and doing mathematics, though the emphasis on these is now much greater. Teachers continue to try and meet the broad range of children's needs, taking account of policy, though they are much more driven by external expectations.
There have been improvements. The National Curriculum has helped to provide a level of entitlement and been welcomed by most teachers and parents/carers. Mathematics – or at least numeracy – is certainly taught better, and children with disabilities, bilingual children and looked-after children are, mostly, catered for much better, largely as a consequence of the move towards entitlement and inclusion. There is little doubt that primary teachers plan more carefully – they certainly spend much longer doing so – and collaborative planning is more common.
Much has, in my view, got worse. The focus on performativity reflects, and leads to, an over-emphasis on measurable results and content knowledge. Paradoxically, the scope of the curriculum has shrunk while its size has increased. Particularly damaging for young children has been the loss of breadth and balance, with reduced time and importance for the humanities and the arts. One may question whether such a curriculum is genuinely inclusive if many children are not engaged with what interests them. This is exacerbated by the tendency towards adopting instructional and transmissive teaching methods at an increasingly early age, to try and cover curriculum content within a set time and achieve short-term results. For many children, notably those with special educational needs and/or not attaining well, the curriculum is fragmented, with a plethora of interventions designed to 'drive up' standards. Planning is often inflexible, focused on literacy and numeracy and dominated by content, based on 'scripted instruction', leaving little space for 'disciplined improvisation', to use Sawyer's (2004) terms. The rhetoric of setting teachers free remains hollow if assessment and accountability mechanisms are so high-stakes that these determine what happens in the classroom.
For me, teaching a class of young children has always been hard work, but also enjoyable – at least most of the time. However, there is far less enjoyment, for teachers and children, with more pressure for results. The last four decades have seen a move from permissive individualism to regulated surveillance, affecting everyone from teachers to headteachers to local authorities. This is evident in the tendency of many headteachers and teachers to try and guess what will help them most in the next inspection, rather than basing their decisions on evidence or professional judgement.
The last 25 years have seen continual political interference and attempts to micro-manage, resulting from a short-term desire to achieve measurable results. Policy is based on, at best, a sketchy and partial view of evidence from research, and frequently on the political complexion of the government, or even the whim of a minister. The result has often been selective policy borrowing, despite the well-attested difficulty, and potential danger, of doing so (see Phillips and Ochs, 2003), with claims often based on data of questionable reliability and validity.
The culture of primary schools has changed profoundly but gradually, with considerable consequences for teachers as well as children. Ball (2003) argues that what he calls the terror of performativity requires teachers to organise themselves in response to targets, indicators and evaluations and to set aside personal beliefs and commitments. Initiative fatigue and a culture of compliance have altered many teachers' ideas of professionalism, moving broadly from one based on autonomy towards one based on compliance. Nias (1989) argued that the close link between primary teachers' professional and personal identity meant that they were affected particularly strongly when asked to act in ways that conflicted with their beliefs.
Two major difficulties with an approach based on prescription are that:
* the context of the primary classroom is so fluid that teachers require a wide repertoire of pedagogies and the judgement to respond appropriately; and
* prescription inhibits rather than encourages the development of expertise, especially in a context where immediate, measurable results are required.
Whereas the amount of legislation and guidance has massively increased, many structures designed to support schools have fragmented. While LEAs were often frustrating and bureaucratic, their demise has had serious consequences for primary schools, because most are too small to have the necessary specialism and advice. In other professions, from medicine to law, accounting to engineering, there is a long period after qualification akin to an apprenticeship where people are still learning. Yet, in teaching, especially in primary schools, there is too often no expectation of, or coherent structure for, sustained professional learning.
As a teacher and headteacher, I relied mainly on short courses and a very sketchy knowledge of Piaget and Vygotsky. Students – both in initial teacher education and at masters' level – engage with research far more than I did at comparable stages of my career. However, serious engagement with research findings, as opposed to responding to data, is too often absent among those teaching in schools, in part because of the pressure to meet requirements in terms of attainment. The lack of a solid research basis for pedagogy has made the profession vulnerable to political interference, affecting primary schools especially because this opens the door to simplistic, but inappropriate, models of how to teach young children.
The importance of primary education continues to be downplayed, with primary schools' role often seen as mainly to ensure that children are 'secondary-ready'. This reflects a lack of vision among policy makers and politicians of primary education being about much more measurable outcomes in literacy and numeracy and what can be measured. Although primary schools are far better resourced than in the 1980s, funding is still skewed against primary schools. And initiatives such as the Strategies, and suggestions that teachers of young children do not need to be qualified – as with what came to be called 'Mum's army' in the 1990s – reflect an ongoing belief that those who teach young children do not have, or require, a similar level though different type of qualification and expertise as those teaching older ones.
Despite many improvements, the focus on Curriculum 1 and models of teaching that rely heavily on instruction mean that primary education has not escaped the legacy of the elementary school. While education has been a greater political priority, politicians seem not to have learned that top-down imposition has huge limitations. Long-term improvement requires a partnership where politicians establish the framework and trust teachers to teach and not always to be accountable for their every action. The implications are considered in the next section.
## Looking to the future
Much of this chapter may seem very remarkable to those whose experience of primary schools is only in the last 20 years. However, there must be, and is, an alternative to the narrow legacy of elementary education, neither harking back uncritically to the period before 1988 nor falling into the prescription and micro-management since.
There is a growing consensus that major policy decisions must not be dependent on political short-termism. For instance, Bell (2015), previously Her Majesty's Chief Inspector and a senior civil servant, recently argued for 'trusting the frontline' and less political interference. While he was referring to science teachers, this is no less true in primary education. As Fullan (1991, p. 117) claims, 'educational change depends on what teachers do and think. It's as simple and complex as that'. But the policy context within which teachers work affects what, and how, they teach. So, there is a strong argument for a body independent of government to provide an evidence-based and long-term view of the curriculum and assessment.
It is too easy just to blame politicians and policy makers. If the profession is to avoid being open to political interference, teachers, both as a group and individually, must articulate what constitutes good primary teaching, across the curriculum, drawing on both experience and an increasing knowledge of how young children learn and how adults can enable this.
Neuroeducational research provides some promising evidence, though one must be wary of thinking that knowledge of how the brain works is easily translated into practical applications and of neuromyths such as that everyone is either a visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learner. The Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP, 2006) argued for the importance of learning relationships in all phases, and Mercer (2000) and many others have highlighted the centrality of children's talk, emphasising the social and active nature of learning. Both are especially important when working with young children. Gardner (1993) and Dweck (2000) have rightly challenged simplistic notions of intelligence and fixed ability, which underlie much of the current policy. In particular, both teachers and policy makers need to take account of the evidence (see Alexander, 2010, chapter 14) that a broad, balanced and engaging curriculum leads to higher standards of attainment in the long term. The humanities and the arts must not just be an add-on when the serious work of literacy and numeracy allows. A world of constant change requires more emphasis on qualities, attributes and dispositions – in children and teachers – such as resilience, creativity and criticality and on procedural knowledge, if young children are to learn actively through experience (see Eaude, 2011, pp. 62–5) and if schools are to be genuinely inclusive.
Teachers, and children, must recapture a sense of risk, adventure, creativity and enjoyment. Expectations must be broad as well as high. Because context is so important, more flexibility and reliance on teachers' judgement is required, if learning is to be reciprocal. For instance, technology offers many opportunities, but interactive white boards can, paradoxically, lead to a transmissive style of teaching. While subject knowledge is important, the challenge for primary class teachers is to develop pedagogical content knowledge (see Shulman, 2004, p. 203) in many subject areas and a wide repertoire of pedagogies, so that links can be made across subject boundaries. This emphasises the importance of formative assessment and of primary teachers having a deep understanding of child development, and for policy to be focused more on improving teacher quality and expertise. As Hargreaves (2003, pp. 127–9) suggests, this requires a move away from individualism and towards collaboration within professional learning communities.
If such developments are to occur, policy must enable rather than make these difficult. Politicians have to recognise that they can set the framework but not try to micro-manage what happens in classrooms, either by dictat or using indirect levers. Funding is important, but even more so is a culture of less change and interference, with:
* a reduction in the current obsession with grading of schools, teachers and children;
* a revision of accountability mechanisms, to end the culture of compliance and encourage greater trust in teachers' judgement and professionalism;
* a more coherent set of structures to support schools and teachers; and
* a greater emphasis on teacher education as a continuum, with structured opportunities, especially in the years soon after qualification.
These are necessary in all phases. But, to escape the legacy of elementary education, primary education requires a clearer articulation of its aims, recognising that the standards agenda is too limiting and that we must build on improvements made in recent years while not forgetting broader lessons from the past and from research. This will be hard and may take another 40 years. We will need to be optimistic but without being naïve, 'living without illusions without being disillusioned', as Gramsci wrote, if we are to create a system of primary education to meet the broad range of young children's needs, now and for a future of constant change.
## References
Alexander, R. (ed.) (2010). Children, their World, their Education: Final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review. Abingdon, Routledge.
Alexander, R.J. (2004). Still no pedagogy? Principle, pragmatism and compliance in primary education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 34 (1), 7–33.
Ball, S.J. (2003). The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18 (2), 215–28.
Barber, M. (2005). Informed Professionalism: Realising the Potential. Presentation to a conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, London.
Bell, D. (2015). Science education: Trusting the Frontline, via www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR618539.aspx.
Campbell, R.J. and Neill, S.R. StJ. (1994). Primary Teachers At Work. London, Routledge.
DfES (Department for Education and Skills) (2003). Excellence and Enjoyment: A Strategy for Primary Schools. Nottingham, DfES Publications.
Dweck, C.S. (2000). Self Theories: Their role in Motivation, Personality and Development. Philadelphia, Psychology Press.
Eaude, T. (2011). Thinking Through Pedagogy – Primary and Early Years. Exeter, Learning Matters.
Eaude, T. (2012). How Do Expert Primary Classteachers Really Work? A critical guide for teachers, headteachers and teacher educators. Critical Publishing: www.criticalpublishing.com.
Fullan, M. (1991). The New Meaning of Educational Change. London, Cassell.
Gardner, H. (1993). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. London, Fontana.
Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the Knowledge Society: Education in the Age of Insecurity. New York, Teachers College Press.
Mercer, N. (2000). Words and Minds – How We Use Words to Think Together. London, Routledge.
Nias, J. (1989). Primary Teachers Talking: A Study of Teaching as Work. London, Routledge.
Phillips, D. and Ochs, K. (2003). Processes of Policy Borrowing in Education: Some explanatory and analytical devices. Comparative Education, 39 (4), 451–61.
Plowden Report (1967). Children and their Primary Schools – A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England). London, HMSO.
Sawyer, R.K. (2004). Creative Teaching: Collaborative discussion as disciplined improvisation. Educational Researcher, 33 (2), 12–20.
Shulman, L.S. (2004). The Wisdom of Practice – Essays on Teaching, Learning and Learning to Teach. San Francisco, Jossey Bass.
Simon, B. (1981). Why no pedagogy in England? pp. 124–45 of Simon, B. and Taylor, W. (eds) Education in the Eighties: The central issues. London, Batsford.
Swann Report (1985). Education for All – Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups. London, HMSO.
The Stationery Office (TSO) (2003). Every Child Matters. London, TSO.
TLRP (Teaching and Learning Research Programme) (2006). Improving Teaching and Learning in Schools. London, TLRP (see www.tlrp.org).
# [5
Secondary Education 1976–2015](content.xhtml#bck_Ch05)
A shire county view
Martin Roberts
## 1976–1988 Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire: powerful LEAs, new comprehensives, curriculum freedom
### Sandy Upper School to 1980
LEAs responded to Tony Crosland's 10/65 circular at different speeds. Bedfordshire, then Conservative controlled, did not rush to reorganise. Rather it carefully husbanded its resources and introduced a three-tier system that made best use of its existing schools in a predominantly rural county. Where there were gaps in the secondary provision it built new 13–18 upper schools. One of these new schools was in Sandy on the A1. When I was appointed in 1974 as Deputy Head I was one of 11 teachers responsible for creating a new 13–18 Upper School and Community College. We started with 130 Year 9 pupils in temporary accommodation in the grounds of the old secondary modern. By 1980 we had grown to 1300 pupils and 75 staff in buildings, that had risen around us.
It was a marvellous job. My own background was highly selective – independent schools and Oxford with my first post teaching history at Leeds Grammar School – but I had become convinced, like so many of my generation, that social justice demanded the end of selective schooling. Within the framework provided by the LEA, which in the case of Bedfordshire was relaxed, we could create the kind of school we believed in.
What was that? Such a school would enable its pupils to get the best possible jobs, lead fulfilling lives and become good citizens. A new comprehensive school would do all those things better than the old selective system. In particular it would raise the aspirations of all its pupils. What did we need to be successful? A good headteacher: that we had in John Francombe, intelligent, essentially traditional in much of his thinking, strict and fair. A good staff: getting a new school started enabled us to attract some able teachers. Good discipline: strong heads of year created an effective pastoral system alongside a strict code of behaviour held in place by detentions and sometimes the cane (corporal punishment was not abolished in English state schools until 1987). A general ethos that pupils and their parents appreciated: we had replaced a small secondary modern and with our new buildings, which were open to the community in the evenings, we had no difficulty winning local support.
An appropriate curriculum: Sally Tomlinson, in her Education in a Post-Welfare Society (2001) describes how the new comprehensive schools approached the construction of their curricula. Some tried to maintain the old grammar school academic offer for their more able pupils and a more vocationally directed 'secondary modern' provision for the rest. Though at Sandy Upper we were building on a secondary modern base, we constructed a common curriculum for all in the Third Form (Year 9), which was based on a range of subjects, some academic, such as French, and some more practical, such as woodwork. In Years 10 and 11 we had a core of English including literature, maths and science plus options examined either through GCE O Levels or CSEs. Initially our only clearly vocational courses were RSA Secretarial Studies and CGLI courses run by our Technical Department.
We appointed heads of department on a subject basis and then allowed them considerable freedom. For support, they could look to the local LEA. For example, we found the history adviser Cynthia Cooksey excellent. She was an enthusiast for the Schools Council History Project as were we. Staff could look to other professional support through subject associations such as the ASE for science and NATE for English.
As for accountability, we measured our performance primarily through our GCE and CSE results. John used to have an annual meeting with Heads of Department. In an era before appraisal and performance management we aimed to have a professional ethos where all staff would do their best and expect to be chased by the senior team if they did not. HMI came the term after I left and gave the school's performance a thorough, supportive analysis, confidential to the staff and governors.
Central government did not impinge upon us except through two major committees of enquiry – Bullock on Language for Life and Warnock on Special Needs. Curriculum advice came from the Schools Council.
### The Cherwell School, Oxford 1981–1988
#### The downs and ups of being an LEA school
When I told Ernest Sabben-Clare, the kindly headmaster of Leeds Grammar School (then quasi-independent with 'direct grant' status), that I intended to join the state sector, he tried to change my mind. LEA bureaucracies, he told me, suffocate good teachers. I remembered his advice in my first years in Oxfordshire as I negotiated over the telephone about staffing levels, getting leaky roofs repaired, securing new buildings and defending our exceptional if maverick RE teacher from the RE adviser who wanted to be sure that he was following the Agreed Syllabus. My first success as a new head was to get my district officer to agree to increase the school's staffing allowance for 1981–1982 from 36.2 to 36.4!
The situation in the City of Oxford in 1981 was significantly different to that of rural Bedfordshire. Oxfordshire had reorganised piecemeal in the sixties and seventies and its Conservative-controlled council had botched the reorganisation of the city by creating, on the cheap, a three-tier system with seven small to medium-sized upper schools. This was at a time when school rolls were beginning to fall and for these upper schools to be able to run viable sixth forms, their number needed to reduce by at least two or possibly three. The LEA began a consultation about which schools were to close that was to run indecisively for the next two decades, creating harmful uncertainty for its schools during that period.
Against such a background, my priority had to be increasing our pupil numbers and strengthening the sixth form. Unlike rural Bedfordshire, in Oxford parental choice was already a reality. Cherwell, with 633 pupils, was an ex-secondary modern, in inadequate buildings with a poor local reputation. It sits in the heart of North Oxford, a suburb of the city that has the highest concentration of graduates of anywhere in England, with possibly the exception of Hampstead, and in easy reach of numerous independent schools. (It also contained two among the most deprived wards in Oxfordshire.) We needed urgently to win the confidence of this well-educated and generally prosperous neighbourhood. That determined our curriculum offer: broad and balanced, including strong art, drama and music. Once results were on an upward trend and discipline secure, our roll increased steadily, which led to more frustrating discussions with the LEA. Its statistics department continued to forecast incorrectly that our roll would fall, and so our only additional accommodation came in the form of temporary classrooms. By 1990, we had 1,000 pupils, with a sixth form of 250. A third of our accommodation was in huts. I used to teach Y9 history in one of them in a gloomy corner of the site. It was too cold in winter, too hot in summer and showed wear and tear only too quickly.
To be fair to the LEA, financial restraints in the 1980s and 1990s gave it little room to manoeuvre. After a high point in 1975, education's share of government spending fell back, only rising again under New Labour. It needed a clever deal, initiated by an architect governor, involving the sale of some surplus land for undergraduate accommodation, which enabled a substantial building programme to proceed in the early 1990s.
There were, though, many compensations working for Oxfordshire. The CEO was Tim Brighouse, at an early stage in his remarkable career (see Chapter 12). He was brilliant at strengthening an esprit de corps among Oxfordshire schools. The Oxfordshire Secondary School Head Teachers Association (OSSHTA) flourished and decamped annually to Bournemouth to confer with Tim and his LEA team. Brimming with ideas, he got most of us to sign up to a joint scheme with Leicestershire, the Oxford Certificate of Educational Achievement (OCEA). Tim realised that academic attainment was just a part of the achievements of young people and that, if an accredited recording of personal achievements could be made, such a record would both motivate less academic pupils and encourage schools to value highly extra-curricular activities. An innovator himself, Tim encouraged us to innovate.
The LEA also had a sensible self-evaluation process that encouraged staff and governors to evaluate their own performance and then discuss the evaluation with their local councillors. With my lively governors I found this a stimulating activity.
Nationally, the takeover of education by the Thatcher government was beginning. In 1982 Sir Keith Joseph had funded and supervised, not by the DES but by the newly created Manpower Services Commission (MSC), projects that would improve areas where the government considered the existing system defective. One of these was TVEI, the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative, in which LEAs competed to win MSC money. Tim Brighouse identified Oxford City as the local area most likely to benefit from TVEI. Our 1984 bid succeeded. Led by LEA officers and involving the College of Further Education and local businesses we made considerable progress collaborating to devise new vocational courses accessible to 14-year-olds in the city. In 1986, Tim engineered a year's secondment for me to plan the 16–18 phase of TVEI which I finished in 1987. Nothing came of it. In Westminster the DES and MSC had been battling for the control of education. The DES won and in 1988 proceeded with the introduction of the National Curriculum, fatally undermining TVEI nationally. So a turf war between politicians and civil servants destroyed an important and timely vocational project.
The worst year of my headship was 1985–1986 when the teachers' strikes were at their height. The claim for better pay was in many ways justified, but the tactics of the teacher associations were uncoordinated and counterproductive. The government was in no mood to negotiate, and media and public opinion grew more hostile the longer strike action lasted. I had to deal with three associations following different kinds of action while minimising the harm to the pupils. Each day I had to decide how many classes could take place, how could adequate supervision be organised at break and lunchtime and how to keep hard-pressed parents informed about what was going on. The harm done was great and lasting. Many teachers who had worked to rule during the strikes refused to resume the extra-curricular activities that formerly they had led. For example, Drama at Cherwell, which had previously been brilliant, was not to recover for a decade. By the Teachers Pay and Conditions Act of 1987, Kenneth Baker, who had succeeded Sir Keith Joseph as Secretary of State, abolished the previous pay negotiating procedures and put in their place an advisory Pay Review Board. Teachers now had to work 1,265 hours per year at the direction of the headteacher, a ruling that led to endless discussions about what should be within 'directed time'. These strikes greatly weakened the teacher associations and strengthened the government's conviction that teachers needed policing.
## Revolution, the Education Reform Act (ERA) of 1988 and its aftermath: powerful central government, weakened LEAs, more autonomy for schools
Then in 1988 came the Education Reform Act. Insofar as it affected secondary schools like Cherwell, its main elements were the National Curriculum, open enrolment giving greater parental choice of school, the opportunity to create schools independent of the LEA (Grant Maintained schools) and Local Management of School (LMS), which required LEAs to delegate a substantial part of their education funds to schools on a per capita basis, giving heads, with their governors, new powers to manage the school's budget.
### Seen as a headteacher 1988–2002
Though I had a keen interest in politics and education policy in particular, I somehow missed the changing mood in Westminster. I had read the Black Papers and the headlines about William Tyndale but thought them right-wing sensationalism. I do not remember the Ruskin speech, or being upset by the abolition of the Schools Council, or realising the political novelty of TVEI. Substantial extra funding was then more than acceptable, whatever the source. So when the outlines of ERA appeared in the Conservative manifesto for the 1987 election, which Mrs Thatcher won with an increased majority, I was amazed how radical it was. It transformed my role as a headteacher. By and large I had gained promotion because of my interest in creating effective curricula. ERA took that curriculum responsibility away and instead made budget management and marketing the school my prime responsibility. The shift of funding through LMS inevitably altered the relationship between schools and the LEA, substantially weakening the latter.
In theory, I supported a National Curriculum, but, because it was implemented top-down and driven by distrust of teachers, its introduction was needlessly controversial and chaotic. The content of three 'core' subjects and seven 'foundation' subjects had to be defined as did ten levels of performance. Ring-binders of 'interim' then 'final' reports of the subject working groups piled up on my desk. Secretaries of State came and went in quick succession – Baker, Macgregor, Clarke, Patten. In 1993, teachers boycotted the new Key Stage 3 tests. The original NC plan was too detailed and had to be slimmed down considerably. During these years of chaotic change I had to keep bewildered and often angry staff teaching their existing courses well. Then once decisions were made centrally about the new courses and the timetable for their introduction I had to ensure that they were introduced smoothly.
## History in the National Curriculum: a case study
Of the NC subjects, history caused the most controversy in which I became involved, as in 1988 I was Chair of the Secondary Committee of the Historical Association (HA). The right wing of the Conservative Party disliked much of the history being taught in schools. It particularly disliked the influential Schools Council History Project (SCHP), which built its course on the methodology of history including empathy (the skill of getting inside the culture and minds of people in a particular period). The Conservative Right thought SCHP too short on facts, especially on British history, and too long on skills, particularly empathy. Backed by much of the national press it declared war on trendy history teachers who spent too much time on soft skills and not enough on the great achievements of Britons over the centuries. English teachers faced a similar challenge from the Conservative Right, who wanted the canon of great English literature to be the essence of the NC English.
A dilemma we faced at the HA was that, unlike any European country other than Albania, history in England was not compulsory to 16. We regarded the subject as central to any serious understanding of the world in which young people were growing up and had as our priority safeguarding its new foundation subject status. Professor Ralph Davis, President of the HA, and I co-authored a draft core curriculum that included 50 per cent British history, which might prove helpful to those empowered to create NC history. We had underestimated how strongly many of our colleagues felt about any prescription in general and prescription by a Tory government in particular and met considerable criticism. Baker then set up a Working Group, chaired by a member of the landed gentry, Commander Saunders-Watson. In the circumstances it did a brilliant job, managing to combine enough British history with enough of the elements of the SCHP. Mrs Thatcher hated it, but after considerable debate, including in the media, it was finally agreed. Professor Davis and I then did our best to rally history teachers behind the Working Group. However, our efforts were in vain. Sir Ron Dearing, called in to sort out the emerging unworkability of the original overcrowded Baker National Curriculum, decided that history, geography, art and music should become optional at 14. Another Working Group had to rewrite the original 11–16 versions to fit the 11–14 age range.
This episode demonstrated a number of things – the lack of a coherent philosophy underpinning the National Curriculum; the dangers of partisan politicians interfering with curricular details; the malfunctioning of the Department for Education; the low esteem in which teachers were held by the Conservative administration; the role of the press unhelpfully simplifying and sensationalising complex issues, for example the teaching of varying historical interpretations; and the time, energy and money wasted by political in-fighting.
It was all to happen again 25 years later when the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, an enthusiastic amateur historian (he was an English graduate), decided to write the review of National Curriculum history in 2013. It was so idiosyncratic and unworkable that some of us thought that he and friends had put it together one evening aided by an excellent bottle of whisky. Along with 20 others I was summoned to Westminster to a meeting chaired by Gove himself and asked to come up with something workable. This a number of us did. Our version seemed acceptable to history teachers who had been outraged by the original Goveian version. Our revision was not that different to the one Professor Davis and I drafted in 1988.
### Parental choice, GM schools and LMS
Parental choice was already active in Oxford, but the open enrolment clauses in ERA intensified it. By 1988 Cherwell was already over-subscribed, but that over-subscription increased. The correlation between a school's popularity and the desirability of its location became evermore obvious.
No secondary schools in Oxfordshire went GM. I think that this was largely due to the Brighouse factor, though Tim had left by then and was on his way to Birmingham. There was a sense of loyalty to Oxfordshire and the belief that local democracy was worth preserving.
I found LMS liberating if initially terrifying, the financial responsibility of the governors and myself now being measured in millions of pounds rather than thousands. The ability to appoint additional staff when needed was the crucial benefit plus being able to redecorate and make minor improvements to the premises. Once we had LMS I could see no reason to leave the LEA.
### Tests, targets and league tables
By 1993, when the tumult of ERA had subsided, I had been in post for 12 years. Parents seemed happy with the way the school had progressed, and I was disinclined to allow national politicians to blow us off course. Our governors agreed. They were broadly left of centre – my Chair of Governors was a former educational journalist. We came to live with the publication of each year's exam results, which the local press immediately turned into league tables. Of 36 Oxfordshire schools we were usually sixth or seventh at GCSE and first or second at A Level. As long as we stayed close to these positions I avoided pressurising the staff to give greater emphasis to improving examination performance per se rather than teach in a stimulating way. Concentrating on exam grades at all costs leads to a Gradgrind, deadening, essentially anti-educational culture. I had the same attitude to externally set targets. On the whole we were slowly improving on most measures, as a consequence of internal policies that were shared by governors and most staff. When appraisal and performance management became a national requirement, I worked with staff to find a 'modus operandi' with which they were comfortable. Nowadays, Ofsted would doubtless class me as complacent and insufficiently directive.
### Specialist schools
One effect of the government's many interventions in the curriculum and the assessment was to dissuade schools from innovating themselves but to get involved in government projects that had funds attached. Of the many initiatives pouring out of Whitehall the major one we took on was to become a specialist school, not because we saw any merit in the specialism concept, but funding continued so tight in the 1990s we needed the linked funds. We opted for the science specialism since it would mean the minimum alteration to our curriculum. In due course we succeeded. It was during the application that I became aware of the 'gaming' schools, which were now having to play to hit the targets set out in their application. We had an external consultant advising us. I commented that the GCSE improvement targets looked demanding. He advised me not to worry but to change from our traditional courses to the new Applied GCSEs, which were easier. When I indicated that such a change would not be in our pupils' interest, 'then you will have problems' was the gist of his comment. With the proliferation of new GCSEs and vocational courses, 'equivalences' between courses became a live issue about which Whitehall found consistency difficult. As for the specialist initiative, the Coalition government killed it in 2010. As an approach to secondary education it had won only a few adherents among teachers and parents.
### Ofsted
As with the National Curriculum, I thought that the introduction of a reformed national inspection system was desirable. Taxpayers paid for state schools, which should therefore be accountable. I assumed that the previous HMI system, which took schools as it found them and was respected for its thoroughness and quality of its advice but did not inspect frequently enough, would be streamlined but visit schools more often. What emerged was very different, driven by the Conservative belief that teachers needed policing. Schools would be inspected every four years by teams of private inspectors supervised by reformed HMIs. Ofsted's Chief Inspector became a major public figure. Two, notably Chris Woodhead and Michael Wilshaw, gained reputations as scourges of weak teachers and schools. Cherwell experienced two inspections before I retired in 2002. The first in 1993 to my surprise was a team from the LEA led by an adviser I knew well. It was a tame affair but not unhelpful. The second, which came in 1999, was very different. In the intervening years Ofsted had become more number-crunching and the 1999 team arrived with some inaccurate data that indicated that the school was going rapidly downhill. Its information omitted the existence of two units in the school, one for autistic pupils and another for the visually impaired. We had not helped our cause by ignoring the NC regulation to make technology and MFL compulsory to 16. I failed to achieve any rapport with a humourless Lead Inspector and was only able to turn the inspection round by arranging a lunch half-way through the inspection for him and some of my best-informed governors. Eventually we emerged as a good school with some outstanding features, which in the circumstances was a relief. I was angered though, not only by the team coming misinformed, but by how disruptive it was. Staff had put so much into the late January inspection that it was not until March that the school was back to normal.
### New Labour and 'education, education, education'
My immediate reaction to Tony Blair's election in 1997 was that a new era had dawned. Disillusion followed swiftly. What Blair meant by education was an intensely focused enterprise, directed from Whitehall, which would produce pupils trained to enable Britain to compete successfully in the international struggle for economic competitiveness. As Michael Barber reiterated, there needed to be a 'step change' in the culture of most schools. School leaders needed to concentrate 'relentlessly' on school improvement as measured by exam results in order to achieve 'world class' standards. Target-setting and Ofsted were the major agent's to achieve this step change. The DfE and Ofsted number-crunched more remorselessly. Lip service was paid to other vital elements of schooling like creativity and ethics, but they were peripheral since their outcomes were qualitative and immeasurable. The stress on international performance was not new to Labour. When first I became a headteacher, we were found wanting in comparison with Japan, then it was Germany and later, thanks to PISA and TIMMS, with South Korea and Shanghai.
### The reorganisation of the three-tier to a two-tier system in Oxford
My last years were spent working with the LEA to replace the 9–13 Middle Schools. It was a difficult exercise as some of the Middle Schools were much loved, especially the one immediately across the road that Cherwell was to absorb, and only successful because of a determined CEO, Graham Badman. Hardly anyone now doubts that it was a vital step to take in the interests of future generations, but I do wonder now, as all the Oxford secondary schools and some of the primaries are academies, how such a desirable city-wide reorganisation could ever occur.
## Looking from outside 2002–2015
In 2002, I helped establish a new Prince of Wales charity, the Prince's Teaching Institute (PTI), which has given me a new perspective on recent changes in thinking at national level about curriculum design. PTI organises subject-centred Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for state school teachers. It first ran annual residentials for teachers of English literature and history, then, because of teacher demand, added maths, science, geography, art, music and MFL. We now have a project-based scheme known as the Schools Programme, annual headteachers conferences and a programme for beginning teachers, which has expanded over three years from 150 to 700 participants. Nationally, one secondary school in five now takes part in PTI activities. Research indicates that good teachers must be subject experts and subjects must be central to any secondary school curriculum. Consequently, we link our university experts to excellent experienced teachers who lead workshops on key topics. From the start our courses have been designed by teachers for teachers. Happily independent, we concentrate on what constitutes inspiring subject teaching and avoid getting embroiled in immediate concerns like how to do well at Ofsted. Our teachers tell us that we are filling a CPD vacuum, as most other CPD concentrates on generic school improvement, getting better exam grades or preparation for Ofsted.
What kept me involved in PTI activities was a growing realisation that, among university-based educationists and within the DfE of New Labour, subjects were regarded as obsolete. What really mattered were transferable skills like the 'competences' of the RSA Opening Minds project and Information Technology, which should make knowledge acquisition an individual web-based exercise. The teacher should stop being 'the sage on the stage rather the guide on the side'. I have been strongly influenced by Michael Young's Bringing Knowledge Back In (2009), which argues that the central function of all schools is to pass on powerful subject-based knowledge to all pupils. If only elite schools offer well-taught subjects to their pupils, and the less advantaged take the skills and competences route, a new bipartite school system will emerge with the life chances of pupils being directly affected. Powerful subject knowledge for all is essential for social justice.
Obviously, the impressions I have gained from 13 years of PTI conferences are anecdotal, stemming from conversations I have had with hundreds of teachers. The first is that a succession of Westminster initiatives has left teachers reeling. Whatever Michael Gove's virtues, his whirlwind approach to policy making without regard for teacher opinion took ministerial interference in the details of education policy to a new extreme. The second is that Ofsted has for most teachers become an ogre, distorting the activities of too many schools. Many headteachers are obsessed with the extraordinary amount of data now available to them through the statistical tool RAISEonline, which is inevitably quantitative rather than qualitative. Another obsession is how to get into the 'outstanding' category and, once there, stay there. Third an increasing number of teachers are losing confidence in the examination system, especially GCSE. So detailed are the specifications and the mark schemes that desiccated 'teaching to the test' is too often the norm. Warwick Mansell's brilliant Education by Numbers, the Tyranny of Testing (2007) confirms this depressing trend. A fourth is that many schools have allowed the DfE to do their curriculum thinking for them. Perhaps most serious of all, government busyness militates against teachers being able to think about what should be their priorities – for their pupils, the extent to which their school best meets the needs of their communities, and innovation. Fifth and last, for a variety of reasons, headteachers are increasingly reluctant to allow teachers time out of school for any CPD that is not directly linked to gaining better exam grades or impressing Ofsted.
As a way out of the present turmoil, the idea of a Royal College of Teaching has emerged from PTI discussions. Over the last two years, Chris Pope, Co-Director of PTI, has worked hard and skilfully to persuade the major teacher organisations that such a college, the immediate responsibilities of which should be CPD and ITT, is well worth considering seriously.
## Reflections
Great improvements have occurred in these four decades. One of the most important has been the integration of young people with special needs, their greater opportunities and the greater tolerance of other pupils. The advances made by women both at school and as teachers have been remarkable. At Cherwell, only physics and technology remained male-dominated by the time I retired. In 1981 there were only a handful of female headteachers in Oxfordshire, mainly heads of girls' only schools. Now there are more women heads than men. The quality of classroom management in most schools is much better, partly because of changes in ITT but also the greater direct monitoring of individual teachers by Senior Leadership Teams. There has also been a considerable increase in the number of pupils going on to university and FE.
These changes, however, have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The revolution that is the subject of this book has been in the comparatively sudden takeover by central government of control of educational policy making between 1988 and 1993 and its ramifications.
There have been benefits. We needed a national curriculum and now have one, though why it is not required of all the schools in the land is a mystery to me. We needed a national system of inspection. We now have one of the strictest in Europe that, whatever its faults, provides parents with useful comparative information about all the state schools in their locality. We have fewer failing schools. Exam results have generally improved, but to what extent is a matter of fierce debate. Education is a political priority and the Secretary of State for Education a senior figure in the Cabinet. Coverage of education in the media is much more extensive. Consequently, more parents and their pupils know that education matters. Teachers' pay and working environments are better.
Harm, however, has been done. Politicians have proved both partisan and inconsistent. Inconsistency is demoralising to teachers and a waste of money. I could cover pages with examples of initiatives that have come and gone since 1988. Here are some of the most grievous. In 1988 Professor Higgenson reported on A Levels. He had achieved a professional consensus that the country needed more and leaner A Levels. Mrs Thatcher vetoed it. For her the existing A Levels were 'the gold standard' of the English system. In 2004 Mike Tomlinson, again with the backing of key professionals, recommended a radical reform of 14–19 with an overarching diploma that would cover both academic and vocational subjects. Tony Blair, anxious about a potentially hostile national media, would have none of it. We have seen how TVEI came and went and how specialist schools lasted little more than a decade. Twenty years later came the Advanced Diplomas, which Ken Boston, head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) described as the most important educational reform in Western Europe since 1945. The planners were over-ambitious and out of touch with school and college realities. The initiative was already in trouble by 2008 and cancelled by the Coalition government in 2010. 'Connexions', launched with a fanfare in 2000, was intended to transform the careers advice for young people. It was flawed from the start as its designers were never clear whether it should be a universal or targeted service. I represented the Oxfordshire headteachers at fruitless meetings when Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes attempted to get the new service going. Again, over the years, the initiative withered. The Learning and Skills Council was set up in 2001 to give the existing 16-plus system a good shake-up. New headquarters were found in Coventry. Nine years later it was disbanded.
The big issue is teacher autonomy. My main responsibility as a headteacher was to recruit the best quality teachers I could find and then give them considerable freedom. I only interfered when I thought things were going wrong. The more professional freedom teachers have, both in relation to their pupils and assisting in the direction their school is travelling, more often than not their pupils will benefit. But what limits should governments place on that freedom? In 1976 these limits were too weak. In 2015, because of the revolution in government controls described above, they are too strong, suffocating inspiration, initiative and innovation.
Since 1988, the politicians have distrusted teachers. So many mistakes could have been avoided if politicians and teachers could have achieved a workable partnership. However, neo-liberals advising Mrs Thatcher maintained that the professions were a self-serving cartel that prevented the market bringing progress. Tony Blair remained suspicious, if in a more pragmatic way. Most politicians thought that they knew enough about education from their own and their families' experience that they would be intelligent policy makers. The increasing interaction of Westminster politics and the 24/7 media (see Chapter 15) encouraged them, thinking frequently about the next election, to dream up some headline-grabbing initiative, the serious sustained viability of which was not an immediate consideration. By being told what to do for nearly two decades, teachers have been de-professionalised. They have not, however, helped their own cause. For decades four teacher unions and two separate headteacher associations have competed for membership, and their apparent readiness to prioritise their members' pay and conditions over pupil welfare has contributed to politicians' distrust.
### What then is to be done?
Politicians must step back and trust teachers more.
Responsibility for curriculum and assessment should pass to a genuinely independent body in which the government should have representation and which should regularly review the NC and public examinations every ten years or so. Such a body should encourage innovation.
Ofsted should cease inspecting most schools. Rather it should concentrate on those schools clearly struggling. Other schools should self-evaluate regularly using their own criteria. Ofsted should monitor those self-evaluations.
A Royal College of Teaching should take responsibility for teaching standards and the development of both CPD and ITT. Once it has established its credibility it should also take national responsibility for monitoring performance management in schools.
The really difficult issue is how to revive local democratic involvement in education. The sustained attack by both the Conservative and Labour parties has virtually destroyed LEAs. Appointed regional commissars are no answer. With the present interest in 'localism' and the delegation of Westminster powers to cities or regions, a Committee of Enquiry should consider how to create new forms of local government of education.
## References
Mansell, W., 2007, Education by Numbers, London: Politico's.
Tomlinson, S., 2001, Education in a post-welfare society, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Young, M.F.D., 2009, Bringing Knowledge Back In, London: Routledge.
## Further reading
I found these books particularly helpful in writing this chapter and when reflecting more widely on contemporary issues in education:
Ken Jones: Education in Britain, Polity (2003)
Arthur Marwick: British Society since 1945, Penguin (2003)
Robert Phillips: History Teaching, Nationhood and the State, Cassell (1998)
Alison Wolf: Does Education Matter, Penguin (2002)
# [6
A View from the Island](content.xhtml#bck_Ch06)
A very personal story
Kenny Frederick
## Preparing for headship
I could never be described as a careerist as I spent the first 16 years of my working life working in two schools. I can't help but get emotionally attached to a school and have never been good at flitting from school to school. Even after 16 years I was not particularly ambitious and was enjoying my role as Head of House in a school in Haringey. However, I decided to apply for deputy headship after being told by a senior manager, during a heated argument, that I would never be a senior leader because I was too emotional. This gave me the impetus to move on. Subsequently I moved to become Deputy Head in a girl's school in Hackney in January 1990. A major part of my role was working with the business community and the work-related curriculum. One of the important initiatives at the time was Compact, which was a partnership between business and schools, and a lot of work was done to make sure students were ready for the world of work. Another responsibility was preparing the school for Investors in People (IIP) accreditation, which helped me to learn more about leading and managing people, who are our greatest resource. When I did move on to headship, I used the IIP framework to help me plan my strategy for making the most of our human resources.
About two years into my role as Deputy Head, I realised that I needed to keep my options open and, therefore, needed to learn more about leading schools. Despite my earlier reticence, I acknowledged that I did want to become a headteacher at some point in the future. Working alongside a headteacher who could be (putting it mildly) described as 'autocratic' helped me to make up my mind. I completed my Masters degree at East London University (part-time over two years) in Educational Leadership, where I discovered Tim Brighouse and lots of other education academics, who helped me develop my own vision for a school I would lead (see Chapter 12). Tim's writing was practical and real, and his appreciation for the people he worked with shone through. In addition, I also did a number of leadership courses in preparation for senior leadership, which I funded myself and often completed during the weekends and always in my own time.
I was given little or no encouragement from my headteacher at the time, who started to see me as a bit of a threat and was cross that I had the cheek to think I could put myself on to the same level as she. My life was made even more difficult from that point. After four years in post I decided that I needed to start the application process to get out before I was pushed out! I was successful in securing the headship of George Green's School on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets in April 1996. I was 43 years old with around 22 years' experience in schools. I was delighted but somewhat daunted at the prospect of becoming a headteacher.
Prior to my appointment as Principal of George Green's School I had been seconded to a boys' school in Hammersmith and Fulham for about six months. This was a school in trouble when the new headteacher had arrived and his one deputy had had a heart attack and his partner who was on the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) was also on long-term absence. An imminent Ofsted visit was expected, and most of the teachers were supply staff. This was swift learning ground for me but it meant that I had little time to do my homework in terms of schools I was applying for. If I had done so, I might have decided against applying for George Green's. Looking back now I am thankful I didn't, as ignorance is often a good thing. I had always worked in the inner city and assumed that the Isle of Dogs would be much like Hackney and Haringey. This it most certainly was not! It was unique.
## Tower Hamlets – the Isle of Dogs
What I had not realised upon appointment in 1996 was that the first BNP (British National Party) counsellor to ever be elected in England was in November 1993 on the Isle of Dogs. He only lasted a couple of months before he was ousted and replaced. However, the people who had elected him were still there when I arrived in April 1996. The discontent of the white population was blamed on the housing policy of Tower Hamlets Council who placed a large number of the incoming Bangladeshi population on the Isle of Dogs. This caused resentment locally and resulted in a very divided community. This spilled into the school, where many students and their parents felt it was appropriate to express overt racist comments and attitudes. It was a difficult time and took many years to overcome and to change attitudes. Bringing the community together so that we could get on with the business of teaching and learning in a safe environment took a great deal of resilience on my part and on the part of my staff.
Therefore, the diverse ethnic background to the school was a crucial consideration in the policies that needed to be adopted and that, as the Principal, I pursued. According to the UK government's Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Tower Hamlets in 2006 ranked as the most deprived local authority in the country, with high levels of unemployment, poverty and poor health. Fifty per cent of the residents were from the black and minority ethnic communities (33 per cent Bangladeshi). Almost 100 languages were spoken locally. The school of about 1,200 boys and girls aged 11–19 reflected that ethnic and linguistic mix. About half the pupils were white (British mainly, but also Irish and other), a third Asian (mainly Bangladeshi), around 20 per cent Chinese, Afro-Caribbean, Somali and other African background. About one in sixty pupils arrived at the school with little or no spoken English. Over 50 per cent of the pupils were eligible for free school meals – more than three times the national average (14 per cent) for secondary schools.
Therefore, one of my first jobs as Principal was to work with staff, pupils and parents to develop our Equal Opportunities Policy and our motto 'All different. All equal'. Getting the community to understand that equal opportunities is not about treating everybody the same but is about meeting individual needs. This helped me counteract the accusations that I was treating different children 'differently', for instance by providing EAL pupils with additional help with their English. This policy remained firm and informed every other policy we developed over the year and it eventually became ingrained into the hearts and minds of our pupils. However, this aspect of our work took many years.
## Dealing with the racial tension
The horrors of 9/11 in New York in September 2001 increased racial tensions further, and we had a particularly difficult situation in November 2001 only a few months after the tragic events unfolded. Islamophobia was rife, and The Guardian (20 November 2001) described one of the most difficult situations we went through when a group of parents leafleted the island to gather support on a Sunday evening following a fight at the school gates on the previous Friday afternoon. Waiting for this group to arrive was frightening but we had no option but to let them in and let them vent their anger. I was the focus of this anger but I had no opportunity to speak calmly to them or tell them what the school was doing to resolve the racial tensions. They screamed at me for about 30 minutes and left. The local newspaper described the school to be in a state of anarchy – which it certainly was not. While this was a horrible experience, it only strengthened my resolve to hang on in there and sort it out!
During this time, when racial tensions were at their highest, we were (mostly) able to keep a lid on the situation while pupils were in school, but we began to hate unstructured time and home time. My staff were having to lead different groups of pupils home at the end of the day (to avoid fighting in the street and local park). Having very narrow corridors, one minor scuffle during lesson changeover would polarise the school along racial lines and would spread out into the streets at the end of the day. Needless to say we were doing lots of work in our curriculum to address the issues at the same time. However, it was very exhausting and was not conducive to good learning. At this time one of our Bengali TAs (teaching assistants), who had by his own admission been a local 'youth' in his time, came up with the idea of taking our 'most extreme' pupils to Belfast to see what a divided community looked and felt like. After a short discussion with my senior team we decided to go with the idea. We had to do something and do it quickly!
It was agreed we would take 40 pupils and these should be those with leadership qualities and the capacity to change their views. We spent time on choosing this cohort and were so surprised that so many wanted to go. Most saw it as a free trip abroad and a week out of school! Once the group was chosen we looked at the staff who would accompany them and work with them for the week. Without a doubt I sent my most talented and experienced teachers and support staff who had good relationships with the pupils. It was a huge risk, and I had nightmares worrying about what might happen on the journey or when they were in Ireland.
The TA, whose idea it all was, sorted out the details of the trip, and they went to the 'Share Centre' in Fermanagh where they lived in 'Big Brother' style houses in mixed groups and where they had to cook for each other and get to know each other properly. My expert staff got them to confront their own racism and ingrained prejudices and to understand what had been going on. They also went to see the 'peace wall' and were shocked to see a city divided by a physical wall. However, the greatest change came after our pupils had the opportunity to meet other students, both Catholic and Protestant, and to spend time with them. Our pupils found it hard to understand what the argument was all about – they are all white and all Christian, what are they fighting about? After a number of history lessons and discussions with these youngsters, our pupils were shocked that many of those they met (not all by any means) were happy with the status quo and did not want to change. They liked things as they were.
When our pupils returned to school they formed the 'Unity Cru' and were led by my TA who went on to become a community manager in later years. They worked together as a mixed group of 40 individuals who were able to influence the whole school population. They learned to mediate and negotiate and to make presentations at assembly and elsewhere, but most of all it was the work they did with 'the youngers' in the playground that made the biggest difference in changing the culture of the school. When small incidents were in danger of exploding into bigger ones, the Unity Cru were there to intervene. We took different groups back to Northern Ireland for a number of years to reinforce the work that had been done there and, as the racial tensions ceased and gang warfare (!) blossomed to replace them, we were able to do useful work on restorative justice that helped to diffuse situations on the island.
The trip to Belfast was an extreme and expensive answer to a very difficult problem. It was just one of the many risks I took during my time as Principal. It was a risk well worth taking and taught me that procrastination is no use to anybody. I had to take a decision and take it quickly. I did not have the money to pay for the first visit but we went anyway and I raised the money from sponsorship afterwards. The trip to Belfast was used as a case study and was written about often. There was a lot of interest in our story, which is fine after the event, but not while you are in the middle of it!
## Responding to government initiatives
During my 17 years as Principal, risk taking and change were constant. Much of this change was a result of government initiatives, but many of the changes were of our own making. Some were in response to what was happening to us (see above) and others were about school improvement. Schools, especially those in challenging circumstances like mine, cannot stand still and need to keep moving forward. In fact we often felt like we were frantically treading water, just to keep our heads above it. While this was exhausting it was also very exciting and created a dynamic can-do culture where there was no problem we could not find a solution to. This is the reason why I have always worked in the inner city in schools on the 'edge'. I am naturally positive and optimistic, which certainly helped me to become very resilient and allowed me to cope well with the stress that comes with the job. Furthermore, I surrounded myself with senior staff and teachers who had a similar attitude.
Changes imposed by the Labour government in their 12 years in power (1998–2010) – (see Chapter 1, p. 16) were largely positive and were not 'new' in the sense that we were not being asked to do very different or very difficult things. Many of these policies were designed to help schools share good practice and were an attempt to develop a more coherent approach to school improvement. I made sure I got involved in various advisory and focus groups and encouraged my staff to do the same. This way we felt we could inform policy change and be done 'with' rather than be done 'to'. This was and is an important fact to consider if we want schools and teachers to embrace change. Imposing changes on schools does not work.
The numerous changes to the Ofsted framework took up a lot of time and energy and have, I believe, stopped many schools taking risks and developing a curriculum to suit the needs of their students. The anxiety about the next Ofsted inspection is never far away. This was particularly true when we were judged as NTI (Needs to Improve) category in September 2008 when our results dropped unexpectedly.
When I first took over as Principal, I found myself in a financial deficit situation. I'd had very little experience of dealing with a budget as my previous head had kept that knowledge to herself. Thankfully, I had governors who had a great deal of expertise and experience in managing finances. We went immediately to asking for voluntary redundancies and found that we were able to get rid of the deficit without too much pain. However, funds were short, and I found myself along with a couple of other colleagues teaching RE (without any previous experience or expertise), as we could not afford to employ a new RE teacher.
As a new head, I discovered that the relationship between my predecessor and senior team and the rest of the staff had been a difficult one. The Ofsted inspection in 1993 (one of the first inspections in England) described 'an atmosphere of distrust between senior leadership and staff'. The situation had gotten so difficult the headteacher had refused to write personal references and instead provided a bland document saying exactly what individuals had done, without any comment about the quality of their work. I, of course, had no knowledge of this and I naïvely expected staff to follow my lead and work alongside me. Thankfully they did.
## 1997: changes under Labour
There was much joy when Labour won the general election in 1997 and 'Education, education, education' was the strapline. Funding increased, and there were many new initiatives. Most of my headship (12 years of it) was under a Labour government and I certainly think we benefited from this. Tower Hamlets was and still is one of the poorest boroughs in England, and, therefore, our schools received almost 60 per cent more resource per pupil than the national average, and we had higher levels of resourcing than almost all other London boroughs. This did not always go down well with heads in other boroughs and counties and I can understand their resentment. However, this high level of funding certainly contributed to the success of the borough, making it one of the most successful in the country. It allowed us to increase the number of teachers and support staff and to provide additional resources for our students.
The Excellence in Cities (EIC) initiative was introduced in March 1999 with the aim of raising standards and promoting inclusion in the inner cities (see Chapter 1, p. 15). We were delighted to embrace this initiative, especially as it was so well funded. The requirements of EIC were clear but not prescriptive, and we were able to decide exactly how we would introduce and shape the different strands into our own schools. This was a challenge we welcomed because we felt it would help us to improve the quality of our school. There were four main strands of EIC. These included:
* Learning mentors
* Learning support units (LSUs)
* Provision for gifted and talented pupils
* City Learning Centre and Education Action Zones
We had already started adding to our workforce and led the way as far as workforce reforms went. Most of these new employees were working as Learning Support Assistants (LSAs), back office staff and finally Learning Mentors. Most of these came from the local community, which really helped to bridge the gap between the school and the community. Learning Mentors proved to be valuable in helping us support some of our most vulnerable children of whom we had many.
The development of the new LSU caused much discussion in our school, and many urban myths spread across the staff, students and parents. 'Swimming with dolphins' was quoted many times and the notion that children were being rewarded for being naughty! However, as with most things, we got over that hurdle and the LSU proved to be very successful in supporting some of our most difficult and hard-to-teach students. The Behaviour Improvement strategy arrived around the same time, and I received a call one day from the private office of Stephen Twigg, Minister for Schools (2004–2005), to see if they could visit for the day and see how we managed behaviour! Of course we agreed to this as we felt that civil servants who were developing behaviour policy ought to see what we were dealing with on a daily basis.
The focus on Gifted and Talented pupils made us think more about this group who had probably been neglected up to now. We could not live with the title Gifted and Talented as it was so difficult to come up with a clear definition of what this meant. Therefore, we settled on More Able and Talented and set about developing a support programme to develop and challenge this group. This involved tracking this group carefully, providing enrichment activities and individual mentoring. What it did not involve was a concentration on teaching. When I look back now and still see the same model in many schools I visit, I am sorry that we did not focus more specifically on strategies for raising achievement in the classroom.
Putting together a bid to become a small Education Action Zone (see Chapter 1, p. 15) with our primary feeder schools on the Isle of Dogs under the EIC banner was something that was very worthwhile. We already had strong relationships with our feeder primaries and we supported each other in any way we could. However, the small Action Zone provided the structure and funding to develop a strategic action plan to work together on improving teaching and learning. We had to go through a very vigorous process in putting our bid together, and I remember a rival group of schools (who were bidding against us) being very angry when we were chosen as the successful cluster. However, the Action Zone group are still working together in a coherent way to get to grips with the many changes that they are expected to make.
The EIC programme ran alongside the Leadership Incentive Grant, of which we were quick to take advantage. I noticed an advert asking for schools interested in taking on a Trainee Head for a year as a training opportunity and could not resist the opportunity to have a free member of SLT for a year! We were lucky to have had three trainees over three years who all went on to be headteachers. They brought three different sets of eyes and added much to our school. My senior team was always welcoming and open and we subsequently went on to host many Future Leader participants in the following years. In addition, we opened up our team to a number of Associate Assistant Heads who were middle leaders, and they also brought a great deal of expertise and ideas to the table. My aim has always been to demystify headship and to encourage others to think of themselves as leaders in the future. I had never been encouraged in this way and used to believe that senior leadership was out of my league.
The Labour government introduced Every Child Matters (ECM) in 2004 (see Chapter 1, p. 15), which was in my opinion the most important and relevant development that I can remember. In fact I wrote my MBA thesis on the subject. The notion and reality of different organisations working together to ensure the needs of our children were ground breaking and worked very well for us. In fact it was the way we were already working but in a very informal way, where my staff had persuaded individuals from other child-centred professions to work closely with us. ECM made these partnerships more solid and provided a framework for brokering relationships and partnerships. We became a designated Extended School, which allowed us to provide a range of services for vulnerable children and their families. For instance, it was much easier to get vulnerable families to come to school for their CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) appointment rather than go to the centre that was a bus ride away. We were open from 7.30 a.m. for breakfast (provided by Morgan Stanley) and provided activities and childcare (The Place to Be) until 6 p.m. After that, the school sports facilities were used by the community until 10 p.m. at night. The community team and Sports Trust (a charity set up by governors some years before and run largely by sixth formers and ex-students of George Green's) made sure that local people could hire the facilities at a low cost while the business community paid premium prices. The Sports Trust was, and still is, self-funding and is a very efficient way of organising school lettings. ECM made perfect sense to us. It brought together all strands of the school, and we were horrified when the Coalition government decided to change the name of the DCSF (Department of Children, Schools and Families) to the DfE – families were (it seemed) no longer our problem!
## Youth Services
Later on (2006) we were commissioned to deliver Youth Services on the Isle of Dogs and we readily took on this role, despite the fact that it caused so much additional work. We were keen to take this on because as a school we had spent years bringing the different communities together in school only to find they went off to different parts of the island when they left school. The youth clubs were very segregated, and white and black boys went to one club, while Bengali boys went to another. Girls did not attend any youth clubs because they (and their parents) did not think they were safe. The quality of youth services was very poor and when problems occurred in the streets, as they often did, the clubs chose to close rather than work with young people to sort them out. Staff working in the Youth Service at the time were used to working in a particular way and were not used to being led and managed. This had to change, and the process was difficult. However, the outcomes were hugely successful. Clubs were no longer segregated, girls were now participating, and the number of youngsters attending youth clubs rose dramatically, meaning youths were no longer hanging around the streets causing problems. We developed and delivered a relevant curriculum, staff were well trained and well led, and youth clubs were not closed without due notice. It was another big risk that paid off.
## Vocational courses
Many new vocational courses equivalent to GCSEs started in schools in around 2002 (see Chapter 1, p. 11), but this was something we never went in for. Instead we stuck to the more traditional curriculum, including every child doing a humanities subject and a language. At the time we felt that this was the right thing for our pupils, as it gave them all the opportunity to study a wide range of subjects and would enable them to move on to the pathways they chose in the future.
This was a mistake, as the traditional curriculum did not suit lots of our children, and we should have taken more risks with the curriculum. We saw schools around us embrace GNVQs (which we did not feel were of much value), and their results soared. I believe this lift in attainment gave pupils confidence and self-belief, and these schools then went on to climb up the league tables. It was our mistake not to follow suit. However, in 2008, we did revise the curriculum so that it offered more appropriate pathways for all our young people. This development was too late to save us from plummeting results in 2008, followed by a subsequent Ofsted inspection that took us into a 'requires improvement' category. A lesson learned the hard way!
## Inclusion
At some point in 2002 I was invited to a meeting at the local authority to discuss piloting the Index to Inclusion (produced by Tony Booth and Mel Ainscow). As a school we were already well down this road, as we were working so hard to include all members of our community, including those with special needs. The borough (like many others) was keen for schools to include youngsters with physical disabilities and learning difficulties to attend mainstream schools and we were very happy to be part of that movement. The Index to Inclusion was a very helpful document in helping us to audit our school and to find the gaps in provision. I often recommend it to colleagues today. Although our building was totally unsuitable (on seven floors with one unreliable lift), we were designated as the 'inclusive' school in the borough. We had the will and were able to find the way of including young people with a wide range of children with additional needs. Some years later we were able to convince the DfE to fund adaptations to make movement around the school and for the provision of more disabled toilets and other facilities. We gained a reputation for inclusion and it was a reputation we were very proud of. Though the subsequent Special Needs regulations have been strongly criticised by many, including Baroness Warnock, schools and colleges across the country have developed inclusive policy and practice, while many others, who are often those lauded as examples to us all, have rejected inclusion and those children who will use lots of resources and who may not achieve the benchmark re GCSE results. Admission policies need to be more rigorously applied so that those who want to attend a mainstream school have that opportunity. However, the new SEN Code of Practice (see Chapter 1, p. 15) and new funding arrangements are making it more difficult for schools to be fully inclusive.
## Concluding comments
The change of government in 2010 was not a happy time for those of us in education. Policies introduced under the Coalition were more difficult to manage and caused great anxiety. They were seen to be punitive and targeted at schools with challenging intakes and fighting against the odds. My teachers were constantly re-writing schemes of learning and finding new ways to implement new initiatives and changes to exam syllabi. Change was imposed and not based on evidence that it (whatever it was) worked. The worst part was not being consulted or involved. The feeling that we were being 'done to' caused a great deal of resentment. Keeping staff morale high and keeping them positive was a great challenge but was one we managed most of the time. Teachers were blamed for all the ills of society and were constantly being told they were not doing a good job. The workload increased, although we had thought this was not possible. The autonomy of headteachers was a piece of fiction, as we had never been so tightly controlled by central government. The Local Education Authority, who had always been so supportive, lost most of their funding and subsequently most of their personnel. The Ofsted framework continued to change, and the exams criteria changed, making it more difficult for many pupils to gain the qualifications they needed to move forward.
At this point I had reached the ripe old age of 60 and decided it was time to retire and give someone else a chance to lead the school.
# [Part III
Higher and further education](content.xhtml#bck_part3)
# [7
Evolution of Teacher Training and Professional Development](content.xhtml#bck_Ch07)
Richard Pring
## Introduction
The preparation and continuing professional development of teachers have been in constant evolution ever since the 1944 Education Act, that great Act of Parliament which, in the aftermath of the war, created a 'national service locally administered'. Such a national service required of the Minister to ensure, first, there were enough school places for all school-age children, and, second, there were enough teachers trained to teach them. Not for the Minister to say what should be taught or how it should be taught. And not for the Minister to say how teachers should be trained or how their continuing professional development, if any at all, should take place.
That subsequent evolution reflected the changing understandings: of the place of teacher education within a unitary system of higher education; of the place of schools and the profession in that training; of the content of the training and professional development; and of the responsibilities of government. In this last respect, we have seen the autonomy of the profession and indeed of universities increasingly eroded by political intervention.
One might see that historical evolution in terms of positive developments, arising (through public deliberations and subsequent White Papers and Acts of Parliament) from responses to perceived difficulties regarding low standards in many schools or the ideological beliefs of the teacher trainers. The name 'blob', as such an establishment has been called by some politicians, reflects a political concern about the influence of those whose ideas permeate the training of teachers, especially the social and philosophical critiques within colleges and universities. Was John Dewey, taught in our university departments of education, mainly responsible for all the problems of our schools, as I was told by a Secretary of State and a Minister of Higher Education? Much better, it is thought, that attention should be directed more effectively and efficiently to the improvement of learning as that has come to be defined from outside the teaching profession, ever since the 1988 Education Act.
In what follows, I examine that evolution more closely, drawing upon historical record and personal experience – as teacher in training, schoolteacher, teacher of students on the new BEd degree, university lecturer on professional diploma courses, professor helping to bring about the first merger between a prestigious college of education and a university, and finally Director of the Oxford University Department of Educational Studies, when after 100 years that university finally thought the study of education was worthy of a professor.
## Prelude: do teachers need to be trained?
There once prevailed the Platonic idea of the sort of education in which, 'in a place set apart', the guardian class would receive a special sort of education, partly through what was taught but partly through the initiation into a particular tradition, social ethos and network. This was accessible to relatively few (what the nineteenth-century philosopher and poet Coleridge referred to as the 'clerisy') brought up, if not on gymnastics and mathematics, then at least on the classics and games. Prep school, public school and Oxbridge would provide the right kind of educational background. Indeed, this was argued to the Bryce Commission in 1895 by Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen College Oxford, when discussion was conducted on whether the University of Oxford should be concerned with the training of teachers. The student who has read Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics and Ethics has whatever theory is necessary for the practice of teaching. But in addition it would be helpful:
that a young man who has passed through an English public school, more particularly if he has been . . . a prefect has had experience in keeping order and maintaining discipline. Thus the average Oxford man, more especially the classical student, ought not to require so long an additional training, either in theory or practice, as is sometimes necessary for students elsewhere.
(Bryce Report, 1895, v. 257)
Indeed, this message was reiterated by Mr Raleigh of All Souls, also to the Bryce Committee, reminiscent of John Stuart Mill's inaugural address at St Andrew's, in which he argued that the university is not a place for professional education (Mill, 1867). According to Raleigh:
It is not the office of the University to train men for teaching, or any other profession . . . his special training must be left to those who are engaged in professional work. Almost any honours man will make a good teacher, and if he has the luck to fall into the hands of a good headteacher.
(Bryce Report, 1895, v. 22)
This view may seem antiquated, but it continues to hover around the corridors of power and in many schools. Training, of whatever sort, is no longer a requirement to teach in schools released from the bonds of local authorities, as well as those that remain in the private sector. It is regarded that, with the right sort of subject knowledge from the university and with the right sort of character, training is unnecessary. Ignorance of what is referred to as the 'disciplines of education' (philosophy, sociology, psychology, history) might indeed be a bonus. One might, as with Teach First, just as well go straight into school where one will be nurtured by mature teachers. The result is that there is a rejection of those developments, especially after the Robbins Report in 1963 (to be explained below), which have shaped teacher education for 50 years and through which I have been engaged with teaching and teacher education.
The question continues to be: Do the training and development of teachers need to be made academically respectable through the support of universities, on the one hand, and, on the other, can the academic respectability of the universities be practically relevant?
## Academic respectability and practical relevance: a fading example
In 1964, I quit the Ministry of Education in Curzon Street, where I had been an Assistant Principal working in my final year in the newly established Curriculum Study Group, which was the forerunner of the Schools Council and which initiated a range of papers in preparation for the new Certificate of Secondary Education. The Schools Council, established in 1964, was a shrewd combination of local education authorities, and representatives from teachers (who were the majority members), HMI, community, and employers and government. The first Joint Secretary, Derek Morrell (the civil servant who in effect created the Schools Council), argued that it aimed to support and to enhance the professional aspect of teaching:
to democratise the processes of problem-solving as we try, as best we can, to develop an educational approach appropriate to a permanent condition of change. . . . this democracy must also be locally organised, bringing together teachers, dons, administrators and others for the study of common problems, some local and others national in their implications.
(Morrell, 1966)
Later in the lecture Morrell spelled out the particular nature of this partnership between teachers (at the centre, not periphery, of these deliberations) and the research interests of the universities to which the teachers might in various ways be attached – not as neighbours knocking on the door of theory but as partners in a shared enterprise.
One influential example of such a partnership was that of the Centre for Applied Research in Education at the University of East Anglia, led by Professor Lawrence Stenhouse. Its Humanities Curriculum Project was founded on Stenhouse's scholarly research into the idea and practice of 'culture', developed in schools by teachers, rigorously evaluated by the university, and supported and promoted by the Schools Council. It gave rise to the tradition of 'action research', putting teachers at the centre of research and supported by research traditions within the universities – described by John Elliott (1991), a member of the Stenhouse team, in his book Action Research for Educational Change. However, there were many examples of such a partnership in the development of curriculum projects – History 13–16, Geography for the Young School Leaver, Design and Technology, Nuffield Sciences, for example.
Much inspired by the ambitions of the Schools Council, I started teaching in a London comprehensive school in 1965. Nothing in my teacher training year at a London college of education prepared me for 1x. When I asked the headteacher in July for my timetable so that I could spend my vacation in preparation, I was told to come in early on the first day of Autumn term. He asked what I had studied at the university. When I replied philosophy, he said he thought so and said I was to have the slow learners – the fifth stream of a five stream comprehensive school. I struggled. But it was the Schools Council that came to my help. The Council saw the need for professional support for teachers through the partnerships established across schools and with university-based curriculum projects. Its Teachers' Centres, throughout the country, provided that support, and it was to the Centre in Highbury and Islington that I went for support, professional engagement, and introduction to relevant thinking and research.
Unfortunately the Schools Council ceased to be granted government support in 1984 and closed. The early fears held by the teachers' unions of government desire to obtain control of curriculum proved correct. Four years later there was the 1988 Educational Reform Act.
## Academic respectability
The nineteenth-century training of teachers took place in training colleges run mainly by the Church of England, though a few emerged from the Catholics and Non-conformists to support their growing number of schools. But, with the extension of secondary education to all, following the 1944 Education Act, there was a need for many more training places and for a deeper, more academic preparation. No longer were they to serve elementary schools that offered a limited education for the poor. A first step was to change the name in 1960 from 'training colleges' to 'colleges of education', and to attach them to regional universities through Area Training Organisations (created in 1955 following the proposals of the 1944 McNair Report).
The aim, following the 1963 Robbins Report, was to bring the colleges within a unitary system of Higher Education, ignoring the objections from those who, believing in a restricted pool of ability, opposed such an expansion. Indeed, the judgement of Mr Raleigh (quoted above) still prevailed in many quarters: 'it is not the office of the University to train men for teaching'. The colleges would not be granted university status. But they would be either linked to universities and thereby be able to take the newly proposed BEd degree (initially a three year Ordinary Degree, then later a four year Honours) to be awarded by their respective universities, or linked to polytechnics with degree awarding powers given to the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA), established in 1965. The Institute of Education of London University, for example, had 30 colleges under its academic wing, from as far away as Canterbury (later to become Canterbury Christ Church University). The training of teachers would be firmly within the university sector – thereby gaining 'academic respectability'.
That, however, gave rise to the need to make the study of education academically respectable. That was not easy. The university lecturer in education was, in the words of Professor Richard Peters of the University of London Institute of Education:
so often like the distraught Freudian ego – at one moment at the mercy of the ids in the classroom, unruly little boys and girls, insatiable in their demands and beyond the control of reason; at another moment feeling the disapproving gaze of the superego in the philosophy, psychology or sociology department, whose discipline is tough, but seemingly disconnected from the world of unreason which teachers have to inhabit.
It was as a result of such doubts and criticisms that attempts were made to make educational studies respectable. At a conference of the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education in Hull in 1964, studies for the professional development of teachers were dismissed by Peters as so much undifferentiated mush. Hence began a purposeful attempt to inject an academic rigour that respectability in the eyes of the universities demanded. There was an exponential growth of theory in what were called the 'foundation disciplines' – the philosophy, sociology, psychology and history of education, and finally comparative and curriculum studies.
This I witnessed first hand in my PGCE year. On Friday afternoons the postgraduate trainees would go from their respective colleges to hear the stimulating lectures from Richard Peters in philosophy of education, Basil Bernstein in sociology of education, W.D. Wall in psychology and A.C. Beales from Kings College London in history of education. Peters' book The Ethics of Education (published 1965) became deservedly a textbook on BEd courses, stimulating consideration of the aims of education and of the ethical basis of what is taught in schools. He was accompanied by Paul Hirst whose influential paper on 'the seven forms of knowledge' provided a philosophical background to the study and value of curriculum subjects (Hirst, 1965).
I joined a group of aspiring philosophers and signed up to study for a part-time PhD under the University's Philosophy Board, supervised by Professor Peters. That and similar groups in the other disciplines were most important within the development of educational studies worldwide.
First, the development of the BEd required university teachers – people who could teach philosophy, sociology, psychology and history. The newly developed diploma courses at the Institute were intended to provide these. Hence, college lecturers and schoolteachers were recruited to the courses, made into philosophers (sociologists, etc) and then dispatched to the far corners of the kingdom as missionaries. A series of books was published by Routledge and Kegan Paul (RKP), whose authors were mainly from the Institute of Education. New journals were established (for example, The British Journal of Educational Studies and The Journal of the Sociology of Education). Learned societies were set up, such as the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, whose Proceedings published the papers given at the annual conference, which took place at the Beatrice Webb House in Surrey from 1967 and subsequently at the Froebel College.
Second, however, this became a worldwide movement. Israel Scheffler at Harvard University (whose 1958 book Philosophy of Education included papers from Peters and Hirst) published The Language of Education, which analysed in detail the use of 'definitions' in education, 'educational slogans' and 'metaphors', the meaning of 'teaching'. The prevailing Oxford tradition of analytic philosophy had entered into educational thinking, and thereby attacked mercilessly the words and assumptions of, say, the Plowden Report (1967) on primary education – for example, children's 'needs', 'creativity', 'growth'. In a visit to Melbourne University in the 1970s to give the Victor Cooke Memorial Lecture, I witnessed the impact of this literature on teacher education – the almost monopoly of reading material from the philosophers (Peters, Hirst, John and Pat White, Ray Elliott, Robert Dearden) of the London Institute of Education.
## The death of the college
More was required to achieve the respectability to emerge from the Robbins' ideal of a unitary system of higher education. The 1972 James Report: Teacher Education and Training recommended the total abolition of monotechnic teacher training courses and the merging of them into institutions with other undergraduate studies. It recommended three cycles of continuing education, namely, a two-year Diploma in Higher Education, a two-year professional training and then professional in-service provision. It was regarded as inadequate to finish teacher preparation with no more than the successful completion of initial training. However, despite these recommendations, the 1972 White Paper, Education: a Framework for Expansion, dismissed the DipHE and postponed the inservice proposals and thereby the hope of much needed opportunities for continuing teachers' professional development.
By 1976, of the original 151 voluntary and municipal colleges of education, five had merged with universities, 33 were locked in with polytechnics, 63 had amalgamated into 44 newly created institutes of higher and further education, and 21 were earmarked for closure. The changes in institutional provision for teacher preparation were immense: it had become a degree-based profession; it had its own professional degree (Bachelor of Education) and it had become an intrinsic part of higher education within the 'binary system' – not the unitary system envisaged by Robbins, since, except in the case of the few that had merged with universities, colleges were not funded by the University Grants Committee. However, academic autonomy was preserved through the CNAA, which oversaw academic standards in the burgeoning public sector of higher education (including the polytechnics).
But the changes to a unitary system of higher education continued apace through more mergers and through the gradual acquisition of university status. In 1978 I was appointed to Exeter University and engaged in the merger between St Luke's College of Education and the university. The new School of Education, soon to be the largest in the country outside the Institute of Education in London, remained on the St Lukes' site. It was joined there by the staffs of the now former University of Exeter's Department and Institute of Education. Ted Wragg succeeded Michael Brock (appointed as Principal of Nuffield College Oxford) as Director. The success of the new school, in integrating within it the erstwhile separate institutions and in integrating the school within the wider university, owed much to his dynamism, reputation with schools, and combination of practical know-how in the classroom with a grasp of educational theory.
Members of the St Luke's staff had been appointed to the college first and foremost because they were excellent teachers who knew their subjects, though few had higher degrees. Their profiles did not match those of Exeter University's Department and Institute of Education. How could they fit into the academically motivated ethos of a university? There were, therefore, some nervous new members of the university. But, as I wish to develop later (and even conclude), there is a danger in the disdain for 'practical knowledge' – in not seeing the importance of the practical as the basis for the theoretical, not the other way around.
For example, on the BEd primary course, students were taught mathematics by an excellent team of mathematicians for the three or four years of their BEd, and were well prepared for the classroom once they had graduated. Compare this with the present situation, following the demise of the BEd, where only about one in ten of new primary school teachers have more than grade C in GCSE mathematics, following which they have done no mathematics during the next six years prior to their PGCE qualification. It is not surprising that many young people have been ill-prepared for their study of mathematics when they enter secondary school.
A further example would be that of teaching physical education. After the war, the Principal Smeales was determined to bring fame to St Luke's and to do so by creating the best rugby team in the country. He went to Wales to recruit for the training college the best players he could persuade to become teachers, including several internationals. One benefit that the University of Exeter saw in the merger was to have a great rugby team. I have no doubt that the new School of Education produced possibly the best-trained physical education teachers in the country, though (as we were constantly told) rivalled by Loughborough.
As educational studies were made increasingly to look like other undergraduate studies, I see the demise of the professional degree for preparing teachers as a grave mistake. Physical education gradually morphed into sports science. Drama disappeared from most teacher training places. Whereas I entered teaching (even in 1x, the lowest stream in a five-form Year 1) without any knowledge of the different kinds of learning difficulty to be encountered, those who studied for the BEd at the two universities where I was employed (Goldsmiths College and Exeter University) had clear and practical introductions to them.
Students who studied at Goldsmiths College in the late 1960s recall that the BEd degree was made academically respectable through the support of universities and practically relevant through an appropriate curriculum that provided academic knowledge and hands-on experience throughout the four-year programme. A four-year programme enabled students to be academically able and practically skilled, as there was time to address all aspects in sufficient detail. There was a balance of educational studies and specialist subject teaching that was on a par with the BA or BSc course. In addition they were taught how to identify and support children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, by attending stimulating lectures, visiting institutions that specialise in specific learning needs such as epilepsy, dyslexia, autism and Down's syndrome, and by carrying out work experience at an allocated specialist centre. This was followed up by a written assessed dissertation. For example:
We did an intense study on dealing with children with special needs. We all visited a Centre in Kent regarding epilepsy and how to deal with it. Then we had lectures on dyslexia, autism and Down's syndrome, etc. We were required to write an in-depth study with reference to special needs and were required to include work experience. I focused on Down's syndrome, another on children with polio. I spent 2 to 3 weeks as a volunteer at a Centre for children with Down's syndrome over one summer break. This type of study is not included in courses today unless doing a special course.
Such rigour, depth and breadth of preparation over a four-year period are not mirrored in teacher training programmes today. Much preparation and thought was put into the BEd degree by educationalists at that time, and as a result emerging teachers felt supported and prepared for their future careers.
Over time either all colleges merged with universities (e.g. Keswick Hall with East Anglia), or joined a polytechnic, which eventually became a university (e.g. Lady Spencer Churchill and Oxford Polytechnic becoming Oxford Brooks University and later subsuming Westminster College), or evolved slowly into universities (e.g. King Alfred's College becoming the University of Winchester), or simply went out of business. But problems remained.
## Government control
It would have seemed that, in shelving teacher education firmly within the university sector, the preparation and continuing professional development of teachers would have remained safe from government interference. Universities were autonomous institutions. Though receiving money from the government, that money was channelled through the University Grants Committee, established after the recommendations of Robbins to ensure freedom from interference in academic matters. But the government believed that assurance over the quality of teacher training was as necessary as assurance over the quality of teaching in schools. Just as HMI were empowered to enter schools, so should they be empowered to enter universities for this particular set of courses.
In 1983, the government produced a paper, Teaching Quality, spelling out four phases of a teaching career. In 1984, it gave HMI powers of approval on teacher education courses.
Staff Inspector Pauline Perry came to Exeter University to announce the intention. But would the university allow it? It did so because otherwise the government grants would be withdrawn. There was indeed a rearguard action from the redoubtable Ted Wragg. For the first inspection he insisted that he be notified beforehand of the team of HMIs. Following his perusal of the list, he insisted that one of the team be removed because of his known insobriety on a previous occasion and because we could not allow bad influences to be imported into the high level of professional training for which Exeter was noted. The HMI was removed from the team.
In 1988, the government published The New Teacher in School. No doubt on the basis of the now numerous HMI inspections, it criticised the weaknesses in teacher education, especially in terms of the lack of sufficient preparation in the organisation and preparation of learning and of poor assessment and recording of pupils' progress. Had the pursuit of academic respectability diminished practical relevance?
However, 'quality' is an elastic term. It can be stretched to cover many more things than actual performance in the classroom or subject knowledge. There had long been a suspicion from the right wing of politics that educational theory was promoting a left-wing agenda, blaming poor performance, for example, on cultural and social backgrounds rather than on ineffective teaching. In 1969 the first two of the seven Black Papers on Education, edited by Cox and Dyson, were published: Fight for Education and Crisis in Education. These, together with other papers from the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), identified a cause of the perceived problems in schools to arise from the prevailing theoretical assumptions that, especially following the Plowden Report on Primary Education, permeated education departments – the espousal of child-centred theories of progressive education in particular. Typical was Sheila Lawlor's Teachers Mistaught: Training in Theories or Education in Subjects? (1990) which argued that 'any plan designed to improve the quality of teachers should concentrate on ensuring those in the profession have a mastery of their individual subjects' rather than over the non-subject of education.
The villain of the piece was the American philosopher John Dewey. Anthony O'Hear, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bradford and appointed by Margaret Thatcher to chair a committee on teacher training, wrote for the CPS the monograph Father of Child-Centredness: John Dewey and the Ideology of Modern Education, and a paper to the Applied Philosophy Society in 1980 that dismissed Dewey as subverting the central aim of education which was the initiation into the cultural richness we have inherited (O'Hear, 1987). These had considerable influence on the Conservative attitude to the 'ideologues' of university education departments. It was shortly after my arrival as Director of the Department of Educational Studies of Oxford University (1989) that I was invited to share a platform with the now retired Lord Keith Joseph at a conference at Wolfson College. Seated next to me at dinner, he ascertained that my name was Pring and then told me that I had caused all the problems in our schools. When asked what led him to that belief, he replied that it was I (or people like me) who had introduced teachers to John Dewey. At roughly the same period I was invited to be interviewed by Melanie Phillips on the radio as to whether we taught John Dewey. The Daily Mail sent a reporter to me to ask whether we taught John Dewey and whether we would promote child-centred education. I was cross-examined by another reporter who made the excuse that he was visiting the department to leave some books to the library. I felt chuffed that I should be seen as such an influential person, though concerned by the increasing political suspicion of teacher education. Should a university department bend to such political pressure? It would not do so in the philosophy or psychology departments – such is the value attached to academic autonomy.
The criticism, however, came also 'from within the fold'. Professor David Hargreaves upset the education academics gathered at the annual conference of the British Educational Research Association in Belfast in 1990 by attacking the value and standards of the research that, to lay claim to be educational, should be serving the training and professional development of teachers – which clearly, he argued, it was failing to do. Despite the enormous amount of money spent on research and the large number of people who claimed to be active researchers, there was not the cumulative body of relevant knowledge that would enable teaching to be (like medicine) a research-based profession; for it to be so it would be necessary to change, first, the content of that research, and, second, the control and sponsorship of it.
This criticism of theory and research in the now university-based teacher education was cumulative – harking back to that made by Lord Skidelsky to a debate in the House of Lords concerning the proposal to transfer responsibility for the funding of educational research from the Higher Education Funding Council to the Teacher Training Agency:
Many of the fruits of that research I would describe as an uncontrolled growth of 'theory, an excessive emphasis on what is called the context in which teaching takes place, which is a code for class, gender and ethnic issues, and an extreme paucity of testable hypotheses about what works and does not work'.
(quoted in Bassey, 1995, p. 33)
Meanwhile, in the course of my 14 years as Director of the department at Oxford, the inspection regime, as in schools, became increasingly more specific. Following the DES Circular of 1989, Initial Teacher Training: Approval of Courses, it set precise 'performance indicators' in preparation for the 'audits'. It became a question then of writing what we wanted to be judged on in the terms of the inspectorate without sacrificing what we believed in.
## Academic respectability and professional relevance: can they be reconciled?
Despite the doubts expressed by Heads of Houses to the Bryce Committee in 1895 about the university being a suitable place for the training of teachers, there was one voice from Oxford that expressed a different opinion. Mr Haverfield of Christ Church foresaw the possible integration between theory and practice and between the academic concerns of the university and the practical purposes of the schools.
The object seems to me to be to get the future teacher thinking about teaching; then, being (on the whole) an educated and capable man, he will probably be able to take his own line.
The dualism between theory and practice, condemned by the aforesaid John Dewey, is surely indefensible. Intelligent practice embodies theoretical perspectives – about aims of education, motivation of the learners, levels of understanding, logical connection of key concepts, impact of cultural backgrounds. Making such implicit perspectives explicit and enabling the teacher to subject them to informed criticism are as central as is the constant critique of theory against practical experience. The theorist needs the practice as much as the practitioner needs the theory. The development of teaching quality in both initial training and professional development requires this interrelationship and the critical attitude in their marriage. One problem with the merger of the colleges with the universities has been the danger of seeing theory (what the universities are good at) imposed upon the practice (which the teachers are good at) without recognising the experiential knowledge that is embodied in that practice.
It was in recognition of that problem that my predecessor as Director of the Department of Educational Studies, Dr Harry Judge, together with the Chief Education Officer of Oxfordshire, Sir Tim Brighouse, created the Oxford Internship Scheme to which all Oxfordshire secondary schools belonged. Eight or more trainee teachers were attached to each school, which was thereby transformed into a 'training school'. Each member of the department was attached to a school as General Course Tutor, linked to the school's Professional Course Tutor, covering the topics that concerned the trainee teachers. Each week they would jointly lead the school-based seminar. At the same time, parallel links were created between the curriculum tutors in the department and the subject teachers in the schools. In addition, subject-based seminars were held back in the department, which brought together the subject tutors from the different schools. Professional development was integrated with initial training. Theory was tested against practice. Practice was informed by theory.
How far can this now be maintained in a modern university, given the changing pressures on them? Should we not learn from Chicago? There the once prestigious School of Education, under pressure to produce world class research, found less and less time to be in schools. It joined the university's School of Social Sciences. The social scientists did not care much for the research of the erstwhile educationists. Educational studies, without friends in schools and without friends in the university, closed down.
Is not the same happening here? Every four years the Research Excellence Framework assesses the quality of research, based mainly on publications in highly cited peer reviewed journals. Each subject department's finances and prestige in the consequent league table affect not only the income for the next four years but also the readiness of the respective universities to maintain particular subjects. The intensive partnerships with schools, so necessary for the quality of teacher education in universities, are less and less reconcilable with the devotion to writing research reports in journals, many of which are rarely ever read. We are likely to see many education departments closed in the coming years, thereby reversing the evolution that has taken place over the last 60 years.
## And in its place?
We are already seeing the consequences of the issues I have raised:
* suspicion of the 'ideologues' (the 'blob') in the university departments of education;
* slow death of the professional degree as a route to Qualified Teacher Status;
* by-passing of the universities by those who have already gained degrees as they enter school through Schools Direct, TeachFirst and indeed 'Troops to Teachers';
* the closing of university departments of education (already begun) and, even when they survive, the closure of particular PGCE subject courses (in Autumn 1914, 27 English, 9 history and 11 geography courses lost funding);
* the continuing suspicion that 'education' is not an appropriate subject for the university. Thus Mr Raleigh of All Souls would have been pleased that, a hundred years later, his advice to the Bryce Commission was being listened to. Is it not once again believed that 'almost any honours man will make a good teacher, and if he has the luck to fall into the hands of a good head teacher'?
And yet is there not a crisis looming in the recruitment and retention of teachers? For the third year, the government is set to miss its target figure for teacher recruitment – a shortfall of 27,000 predicted by 2017. Between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of newly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years. Two-thirds of secondary school heads had difficulty in recruiting maths teachers, according to a poll by the Association of Schools and College Leaders. Concern over teacher supply has been exacerbated by Schools Direct filling only 61 per cent of the places allocated in 2014 – places that otherwise would have been allocated to universities. The problems will be exacerbated in an expanding economy that offers other attractions for would-be teachers. Reasons given for leaving are, among others, the constant teacher bashing and the high-pressure accountability, the excessive workload and relentless pace of change (TES, 30 January 2015). Will it not be necessary to establish once again that partnership between schools and universities in initial training, continuing professional development and research?
But what about professional development – the third phase of the James Report's recommendations? We have seen the central importance of such development in the years following the Schools Council in the 1960s and 1970s. Teachers were in charge, though utilising the knowledge and research to be found in the universities. The Oxford Internship Scheme was a unique partnership between university and schools, as such professional development arose from the shared responsibility for initial training. I am sure there are many other excellent examples. But increasingly, so-called professional development is geared to courses on how 'to meet the standards' imposed by government – a far cry from the autonomous profession experienced by most contributors to this volume when they first started to teach.
However, there are interesting examples, afforded by social media, of teachers once again asserting their professional autonomy. Increasingly, teachers are systematically using the Internet for the professional interactions through which they might advance their professional knowledge and practice. Grass-roots organisations of teachers have arisen such as 'Teachmeet'.
Teachers are doing it for themselves, using social media for professional development and advocacy. . . . In the face of increasingly centralised policy agenda, social media has created spaces for teachers to talk to each other, share . . . learn for each other.
(Hardy, 2014)
## Notes
1 Quoted from my inaugural lecture Academic Respectability and Practical Relevance, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992.
2 This quotation is from a letter sent to me by a retired teacher, a former student, who does not wish her name to be disclosed.
3 Bryce Report, 1895, v. 167 (In ref: Bryce Report, 1895, Royal Commission on Secondary Education).
## References
Bassey, M., 1995, Creating Education Through Research. Newark: Kirklington Moor Press.
Bryce Report, 1895, Royal Commission on Secondary Education.
Elliott, J., 1991, Action Research for Educational Change. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Hardy, E., 2014, Forum 56(2).
Hirst, P.H., 1965, 'Liberal education and the nature of knowledge', in P.H. Hirst (ed.) Knowledge and the Curriculum. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
McNair Report, 1944, Teachers and Youth Leaders. London: HMSO.
Mill, J.S., 1867, 'Inaugural address at St. Andrews', in F.A. Cavenagh (ed.) 1931, James and John Stuart Mill on Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morrell, D., 1966, Education and Change. London: College of Preceptors.
O'Hear, A., 1987, 'The importance of traditional learning', in British Journal of Educational Studies 35 (2), 102–114.
Peters, R.S., 1965, Ethics and Education. London: Geo. Allen and Unwin.
Plowden Report, 1967, Children and their Primary Schools. London: HMSO.
Robbins Report, 1963, Higher Education. London: HMSO.
Scheffler, I., 1960, The Language of Education, Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas.
# [8
The Evolving Idea of a University](content.xhtml#bck_Ch08)
Richard Pring
## Sir David Watson
It had been hoped that Sir David Watson would write this chapter. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in January. He would have been the ideal author since his own professional life (spent entirely in higher education – 'my trade for 40 years') had to cope with the evolving idea of a university and, indeed, contributed richly to that idea. Moreover, the thanks of the present author are due, not just to his many writings on this subject, but in particular to his most recent book, The Question of Conscience, which outlines what he referred to as the successive 'frameworks' imposed on the UK since the Robbins Report of 1963 – coinciding with the period covered in this book. As he claims at the beginning of the book, 'the system has been radically reconfigured for every third or fourth new cohort that has entered it' (Watson 2014, p. xxii).
What follows, therefore, arises very much from Sir David's 'mapping' of that 'reconfiguring of the system', reflected in his own professional life.
His senior management career in higher education began at Oxford Polytechnic before the dramatic reorganisation of higher education in 1992. That followed (finally) the Robbins Report's recommendation for a unitary system of higher education, thus getting away from the 'binary line' that had divided polytechnics and institutions of higher education from universities in terms of financial resources and degree-giving powers. Brighton University was one of the first of the polytechnics to join the university club, and that demanding process took place under the leadership of David Watson, who was Vice-Chancellor from 1990 to 2005. Here we see an instance of that changing idea of a university pioneered within a much expanded system. As Theodore Zeldin wrote in the Foreword to The Question of Conscience,
Sir David demonstrated in Brighton how a university could raise professional training to a higher level and become a catalyst for local community innovation. His advocacy of lifelong learning is bearing fruit.
Thereafter, David Watson became Professor of Higher Education Management at the University of London Institute of Education and then was appointed in 2010 Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford University's newest college, reinforcing the important role which that college has in linking the academic teaching and research of a university to the professional training of medics, teachers, business leaders and other professionals. But that distinctive contribution to the idea and the practices of the university, reflected in his achievements at Brighton, continued to be developed in his publications, in particular Managing Civic and Community Engagement in 2007 and The Engaged University in 2011.
## The idea of a university
As David Watson demonstrated, it could be misleading to speak of the idea of a university when, under that title, there are many different kinds of institution and when we have witnessed in the period covered by this book a gradual evolution and diversification of that idea within the UK. Indeed, it would be wrong to freeze the idea as defined at a particular moment of time, for universities or institutions of higher education are part of a wider network of social and educational institutions, which itself will constantly be changing in response to changing economic and social factors. But there comes a time, and surely that time is now, when the shift in meaning has been such that particular institutions of higher education should not be seen as universities, even if that title is being claimed or has been bestowed upon them.
A key reference has frequently been John Henry Newman's Idea of a New University where he argues for it as 'a place of teaching universal knowledge'. This is qualified by the claim that its objects are intellectual, not moral, and the 'diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement'. By 'universal knowledge' is meant those different logical forms of knowledge (defined by their distinctive concepts, modes of enquiry, procedures for verifying the truth) by which we have come to understand the physical, social and moral worlds we inhabit. There is an inheritance of knowing, reasoning, appreciating which needs to be preserved and passed on to future generations. Such an institution (the university), therefore, would need to be broad in terms of the different disciplines of thinking that it offers, and thereby a 'liberal education which viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence' (Newman, 1852, p. 25).
Universities, through their teaching and scholarship, would guard the intellectual inheritance and preserve it through its transmission to the next generation – or, in the words of Michael Oakeshott (1962), introduce such a generation to 'the conversation between the generations of mankind' as they come to appreciate the 'voices' of poetry, literature, history, science. Again, as Anthony O'Hear argued in defence of traditional learning, 'the proper and effective exercise of learning must take place against the background of inherited forms of thought and experience' (1987, p. 102). It is important, in understanding this 'idea', to identify certain conditions for its practical adherence in those institutions established to promote it.
The first was autonomy, that is, freedom, particularly from the state, in deciding what such excellence was, how it might be pursued, who should be selected to engage in it. Inevitably, there are limits to such autonomy, because the pursuit of scholarship and its transmission need resources. And we have seen over 40 or so years how such dependence has shaped the idea of a university.
The second was a certain disdain for usefulness or relevance as the purpose of a university. The preservation, promotion and enrichment of the world of ideas constituted an end in itself – the maintenance of a distinctive form of human life. John Stuart Mill, at his inaugural lecture at St Andrews, agreed that universities should not be places of professional education as:
their object is not to make skilful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings [for] what professional men should carry away with them from an university is not professional knowledge, but that which should direct the use of their professional knowledge, and bring the light of general culture to illuminate the technicalities of a special pursuit.
(Mill, 1867, p. 133)
That seemed to be the idea of the university when I studied philosophy at University College London – three years of exploring ideas, engaging with key texts, interacting with such philosophers as A.J. Ayer, Stuart Hampshire, Bernard Williams, Richard Wollheim and others whose main mission seemed to be that of 'teaching universal knowledge'. Usefulness or 'professional knowledge' never came into it, but I received what Mill would have regarded as 'the general culture to illuminate the technicalities of a special pursuit'. And so I did what several in such circumstances did – I joined the Civil Service as an Assistant Principal.
## Robbins Report, 1963
At the beginning of our period was published the Robbins Report, Higher Education, as significant for higher education as the 1944 Act had been for schools. The Committee took three years to report and it shaped the considerable expansion and pattern of higher education for the next 30 years. It questioned the assumed 'restricted pool of ability', which had limited the number of universities (and thereby access to them). The general principle for entry was that 'the courses in higher education should be available for all those who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and who wish to do so' (Robbins Report, 1963).
That inevitably required a considerable expansion of universities, but also an extension of the idea of a university. Professional usefulness had thereby also become relevant. Thus the Report proposed bringing universities, teacher training colleges, colleges of advanced technology (CATs) and regional technical colleges into a growing 'unitary system' of higher education, with the CATs re-designated as universities. But the distinction was still there between universities and those other institutions of higher education, which were geared to professional preparation and practical usefulness – a 'binary divide' was upheld. However, the higher learning of these non-university institutions needed to be recognised, and thus the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) was recommended with degree-giving powers, thereby enabling regional technical colleges and training colleges to offer degree courses, albeit lacking the autonomy of universities. The CNAA was established in 1965. How this played out with the training of teachers is explained in some detail in Chapter 7.
Therefore, one might say that the Robbins Report extended the 1944 principles of publicly funded (and thereby free) secondary education for all pupils to further and higher education.
One further recommendation must not be forgotten. A characteristic of the university idea was academic autonomy. How does one reconcile the massive investment of public money in the expanded universities with the maintenance of autonomy? The University Grants Committee (UGC) was to be established with general oversight over the 60 or so universities in Britain, and it would act as the independent buffer between the government as the source of finance and the universities who were to spend it as they saw fit in the pursuit of their aims.
## The binary divide and its final demise
The attainment of Robbins' 'unitary system of higher education' was slow but gradual from the establishment of the CNAA finally to the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, when polytechnics were re-designated universities. More new universities were created. But, no doubt arising from concern over such expansion, a Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) was established, one of whose functions was to define 'graduateness'. Universities were under inspection (light though it might seem at first) for quality, thereby impinging somewhat on the autonomy criterion of the university idea. When I arrived in Oxford in 1989, I was on a CNAA panel checking the quality of Oxford Polytechnic's education degree. I also was engaged in the negotiations over the future of Westminster College of Education in the new 'unitary system' – Oxford University validated its professional degree, the BEd. Eventually there was a merger between the polytechnic and the Westminster in the new Oxford Brookes University.
However, the path to the unitary system was a thorny one. The 1972 White Paper, A Framework for Expansion, sought to continue the binary divide in the expanded higher education system – the pursuit of excellence in a disinterested way sat uneasily with the more practical and professional development purposes of colleges of education, colleges of technology, and business and law schools. But there should be, it was argued, a two-year professional diploma that could lead to the CNAA degree (as in the case of the new BEd). In 1981, Shirley Williams' Green Paper on Higher Education proposed three types of university for the sake of appropriate funding – R,X,T, that is, 'research universities', 'teaching universities' and 'research/teaching universities'. Again, this led to nowhere, except that the idea of research and teaching universities seems to have emerged gradually as a result of the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise), later renamed the REF (Research Excellence Framework). A differentiated idea of the university, linked to competition for certain sources of funding, was beginning to emerge.
Nonetheless, the gradual dismissal of the binary divide took different forms: the incorporation into specific universities of erstwhile independent colleges, as in the case of St Lukes College being subsumed within Exeter University (see Chapter 7 for a brief account); the slow handing over of powers to colleges that had been supported by their local university, as in the case of Canterbury Christ Church College, which, under the Collegiate Board chaired by the University of Kent, gradually developed as independent Canterbury Christ Church University. What characterised many of these new universities so developed was the promotion of professional degrees in education, social work, nursing and such like – somewhat removed in essence from the pre-Robbins idea. Finally, in this 'road to independence', the 1988 Education Reform Act enabled polytechnics to become semi-independent corporations free from the control of local education authorities.
However, in preparation for this expansion and differentiation of purpose, there inevitably emerged a gradual erosion of independence. Reference has been made to the establishment in 1992 of the Quality Assurance Agency. But also a University Grants Committee was to be replaced by the University Funding Council, with increased powers to determine the conditions under which universities were to receive funding, thereby opening up the possibility of 'contract funding' and an increase in the number of representatives from outside the university on the councils and governing bodies. Was this the end of the 'dons' dominion', as Professor Halsey called it?
### The Engaged University
This title of David Watson's book, published with colleagues in 2011, points to a development of our idea of universities much influenced by the expansion referred to above, and reflected in the pioneering work at the new University of Brighton, which, under his leadership, 'developed essentially as a confederation of professional schools, created at different times by a community perceiving different needs' (Watson et al., 2011, p. 102).
Thus Coffield and Williamson (1997, p. 2) argue that 'the old elite model has run its course and needs to be replaced'. Such sentiments were reinforced by the 1997 Dearing Report, Higher Education in the Learning Society, which argued that 'higher education is now a significant force in regional economies, as a source of income and employment, in contributing to cultural life, and in supporting regional and local economic development' (Dearing Report, 1997, p. 228).
This was not simply an observation – a recognition of what in fact was the case – but part of Dearing's approving acknowledgement of what universities could and should become. There had been a shift in how we value the kind of knowledge that universities should both develop and teach. The Report spoke of a 'new compact involving institutions and their staff, students, government, employers and society in general'. Such a compact would involve:
* wider access, thereby transforming an erstwhile elite system into a mass system, requiring a more practical and 'useful' orientation;
* a framework of qualifications and programmes, providing for lifelong learning of people who start from different positions and have different aspirations;
* greater relevance of programmes to the social and economic needs of the local and national communities.
Dearing's 'new compact', therefore, made universities beholden to a new set of demands affecting the degree both of internal autonomy and outside accountability in shaping aims, values and indeed governance. And that coincided with 'modernising government'.
## Modernising government – the growth of bureaucracy
The gradual incursion of government into the conduct of universities coincided with a shift in the control and management of public services generally (e.g. regarding schools, in the creation of a National Curriculum and National Assessment), and with the 'language of management' through which those services were to be controlled – the language of targets, performance indicators, audits and delivery. All this was explained in a series of Government White Papers from HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office: Modern Public Services in Britain: Investing in Reform (1988, Cm. 4011); Public Services for the Future: Modernisation, Reform, Accountability (1998, Cm. 4181); The Government's Measures of Success: Outputs and Performance Analyses (1999, Cm. 4200); Modernising Government (1999, Cm. 4310).
As an illustration of this shift in the underlying understanding of public institutions, one might refer to the change in language and practices in universities, following the 'efficiency review' of the Jarratt Commission, established by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors in 1984.
The crucial issue is how a university achieves the maximum value for money consistent with its objectives (2.12). Each department should maintain a profile of 'indicators of performance' to include standing costs of space, utilities (telephones, etc), market share of applications, class sizes, staff workloads, graduation rates and classes of degrees (3.33). A range of performance indicators should be developed, covering both inputs and outputs and designed for use both within individual universities and for making comparisons between institutions (5.4). The headships of departments . . . ideally should be both a manager and an academic leader (4.27).
This is clearly a very different language from that which is met in the writings of Newman or Oakeshott. Indeed, it would seem incompatible with them, namely, that open engagement with key texts, the pursuit of excellence, the fostering of critical enquiry, the struggle with difficult ideas, the entry into the conversation between the generations. The more recently developed professional studies departments were the first to suffer as the government laid down multiple and detailed 'standards' (meaning 'targets') for the newly established Ofsted Inspectorate to check and tick off. My period as Director of the Department of Educational Studies at Oxford coincided with this transition. During the soon-to-pass time of Her Majesty's Inspectorate, I was asked, over lunch in the Rose and Crown, of the 'management system' in the department. Struggling to answer, I finally referred to the regular Friday evening open meetings in the Rose and Crown. Their final report expressed appreciation of 'the light management touch'. Once Ofsted assumed the inspectorial job, there was a change, and time was spent translating the language of education into the language-speak required of the new regime.
The management language has in many ways taken over our understanding of the conduct, governance and understanding of universities. Having a Masters in Business Management is seen as a useful qualification for being a Vice-Chancellor. The newly appointed Vice-Chancellor of the Aston Business School, Professor George Feiger, speaks of universities having to adapt to the marketisation of education with fee income following student. They operate as businesses, though not having shareholders. Therefore, there is the swelling of bureaucracy and thereby a change in the now corporate governance of universities. At the time of my arrival at Oxford in 1989, the proportion of central administrators to established academics was 1:2. That has now been reversed. And there are many tales of the salaries that top administrators receive compared with those of top academics, although Freedom of Information was recently refused at one university on the grounds that such information was 'commercially confidential'.
## The impact of research exercises
When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, the university was principally (in Newman's words) 'a place of teaching universal knowledge'. Of course, those who were teaching were engaged in scholarship, and they published significant articles and books. But none had to meet targets or publish in journals that rated high on, for example, the Social Science Research Index. The UGC annual grant was given to each university for purposes of both teaching and research, irrespective of the nature and depth of that research. Research or scholarship was seen, in the main, as supporting the main function, namely, that of teaching.
However, the 1990s changed all that. A substantial amount was withdrawn from the central grant only to be returned on the basis of the quantity and quality of research.
Indeed, some are referred to as 'research universities', meaning that research is a major activity within them, supported by external grants for so doing. It is the case that most universities in the UK would now see research to be an important element in the duties of academic appointments.
Such an emphasis was intensified internationally as a result of world league tables of 'top universities' based mainly on the quality of research. In the UK the RAE (now the REF), which takes place every four years, has reshaped the idea of the university and the nature of academic life. Until the 1980s, universities were funded to teach and to devote time to the research and scholarship that would support that teaching. An academic was not pressurised to produce research of 'international standard'. He or she would not be penalised for concentrating upon teaching. The RAE changed that. The third of government funding supposedly to support research and scholarship was withdrawn and then redistributed on the basis of the quality of research – subject by subject. That sum of money is increasingly distributed to fewer and fewer universities, with considerable financial consequences.
The effects of this are several, changing the idea of the university and of the role of academics within them.
First, there is a growing hierarchy within the university sector – at the top of which are the 'research universities' – on the basis of international and national reputation and, therefore, of the greater income from research and from the attraction to overseas students. Further down the scale are 'teaching universities', where scholarship is pursued but much within the context of their teaching responsibilities. What Shirley Williams' White Paper proposed has become real.
Second, within the respective universities, there is an increasing division, between those who do research and those who just teach, on different contracts and different rates of pay. Only those are submitted for the REF whose published work is judged to be of national standard. It is a brave academic who, harking back to the nature of the university only a few decades ago, feels able to focus on the quality of teaching, and not to be intimidated by the need to produce four publications preferably in the reputable journals. Such is the pressure that more and more teaching is handed over to part-time teachers or to post-graduate students, raising doubts as to whether the university is seeing teaching (as with Newman) as its prime purpose.
Third, the competition between universities for league table rankings inhibits the collaboration between disciplines within a university and between universities, a point clearly made by Sir David Watson. A good-quality research paper, arising out of collaboration between more than one department or university, cannot be attributed to more than one person for the purposes of the REF. Better, therefore, to keep the research 'within house'.
## Funding
The quite massive and rapid expansion of universities clearly had an effect on their funding. According to the Dearing Report, the decline in the unit of resource had been 40 per cent in the period of 20 years. According to the Taylor Report (2000), New Directions for Higher Education Funding: Final Report of the Funding Options Group, that decline had continued, but more slowly. No longer could funding depend purely on government grants (as through the UGC, which had been replaced in 1988) and, given the extra public funding, no longer could the management expenditure be handed over exclusively to the decisions of the university. The Report, therefore, spelled out four options: (i) increased public funding; (ii) deregulation of fees so that each university could charge whatever the market could bear; (iii) income-contingent student loans; and (iv) institutional endowments.
The government opted for (iii) income-contingent student contributions through payment of government fixed fees and through a system of loans. This radical development in funding was extended further as a result of the Browne Review into Higher Education in 2010, which recommended undergraduate fees up to £9,000, instead of any government block grants, together with student contributions up to £9,000 to be repaid, once the student earned over a certain amount, over a 30-year period. Furthermore, there would be targeted funding of specific initiatives that, in the view of the government, would support its economic and social agenda.
In other words, there were now 'funding levers', used with considerable impact within research through, for example, the demand from Research Councils for evidence of economic and social relevance and through the search for investment as, for example, from the Science Research Investment Fund or the Joint Research Equipment Initiative. This new dependence both on research and on 'funding levers' (both public and private) inevitably affects the idea of the university as in terms of accountability, autonomy and the disinterested pursuit of excellence. The words 'stakeholders' and 'client satisfaction' enter into the language of universities.
## Online and distance learning
It would have been difficult, before the Robbins Report, to foresee how radical the changed conception of a university could be. The 'idea' of a university once included the notion of a community, interacting through debate and questioning. 'Conversation' would have been seen as an essential element in the development of knowledge and critical enquiry. But such communities became increasingly difficult to maintain as universities expanded to the sizes that prevail today. The pressure for widening access, the rising costs, the employment and family demands on those who sought access, wider conception of its purposes, and the development of communications technology have all led to the most radical solution of all.
Why should courses leading to degrees require congregation in one place and community over a restricted time?
Britain's Open University was founded in 1968, whereby part-time students, scattered far and wide, matriculated to take their degrees in a range of academic disciplines. The Open University pioneered the distance learning mode of higher education. This required a different pedagogy in order to maintain the standards of learning expected of an institution calling itself a university. In the 1970s I was invited by the Open University to write material for one of its courses, with relevant exercises and stringently assessed by panels of academic experts. Weekly sessions were backed up by radio and television recordings; personal supervision was organised through correspondence.
The Internet has transformed that. In 2013–2014, of the students studying for both undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in the UK, 150,000 were with the Open University. Students and teachers meet in 'virtual' theatres and laboratories. Discussions and tutorials take place online and in forums. MOOCSs (Massive Open Online Communication Systems), provided by world-standard universities such as Stanford, Harvard and Michigan, cater for many thousands of students.
Furthermore, the Credit Accumulation and Transfer System (CATS), following the 1998 government paper, The Learning Age, should have been fully functioning by 2003, though it raised problems over the autonomy for the specific institutions taking part and a shift to a more modular system. However, 'transferable credits' may well be the way forward in a changing and more global world.
## Private and for-profit universities
Universities obviously need funding in order to pay for staff and resources. Traditionally, this has come mainly from governments, charitable donors, though increasingly from research grants and student fees. Government support was adequate at a time when only 5 per cent or 6 per cent of the relevant cohort of young people went to university, as in the UK in the 1960s. But now the aspiration is for 50 per cent to attend university. There is, therefore, an increase in fees, to be paid by the students, financed principally from loans that have to be paid back over a period of 30 years.
But such an expansion has given rise to the private and for-profit organisations to offer university education.
The year 1983 saw the foundation of the first private university in Britain, namely, the University of Buckingham, now well established and universally recognised. The university is a not-for-profit institution with charitable status. Its teaching income depends entirely on student fees. It is aligned to the Quality Assurance Agency, which gives assurance on the quality of its teaching at university level.
However, there is now a growth of institutions, some accredited by universities abroad (such as Richmond, the American International University in London, or BPP University, whose parent company is the US Apollo Group). Others are single subject professional training institutions, such as Ashridge Business School and the College of Estate Management. The quality of some of the new arrivals has been severely questioned. As a result, a group of eight for-profit institutions with award bearing powers (including the ones just mentioned and referred to as the 'Russell Group of the private sector') has been set up to disassociate its members from the 'dodgy for-profit' colleges now attracting students, many from abroad.
This raises the question, which remains constant in the face of the changing idea of the university, concerning the compatibility of the pursuit of profit with the idea of a community of learners, teaching universal knowledge and exercising academic freedom.
## Looking to the future
This chapter has outlined the many ways in which universities have changed from some ideal type of 'teaching universal knowledge' in response to changing social and economic circumstances.
First, we saw the widening of purpose and the relevance of university education to community engagement, enhancing the quality of local economic and cultural life – as pioneered by Sir David Watson's University of Brighton.
Second, greater importance came to be attached to research in terms of funding and prestige, leading to a hierarchy of universities (Russell Group research universities, on the one hand, and teaching universities, on the other – and often leading, too, to demarcation within the academic community).
Third, the gradual encroachment on the early, carefully protected autonomy of universities through funding and governance has led to a burgeoning cost of administration.
Fourth, the funding has become increasingly dependent (especially through research grants and 'impact') on relevance to economic and social needs, and to employment.
Fifth, we are witnessing the growth of private and for-profit institutions.
Finally, there is massive development of part-time, online and virtual learning, together with credit accumulation and transfer of qualifications.
It is necessary to ask how far these changes can develop before the title of 'university' is used purely equivocally, bearing few of the qualities and virtues normally associated with that name. For example:
* Is a university still a university when it loses its academic autonomy?
* Is a single-faculty university (e.g. a business school) really a university?
* Should an institution be classed as a university when it has no faculty of humanities or social studies?
* How can independent quality assurance be assured in all these developments, especially where universities are globally spread or when they are in the hands of for-profit corporations?
In an age of credit transfer on a global scale, universities and employers will need to be assured of the standards of those 'universities' from whom they are receiving their students and employees.
## References
Coffield, F. and Williamson, B., 1997, The Repositioning of Higher Education, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Dearing Report, 1997, Higher Education in a Learning Society, London: HMSO.
Jarratt Report, 1985, Higher Education, London: HMSO.
Mill, J.S., 1867, 'Inaugural address at St. Andrews', in F.A. Cavenagh (ed.), 1931, James and John Stuart Mill on Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Newman, J.H., 1852, The Idea of a New University, London: Longmans Green (1919 edn).
Oakeshott, M., 1962, 'The voice of poetry in the conversation of Mankind', in M. Oakeshott (ed.) Rationalism in Politics, London: Methuen.
O'Hear, A., 1987, 'The importance of traditional learning', British Journal of Educational Studies, 35(2), 102–14.
Robbins Report, 1963, Higher Education, London: HMSO.
Taylor Report, 2000, New Directions for Higher Education Funding, London: HMSO.
Watson, D., 2007, Managing Civic and Community Engagement, London: Open University Press.
Watson, D., 2014, A Question of Conscience, London: Institute of Education Press.
Watson, D., Stroud, S., Hollister, R. and Babcock, E. 2011, The Engaged University, London: Routledge.
Zeldin, T., 2014, 'Foreword', in Watson D, 2014, A Question of Conscience, London: Institute of Education Press.
# [9
Further Education and the Case for Vocational Preparation](content.xhtml#bck_Ch09)
Geoff Stanton
## Further education – the unknown sector
This chapter cannot trace all the changes that have occurred in the English FE system during the last generation. They are too many, and too complicated to explain briefly to those not already versed in the system. At least with regard to schools and universities most people understand roughly what they do and for whom. But the same cannot be assumed for FE colleges, despite their catering for over 3.1 million people annually.
When attempting to answer well-meant queries about FE I find myself in 'Yes, but . . .' mode. Are most FE students over 19 and part-time? Yes, but more 16–19 year olds attend colleges full-time than attend school sixth forms. Are most FE courses vocational? Yes, but one-third of all 16–18 A-Level students attend colleges. Are most FE courses below degree level? Yes, but 64 per cent of colleges teach foundation degrees. Do colleges prepare people for work? Yes, but colleges also provide 30 per cent of 19+ entrants to higher education.
There are also powerful myths. For instance, some argue that colleges cannot offer the pastoral care available in secondary schools. In fact, colleges are more socially inclusive than school sixth forms. Of those who were receiving free school meals when they were 15, nearly twice as many go on to colleges than are admitted to their own sixth forms, and colleges also have a higher proportion of learners from ethnic minorities. Furthermore, and as I shall describe, integrated courses managed by course teams can offer close support.
Also, many current politicians seem to believe that, for those young people who do not go on to take A Levels, apprenticeships are the primary alternative. The best apprenticeships are excellent, but they vary in quality, and participants have to be employed; they can only be offered by employers, not government. So if a given class of employers is missing in a locality then training in that sector is not available via the apprenticeship route. Most crucially, the number available to young people (as opposed to those over 19) has not increased for a decade. So, despite being massively oversubscribed, apprenticeships still cater for merely 6 per cent of 16–18 year olds. On the other hand, something like 40 per cent of the cohort attend colleges on full-time vocational or pre-vocational courses.
Diversity of provision in the student body is one of the constants for FE. This has attracted criticism, on the grounds that it can result in a lack of focus and is one of the things that hinders public understanding of what colleges do. The Foster Review (2005) of FE concluded that 'FE lacks a clearly recognised and shared core purpose' and argued that this should be 'supplying economically valuable skills'. However, the very next paragraph of the report compromised this clarity by adding that 'the primary focus on skills does not exclude other significant purposes such as promoting social cohesion and facilitating progression'. As if to prove this point, FE was later given a major role in promoting Adult Basic Skills, following the Moser Report (1999). At the time of writing and following the Wolf Report (2011) into 14–19 vocational education, colleges are being asked to ensure 16 year olds who have not attained at least Grade C in GCSE English and maths do so within their first college year. Some colleges are finding this a struggle, but it needs to be remembered that the individuals concerned have often left school because they were not welcome in the sixth form without these grades.
Perhaps colleges have been too responsive and flexible in meeting new demands and target groups, but the irony is that it is the willingness of colleges to do this that has enabled sixth forms and universities to keep relatively stable roles and purposes, and to benefit from greater public recognition as a result.
Lack of recognition is one thing. Invisibility is another. Consider this quote from a speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair talking about plans to raise the participation age:
No dropping out at 16, every young person either staying on in the sixth form or on a modern apprenticeship or job-related training leading to a good career. . . . So substantially more academies, specialist schools, better post-16 provision in 6th forms and 6th form colleges.
(Labour Spring Conference, 2004)
No mention of FE colleges, where most of the new learners were likely to be.
This phenomenon was not new. In 1997 Helena Kennedy wrote in a report for the newly formed Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), 'There is an appalling ignorance among decision makers and opinion formers about what goes on in further education. It is so alien to their experience' (Kennedy Report, 1997). And as recently as 2014, a minister claimed that he was advised by civil servants that he should respond to austerity by 'killing off FE since nobody will really notice' (Vince Cable, as reported on the BBC, 6 October 2014).
So, lack of understanding and invisibility create a problem in writing about changes that FE has undergone in my working lifetime. Therefore, what I shall do is focus on a relatively short period when the ability of FE staff to take professional responsibility for what they taught was probably greater than in a secondary school, and to trace some of the factors that resulted in this being reversed, and centrally sponsored turbulence becoming, if anything, greater than for schools and certainly universities.
In doing so I shall be mostly talking about just one of FE's many client groups. This group shares the invisibility of FE itself. I was recently pleasantly surprised to see them mentioned in an Ofsted Review published in 2015. One of its section headings read 'Where can young people, who do not have five GCSEs or are undecided about their career pathways, go?'. The report continued:
Inspectors . . . found that this issue was exacerbated by school sixth forms, academies, colleges and providers who set high entry requirements . . . This could prevent many young people, often the most vulnerable, from following career pathways that may well be within their grasp with a little more time and effective learning support.
(Ofsted, 2013/2014, para. 66)
What Ofsted does not mention is the fact that since 2014 full-time education has been fully funded only until the age of 18. After that, the rate of funding reduces, reportedly on the assumption that it is mainly used for those repeating A Levels. However, many more learners need the extra year because their school attainments mean that they need three years rather than two to reach level three, and more teaching time rather than less.
All this highlights an issue that I have, over the years, spent some time investigating, namely the process of selection that takes place at 16, even within institutions that are non-selective at 11. Of course, performance indicators and inspection grades are likely to be more favourable if the recruitment of challenging learners can be avoided. There are other ways in which the development of policy has damaged their interests. The shift towards central control and top-down qualifications-led development has brought with it a set of assumptions about what counts as good and rigorous programmes. It is thought that they should be made up of free-standing and recognised academic subjects and assessed in writing at the end. However, during a period when practitioners were able to develop their own approaches, they found that alternative curriculum designs were more effective – for instance, integrated programmes focused on a work-based theme, assessed though the ongoing observation of performance.
In what follows, I concentrate on pre-vocational education, with which I have been closely associated through the Further Education Unit in the 1970s and 1980s.
## Teacher training: a biographical diversion
My first teaching experience was that of teaching physics in secondary schools, at a time when a teaching qualification was not required. However, I learned that knowledge of a subject was not enough to make me a fully effective teacher of it. More than that, while teaching in a large inner London comprehensive I discovered that there were things to be understood about the design and content of learning programmes, as well as pedagogy. Like, I suspect, most grammar school products, I had no concept of the range of attainment and motivations in the population as a whole. When my 15-year-old average attainers asked me why I was teaching them about specific gravity in the way I was, I realised that I had no answer. Or rather I had an answer that was very uncomfortable. Although the structure of secondary education had changed, the curriculum design had not kept up. We were offering a diluted grammar school curriculum – one that was not designed to develop a delight in science, but rather to enable pupils to gain access to the next level up and thence to university. But there would be places there for fewer than 10 per cent of the age group, and my students knew full well that this did not include them. There were things that could have been done about this, but not – as I naïvely imagined – by just being more competent and accessible than some of my own teachers had been.
As a result of this experience, I became more interested in learning about the needs of different kinds of learner, rather than the intricacies of teaching different subjects. Arrogantly, I even wrote to some well-known teacher-training colleges asking to explore this, but was always told that I first had to decide on a subject, then an age group. Then I heard about the teaching of general studies in technical colleges, where it was possible to design at least part of the curriculum in light of the personal needs of the learners, who were otherwise following a course leading to a specific occupation. I obtained a place at Garnett College, which just taught potential FE teachers. I enjoyed this course, not least because I already had a list of issues I wished to explore – another important lesson. The following five years I spent at a technical college in Cheltenham – by far the largest college in the town, but by no means the most well known. This was my first lesson in the relative invisibility of FE.
Later I returned to Garnett College, as a member of staff. All those learning to be teachers there either had a degree or had substantial experience of the working world, or both. This made for groups that were fascinating to teach. I would pick out two features that have implications for current educational issues.
First, since not all students on the course were graduates, they could not be awarded a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) on successful completion, but instead gained the lower-status Certificate in Education. So, people such as experienced chefs or retired merchant navy captains, who had not been to university but had managed very complex situations in the real world, were treated as if they had entered teacher training as school leavers. This was not because they had learned different things or were assessed in a different way from PGCE students. The distinction was made on the basis of the academic qualifications they arrived with. This gave me the first inkling that the hierarchy of levels that feature so strongly in English education might be problematic. There was clearly a prejudice in favour of some kinds of achievement, and some definitions of progression.
Second, while all students had to learn what was called 'general method' (that is, the techniques of questioning, structuring and differentiating relevant to all kinds of teaching), the 'special method' for vocational teachers included a whole raft of other requirements, such as understanding how practical skills could be developed and how industry-standard workshops or kitchens could be designed and used for teaching purposes. Garnett College had such teaching facilities, but my fear is that these days most vocational teacher training is generic, with special methods left to be acquired on their college placement, under the guidance of staff, some of whom do not have the time or resources of their equivalents at Garnett. Inspectors and research confirm that this is the most variable component of FE teacher training (see, for example, Gatsby Foundation, 2015).
The main content of vocational courses was clearly laid down and accepted, and was derived from qualifications produced by awarding bodies such as City and Guilds of London Institute (CGLI) or the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) who had well-established mechanisms for consulting employers and teachers in deciding on a syllabus. In the case of general studies, however, the curriculum had to be designed by the teachers, and varied with the needs of the learners, which were in turn influenced by their age, previous attainment and the occupational areas they were preparing to enter. It also had to be negotiated with the learners themselves, who frequently had to be persuaded of its value. It was no coincidence that, when in later years colleges had to cater for learners with no clear vocational or academic pathway ahead of them – many of whom were unemployed – it was often former general studies teachers who took a central role.
## The negotiated curriculum
I saw this in operation in a later job, as head of the 45-strong Communications and Liberal Studies Department at a large London College. Youth unemployment was escalating. Initially, the college had no fewer than three engineering departments (production, mechanical and electrical). But the economy was changing, and four years later there was only one. Sadly, many otherwise excellent staff found it difficult to adapt. They were used to being able to select students on the basis of their previous achievement and motivation, and were apprehensive about their ability to cope with new groups, many of whom had poor basic skills and were only there because they would lose their unemployment benefit if they did not attend. On the other hand, staff in the communications section of the department had developed, partly through innovative methods promoted by the Local Authority Inspectorate, such devices as learning workshops that were based on activities rather than formal lessons. All teachers of a given group were part of a course team that met as often as weekly. It could monitor how different parts of the course related and make changes if required. The agenda for the meetings was usually a cross-subject review of individual student progress and problems. This differed from my experience of secondary school where staff were grouped together on the basis of shared subjects in a way that made such learner-centred planning impossible.
## Rise and fall of UVP schemes – a case study
In 1976 the government announced the intention to test out approaches to what it called Unified Vocational Preparation (UVP) – 'unified' because the schemes were to be jointly planned and provided by education and training services. The rationale for the programme was that about half of those entering the labour market at 16 received no structured education or training. So UVP was aimed at these employees, rather than the unemployed.
In the same report (Unified Vocational Preparation: A Pilot Approach) the government announced the creation of a unit to undertake the development and review of further education curricula. It was argued that the FE system was 'largely responsive to perceived vocational needs', but that it was 'not well designed to respond to the curricular needs of those who enter further education as full-time students without a specific vocational commitment'. This unit became the Further Education Unit (FEU), which I joined as one of its first two development officers.
The issues that both FEU and UVP were asked to address have not gone away. But what has changed is that now the aim suggested by policy makers would be 'qualifications reform', rather than responding to 'curricular needs'. In developing guidance for UVP schemes my brief was to visit a range of locally developed schemes and to identify factors that led to success in very different contexts. This also contrasts with current approaches, in which change comes from the top down, rather than bottom up.
The UVP pilots were immensely varied, but they all focused on the needs of young people who had entered work at 16, but, because of a lacklustre school career, did not have qualifications necessary to enter a formal training programme, such as an apprenticeship. Because of this they also tended to miss out on the personal support that might come from having a tutor.
I can best illustrate some of the issues with an anecdote about a scheme involving production line operatives. It was run by the training manager, who was – significantly – also a volunteer youth worker. He ran informal group sessions on one afternoon a week, usually focused on how they were finding the adult and working world. One afternoon he noticed a youngster looking particularly glum, and gentle probing revealed that he planned to resign, 'because his supervisor had taken against him'. The previous week the young man had been unwell, and was unable to get to work. But when he did return, far from being sympathetic, his supervisor had been irritated. 'But I had really been ill, and took in a note from my mother to prove it.' When this situation was unpicked, with the help of the rest of the group, it became obvious that the problem was that the young man had not telephoned to report his absence on the first morning. As a result, the start of the production line was delayed. Perversely, if the young man had been an apprentice, his absence might have had less impact, but as an operative who only needed a day's training, he was important from day two. At school and as a reluctant learner, his absence might well have had little impact, and he naïvely adopted the school practice of a subsequent note from his mum.
This was talked through, and the young man was encouraged both to see the point of view of the supervisor, and to think about how bridges might now be mended. But should not correct protocol have been explained earlier? It turned out that it had been, along with what must have seemed a thousand other things on that first confused day. The group leader's youth worker training had enabled him to realise that it was often 'ineffective to offer solutions to problems that the young people had not yet got'. We now talk of teaching 'employability skills', which hardly covers the issue.
Similarly, a tutor on another UVP scheme introduced herself disarmingly as the 'sums lady'. Her analysis of conventional maths lessons was that learners were sitting untroubled in class when someone like her came in and gave them problems they otherwise would not have had. She attempted instead to offer maths as a series of solutions. She therefore ran a drop-in centre, to which young people on the scheme could come whenever they hit a problem in the workshop, or when they were attempting to work out how many more instalments they owed on a motor bike.
It became clear that a common factor on many successful schemes was a process of accompanying people through new experiences, helping them to reflect on them, and only then offering the learning that was demonstrably required. This 'experience–reflection–learning' process was the reverse of the pattern most participants had found in secondary school, where there was a well-intentioned attempt to offer the learning up-front, so as to pre-emptively improve the experience. But this required a degree of compliance and tolerance of boredom that many people do not have – quite understandably. I came to see it as the 'You'll wish you'd listened to me' syndrome. It also means that it is often a serious mistake to require young people to succeed at a broad-based academic programme before allowing them to engage with the adult and working world. Once confidence has been gained through success, even on a narrow front, ambitions widen.
Of course, tutors were not passive when it came to ensuring that learners had experiences that would be fruitful. Many UVP schemes included a brief residential course, often run by organisations such as the YMCA, which ensured that participants were taken out of their comfort zone. This had a powerful effect on apparently streetwise young people. It became apparent that much aggressive or dismissive behaviour was a means of avoiding the unknown.
## Using qualifications as a trigger for funding
Although UVP was never a large-scale scheme, many of the lessons learned were applied to programmes for the young unemployed. But a major problem was that they were approved and funded individually. As schemes grew in number because of the recession, an administratively simpler approach to funding was needed. It was decided that the newly arrived National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) could be used to define the required outcomes, and funding would be triggered by their achievement. At the same time there was (justifiable) pressure to increase efficiency in colleges. The net results were that only what NVQs measured was funded.
Traditionally, education and training programmes were defined in syllabus terms, as a series of topics, and taught over a specified period of time. It required an analysis of past papers to determine the kind of performance required, and only by following a prescribed course was it possible to gain the qualification. NVQs, on the other hand, based their approach on an analysis of what counted as effective performance in an occupational role. If assessment showed that this performance had been achieved, then it mattered not how this had happened.
This enfranchised many experienced workers who had acquired their skills 'on the job' and who did not have the time or resources to enrol on a formal course in order to gain the qualification their skills deserved. But the use of NVQs for courses for the young unemployed provided what has been called 'thin gruel'. In all too many cases the list of competences was treated as a learning programme. This did not allow for issues of transition from school to work, nor facilitate progression. The use of NVQs as triggers for funding and as performance indicators for providers – purposes for which they were not designed – only made things worse. For instance, it resulted in the demise of the short residential courses that contributed so much to social and team development. I cannot help comparing this cheeseparing to the importance we still attach to undergraduates going away to university, despite what this costs.
## Central funding and TVEI as a model for development
Another feature of these initiatives that cast a long shadow was the source of funding, the Manpower Services Commission (MSC). One reason for using this mechanism was that it enabled central government to direct resources to its destinations of choice, and to monitor their use. At that time the Education Department could only make a contribution to the rate support grant received by local authorities, with the request that they use it appropriately. Local politics determined where it actually went, which was often not towards disadvantaged or low-status groups. The MSC, on the other hand, could issue specific contracts and refuse to pay up if their requirements were not met.
I saw some advantages of this approach later when working as the vice-principal of Richmond tertiary college, which provided both academic and vocational education for all local residents over the age of 16. The Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) of 1983 was aimed at providing a new element to the curriculum of all 14–18-year-olds, which in our case meant working with our 11–16 secondary schools, and I acted as the TVEI co-ordinator for the area. The officials working at a national level for TVEI were clear about the aims we should work towards, but did not attempt to prescribe the best way to achieve these in our local circumstances. Instead we were asked to submit our own proposals. We did this in a hurry, and when interviewed about them were tactfully but firmly told that they did not pass muster, as we ourselves came to realise. We were, however, given the chance to re-submit, which we did successfully, largely by drawing on the ideas of the more lively of our teaching staff. Six months or so after the start of our scheme we were visited again by TVEI officials, who checked that we were still on track against our own plan, before signing the next cheque – though we were allowed to modify the plan by agreement and in the light of experience.
It has to be admitted that a lot of the most energetic development activity took place immediately before a visitation, at which time it became possible for the relatively junior staff, who had the ideas, to break though institutional inertia. TVEI has had a mixed press, often because of its diversity being perceived as a problem, but I still think that the balance it struck between the setting of national priorities and allowing for local initiatives and adaptation is something from which we could learn.
## The rise of pre-vocational education
In the late 1970s many colleges began to respond to a demand from young people for whom A Levels were not appropriate, and did not as yet have a firm vocational commitment, but who wished to stay on as full-time students in order to improve their basic education and to explore vocational options. A survey commissioned by the FEU from Garnett College identified over 30 different responses to this demand, and argued for some rationalisation. The one form of response that was seen to be inadequate was the one-year course that repeated school examinations, since this had a high failure and drop-out rate. An alternative approach that seemed to be more promising was what HMI called 'the creation of task-oriented (though not necessarily job-specific) learning situations'.
These were integrated courses, focused on a general occupational area. They were different from the school curriculum in not being subject-based, though they could be designed to achieve similar learning outcomes. In a sense they followed a primary school approach of teaching through topics, but whereas 'the Romans' might be a suitable topic at that stage, for 16–18-year-olds, something that helped with the transition to adult working life was much more appropriate. They became known as 'pre-vocational' courses or as 'vocational preparation'.
The FEU set up a study group, and its report, A Basis for Choice (ABC), recommended a flexible programme that could become more vocationally focused and job-specific as the year progressed, but that would share a core curriculum with similar provision. This core was a result of 'curriculum development by interview', in that its content and methods were culled from a variety of schemes already in operation. The core curriculum was not the same as what subsequently came to be known as 'key skills'. Instead it was expressed in the form of a checklist of:
* those experiences from which students should have the opportunity to learn; and
* the nature and level of performance students should be expected to achieve.
The aims of the core curriculum included literacy and numeracy 'adequate to meet the demands of contemporary society', but also 11 other areas including careers education, physical and manipulative skills, study skills and problem-solving, the acquisition of relevant moral values, and economic and political literacy. Taken as a whole this was perhaps over-ambitious, particularly as different occupational skills had to be added depending on the focus of the course, but at the time something similar was supported by a spectrum of opinion ranging from teacher unions to the CBI, and all the individual elements were being done successfully by somebody somewhere. Also, the term 'checklist' was intended to allow flexibility. For instance, careers education could take the form of job sampling, and not just visiting lecturers.
Currently, our ambitions for a continuation of general education post-16 have been reduced to requiring English and maths in the form of the GCSEs designed for 15-year-olds. The argument for this is that only GCSEs have currency with employers, but the problem is, of course, that the currency derives from the fact that not everyone gets them. They can therefore be used as a selection device, to reduce an impossibly long shortlist. It is not always that the content is what employers want for the jobs they have in mind.
What was recommended in ABC was a course design, rather than a qualification, though reporting by the use of a learner profile was suggested. Attempts subsequently to convert it into a Certificate of Pre-vocational Education (CPVE) were not entirely successful, but it remains an interesting example for a number of reasons:
* It was curriculum- and practitioner-led, rather than driven by a centrally designed qualification.
* It specified learning experiences, and not just outcomes.
* It proposed continuing general education via a vocational interest, rather than setting up general and vocational in opposition to one another.
* It emphasised the value of an integrated programme in which utility of one area of learning (e.g. mathematics) could be demonstrated by its application to another topic.
My view is that an approach that could have benefited many young people has been hindered by the power of an academic paradigm that means that integrated vocational courses are converted into isolated vocational subjects, assessed by methods that privilege certain forms of excellence. Also, the use of a vocational interest as a vehicle for continuing general education, and as a means of providing active careers guidance and smoothing the transition to adult working life, has been confused with the important but different need for more strongly vocational courses that meet specific employer needs. An unfortunate example of this is the Wolf Report of 2011 about 14–19 vocational courses that, while making pertinent criticisms about false equivalences and the malign results of funding individual qualifications rather than whole programmes, also judged pre-vocational courses as if they were intended to be a substitute for apprenticeships.
## The role of advisory bodies and the move to central control
When I first worked at FEU, and then returned there as CEO, the Board of Management was in the form of a representative body. The Chair was appointed by the Secretary of State, but other members were nominated by other organisations. There were members chosen by an employers' organisation (CBI) and by the TUC. Two education officers were proposed, respectively, by the Metropolitan Authorities (assumed to be left-leaning) and the County Councils (assumed to be Conservative). A college principal was balanced by someone from the teaching union. The inspectorate and the Education Department were each represented, but, despite all funding coming from the Department, it was accepted that approval for the programme of work and publications was a matter for the Board as a whole. The assumption at the time was that the curriculum had to be kept a non-political matter, and that, while a central agency might spread good practice and give guidance, the development process – and as we have seen the funding priorities – should be devolved. My sense was that there were still powerful if unspoken memories about the damage to civil liberties that could be done by totalitarian regimes, of the Left or the Right, if they could control what people learned.
The advantage of a representative system was that members usually arrived well briefed on agenda items by officers from their organisations, and could advise and challenge FEU staff on the basis of evidence. A disadvantage was that there was always a chance of members being there just because it was their turn.
The first sign of a changed climate came during the Thatcher government, when the Secretary of State objected to the appointment to the FEU Board of the nominee from the Metropolitan Authorities. The fact that there should be a nominee was still accepted, but the individual concerned was thought to have 'unhelpful' views. The next step was to decree that a new board should all be appointed in an individual capacity by the Minister, so – it was said – as to avoid the 'buggins turn' syndrome. Then, after the FEU began to be funded by the newly formed FE Funding Council (FEFC), I received a call asking about their procedure for approving FEU research reports. I had to explain that despite the source of our funding it was our Board that authorised publications, as well as agreeing which areas should be prioritised for R&D.
The basis for this prioritisation was extensive canvassing of views, via advisory groups and a network of regionally based officers. Also much of FEU's human and limited financial resources went into collaborative work involving college staff, which provided a good deal of useful intelligence. But FEFC thought that these co-workers should be seen as customers, and that FEU's independence was in fact a 'licence for the FEU to choose for itself what to become involved in and whether or not to be helpful'. The answer to the question 'helpful to whom?' turned out to be the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ), whose roll-out of the new qualifications were going more slowly than planned. Although FEU had published a number of guides on the curriculum implications of NVQ-type competence-based qualifications, the colleges also needed help on other things that were not part of NCVQ's agenda.
The assumption was that customer requirements would be demonstrated by the workings of the market, rather than through consultation. However, when the time came, FEFC did not create such a market by providing funding to colleges themselves to commission R&D. Instead, FEU's successor organisations have been funded by direct grants from a central agency plus individual government contracts for specific activities. In effect this made government itself the customer, and this is now the current pattern, so that an agency can be closed by a simple withdrawal of contracts.
Another mechanism by which power over educational development has been drawn to the centre is the constant reorganisation of bodies that might otherwise develop a will or a culture of their own. The FEU existed for 15 years, a remarkably long period by modern standards. Five successor organisations have been, and four of them gone again, in the succeeding 20 years.
Since its creation, the FEU as an advisory body had been joined in the educational firmament by other much more powerful organisations. The NCVQ had been set up in 1986 to regulate vocational qualifications. In 1988, the National Curriculum Council (NCC) was set up with the authority to specify the content of school curricula, alongside the Schools Examinations and Assessment Council (SEAC), which oversaw the qualifications system. Personally, I valued the lack of a legislative role for the FEU. It meant that the Unit's influence on practitioners could only be based on analysis and evidence. For government, the Unit could usefully go fly kites. If an idea proved valuable, government could adopt it as its own. If not, it could be disowned.
## Balancing curriculum and qualifications development: the case of core skills
There was a brief but interesting period during which all four organisations mentioned above worked together to formulate a 'core skills' policy for 16–19-year-olds in the areas of communication, problem-solving, personal skills, numeracy, information technology and a modern foreign language. Note that this list is closer to the FEU's suggestions for a 'core curriculum' than the current narrower definition, which concentrates on the subjects of English and maths.
In 1989, government (namely, John Mcgregor, Secretary of State for Education) asked NCC to lead the work. My observation of the process was that sometimes the FEU and NCVQ formed an alliance to emphasise the special features and needs of vocational students, and sometimes FEU and NCC formed an alliance to emphasise the need for curriculum-led as well as assessment-led development. Structuring the learning for pedagogic purposes led to different patterns from when content was structured for assessment purposes. Not all that could be assessed could be equally easily taught. Conversely, there were learning experiences that were known to develop some important qualities that could not easily be assessed for qualification purposes. This core-skills initiative eventually ran into the immovable barrier of A Levels. I attended many meetings where it became clear that it was felt that studying A Levels, particularly in the humanities, was itself a guarantee of a broad education. Once again the academic paradigm was at work. Core skills were needed for vocational students 'because they were only studying one subject'. In fact they were following one vocational course, which might cover, among other things, the social and economic impact of the vocational sector in question, the underpinning science, the numeracy and literacy skills required to succeed as an employee, and the history of the sector's development – a broader programme than some A-Level combinations.
The development process itself, where a useful tension existed between things being curriculum and assessment-led, has since become almost entirely replaced by a focus on qualifications reform. More than this, qualifications design has become centralised, not only with little initial involvement of teachers, but even without a feedback loop that would allow them to modify the design subsequently, in light of their knowledge of learners and their needs.
This has resulted in a series of what I call, by analogy with the motor industry, a series of 'product recalls'. The pattern is remarkably consistent. A product is issued without piloting and without the involvement of those with experience of curriculum design and delivery, often because they are defined as being 'part of the problem'. More recently, even examining bodies have been denied initial involvement, because employers or universities must be 'in the driving seat'. The development process is seen as being linear, and not iterative, as it would be in any other field of development.
Within a very few years the product is discovered to be over-complex, too expensive and failing to achieve its original purpose. Then there is a fundamental review, usually conducted by one of the great and the good from outside the responsible organisation. But this was not planned into the process, and comes after many students have been used as guinea pigs.
The National Curriculum itself was reviewed in this way by Dearing, NCVQs by Beaumont, A-Level reform (misnamed 'Curriculum 2000') by Tomlinson, GNVQs by Capey, and Modern Apprenticeships by Cassells. Sometimes, a product launched with great fanfare is simply discontinued. This has happened recently to 14–19 Diplomas and to the Qualifications and Credit Framework. The more considered and collaborative development processes of other countries are sometimes criticised on the grounds of greater delay and expense, but this is to ignore the cost and damage caused by the need to review our programmes so soon after launch.
The example of 14–19 Diplomas also illustrates the ignorance of FE and its provision mentioned earlier. They were developed after Prime Minister Blair had announced that the recommendations of the Tomlinson Committee about the creation of a single 14–19 framework were not to be implemented, because of a perceived threat to A Levels. In evidence before a select committee, the then Secretary of State was briefed to say this about the proposed new qualifications:
It is the bit that is missing from our education system. We have had, on the one side, theoretical study and, on the other side, workplace training, job training, and there has been nothing that mixed the theoretical with the applied to any great degree.
(Hansard, 2006–2007)
Similarly, in an article published soon afterwards, the official responsible for overseeing our qualifications system claimed that, without the Diplomas, 'the alternative to GCSEs was training courses' (Boston, 2007), and in his select committee evidence the responsible civil servant even claimed that some 14–16-years-olds were 'spending perhaps half or two thirds of their timetable' on 'things that are clearly narrowly focused vocational training' (John Coles, Hansard, ibid.).
All of this was, of course, plain wrong, and ignored the previous government's own GNVQ initiative, let alone the long-established BTEC courses that preceded and then outlived both of the centrally designed schemes.
## Summary and conclusions
I have identified a number of factors that have remained relatively constant over my working lifetime: invisibility of FE and its courses; neglect of half the 14–19 cohort; the diversity of FE; and putting the blame on colleges themselves for this, despite the fact that diversity has protected the traditional role of universities and sixth forms.
Among the things that have changed are: a reduction in representative decision making bodies, and their replacement by individuals appointed by ministers; a shift from curriculum-led change to qualifications-driven 'reform', where qualifications are used both as performance measures and triggers for funding; and an increase in top-down developments and the influence of central government on content.
I am all too aware that I have illustrated these things by reference to a very small part of FE's activities: the area of pre-vocational education. For a broader perspective, see the 2011 Report of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning. But my work as a consultant in other areas of FE over the past 20 years confirms that they do have broader and current application. There are ways of addressing these issues. Development work should be iterative not linear, and both successful and abortive initiatives should be independently evaluated and lessons identified. 'Reform' should not be solely qualifications-driven but should be balanced by the need to identify suitable learning processes. Vocational qualifications should both embody national standards and allow some room for locally designed options to meet specifically local needs and opportunities.
Above all, the domination of the academic paradigm in definitions of excellence, curriculum structures and assessment methods should be recognised and reduced. The value to many of our citizens of continuing general education through a broadly defined pre-vocational programme as well as academic subjects should be recognised. At the same time, appropriately different definitions of excellence should be used for the more strongly vocational programmes being followed by those already committed to a defined career. This should include access to industry standard equipment and staff who are both skilled teachers and credible practitioners in their occupational area. Both will require regular updating. This will, of course, not come cheaply.
## Note
1 Vince Cable, quoted in Brian Wheeler, 'Officials wanted to axe FE colleges – Vince Cable', BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29496475
## References
Boston, K., TES, 30 March 2007.
Foster Review, 2005, Realising the Potential: A Review of the Future Role of FE Colleges. London: DfES.
Gatsby Foundation, 2015, Mentoring and Coaching for Teachers in the FE and Skills Sector in England. London: Gatsby Foundation.
Hansard, 2006–2007, House of Commons Education and Skills Committee. Fifth report of session 2006–2007.
Kennedy Report, 1997, Learning Works: Widening Participation in Further Education. Coventry: FEFC.
Moser Report, 1999, A Fresh Start: Improving Literacy and Numeracy. London: DfEE.
Ofsted Annual Report, 2013/2014. London: Further Education and Skills.
Wolf Report, 2011, Review of Vocational Education. London: DfE.
# [Part IV
Accountability, examinations, qualifications](content.xhtml#bck_part4)
# [10
Assessment](content.xhtml#bck_Ch010)
The need to 'do nothing'
Tim Oates
## Introduction: constant change
This chapter explores the role that assessment and qualifications reform has assumed in overall reform policy in England, focusing particularly on the period 1980 to the present day. The analysis will suggest that its role – already assumed to be substantial by analysts and educationalists (for example, Mansell, 2007) – has been more dominant than presumed.
To make this chapter into a listing of the myriad changes to qualifications and qualifications policy would be both to render it into a boring catalogue, but also to reproduce a historical record that is more meticulously produced by other sources (see Cambridge Assessment, 2014, Register of Change).
A brief look will be sufficient to indicate the constant change that has occurred. The year 1985 saw the end of the CEE (Certificate of Extended Education); 1988 the full introduction of GCSEs; 1994 A* grade introduced; in 1996 GNVQs were introduced, a heavily outcomes-oriented qualification influenced by NVQ developments, and then withdrawn in 2007; Advanced Extension Awards were introduced in 2002 and then withdrawn in 2009; key skills at Levels 1 and 2 were introduced in general education in 2000 and withdrawn in 2013; Diplomas were first taught in 2008 and all Diplomas withdrawn in 2013. A Levels were fully modularised in 2000, and then made linear from 2015. Merely some highlights.
And . . . tiering has been reconfigured at various times in GCSEs; calculators have been allowed and then removed from GCSEs on a number of occasions; coursework serially has been relaxed, tightened and transformed; modularisation has been adopted universally in A Level and GCSE and then abandoned. January sessions for general qualifications became widely used and were withdrawn in 2014. In 2015 there came the removal of controlled assessment; and also in this year, discussion by Labour of 'ditching GCSEs within ten years' (The Guardian, 22 April 2015).
Journalist Peter Wilby's broadside on New Labour thinking targets exactly the tendency upon which I want to focus in this chapter – educational reform policy and accountability arrangements that have undue emphasis on assessment and qualifications. According to Peter Wilby (The Guardian, 14 June 2011), it was Michael Barber who helped to write prime minister-to-be Tony Blair's first speech on education during the 1994 leadership contest and, in 1996, published The Learning Game, which was virtually a handbook for Labour education ministers. The phrase 'standards, not structures' was his, as was the focus on failure: failing councils, failing schools, failing pupils. 'Serious debate about failure', he said in 1995, 'is . . . a precondition of success.'
Michael Barber was right to home in on the huge disparities in attainment – for example in GCSEs – across the education system. In 1989 only 30 per cent of 16–17-year-olds were attaining 5+ GCSE grades A–C (Payne, 2001), with significant variation by school type, ethnic group and social background (Gillborn and Mirza, 2000). But a rightful focus on equity and attainment, using qualification outcomes as an indication of educational quality, became an exaggerated focus on assessment and qualifications as instruments of improvement and reform.
## Complexity of form and function
The use of qualifications and assessment as major instruments of government education policy is not new (see Sahlgren, 2014). Such use intensified in the 1950s, with the introduction of A Levels and O Levels, following the Education Act of the mid-1940s. Although major examinations at 16 and 18 have continued to be produced and owned by independent assessment bodies, successive governments have increased levels of state regulation of the form and content of the examinations, principally through the specification of codes and criteria, and development of increasingly elaborate national regulatory organisations.
But, despite this escalation of central control, it would be quite wrong to cast assessment and public examinations simply as a crude tool of government policy and, particularly, accountability policy. The reality is far more complex. Much of the complexity derives from the multiple functions that are carried by assessment. Other elements of complexity derive from who owns and drives the form and content of qualifications. Newton outlines 20 functions of national assessment (Newton, 2007), while Oates and Coles trace 40 functions of general and vocational qualifications (CEDEFOP, 2010). Some of these functions relate to curriculum intent – that assessment embodies and conveys certain curriculum intentions (e.g. to focus on specific knowledge, skills and understanding). Others relate to standards – assessment conveying 'improvement' targets, being used to monitor 'national standards' and so on.
I am not arguing for complete removal of this complexity. It is likely that the assessments will, in England as in many other nations, continue to carry multiple functions. Rather, I am arguing for recognition of the over-dependence in improvement and reform policy, on assessment and qualifications, and the relative neglect of other factors.
Qualifications and assessment have carried an enormous policy burden from 1988 to the present day. They have been principal instruments of the accountability agenda. Indeed, assessment has been far more dominant in accountability than has generally been recognised. Using public examinations in target-setting and for measuring teacher, school and national performance is an obvious example of assessment-led instruments of control. The role of national assessment at KS1, 2 and 3 in target-setting and performance measurement also was clear. Less obvious was the form of the National Curriculum itself. It is misleadingly titled – the term 'curriculum' is technically a misnomer – and this is no trivial matter. Used correctly, the term 'curriculum' actually refers to the totality of the experience of learning – it encompasses aims, content, methods, assessment, evaluation. Curriculum theory further explains the distinctions between intended curriculum, enacted curriculum and actual learning outcomes. It encompasses 'taught curriculum' and 'untaught curriculum' as elements of the experience of schooling. This is not an over-elaborated view of curriculum. Understanding these elements and the interaction between them is a vital part of understanding the performance of schools and of national arrangements. The National Curriculum obviously states content – the things that should be taught – and it does determine, to a degree, and in certain areas, the pedagogical approach. For example, requiring experimentation in science and development of phonological awareness in English does carry strong implications for pedagogy.
But the National Curriculum is not a curriculum. It is a framework of standards – of desired outcomes. Other countries use a far more accurate term, describing frameworks of outcomes as 'standards'. The moment this term is used, and the current arrangements for national assessment at KS1 and KS2 are added to the 'national standards', it can be seen that the National Curriculum is far more assessment-oriented than curriculum-oriented. It is a framework of standards and assessment that determines aspects of curriculum. It is not a curriculum, it is certainly not the 'School Curriculum' (Oates, 2010). Seen through this more accurate lens, Michael Barber's drive towards standards can be seen as policy pressure on schools that is fundamentally about assessment.
Only with the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies did government action around the National Curriculum begin substantial direct intervention in the form of pedagogy in schools. The Numeracy Strategy appears responsible for a minor elevation and peaking of mathematics attainment in Timss, but remains controversial in respect of curriculum control. John Bangs, the then NUT head of education, regarded the strategies as invaluable professional development support to teachers, while other educationalists regard it as inappropriate subversion of schools' autonomy (Whitty, 2006). As a non-statutory part of government policy, the Strategies do not detract from the fact that the main legislative instrument of government – the National Curriculum and its allied national testing – remains an assessment-oriented instrument; a framework of standards, accompanied by testing arrangements.
Research on the many advantages of having a National Curriculum (for example, Hopkins, 2001) shows many who cite a 'general culture of high expectations' as being an important part of the post-1988 era, with 'high expectations' intensified as a result of the New Labour focus on 'standards'. But while a general culture of high expectations also characterises other high-performing jurisdictions (OECD, 2006), the impact of a general concern for high standards in England has been moderated by the specific impact of detailed accountability measures and the focus on examination standards as the key metric for judging whether 'high expectations' are being met. In other words, the international evidence suggests that a general concern for high expectations is vital and can lead to a general elevation of attainment for all learners. This, however, can be distorted by an intense emphasis on specific measures, leading to a dysfunctional focus on specific learners and/or a very instrumental focus on a restricted set of outcomes (Mansell, 2007; Select Committee, 2008). This combination of assessment and account ability requirements has pushed the English system into a highly outcomes-focused educational culture – in other words, heavily assessment-biased.
During the late 1990s and first decade after 2000, the 'grade C/D borderline problem' emerged widely in the system: the focus on GCSE C/D borderline candidates (capable, with highly targeted support, of just getting into 5 A*–C territory) led to relative neglect of those well above the threshold and well below it (Mansell, op cit). At one time, the then Department for Education and Skills was advocating this focus on C/D borderline candidates as a key improvement strategy despite its known adverse impact on equity (Gillborn and Youdell, 2000). Government failed, for over a decade, to refine the measures into a more equitable form, despite the obvious nature of the emerging problems (Oates, 2014).
The second strong moderation of a general culture of high expectations was the distorting effect of highly instrumental teaching to the test (both in national assessment and public examinations). Again well documented (for example, in evidence to the Select Committee for Education, 2012), the impact has been wide ranging: general narrowing of the curriculum; dramatic rise in strategic retakes in both GCSE and A Levels; narrow assessment-driven instruction; and deleterious impact on both the relation between learning resources and qualifications and the quality of those resources.
'Curriculum narrowing' has manifested itself in a number of ways. 'Teaching to the specification' has increased dramatically through a combination of teacher imperatives to focus on outcomes in accountability and pupils' demands. The latter usually is expressed along the lines of 'Why should I do this?' – 'Because it's in the examination' and combines with a recognition that high grades are of increasing importance in entry to HE and in the labour market. And this narrowing of focus is taking place despite evidence that teaching beyond the syllabus enhances the chances of higher grades. The collapse of 'curriculum thinking' to 'qualifications thinking' within institutions has affected student demand (during the 2010 review of the National Curriculum, evidence cited the dominant lack of student motivation for uncertificated components of the 14–16 curriculum) as well as introducing undue narrowness into overall curriculum development in the 16–19 phase.
## Objective base to pedagogic approaches
In developing this thesis, I will need to spend a short time on the issue of an objective base to pedagogic approaches. Put simply, is there a means of establishing 'effective education', and what is the role of assessment in this? The argument frequently deployed in education is that it is complex, and thus forms of enquiry that seek to establish the superiority of one approach to teaching and learning over another are not possible (Stringer, 2007). It is clear that the complexity argument is correct (Oates, 2010) – education is affected by an interaction of natural phenomena (brain development, limits posed by working memory, etc) and social phenomena (dispositions to learn, parental support to learning, organisation of learning, etc). An issue such as class size is trammelled with this interaction and complexity (Blatchford et al., 2003). But it does not follow that there is no means of discriminating the impact, in specific settings, of specific approaches to teaching and learning, of identifying vital educational imperatives such as the early acquisition of complex language, and of identifying specific facets of educational provision, such as the subject expertise of teachers, as being associated with 'desirable outcomes' (Bell and Cordingly, undated). This is heavily contested territory. The conflict over the role of RCTs (Randomised Controlled Trials) has highlighted the failure of our educational establishment to tackle effectively the question of 'what kind of system are we dealing with when we attempt to understand and manage education?'. This chapter is not designed to work through forensically the details of the debate; I am intending to extract matters associated with assessment, and with change in education. I am building an argument that asserts 'we need dependable assessment to determine the impact of what we do in education'.
Lapsing into 'nothing can be certain; all is relative' (an extreme version of post-modern sentiment) is not unheard-of in the education establishment – both from teachers and from academics. This, however, denies even the possibility of rational action and meaningful communication. A further, more moderated version is that the complexity of education renders systematic enquiry and discrimination between approaches impossible, or so heavily compromised that the endeavour is fruitless. Nowhere is this sentiment more evident than in the area of comparative education, when examining the features of different national systems in the context of PISA. But – although ruling out discrimination merely on contingent complexity rather than a matter of principle – this position denies the power of underlying method and of work that has shown us, for example, the importance of early language learning and high facility in reading (Sylva et al., 2003). If crude empiricism is inadequate, the pessimism of post-modernism is irrational, and the relativist leanings of much contemporary educational theory is less confident than it should be. What body of theory helps us with careful convergence on 'what works', and deliberate management of change in education, rather than a lapse into being passive victims of events?
## A 'critical realist' perspective
In my own work on review of policy development in England, and on comparison of national systems, critical realism has provided some important anchor points. It enables us to understand that, in natural systems, laws apply independently of human thought and action, while in social systems, our theories are part of those social systems, and affect the processes that arise (Bhaskhar, 1998). In natural systems, apprehended by our thought but independent of them, laws apply – Boyle's Law, the Beer-Lambert Law. In social systems, tendencies apply, not laws, and things will persist when all other things are equal – the ceteris paribus provision.
A simple but powerful example is the history of the education of women. Start with an assumption that women are not deserving of education and, as a result of being denied access to formal education, they will demonstrably not know as much of the standard canon as men – they are 'less intelligent'. This appears clearly to justify that they are not deserving of education, since they are apparently of 'lesser intelligence'. The theory about women's abilities actually significantly determines their abilities. But this is not a natural law, it is simply a tendency – one that can be utterly disrupted by adoption of another theory – for example, that women are equally deserving of high-quality education. The 'all other things being equal' principle is important for analysis of change in education. Women will appear less intelligent for the time that the idea of inferiority is dominant. Shift that view, and a lot of things change. What we think and do seriously affects the way in which the education system behaves – and education is affected by a diverse set of ideas and practices, determining the shape of its many features.
Now, a further illustration of ceteris paribus: all other things being equal or held constant. It is true that a specific system of schooling with a late age of starting does not need to be fraught with discussion about practices of how children acquire complex language, if the family culture has a strong tradition of literacy and ensures the majority of children acquire complex language before they start school. But if culture and practices in the family shift, for example because parents feel they need to work extended hours to maintain their standard of living, then schooling can make no assumptions, and had better respond, and fast. Responding to such shifts in complex systems is absolutely the stuff of effective domestic policy (Sylva, op cit).
'All other things being equal' is nowhere more evident than in vocational education and training, where attempts to increase volumes in employer-based training for young people constantly have been adversely affected by shifts in incentives and drivers, emanating from changes in the nature of production, the labour market, profitability and a raft of other economic factors. Vocational education and training also illustrate how 'all other things being equal' can highlight contradictions within the different arms of education and training policy: the drive to very high levels of participation in higher education sends strong messages that the vocational route from 16 is of lower status, and that it is more important to gain a higher education degree of any kind rather than to attend to alignment of learning with the labour market – thus undermining the drive to high-quality, long-duration, employer-based initial vocational education and training.
Because of the way in which our ideas about social systems actually are part of those systems, education is indeed bewilderingly complex. It is not only continually buffeted by external factors (social change, economic issues, demographics), it is also constantly disrupted by internal shifts in ideas and assumptions, theory and practice, where these ideas profoundly affect both the way education operates and the outcomes it achieves.
Critical realist perspectives help us to understand that some things are not arbitrary – the physiology of early and adolescent development, the importance of complex language in cognition – and that other things will only hold true while certain other things are held constant – ceteris paribus: all other things being held constant.
So . . . rather than lapsing into 'well . . . it's all so complex that we can't really know anything or predict anything, then . . .' or the assumption that we are condemned to endless conflict about ideas and to pendulum swings in practice, I want to place assessment in a special position. I believe that it can be and should be held more constant, and that this is an asset for policy makers, not withdrawal of a policy tool.
## Making control easier
Assessment IS easier to control than many elements of education systems. This makes it a very attractive target of reform policy – the first thing to which politicians and reformers turn when they wish to effect change in education and training arrangements. This ease of control stems from many aspects of assessment, but not least from the fact that when it is done, and how it is done are subject to greater regulatory control and social consensus than many other aspects of education. Pupils, parents, educationalists and employers have long agreed that exams should be administered in a highly consistent manner. The fairness and accuracy, that are at the heart of formal 'qualification', are predicated on such consistency. Dependability in recognition of achievement and in signalling attainment is essential to the very notion of 'qualification'. It can be controlled by policy makers since it is a tightly managed set of arrangements in which the participants 'follow the rules' and the controlling agencies have a commitment to and interest in ensuring that those rules are followed. The obvious temptation of policy makers is to use this established, highly proceduralised apparatus as a tool of transformation. With the (quite rational) notion that the washback from assessment is prompt and powerful, policy makers can impose relatively cheap and simple reform on arrangements. The Coalition government's use of the English Baccalaureate requirement (The Guardian, 17 October 2013) was entirely consistent with this approach to reform. Incredibly cheap – nothing more than a statement delivered from the centre regarding the set of GCSE results by which schools would be judged, with a re-casting of data already collected from schools – and with no legislative change required, the government effected a massive and overnight shift in the curriculum preoccupations of secondary schools (The Guardian, 11 January 2011). Timetables and option choices were re-cast, teachers were told that their subjects were no longer a priority. Entry patterns to GCSE underwent a seismic shift. Ministers were themselves shocked at the speed and extent of the re-alignment of arrangements. It appeared to be a strong confirmation of the power of assessment-led system transformation.
## Diversity of educational arrangements – the attraction of assessment
Let us now take a brief diversion into the peculiar diversity of education arrangements in England. It provides another element of the rationale for leaving assessment alone, and keeping it constant. The system in England is large – an annual cohort of over 600,000, compared with 70,000 in Finland and 40,000 in Singapore. But the diversity of arrangements is a feature of England that seldom is commented upon in analyses of reform and development. England has retained the 11-plus in some counties (Lincolnshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent and other minor areas) while others have varying forms of comprehensive education. Some areas deliberately have retained small rural primary schools (Cambridgeshire) while others have embarked on a programme of closures (Worcestershire, Wiltshire). Some areas have retained and are committed to middle schools, some have seen growth in school sixth forms, while others have ensured the growth of sixth form colleges. The age of institutional transfer thus varies considerably across England. UTCs have introduced 14–19 as a new 'phase'. FE colleges are the location of around 30 per cent of A-Level provision and 10 per cent of HE provision (AoC, 2014). The academy and free school developments have increased variation in structural form. Preschool provision is highly diverse, with an increase in nursery provision in primary schools in a number of areas. Local 'economies' of education vary widely, depending on local 'market' composition (for example, in a given area, the existence of dominant independent schools with day school provision can strongly affect local institutional form and policy). The size of institutions varies greatly, as do governance and management forms (federated schools, academy chains, and so on).
The DfE website gives the following description of variants of state schools. The most common ones are (www.gov.uk/national-curriculum):
* community schools, controlled by the local council and not influenced by business or religious groups;
* foundation schools, with more freedom to change the way they do things than community schools;
* academies, run by a governing body, independent from the local council – they can follow a different curriculum; and
* grammar schools, run by the council, a foundation body or a trust – they select all or most of their pupils based on academic ability, and there is often an entrance exam.
And this does not include the many variants of independent schools or reflect the variation among the group of schools that includes Montessori, Steiner, Buddhist and others. And a careful look at the descriptions shows that important dimensions of variation are present in each of the categories – governance, form, curriculum restriction, etc.
Structural variations are joined by variations in curriculum requirement. Unlike Finland, English law does not stipulate the number of hours that should be devoted to specific subjects. The National Curriculum does not apply to independent schools, academies and free schools. But there is more. The 2010 curriculum review detected further dimensions of variation – profound variation running deeply into beliefs regarding the aims of education, models of and assumptions about ability, models of progression, use of teaching assistants, vocational versus academic provision, and other fundamentals.
It is thus hardly surprising that, for any given central innovation (Reading Recovery, Assessing Pupils Progress, the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, Diploma qualifications), impact is highly variable (Ofsted, 2002). Unlike teaching practice – action distributed across thousands of classrooms – the machinery and implementation strategy for qualifications reform are highly proximal to government – qualifications specifications can readily be reviewed and changed, and then fed into an established, highly structured implementation apparatus run by examination boards. In contrast, the means of directly affecting a system factor such as teacher quality in the existing teacher workforce requires sophisticated policy formation and a highly elaborate implementation strategy.
Such a high level of diversity is not present in smaller, high-performing systems such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland. Crucially, my own research in Singapore and Finland shows less diversity in ideas about education and children, particularly regarding ability and models of progression.
It is difficult to exaggerate the challenge that this many-layered diversity poses to policy makers – it ranges across the structure of schooling, the forms of schooling, organisation of learning and ideas about education. As Andy Green (2013) has pointed out, this variation is an enduring feature of the system in England deriving from the way in which modern schooling emerged in the country, and contrasts significantly with the form of emergence of education arrangements in France, USA and Germany. The acute and chronic diversity in arrangements is not going to go away, either overnight or in the near future – the pedigree of the diversity means that it is entrenched, and yet heavily contested (Aston et al., 2013). It poses a genuine challenge to centrally derived measures aimed at innovation and improvement. The effectiveness of improvement strategies tends to be heavily dependent on context. And context in England varies dramatically. Initiatives that reach deeply down into practice are expensive, complex to manage, and recently have been perceived, by both teachers and politicians, as intrusive – prime examples being the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies (Whitty, 2006). In the face of all of these factors, using assessment and qualifications and major instruments of reform looks, to policy makers, like a very attractive option – apparently cheap, and relatively easy.
## Change in assessment: a deceptively seductive option
So . . . cheap and easy, but I believe that change in assessment and qualifications is a deceptively seductive option for effecting change in key aspects of the system such as quality of learning, reduction of within-school and between-school variation and so on.
The first reason has already been outlined: the impact is variable and unpredictable, partly as a result of naïve dependence on a 'trickle down' effect – erroneous assumptions that educationalists always will respond in an optimum way to the challenges of new assessments, and partly as a result of the diversity of the settings into which the new assessment falls.
The second reason is of considerable importance. Assessment is one of the ways in which evidence of the impact of teaching and learning is created. Investigation of and experimentation on human cognition require measurement, as does investigation and development in education (see Mellanby and Theobald, 2014). It is no accident that, in the USA, it is the American Psychological Association that publishes The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (APA, 2014). We need to know the impact of educational development and improvement strategies – and measurement is a key element of this. I am NOT arguing that public examinations and related assessments measure all the outcomes in which we should be interested when investigating and enhancing learning. What I AM arguing is that, for the outcomes that are legitimately assessed by public examinations and assessments, consistency of measurement is vital.
For investigation of whether a change in approach to learning yields benefit, valid and consistent measurement of outcomes is an essential part of method. This is a tenet of psychological research, and is a methodological aspect of many experimental and evaluative studies in education (Mellanby, op cit; Sylva 1999). I believe that the same discipline should enter our thinking about routine educational assessment – public examinations and national tests. These are the means by which we can measure desirable improvements in our system, as well as producing dependable descriptions of what pupils know, understand and can do. This supports an evaluative function, and a communication or signalling function – the latter to be used in admission to programme decisions (e.g. for higher education), and labour market selection. If the measures constantly are changing, we limit our ability to make rational decisions about what works in our teaching and learning, and compromise the dependability of the information that is used in admission and selection.
Although it is far more difficult to reach deeply down into our system with sympathetic and effective innovation targeted directly at practice – innovation that will enhance children's reading, scientific understanding, creative thinking, and so on – it is possible to measure with precision the impact of such innovation if valid and consistent measures are used to detect improvement in outcomes. And this kind of consistent measurement needs to be available over an extended period of time, since educational transformation typically occurs over years, not months, and the improvement often is something that society wishes to sustain. This sustained consistency of measurement is an essential basis of PISA, Timss and PIRLS. In public examinations, Finland provides a fascinating foil to the relentless change in post-16 qualifications in England. Finland's high-stakes leaving examination at 18/19, the Finnish Abitur, has at its core four external examinations in subject disciplines, with one of these being in native language. These exams resemble A Levels extremely closely, in being highly discipline-focused. But the salient feature of the Abitur is that it has not changed in function or form, in any significant way, for over 100 years. Through the periods of relatively slow improvement and through periods of deliberate transformation of all other aspects of the education system, this key measure of outcome was kept stable. During the 1980s, throughout the move from highly selective education to wholesale, committed adoption of a form of Asian comprehensive education, the Abitur remained a consistent reference point in the system. Other aspects of the system – teaching approaches, educational resources, school form, etc – all were attended to directly, not assumed to be transformed through radical change in qualifications. This provides an extreme contrast with England, where assessment-led change has assumed such dominance, and difficult confounding has occurred as a result of assessment reform being used as the main stimulant of change while the assessments simultaneously are depended upon as the prime means of measuring outcomes.
## Problems of change
It is important to recognise that this does not condemn assessment and public qualifications to moribund ossification. Measurement through assessment can be introduced in new areas of disciplines and of human learning, existing measures can be updated, and new measures equated with old ones. But there are limits on this equating, as demonstrated profoundly by the controversial contemporary challenge of linking standards in the new suite of post-2015 1–9 GCSEs with the previous suite of pre-2015 A*-G GCSEs. The tendency in England is to change the entire suite of A Levels and/or GCSEs at the same time, rather than changing specific subjects according to their own necessary timeframe – for example, when new knowledge is introduced to a specific discipline (Oates, 2010). Equating and maintaining standards become highly problematic when wholesale reform of examinations is effected (Bramley, 2013). And the system has been subjected to repeated waves of this wholesale, general reform. Two key elements of 'national standards' – standards over time, and standards between awarding bodies – are threatened by wholesale change in qualifications – adversely affecting confidence in qualifications, the signalling function of qualifications, and the ability to measure the impact of reform measures outside assessment. The recent controversy over the sample assessment materials for reformed maths GCSE – with two of the three national bodies expressing concern that the 'race to the bottom' was opened up by the Regulator's chosen approval process for the new qualifications (The Times Educational Supplement, 6 March 2015) – demonstrates the serious risks posed by all-embracing, ambitious reform processes.
## A conclusion?
There is a strong philosophical, historical and practical rationale for stating this: that changing all things all the time, in a highly diverse education system, will result in chaotic, incoherent development. Of course specific assessments have to be designed well, operate effectively and be refined through evaluation. But endless arbitrary change seriously disrupts system coherence. The very ease with which assessment can be changed from the centre is actually a rationale for it being the one thing that is kept as stable as possible. Stability in assessment should be seen as an asset by policy makers. It should be viewed as an anchor point in a constantly shifting sea – an anchor point that enables us to understand and respond to all the other shifts that occur. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Without consistent measurement, policy makers will not have dependable intelligence on the system. Given the complexity and diversity of English arrangements, enhancing the quality of learning requires sophisticated transformation policies, sensitive to context. After three decades, assessment-led transformation policy has not yet delivered the step-change in system performance that preoccupies policy makers (see The Telegraph, 8 July 2013). Changing assessment has at the same time been ineffective in raising underlying quality and diminished the key quality essential to assessment – the ability to measure key educational outcomes with consistency and precision. Assessment change rips educational capacity from the system, as textbooks, teaching notes, 'polished' lessons all are discarded. As each transformation through assessment has failed to deliver, policy makers have not undertaken radical re-thinking of assessment-led change, they have lapsed into Soviet-style 'one more push'. It is time to realise that stability in assessment and qualifications is a crucial element of a balanced programme of system improvement.
## References
AoC, 2014, College key facts 2014/2015. London: Association of Colleges.
APA, 2014, The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Aston, H., Easton, C. and Sims, D., 2013, What Works in Enabling School Improvement? The Role of the Middle Tier. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research.
Bell, M. and Cordingly, P., undated, 'Characteristics of high performing schools'. Coventry: CUREE.
Bhaskhar, R., 1998, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, 3rd edn. London: Routledge.
Blatchford, P., Basset, P., Goldstein, H. and Martin, C., 2003, 'Are class size differences related to pupils' educational progress and classroom practices?' British Educational Research Journal, 29 (5) pp. 709–30.
Bramley, T., 2013, Maintaining Standards in Public Examinations: Why it Is Impossible to Please Everyone. Cambridge: Cambridge Assessment.
Cambridge Assessment, 2014, Register of Change Report, Cambridge Assessment.
CEDEFOP, 2010, 'Changing qualifications – a review of qualification policies and practices', Report, European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Luxembourg. Gillborne, D. and Mirza, H., 2000, Education Inequality: mapping race, class gender and inequality. London: Ofsted.
Gillborne, D. and Youdell, D., 2000, Rationing Education: policy, practice, reform, and equity. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Green, A., 2013, Education and State Formation, 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hopkins, D., 2001, School Improvement for Real. London: Routledge.
Mansell, W., 2007, Education by Numbers: The Tyranny of Testing. New York: Politico's.
Mellanby, J. and Theobald, K., 2014, Education and Learning: An Evidence-based Approach. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Newton, P., 2007, 'Clarifying the purposes of educational assessment', Assessment in Education, 14 (2) pp. 149–70.
Oates, T., 2010, 'Could do better': Using international comparisons to refine the National Curriculum in England, Report, Cambridge Assessment.
Oates, T., 2014, 'The qualifications sledgehammer: Why assessment-led reform has dominated the education landscape', in Sahlgren, G.H. (ed.) Tests Worth Teaching To. London: Centre for Market Reform in Education.
OECD, 2006, Education at a Glance. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Ofsted, 2002, The National Literacy Strategy: The First Four Years 1998–2002.
Payne, J., 2001, Patterns of Participation in Full-time Education after 16: An Analysis of the England and Wales Youth Cohort Study. Policy Study Institute.
Sahlgren, G.H. (ed.), 2014, Tests Worth Teaching To. London: Centre for Market Reform in Education.
Select Committee for Children, Schools and Families, 2008, Testing and assessment: Third report of session 2007–2008 Vol 1, GB, Parliament House of Commons.
Stringer, E.T., 2007, Action Research. London: Sage.
Sylva, K., 1999, An Introduction to the EPPE Project. Institute of Education.
Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sammons, P., Siraj-Blatchford, I. and Taggart, B., 2003, The effective provision of pre-school education (EPPE) project – findings from the pre-school period, Research Brief RBX-15–03. Department for Education and Skills.
Whitty, G., 2006, 'Teacher professionalism in a new era', Paper presented at the first General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland Annual Lecture, Belfast.
# [11
Accountability and Inspection](content.xhtml#bck_Ch011)
Pat O'Shea
## Starting off as an English teacher
In schools in the early 1970s, accountability was not a word that often troubled us. I began teaching English in 1973 in what was then the only comprehensive school in Kent, a very large school whose families belonged to what was disparagingly referred to as 'London overspill'. As young teachers, our three major concerns were the impact of RoSLA (Raising of the School Leaving Age), the teacher recruitment crisis, and the Houghton pay award. The first meant that many 16-year-olds had to stay in school a year longer than they had expected and, even more alarming, be persuaded to take a public examination. The second meant that we started the school year four teachers short in the English department alone, and of those of us actually there, several were in our Probationary Year (NQTs). The third, Houghton, provided some succour, as in my second year of teaching our pay went up nearly 30 per cent at a stroke. (As a dampener to the excitement of this, inflation in 1975 was 24 per cent.)
As a young and inexperienced teacher I do not recall my teaching ever being observed. There were no appraisals, nor even any kind of review of my work. The avuncular head of department and his deputy supported as best they could with ideas and materials, but never watched us teach. The head of department was in any case somewhat distracted throughout 1974, as he stood as the Labour candidate in both the general elections that year. When I applied for this and later teaching posts, the selection procedure consisted solely of an interview with the headteacher. No governors were involved, but I did spend some time with the head of department and perusing the stock cupboard (the usual class sets of An Inspector Calls, Of Mice and Men, and Animal Farm – just as now, despite Michael Gove's aversion to English literature not from England). There was certainly no question of teaching a sample lesson or of meeting any students.
Teachers did not seem to regard examination results as a measure of accountability. At age 14, students were divided into three groups: those who would take no qualifications, CSE candidates, and those on track for the more prestigious O Level. The latter had been designed for the 20 per cent of young people in grammar schools, and could lead on to A Level and thence to higher education. CSE was aimed at the 'next' 40 per cent, so qualifications were deemed inappropriate for the remaining 40 per cent. (It was reading John Newsom's report Half Our Future, while I was supposed to be revising for finals, that made me go into teaching.) The syllabi for O Level and CSE did not overlap. After RoSLA in 1972, all students, more or less, had to take one or the other. This meant that a system of public examinations at 16 designed for the few became a universal point of assessment. This changed its nature, and made possible the later development of the whole apparatus of accountability through performance tables and examination outcomes at 16. It led the way to examination boards becoming businesses vying for custom, examination entry fees featuring heavily in schools' budgets, and the huge change in pace and focus that comes over secondary schools from May to July.
One version of the public exam at 16 was very attractive to ambitious and creative young teachers: the CSE Mode 3. Any teacher could design and propose a syllabus which would be marked and assessed by the teachers in the school through 100 per cent coursework. The course could reflect the enthusiasms and, indeed, political predilections of the proposer. The course and its assessment followed the teaching and its objectives, rather than the other way round. This put teachers in control of every stage of the process of the CSE public examination. We were participants in the Examination Board subject committees, setting syllabi, defining grade boundaries, and devising and developing the curriculum. We were driven by the need to make sure that the exams would suit our students' needs. It almost felt as though we were holding the Examination Board to account.
Although there was some external moderation, we were effectively taking in one another's washing, since we reciprocally moderated courses from other schools. I designed and taught a Mode 3 English syllabus. It included an independent art house film I liked and thought would appeal, some Bob Dylan, and Romeo and Juliet. It was not, to say the least, very coherent or rigorous. I am not proud of the fact that, for several of those who took it in the mid-1970s, it probably remains the only formal qualification in English they have. Complete freedom over the curriculum was no better for learners than excessive prescription.
## Deputy Head at Peers
My years as Deputy at Peers (1985–1992) saw the biggest changes to education and the organisation of schools affecting teachers and students until the current wave. Bob Moon, the inventive head who had come from the ground-breaking Stantonbury Campus in Milton Keynes, had introduced an innovative curriculum based on modular accreditation, similar to that now offered by many universities. Peers had a national profile. We regularly ran Saturday conferences for visiting teachers and heads who wanted to hear about the modular curriculum, and were often invited to conferences around the country to speak about it. We were proud of the work we were doing and its impact on the motivation and achievement of some very disadvantaged and hitherto underachieving young people. Students gained CSEs and O Levels and, from 1988, the new GCSEs, all of them continuously assessed by coursework and module tests. I sold off 300 examination desks, convinced that never again would a cohort of students sit down together to take a public examination. I was wrong.
While I was on maternity leave in 1987, Bob Moon came for tea, to inspect my son and to tell me two things: first, that he was leaving Peers for a chair at the Open University, and second, that when I returned in the autumn and before he left, we would have a full HMI inspection of the school. I received the first item of news with alarm and apprehension, but the second with complete equanimity, because I had no idea what it meant or that it was a serious business. It is said that at that time HMI inspections came round about once every 250 years, in any case at sufficient intervals for most teachers and headteachers to escape inspection throughout their careers. Bob, however, did know that our innovations were on the line, and that much was at stake. Now, those in schools are constantly aware of Ofsted's imminence; it presides implicitly or explicitly over much planning and evaluation; then, the notion of inspection was novel. For the first time I recognised that we were accountable for what we were doing, that we would be externally judged. (My infant son was judged Good with Outstanding features.)
## The HMI inspection
HMI were a cadre of highly experienced and mostly well-respected senior professionals. They were responsible for inspecting and evaluating a few individual schools, but the main part of their work was to provide information on education to the Secretary of State by carrying out and publishing national surveys, thematic studies, and evaluations of the teaching of particular subjects and aspects of school life across the country. About 12 HMI were in the school for most of the week. We took all this in our stride; we thought of the inspection as a kind of supportive professional review. We thought the HMI were interested in our modular curriculum and early use of records of achievement of our own devising (see also OCEA, discussed by Tim Brighouse), as was much of the rest of the secondary education world. On day three of the inspection one HMI was overheard saying to another: 'I have a little list – modular curriculum plus and modular curriculum minus. So far minus is ahead'. This sort of score-card tallying, rather than a more measured evaluative and reflective approach, seemed to us rather shocking.
The report was made available to the school and governors, but was not published until about a year after the inspection, by which time we had a new head and everybody had forgotten about it (HMI school inspection reports had only been published at all since 1983). Despite their misgivings about our unorthodox curriculum, we were relieved when the report was broadly very positive, on the teaching and on the curriculum offer. A significant concern was that the library was thought to be inadequate – this proved useful later when we were able to negotiate the creation of a substantial joint public library on the campus.
All of our curricular freedom was changed by the Education Reform Act of 1988. This legislation introduced parental choice, local management of schools, the National Curriculum, and Key Stages, with objectives for each. There was also provision for City Technology Colleges, which were maintained schools taken out of local authorities, the predecessors of academies. I remember a meeting of heads, deputies, and chairs of governors, at which Tim Brighouse, then Chief Education Officer for Oxfordshire, explained how the combination of these elements of legislation would exercise a vice-like grip on schools and local authorities, to the clear detriment especially of those in disadvantaged and economically deprived areas where educational achievement was low. (The introduction of grant-maintained schools posed a further threat to local authorities and their illusory 'control' of schools.) We were required to publish examination results to parents, although league tables did not begin until 1992, introduced by John Major's government after his surprise election victory. The stated aim then was to give parents the consumer information they needed, to create a free market in school choice. That 'choice' has only ever been patchy at best, varying wildly between rural and urban settings, by class, by faith, and by parents' willingness to undertake informed perusal of all the data. Performance tables, as instruments of accountability, also provide a lever whereby government can directly influence the school system and the curriculum: the later double-weighting of English and mathematics, the introduction of value-added to tackle high-attaining but 'coasting' schools, the down-valuing of vocational qualifications and ignoring any but the first shot at a subject examination, the invention of the EBacc: all provide examples of this.
## Warden of a Cambridgeshire village college
By the early 1990s I was in my first headship at a village college in Cambridgeshire. Because of the rich community dimension to these wonderful schools, headteachers were known as Wardens, an idea of the visionary bureaucrat who founded the village colleges, Henry Morris, CEO in Cambridgeshire in the 1930s. I greatly valued that title, carrying as it does the notion of guardianship of the whole learning community as well as of its young people. By now, the National Curriculum had settled down a bit: the 17 attainment targets and the 17 ring-binders that specified the science curriculum alone had been reduced to a more manageable number. SATs were firmly in place, and, for the first time, we knew how well the youngsters joining us in Y7 had performed against a national benchmark, however flawed.
We were subject to a new-style Ofsted Section 10 inspection in 1994. In contrast to the current approach, the focus was very clearly on the curriculum and its subjects. The inspection team comprised 25 mostly subject specialists from the school improvement service in a neighbouring local authority. Like every inspection team, there was also a lay inspector, a kindly, interested person with no professional experience in education. They were usually deployed to consider matters considered more peripheral than the curriculum, such as attendance, assemblies, and extra-curricular activities.
We had six weeks' notice of the inspection dates. During this time the deputy head spent many of his waking hours gathering data, information, evidence, and documents of every kind. His rather cramped office was stacked from floor to ceiling with dozens of green box files in which these were obsessively filed. Teachers, too, had six weeks to prepare the lessons they would teach during the inspection, and to become anxious about them. During the inspection every teacher knew they would be seen teaching at least once. By Friday afternoon an RE teacher who taught nearly 20 different classes in the school had still not been seen, and was in tears at Friday lunchtime knowing that her fate was closing in on her.
In contrast to the HMI approach at Peers, reports were now written to a common framework, and published within a month. For the first time, we were all clear what the criteria were, and the handbook included descriptions of what each of the seven grades looked like, from Excellent to Very Poor. This clarity was welcome. Inspection was almost wholly subject-based, with inspectors only coming together for large team meetings at the end of the day, in which findings were pooled. Several never met the head, nor understood how the school worked beyond the department they were inspecting. On Thursday the head of PE approached me with a concern about the PE specialist adviser who had made a number of comments revealing these limitations, including asking the head of PE, 'Who is this Warden person, anyway?'.
We had been reassured there would be no surprises in the report, and that proved to be the case. We had to draw up and submit an action plan within six weeks, but that was already there in our school development plan. Lesson observation by heads was not routine or formalised, but the deputies and I were confident we knew our teachers' strengths pretty accurately, from MBWA (management by walking about), and from having active antennae. I had begun at Peers to look at a teacher's results and manually compare what the same students had achieved in other subjects. I later learned to call the resulting measure a residual, when computers made this sort of analysis much easier, and school leaders acquired new skills in data and statistics. We were devising our own systems of data analysis before Raiseonline and FFT came along.
In my second headship, appraisal of teachers and school leaders became part of the annual gardening calendar of a school's work. The processes were somewhat cumbersome, but we tried to make them supportive of teachers' work and complementary to the planning of CPD. The unions were influential in this, and acted as guardians of teachers' interests, so that appraisal was developmental, and not linked to pay in any way. This was to change step by step in later years, with the introduction of pay thresholds, the need for clear evidence against published standards, moves away from a national pay scale, and the stealthy approach of performance-related pay – anathema in the 1990s.
Examination results days began to affect my family life and that of all heads, as holidays in Provence or Tuscany were curtailed so we could be in school on the third and fourth Thursdays of August, to celebrate A-Level and GCSE results with students, but also to issue carefully crafted press statements and begin to calculate what our value-added might be and where we might stand in the league tables. KS2 and KS3 SATs were also externally marked, but the tests were erratic in standard, and their marking was sometimes plainly inaccurate. I may have been one of the few heads who appealed against the KS3 SATs English results on the grounds that they were too high. I knew that if they stood, our GCSE value-added results two years later would look poorer than they should, and I would be held accountable.
## LEA adviser and SIP
After the turn of the century, I was working for a local authority. Oxfordshire LA, like many, had set up and run its own team of Ofsted inspectors, comprising the wide range of subject and phase advisers and inspectors working for the service. We had been inspected by just such an LA team in Cambridgeshire. LA services of this kind were beginning to have identity crises, reflected in the frequent changes of name. They were also grappling with cuts, as central government endeavoured to reduce the influence of local democracy and to introduce market practices. During my time, there were at least five reorganisations (restructuring, remodelling, re-alignment . . .) and at least five different names in as many years. Were we about advice, inspection, improvement, school development, raising achievement, effectiveness? All these words figured in the names of the service.
A further string was added to the accountability bow in 2004: the School Improvement Partner (SIP) scheme was introduced, as part of a so-called New Relationship with Schools. Experienced school leaders and local authority advisers like me could, through training and assessment, become accredited as SIPs. All schools had an SIP with whom they would have a 'single conversation'. The scheme was nationally funded and ran from 2004 to 2010. It was cut as a consequence of a change of government in 2010, despite evidence that it was effective, though not consistently so. As an SIP, I developed a working relationship with schools in a way impossible for an Ofsted inspector, so there was a perspective of evaluation and change over time. We provided external challenge as well as support; schools were accountable, as SIPs reported to their LAs, but could also deploy their SIP to support school initiatives. Discussions about target setting were informed by both comparative data and a knowledge of the context; they could be tough, and many heads valued a robust exchange with a supportive but external fellow professional. Many schools have chosen to continue to seek external support and challenge from former SIPs, but the free market in school improvement services has left schools able to choose not to seek and pay for external advice.
## Becoming an inspector for Ofsted
As I arrived at the LA, the Ofsted teams lost their remit, and six national companies ran inspections in England. (Later, only three companies – Tribal, Serco, and CfBT – won a competitive bidding process for contracts to run inspections across the country. Costs were cut.) In 2005 I trained as an inspector for Ofsted. The training was extensive and expensive. At the end, I spent a whole day sitting examinations in a large area of a posh hotel in Park Lane. It was an extraordinary experience to be sitting at an examination desk, one of a hundred candidates arranged in rows, doing written exams all day, complete with prowling HMI invigilators. Mysteriously, we were only allowed to use a pencil. The experience felt like a throwback: nervousness waiting for the results, relief at passing. We were tested on data analysis, evaluating evidence, applying criteria, writing clearly. It felt adequately rigorous.
As I began inspecting in 2005, the framework and the process were slimmed down enormously. Average-sized secondary schools now had nine or ten inspector days – a team of four or five for two days – and two days' notice of inspections. The emphasis on subjects and the curriculum disappeared, and with it the inspection of subject teaching by specialists in that subject. This was a major step in the decline of the place of the curriculum in the inspection framework. Apart from the growing emphasis on English and mathematics, subjects have been sidelined, and the quality of the whole curriculum, once graded separately, now merits one paragraph in the long list of aspects of leadership and management to which inspectors must attend. With my roots in curriculum development and subject expertise, this seems a significant loss.
Also in 2005, schools' self-evaluation became hugely important. Never compulsory, but always expected, the exercise of completing an SEF was onerous but arguably did much to improve the skills of school leaders, to gather evidence, to interrogate data, to plan improvements, and to evaluate impact. Heads and senior leaders began routinely to observe lessons and grade them, something rarely done before this. Comparative information about schools transformed beyond measure during this time. As deputy at Peers School in the 1980s, on open evenings for prospective parents, each year I scanned the results from the previous year with the aim of finding three things that had improved. I then designed graphs with extended vertical axes to give a visual impression of rapid and impressive improvement. In the 2000s, the accountability measures were plain to all and common across schools. Data dominated our preparation for inspection. Performance tables had been introduced in 1992 in the public domain, but gave only broad-brush data. In the 2000s, Raiseonline provided sophisticated information for school leaders, and for inspectors. For the first time it was easy to compare a school's outcomes with national figures.
Many schools and local authorities subscribed to the Fischer Family Trust. This gave a new perspective on data about progress and achievement in schools, using a complex formula including social and economic make-up, gender, incidence of special needs, deprivation factors, and ethnicity, so that there was more chance of comparing like with like. This provided a very helpful set of comparators but was never made routinely available to Ofsted inspectors. Schools offered it to the inspection team if they chose. Doubts crept in that the weighting of deprivation factors, for example, to give 'contextual value-added', might be seen as an excuse for low expectations, and the contextual part of value-added was removed from later versions of Raiseonline. The effect for us as inspectors was to remove the capacity to give due consideration to the enormous social and economic problems some schools were addressing. Social deprivation was not to be seen as an excuse, rightly so, but nor was it accorded any explanatory power. Schools were expected to compensate for the growing inequalities in society.
During this period, however, I felt that Ofsted provided a broadly accepted national standard of what good practice meant, and I used it as such when providing INSET. The evaluation schedule provided lists of the aspects of the school's work that inspectors must and should consider, in each section. There were also detailed grade descriptions of what constituted outstanding, good, satisfactory, and inadequate practice and outcomes. Ofsted was and is unpopular in schools; the process is often damaging. However, it was possible to argue that the evaluation schedule was a powerful handbook of good practice, and could be used for professional development and to help school leaders improve their schools. The descriptions of what constitute good teaching, good leadership and management, good governance, and what additional factors make them outstanding: all those in schools could draw upon these.
Despite this, there has always been some lack of clarity and evidence about whether Ofsted was an instrument of school improvement or merely its chronicler. Certainly, the motivation of many inspectors, mine included, was to help schools improve by providing an external focused view of what would make the school even better. 'Improvement through inspection' was Ofsted's strapline, though there was no mention of improvement in the Education Act 1992 that created it. Improvement could perhaps come through the action plan that schools (governors, in fact) had to produce and circulate to parents. The idea was that the governors would ensure that the school followed up the inspection, and that parents would hold the governing body accountable. The LA also had a role in ensuring action plans were fit for purpose and, for a while yet, in supporting schools to implement them. This closing of the loop has ceased, however, and the function of Ofsted in helping schools to improve has withered. Local authorities no longer have the capacity to provide practical school improvement support; many schools are not part of an LA or even an academy chain, and so schools seem to be left with judgements and only their own resources to work out how to respond to them. Gerald Haigh quotes American management consultant William Deming: 'You can't inspect quality into a process'. The separation of powers – of inspection from support for improvement – seems part of what has been called the 'decentralisation of blame'. In a climate of much-vaunted autonomy and freedom for schools and their heads, who is responsible if things go wrong, or into decline? Over time, Ofsted's expectations of governing bodies and the extent of their accountability have increased hugely, seemingly to compensate for the diminution of the LA's role as the middle tier. My increasing awareness of the gulf between inspection and school improvement led me to withdraw from inspecting at all. It has also become ever clearer that Ofsted creates unacceptable stress, fear, and pressure for teachers, and several of us could no longer be part of that.
Political imperatives surfaced from time to time in iterations of the Ofsted schedule, under both Labour and Coalition governments. Every Child Matters followed in the wake of the Victoria Climbié case, bringing together national and local leadership of education and the social care of children. Working in education in an LA, it often felt as though direction was lacking, as aspects of the education service were led by people with no background in education. The five priorities of this framework each had a paragraph in an Ofsted report. Inspections at this time became something of a scramble, as each individual inspector had to chase down evidence of our allotted ECM aspects, and also the four aspects of social, moral, spiritual, and cultural (SMSC) development. Inspecting school dinners became routine in order to have something to say about how well a school enabled children to Be Healthy. The five priorities had been developed through discussion with young people, and the aim was laudable, but the implementation became unwieldy.
Safeguarding too came to the fore after the Bichard report on the Soham case. Again, the cause was right, but the mechanism faulty, at least initially. Some schools failed their Ofsted inspection if there were minor administrative errors in the single central record. On one inspection it required several frantic phone calls to head office confirming that errors had been corrected within the hour to ensure that a strong and successful school did not go into special measures because of a typographical failing.
Community cohesion entered the lexicon in 2007 and became an inspection focus, in light of the fears about the rise of the far right and increase in racism. Nobody really knew what community cohesion meant, and the descriptors for it overlapped significantly with other elements of the Ofsted framework, especially SMSC, which had its own judgement grade in an Ofsted report. The new coalition government decided in 2010 that it was no longer important and abolished it, but later introduced a requirement to inspect the promotion of British values instead, in response to developments in some Birmingham schools.
These fluctuations in what schools were being judged on, and the consequent flurry of activity to produce evidence for the newest priority, have intensified under the Coalition. Increasingly, carrying out an Ofsted inspection is about checking for compliance, and chasing down evidence for aspects of school management that had never been subject to inspection before. The clarity of focus on learning and progress, on the quality of teaching and leadership, has been muddied by additions favoured by the Secretary of State. We are now required for the first time to inspect the use of one particular funding stream (Pupil Premium), examination entry policy (because 'early' entry might limit the highest grades), and salary progression and its link to appraisal (to embed performance-related pay). Changes to the accountability framework impose pressure on schools to offer a curriculum that will look well in tables, whether or not it motivates and meets the needs of students.
Increasingly, inspecting no longer felt like the exercise of professional judgement or the opportunity to work with schools to provide a helpful, informed external view. Rather, it felt like operating someone else's instruction manual. After the three national contractors took over, the day rate for Ofsted inspector was reduced by nearly 25 per cent. This major cut in the pay of additional inspectors opened up the gulf between salaried HMI and freelance additional inspectors. It appeared to me that quality also became more variable. HMI Lead Inspectors were almost all exceptionally skilled professionals for whom I had great respect. Increasingly, they were deployed to monitoring inspections, subject surveys, and work with schools in a category, and now lead almost no Section 5 inspections. I had only ever inspected infrequently, but now job satisfaction, never high, plummeted. Inspection provided none of the colleagueship and camaraderie that have been so rewarding through all my working life in schools. The pay cut was less important than the two experiences in 2014 that clinched my decision to stop.
First, additional inspectors received a memo from the Ofsted contract holders to emphasise that Ofsted had no preferred teaching style. It clarified the language it was permissible to use to describe teaching:
Please consider the use of the phrase 'independent learning' or similar phrases as banned with immediate effect . . . inspectors should focus more upon aspects of teaching which will be more readily understood by lay readers and parents such as:
* whether homework is purposeful and regularly set and marked
* whether lessons begin promptly
* whether classrooms are tidy and have stimulating wall displays.
The gulf between this instruction, and the model of a professional, rigorous, fair and consistent approach to helping schools develop seemed unbridgeable.
The second made even more plain the divorce of inspection from school improvement. I attended my final Ofsted training in September 2014. By careful questioning, a participant obliged the HMI leading the training to make explicit that Section 5 inspections had nothing to do with school improvement – this was a matter for monitoring visits and Section 8 inspections. We were to give only judgements, with no advice to teachers in lesson feedback, nor discussion of possible strategies to improve the school further with school leaders. I had already become disaffected with the work of undertaking Ofsted inspection. The territory held by the political agenda was increasing. We caused stress and distress to teachers and heads, who were under huge pressure. Fear does not improve schools for young people. My inspection life is over.
## Reflections
Writing this in the approach to the 2015 election, there is a broad consensus that Ofsted must change, or be replaced. The cost in teacher stress is too high, and the gains are not demonstrable. Ofsted is increasingly driven by political imperatives, is insufficiently rooted in the context of the school, and is intrusive in the demands the process makes. It labels schools, accurately or not, but makes little contribution to helping them move forward. A publicly funded system should, of course, be accountable to those who fund it, and a future model for monitoring and evaluating schools should have at least these features:
* local democratic accountability, through LAs or some other regional forum;
* self-evaluation rigorously tested by triangulation with other local schools;
* a focus on support for improvement, from a range of sources including local expertise;
* a developmental perspective, not a snapshot in time;
* high quality and consistency across the country, assured by a renewed HM Inspectorate or its equivalent.
# [Part V
Reflection on policy matters](content.xhtml#bck_part5)
# [12
From 'Optimism and Trust' to 'Markets and Managerialism'](content.xhtml#bck_Ch012)
Sir Tim Brighouse
It is arguable that are three definably different periods in education policy making in England since Butler's 1944 Education Act. The first lasted for nearly 30 years, the second for 15 between the late 1960s and early 1980s, and the third for another 30 almost to the present, when there are signs that it will give way to a fourth. Each is characterised by values and attitudes that reflect the wider social and economic context of the different periods. I shall argue that the first could be dubbed an age of 'optimism and trust'; the second, one of 'doubt, disillusion and un certainty' and the third, one of 'markets and managerialism', which is even now giving way to another period of transition. As with all 'ages' of history, activity characteristic of one period spills over to the next, but in the context of a different and less accommodating climate as new values catch hold. I shall end by speculating about the next age into which we are now entering, as the limitations of 'markets and managerialism' are being exposed.
My involvement over those 70 years has been as pupil, student, teacher, academic and administrator, progressively observing, writing, and commenting on and seeking to influence policy and practice.
## The age of optimism and trust
The first period, which caught the post-war spirit of optimism (and a determination not to return to the habits of the 1930s), lasted until the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was an age of 'optimism and trust', characterised by partners in education knowing their respective roles and exercising them energetically, as all were agreed that education was a public good and we needed more of it. They behaved interdependently confident that each would play their part.
The Secretary of State had but a handful of powers, the most important of which was the duty of securing a sufficient supply of suitably qualified teachers in different parts of the country. In the process of discharging this ministerial duty, meticulous planning was involved with the Local Education Authorities (LEAs), which supplied local knowledge and ran the Teacher Training Colleges through grants from central government. Likewise too with the Secretary of State's second main responsibility, namely approving the opening and closure of schools, and rationing the size of building programmes against national minimum standards. In this latter duty the Secretary of State initiated an annual bidding process from LEAs, which were expected to ensure that the bids they were all asked to produce were consistent with the 1948 Development Plan. London 'overspill' and unanticipated housing schemes, including the creation of new towns and a birth-rate induced 'bulge' in the number of children requiring schools, soon rendered these 1948 Development Plans redundant. Direct contact between DfE and LEAs mainly focused on buildings and teacher supply. There were few 'circulars' – that is to say, papers asking LEAs to consider action on a particular matter – and no legislation followed the 1944 Act until the early 1970s. Taken together, these ministerial duties and powers were intended to ensure that all children would have a fair deal in terms of their teaching and learning environment.
There was much else to be done in this first post-war period, apart from the need to train teachers and build schools. All the many other matters requiring attention could safely be left to the LEAs. This first period was a golden age for LEAs – their responsibilities, duties and powers legion and varied. Colleges of further education had to be created and staffed to respond to the long-felt need to provide further education and training for 'vocational' students. Every LEA responded to this need, guided by Regional Advisory Councils on which Industrial Training Boards were represented and which were charged with securing a fair spread of accessible courses according to employment needs. Nor did it stop there. Using the same mechanism of 'pooling' of resources, local authorities established advanced further education opportunities through Colleges of Technology and Arts whose degrees were accredited by CNAA (a Council for National Academic Awards) and were later to become polytechnics and universities in the wake of the Robbins report, which also saw the establishment of a wave of new universities in the 1960s. As I have noted, Teacher Training Colleges – later Colleges of Education – were run by LEAs and their work planned through Area Training Organisations (ATOs), and a dozen or so rural LEAs used a similar pooling mechanism to establish Colleges of Agriculture.
Local Education Authorities were busy in this age of post-war reconstruction and expansion. All established a Youth Service and a Youth Employment Service – later called a careers service – and many bought old country mansions and set up adult education residential centres where they ran courses for their local citizens, as well as outdoor pursuit centres for their schools to use. Local advisory or inspection services were established to give advice to schools, whose control of the curriculum and how it was taught was regarded as sacrosanct. Recruited from schools, LEA advisers attempted to persuade school colleagues of the advantages of different approaches to subject teaching and primary school practice, but adoption of the ideas was down to schools. Teachers' Centres, financed by LEAs, ran twilight and weekend courses for teachers whose conditions of service were general and limited solely by convention and tradition.
This brief description captures some of the features of this first period – the age of 'optimism and trust'. Despite a huge national debt, public services were established for all: indeed, a career in the public service, together with what might be called public service values, were regarded as an uncontroversial 'good thing'. This regard for the public service, which seems so odd to modern eyes, was doubtless bolstered by the twilight of Empire, which was run by copious supplies of people from public schools, but perhaps also by the nationalisation of so many services – water, electricity, steel, coal, buses, railways – and by the establishment of the new National Health Service. All classes – upper, middle and working – had careers within public service. It was the main home of professions – architects, planners, lawyers and accountants.
In education, it was for the Secretary of State and national government to set out general policy and for the LEAs to flesh it out in a way appropriate to local circumstances and then implement it. In setting out and formulating policy, the Secretaries of State were advised by civil servants and HMI; they would also consult in depth with William Alexander, the Secretary of the Association of Education Committees (AEC), the representative body of the LEAs, each of which sat within a broader democratically elected set of local authorities. They would also consult with the teacher unions, then dominated by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and its General Secretary Ronald Gould. In practice, for many of the post-war years, Alexander and Gould could heavily influence most policy. Secretaries of State and local councillors came and went. Continuity was provided by Alexander, Gould and the senior civil servants. They were, of course, direct protagonists in terms of Burnham Committee negotiations over teachers' pay but that did not prevent them co-operating to further their common interests. School budgets were determined locally by local authorities through the rates supplemented by the Rate Support Grant, and since the early part of this period was one of low inflation – pay deals were for two-year periods for example – the issue of money was not contentious.
Within most local authorities in this first period, education was seen as the 'cuckoo in the nest' of local government, greedy of resources, consuming 60 per cent or more of most local spending, and a 'law unto itself'. There were no Chief Executives and, in all but the cities, no real party politics: many councillors were Independent. The position of the Chief Education Officer was seen as important. Many of them had distinguished war careers and some of them used their position in very creative and influential ways. For example, Newsom in Hertford-shire, Clegg in the West Riding, Morris in Cambridgeshire and Mason in Leicestershire were all in different ways innovators and extended our ideas of what education could do. The impact of their achievements is still with us, not just in education, but in our wider lives. It is arguable, for instance, that Clegg's influence on the arts has a direct link to that thriving sector today. Locally, every education officer saw it as his – and they were all men – duty to ensure that schools were well staffed, resourced and supported, and they competed with each other in extending what an LEA could and should do to discharge its limited 1944 Act duties.
My experiences in those years lie in five years after VE day in a three teacher primary school in Leicestershire, a brief six week school-phobic inducing spell in a direct grant grammar school and then seven blissful years in a relaxed 'county secondary school' where the prizes were given out by the Education Officer of the Excepted District of Lowestoft in the East Suffolk LEA, whose Chief Education Officer, Leslie Missen, preferred directing his creativity to writing books on 'after dinner speeches' rather than administration. On a full grant, I received the modern-day equivalent of £100,000 for tuition and my living expenses at university. After training to be a teacher and jobs in grammar and secondary modern schools, I became an assistant in Trevor Morgan's Monmouthshire LEA office in charge of sites and buildings. My first week's task, clearly an induction test of my powers of analysis and initiative, was to give a 'school by school' description of what would need to be done if Monmouthshire were to raise the age of transfer to 12, as both a response to the Gittins Report – the Welsh equivalent of Plowden – and the need to go comprehensive suggested in Tony Crosland's circular 10/65. My exercise was academic. Trevor Morgan had no intention of raising the age of transfer to 12 and needed quite a bit of persuasion, as did all in South Wales, that going comprehensive was a good idea. My main responsibility, both there and in my next job, in Roy Harding's Buckinghamshire, was to persuade the DfE to give us large loan consents for school building in the annual bidding round and then brief architects with the resulting work in what were called 'major' and 'minor' building programmes. In Buckinghamshire, there was a new city to be planned, as well as raising the age of transfer to 12. This change enabled selective Buckinghamshire to provide more grammar school places and accommodate the raising of the school leaving age to 16 while still living within the ban on building more places in grammar schools, which central government had imposed in an attempt to pressurise LEAs to end selection. Almost all were primary building projects to accommodate the extra age group at 11 rather than 15. At that time, Buckinghamshire faced an expansion of schools places to respond to house building in south Buckinghamshire, Aylesbury and the creation of Milton Keynes, where the County Council made an exception to its selective stance and, to the astonished dismay of the headteacher of Bletchley Grammar School, approved comprehensive reorganisation. Fortunately, the most influential Conservative County Councillor for that area, Lady Markham, approved of comprehensive schooling. It is hard to see how Buckinghamshire would have received approval for new secondary schooling for the new population within the new city, had they not held their noses and done in one small area what they would never contemplate in the other more affluent areas of their County. Their pragmatism enabled me to help plan Stantonbury Campus, an 'educational village' in Milton Keynes that excited the DfE Architects and Buildings Branch which throughout this first period issued Building Bulletins in an attempt to influence, rather than prescribe, the design of new school buildings. Their favourite secondary examples stemmed from the designs of Countesthorpe in Leicestershire, Sutton Centre in Nottinghamshire and the Abraham Moss in Manchester. In that pre-national curriculum age there was room for innovation and experimentation. At Stantonbury, Roy Harding, Buckinghamshire's CEO, took a calculated risk and appointed Geoff Cooksey, Assistant Secretary from the Schools Council, to run it. It was immense fun, and Cooksey, who might be called a 'progressive', attracted and appointed a remarkable staff, whose deeds have reverberated for decades as teachers from those pioneering years have taken up posts elsewhere.
As a teacher I had experienced the absolute freedom schools enjoyed over the curriculum and how it should be taught. It was a freedom not uniformly exercised. Stantonbury was the exception rather than the rule. For example, the curricula in many grammar schools, and their timetables too, were much the same from year to year. There was more use of the freedom in secondary modern schools, either created for new populations or arising out of the national decision to discontinue all-age schools. Primary practice varied much more, as the teachers were influenced by strong advisory services in a few LEAs: so the West Riding, Leicestershire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire became synonymous with progressive primary practice.
The freedom teachers were encouraged to exercise in this period is best illustrated by the Foreword written by the minister to 'Story of a School', first issued in 1949 and re-issued in the 1950s as the sole central advice to primary schools about what they should do. In effect, schools were 'encouraged to experiment as the head who had written the pamphlet had done'.
Perhaps the last national expression of this period's optimism was Margaret Thatcher's White Paper 'A Framework for Expansion' of 1971. It outlined the most ambitious plans for nursery and pre-five education ever contemplated. It was still-born, cut down first by economic crisis and then a change in beliefs on economic policies.
## The age of doubt and disillusion
By the time I left Buckinghamshire at local government reorganisation in 1974, the first age of optimism and trust was giving way to one of doubt and disillusion. The causes were many and varied. The year 1968 witnessed student unrest; 1969 the publication of the Black Papers casting doubt on the progressive methods of teachers and schools and Leila Berg's 'Death of a Comprehensive School', the story of the rise and fall of 'progressive' Risinghill Secondary School in Islington, where later there was a parallel primary school failure – 'William Tyndale' – which led to the Auld Inquiry. And of course there was the oil crisis, which contributed to cutbacks in public services amid massive inflation.
The settled educational world of a 'national service locally administered' was disturbed on other fronts too.
William Alexander and his beloved AEC were sidelined by the creation of the Council of Local Education Authorities (CLEA), a body representing two of the local authority associations, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities (AMA) and the Association of County Councils (ACC). In effect they were the usurpers of the AEC. Newly created Chief Executives and their political leaders in councils where political allegiance to one party or another was the rule, were determined to put over-mighty Education Officers and their committees in their place. I had left Buckinghamshire to join the ACC as Under-Secretary for Education and my tasks included making a fist of CLEA and proving that education, even in the new world of reorganised local government, would still be a force to be reckoned with. At first there were fraught meetings with the AEC and its beleaguered secretary, whose supply lines had been cut off by all the newly created authorities paying their dues to the AMA or the ACC rather than a subscription to the AEC.
Of course, as a young administrator I had known of Alexander's influence. He wrote a 'weekly' column for the journal Education, edited by Stuart Maclure. This was compulsory reading, as was The Times Educational Supplement's leader when Maclure moved to be editor in 1969. Both these characters were wont to have lunch at their club, the Athenaeum, with ministers and senior civil servants on a regular basis. I could tell from Trevor Morgan and then Roy Harding that they each rated Alexander highly and were pleased to be advisers to meetings of the AEC. So Alexander's demise left them and most of their Chief Education Officer colleagues with mixed emotions. The old and trusted lines of influence were broken.
New ones would have to be forged through the AMA and ACC. For me it was an opportunity to see how policy was made at close quarters, albeit at a time of retrenchment and decline. School rolls were falling, and money was in short supply as a result of the oil crisis and hyperinflation. My life was spent in reading and commenting on drafts sent by the DfE to the AMA and ACC prior to public announcement; in writing reports for the ACC education committee, both on these issues and on those raised by members' authorities; and in sitting on various bodies such as the 'Pooling Committee' or the 'Inter-Authority Payments Committee'. These two had arcane rules and procedures intended to ensure a level playing-field for all authorities. If the rules of the first of these were understood there was room for individual officers to have huge influence on policy, practice and the speed of expansion of services. It was through 'Pooling' that advanced further education in the Colleges of Advanced Technology and the polytechnics expanded to form a base for the expansion of higher education over the remainder of the century. It was also to provide me with insights that were to come to my rescue in my first Chief Education Officer's post in Oxfordshire. But that is to anticipate.
Some of my time at the ACC was also taken up in negotiations with the teacher unions, on behalf of the employers, about conditions of service, and in sitting at the Burnham Committee to witness increasingly influential government observers advised what was affordable.
Of course, at this time of inflation, falling school rolls and diminished resources, expenditure was a contested issue. The work of the Expenditure Steering Group for Education (ESGE) was key to budget settlements. In my role at the ACC I attended, along with half a dozen CEO advisers, Treasurer advisers from local government and Treasury and DfE officials who acted as hosts. Key to decision making at this time was the annual report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector Sheila Browne. She was almost Robespierrean in her sea-green incorruptibility: she certainly had integrity and a nerveless capacity to tell the unvarnished truth as she and her inspectorate saw it. It was policy making in a world where the old certainties had evaporated and everything was open to question. Policy was forged no longer through a comfortable debate among a powerful few, as civil servants tried to work out where the power lay in reorganised local government, which still was a vital engine of translating broad policies into practice. I suspect it was then that civil servants began to form a mistrust of local government, which has grown with the years.
In both the first and second ages, the influence of HMI on policy and practice was enormous if unobtrusive, both at the ministerial table and in the classroom. One has only to look at their publication record of national surveys during the late 1970s and early 1980s to see how they were attempting to influence the direction of the education debate.
Of the whole of my career, this period at the ACC was the least enjoyable, although formative and valuable, as I could see at close quarters how policy was made nationally. Within two years I had secured the exciting position of one of three deputies to Peter Newsam, who had become the Education Officer of the Inner London Education Authority, having been deputy to the legendary Alec Clegg in the West Riding, which had been abolished in 1974. I was back at the local scene and closer to the schools where I have always gained my energy and enthusiasm for what might be possible. But by then nationally 'Doubt and Disillusion' were in full flood.
For me, two incidents epitomised that doubt and disillusion. Both were speeches, one by Sir Ashley Bramall, the leader of the ILEA, when he charged his Education Officer, Peter Newsam and his team (of which I was by then a member) to make budget cuts with the words that it was 'time to get rid of some of the expensive horses in the ILEA's many stables, as not all of them are winners'. This was in the same year (1976) as Jim Callaghan's Ruskin speech, the impact of which was to be long lasting and the tone of which signalled the end of the unqualified trust and hope afforded to educational professionals for so long. The curriculum once dubbed a 'secret garden' by a Minister of Education was soon to lose its professional mysteries.
Both these speeches made me realise only too clearly that the post-war consensus was well and truly over. It hadn't yet given way to a third age, as it would in the mid-1980s, of 'markets and managerialism'. But doubt and disillusion were pervasive.
When I took up post in Oxfordshire in 1978, LEAs received another circular enquiring forensically into their curricular oversight. It was clearly a precursor to other action. I set out from a local position to try to influence the direction of national policy. At first it was as a result of an apparent crisis, which we were able to turn into an advantage.
On arrival from the ILEA – an unlikely source for such an appointment by a Conservative-dominated council – the chairman of Oxfordshire's Education Committee, Brigadier Streatfeild, charged with making large cuts, informed me that in his view the best way of doing this was to dismiss 200 teachers. This was where my knowledge of what was called the 'uncapped pool' came in handy. I knew there was no limit on the number of teachers who could be seconded for a term or a year at approved courses at the polytechnics or universities. To the superficially informed, an impenetrable barrier seemed to be that the sending LEA had to pay for a quarter of the salary costs of the seconded teacher. It was possible on closer examination to see that, if an LEA seconded a senior teacher, the costs of a quarter of her salary plus a temporary allowance for the person replacing her, together with the salary costs of Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) – or Probationers as we called them – were less than leaving the teacher where she was. With natural turnover from retirements and teachers moving on, it was easy to see that seconding senior teachers to such courses would solve our financial problems, provided that we could ensure that teachers could continue to live at home. Brigadier Streatfeild, once convinced of the arithmetic, needed no further persuading. Discussions quickly followed with the Oxford University Department of Educational Studies where Harry Judge was Director and with Brian Tongue, the Deputy at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University). Each was willing and inventive in creating new courses that might be suitable for curriculum thinkers among the teaching profession.
It was all very well to solve a local financial crisis, but I wanted to use it to change national policies in directions that would benefit children's experience of school. In one sense it would do so, in that nobody previously had tried to breathe reality into the recommendations of the James Committee (of which Harry Judge had been a member) that the Continuous Professional Development of teachers should be taken seriously and that, among the measures to achieve this, teachers should have an entitlement to 'sabbaticals'. In effect that's what our solution to a budget cut would ensure, but we wanted more. A couple of years earlier, Michael Rutter had published '15,000 hours: secondary schools and their effects on children', which was the first substantial piece of research that showed that schools and how they are organised make a difference to children's achievement. Oxfordshire secondary heads at the time were very interested in finding ways to improve what was going on. Feeding the intellectual curiosity of teachers through engaging them in self-chosen study in groups and on topics relevant to practice would help. Notwithstanding the cuts and falling rolls, causing the LEA to close some schools, heads and teachers in Oxfordshire recall this period as a golden one, probably as a result both of the secondments and of the sometimes orchestrated purposes for which the teachers took part. Take two examples. Keith Joseph, when Secretary of State, upset local government by announcing that he would top slice up to one half of 1 per cent to fund nationally determined initiatives. He would start with two schemes: one the Technical, Vocational, Educational, Initiative (TVEI) and what was called the Low Attainment Pupil Project (LAPP). Oxfordshire succeeded in a joint bid with Somerset for the latter, and, with Barry Taylor, their
CEO, we focused in part on Feuerstein's work in what we called the 'Thinking Skills' project. Taylor was intrigued by our capacity to add to the scheme by supporting seconded teachers who engaged in action research while carrying out their courses at the polytechnic or the university department.
Once the finances of the pooling device were shared with Taylor and his counterparts, Andrew Fairbairn and Bob Aitken, in Leicestershire and Coventry, respectively, we discussed an ambitious attempt to revolutionise what we saw as a divisive and limiting secondary exam system of GCEs and CSEs. What if such a system could be seen within the context of a broader assessment of pupils' achievements in what we would call the Oxford Certificate of Educational Achievement (OCEA), which would be accredited by Oxford University through its Delegacy of Local Examinations – then a GCE board, on which I sat as a delegate by virtue of holding my post? It would have three parts, one a 'G' part focusing on graded assessments of skills that could be assessed; another, an 'E' part containing records of exam success; and a third, a 'P' section attempting to record personal development. We could second teachers to Harry Judge's department and have them working with the Delegacy in devising the detail.
I simultaneously worked with two colleagues, Gordon Hainsworth (CEO of Gateshead and then of Manchester) and Bill Stubbs, a former colleague in ILEA and Peter Newsam's successor as its Education Officer: they too were promoting, with the Northern and London GCE boards, respectively, developments similar to OCEA. We thought it would be irresistible as it appeared simultaneously in different parts of the country. In practice it was taken over by DfE and ruined by imposition as a National Record of Achievement (NRA). In the process of universal prescription it lost the energy of its teaching progenitors.
Harry Judge was effectively my mentor in those years; a better or wiser one it would be hard to find. He had other plans for affecting policy through local innovation. He had long been doubtful about the effectiveness of the university model for PGCE. Impressed by medical analogy and some models elsewhere, he launched the Internship scheme, which effectively turned the PGCE into a partnership with schools, all of whom through their participation were inclined to focus anew on teaching and learning and staff development. In the years that were to follow, the Oxford Internship scheme shifted the balance of theory and practice and of university and school.
All these exciting ventures were happening at a time of cuts in the age of national 'Doubt and Disillusion'. In short, some of us were behaving as though the virtues of the previous age – strong LEAs and partnerships with heads and teachers in exciting development of the curriculum – still existed. Of course we could read the runes of a new age, but we enjoyed ourselves as we searched for the characteristics of the age that would emerge.
## The age of markets and managerialism
Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979 ushered in an economic policy that set the defining features of this age, which was taken on by New Labour when they were elected in 1997. All the White Papers contained mantra words – 'choice', 'autonomy', 'diversity'; much mention too of 'accountability', with some exhortation towards 'equity' and of course 'excellence'. If the state was going to unleash market forces, it realised it had to regulate.
Just prior to my arrival in Oxfordshire, the council formally resolved 'to publish exam results so that parents could make a better choice of school' – 15 years before publication became a national requirement, and 3 years before parental preference became a required feature of admission to schools arrangements. Encouraged by Brigadier Streatfeild, I had supper with John Redwood, formerly a councillor and shortly to be head of Mrs Thatcher's Policy Unit. His views – to privatise everything and create a quasi-market in education – seemed bizarre at the time and certainly eccentric to the Brigadier, whose background was steeped in public service. The Brigadier encouraged me to think of ways to head off the worst possibilities of accountability. I rejected the idea of local inspectors, because it seemed unlikely that LEA advisers would walk the tightrope of being a 'critical friend' by avoiding the Scylla of 'hostile witness' or the Charybdis of 'uncritical lover'. Instead, we set up a four-year cycle of 'School Self-Evaluation' backed by a stimulating set of questions, 'Starting Points in Self-Evaluation', with the schools involving their staff and a selected outside professional. The outcome was their presenting to a small group of councillors, including the member local to the school.
Finally, I encouraged teachers, parents and governors to respond to Kenneth Baker's 1987 consultation on the 1987 Reform Bill. Local Management of Schools (LMS) seemed long overdue, as the practice of stipulating what a school should spend in great detail seemed antiquated. Removing from schools power over what is taught seemed to me entirely wrong. I wrote a 600-word piece, 'First Steps on a Downward Path', for The Observer, comparing the government with the 'authoritarian church states of the 16th century' and, conjuring 'images of brown and black', I worried 'for my grandchildren'. It provoked a strong reaction, including my having to sit through a Conservative censure motion in the council chamber that was lost, because the council was by then 'hung'. I could not continue to lead a community when all I had fought for seemed lost. I was no longer credible as a leader who could make sense of the external world to the teachers.
I accepted a job at Keele University as Professor and Head of Education Department to start in 1989. So it was from this academic vantage point that I saw LEAs lose their Colleges of FE, Polytechnics and the Colleges of Education. GCSE results were published as league tables, as would be Key Stage 2 SAT results for primary schools in due course. Ofsted was created, and the outcomes of regular inspections of schools were published, as was the name of the first 'failing' school. Meanwhile at Keele, I introduced the Oxford model of the PGCE, taught in schools and the university, supervised Masters and Doctorate students, founded a Centre for Successful Schooling, read voraciously, wrote about school improvement that was fascinating me, and campaigned for a movement called 'Towards a New Education Act' (TANEA). However, if one wanted to influence national policy, being in a university wasn't a good place to be effective.
In 1993 I started a ten-year period as Chief Education Officer in Birmingham. With no responsibility for further and higher education as a result of government action, and with responsibilities for the youth service, adult education and the libraries given to other chief officers, I focused on pre-school and schools, which were my first loves in any case. Armed with a set of recommendations for improvement from an independent enquiry and report chaired by Ted Wragg, and with excellent data, we set about transforming expectations and outcomes in the city. This was not something confined to the professionals: the whole city was caught up in our determination each year 'to improve on previous best'. We harnessed the considerable 'common wealth' of the city – art galleries, music, universities and other performances and the like – to establish a set of experiences or entitlements that we asserted all children should have. Schools were the guardians who would make sure they had them. Simultaneously with teachers and heads we shared a common language and map of school improvement and set targets for improvement from the 'bottom-up' rather than, as the government later imposed, the 'top-down'. We were determined to change the culture of a city, at least so far as education was concerned. After a couple of years, the data (which we collected meticulously and used imaginatively to encourage 'school-to-school' learning) suggested we were succeeding, although, in our efforts to improve, we were hampered by the DfE's inability or unwillingness to give us comparative data by ethnic and socio-economic groups. Instead, we used anecdote to help us search out what might be better practice in other LEAs. Schools enthusiastically embraced the agenda and co-operated one with another in a quest for ever-better practice and outcomes. Between 1993 and 1997, we did this largely unnoticed beyond the city, but one of the local MPs, Estelle Morris, invited David Blunkett frequently for discussions, and I was part of a small group that helped him and Tony Blair prepare their education priorities for government. Indeed, after their election, Blunkett had wanted me to work full-time in a post eventually given to Michael Barber. I had refused, partly because I knew the work with Birmingham was not yet fully rooted, partly because I loved the city and its people and partly because I knew I would fall out with David Blunkett over method. He was inclined to national prescription and imposition, which seemed unlikely to work in somewhere as vast as England. My experience suggested it would breed professional resentment and a loss of teacher energy, which is so vital to school success. In the years after 1997, both David Blunkett and Estelle Morris would tell me when I complained of their agenda that all they were doing was what they had learned worked in Birmingham. In vain did I explain that the agenda – well, most of it – might be fine, but the language (always emphasising failure and 'zero-tolerance') and the method of introducing it were counter-productive.
It is hard to overestimate the excitement of having a government that put education at the top of its agenda. I was offered the Chair of the Standards Task Force by David Blunkett, who withdrew the offer on the grounds that, for it to make a difference, he needed to chair it, but I could be vice-chair. He then made a big request that I should be joint vice-chair with Chris Woodhead, HMCI and head of Ofsted, which, as I thought then and have done ever since, needed total reform. He and I did not get on, as any glance at newspaper coverage of our fairly public disagreements at that time will testify. But I accepted to help in what I saw as a huge opportunity for education to make the difference it could when put centre stage of public policy. I soon saw, however, that the Task Force had little influence and wasn't sorry to resign when Woodhead's 'pilot' inspection of LEAs was taking place in Birmingham and was going to demand all my time to handle, if damage was to be avoided.
I had anticipated, wrongly as it turned out, that New Labour would re-establish 'planning' as a watchword to accompany and limit 'choice', 'diversity', 'autonomy' and 'accountability' in the mantra lexicon of the new government's policy and practice. Certainly they emphasised 'equity' and took many measures designed to make the schooling system less unequal and unfair, especially in the early years where they introduced and exceeded all the measures contained in Mrs Thatcher's stillborn Framework for Expansion White Paper of 1971. Nevertheless, we were still in an age of 'markets and managerialism': indeed, New Labour consolidated their influence. The first 15 failing schools were named and shamed, and 'literacy' and 'numeracy' hours introduced. Their legislation gave yet more powers to the Secretary of State who, from 1945 to 1980, had but three and, by 2015, had added another 2,000 powers, with over 3,000 schools run by direct private contracts with him.
## The London challenge
By 2002, with a second LEA inspection behind me, it was time to retire. But Estelle Morris, by then Secretary of State, had other ideas. London had become synonymous with all that was wrong in education, just as Birmingham had been a decade earlier. Neither reputation was deserved and was more the result of a bad press. Would I be interested in becoming Commissioner for London School and running the London Challenge? It was an irresistible temptation. I was to be given a 'more or less free hand'.
I had written a no-holds-barred attack on markets and managerialism as the Caroline Benn–Brian Simon memorial lecture in 2002, 'Dreams and Nightmares', speculating about two possible scenarios of ever-widening hierarchies of schools in urban areas, on the one hand, the product of market competitions, and, on the other hand, of partnerships of schools in an area, working interdependently and committed to pooling their ideas, skills and knowledge and being judged as a group. What I was witnessing was ever-harsher Ofsted regimes, a use of language that emphasised failure, challenge and 'zero tolerance' of whatever undesirable feature one was trying to eradicate. I asked all ministers to read it and only approve my appointment if they did not think it would embarrass them.
The measures put in place and expertly framed in the London Challenge prospectus and carried through by Jon Coles, the ablest civil servant of his generation, included school-to-school support, a Families of Schools database to support learning from each other, a focus on Continuous Professional Development through the Chartered London Teacher scheme and a small group of part-time expert experienced school advisers who would work with schools that elsewhere (and up to that point) DfE classified as 'failing' because of low GCSE results. We dubbed such schools 'Keys to Success' – a subtle but important change of language intended to contribute to a change in culture. After all, if these schools could transform standards, any school could. Name, blame and shame might make good headlines but it set back the chances of improvement, and I was granted some latitude in London, where my experience as deputy to Peter Newsam meant I was remembered, by teachers now leading schools, as somebody who probably understood their circumstances.
In short, in London we were allowed to try a distinctive set of practices that were tailored to London's needs but within national educational policies. What we tried to encourage was professional trust and schools learning from each other, backed by a database that enabled them to see in forensic detail what other schools in similar circumstances were doing. We talked the language of partnership and, by speculating on different solutions working in different contexts, tried to counter the belief in 'one size fits all', which was then prevalent in policy making.
There remained, however, a belief in the overall efficacy of the 'market', as expressed through creating autonomous competitive quasi-independent schools. This had first surfaced with the Grant-Maintained School, which was abandoned as a model by New Labour in 1997 but was about to make a come-back through the Academies movement.
Ten years on, as politicians celebrate the extraordinary success of London schools, and as researchers seek to explain the phenomenon, the seeds sown then are beginning to surface, and the questions crowd in. Agreement about London is by no means the only political pointer to the direction of the educational weathervane. The main parties, presumably aware of the unreasonable pressures on heads and teachers and the imminent shortage of candidates for both, are agreed that Ofsted is no longer fit for purpose and needs reform, that there should be a Royal (or National) College of Teaching, and that the autonomous independent school is an inadequate and unreliable model on which to plan a successful schooling system. Are perhaps partnerships of schools for very clearly stated purposes – including of course school improvement and teachers' continuous professional development – essential? If so, how should they be funded and held accountable? In the age of creativity, which makes new and different demands on schools, are we holding schools themselves accountable for the wrong things?
In short, there are plenty of signs that the Age of Markets and Managerialism may have nearly run its course and may be succeeded by one of Partnerships and Intelligent Accountability, where democratic influence is regional rather than national and where policies are more overtly based on research evidence tempered by an understanding of context rather than on anecdote and personal opinion.
# [13
Schools](content.xhtml#bck_Ch013)
A shifting landscape
Margaret Maden
## Islington Green Comprehensive School
In October 1976, Prime Minister James Callaghan criticised schools, mildly but firmly, in his Ruskin Speech. I was then in my first year of headship at Islington Green Comprehensive School, part of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). I was already conscious of growing doubts about schools, not least through a nearby school's headteacher, Dr Rhodes Boyson, and the part he played in the 'Black Papers'. These raised questions about 'progressive' teaching methods, many of which I supported through Schools Council projects such as history, geography for the Young School Leaver, music and humanities. Through these, teachers developed learning materials and pedagogy alongside university curriculum specialists. They were properly trialled and amended in light of classroom experience. The 'progressive' nature of these appeared to be the ambition to democratise more contemporary scholarship and emphasise the modes of learning particular to each discipline. In the hands of able and motivated teachers, Schools Council projects were demonstrably raising standards of thinking and investigation on the part of pupils. Insufficient evaluation of their impact probably aided those who valued, above all else, more traditional syllabi and rote learning.
Several teachers at Islington Green welcomed the more comfortable challenge-free implications of the Black Papers, something not intended by their authors. The rhetoric at this time now seems naïve. It was, of course, in a context when the secondary school curriculum was primarily determined by examination boards. In primary schools there was no equivalent framework, and one of my main feeder schools, William Tyndale, deepened my anxiety levels about the mounting worries of many parents. I roused the wrath of NUT friends by expressing public condemnation of its teachers barring access to inspectors and 'unacceptable' school governors. None of its antics helped me at all in my determination to galvanise teachers at my school, not through idle polemics but through hard graft and appointing teachers, once the pupil roll increase permitted, who were imaginative and optimistic about their pupils' capabilities.
In 1977, I was invited to address one of the regional conferences in 'The Great Debate', the response of the Secretary of State, Shirley Williams, to her Prime Minister's expressed concerns about the nation's schools. To my best recollection, this was the first and last time I received, as a headteacher, any communication from central government. How very different now. The outcome of the 'Great Debate' was an advisory Circular in which local education authorities were to devise a 'core curriculum' for their schools and the accumulated knowledge of the Schools Council would be 'considered'. Compared with what followed in the 1980s, this was all 'business as usual' and a bit of fudge. Even at the time, it was clear that significant interest groups, including employers' organisations, were dissatisfied with many school leavers. It was quite common for a mere 20 per cent of 16-year-olds to continue in full-time education and training at the end of their time in a comprehensive school. The gap between high achievers and low achievers was not only greater than today but also seen by many as unbridgeable. Primary schools varied from creative brilliance and impressive outcomes to those characterised by an unstructured lack of challenge.
## The Local Authority – London
So that many more 16–19-year-olds could voluntarily and usefully continue their studies, a changed approach was needed. In Islington, better A-Level teaching was provided through a combined approach, with its ten secondary schools working through a sixth form centre. This evolved from a loose federation to a larger college based in former London County Council Board schools. An initial student enrolment of 300, mainly part-time and still formally enrolled in one of 11 local schools, rose to over 500 in its first year, and increasingly, students were full-time as they consciously opted for the more adult ethos and better outcomes. Economies of scale plus high-level teaching skills meant that a wide range of needs could be supported. This is where the role of the local authority proved positive. It quickly located empty buildings, and its architects did wonders with unpromising conditions, making the physical provision both attractive to staff and students and appropriate in terms of specialist facilities.
The ILEA was an odd mixture of brilliance and frustration for its schools. In quickly and imaginatively responding to post-16 inadequacies in Islington, it was at its best, aided and abetted by a new head of service, Dr William Stubbs, and a new Leader, Councillor Frances Morrell, the latter being a resident of Islington. Additionally, Dr Stubbs ensured that I, as Director-designate, visited successful community colleges in the USA and sixth form colleges in England so as to raise aspirations and strengthen organisational planning. Likewise, money was found so that a core of excellent teachers could be appointed as heads of faculty, with teachers from local schools teaching on a sessional basis.
All schools and colleges benefited from the ILEA's Research and Statistics branch. This generated high-quality data about us and our performance and, equally, promoted good practice exemplars of both a qualitative and quantitative kind. With a powerful inspectorate, subject centres were a godsend, where teachers could immerse themselves in the best of their specialisms and meet each other, irrespective of their headteachers' predilections. In 1979, 15,000 hours (Rutter et al., 1979) was published, a rigorous study of how secondary schools in the ILEA with similar pupil characteristics were highly variable in outcomes and, crucially, why. 'Nowhere now to hide' as one head said. This was a project led by Professor Michael Rutter, leading a team of University of London researchers, including Peter Mortimore, who soon afterwards became Director of the ILEA's Research and Statistics Branch. This kind of expert systemic support and challenge represented the 'middle tier', between central government and individual institutions, at its best.
However, in other regards, the ILEA was cumbersome and aggravating. Limited autonomy for headteachers meant that I could not get into my school unless the school-keeper (janitor) allowed it, neither could I require the school bursar to arrange her holiday leave at a time that made sense to the school; both reported to line managers somewhere else in the ILEA firmament. I was keen, with leading governors and teachers, to develop Islington Green as a community school, combining school and adult education, 'open all hours', which I believed would improve our educational relationship with parents and neighbours. It would also enlarge our students' sense of the value and potential of education. However, I was stopped by the ILEA's Youth and Adult Education service which saw our proposal as a threat and its youth club in the school premises five evenings a week (term time only, of course) as sacrosanct. Visits to Leicestershire's community schools merely made me feel worse. When I managed to get funding from the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) for a School-Work Liaison Officer, several leading ILEA councillors complained, saying 'every school will want one if she gets one'. Only the intervention of senior officers secured this, but the time and angst wasted were absurd. The extension of our successful sixth form centre to other inner London boroughs was likewise stymied by the authority's FE lobby. That successful provision depended on the skills and knowledge of FE colleges as well as schools seemed to be lost in the struggle.
## The Local Authority – Warwickshire
The reconstruction of educational systems, accountabilities and powers proceeded at breakneck speed through the 1980s and beyond. GERBIL – the Great Education Reform Bill – took up hours of angry debate among the traditional 'partners' in the education service. At the end of that decade, I was appointed to Warwickshire County Council as its County Education Officer. Councillors took a calculated risk in appointing an LEA novice, a woman at that, with London experience, but they sniffed the prevailing air and decided that headship experience was a more timely criterion. The education department wit expressed widespread surprise at my appointment, commenting that this was like 'Maradona being appointed to Port Vale'. That Warwickshire staff saw themselves as Port Vale spoke legions about this 'Middle England' local authority. Later accusations of local authority 'control' over schools were and are laughable.
My recent experience as a headteacher and Sixth Form Centre Director was certainly helpful in working constructively with headteachers and governors in this shire authority. Initially, I set up working groups of officers and headteachers to prepare a series of proposals for the council and schools as a response to GERBIL. Not all headteachers welcomed the autonomy that was offered, nor the 'freedoms' associated with devolved budgets. The role of officers and inspectors actually became stronger and more creative as school autonomy increased. From my ILEA days, the setting out of a larger vision, backed up with visiting luminaries from the education world, made many of the 380 schools feel more positive about their possible futures. Some were amused, though worried, to hear Peter Wilby, an experienced education correspondent, tell them that he felt that the new National Curriculum was, in effect, 'Mr Baker's dimly remembered prep school timetable', 'Mr Baker' being the Secretary of State responsible for the new structures being put in place.
It soon became apparent that the amiable days of government circulars were over. Schools were to be more publicly scrutinised and reported on. Quantification and grading were soon the main means of 'quality control'. In most shire counties all this was unheard of, as was any kind of local authority inspection. Advisers were important in encouraging the adoption of newer curricular and pedagogic approaches, but the kind of Quinquennial Review, a local school system inspection that I had experienced in London, was unheard of. The Warwickshire advisory team of 11 was developed as a local inspectorate with a brief to help schools work through and, hopefully, thrive in a quite new world. Some of the traditional advisory work persisted: the art adviser arranged visits for teachers to great galleries, home and abroad, and the music adviser ensured that the County Youth Orchestra was open to all, irrespective of family income, and arranged teacher excursions to major Birmingham concerts. In-service training was increased with a new Professional Centre in Leamington Spa. Helping headteachers and classroom teachers confront a rapidly changing context was our main objective, but not at the cost of some traditional customs and practices. Subject Associations were important and the nearest equivalent, for secondary teachers, to the well-resourced subject centres in London. Before budgets were almost entirely devolved to schools, we paid teachers' subscription costs to these vital national associations.
Nonetheless, the early 1990s were an unsettled period of fear and uncertainty in Shakespeare's leafy county, as a raft of central government reforms were absorbed. The appointment of a rather brilliant hands-on deputy, Eric Wood, settled initial rumblings from the teacher unions, both within and beyond the council. Five further education colleges were largely 'autonomous', irrespective of legislation, although it was clear that an expert County Treasurer's department was still needed for both capital and revenue oversight. There was no evidence that a new government quango, the Further Education Council, improved this situation. The profound changes arising from government reforms were made manageable and largely positive as much by informal exchanges and chat across and between officers, county councillors, governors, union reps and teachers as by hundreds of hours of scrutiny of central government documents and more formal council meetings. These less formal exchanges and insights strengthen the real, rather than posited, 'checks and balances' required in the proper management of public bodies . . . and money. Whitehall doesn't always know best.
## School re-organisation
My final four years in Warwickshire were not easy, certainly in terms of my popularity, but hugely important for the county's 244 primary schools and 37 secondary schools. After witnessing a series of failed attempts to close individual under-subscribed schools and the negative reaction to Labour councillors' proposals to 'comprehensivise' the county's five grammar schools, I increasingly worried about the lack of overall strategy with regard to 'surplus places'. Over 20 per cent of our school capacity was surplus to needs, and this meant that we were asking more fully subscribed schools to pay for empty school desks elsewhere. We could gain more than an additional £2 million annually for schools with a more rational system and this, in turn, would trigger capital spending on improving a rather lacklustre set of buildings to the tune of £29 million. Additionally, as the National Curriculum unfolded with its key stage assessments at ages 7, 11, 14 and 16, it was increasingly apparent that our first, middle and upper school system, which applied overall – except in the south of the county – was inappropriate. This system had transfer ages that cut across the new key stages, and it would be clearer to everyone – parents and governors, as well as teachers – if key stage assessments were aligned, for accountability purposes, to one school for each child's educational phase: primary, then secondary.
A massive planning exercise, based on accurate birth data from the Area Health Authority, housing development information from District and Borough Councils and cost analyses from our own County Treasurer, was further supported by work from Price Waterhouse Coopers, our external auditors. We first consulted on basic principles and objectives, then trialled a range of formative proposals in one of our local divisions, North Warwickshire. Over 30 consultative meetings were held, all with predictable results. 'Go away' was the general message. The local Labour MP wanted me sacked. A former NUM member who was the Education committee's Deputy Chair voted for the proposals, even though two of 'his schools' were lined up for closure. He lost his seat at the next local elections because of doing what he believed was right for children. There were threats to 'opt out', as schools sought an escape route through grant-maintained status in order to evade the 'County Plan'. Secondary schools supported the proposals, as they would acquire an extra year group of pupils from the middle schools, as well as new buildings to support these. Over the following three years, as the whole county was involved, some 400 consultative meetings were held. Highly effective officers led these and took a whole load of stick. Senior officers, myself included, alongside leading councillors, attended many meetings under a vow of silence, concentrating on listening to the arguments as they raged on. At one such meeting, the Permanent Secretary from the DES sat silently at the back of the village hall, commenting later, 'I was surprised at the intensity of feelings expressed'. Indeed. On another occasion, when leaving a particularly heated consultative meeting, I saw that the tyres of my car had been cut. On a welcome Saturday break in Stratford-upon-Avon's Jaeger shop, I was concluding a purchase of clothes when the assistant looked at my VISA card and shrieked, 'Oh you're that awful woman who's trying to close all our schools'.
Final approval had to be secured from the Secretary of State for Education. A delegation of leading councillors and myself were able to present our case to the then Minister of Schools, Robin Squire, and sitting there was the Secretary of State, Gillian Shephard. We were courteously treated and on leaving, Gillian Shephard said to me, 'My husband sends you his warmest regards'. Thank goodness her husband was a former headteacher and knew me through that oddly masonic clan. We were fortunate that she was in office and not her predecessor, John Patten. As she had warned me, 'I'll have to let a few go GM you know', and indeed, of the 197 schools for whom legal notices had to be issued for restructuring purposes, five were allowed to 'opt out' and become grant maintained, outside the Local Authority. Actual site closures amounted to 30. These were hotly disputed and they were primarily very small rural schools. We learned that an inverse ratio operates: smallness and rurality of school equal largeness and fury of objections. The Deputy Secretary at the Department of Education and Science later told me that the Warwickshire school re-organisation scheme was the largest the Department or former Ministry of Education had received since the 1944 Act first established the ground rules.
The local passions roused and expressed are now avoided in that local authorities no longer close or open schools. The presumption is that new schools will either be Academies or Free Schools with sponsors, not needing to survey the intricate needs of localities or regions. Whitehall has assumed for itself the boring-sounding but vital business of ensuring that there are sufficient school places for children, ideally, in locations helpful to parents, but all this is done without deep local knowledge. The escalation of performance tables and Ofsted reports means that many parents 'shop around' much more, and so it is that a 'rational' approach to the location, size and type of school is impossible. School closures are assumed to result from market forces, which also encourage the promotion of 'Free Schools', which parents and particular local interest groups set up, irrespective of 'basic need' or the connections to, or impact on, other schools. The growth of multiple faith schools is also evident; that our Warwickshire proposals were underwritten by both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Authorities was important. I was immensely gratified when the Bishop of Coventry came with me to persuade the Conservative MP in Stratford-upon-Avon to support our plan. We failed totally.
Neither in-depth consultation rooted in locality nor value for money is now considered. By value for money, I mean securing whatever funds are available for classroom work and the finest buildings possible for schools and colleges. Warwickshire's early 1990s re-organisation provided much better buildings across the county and increased spending per pupil, much more equitably spread. Warwickshire's administrative costs as a local education authority remained modest at 73 per cent of the English county average. Hard though the consultation exercise was, it represented public debate at its best, with significant modifications to the officers' original proposals emerging from those long, tortuous exchanges.
## National Commission on Education
In 1991, following Sir Claus Moser's British Association for the Advancement of Science presidential speech, the National Commission on Education was established. A two-year investigation, equivalent to earlier government-sponsored enquiries, was funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. I was one of the Commission's 16 members, and we were asked to investigate and take stock of the rapid changes, which had been set in train during the 1980s in particular. However, the main task was to look ahead some 25 years and think about educational goals and training needs in a way that responded creatively to both economic and social circumstances and 'the needs and aspirations of people throughout their lives'. Our Chair was Lord Walton of Detchant, with much medical educational experience, and other members represented all sectors and phases of education as well as industry and commerce.
The final report, 'Learning to Succeed' (National Commission on Education, 1993), was well received, primarily because our analysis and recommendations were powerfully argued and substantiated with evidence. High-quality research was commissioned, so that the report was rooted in empirical findings, not just from within England and Wales, but also from international studies.
That large-scale, well-resourced and researched commissions of enquiry are now consigned to history is depressing. The current pace of change and rapid reform are not inevitable and are often damaging to those who provide and receive education. Frequent initiatives and shifts of policy require an evidential base as well as every effort to involve and win over the support of teachers, in particular. Germany bucked this trend when it investigated and took action on its low ranking in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tables, and this was a ten-year exercise (2002–2012). It stressed that 'a much improved research establishment has now fed into teacher training so that teachers are enabled to analyse and diagnose their students' specific problems' (OECD, 2011). In all high-performing systems, there is a similar emphasis on a strong relationship between universities and schools and colleges. In England, Free Schools are allowed, perhaps encouraged, to employ unqualified teachers. However, in Scotland, headteachers are to be required to continue their understanding and knowledge through Masters' courses, and the Scottish government's review of teacher training in 2011 stressed that, for teachers, 'the values and intellectual challenges which underpin academic study should extend their own scholarship and practice, equally' (Scottish Parliament, 2011).
## The Centre for Successful Schools
From the National Commission on Education (1996) came 'Success Against the Odds', a series of case studies of 11 UK schools where pupils demonstrating significant disadvantage had succeeded 'against the odds'.
In this project, well-respected researchers forensically examined the factors that seemed to explain the schools' successes. Published in 1996, it coincided with my move to Keele University as the Director of the Centre for Successful Schools, originally set up by Tim Brighouse. As I read more, visited scores of schools and was asked to speak about the 11 schools in the National Commission's study, it occurred to me that a follow-up study was needed. Five years later, the original team returned to the schools to check on their further progress and found a range of significant changes, with one school having effectively collapsed. Lessons from this school were as instructive as the others who had continued their upward progress, but in markedly different ways. Success Against the Odds: Five Years On (Maden, 2001) is still being widely read, mainly by practitioners in and around schools. This contrasted with increasing amounts of educational research, as I rapidly learned.
I worked at Keele on a half-time contract, but was there at least three days each week. It was an odd experience, after working in schools and a local authority. In the latter, there was a daily sense of collegiality, not always smooth or consensual, but nonetheless materially evident. Meeting and greeting from 8 a.m. or earlier, planned or chance encounters throughout the day all featured as 'work'. Gradual development, in Warwickshire, of 'working from home' was piloted as computers became more important. It was necessary in trialling this to define where and when face-to-face exchanges were needed and preferable. This emerged as an effective and welcome practice.
At Keele, there was not any tradition of day-to-day, hour-by-hour, 'social' working. The 8–9 morning start didn't exist. Many meetings with lecturers were arranged by students through an appointments system rather than through chance encounters. Staff didn't seem to work as a collegium, rather odd given the origin of that term. Increasingly, email exchanges predominated (now text messaging, no doubt). Starting in the late 1990s, more research was needed for the maintenance and improvement of the university's income and reputation. The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), followed by the Research Excellence Framework (REF), increasingly dominates the work and ethos of university departments. However, when the bulk of 'output' is teachers and other education practitioners, this can sometimes lead to conflicts of interest. In some cases, an older practitioner-learning tradition has left some staff stranded, trying, as required, to produce more esoteric research and publications.
Ofsted now inspects university education departments, so that the vocational preparation of teachers is judged and ranked. With the rise of school-based teacher training through the newer First and Schools Direct schemes, these departments are thus under the additional strain of competition. This, combined with the pressures of the REF, has led some universities to question the continuing role and existence of their education departments' vocational training work. To date, Warwick, Bath and Sheffield have closed their Post Graduate Certificate of Education programmes rather than invest in their improvement along Ofsted lines, especially if the education research output is not helping to raise the university's REF ranking and income.
A welcome change to REF in 2014 was the requirement placed on universities to demonstrate the impact of research on practice, not simply in education. It is certainly in the interests of schools that practice and innovation should be rooted in research, often of an empirical kind. The opposing of practice and theory is extremely damaging. Medical education is rooted in research as well as in practitioner advances and reflection. The same should apply to teacher training and continuous professional development.
## Reflecting on the 'middle tier'
In 2003, the post of Chief Education Officer was abolished when the recommendations of the White Paper 'Every Child Matters' were put in place through Parliament. The reaction to the Victoria Climbié case in Haringey had led to understandable consternation about the public protection of such children, and subsequent events have confirmed this anxiety. Whether the removal of local educational leadership and co-ordination should have been wrapped up in this is a separate matter. I followed up my Warwickshire experiences by writing about 'the middle tier' in education and finding out how these matters were handled elsewhere.
Through my involvement in OECD reviews – Russia and Hesse, Germany – and a special study of Midi-Pyrénées in France (Maden, 2000), as well as attending Council of Europe and OECD seminars on school improvement, I tried to define why and how some kind of middle tier was necessary and helpful in the continuous development of schools and colleges. It was clear that greater 'school autonomy' was being thought about elsewhere, but it was seen as a high-risk strategy if taken too far, especially if a school's improvement halted or stuttered. Experience and expertise should be available locally, both to identify emerging problems and to advise and know where relevant support is to be found. Whether this person is in a local authority as currently organised is arguable, but there certainly needs to be a statutory body employing such advisers.
Related to this is the role of a local or sub-regional authority in tasks that even the best schools cannot carry out, but that affect how well children and young people thrive. Examples include high-level special needs assessment and provision, specialist arts and sporting facilities and instruction administering school admissions, and planning school places. I would argue that local democratic accountability is intrinsic to most of these for the qualitative reasons I have tried to describe in the Warwickshire planning exercise. Answerability to electors – and even to non-voting parents, if such exist – is a civic good and curbs, if necessary, the over-reaching power of headteachers, local-level officers or government civil servants. While I recognise that international visits and knowledge do not offer ready-made models to emulate, I continue to be impressed by the quality and citizen appreciation of local and regional government in, say, France, Germany and Italy. Our lack of a basic law protecting a middle tier of government from central government forays is damaging to the quality of our civic life.
Irrespective of the civic polity, monitoring school performance and encouraging schools to 'do even better' cannot depend solely on published performance data ('league tables') and popularity with parents on school choice. These indicators do not identify further potential or weaknesses soon enough. Neither will the vital institutional health of a well-motivated and skilled staff be assured through such data.
As a former headteacher, I increasingly question the Hollywood star model of headship – 'l'école c'est moi' now appears to be the underlying precept. The way successful orchestras work interests me, especially following my chairing of the Royal Opera House's Education and Access committee. The idea of supremely skilled, proficient instrumental players, often a bit stroppy, working at ever-higher levels of excellence under the right conductor fascinates me. The von Karajan 'dictator' model is recognisable but limited. The Claudio Abbado model is better: he's described as 'a catalyst', his most frequent urging in rehearsal is 'Listen, listen' (to other sections of the orchestra), and we're told that his work with his players is 'a tectonic generative approach to musical architecture, in which Abbado knows how each part relates to the other, how shifting weights and densities in one part of the score will affect and shape the whole landscape of the symphony' (Service, 2012).
This is a more appropriate model of headship than most others proposed by business leadership consultants. The important role of the audience is also greater than most of us imagine, a 'circle of listening' with orchestra members being clear that this dynamic affects their performance. The pupils and their parents in schools likewise affect outcomes and strategies. The sensitive 'ear' is needed, and we should be cautious about charismatic omnipotence as a worthwhile quality. Potentially excellent headteachers are lost to the profession because of this tendency to promulgate a Dragon's Den model of leadership and obtrusive dynamism.
In recent years I have been a school governor and have observed the intense pressures on headteachers as they worry about an unfavourable Ofsted inspection and the slightest downward shift in published performance tables. Public scrutiny is a good thing, even if occasionally uncomfortable, but when scrutiny overload occurs – as I believe is now happening – the development of teaching and of children's learning is adversely affected. The almost total lack of professional space for any kind of innovation is depressing. It is also self-defeating. The high-stakes model of intensive instruction in Shanghai or Singapore schools has been promulgated by recent Secretaries of State, and yet, more critical appraisals of these are side-stepped (Ravitch, 2014). Meanwhile, the steady teacher-centred Finnish model is ignored, even though its development over three decades has resulted in consistently high outcomes. In Finland, teaching is an enviable profession, with high levels of entry qualification, and turnover is very low, unlike in England. The potential of the teachers I see working now is great but unrealised. Headteachers watch their backs; so do teachers; so do governors. The following of laid-down rules from the centre is paramount. Yet measured outcomes are better than those two or three decades ago. Thus, a move towards more local innovation at classroom level and encouragement of the non-measurable in education should proceed, without losing the positive improvements of recent years. Without such a move, we will lose our best teachers.
## Postscript: the educational undergrowth
From my first job as a geography teacher in Brixton in the 1960s through to a professorial chair at Keele University in the early years of the twenty-first century, I have been conscious of informal networking influences on my professional journey. From early NUT days to The All Souls Group, based in Oxford, making contacts from beyond the particular workplace setting has been enlightening. Around the time of the James Commission, investigating teacher training in the early 1970s, some of us set up SPERTTT, the Society for the Promotion of Educational Reform through Teacher Training, and produced a Penguin Education Special for the good Lord James to savour (Burgess, 1971). Later, while at Islington Green School, the Deputy Chair of governors, Professor Maurice Kogan, asked me to join him in establishing The Ginger Group where, again, rambling discussions in a local restaurant led to publications across and between educational sectors and phases. In The All Souls Group, invited members from senior levels of the civil service, higher and further education, as well as local authorities and schools meet three times a year to listen to and discuss with leading practitioners and theorists. By straddling issues from early years to higher education and demonstrating the connections across and between apparently separate components, we enlarge our sense of what we should be trying to achieve. This is a powerful form of continuing education. Writing also helps to distil and analyse our thoughts and experience. What I am now concerned about is the increased separation of educational professionals into their specialist 'silos'. Quality and innovation are thus diminished.
Finally, over my professional lifetime, the position of women has been a marked characteristic of change, mainly improvement. Being rejected for a deputy headship at age 30 on the basis that a 'strong man' was needed was strange. This was followed by a much better post in an Oxfordshire comprehensive where, on this front, the main problem was my membership of the 'Oxfordshire Senior Mistresses Association', its title denoting the lack, until then, of any female deputy heads in Oxfordshire secondary schools. Inner London was used to doughty women, both elected to the authority and professionally, but my 1988 interview in Warwickshire was marked by elected members not being able to decide whether my student days' membership of the British Communist Party was a worse problem than my gender. In 1993, Jenny Ozga included me in her collection of case studies on women in educational management (Ozga, 1993). She interviewed me, then ruefully observed that my progression through the educational world appeared to have been founded on 'male patronage'. At least, this dubious phenomenon is far less likely to occur today for all those able and talented women who run the education world.
## References
Burgess, T. (ed.) 1971, Dear Lord James: A Critique of Teacher Education. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Maden, M. 2000, Shifting Gear: Changing Patterns of Governance in Europe. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.
Maden, M. 2001, Success Against the Odds: Five Years On. London: Routledge-Falmer.
National Commission on Education, 1993, Learning to Succeed. London: Heinemann.
National Commission on Education, 1996, Success Against the Odds: Effective Schools in Disadvantaged Areas. London: Routledge.
OECD, 2011, Education at a Glance, Country Note – Germany. Paris: OECD.
Ozga, J. (ed.) 1993, Women in Educational Management. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Ravitch, D. 2014, The Myth of Chinese Super Schools. New York: New York Review of Books, November.
Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P. and Ouston, J. 1979, 15,000 Hours. Open Books, London.
Scottish Parliament, 2011, Teaching Scotland's Future. Edinburgh.
Service, T. 2012, Music as Alchemy. London: Faber and Faber.
# [14
1944–2015](content.xhtml#bck_Ch014)
Towards the nationalisation of education in England
Sir Peter Newsam
## Teacher and administrator
As a teacher for seven years, my main interest was with what happened inside schools: with the curriculum and in learning how to teach better. Since 1963, as a local education authority administrator in four different education authorities, three of them Conservative led, I was necessarily mostly concerned with what the local authority provided or managed outside the schools and colleges they maintained. Earlier, as a teacher in a grammar school immediately adjoining a secondary modern school, I had become directly aware of, as I saw it, the adverse consequences of the 11+ examination. It was the wrong examination at the wrong age, with damaging consequences for far too many children. It was in 1970, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as Deputy to Sir Alec Clegg, that I became directly involved in discussions on ending selection in Harrogate; this was managed by a Conservative local authority with the widespread agreement of the parents, teachers and governing bodies concerned. As Deputy, from 1973, and then as Education Officer to the Labour-led Inner London Education Authority, ending selection at 45 grammar schools by 1977 proved rather more difficult. But the system of schools then created has provided the secure platform on which London's parents, teachers and governing bodies have since been able to build so successfully.
## The 1944 Education Act: a national system locally managed
Educationally, the Britain of 2014 is a very different place from when I left school in 1947.
In 1947, victory in two wars had recently been enthusiastically celebrated. Britain was close to bankruptcy, with large parts of its major cities and industrial areas in ruins. India's independence had just been achieved, and it was already evident that the further dissolution of the Empire, over which Britain had ruled and from which it had benefited for many years, could not long be delayed.
In the immediate post-war years, Britain was led by people who had lived through a war against totalitarian government. Many had experienced the war at first hand. They did not intend their hopes for the future to be crushed by apparently insurmountable debt. Britain's successful staging of the 1948 Olympic Games was an early statement of that intent, followed by the Festival of Britain in 1951.
At school, we learned of the proposal for a national health service and for an education system that would provide opportunities for all, of the kind that we had taken for granted. There was a widespread feeling among many of my educated-in-war-time contemporaries that we had a duty to play an active part in our country's future.
So much for 1947. Seventy years later, England, though not the rest of Britain, has moved a long way towards nationalising its education system, without its electorate ever having been invited to say whether it wants that to happen. Any account of how this has come about begins with the Education Act of 1944.
The 1944 Education Act was a continuation of earlier thinking. The terms of the Act were devised by an able group of civil servants, working with a small number of politicians of outstanding competence. In its final form, the Act was warmly welcomed by all the parties involved: Parliament, local authorities, teacher unions, the churches, the general public and even the press.
The first of the 1944 Act's two main achievements was structural. It established a, subsequently abandoned, division between primary and secondary education. Primary schools would cater for children up to the age of 11. Thereafter, all children would attend secondary schools up to the school leaving age, soon to be raised from 14 to 15, and beyond. As part of that restructuring, the Act created a secondary school system out of two very different types of existing school. The publicly funded elementary schools, which since 1870 had provided education for most of the population up to the school leaving age of 14, were combined with a group of mostly fee-charging secondary schools, provided by a whole range of denominational and charitable individuals or agencies, that educated children up to the age of 18.
Restructuring led to many long-established and independently managed secondary schools, some denominational but many not, joining the national system as voluntary aided (VA) schools. As they brought their land, their school buildings and their teachers into the national system, these VA schools were allowed to retain important elements of their independent status. VA school trustees formed the majority on the governing body, retained the right to appoint their own staff, to develop their own curriculum and to decide which children to admit to their school. The incorporation of many of these essentially independent schools into the national system for England and Wales was a great achievement. It made possible a stated aim of the Act: secondary education for all.
The 1944 Act's second main achievement was to establish a school system that reflected the values of a democratic society. The Act had been drafted during a war against totalitarian governments in which institutions like schools, and what was taught inside them, were directly controlled by the government. The civil servants and politicians who developed the Act and the Parliament that approved it were unitedly determined to create a structure that would make such a development in England impossible. To that end, the Act ensured that responsibility for the management of education in England and Wales would be shared between the government, elected by the national electorate, and local education authorities, elected by a local electorate. Accordingly, no publicly funded school could become wholly dependent for its wellbeing or its existence on either local or national government acting alone. Neither could open, close or change the character of any publicly funded school without the agreement of the other. Proposals for a new or significantly enlarged school had to be published locally, either by the local authority or by a group of proposers. Any such proposals were then subject to consultation locally. Proposals, with any objections to them, were then sent by the local authority to the Secretary of State. His role was to approve, amend or reject these proposals. For his part, the Secretary of State could not open, close or change the character of any school. He had to await a proposal to do that from the local authority that either already was or would be maintaining it. The 1944 Education Act made it impossible for any school in England or Wales to be directly controlled by an individual government minister or by any individual local authority, because neither could act without the agreement of the other.
The 1944 Act placed a general duty on local education authorities to provide secondary education in schools, 'offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes'. The Act did not stipulate how this was to be done. It was left for local education authorities to submit their plans on how they intended to meet these requirements. The terms 'grammar school', 'secondary modern school' or 'technical school' do not appear in the Act, but the government had made known its preference for a secondary school system consisting of these three types of secondary school. At a time of acute financial difficulty, this preference for what became known as the 'tri-partite' system was understandable. It broadly fitted the structure of schools already in use and was widely adopted. Existing secondary schools became grammar schools that selected their pupils as they left their primary schools; elementary schools, once primary-aged children were provided for elsewhere, were adapted to become secondary modern schools. Technical schools were provided wherever that proved possible.
The preference of a government for a tri-partite system had no statutory force. Accordingly, several local education authorities, including the London County Council and the West Riding of Yorkshire, decided to meet the age, ability and aptitude criteria by combining in one school what the tri-partite system took to be three different types of pupil requiring three different types of education in three different types of school. Schools designed to meet the full range of the 'aptitudes and abilities' of pupils within one secondary school, rather than between three, became known as 'comprehensive' schools. The London School Plan of 1947 set out the London County Council's reasons for providing schools of that nature.
A second example of shared responsibilities between central and local government was the way in which school places were provided during the post-war years of sharply rising school numbers. Under the Act, the duty to secure sufficient and suitable school places was the responsibility of local government. Central government's role was to control the total amount of expenditure involved and to approve or reject major building schemes proposed by individual local authorities. Governments had to ensure that their own national priorities were met. The most important of these was ensuring that sufficient funds were available to provide 'roofs over heads', schools needed to cater for rising school numbers. Between 1947 and the mid 1960s, local education authorities and successive governments worked together to provide over five million school places within tightly controlled cost limits. The efficiency with which the Department for Education's Buildings Branch helped to make this possible was widely recognised within local government and nationwide.
A third aim of the Act had been to extend the amount and to improve the quality of technical and vocational education. In this, it failed. The cost of the school places needed to raise the school leaving age to 15 meant there was little money left to spend on creating the technical schools required or on the system of national part-time day release the Act had designed to provide continued training for those entering employment on leaving school. These constraints meant that the need to provide systematically for such training, first identified in the latter part of the nineteenth century and only partially developed following the 1918 Education Act, was still not dealt with successfully by the 1944 Act. Despite sporadic efforts to remedy this problem, notably by Kenneth Baker in 1988, it remains largely unresolved in 2014.
## The school curriculum
The 1944 Act deliberately did not deal with the school curriculum. It was not seen as the role of local or central government in a democratic society to require schools to teach pupils particular things in any particular way. Until the late nineteenth century, publicly funded schools in England had been required to work within a nationally prescribed curriculum. Teachers were paid on a set of measurable results achieved by their pupils. After some 20 years, there was general agreement that 'payment by results' had failed.
Under the 1902 Education Act, education became the responsibility of all-purpose local councils, as opposed to single-purpose school boards. In 1904, the Board of Education issued a Prefatory Memorandum, setting out the general aim of the elementary school. The Memorandum contained the following paragraph:
The only uniformity of practice that the Board of Education desire to see in the teaching of Public Elementary Schools is that each teacher shall think for himself, and work out for himself, such methods of teaching as may use his powers to the best advantage and be best suited to the particular needs and conditions of the school.
Subsequently, the Board provided a handbook of Suggestions for Teachers in Elementary Schools. These suggestions covered all aspects of the curriculum and reflected an unchanged approach of successive governments to the role of teachers that lasted until the late 1970s.
Suggestions for teachers in secondary schools were not considered necessary. It was left for a variety of examination boards, working with universities and schools, to cause teachers to adapt their teaching, so far as they thought this necessary, to the questions posed by the examinations themselves.
The 1944 Act did not change the government's attitude towards the primary school curriculum. In 1949, the foreword to the Ministry of Education's publication, Story of a School, simply reproduced the words of the 1931 Consultative Committee's Report on the Primary School:
Instead of the junior schools performing their proper and highly important function of fostering the potentialities of children at an age when their minds are nimble and receptive, their curiosity strong, their imagination fertile and their spirits high, the curriculum is too often cramped and distorted by over-emphasis on examinations subjects and on ways and means of defeating the examiners. The blame for this lies not with the teachers but with the system.
## 1960s: a period of major reports
In 1966, the Plowden Report on the Primary School broadly endorsed this approach to the primary school curriculum. Commentators with an insecure grasp of the history of English education interpreted what had been endorsed by successive governments since 1904 as an example of the supposedly collapsing standards of the 1960s. The evidence, contained in an appendix to the Plowden Report, of the marked improvement in reading standards over the previous 20 years was ignored.
The Department's circular Number 10 in 1965 is an often quoted, but evidently seldom read, example of the relationship between central and local government under the 1944 Act. The circular took the form of a request to local authorities to submit plans for developing comprehensive schools. Requests by circular lacked the force of statute; so local authorities could not be required to respond to the circular. Most did, but others did not. Those that did could not be required to carry out any proposals they had decided to submit.
The 30 years between the 1944 Act and the early 1970s saw little substantial educational legislation, but a succession of well-researched reports on primary, secondary and higher education were published. These included the Crowther (1959), Newsom (1963), Robbins (1963) and Plowden (1967) Reports. The research appendices of these reports ensured that administrators and politicians alike did not lack facts, as well as opinions, on which they could base their decisions.
The 1944 Education Act had staying power. It was based on widely shared principles of the place of education in a democratic society. Its provisions underpinned the expansion and improvement of the education service in England and Wales for some 25 years and created, in the words of Sir William Alexander, a national system locally administered. It was not until early in the 1970s, at which point Part 1 of this autobiography ends, that this balance of responsibilities between local and central government showed the first signs of developing into a national system nationally administered.
## 1972 to 1982: the decline of local authorities
It was during these years that the educational role of local authorities in England, either by accident or design, began to decline.
In 1966, the government had established a Royal Commission on Local Government outside London. In June 1969, the Commission's Report was presented to Parliament. So far as education was concerned, the Report made two crucial proposals and issued a warning. The first proposal was that, to be able to act as a full partner with central government, local education authorities needed to be much larger than many existing ones. The evidence from HMI, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, local authorities and the Department for Education all indicated that large education services performed better than small ones, some of which were doing poorly. The Commission therefore proposed the creation of 78 education authorities, outside London, with a preferred population of 500,000 and a minimum size of 250,000. These 78 would replace 124 existing education authorities and the 156 other local government bodies with some responsibilities for education.
A second proposal was that, even with larger local authorities, some elements of education, such as further education, would need to be dealt with at a provincial level. The Commission suggested that the newly formed local authorities should, to deal with these issues, appoint some of their members to form eight provincial councils. The Commission did not recommend that a provincial council should be an independently elected body.
In 1970, the government set aside the Commission's recommendations, notably on the need for some provincial local authority presence. Eventually, under the 1972 Local Government Act, 97 local education authorities were created instead of the 78 proposed. In Yorkshire, 13 local authorities, some of which have, predictably, since functioned poorly, were created in place of the five much larger ones proposed by the Royal Commission.
The Commission's powerfully stated prediction that, if local government was not reformed in the way it proposed, 'local government will be increasingly discredited and will be gradually replaced by agencies of central government' has since proved correct.
A second development that substantially reduced the capacity, even the will, of some local authorities to carry out a full range of educational functions was initiated by local government itself. The Bains Report of 1972 was produced by a group of local authority chief clerks. Historically, functional legislation was administered by functional government departments. So educational legislation was devised and administered by a national education department. Similarly, health, police, housing and so on were administered by separate government departments, each responsible for the legislation relating to their function. Until the 1970s, local government committees were organised in much the same way. Senior education officials in local government, working with their education committees, dealt directly with their opposite numbers in the national Department for Education. Similarly, political leaders of education in a local authority dealt directly with education ministers. Both had detailed knowledge of the legislation they were dealing with. Nationally, until the mid-1970s, leaders of local authority education committees and their senior officials formed the highly influential Association of Education Committees. For many of these years, Sir William Alexander, as its Secretary, was able to represent the views of local education authorities directly to senior officials in the Department and to its ministers.
From 1974, most local authorities outside London became corporately managed. Once received by local government, money provided or expenditure authorised by central government departments was, to a varying extent, distributed in accordance with local government priorities rather than those of the government department that was its source. The managerial logic of corporate local government is indisputable; its practical and political consequences for the education service were disastrous, culminating in 2010 in the government removing the word 'education' from the term 'local education authority'. Under the 1944 Act, the local management of schools was the responsibility of education-specific local authorities, with their own chief officer holding the statutorily required office of chief education officer. All that was set aside, and the management of education was no longer seen by politicians, few with any experience of either, as a specific function.
While local government became corporate, government departments stayed functional and could no longer rely on corporate local education authorities deciding to spend money on the department's national priorities. Having won money from the Treasury for one purpose, ministers and their officials were not content to see it used for some other purpose. As the Royal Commission had predicted, central government's reaction was to create organisations outside local government to perform educational functions that had hitherto been exercised locally. Combined with the failure to create local authorities of an appropriate size and in the absence of the Commission's proposed provincial arrangements, this led to the creation of government agencies such as the Manpower Services Commission, the Learning and Skills Council and, later, Connexions and a series of funding and other such agencies created to do what had earlier been done by local government.
Within local government, newly appointed and corporately minded chief executives saw no reason for particular departments, of which education was by far the largest, to retain direct access to any functional government department. Many actively prevented it. From being a central element of the local authority system, education officers, almost all with teaching as well as administrative experience, found themselves spending much of their time dealing with issues that had little to do with their area of expertise. It was during the 1970s that the role of local authority education officer became less attractive as a career. With the decline of that career structure went much of the expertise and understanding needed to manage even a diminished set of educational responsibilities. In 1977, the authoritative voice for local government's education service ceased with the demise of the Association of Education Committees.
My own direct participation in educational administration ends in 1982. By the end of the 1980s, the role of local authorities in education and, in some of them, even their commitment to the education service itself had been further weakened. In a few urban local authorities, irresponsible behaviour had strengthened the government's general distrust of local government.
## Nationalisation of the curriculum and schools
Between 1988 and 2014, two of the main changes to education in England have been the nationalisation of the school curriculum and, at an increasing rate since 2010, the nationalisation of its publicly funded schools. Nationalisation is here defined as a system under which all important decisions are exercised by a single government minister, accompanied by an actual or potential transfer of assets to the state. This process necessarily requires the elimination of local government and other independent institutions from anything more than a peripheral influence on decisions about the form and content of education, either locally or nationally.
The curriculum of schools in England was nationalised in 1988. This replaced the system whereby, since 1904, governments had provided advice on the curriculum, which schools were encouraged but not required to follow. From 1963, under arrangements originating with the Department for Education, a wider range of advice than in the past had been provided by the Schools Council. The Council's members included representatives of teachers, local authorities, universities, officials from the Department for Education and members of HM Inspectorate. The documents the Council produced, its advice, the research it undertook and the experimental work it supported were designed to encourage good practice. Most of what it produced was of high quality.
In 1976, a speech at Ruskin College by the Prime Minister pointed out that the government had a legitimate interest in the curriculum of schools, and that the balance between the role of local government and central government in dealing with this might well require adjustment. His carefully worded statement left open the question of how and to what extent this adjustment would be made. In the years following the Prime Minister's speech, elements in the Department for Education had come to believe themselves better qualified to deal with the curriculum than the Schools Council. They openly expressed dissatisfaction with the Council's work and commissioned a report on its effectiveness. When the report recommended that the Council should continue, in April 1982 the Secretary of State's response was to stop financing it. That left the way open for the nationalisation of the curriculum in 1988.
During the creation of a statutorily enforceable national curriculum, advice from all quarters on its scope and content was, with rare exceptions, ignored. A complex set of curricular requirements, with an accompanying apparatus for ensuring schools were accountable for meeting these effectively, was given the force of statute. The National Curriculum was poorly constructed and imposed in haste. It has since had to be regularly and expensively revised, with teachers having to be retrained to meet new requirements as these have arisen. In 2014, some schools are still required to comply with it while others are not. Its collapse has been gradual, in recent years punctuated by personal and often ill-considered interventions from government ministers.
The nationalisation of schools in England began, on a small scale, in 1988. Twenty-five years later, that process is well advanced. Nationalisation has gone through three stages, best identified by the ministers most closely associated with them. Each stage began with a good idea. The idea behind the City Technology Colleges (CTCs), promoted by Kenneth Baker, was admirable. New and forward-looking sponsors, with a strong commitment to technical and vocationally relevant education, were invited to create and lead a series of enterprising and self-managed secondary schools. The sponsors of these schools would control the governing bodies, appoint their own staff, develop their own curriculum, decide on which children to admit, and be responsible for the financial management of their school.
In creating these schools, Kenneth Baker was either unaware of or deliberately chose to ignore the fact that schools with almost exactly the same degree of self-governance as CTCs already existed as Voluntary Aided (VA) schools. Many of these had been developed as independent schools during the nineteenth century by city companies, the churches and by individuals such as Miss Beale and Miss Buss. To develop more of such schools with appropriate sponsors would not have been difficult. Two things had to be done. First, the 1944 Act requirement that proposers/sponsors of a new school of the kind required had to provide both site and buildings had to be replaced by the need to make only a token or even no contribution to the cost of the new school. Second, local authorities, in submitting their proposals for a new school in their area, as they had done since the 1944 Act, would have had to be required by the Secretary of State to include any proposal they received for a CTC. The Secretary of State would then have had to consider all such proposals on their merits and to decide which to accept, modify or reject. If he decided to approve a proposal for a CTC, it would then have been for the local authority to find the site and, as in the case of VA schools, convey it to the trustees. Within agreed cost limits, the trustees would then manage the construction of their school.
Kenneth Baker's decision to develop CTCs, in itself a good idea, as government schools instead of VA ones, maintained but not controlled by a local authority, was the first move towards replacing local government's role in education with control of individual schools in England by a government minister.
No prime minister since 1997 has been educated in a publicly funded school in England or later had any personal association with the management of any such school. This lack of understanding has made it possible for unelected and inexperienced policy advisers to play an increasingly important role in formulating educational policy. One such adviser, Andrew Adonis, later ennobled as Minister for Schools, had an excellent idea. This was to encourage enterprising groups of sponsors to run independently managed and newly built schools in areas of poor performance. Like Kenneth Baker, he was apparently unaware that the VA model could provide the legally established independent trustees and status that he believed to be necessary. That is presumably why the existence of VA schools is not mentioned in the account Lord Adonis has given of his struggle to develop, against fierce resistance, a type of school that already existed.
## The academy programme
In developing academies in the form of Kenneth Baker's CTC model of school governance, the Secretary of State was authorised, under section 65 of the Education Act 2002, to enter into a contract with 'any person' to 'establish and maintain' a school, at public expense. Contracts formed in this way are at the heart of the academy programme. As the governance structure of VA schools makes clear, academy 'freedoms' can be secured without any such contract. Although, in themselves, contracts serve no useful educational or administrative purpose, what academy funding contracts successfully do – as they are clearly intended to do – is place the minister concerned in ultimate control of the schools or groups of schools contracted to him. Contracts leave it to an individual government minister, the Secretary of State, to determine exactly how much money each school contracted to him receives to run itself each year. If the governing body of any school dependent on a single politician in this way believes itself to be 'independent', it runs a severe risk of deluding itself.
Labour's enthusiasm for contracts in the form of funding agreements has caused a clause to be inserted that reads: 'the Academy Trust cannot assign this agreement'. But the Secretary of State can, and some future one may well decide to assign many hundreds of his contracts to other agencies to manage.
Academies, as essentially government schools, paved the way for Michael Gove. His declared intention has been that all schools in England, willingly or otherwise, should have rolling 7-year contracts with him, terminable by either party after due notice. In giving a Secretary of State what amounts to direct control of an increasing number of England's schools, contracts potentially involve a huge transfer of assets to the state. On becoming contracted to the Secretary of State as an academy, the trustees acquire the site and buildings of any school built and paid for by a local authority. If the Secretary of State's funding contract with those trustees is terminated, that property reverts to the Secretary of State and not to the local authority that originally paid for it. The academy programme is a nationalisation of local assets process in waiting.
As an extension of its legislative approval of the Secretary of State's move to nationalise England's schools, Parliament has further legislated to allow nearly all important decisions about education in England to be made by or on behalf of the Secretary of State, without reference to anyone else, including Parliament itself. Parliament is not a party to the contracts that it has allowed the Secretary of State to make with any set of trustees he finds acceptable. His only evident criterion for establishing the suitability of trustees to run a school at public expense appears to be that they have not been elected by anyone.
The Secretary of State's uninhibited control of education now extends to the examination system, the training or lack of it of teachers, the structure of the governing bodies of academies, including the right to decide whether any of which he disapproves are to be allowed to remain in office, where, whether and at what cost new schools are to be built, and so on.
## What next?
Two consequences of this legislatively authorised control of education by an individual government minister have become evident. The first is that it is very obviously inefficient. Even the straightforward task of relating the number of school places provided to the number of school places required has been mismanaged. Public money is routinely spent on children and students who do not exist. Financial control of academies is defective. Schools are developed where new schools are not needed. This practice of creating extra school places where there are already spare places, apart from wasting money, almost always adversely affects what local schools with spare places can still afford to offer their pupils. Sixth forms are encouraged to proliferate at a time when sufficient teachers of high quality, available to teach a full range of subjects in many existing sixth forms, are lacking. Narrowly defined systems of accountability are created that give teachers perverse incentives for teaching badly. Bad practices are routinely imported from foreign countries. Over the past few years, the list of poorly structured 'initiatives' and ministerial incompetencies has become long and is lengthening.
Control of education by an individual government minister is also leading to increasingly totalitarian behaviour. As Lord Acton put it in 1887, power that verges on the absolute corrupts. The symptoms are unmistakeable. Ministerial hostility to all forms of real or imagined sources of opposition is loudly proclaimed. Enemies of 'reform', a term used to describe any ministerial initiative, however ill-considered, are said to be lurking everywhere. Local government, the universities, the judiciary, the churches, the BBC, non-conforming elements of the press and any form of independent thinking or action from teachers or their unions are all perceived as inherently pernicious. All are treated with contempt. Disciplined conformity, within schools and by everyone connected with them, is to be the order of the day.
The arbitrary and sometimes irrational behaviour of individual government ministers is just one instance of England's general retreat from its democratic past. Now that Parliament, with the notable exception of some of its select committees, has legislated away its ability to exercise effective control of the Executive, Parliament itself is widely perceived as little more than a noisy and largely irrelevant adjunct to the Executive. This has damaging consequences for England as a functioning democracy. It is becoming difficult for England's electorate to find good reasons to vote at parliamentary elections for individual Members of Parliament. Voters correctly perceive that few of the people they vote for have any influence on what the government of the day, once safely elected, then decides to do.
Within narrowing limits, resistance to the government is still permitted, but the form democracy has taken in England is increasingly reminiscent of the 'democratic centralism' proposed by Lenin in 1917. Under such a system, further developed in parts of Europe during the 1930s, people are still allowed to discuss issues and to march about with banners, provided they behave themselves. The deployment of second-hand water cannons would, in the opinion of at least one mayor, help to remind marchers of their duties in this respect. But there is little room left for alternative sources of decision making, even on important local issues. All important decisions in England are now taken by the small group in charge of the government. Intervention from subordinate bodies such as local government, professional bodies, independent researchers or even, other than grudgingly, from Parliament itself is rarely found acceptable. In the wings, another small group of much the same composition awaits its opportunity to replace the existing one.
Education in England has been particularly badly damaged by this nationwide retreat from the widely shared beliefs in what constitutes a democratic society that underpinned the Education Act of 1944. As Friedrich Hayek put it in that same year, 'Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of self-government'. That measure of self-government is what the 1944 Education Act secured and has since largely been legislated away.
In 2015, one simple question about education needs to be asked: is England content to place a single individual, the Secretary of State of the day, in what is close to absolute control of all elements of this country's education system? If it is, no action is needed; that is what England's schools and other educational institutions are being frog-marched towards. If it does not, a second question arises: is any political party prepared to put that question to the electorate? That is the question that hangs in the air, awaiting an answer.
# [Part VI
Role of the media](content.xhtml#bck_part6)
# [15
Media and Education in the UK](content.xhtml#bck_Ch015)
Peter Wilby
Today, nearly every British national newspaper has an education correspondent, covering schools, colleges and universities. If the numbers are fewer than they were 20 years ago – when some papers employed as many as three such specialists – that is more a reflection of newspapers' increasing financial difficulties and journalists' higher workloads than of any diminution in education coverage. Some newspapers publish weekly sections devoted to education, though these, too, are much reduced from what they were even 10 years ago. For example, The Guardian's section, published on Tuesdays and branded Education Guardian, was once a separate supplement of 12 pages or more; now the section has gone, replaced by barely half as many pages within the main paper.
Yet education remains a far more high-profile subject than it was half a century ago. Before the 1960s, it was scarcely regarded as a news subject at all. Though the annual teachers' union conferences attracted attention even in the immediate post-Second World War years – mainly because they were (and are) held at Easter, when other news is in short supply – the 'popular' press particularly focused almost exclusively on teachers' pay, often linking it to difficulties in recruitment (Cunningham, 1992). More detailed coverage, particularly in the 'quality' press, tended to focus on universities (especially Oxford and Cambridge), then attended by less than 6 per cent of young Britons, and on fee-charging schools (such as Eton, Harrow and Rugby), rather than on the taxpayer-funded schools attended by the majority of the population.
According to one estimate, there were only three full-time education journalists at the beginning of the 1960s, excluding those working for specialist publications. An education correspondents group – formed to co-ordinate the reporters' access to ministers and other key sources of information – was not formed until 1962, whereas a labour and industrial correspondents group was formed in 1937, and a crime reporters' association in 1945 (Williams, 2009). By the early 1970s, the education correspondents group had around 50 members. In The Times, the number of articles on educational matters rose from 70 in 1960 to 184 in 1967 (Kogan, 1975). In 2013, a search on The Times website identified a total for the year of 439 articles devoted to education. Interviews with education journalists in the mid-2000s found that most of them saw education as 'one of the top specialist areas of reporting . . . comparable in importance to . . . health reporting, crime reporting and business/finance reporting'. Though few had sufficiently long memories to be certain, the general consensus was that it ranked higher than it did in the past (Hargreaves et al., 2007).
The main drivers of this growth in education coverage – on radio and television, as well as in the press – were the politicisation and centralisation of education. Politicisation started in the late 1950s and 1960s, as Britain began to abolish most of its grammar schools, which selected the most academic children after a competitive examination at 11, and to introduce 'all-ability' comprehensives instead. Though the division between the major parties on selective schooling was never a rigid one – Conservative local councils were among the pioneers of comprehensives, and, to this day, the official Conservative policy is that comprehensives should continue – Labour was always more eager to hasten the demise of the grammar schools, by central diktat if necessary.
Until the late 1970s, however, it was widely accepted that what was taught in schools and how it was taught remained a matter exclusively for teachers. The curriculum, as an education minister observed in 1960, was the teachers' 'secret garden', and 'parliament would never attempt to dictate the curriculum'. Or, as the Lancastrian George Tomlinson, education minister during Clement AttIee's 1945–1951 government, more colloquially put it, 'minister knows nowt about curriculum'. In Westminster and Whitehall, the curriculum was not a contestable subject. An education 'parliament' for curriculum and examinations, the Schools Council, was set up in 1965, but it had no formal powers of legislation or direction and was essentially a talking shop in which, though both local and national government were represented, teachers' unions and subject associations held most of the seats. Outside the classroom, nearly all the power in education resided with local councils. Though much of their funding came from central government, they controlled the distribution of money and decided which children should go to which schools. David Eccles, education minister from 1954 to 1957, complained that, 'having succeeded in getting Cabinet support for increased funds for education, he had no real say in how those funds should be spent' (Jarvis, 2014).
Education was covered more thoroughly, and often better, in local newspapers than it was in Britain's national newspapers, radio and TV. The national press, geared to receiving most of its information from Whitehall, Westminster and assorted bodies associated with central government, found it hard to derive significant news from the subject. A row over school admissions in Newcastle, it was thought, would not interest readers in Birmingham. Similarly, a curriculum innovation in Birmingham would not interest readers in Newcastle. Only in the 1960s did the growing numbers of specialist education reporters begin to present some local developments as being of national significance. Newly opened comprehensive schools, for example, might get national coverage. So might radical developments in internal school organisation, curriculum and teaching methods that went loosely under the heading 'progressive'. But universities and the fee-charging, private boarding schools (confusingly known by the English as 'public schools') continued to get more coverage, because both drew on a national clientele that was almost entirely the well-heeled middle classes, the most sought-after audience for advertisers, even in the more downmarket papers.
In this era, nearly all education journalists favoured comprehensive schools and 'progressive' teaching styles. A columnist in the right-wing weekly magazine The Spectator complained in 1972 that all but one of the 48 members of the education correspondents group were 'left-wing, some extremely so'. Even on Conservative papers, they could favour the 'progressive' cause, or at least give it an easy ride, mainly because their editors had little interest in education. C.B. Cox, a Manchester University professor of English, told a conference in Australia in 1981 that newspapers had played a leading role in persuading the public of the merits of 'progressive' teaching. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cox and like-minded colleagues brought out a series of 'Black Papers' – written by academics and teachers who favoured 'traditional education' – that deliberately attempted, as Cox put it, to 'shift the centre' of debate. They were written in a populist, jargon-free, accessible style and were heavily promoted to the newspapers. The Black Paper editors understood that they could maximise sympathetic coverage by sending the pamphlets to newspapers on Sundays – a thin news day and one on which most specialist reporters would be off work – for publication on Monday mornings. A Labour Education Secretary foolishly assisted them by branding their first publication as 'the blackest day in English education for over a century'.
The Black Papers – alongside their offshoots such as the National Council for Educational Standards, which, again to maximise media coverage, held its conferences on Sundays – turned the tide. The 'traditionalists' had no inhibitions about wooing journalists, making their leaders accessible to the press and trying to reach a mass audience. In contrast, the 'progressives' regarded populism with distaste and the 'capitalist' press with suspicion. The Campaign for Comprehensive Education, for example, had a spokeswoman who could be reached only with the greatest difficulty, took no trouble to conceal her hostility to journalists and insisted that she should never be named.
For all the efforts of the Black Paper editors and their media supporters, the rise of comprehensives initially continued without interruption: in the 1970s, despite the Education Secretary in the first half of the decade being none other than Margaret Thatcher, more were created than in any previous decade, with grammar schools surviving only in a handful of areas ruled by true-blue Conservative councils. The media have little power in education (or indeed in politics generally), at least in the sense of 'transformative capacity' as defined by the sociologist Anthony Giddens: 'the capability to intervene in events so as to alter their course' (Giddens, 1984). But they do create an agenda and a framework – sometimes a very restrictive one – for debate. In the 1970s, the media, influenced by the Black Papers, began slowly to change the agenda. Newspapers eagerly reported research showing the weaknesses of 'progressive' teaching methods – which were nothing like as ubiquitous as journalists suggested – and highlighted the case of a London primary school that, by any standards, had gone too far in its 'progressive' methods, with its teachers apparently training pupils to become members of a revolutionary vanguard while completely neglecting the basics of reading and maths.
Public interest in education was growing, and not just because the media debate was increasingly vigorous and polarised. For most of the twentieth century, education played only a minor role in the lives of the majority of the population. Most people left school in their mid-teens and never returned to full-time education. They took no exams and had no paper qualifications. Some returned to college, a day or two a week, to learn skills for a trade, but many learned skills on the job or found unskilled factory or labouring jobs that were then in plentiful supply. Even many white-collar jobs required only minimal qualifications. Journalism itself required nothing more than a rudimentary knowledge of shorthand and law.
In the second half of the twentieth century, however, career prospects – and, as heavy industry declined, the chances of getting a job at all – depended increasingly on length of education and particularly on credentials acquired at school. Education became a distributor of life chances and a source of growing anxiety to parents of all classes. This made it a subject of interest, not only to newspapers and their readers, but also to politicians.
From the mid-1980s, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governments introduced dramatic changes in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate education systems, subject to separate regimes), which were largely accepted by Tony Blair's Labour governments from 1997 and then further elaborated by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition from 2010. Parents were allowed more choice of schools and more say in how schools were run. Schools were required to publish their examination results in standardised form. Local councils were required to distribute funds according to a national formula and to delegate spending decisions to schools, leaving governors and headteachers to determine, for example, how much was spent on books and how much on repairs to buildings.
Crucially, schools were given the opportunity to opt out of local council control and to become 'independent', receiving their money direct from central government; a majority of secondary schools have now taken this route. Private companies and voluntary associations were invited to set up new schools and take over existing ones. Through a new regulatory body, the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), the powers of central school inspectors were greatly enhanced, and Education Ministers increasingly took it upon themselves to order a change of leadership or even closure for 'failing' schools. Most importantly, schools were required to follow a national curriculum, which different ministers determined in varying amounts of detail. Being mostly educated in the humanities, ministers were particularly anxious to specify which novels, plays and poems should be studied for English literature and which events for history. Labour dictated, not just curriculum content, but the methods used to teach reading and maths in primary schools, thus breaching what one professor of education has called 'the final frontier of professional autonomy', which, even as late as 1991, a Conservative Education Secretary declined to cross, saying that, 'questions about how to teach are not for government to determine' (Alexander, 2014).
All this led to an explosion of media interest. The secret garden was now open for everybody to trample over the flowerbeds. In the past, only teachers' pay disputes created the simple dramatic clashes of opposites on which the mass media thrive. These were only peripherally connected to educational issues; they were covered as simple employer–employee battles, similar to other labour disputes. Now, the disputes were about what was taught and how, with highly politicised debates developing about, for example, how the history of the British Empire should be taught and whether English lessons should focus on creative writing or on correct grammar and spelling.
The national media distilled such disputes into a simple opposition between mainly right-wing 'traditionalists' and mainly left-wing 'progressives'. The former favoured a strong emphasis on basic literacy and numeracy; academic subjects such as physics, chemistry, history and literature; formal instruction, with pupils sitting in rows at desks facing the front while the teacher told them what to learn; the 'phonics' method of teaching reading; selection by ability into different 'streams' within schools and, if possible, into different schools; old-fashioned written examinations, usually lasting three hours. The latter supported a more flexible curriculum that did not divide knowledge by rigid subject boundaries; informal or 'discovery' learning where pupils sat in groups and were encouraged by teachers to find things out for themselves; the 'whole word' method of teaching reading; comprehensive schools with 'mixed-ability' classes; and new-style examinations that involved continuous classroom assessment and projects completed in the pupils' own time. Most classroom teachers are pragmatists who do not fall into either camp. They prefer a balanced curriculum and a mixture of teaching and assessment methods. But the media wished to subsume almost every educational issue into the progressive–traditional framework: for example, it was thought desirable to give parents more choice of schools and the private sector more opportunities to run them, because both would bring schools 'back to basics'.
Politicians, working to their own ends, encouraged journalists and media commentators to report education in terms of this dichotomy. Indeed, politicians increasingly presented their policies in tabloid newspaper terms. When Michael Gove, Conservative Education Secretary from 2010 to 2014 and himself a former journalist, introduced a national curriculum that placed more emphasis on factual knowledge, he presented it as an attempt to wrest control of schools from what he called 'the blob': academics, teachers, school inspectors, advisers and local authority officials who were 'enemies of promise', guilty of 'valuing Marxism, revering jargon and fighting excellence'.
Unlike his predecessors, Gove was in a position to get his way. The decentralised governance of English schooling was long a source of frustration to both Westminster politicians and Whitehall civil servants. Education ministers frequently had ideas as to how to improve schools but found they had no levers to make anything happen. For example, when Sir Keith Joseph, one of the chief architects of what became known as Thatcherism, took over as Education Secretary in 1981, he wanted schools to create more pro-business, pro-free enterprise attitudes among young people. To his despair, he found himself powerless to insist on any such change. Like all previous education ministers, he was little more than a spectator, as the teachers' unions and local education authorities – among whom education journalists cultivated contacts as assiduously as they did among ministers, their advisers and civil servants – ran the system.
Largely because he had so little direct power, Joseph badly needed public support for his ideas in order to put pressure on those who were in charge. He wished, for example, to change teachers' working practices and to introduce regular assessment of their performance ('teacher appraisal', it was called at the time). But, since he did not himself employ teachers or determine what or how they were paid – though he did provide the money to fund pay increases – he needed to put pressure on the local council employers and the teachers' unions who, through a somewhat cumbersome machinery (known as the Burnham Committee), negotiated pay and working conditions. Public support and, therefore, press support would be crucial if he were to get his way.
He largely failed. The teachers' unions mounted a highly effective campaign highlighting teachers' poor pay, which required some to take second jobs, heavy workload and propensity to heart attacks and nervous breakdowns. Joseph, by contrast, was, to the despair of his department's press officers, 'unskilled and uninterested' in influencing the media. 'He was often reluctant to meet journalists, and conducted press conferences with ill-concealed distaste and indecent speed' (Wilby, 1986).
Only after Joseph left office in 1986 did the Education Reform Act, introduced by Kenneth Baker, begin to change the balance of power. Baker, like nearly all Joseph's successors (John Patten, Education Secretary from 1992 to 1994, was the only significant exception), was far more media savvy. He launched the first National Curriculum, the first legislation allowing schools to become 'free' of council control and the first experiments in persuading private sponsors to back state schooling. He also solved the problem that Joseph faced in influencing teachers' pay and working conditions by abolishing the Burnham machinery and giving himself power to determine teachers' terms of employment.
By the end of the 1980s, the media narrative was almost wholly focused on an apparent battle to the death between 'traditionalists' and 'progressives' (sometimes called 'trendies') and, after the Conservatives' centralisation of educational power, it had an increasingly political dimension. The events of 1991 showed how the narrative would now develop.
In that year, Leeds council published a report on the outcomes of a programme to transform its primary schools into exemplars of 'good primary practice', which meant – or was thought to mean – making them more 'progressive'. Normally, such a report from a provincial education authority would attract little national press attention. Nobody can be sure why this one was different. Perhaps it was just the date of publication: the end of July, when other news is thin. But some commentators suggested that the Conservative government, facing a tricky general election the following year, tipped off some of the London-based education correspondents, seeing an opportunity to discredit a Labour-controlled city council and associate their main political opponents with falling educational standards.
Whatever the explanation, the coverage of the report, written by Robin Alexander, professor of primary education at Leeds University, dealt a devastating blow to 'progressive' education, possibly the most serious in more than a decade. 'Progressive teaching in schools was £14m failure', was the Daily Telegraph headline. 'The education of millions of primary school children has been blighted in the name of an anarchic ideology', the paper explained. The government's reaction chimed precisely with this press coverage. John Major, who had recently succeeded Margaret Thatcher as Conservative prime minister, used the report to support 'a return to basics' and announced 'the progressive theorists have had their say and . . . they've had their day'. Later, in 1992, Alexander was invited by the government to join an official inquiry into 'the delivery of education in primary schools'. Also appointed to the inquiry were Jim Rose, the then chief inspector of primary education, and Chris Woodhead, the chief executive of the National Curriculum Council; the latter largely accepted the government and media narrative of sturdy traditionalists fighting a rearguard action against a mighty progressive juggernaut. Appointed just before Christmas, they were dubbed 'the three wise men' by the press. When they reported, newspaper headlines screamed: 'Call for return to traditional school lessons' (Alexander, 1997).
Yet, as Alexander pointed out, the Leeds report's main conclusion was that the Leeds project 'was an initiative well worth the Authority's investment', even though it found important weaknesses in some outcomes in some schools. 'A complex and carefully qualified analysis', Alexander wrote, 'was reduced to a simple pathology.' As Alexander saw it, the outcome of the 'three wise men' inquiry was similarly distorted, partly by Woodhead, who re-drafted what was supposed to be 'a discussion paper', partly by the Education Department's press release, partly by the press itself. For example, the report rejected a return to streaming by ability, a favourite demand of the traditionalists. When Alexander made public his reservations about a report that had appeared under his name, the press accused him of a U-turn and called him 'one rather unwise man' (Alexander, 1997). When, nearly 20 years later, Alexander headed an independent investigation into primary education (known as the Cambridge Review), his nuanced reports – which, as he put it, 'exposed the complexity of the data and the difficulty of making hard and fast judgements' – were simplified into headlines mostly designed to discredit an increasingly unpopular Labour government: 'Literacy drive has almost no impact', 'Primary pupils let down by Labour', and so on (Alexander, 2014).
The campaign against 'progressive' teaching was not confined to newspapers. Television played its role too. In the autumn of 1991, in the wake of the Leeds report, a prestigious BBC current affairs programme reported that 'experts with a mania for progressive education have spread a canker through Britain's classrooms'. To illustrate this thesis, the programme went to two primary schools where, according to one study, 'a small and unrepresentative sample of practice was filmed, an even smaller sample remained after editing and, stripped of much of its context, the material actually shown was employed . . . to portray progressivism in simplistic terms' (Wallace, 1993).
The narrative would change little over the next 20 years. Like the 'red menace' of the Cold War era, the 'progressives' were always lurking, never idle in their mission to subvert decent, common-sense, traditional values. The narrative was supported by the frequently repeated judgement that, while the Right won the economic wars (converting the whole world to free-market economics), the Left won the culture wars. 'Trendy' teaching methods, the narrative argued, were imposed for ideological reasons by an 'educational establishment' comprising some prominent heads and teachers, professors of education, teacher-trainers, local authority officers and advisers, and even Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools whose pronouncements were once treated as the Holy Grail. Even the advent of a Labour government in 1997 did not significantly alter the narrative, though some of the rhetoric was toned down, and Labour ministers made greater efforts to take account of teachers' opinions. The politicisation of schooling has gone to extraordinary extremes. Even the teaching of reading, essentially a technical matter, became a struggle between the 'phonics' method, supported by the Right, and the 'word recognition' or 'look-and-say' method, supported by the Left.
Politicians, meanwhile, have become hugely more sophisticated in using the media to their advantage. When they make policy, they think, not only of how well it will work, but of how they can 'sell' it to the media. All governments aspire to keep 'control' of the media agenda, and no departmental minister will survive for long unless he or she can feed the media with policy 'initiatives'. David Blunkett, Labour Education Secretary from 1997 to 2001, employed a special adviser (separate from the department's press office) who spent at least an hour a day on the media. In the early afternoon of each day, he would ring round the education correspondents and speak to them individually (Bangs, MacBeath and Galton, 2011).
But one effect of the increasing politicisation of education is that ministers often give news of what they regard as 'major initiatives' to the Westminster-based political correspondents, not to the education specialists. Since political reporters are by definition specialists in politics, not education (or health or policing or social services), policies rarely get expert scrutiny. Moreover, the growth in the number of columnists – nearly every newspaper has two or three of them each day – who express opinions on a large range of issues, and are employed for their ability to write provocatively and entertainingly, rather than for their understanding of a particular subject, further marginalises the role of expertise and informed critical scrutiny. Professors of education and other specialist academics are almost wholly excluded both from policy making and from newspaper coverage of education.
Most social media and Internet blogs multiply the amount of poorly informed comment. True, in education as in other areas, the Internet allows a few well-informed voices to bypass the press and to address directly a wide audience in a way that would once have been impossible. The Local Schools Network, for example, defends schools that are run by elected local councils and critiques the growing number of schools run by private chains with meticulously researched comment on its website.
But that is an exception. The narrative of 'progressives' versus 'traditionalists' continues to grip education, and no education minister has made more use of it than Michael Gove, Conservative Secretary of State in the Coalition government from 2010 to 2014. Successive governments, as one account puts it, have set up 'an object of derision' that they then pledge 'to exorcise' (Wallace, ibid). This perfectly suits the media, which has the clash of opposites that it craves and can put nearly all educational issues into this simple framework.
## References
Alexander, Robin (1997): Policy and Practice in Primary Education, 2nd edition. Routledge, London.
Alexander, Robin (2014): Evidence, Policy and the Reform of Primary Education: a cautionary tale, Forum, 6(3), Autumn 2014.
Bangs, John, MacBeath, John and Galton, Maurice (2011): Reinventing Schools, Reforming Teaching: From Political Visions to Classroom Reality. Routledge, London.
Cunningham, Peter (1992): Teachers' professional image and the press 1950–1990, History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society, 21: 1, 37–56.
Giddens, Anthony (1984): The Constitution of Society. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Hargreaves, Linda et al. (2007): The Status of Teachers and the Teaching Profession in England, Department for Education and Skills, Research Report 831B.
Jarvis, Fred (2014): You Never Know Your Luck: Reflections of a Cockney Campaigner for Education. Grosvenor House, Guildford, Surrey.
Kogan, Maurice (1975): Educational Policy-Making: A Study of Interest Groups and Parliament. Allen and Unwin, London.
Wallace, Mike (1993): Discourse of Derision: the role of the mass media within the education policy process, Journal of Education Policy, 8: 4, 321–37.
Wilby, Peter (1986): Press and Policy: teacher appraisal, Journal of Education Policy, 1: 1, 63–72.
Williams, Kevin (2009): Read All About It! A History of the British Newspaper. Routledge, London.
This chapter is a version of a paper that was first published in Revue internationale d'éducation, 66, September 2014.
# Conclusions
# [16
Stories from the Field – Summarised](content.xhtml#bck_Ch016)
Richard Pring and Martin Roberts
## Overview of contributions
The changes in the educational provision – from early years, through primary, secondary, further and vocational education, to higher education and the training of teachers – have been amply illustrated by the contributions to this book. They have shown especially the revolutionary shift from minimal central control over what goes on in schools to much greater political control, first, through a national curriculum and national assessments, second, through the decline in local authority powers and responsibilities. The recently arrived academies and free schools are contracted directly to the Secretary of State. But higher education, too, has not escaped. The autonomy once protected by a University Grants Committee has been eroded as government has exercised its powers through funding and research to ensure greater relevance to its perception of national needs.
The scene was set by Lord Baker, who, as Secretary of State, introduced the 1988 Education Reform Act, thereby creating the National Curriculum and National Assessment, as well as the local management of schools. These were revolutionary changes arising from a belief that standards were too low in many schools – an understandable belief shared by the preceding Labour government, which, as explained in the introductory chapter and referred to in other contributions, set the ball rolling with Prime Minister James Callaghan's Ruskin College speech in 1976 – a generation of 40 years ago. In particular, the endemic neglect of technical and vocational education, despite many reports on the crisis since 1851, would be challenged through the establishment of City Technology Colleges, directly funded by government and private sponsors, and in a way resurrected by the more recent University Technology Colleges.
What the contributions illustrate are the gains and losses as experienced by those with responsibilities within the system – for example, by the early years' headteacher and ILEA adviser Wendy Scott, who, not denying the need for greater accountability to ensure high standards throughout, regretted the impact of the emerging top-down, short-term interference, undermining the much needed child-focused work of good early years education.
Both she and the former primary school headteacher, Tony Eaude, pay tribute to the Plowden Report of 1967, which influenced primary schooling at the beginning of our era, encouraging the arts and creativity in different forms. However, in their experience, what was often referred to as the more child-centred approach to education was gradually undermined by rigid assessment and accountability. Even how to teach literacy and numeracy came to be directed by government in the 1980s and 1990s. The autonomy of teachers was eroded in a political distrust of their expertise.
Similar concerns were expressed by Martin Roberts, a former head of a large and successful comprehensive school in Oxford. He expressed concern, not about there being a national curriculum framework, but about its mode of implementation. During his period of headship, the National Curriculum was increasingly implemented through an outcomes-driven system of accountability and through growing dominance of the newly established inspectorate, Ofsted, which was data-driven and judgemental rather than, as in the case of the HMI (which it largely replaced in 1992), much more supportive. Kenny Frederick experienced a similar case during her experience of headship in a challenging school in Tower Hamlets. There was a need to transform the racist and islamophobic ethos of the social context that affected the school, thereby creating a very inclusive school. But she pointed to the changes that had come to make the task more difficult, especially the decline in local authority support. On the other hand, both Martin Roberts and Kenny Frederick were able to point to innovations that had made improvements possible – increase in funding, greater opportunities for women, positive approaches to pupils with special needs, and initiatives like 'Excellence in Cities'.
The changes over the half century have paradoxically reflected both mistrust in the professionalism of teachers and yet the transformation of teacher preparation into a university-based profession. Richard Pring gives an account of that transformation and at the same time its gradual erosion, first, through political criticism of the content of that university preparation and, second, through the different routes now available for aspiring teachers – while highlighting the crisis facing the next generation in recruitment and maintenance of teachers, in part resulting from changes in schooling. But higher education, too, has changed, as explained by Richard Pring in a following chapter – from a relatively small group of universities catering for a small percentage of students to a massive increase with much wider student access. It has shifted from a mainly government-funded public service to one dependent on student fees.
Further education, as explained by Geoff Stanton, is the unknown sector of education, much neglected and under-funded as a result, despite the fact that colleges of FE cater for over three million students annually. They have witnessed, too, considerable changes, partly in response to those occurring in schools, which pass on, as it were, the students unlikely to succeed along an academic route. The colleges have provided innovative responses, especially through the pre-vocational courses they developed, to the needs of such students. But there has been a failure of recognition and thus of financial support, together with a bewildering change of programmes and qualifications, known by the flow (or flash flood) of acronyms: UVP, NVQ, TVEI, CGLI365, CPVE, DoVE, GNVQ, NFVQ, QCF, OCEA (and that's just a start).
It is to this changing system of qualifications that Tim Oates turns in a dramatic contrast between the whirligig of changes in England and the stability in other countries (e.g. the post-16 qualification in Finland has not changed in form or function for 100 years). That constant change in form and range of functions that the exam system has to perform (reflected, for example, in the short lives of GNVQ, 14–19 Diplomas, modularisation of A Levels, AS Levels as part of A Level) is one of the most distinctive and frustrating features of the last 40 years – not encouraging for the longevity of yet further changes promised by the political parties. The use and role of examining have been distorted by its use as an instrument of government policy.
One such use is its employment as an instrument of accountability. Certainly, as Pat O'Shea recounts, prior to our period, accountability of schools and the system as a whole left much to be desired. But, once the regime of Ofsted and testing had been in place for some time, the earlier kind of accountability provided by HMI, which was geared to school improvement, became divorced from inspection. The scheme of School Improvement Partners provided good professional support, but, like so many innovations, it had but a short life of six years. Inspection was slimmed down to two days, making judgements with little knowledge of the social context and with a shift of emphasis from curriculum to leadership and management. This reduction in professional support coincided with the enfeeblement of local authority responsibility and support.
The following three chapters (Part V) are written by people who, as well as having taught in schools, have also been Directors of Education in local authorities, dealing with the changes imposed and the increasing centralisation of services. Peter Newsam, Education Officer for the Inner London Education Authority, points to the weakening of local authorities from their partner role in a 'national system locally managed', as had been established by the 1944 Education Act. Such weakness strengthened the power of the Westminster politicians, not only through the curriculum control and assessment regime, but also through the broader 'reforms' of local government. The new corporate model had no room for the once powerful defenders of local democracy and accountability in education, namely, the Chief Education Officers. That understanding is reinforced by Tim Brighouse, whose reign as Director in both Oxfordshire and then Birmingham enabled him to see the shift from the age of optimism and trust at the beginning of our period (as reflected in 'teacher-based school improvement'), through the growing doubt and uncertainty (as trust in teachers gave way to high-stakes testing and increased prescription), to that of markets and managerialism (reflected in the espousal of 'choice', the language of targets and performance indicators, and the contraction out to external bodies (some 'for-profit' companies) of these public services. Margaret Maden, whose career enabled her to witness these changes from the positions of teacher, headteacher, Chief Education Officer and university professor of education, saw the need to adapt to the changes arising from the Education Reform Act, but also the importance of preserving the role of LEAs' advisory services, county in-service training centres and the organisation of schools from the viewpoint of one who knew the local needs and context. Local education authorities may have been driven to near extinction, but the gaping hole thereby left in organisation of education demonstrates the need for a 'middle tier' of organisation.
Throughout these changes, and the professional and public perceptions of them, the role of the press cannot be ignored. Peter Wilby shows how political standpoints entered into the reporting at key stages, particularly in the early 1970s with the Black Papers railing against the prevailing 'progressive ideas' (Teachers Mis-taught being the title of one of those papers). Hence, with the increased politicisation of education, the media tended to subsume issues into the progressive versus traditional, especially at the time when grammar schools were being transformed into comprehensives. In order to keep control of the media, Secretaries of State have fed 'initiatives' to journalists who often were political rather than specialist education journalists.
Of course, our period follows the transformation of the system of secondary education from a tri-partite one into a largely comprehensive system, albeit with that demarcation between able and less able still enforced by the dual examination system at 16 of GCE O Level and Certificate of Secondary Education. It was only in 1988 that the two systems were merged into the one that still prevails, namely, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) – though for how long is open to question.
# [17
The Way Forward for the Next Generation](content.xhtml#bck_Ch017)
Richard Pring and Martin Roberts
Forty years have passed since Prime Minister Callaghan's Ruskin College speech. A generation of teachers, who commenced their careers then, are about to retire. When they commenced their careers, we had a 'national system of education locally maintained', as legislated in the 1944 Education Act. The Secretary of State had few powers, and those had nothing to do with the curriculum or how it should be taught.
One third of the time through the careers of this generation (13 years), the Education Reform Act radically changed that, giving the Secretary of State far-reaching powers over the curriculum (and its attainment targets and assessment), and over the establishment of schools no longer 'locally maintained' (namely, City Technology Colleges) but contracted to the Secretary of State.
Twelve years later, the City Academies Programme was launched, thereby opening up a system of schools (including the Free Schools) contracted directly to the Secretary of State, but maintained mainly through sponsors of various kinds.
Simultaneously, there has been an intensification of targets and performance indicators, of audits and league tables, by which schools, colleges and universities are held to account.
Therefore, these have been revolutionary times. But many aspects of that revolution are being seriously questioned, as the preceding chapters indicate. Furthermore, whatever the system, its success depends on the sufficient supply of good teachers. Yet there is a crisis looming in the recruitment and the retention of teachers. A shortfall of 27,000 is predicted by 2017, and between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of newly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years. Two-thirds of secondary schools had difficulty in recruiting maths teachers. Reasons given for leaving are constant teacher bashing, high-pressure accountability, excessive workload and relentless pace of change.
Therefore, the post-ERA education system seems now to be in much need of further reform. Although responsible for some necessary improvements, it has opened up a range of problems and is in danger, therefore, of doing more harm than good to many pupils.
Further reasons for questioning the efficacy of these years of continuous government-led reforms stem from international comparisons. One can debate the validity of the PISA tables, but they offer no evidence of England improving its position in recent years. Meanwhile, the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) shows us performing very poorly on adult literacy measures. Uniquely within the OECD, the literacy scores of our 16–24 age group are lower than our 55–65 one. Vocational education and training is a black spot. Only 32 per cent of our upper secondary pupils are following vocational courses, compared with the OECD average of 44 per cent. As the government's own advisory group, the Social Mobility Commission, noted in 2014, there is 'a lack of a plan to prepare young people for the world of work and support them through this complex transition'. Educational experts from both the OECD and North America are critical of the inconsistencies of over-centralised political control. In its Education Policy Outlook 2015, OECD analysts noted that, in England, 'rather than build on the foundations laid by previous administrations, the temptation is always to scrap existing innovations and start afresh'. They also comment that, 'the more the government is only one partner among several, the less vulnerable programmes are to being wound up after administrative or personality changes'.
Having seen the evolution of the system of education over the last 40 years, what, in light of the considerable problems emerging, should be the direction of change for the next generation of teachers? In what follows, arising from the contributions to this book, we make the following recommendations and are confident that, if implemented and sustained over many years, they would lead to significant improvements in English education.
## 1 Limit the power and control by central government
Problems arise from concentration of so much power in the hands of a Secretary of State, who is not accountable even to Parliament for many of the decisions made. Those problems include:
* constant changes to examinations and qualifications that have a limited time-span or need soon to be reversed – to the frustration of employers, universities and teachers. There need to be a pause and wide deliberation before further 'reforms' are proposed and the establishment of an independent Examination and Qualifications Council to organise that deliberation and to make final decisions;
* initiative after initiative made in relation to election-driven timetables or in response to 24/7 media interests, rather than to well-researched deliberations; and
* persistent tinkering with curriculum content, which should be left to subject and pedagogical experts.
## 2 Create a 'middle tier' between schools, colleges and government
The pursuit of 'choice' within what has become a 'market of schools', with the drastic weakening of local education authorities throughout this generation, has led to fragmentation of schools, to competition rather than collaboration between them, and to expensively created extra places in some areas, with a lack of school places in others (while pupil numbers are rising). There is a need, therefore, for a 'middle tier' of organisation with a real democratic element to ensure:
* there are the right schools and colleges in the right places;
* schools and colleges work in partnership to ensure a fair spread of scarce resources and staff; and
* those schools receive good advisory support when needed.
## 3 Create a more rational and uniform system of schooling
There is now a bewildering variety of schools ('free', sponsored academies, academy chains, grammar, UTCs, local authority community, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled), each with distinctive forms of governance, funding arrangements and control over admissions. Sense needs to be restored through:
* total transparency of funding, governance and admissions;
* not allowing once again the creation of secondary modern schools through the expansion of grammar schools, either as new schools or by expanding existing ones; and the
* restoration of local accountability of all schools receiving (directly or indirectly through charitable status) public funding.
## 4 Ensure equal funding for pupils across schools and colleges
One result of the many different types of school, arising from different forms of sponsorship, is that the unit of resource varies from school to school, often without educational or social justification. It is important that:
* an agreed common funding formula be established for all pupils at the different age levels, irrespective of type of school;
* grounds for exception (e.g. special educational needs) should be universally agreed and applied; and
* the deficit funding currently applied to post-16, especially to FE, should be rectified.
## 5 Trust the teachers more
The quality of teachers is essential to good education – well educated, well trained, well supported professionally, well respected and well paid. There is now, however, a crisis in recruitment and retention, as described above. Concern over teacher supply has been exacerbated by Schools Direct filling only 61 per cent of the places allocated in 2014. And the provision of training is now increasingly fragmented, as its traditional prevalence in universities is receding. It is essential, therefore, to:
* establish an independent college of teaching (similar to the Royal College of Medicine) as an independent professional body for the regulation and support of teachers, for the provision of guidance on the training of teachers, for advice to government and for the link between teachers and the Secretary of State;
* require all teachers to have Qualified Teacher Status following an approved training course;
* ensure all teachers are required to have regular 'Continuing Professional Development'.
## 6 Make accountability of schools and teachers supportive rather than punitive
Characteristic of recent years has been increased accountability through examination results, testing and data-driven inspection by Ofsted. This has created a climate of fear, teaching to the test, and failure to do justice to the wider range of educational aims and achievements. It is important, therefore, to revert to a system of accountability that:
* is based on professional judgement as well as quantitative data;
* supports teachers in their efforts to improve their teaching;
* reforms Ofsted so that its members help rather than punish struggling schools; and
* encourages self-evaluation, monitored by other teachers.
There is no compelling evidence that Ofsted is contributing to the overall improvement of English education, as it concentrates excessively on individual institutions and not enough on local and regional performance.
## 7 Promote curriculum development, not imposition
'There is no curriculum development without teacher development.' The curriculum, within a broad national framework (but bearing in mind terminal examinations), should be developed by the teachers who know their subject and know their pupils. It should not be controlled by whichever government comes into power and at the whim of the ever-changing Secretaries of State. To assist schools in this task there is a need to:
* establish a National Council for Curriculum Development whose membership should have wide representation from teachers, professional associations (e.g. the Historical Association), universities, employers, inspectorate, government, the wider community; and
* support curriculum development by research evidence, including teacher research, which could be part of CPD.
## 8 Reviewing examining and qualifications
Qualifications, and the examinations leading to them, have been in constant change, often with a short life and often reversed after initial experience. This makes life exceedingly difficult for the teachers who have constantly to change their courses, and for universities and employers who depend on the qualifications for recruitment. It is important to:
* differentiate the different functions of testing and examining (formative and summative, international comparisons, national standards, school performance, personal achievement, remedial needs); and
* establish an independent Council for Examinations and Assessment with wide representation. (It could be integrated with the proposed National Council for Curriculum Development – we have been here before – several times!)
## 9 Promote technical education and training
The country has constantly failed to respect and to provide good-quality technical education and training, as reflected in Acts of Parliament and government papers ever since the 1851 Great Exhibition. The creation of city technology colleges and university technical colleges, together with the 14–19 Diploma in Engineering, are recent attempts to rectify this. It is important:
* to maintain this momentum and to ensure such opportunities are available for all and included in any new curriculum framework, such as a Baccalaureate.
## 10 Restore pre-vocational education in schools and colleges
At a time when all young people are to be in some form of education and training until the age of 18, it is important to consider ways in which, for many, general education can be continued but based on more practical and occupational interests. Hence, there is a need to:
* examine again the thinking and practices that were developed through the pre-vocational initiatives which took place within the last 40 years; and
* ensure greater partnership between schools, colleges of further education and employers, essential for success.
## 11 Benefit from the revolutionary developments within this generation of ICT
ICT and the electronic revolution have opened up immense possibilities for the improvement of learning. It has opened up distance learning in higher education on a massive scale (e.g. MOOCS). In schools and colleges, it has made possible online tutoring and seminars and even virtual social areas and laboratories for the house-bound and excluded (e.g. NISAI). Teacher collaboration and curriculum development have been made possible across schools and colleges. Therefore, it is essential:
* to build urgently on what has been achieved so far through teacher professional development and ready access to the necessary resources.
## 12 Restore 'proper' apprenticeships
Vocational education is essential, but, as the Wolf Report showed, much was of low standard and did not provide the necessary link between the hopes of students and the needs of employers. Although there are many political promises to create more apprenticeships, it is important to preserve the high standard of skill traditionally associated with apprenticeships and improve the routes through apprenticeship to employment. To that end, there is need:
* not to let quantity diminish the meaning and quality of apprenticeships; and
* to make it easier for employers to take on long-term apprenticeships.
## 13 Prioritise independent and professional careers guidance for all
Although this issue did not emerge in the chapters, we believe that the provision of information, advice and guidance (IAG) to students from 14 upwards is patchy and limited, and yet is essential if they are to know about the availability of apprenticeships, the many different university courses and the subject choices necessary to proceed to the right course. Therefore, it is necessary:
* to ensure every secondary school and college of FE has ready access to a professionally staffed, independent and well-informed IAG; and
* to provide courses in school about the different routes that students can take to a chosen career.
## 14 Reconsider the nature, shape and funding of the higher education system
It is now half a century since the Robbins Report. The higher education system has grown and changed, partly as a result of specific reports (e.g. on funding), but in particular because of much wider access and differentiation of higher education functions. Particular issues, however, have arisen through the development of open access, the greater importance attached to research, the entry of foreign and for-profit providers, and the corporate nature of current universities. Therefore:
* this would seem to be the time for another major and comprehensive report – Robbins Mark II.
So, in the interest of the future generations of schools and universities, there needs to be a new Education Reform Act encompassing many of the recommendations of this book and the insights of those who have contributed to it, ensuring a better, positive, productive educational culture.
But, learn from the past! Successful legislation has always followed a long period of deliberation, consultation, open debate and reference to relevant research. Our final recommendation is therefore:
## 15 Pause, think and deliberate, preferably for two years, before further 'reforms'
In the past 150 years, successful and long-standing reforms have followed major and comprehensive reports by commissions established to address problems (e.g. on the future of higher education, on examination reform, on developing a secondary school system). In the nineteenth century, these were called Royal Commissions. In the post-1944 era, they were commissioned by the Central Advisory Committee. They took time to consider every aspect, before finally making recommendations and only then legislated. Therefore:
* a crucial recommendation of this book is that, before any more reforms, a public enquiry should be established into the range of issues raised in this book, representative of the many interested parties, and should collect evidence, institute relevant research, engage in public debate, and finally (after two or three years) report to government, making recommendations for reform.
N.B. While this book was at proof stage Dr Paul Cappon, an international expert appointed by the DfE in 2014–15 to undertake a review . . . which could inform deliberations within the Department', published his findings in Preparing English Young People for Work and Life. Many of his recommendations are similar to the above; e.g. the government tries to do too much on its own; our accountability system needs serious realignment; we should prioritise vocational education, create a new 'middle tier', a College of Teaching and a National Council of Learning. Cappon concurs with the Wolf Review that 'in England strengths occur despite rather than because of its systems and structures'.
# Appendix
# Major education acts and reports
1976 | James Callaghan's Ruskin Speech
Auld Report on William Tyndale School
Assessment of Performance Unit
---|---
1977 | Further Education Unit established. Published A Basis for Choice Taylor Report: A New Partnership for our Schools
1978 | Waddell Commission Report – proposing unified system at 16+
**1979** | **General Election: Conservative victory (Thatcher)**
1980 | Assisted Places Scheme
1981 | Warnock Report on Special Educational Needs A New Training Initiative: A Programme for Action
1982 | Abolition of Schools Council, replaced by the Schools Curriculum and Development Committee (SCDC) and the Schools Examination Council (SEC)
TVEI (Technical Vocational Education Initiative)
1983 | Youth Training Scheme
CPVE (Certificate of Pre-vocational Education)
1986 | NCVQ (National Council for Vocational Qualifications) City Technology Colleges
1987 | Curriculum 11–16 (HMI The Red Book) unified and common curriculum
1988 | Higginson Report on A Levels
1988 | Education Reform Act
National Curriculum Council (NCC) and Schools Examination and Assessment Council (SEAC) established
ILEA abolished
1990 | Rumbold Report (Early Years)
**1992** | **Conservative government victory (Major)**
Ofsted established
White Paper: Choice and Diversity
Further and Higher Education Act: ended binary line in higher education
1993 | Specialist schools encouraged
Technology Schools Trust (becomes the SSAT in 2005)
SCAA (Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority) created by merging NCC and SEAC (see above, 1988)
1994 | Dearing Report on the National Curriculum
1995 | FEU absorbed into the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) Dearing Report on HE – proposes fees for full-time undergraduates
1996 | White Paper: Self-government for Schools
(by now there were 163 grammar schools, over 100 GMS, 196 specialist schools, 15 CTCs, 30 language colleges, 151 new technology colleges, assistant places, whereby places in private schools were publicly supported)
**1997** | **General Election: victory for New Labour**
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) formed through a merger of SCAA and NCVQ
White Paper Excellence in Schools: benchmarks, targets, standards, performance management, rigorous inspection
Kennedy Report, Learning Works: Widening Participation in FE Effective Provision for Pre-School Education (EPPE)
1998 | National Skills Task Force (Blair)
Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) introduced, offering another route into teaching other than the well-established university-based PGCE
Education Action Zones (EAZs) established
National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies for primary schools introduced Sure Start begins
1999 | Excellence in Cities initiative
Moser Report, A Fresh Start: Improving Literacy and Numeracy
2000 | Introduction of city academies
2001 | Ofsted responsible for day care and childminding
Green Paper: Schools: Building on Success: raising standards, promoting diversity, achieving results
2002 | Citizenship added to the National Curriculum Education Act 2002 encourages the spread of academies Birth to Three Matters
2003 | The first Teach First graduates enter schools Ouseley Report: Community Pride, Not Prejudice
2004 | The Childrens' Act (Every Child Matters)
Tomlinson Report on 14–19 Curriculum and Qualifications Reform Higher Education Act: variable fees, foundation degree powers to FEC
2006 | Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory standards for early years providers
Raising age for remaining in education and training to 17
2007 | Ofsted responsible for FE but not universities
2008 | 14–19 Advanced Diplomas introduced
**2010** | **General Election: Coalition (Conservative and Lib Dem) victory (Cameron)**
SSAT loses government support and becomes much smaller Schools Network
Many education quangos abolished – for example, QCA, which had become the QCDA
2011 | Wolf Report on the Reform of Vocational Qualifications Rationalisation of qualifications, many scrapped (e.g. Advanced Diplomas) Free schools and academies vigorously promoted EBacc added as a measure of school performance Nutbrown Review (Early Years)
2012 | GTP programme replaced by Schools Direct and School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT)
2014 | Regional commissioners introduced
2015 | Carter Report on ITT
Government refers a workload review after one-day strikes about pay and workload
## Changing acronyms for the Education Department
From 1964 DES, 1992 DfE, 1995 DfEE, 2001 DfES, 2007 DCFS, 2010 DfE
## Changing Curriculum and Assessment Agencies
From 1964, the Schools Council, 1983 SCDC and SEC, 1988 NCC and SEAC, 1993 SCAA, 1997 QCA, 2008 QCD(development)A and OFQUAL, 2010 QCDA abolished
# Subject Index
academic respectability –, –
accountability xv, , , , , , , , , , –, –, –, ,
AEC (Association of Education Committees)
apprenticeship , –, , ,
assessment , –, –,
Baker-Dearing Educational Trust
Bedfordshire
B.Ed degree , –,
binary divide , –
Birmingham LA –
Black Papers on Education , , , , –,
Brighton University , ,
British values
Bryce Commission , ,
Buckinghamshire LA –
Bullock Report
Cambridgeshire Village Colleges
Careers education ,
Centre for Successful Schools –
citizenship education
City Learning Centres
City Technology Colleges , , , , ,
CNAA , ,
Colleges of Advanced Technology
comprehensive schools , –, ,
core skills –
curriculum , , –, , –, –, –, , , , –, –, , ,
digital revolution –
disability –,
distance learning ,
DLOs
Early Excellence Programme
early years , –, ,
ECF –
Education Action Zone , ,
Education Acts: 1944 xv, –, , , , –, , , ; 1988 Education Reform Act , , , , , , , , , , , , ; 2004 The Children's Act, Every Child Matters , , ,
Education Priority Areas ,
education system , , , ,
elementary education , –, , , –
employers
equality/equal opportunities ,
ethnic minorities and diversity , , , –, , , ,
examinations and qualifications xv, , –, , –, , ; Advanced Extension Awards ; BTEC , ; CEE ; CGLI 365 , ; CPVE , , ; CSE , , , ; Diplomas – , , , –, , , ; DoVE , ; EBacc ; GCE-A level , , , , , , , , ; GCE-AS –; GCE-O level , , ; GCSE , , , , , , , , , , , –, ; GCSE Applied ; GNVQ , , , , , ; NVQ , –, ,
Examination Boards/Awarding Bodies , , , ; CGLI , ; OCEA ; RSA ,
Examinations and Qualifications Council
Excellence in Cities , , ,
EYFS ,
faith schools
Finland (abitur) , ,
Fischer Family Trust
foundation degrees
France
further education , –, –, , ; colleges , –, –
Further Education Funding Council , ,
Further Education Unit , ,
George Green School –
Germany
gifted and talented –
government (central) control xv, , , , , , –, , , –, , , , , , , , ,
Great Debate
Headship –, , , ,
higher education , , , , , , ; history in the NC , ; unitary system , , , , ,
HMI , , , , –, , –, , ,
Humanities , ,
ICT , , ,
Immigration –
Inclusion , , ,
Inner London Education Authority –, ,
international comparisons ,
Islington Green C.S.
Jarratt Commission
key skills
Labour, Conservative and Coalition Governments overview –
labour market ,
league tables , , ,
Learning and Skills Council , , ,
literacy (strategies) , , –, , , –, ,
local (education) authorities xv, , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , –, –, , –, –,
local management of schools , –,
London Challenge , –
London Institute of Education ,
managerialism and language , , –, ; audits , , ; delivery, , ; Manpower Services Commission (MSC) , , ; performativity –, , , ; targets , , , , , , ,
markets , , , ,
Mathematics , ,
media (including 'social') , , –, ,
middle tier –
modular ,
National Commission on Education –
National Council for Curriculum Development
National Council for Vocational Qualifications , –
National Curriculum xv, , –, –, , , –, , , , , –, , , , –
National Foundation Vocational Qualifications
nationalisation of education –
National Qualifications Framework
National Youth Agency
New Labour , , , , –, , ,
Numeracy (strategies) –, , , –,
nursery education/provision , –,
NUT , , , ,
OCEA –, ,
OECD , , ,
Ofqual
Ofsted , , , –, , , –, , , , , , , , , –, , , , ,
Opening Minds (RSA)
Open University ,
Oxford Internship Partnership ,
Oxfordshire –, –,
pedagogy , , , , ,
Peers School, Oxford
performance management (appraisal)
PGCE , ,
physical education ,
PISA , , , ,
Plowden Report , , , , ,
policy/policy makers –, ,
political context –, –,
polytechnics , , , , –
post-16 education , ,
post-modernism
practical knowledge ,
pre-school
pre-vocational , , –, –, , ,
primary education and practice –, –, –
Prince's Teaching Institute –
private, privatisation, for-profit xv, , , –,
progressivism , –, –,
public service ,
pupil premium ,
PVI nurseries , ,
qualification-led reform , –, –
qualifications see examinations and qualifications
Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) , ,
Quality Assurance Agency , ,
race relation, racisms , , –,
reading , , , , ,
Reports (prior to 1976): 1884 Royal Commission on Technical Instruction ; 1938 Spens ; 1943 Norwood ; 1963 Robbins
research , , , ; Research Assessment Exercise , ; Research Excellence Framework , ,
restorative justice
Robbins Report on Higher Education , , , , , –,
Ruskin speech , , , ,
Sandy Upper School
School Improvement Partners
Schools: Academies , , , , –, , , –, , ; Community ; Comprehensive , , , ; Free , , , –, , , ; Foundation ; Grammar , , , , ; Grant Maintained , , ; Independent , –; Reorganisation –; Secondary Modern , , , ; Self-evaluation ; Specialist , ; Technical , , , ; Voluntary Aided and Controlled
Schools Council , –, , ,
Schools Direct
Schools Examination and Assessment Council (SEAC)
secondary education for all xv,
SEED Project ,
selection at ages and , ,
SIP
sixth forms ,
social class
social context –, , ,
special education needs (SEN) , , , , , ,
standards , , , , –, ,
Sure Start ,
Swann Report
Teach First , ,
teacher autonomy , , , ,
Teacher recruitment , , , ,
Teacher strikes ,
Teacher Training Agency
Teacher Training Colleges/Colleges of Education ,
teacher training/professional development , –, –, –,
teaching profession xv, –, , ,
technical and vocational , , ,
Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) , , –
testing xv, , , , ; teaching to , ,
Timss ,
Tomlinson Committee ,
Tower Hamlets , ,
Training and Enterprise Council (TEC)
unemployment
Unified Vocational Preparation (UVP) –
universities , –, –
University Funding Council
University Grants Committee (UGC) , , , , , ,
University Technology Colleges , –, , ,
USA ,
vocational education and training –, –, –, –, ,
voluntary bodies xv, , ,
Warwickshire LA –
world of work
youth service ,
# Name Index
Adonis, A. ,
Ainscow, M.
Alexander, R. , , , ,
Alexander, W. ,
Allen, G.
Baker, K. , , , ,
Ball, S.
Balls, Ed
Bangs, J.
Barber, M. –,
Beales, A.C.
Beaumont
Bell, D.
Bernstein, B.
Bhaskar. R.
Blair, T. , , , , –
Blunkett, D. , ,
Booth, T.
Boyle, Edward
Brighouse, Tim , , ,
Brock, M.
Cable, V.
Callaghan, James , , , , ,
Coleridge ,
Dearing –,
Dewey, J. , , ,
Dweck, C.
Eaude, T. ,
Friedman
Fullan, M.
Gardner H.
Gillborne, D. , ,
Glass, N.
Gove, M. , , , –, –
Gramsci
Green, A.
Greer, G.
Hargreaves, A ,
Hargreaves, D.
Hayek, F.
Hirst, P.
Jones, K.
Joseph, Keith , , ,
Judge, H. ,
Kennedy, H.
Kerpel, A. ,
Letwin, O.
Major, J.
Mercer, N.
Mill, J.S.
Morrell, D.
Morris, E. ,
Newman, J.H.
Newsom, J.
Newton, P.
Nias, J.
Oakeshott, M. –
Oates, T. , ,
O'Hear, A. –,
Perry, P.
Peters, R.S.
Piaget
Plato
Pugh, G.
Riddell, P.
Rose, J.
Rutter, M.
Sahlgren, G.H.
Shulman, L.
Simon, B.
Stenhouse, L.
Sylva, K. , ,
Taylor, C.
Thatcher, M. –, , , , , –, ,
Tickell, C.
Tomlinson, M.
Tomlinson, S.
Twigg, S.
Vygotsky
Wall, W.D.
Warnock, M.
Watson, David –, , ,
Whitty, G. ,
Wilby, P.
Woodhead,C. , ,
Wragg, T. ,
Young, M.
Zeldin, T. –
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaBook"
} | 6,920 |
{"url":"https:\/\/worldbuilding.stackexchange.com\/questions\/28276\/other-blood-colors","text":"# Other blood colors\n\nMany people know that our blood is red because it is iron based. Many people also know that blood is blue or green if it is copper based. I'm wondering what color blood would be if it was let's say aluminum or tin based? How could I achieve white or black blood?\n\n\u2022 Black\n\u2022 White\n\u2022 Orange\n\u2022 Brown\n\u2022 Yellow\n\n\u2022 Tin\n\u2022 Aluminum\n\u2022 Platinum\n\u2022 Gold\n\u2022 Silver\n\u2022 Cobalt\n\u2022 Nickle\n\u2022 Zinc\n\nDon't worry about the effects or problems of the colors or metals that will be a separate question.\n\n\u2022 I assumed something about chromium, did a little research and found out I was completely wrong. This may provide some answers for you. The chemistry involved is a little over my head, so gave up trying to decipher. Hopefully you'll have better luck. Also, since gold doesn't oxidize, it wouldn't work as a base for blood, unless your world didn't use oxygen as the catalyst like we do. Silver oxidizes black. I believe aluminum oxidizes white. \u2013\u00a0P\u1d00\u1d1c\u029fs\u1d1b\u1d07\u02802 Oct 24 '15 at 21:29\n\u2022 Could you accept that blood stays red, but that skin has changed to block certain wavelengths of light? A lot of people believe we have 'blue' blood, because skin due to light wavelengths being filtered differently by the skin. This depends on your story, so I just wanted to ask if we could take this alternate approach. \u2013\u00a0Mikey Mar 28 '16 at 19:03\n\u2022 @Mikey Since I'm looking for a wide variety of answers (and choices), not only do I think you should expand on this idea, I highly encourage it. \u2013\u00a0TrEs-2b Mar 28 '16 at 20:28\n\u2022 @TrEs-2b - I tried for a bit, but couldn't get both White and Black - White is 'All Light' or 'No Pigment'. Black is 'No Light' or 'All Pigment'. For folks to be walking around with Black Blood, the skin should block all wavelengths to your veins. For White Blood, it must allow all colors to reflect. I tried at length, but couldn't get you an answer that is around \"skin\" properties. Just a thought - happy writing! \u2013\u00a0Mikey Mar 28 '16 at 20:53\n\u2022 Perhaps this answer could help. \u2013\u00a0Wyglaf Apr 6 '16 at 13:51\n\nOne thing to note is that at human body temperature, atmospheric pressure, and Earth's atmospheric concentration of oxygen Hemoglobin is by far the most efficient oxygen transport protein among the list included in this post. It varies from 50% more efficient to 10x more efficient than the other oxygen transport molecules listed here.\n\n## Hemoglobin\n\nHemoglobin uses iron as its metal atom. We are all familiar with hemoglobin and its color red.\n\n## Hemocyanin\n\nHemocyanin's can be found in certain mollusks. It is colorless when not transporting oxygen and blue when transporting oxygen. Hemocyanin uses 2 copper atoms in its protein structure and the protein is very similar (but not identical) to hemoglobin.\n\n## Chlorocruorin\n\nChlorocruorin's uses $Fe^{II}$ as its metal ion.\n\nA dichromatic compound, chlorocruorin is noted for appearing green in dilute solutions, though it appears light red when found in concentrated solutions.\n\n## Hemerythrin\n\nHemerythrin uses $Fe^{II}$\n\nHemerythrin is an iron bearing oxygen transport protein often found in the muscles of marine invertebrates.\n\nHemerythrin and myohemerythrin are essentially colorless when deoxygenated, but turn a violet-pink in the oxygenated state.\n\n## Erythrocruorin\n\nErythrocruorin is an iron bearing protein. I didn't find definitive description of its color but I think it would be a light red.\n\nErythrocruorin is a large oxygen-carrying protein, whose molecular mass is greater than 3.5 million Daltons. It is related to the similar chlorocruorin. It is found in many annelids and arthropods (including some insects).\n\nand Earthworms.\n\n## Pinnaglobin\n\nOnly seen in the mollusc Pinna squamosa. Brown manganese-based porphyrin [oxygen transport] protein.\n\n## Coboglobin\n\nCoboglobin is currently a synthetic protein that performs the same function as hemoglobin. It uses Cobalt in place of the iron atoms.\n\nBlood of this type would be amber yellow in color when in the veins while uncoloured and clear in the arteries.\n\nIt might make an interesting blood for synthetic biological organisms (like the one found in the movie Aliens)...\n\n## Chloro-carbonyl-bis(tri phenylphosphine)-iridium\n\nAn Iridium (one of the Platinum Group Metals) ion based molecule that is yellow when oxygenated and dull orange when not. It provides the additional capability of serving as a hydrogen transport molecule too - which might make for interesting biology on a gas giant planet. The organism would require a biological\/chemical pathway to generate oxygen from chemicals found in the environment and then transport that molecule to the cells that needed energy. Perhaps the oxygen circulatory system and hydrogen circulatory system would need to be separated?\n\nIn solution, the compound takes up one atom of oxygen per molecule to change from brilliant yellow to sullen orange...\n\nIn the oxygenated condition, the iridium-based blood of extraterrestrials would have to be protected from light because it is very photosensitive. The pigment slowly decomposes over a period of days or weeks when exposed to strong light, gradually changing color from orange to green and finally to a deep bluish-black. Such aliens would therefore either have very dark skin, or would inhabit a dimly lit world. (In the absence of light, the molecule is stable for years.)\n\nThe iridium complex has one additional property which is extremely fascinating to xenobiologists. In addition to oxygen, the molecule is also capable of reversibly binding hydrogen as well!\n\n## In Summary\n\n\u2022 Pink (Iron - Hemerythrin)\n\u2022 Red (Iron - many)\n\u2022 Orange (Iridium - chloro-carbonyl-bis(tri phenylphosphine)-iridium)\n\u2022 Yellow (Cobalt - Coboglobin, Iridium - chloro-carbonyl-bis(tri phenylphosphine)-iridium)\n\u2022 Green (Iron - Chlorocruorin)\n\u2022 Blue (Copper - Hemocyanin)\n\u2022 Violet (Iron - Hemerythrin)\n\u2022 Clear (Cobalt - Coboglobin, Iron - Hemerythrin)\n\u2022 Brown (Manganese - Pinnaglobin)\n\nAll but two of these (the exceptions are the Cobalt and Iridium based molecules) are known to exist in living organism in the terrestrial biosphere.\n\n\u2022 Under erythrocruorin, there is an \"and Earthworms.\" which looks out of place. Was that supposed to go elsewhere? \u2013\u00a0a CVn May 12 '17 at 9:35\n\u2022 No. There was a wall of text between \"insects\" and \"earthworms\" so I just put the \"and Earthworms\" after the relevant text mentioning insects. \u2013\u00a0Jim2B Jul 30 '17 at 16:02\n\nOne major issue with blood colors in your scenario is that compounds might look very different when in a dilute solution and when in (near) saturated levels. The best example is blood itself. Considering individual \"red\" blood cells are golden colored, but give a red impression when seen together in tens of thousands. If you dilute blood sufficiently in clear water, you would see that it is indeed golden of color.\n\nAnother big problem is that a lot of metallic compounds have a different color when in anhydrous (dry) form and when forming complexes with water. For example, Copper Sulphate is white when anhydrous and blue when combined with water molecules to form complex CuSO4.5H2O.\n\nHaving said that, here are some of your colors.\n\nTin compounds (+2 and +4 state) are colorless in a solution.\n\nAluminum compounds are also colorless as solute.\n\nSame for silver.\n\nReference for above colors\n\nPlatinum compounds are mostly brown or red in color. However the oxides (+2 and +4) are black. The peroxide of platinum is golden yellow of color.\n\nGold oxide (+3) is reddish brown (reference).\n\nCobalt oxide (+2) is olive green of color. (reference)\n\nZinc oxide is white while nickle oxide is green (when pure NiO) or black (when the oxygen to nickle ratio is not constant in the sample). (reference)\n\nNo metallic oxide that I know of, produces white color when dissolved in water. Metallic complexes might. But metallic complexes vary so immensely in color that it would turn one completely bonkers knowing how many colors a single transition metal ion could have when in a compound form with other metal ions.\n\n\u2022 Any idea which of these metals would make decent oxygen exchangers? \u2013\u00a0user243 Oct 25 '15 at 0:59\n\u2022 When discussing a metal for practical blood usage, the only factor is not how well the ion can exchange oxygen. One very important issue is, how much of that element is found on the planet and how can it be incorporated in the diet of the creature. Also, how that oxygen transfer compound interacts with the organs of the body cannot be neglected. Yet another factor is the atomic mass of that element and how heavy the blood will make the creature. Having said all that, the only two metals that appear suitable to me for oxygen exchange are Zinc (colorless) and Cobalt (olive green = zombie!!) \u2013\u00a0Youstay Igo Oct 25 '15 at 6:30\n\u2022 Vanadium has a very complex redox chemistry and might make an interesting choice. Several colors , depending on oxidation state. It is already found in some oxidation-related enzymes such as chloroperoxidase. \u2013\u00a0user11599 Oct 26 '15 at 17:40\n\u2022 V for Vanadium is toxic (not Britney Spears Toxic but biochemically toxic). Specially its oxide is a bad bad choice. Plus, it occurs too rarely to be used as blood. If the creature is non-Carbon based, then it might be a good choice. It has a surprisingly high oxidation state, so even a small amount should be enough to keep the animal functional. \u2013\u00a0Youstay Igo Oct 27 '15 at 2:45\n\u2022 Lead Oxide ($Pb_3 O_4$), Zinc Oxide ($ZnO$) & Titanium Dioxide ($TiO_2$) form a white powder that is used in paint as a \"white pigment\". \u2013\u00a0Jim2B May 10 '16 at 16:51\n\nThe colour of a complex organic molecule containing a metal atom is by no means completely determined by that metal. For example, chlorophyll is bright green. The metal it contains is magnesium. Solutions of magnesium salts are usually colourless.\n\nOr you might consider the gamut of colours that a nasty bruise goes through as it heals. These are all generated by Iron, as your body recycles it from blood and other tissues as the damage heals.\n\nKnown here on Earth: certain obscure marine worms use Cobalt-based blood. It is (unsurprisingly?) deep blue.\n\nSome of the metals you mention are unlikely to be useful as part of an oxygen-transporting biomolecule. Obviously an alien biochemistry might throw up surprises and the metal or the colour might not necessarily be part of the oxygen transport mechanism. However, to be useful on that front you almost certainly need a metal which exhibits two (or more) oxidation states differing by one. You'll find these in the transition metals on your periodic table. Vanadium through Copper on the first row, and many of the corresponding elements on the two rows below.\n\nThe element will need to be reasonably abundant, since an organism will need a fair amount of Iron or whatever it can use in place of Iron. Here on Earth the heavier elements in the second and third rows are relatively rare (and of course you get less atoms per gram). The only one which life has made essential use of, is Molybdenum. (A few bacteria use Tungsten but that's not widespread).\n\n\u2022 nigel222 Do you know which protein acts in the marine-worms' cobalt-based blood? I'm guessing that either it's not coboglobin (per Jim2B's answer), or the blood chemistry is sufficiently different that its otherwise-yellow oxygenated state is blue in their case. \u2013\u00a0Charles Rockafellor Jul 30 '18 at 9:22\n\nAnd don't forget that there are white-blooded fish from Antarctica which don't use metal based oxygen carriers at all (at least in the blood. Some use Myoglobin in the heart muscle).\n\nAll the answers above look interesting and with thought behind them, but ph of the solution can change the color and chemical binding of many complex compounds. The reference to the element (probably a metal) being abundant has some credibility. But plants use magnesium for chlorophyl (the structure is very close to hemoglobin) and it is less abundant than iron. It could always be possible for alien biology to use two or three metals together - one that is very common and one that is not - to make a better oxygen carrier. Or some other combination that we can not think of. An interesting side thought - if a copper compound that dissolves in water is added to sodium carbonate, copper carbonate is formed and comes out of solution, but add amonnia and it redissolves. Think about that and alien blood and colors\n\n\u2022 Welcome to WorldBuilding, chrales ferris! If you have a moment please take the tour and visit the help center to learn more about the site. You may also find Worldbuilding Meta and The Sandbox (both of which require 5 rep to post on) useful. Have fun! \u2013\u00a0FoxElemental May 19 '18 at 22:55\n\nChromium based blood in a +6 oxidation state could possibly appear orange either when it is oxygenated or deoxygenated depending on when it\u2019s in the +6 oxidation state.\n\n\u2022 Welcome to the site Carrmodo. Please note that the Worldbuilding SE is dedicated to providing detailed answers to specific questions a user has while developing his\/her fictional world. One-liners are strongly discouraged; answers should provide a solution and explain why that is a good solution to the stated problem. I would suggest you edit your this post to add clarity, otherwise this may be deleted for being inadequate to the purpose of helping the OP resolve his\/her problem due to the briefness with which the topic is addressed here. \u2013\u00a0Frostfyre Apr 9 '19 at 20:49","date":"2020-01-17 13:37:37","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.45256173610687256, \"perplexity\": 2560.3466002520777}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-05\/segments\/1579250589560.16\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20200117123339-20200117151339-00207.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: Accessing JSON File with Multiple Hierarchical Layers I have a JSON file with the format below:
{
"total_rows":10000,
"offset":0,
"rows":[
{
"id":"005584833b8e2063f04ff713",
"key":"00558433b8e2063f04ff713",
"value":{
"rev":"1-8137baa51a2f335b0215ba9d08"
},
"doc":{
"_id":"0055842eb0063f04ff713",
"_rev":"1-8137baa51a2f335b0215ba9d08",
"value":1,
"date":"2017-04-07T12:38:06.336Z",
"date_inmilli":1491568686336,
"sensorType":"sensor",
"date":"2017-04-07T12:38:06.458Z"
}
}
]
}
I'm trying to extract the values of "sensorType" or "value" using Python.
Using the R code below, I am able to get the results correctly:
library(jsonlite)
df <- fromJSON("file.json")
df$rows$doc$sensorType
However using Python pandas, I get an error when I try to exract the values with the code below:
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_json("file.json")
df['rows']['doc']['sensorType']
I am trying to learn Python, could you help about this problem? Thanks in advance.
A: rows is a list of objects try this:
df['rows'][0]['doc']['sensorType']
or if you have many objects in the rows list you need to use for loop statment
for row in df['rows']:
print(row['doc']['sensorType'])
Update
To put those values to a dataframe more pythonic way is this
df1 = pd.DataFrame([row['doc']['sensorType'] for row in df['rows']])
print(df1)
A: You can use python dict get method :
You can check all available method of any object by printing dir (object) :
print(dir(dict))
['__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'clear', 'copy', 'fromkeys', 'get', 'items', 'keys', 'pop', 'popitem', 'setdefault', 'update', 'values']
Uses:
data={
"total_rows":10000,
"offset":0,
"rows":[
{
"id":"005584833b8e2063f04ff713",
"key":"00558433b8e2063f04ff713",
"value":{
"rev":"1-8137baa51a2f335b0215ba9d08"
},
"doc":{
"_id":"0055842eb0063f04ff713",
"_rev":"1-8137baa51a2f335b0215ba9d08",
"value":1,
"date":"2017-04-07T12:38:06.336Z",
"date_inmilli":1491568686336,
"sensorType":"sensor",
}
}
]
}
print(data.get('rows')[0].get('doc').get('sensorType'))
output:
sensor
for pandas you can create a new dataframe and update it with for loop something like this:
raw_data = []
raw_data.append(data.get('rows')[0].get('doc').get('sensorType'))
df = pd.DataFrame(raw_data, columns = ['sensorType'])
print(df)
output:
sensorType
0 sensor
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 2,935 |
Townhouses For Sale | Cape Canaveral
In 2008, tourists spent $2.89 billion in the county. This is distributed in several categories: lodging $839 million, eating and drinking $509 million, Kennedy Space Center $597 million, retail sales $450 million, entertainment $120 million, and Port Canaveral $109 million.[183] Brevard tourists come mainly from ten states: Florida itself is first, followed by Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Virginia, Wisconsin, Georgia, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. The five primary sources of foreign visitors are Canada, England, Germany, China, and Italy.[184]
Military installations in Brevard County include Patrick Air Force Base, near Satellite Beach, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center, and the U.S. Air Force Malabar Test Facility on Minton Road in suburban Palm Bay. In 2009, they employed a total of 2,000 civilian federal workers.[152]
In North America, the MLS systems are governed by private entities, and the rules are set by those entities with no state or federal oversight, beyond any individual state rules regarding real estate. MLS systems set their own rules for membership, access, and sharing of information, but are subject to nationwide rules laid down by NAR or CREA. An MLS may be owned and operated by a real estate company, a county or regional real estate board of realtors or association of realtors, or by a trade association. Membership in the MLS is not required for the practice of real estate brokerage.[citation needed]
"Paul was a wonderful Realtor to work with in the purchase of our new home. We were moving from out of state so our situation was somewhat difficult in that we only could come and look at houses on certain weekends and Paul was very flexible and accommodating to our needs. We also needed his help and expertise in doing some things in the buying process remotely and Paul helped us every step of the way. His knowledge of the real estate market and the local area helped us land in the right house in the right part of town for the right amount of money. We would definitely use Paul again to either buy or sell a home and would highly recommend him to anyone else"
The average non-foreclosed house sold for $143,000 in 2010, down from $147,000 in 2009. The average foreclosed house sold for $70,000 down from $81,000 in 2009. 25% of the houses sold in 2010 had been foreclosed. Total foreclosures rose from 2,200 in 2009 to 4,100 in 2010.[159]
When the Trump administration released its $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan last month, it set in motion a multi-year process that could eventually lead to considerable investment in communities. Of course, Congress must pass legislation to make much of it happen. Although there are some parts that the administration can do on its own, a lot of the plan will require both authorizing and funding legislation, so how close we get to that $1.5 trillion goal is dependent on what lawmakers can agree on in the next year or two.
A concern has been the probable reassignment of thousands of Space Coast workers when the Space Shuttle is discontinued in 2010. In 2010, 9,000 jobs were expected to be lost from the shuttle and other programs.[167] Each launch contributed $4 million to the county's economy. Annually,$78 million is spent at the Space Center Visitor's Complex, and $5.9 million from space business visitors.[168]
While you're at it, call the listing agent. The agent might have some insight on parts of the deal that aren't firm. Try to suss out how many other offers there are on the home and whether there are any potential concerns about the initial bid. You can use those to your advantage in your own bid.
Public safety for unincorporated areas of the county is the responsibility of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. All but three of the 17 incorporated municipalities, Malabar, Cape Canaveral and Palm Shores, maintain their own law enforcement services. Those three contract that service to the Sheriff's Office.[121]
Try driving through the neighborhood to learn as much about the home and the community as possible. Do your homework. Google the address, check out property tax records, or go on PropertyShark and see what comes up. You may never need the intel, but who knows when details might help sway the odds in your favor. You could think of it as getting a head start on your research in case the initial deal does fall through.
*Prices are based on 1-21 day travel. These are the best fares found by travelers who searched TripAdvisor and a select group of our fare search partners in the past 72 hours. Ticket prices and seat availability change rapidly and cannot be guaranteed.
Brevard County is a county in the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2010 census, the population was 543,376, making it the 10th largest county in Florida.[1] The official county seat has been located in Titusville since 1894.[2] Brevard County comprises the Palm Bay–Melbourne–Titusville, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is located along the east Florida coast along the Atlantic Ocean.
Weather can be mysterious, exciting and sometimes dangerous. That's why News 13 created Project Weather to help provide kids with the information they need to stay safe. Project Weather is made up of interactive educational resources to help prepare students for the future.
Like MLS, RLS has under contract, sold and days on market data, and houses rental listings as well. There is a database, which in 2011, was slated to be converted to the more familiar RETS standard in January 2012. The RLS gateway is populated by several private databases that include RealtyMX (RMX), Online Residential (OLR) and Realplus, another proprietary database available to Manhattan Brokers. These databases exchange data continually effectively creating several separate systems with essentially similar data. Another vendor, Klickads, Inc D/B/A Brokers NYC, owned by Lala Wang sued in 2007 to be included in the list of firms permitted to participate in the Gateway. REBNY also grandfathered the major brokerages including Douglas Elliman, Corcoran, Stribling, Bellmarc as participants to the Gateway.
The Brevard County Library System has 17 branches.[238] Although the Merritt Island Public Library is counted as part of the Brevard County Public Library System, it is actually a special library district. In 2005, HB1079 was passed to codify all the special acts that the Merritt Island Public Library District exists under.[239]
Jump up ^ "Brevard County, Florida: SELECTED ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS – 2006-2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates". factfinder.census.gov. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 18 November 2015.
Pursuant to §119.071(3), F.S., a social security number, bank account, debit, charge or credit card number must be confidential and exempt only as provided in §119.071(5)(a), F.S., and §119.071(5)(b), F.S., respectively.
Florida Today is the major daily newspaper serving Melbourne, Brevard County and the Space Coast region of Florida. It is owned by the media conglomerate Gannett. A monthly newspaper, El Playero, serves the Spanish-speaking population of the Space Coast. The weeklies Space Coast Florida Weekly and Home Town News are free newspapers, supported by advertising, that have versions in other Florida counties. Both present local news.
East Orlando Florida
Brevard County is the sole county in the Palm Bay – Melbourne – Titusville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area (formerly the Melbourne-Titusville-Cocoa, Florida Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area and Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area).
Eriksen, John (1994). Brevard County, Florida: A Short History to 1955. Melbourne, Florida: JohnEriksen.net/. ASIN B076H69FDW. – This is a documented history of Brevard County, from prehistoric to the space age. Documented with 320 end notes drawn from 1000 sources.
Purchasing your home is a big step, and TheMLSonline.com has the tools and expertise to ensure the process is enjoyable and convenient. Once you find the home that's right for you TheMLSonline.com has licensed Twin Cities Realtors® to assist you throughout the home buying process.
There are 4,000 species of animals locally.[42] Common mammals include North American river otters, bobcats, white-tailed deer, raccoons, marsh rabbits,[43] and opossum.[44] Feral pigs, introduced by Europeans, present an occasional traffic hazard. Lovebug season occurs twice annually in May and August–September. Motorists, usually, encounter swarms of these while driving during a four-week period.[45][46] Deer flies are particularly noticeable from April through June.[47] There were 596 manatees in Brevard County in 2009, out of a total of 3,802 in the state. This is a decline from 2007 when there was a total of 859 out of a state total of 2,817.[48] Bottlenose dolphin are commonly seen in the intercoastal waterway.[49] The poisonous brown recluse spider is not native to the area but has found the environment congenial.[50] The Florida Butterfly Monitoring Network has counted species of butterflies monthly for a year since 2007. In 2010, it counted 45 species.[51] Included are zebra swallowtail butterflies.[52] Fish and reptiles include alligators, red snapper, sea turtles,[44] scrub lizards,[52] and rat snakes.[53] There are an estimated 3,500 gopher tortoises in the county. They are on the endangered list.[54]
Find your dream home in Chicago using the tools above. Use filters to narrow your search by price, square feet, beds, and baths to find homes that fit your criteria. Our top-rated real estate agents in Chicago are local experts and are ready to answer your questions about properties, neighborhoods, schools, and the newest listings for sale in Chicago.Our Chicago real estate stats and trends will give you more information about home buying and selling trends in Chicago. If you're looking to sell your home in the Chicago area, our listing agents can help you get the best price. Redfin is redefining real estate and the home buying process in Chicago with industry-leading technology, full-service agents, and lower fees that provide a better value for Redfin buyers and sellers.
The primary purpose of an MLS is to provide a facility to publish a "unilateral offer of compensation" by a listing broker, to other broker participants in that MLS. In other words, the commission rate that is offered by the listing broker is published within the MLS to other cooperating brokers. This offer of compensation is considered a contractual obligation, however it can be negotiated between the listing broker and the broker representing the buyer. Since the commission for a transaction as well as the property features are contained in the MLS system, it is in the best interests of the brokers to maintain accurate and timely data.
There are 250 square miles (650 km2) of federally protected wildlife refuges.[40] These lands include Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, the Canaveral National Seashore, the St. Johns National Wildlife Refuge, the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, several conservation areas managed by the St. Johns River Water Management District, Brevard County's Environmentally Endangered Lands Program Sanctuaries,[41] and lands dedicated by the State as conservation areas.
Educators are required to follow the Principles of Professional Conduct of the Education Profession in Florida (State Board of Education Rule 6B-1.006, FAC). To report alleged educator misconduct, contact Dr. Carol Kindt, Deputy Superintendent/Chief Human Resources Officer, Human Resources Services, at 321-633-1000, ext. 201. Kindt.Carol@brevardschools.org
While Brevard County has transportation available in the usual modes for a coastal county—highways, shipping, and airlines—it has the addition of space transportation, making it unique in the world.[248]
Although Brevardians may refer to past storms as "hurricanes", by the time they strike there, some of them may have subsided to tropical storms or depressions. Because of the threat of storm surge, the beach community on the barrier island is often required to evacuate well in advance of the storm.[25] The possibility of storm surge is diminished when the storm comes across the state instead of from the Atlantic.[26]
Jump up ^ Lascody, Randy (March 2002). "The Onset of the Wet and Dry Seasons in East Central Florida- A Subtropical Wet-Dry Climate?". National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office Melbourne, FL. NOAA.
In 2017, there were five municipal entities selling water (figures in parentheses are millions of gallons/day): Cocoa (22), Melbourne (19), Palm Bay (6), Titusville (2), and West Melbourne (1). The fifth, Brevard County (1), is low because county areas outside the preceding cities, purchase their water from those cities.[259]
The county's most common winter bird is the lesser scaup, a diving duck. In 2008, half a million were counted. In 2010, 15,000 were estimated.[57] Local bird counts indicate that there are at least 163 species of birds in the county.[58] Other birds include the red-shouldered hawk,[59] the loggerhead shrike,[60] the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker,[61] Cooper's hawks, pileated woodpeckers, Savannah sparrows,[52] rails (which also includes coots), Florida scrub jays (an endangered species), wood storks, grackles,[44] great horned owls,[62] northern mockingbirds, brown thrashers, catbirds,[63] green-winged teals, greater yellowlegs, western sandpipers, least sandpipers, dowitchers, and American white pelicans.[53] Peak migration in the fall is from the last week in September through the first week in October. Fall migration tends to be stronger than spring because birds typically take different flyways.[64] | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 7,523 |
Q: Does one need to create an interface or implemented class to Mockito.mock()? I read the tutorials but did not understand - how much of the mocked object should be implemented. Are we passing an interface or the entire implemented class to mock()?
What if you do not have the implementation? Do you need to create an interface - suppose you omit some methods out of ignorance of the actual implementation...
from example at mockito.org here
//mock creation
List mockedList = mock(List.class);
Do I need to create a class 'List' with the methods of the android List class?
A: Mockito's default implementation for every method is given by RETURNS_DEFAULTS, which (unless otherwise configured) defers to ReturnsEmptyValues:
Default answer of every Mockito mock.
*
*Returns appropriate primitive for primitive-returning methods
*Returns consistent values for primitive wrapper classes (e.g. int-returning method returns 0 and Integer-returning method returns 0,
too)
*Returns empty collection for collection-returning methods (works for most commonly used collection types)
*Returns description of mock for toString() method
*Returns zero if references are equals otherwise non-zero for Comparable#compareTo(T other) method (see issue 184)
*Returns an java.util.Optional#empty() empty Optional for Optional (see issue 191).
*Returns null for everything else
For any mockable but unstubbed method on a class that you pass to Mockito.mock(), the mock method will have this behavior by default, regardless of whether you passed in a concrete class or an interface. In fact, Mockito encourages you to only stub the methods that are valuable to your system under test, and to let the defaults work for everything else. This is also the case if you "forget" to stub a method, or if new methods are added after you've written your test.
Note that for Mockito.spy, the default behavior is to delegate to (a copy of) the instance you pass to spy, and that by passing additional parameters to Mockito.mock you can change this "default answer" if you'd like.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 4,004 |
Roaming the World
Beginner's Guide to NYC
NOTE: New Yorkers are very opinionated people, probably to an unhealthy degree. Maybe I am too, so here's my guide! This is just based on my personal experience living here in New York City. And not even NYC, specifically Manhattan. Because that's just how it's been man.
I felt obligated to write this because I made alot of effort to write a guide about Japan (for friends, but still), a country I don't even live in. So I thought I should make one for my city, which turned out to be easier said than done. When you're on vacation, you're actively looking for things to see and do. In the city you live in though, you're working most of the time, or drinking with friends, or vegging out with Netflix. And more often than not, you're going to places you're familiar with. I mean, I've been hitting up some of these same spots now for almost two decades.
BIG MAP OF FOODAGE AND DRUNKENESS
Foodage and Drunkeness up above has been my collection of bookmarks for years. Starting as a little booklet I made for friends who moved to the city after college, it's since been ported to Google Maps and continuously added to. As it's my personal map, it's all food and liquor. I don't really need to bookmark sites and stuff.
To get around NYC, you're going to need a Metro card. They come in various types such as a single-ride, pay-per ride, and unlimited cards for a 7 or 30 days. If you don't feel like braining on a vacation, just get one of the unlimited passes.
The contact-less OMNY system is starting to roll out, but it's not city-wide yet, and still only available for pay-per ride.
Wifi is fairly decent in NYC. With as many Starbucks as NYC has, and those info and wifi kiosks around the city, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a free signal. That being said, we're in the 21st century. Just have internet connectivity.
It doesn't matter what airport you fly into, they'll all suck getting into the city. Ride-sharing is an option for all airports, or just a regular yellow cab (they're flat-rate), because no one likes hassles when they land. JFK is kind of sort of connected to the subway system, but it's still bad. You could also take the LIRR from Jamaica Station to Penn Station as an alternative. Coming from LaGuardia you're better off cabbing. And from Newark Airport you can take the connecting train into Penn Station, but it can take a while between trains. At least it's on a set schedule.
A few pointers for first-time visitors.
Almost every place takes credit cards. Most people don't even bother to carry cash, and some places don't even take cash. Having said that, having some cash on hand can be useful. If you want to eat street food, cash works better. Though you'd be surprised how many street carts take cards now.
Speaking of which, don't be afraid of street food. It's delicious.
America, and especially NYC, is a tipping culture. It's the way it is…don't be a dick about it. Generally between 15-20%.
Semi-related, feel free to split checks at restaurants. Don't try and split it a hundred ways, but they're usually amenable to splitting a few cards.
If you order drinks at a bar, tip $1 a drink. If it's happy hour, maybe make that $2.
Don't walk slow. Don't stop in the middle of the street. Don't get on the subway, then just stand in the doorway. Generally don't inconvenience the people behind you. If you need to do anything, stand to the side. Everyone in the city needs to be somewhere, so they don't like getting slowed down by others.
Please take your backpacks off on the subway. Pleeeease.
Walk on the right side of the sidewalk. When taking escalators, stand on the right, walk on the left.
God I wish New Yorkers themselves would all follow these rules.
AROUND THE CITY ON FOOT
I'm surprised I'm still asked which way is north or south. If the number's going up, that's north…or west. Streets run east/west, avenues run north/south. Tip: If you're below Central Park, Broadway only runs south.
In the East Village, once the avenues count down to 1st, Ave A comes next, then B, etc…otherwise known as Alphabet City.
Once the street numbers count down, Houston is sort of "zero" street, with the streets to the south actually having names.
On a typical Manhattan block, it takes less than a minute per block walking north or south, and about a minute and a half east or west.
Hey, I completely forgot about Citibikes. Mainly because I don't personally use it. But my friends like it, and it's nice that the city has a bike share program.
Given the nature and um, "fickle-ness" of New York's mass transit, I thought that it should get a dedicated section all to itself.
Ah the subway. It's convenient, but it sucks, but it's convenient. It's 24 hours, the stations are dirty and smelly, the oldest train stock is from the 60's, and the trains can be at times packed and stanky. But the city still runs on the subway regardless.
The short of it is the ACE and the 123 run along the west side, BDFM and NQRW down the center, and the 456 on the east side. The L and the 7 run east/west along 14th and 42nd respectively. If you're only going between Grand Central and Times Square, an alternative to the 7 is the S (Shuttle).
The number line cabs have a narrow body compared to the letter lines because they used to be different subway companies.
Various lines will wiggle to the east or west side, or taper off and head into Queens, or stop downtown or head into Brooklyn, or whatever…just look at a subway map to get an idea where they go.
On center platforms, if you're facing the direction of the train, the right side will be local and the left side will be express.
Certain stations are a hot mess, so pay attention that you're heading in the right direction (I'm looking at you Canal Street). Stations will generally say Uptown or Downtown. Outside of Manhattan though, they'll say Manhattan-bound or Brooklyn-bound instead. If you're in Queens, then Manhattan-bound would mean north (and west) while Brooklyn-bound south.
Rule of thumb, if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. In subway terms, this means that if the subway is packed, but you spot a relatively empty car, there's a reason for that. Either there's a homeless person on board with a strong odor, or if it's summertime, the A/C might be dead and the car is a sauna.
The buses have gotten slightly better in the last decade, thanks to dedicated bus lanes and the Select Bus Service (SBS) system. These are the buses where you have to get the ticket before boarding the bus.
If you're taking a bus that requires you to swipe a card, make sure your card is facing you and the little notch is in the upper-left corner.
If you're heading north or south, what the hell are you doing? Just take the subway.
The buses are better for heading east and west. If you're riding along 14th, it's sometimes more convenient to take the M14 bus instead of the L. This is considerably less true when comparing the M42 to either the 7 or the Shuttle.
If a taxi's lights are on, they're available. If they're off, they're occupied…or the cab driver doesn't like you. Just kidding. Taxi prices are mid-range when compared to other cities. Not as expensive as London, but not as cheap as Hong Kong.
They hate leaving Manhattan, and might give you a dirty look if you ask them to.
Most people would rather use ride-sharing though. It's a give and take. It's often times cheaper, but not always. If you choose to pool, then yea it'll probably be cheaper if you don't mind the ride taking a bit longer.
All I'll say is that when choosing where to stay, the location's more important than anything else. It's as much about safety as it is about convenience. Eat and drink like a local, but you don't have to live like one. Stay in touristy areas. Midtown (heck, even Times Square), East or West Village, Tribeca, etc. Uptown can be a bit dead, and the outer boroughs are not as ideal.
The first draft of this neighborhood guide got a little too wordy. So meh…toss that right out. Second draft, here we go. This is a general intro to New York City. I really only know Manhattan as I don't find myself in the other boroughs much. Maybe Brooklyn occasionally, but I wouldn't say I could get around easily without staring at Google Maps the entire time. Don't even ask me about Bronx, Queens, or Staten Island.
Midtown | Central Manhattan that covers Times Square, Grand Central, and Rockefeller Center. Not really an area I frequent voluntarily, unless I'm heading to Port Authority, dropping by Midtown Comics, or watching a movie at the Regal E-Walk or AMC Empire. There are pockets of good food and drink. Nishida Sho-ten for ramen, Tomi Jazz for drinks, or Sakagura for foodage. But please never ever look for food in Times Square.
Hells Kitchen | If you find yourself in Times Square, do yourself a favor and just migrate a few blocks west to find better food options, like Sushi Seki, Wondee Siam, or Method Kitchen.
NoMad/Koreatown | NoMad seems to be getting more hotels, which is fine if it means more chill places like the Ace Lobby or the Nomad Library. K-town to the north is exactly what it sounds like…great Korean everything. Go for Gam Mee Ok for ox-tail soup, Kun Jip for good food and bad service, or Turntable for Korean fried chicken.
Hudson Yards/Chelsea/Meatpacking | I'm lumping the whole west side together. Chelsea's fun, Meatpacking still has a couple places I like (and the Whitney Museum), Hudson Yards is awful (but people will go to see the Vessel regardless), and the Highline ties it all together. Hit up the unofficial bar of our office Porchlight (or its sister bar Cedric's at the Shed), or check out the Sleep No More show or Gallow Green for a drink, or grab some Corona's on the Frying Pan and/or chill along the Hudson River Park. The Mercado at Hudson Yards is admittedly nice too. Probably the only nice thing there.
Union Square/Flatiron | Includes Madison Square Park, Gramercy Park, and Union Square. The Flatiron Building is on 23rd, within spitting distance of the original Shake Shack. Union Square has a nice farmer's market, and all around the area are plenty of things to do. I still like taking coffee at Irving Farm, or getting bowls of noodles at TsuruTonTan, or hitting the rooftop of Eataly.
East Village | Considerably less punk these days, but alot of good (and cheap) bars and restaurants, as well as the Strand bookstore and Forbidden Planet for comics. There's a noticeable contingent of Japanese and Chinese fare in the area (due to various reason), but mainly because of the college kids. Check out Hi-Collar for sake, Veselka for Ukrainian, Crif Dogs for hot dogs (and the adjacent PDT for drinks), Cafe Mogador for brunch, Minca for ramen, Hanoi House for pho, or Le Sia for Cajun Chinese. Still a favorite area of mine.
West Village/Greenwich Village | Great bars and restaurants, tons of brunch options (New Yorkers love their brunch), and shopping too I suppose (no clue). Washington Square Park sits in the middle of Greenwich. There are tons of places for food and drink around the area, including EN Brasserie, Buvette for brunch, Happiest Hour for punches, Bubby's for a coronary, or Highlands for haggis.
Soho/Noho | There's a smattering of good spots strewn around to warrant the occasional visit, specifically along Houston, Lafayette, and the new crop of eateries around Kenmare. La Esquina, Osteria Morini, Goemon Curry, or the Ramen Lab for whoever's the guest ramen chef.
Lower East Side | I don't hang here as much as I did in the early 2000's, but there's still alot of good food and liquor. Barrio Chino, Yopparai, Nitecap right below it, An Choi, and a whole bunch of new spots at the newly opened Essex Crossing.
Chinatown | The area around Mott St is what people usually think of, but Chinatown continues further east past Manhattan Bridge. It can at times feel a bit anachronistic, but still has plenty of good food and some drinks. I still go for Taiwanese at Taiwan Pork Chop House, old school noodles at NY Noodletown, my dad's old favorite spot Big Wong's, or even cocktails at Apotheke.
Tribeca | Still unsurprisingly the most expensive neighborhood in all of New York. That's not to say it's bad. There's plenty of good food and drink, and plus there are few areas left in the city with cobblestone streets. Notables in the neighborhood include the surreal Paul's Lounge, Brandy Library, and Locanda Verde for Italian.
Financial District | The area is filled with two things, tourists and bankers. So it's not really for me. But people will visit for 1 World Trade, or the WTC Memorial, or the Oculus. So while you're there, head to Battery Park City for nice waterfront views, Brookfield Place for a decent food hall, or check out the soul-less South Street Seaport, or just nope out for Tribeca.
Upper East/Upper West | Pff…whatever. You'll go because of Lincoln Center, or Museum Mile, or Central Park, or shopping along Madison. Just leave the area afterwards to do anything else.
Williamsburg | This Brooklyn neighborhood has matured alot since the 90's. There are still alot of shops, bars, and restaurants to be found here. Oh and Peter Luger is there too.
DUMBO | I'm cool with DUMBO to be honest. It's waterfront, has nice views, an ice cream parlor right there on the docks, Brooklyn Bridge Park is right there, and more good memories than bad. You can grab drinks with views at 1 Hotel, or pizza from Juliana's (the original Grimaldi's after they sold the name), or shoot pool at my favorite watering hole in the area, Superfine.
Bushwick | I'll go every so often for Roberta's Pizza, but I don't find the area pleasant whatsoever.
Flushing | The last stop in Queens along the 7 train is where you want to go for a more modern cross-section of Asian fare. If Chinatown feels a bit anachronistic, Flushing feels like a neighborhood you'd hit in Seoul, Shanghai, or Taipei. I couldn't give suggestions though, as I don't go frequently enough.
FOOD AND DRINKS TRACKER
And now, a guide on where to find the foods you want.
Pizza | They say the worst pizza in NYC is probably still better than most pizza anywhere else. It's weirdly true. You can hit up the aforementioned Roberta's in Bushwick or Juliana's in DUMBO, or there's John's of Bleeker, Joe's near the West 4th station, or Lucali if you can tolerate the wait.
Italian | I have my picks, but I'll admit that I haven't been to as many Italian restaurants as I could have. That being said, I do like Morini, their big brother Marea for their bone marrow pasta, and Via Carota.
Steakhouse | There are the obvious picks like Peter Luger and Smith & Wollensky, but I personally prefer Keens Steakhouse and Wolfgang's (Park Ave location).
BBQ | I'm still fond of one of the relatively older spots, Hill Country (Texas-style). Mighty Quinn's and Dinosaur BBQ (who've been around longer than everyone else) do solid BBQ as well. If you're in Brooklyn, people will direct you to Fette Sau, Hometown, or Pig Beach. I'm definitely a fan of Pig Beach's outdoor space.
Fried Chicken | Mmmm…fried chicken. My personal favorite is still Bobwhite in Alphabet City, while nearby neighbor Root & Bone is also damn tasty. Peaches a bit further out in Bed/Stuy is amazing too.
Sushi | Anthony Bourdain said that the best sushi outside of Japan is arguably in New York. I wouldn't disagree, but you're going to pay up the nose. (Relatively) affordable picks are Tomita at Cagen, Sushi Seki, Tatsu, and Kura. If you want to destroy your wallet, there's Sushi Noz, Noda, Uchu, or the infamous Masa.
Japanese | The cuisine I eat the most frequently in NYC is unsurprisingly Japanese. My personal picks are Yopparai, their casual sister restaurant Azasu, Goemon Curry, the kissaten Davelle, udon at Raku, hearty bowls of noodles at TsuruTonTan, upscale EN Brasserie, DokoDemo for Kansai street food, and I'll even throw in old school Oh! Taisho for yakitori.
Ramen | I've had to cut down on ramen lately since it doesn't quite sit well with me these days. But I'll still eat it occasionally. We're gonna skip Ippudo and Ichiran, because one is a bit overrated and the other is a bitch to get to (edit: there's an Ichiran in Times Square now? Hmm…) Shops I like include local boy Ivan Ramen, my old-school favorite Minca, the Black Kakuni at underrated Nishida Sho-ten, the Uni Mazemen at Jun-men, and a bowl of Yuzu Ramen at Nakamura.
Chinese | Surprise, I don't know shit about Chinese! I don't eat it that often…sorry. No wait, Hao is good (lol if you speak Mandarin). I've been there a couple times.
Desserts | Cronuts! Just kidding…they are delicious though, no doubt. Other notables though include the matcha mille cake from Lady M, afternoon tea and desserts at Cha-An, cheesecake from Eileen's, ice cream from Sundaes & Cones or Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, the super-delicious concoctions at Spot Dessert, and bubble tea from The Alley.
Misc | And now, for everything else – El Quinto Pino for tapas, Pinch for soup dumplings, Lan Zhou for both hand-pulled noodles and their delicious dumplings (you can buy them frozen too), Taiwan Pork Chop House for old-school Taiwanese or Ho Foods for a modern take on beef noodle, Noreetuh for Hawaiian, Madame Vo or Hanoi House for pho, An Choi for Vietnamese, and finally…awesome diner staples at the no-frills La Bonbonniere.
Liquor | I'll try and list a variety of spots. Hi-Collar for fancy sake or Decibel for divey sake, Raine's Law Room, Porchlight, Little Branch, or Pegu Club for cocktails, Angel's Share because I'll never give it up, Public Record for audio, Copper Still or Scratcher's for a beer, and Other Room or Anotheroom for privacy.
In: Guide
Tagged: Guide, Manhattan, New York City, NYC, USA
Previous Post: Beginner's Guide to Japan
Next Post: Taiwan Pre-Soundtrack 2020
halley.tsai
Second more thorough playthrough. The game really
I'm guessing Night City is as close to traveling a
Brooklyn sunsets
Lol no I didn't resub. Just being a tourist. Havin
St. Marks scene
Sigh, hard to believe I was adventuring around Jap
Categories Select Category Blog Guide Music Photos Videos
Archives Select Month August 2020 May 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 October 2019 December 2018 July 2017 December 2016 August 2016 July 2014 August 2013 August 2012 March 2012 January 2012 July 2011 May 2011 July 2010 September 2009 July 2009 April 2008 March 2008 July 2007 January 2007 February 2006 January 2006 January 2005 January 2003
Travelogue © Halley Tsai 2021 | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 381 |
{"url":"https:\/\/www.semanticscholar.org\/paper\/Sum-free-sets-in-abelian-groups-Green-Ruzsa\/6fa19133f6544fefc3b909000f0163cd63371621","text":"# Sum-free sets in abelian groups\n\n@article{Green2003SumfreeSI,\ntitle={Sum-free sets in abelian groups},\nauthor={Ben Green and Imre Z. Ruzsa},\njournal={Israel Journal of Mathematics},\nyear={2003},\nvolume={147},\npages={157-188}\n}\n\u2022 Published 10 July 2003\n\u2022 Mathematics\n\u2022 Israel Journal of Mathematics\nLetA be a subset of an abelian groupG with |G|=n. We say thatA is sum-free if there do not existx, y, z \u03b5A withx+y=z. We determine, for anyG, the maximal density\u03bc(G) of a sum-free subset ofG. This was previously known only for certainG. We prove that the number of sum-free subsets ofG is 2(\u03bc(G)+o(1))n, which is tight up to theo-term. For certain groups, those with a small prime factor of the form 3k+2, we are able to give an asymptotic formula for the number of sum-free subsets ofG. This\u2026\nSum-free set in finite abelian groups\n\u2022 Mathematics\n\u2022 2005\nLet A be a subset of a finite abelian group G. We say that A is sum-free if there is no solution of the equation x + y = z, with x, y, z belonging to the set A. In this paper we shall characterise\nThe number of additive triples in subsets of abelian groups\n\u2022 Mathematics\nMathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society\n\u2022 2016\nAbstract A set of elements of a finite abelian group is called sum-free if it contains no Schur triple, i.e., no triple of elements x, y, z with x + y = z. The study of how large the largest sum-free\nLarge Sum-free Sets in Abelian Groups\nLet A be a subset of a finite abelian group G. We say that A is sum-free if the equation x + y = z, has no solution (x, y, z) with x, y, z belonging to the set A. In this paper we shall characterise\nON THE MAXIMUM SIZE OF A (k,l)-SUM-FREE SUBSET OF AN ABELIAN GROUP\nA subset A of a given finite abelian group G is called (k,l)-sum-free if the sum of k (not necessarily distinct) elements of A does not equal the sum of l (not necessarily distinct) elements of A. We\nOn the structure of large sum-free sets of integers\n\u2022 T. Tran\n\u2022 Mathematics\nIsrael Journal of Mathematics\n\u2022 2018\nA set of integers is called sum-free if it contains no triple (x, y, z) of not necessarily distinct elements with x + y = z. In this paper, we provide a structural characterisation of sum-free\nN ov 2 00 7 Product-free subsets of groups , then and now\nLet G be a group. A subset S of G is product-free if there do not exist a, b, c \u2208 S (not necessarily distinct) such that ab = c. One can ask about the existence of large product-free subsets for\nA ug 2 00 7 Product-free subsets of groups , then and now\nLet G be a group. A subset S of G is product-free if there do not exist a, b, c \u2208 S (not necessarily distinct) such that ab = c. One can ask about the existence of large product-free subsets for\nOn Maximal Sum-Free Sets in Abelian Groups\n\u2022 Mathematics\nElectron. J. Comb.\n\u2022 2022\nBalogh, Liu, Sharifzadeh and Treglown [Journal of the European Mathematical Society, 2018] recently gave a sharp count on the number of maximal sum-free subsets of $\\{1, \\dots, n\\}$, thereby\nA pr 2 00 8 Generalizations of product-free subsets\n\u2022 Mathematics\n\u2022 2008\nIn this paper, we present some generalizations of Gowers\u2019s result about product-free subsets of groups. For any group G of order n, a subset A of G is said to be product-free if there is no solution\n\n## References\n\nSHOWING 1-10 OF 44 REFERENCES\nMaximal sum-free sets in finite abelian groups, V\n\u2022 H. Yap\n\u2022 Mathematics\nBulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society\n\u2022 1975\nLet \u03bb(G) be the cardinality of a maximal sum-free set in a group G. Diananda and Yap conjectured that if G is abelian and if every prime divisor of |G| is congruent to 1 modulo 3, then \u03bb(G) =\nMaximal sum-free sets in finite abelian groups\n\u2022 Mathematics\nBulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society\n\u2022 1970\nA subset S of an additive group G is called a maximal sum-free set in G if (S+S) \u2229 S = \u00f8 and \u2223S\u2223 \u2265 \u2223T\u2223 for every sum-free set T in G. It is shown that if G is an elementary abelian p\u2013group of order\nSum-free sets in abelian groups\n\u2022 Mathematics\n\u2022 2001\nAbstractWe show that there is an absolute constant \u03b4>0 such that the number of sum-free subsets of any finite abelian groupG is \\left( {2^{\\nu (G)} - 1} \\right)2^{\\left| G \\right|\/2} + O\\left(\nCounting sumsets and sum-free sets modulo a prime\n\u2022 Mathematics, Computer Science\n\u2022 2004\nThe number of distinct sets of the form A of residues modulo p that are said to be sum-free if there are no solutions to a = a\u2032 + a\u2033 with a, a\u2032, a\u2033 \u2208 A is counted.\nIndependent sets in regular graphs and sum-free subsets of finite groups\nIt is shown that there exists a function\u2208(k) which tends to 0 ask tends to infinity, such that anyk-regular graph onn vertices contains at most 2(1\/2+\u2208(k))n independent sets. This settles a\nA Szemer\u00e9di-type regularity lemma in abelian groups, with applications\nAbstract.Szemer\u00e9di\u2019s regularity lemma is an important tool in graph theory which has applications throughout combinatorics. In this paper we prove an analogue of Szemer\u00e9di\u2019s regularity lemma in the\nCameron-Erd\u0151s Modulo a Prime\n\u2022 Mathematics\n\u2022 2002\nWe prove that for p prime and sufficiently large, the number of subsets of Zp free of solutions of the equation x+y=z (that is, free of Schur triples) satisfies\nCombinatorics: room squares, sum-free sets, Hadamard matrices\n\u2022 Economics\n\u2022 1972\nNow welcome, the most inspiring book today from a very professional writer in the world, combinatorics room squares sum free sets hadamard matrices. This is the book that many people in the world\nAbsch\u00e4tzungen der asymptotischen\n\u2022 Dichte von Summenmengen, Math. Z\n\u2022 1958","date":"2022-08-16 15:37:20","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8513277173042297, \"perplexity\": 906.2280533277494}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-33\/segments\/1659882572408.31\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20220816151008-20220816181008-00106.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Nadia Gray (eigentlich Nadia Kujnir-Herescu; * 23. November 1923 in Bukarest; † 13. Juni 1994 in New York) war eine rumänisch-österreichische Schauspielerin.
Leben
Die Tochter eines russischen Flüchtlings und einer bessarabischen Mutter begann gegen Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges auf Bühnen in Bukarest aufzutreten. 1946 heiratete sie den rumänischen Prinzen Constantin Cantacuzino (1905–1958), der sich im Zweiten Weltkrieg einen Ruf als sogenanntes Fliegerass erworben hatte. Das Paar lernte sich auf einem Flug einer rumänischen Fluggesellschaft kennen (sie als Passagierin, er als Pilot), bei dem es wegen eines brennenden Motors fast zu einem Absturz gekommen wäre. Bei der Machtübernahme der Kommunisten verließ sie 1947 mit ihrem Mann das Land und ging über Österreich nach Frankreich. Dort nannte sie sich Nadia Gray und gab noch im selben Jahr ihr Bühnendebüt in Paris.
Ihr Filmdebüt hatte sie 1949 als Nadine Gray in dem österreichischen Spielfilm Rosen der Liebe/ Seine Hoheit darf nicht küssen an der Seite von O. W. Fischer und Siegfried Breuer. Im Film spielte sie meist elegante, verführerische Frauen von Welt. In Fellinis Klassiker Das süße Leben zeigte sie einen Striptease. Ende der 1960er Jahre ging sie nach Amerika, wo sie 1967, neun Jahre nach dem Tod ihres ersten Mannes, den New Yorker Anwalt Herbert Silverman heiratete. Vom Filmgeschäft zog sie sich 1976 zurück und trat fortan als Sängerin in Cabaret-Shows auf.
Nadia Gray starb 1994 in Manhattan an einem Schlaganfall. Sie hinterließ ihren Ehemann und zwei Stiefkinder.
Eine am 14. Juni 2007 ausgegebene, dem 100. Geburtstag von Paul Klinger gewidmete deutsche Sonderbriefmarke zeigt einen Ausschnitt aus dem Filmplakat zu "Hengst Maestoso Austria", auf dem Nadia Gray zusammen mit Paul Klinger zu sehen ist.
Filmografie (Auswahl)
Literatur
Kay Weniger: Das große Personenlexikon des Films. Die Schauspieler, Regisseure, Kameraleute, Produzenten, Komponisten, Drehbuchautoren, Filmarchitekten, Ausstatter, Kostümbildner, Cutter, Tontechniker, Maskenbildner und Special Effects Designer des 20. Jahrhunderts. Band 3: F – H. John Barry Fitzgerald – Ernst Hofbauer. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3, S. 371 f.
Weblinks
http://www.britishpictures.com/photos2/pics/night_stars.jpg
http://www.briefmarken-archiv.de/brd/01/2007/a070603.htm
Einzelnachweise
Filmschauspieler
Österreicher
Rumäne
Geboren 1923
Gestorben 1994
Frau | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 7,219 |
Please let us know how your new faucet compliments your decor by writing a review. Find our selection of kitchen faucets at the lowest price guaranteed with price match. Rated 5 out of 5 by tami76137 from an all moen faucet household i love moen faucets and only buy moen fixtures.
The brantford one handle kitchen faucet is designed so the fixture can be installed with or without the deckplate as needed for your application.
Moen one handle kitchen faucet installation. The noell collection embodies elaborate traditional designs to enhance the style and design of any home. One handle kitchen faucet plumbing product pdf manual download. The style and modern look of the faucets was the first thing that attracted me to the brand. Thank you so much for your interest in moen products.
The moen noell 1 handle kitchen faucet was designed with attention to detail. Shop moen kinzel stainless steel one handle pull out kitchen faucet with soap dispenser at lowes canada. Connection size in 38 in. View and download moen one handle kitchen faucet installation manual online.
Offering sleek sophisticated styling the torrance collection is available in a variety of designs and finishes that will blend beautifully with any home decor. This faucet includes a side spray hose for convenient flexible cleaning at the sink. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 9,197 |
<?php
namespace denbora\R_T_G_Services\examples\RESTv2\History;
use denbora\R_T_G_Services\casino\CasinoRestV2;
use denbora\R_T_G_Services\examples\RESTv2\RestExample;
use denbora\R_T_G_Services\R_T_G_ServiceException;
class GetVideoPokerHistoryDetailV2GET extends RestExample
{
/**
* RedeemCouponPOST constructor.
* @param CasinoRestV2 $casino
*/
public function __construct(CasinoRestV2 $casino)
{
try {
$query = [
"machineId" => 1,
"gameNumber" => 1
];
$result = $casino->HistoryService->getVideoPokerHistoryDetailV2GET(json_encode($query));
dd($result);
} catch (R_T_G_ServiceException $exception) {
dd($exception->getMessage());
}
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 4,127 |
{"url":"https:\/\/math.stackexchange.com\/questions\/3944787\/integral-over-surface-vector-in-the-language-of-differential-geometry?noredirect=1","text":"# Integral over surface vector in the language of differential geometry?\n\nI would like to relate the idea of taking an integral over a surface vector in the language of differential geometry.\n\nFor example, the integral (in $$\\mathbb{R}^3$$) $$\\vec{A} = \\int_{d\\Omega} f d\\vec{S}$$ where $$f: \\mathbb{R}^3 \\rightarrow \\mathbb{R}$$ is a function of position. In standard vector calculus, this is interpreted as the integral over surface vectors (resulting in a vector). Is there a way to write this in terms of differential forms?\n\nIf we had instead $$A = \\int_{d\\Omega} \\vec{f} \\cdot d\\vec{S}$$ where $$f: \\mathbb{R}^3 \\rightarrow \\mathbb{R}^3$$ is a vector function of position. We could write this as a $$2$$-form $$df = f_x dy \\wedge dz + f_y dz \\wedge dx + f_z dy \\wedge dz$$. I'm trying to relate it to something like this.","date":"2022-07-01 05:53:37","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 7, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.9665262699127197, \"perplexity\": 93.83926202367088}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 5, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-27\/segments\/1656103920118.49\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20220701034437-20220701064437-00071.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Full Moon in Gemini: Seeking A Balanced Perspective
Carmen Di Luccio
We are having Full Moon in Gemini on November 25th and 26th. Full Moons are the peak of the Moon cycle, when the Moon is completely filled with light and marks the beginning of the following 2 week period when the light starts fading. This is known as the waning phase and represents a time of release.
Full Moons are generally the most intense and lively time of the Moon cycle. The astrological themes for each one can start to be felt in the week leading up to it. The events and circumstances that occur in our lives on the exact day usually challenge us. The Sun (Ego needs) and Moon (Emotional needs) are opposite each other, therefore whatever signs they are in will most strongly influence the themes.
Just like the New Moon, you can also have intentions for the Full Moon, with the difference being that for this phase your intentions should be associated with some sort of release or need for change. If you have been feeling that there is something to let go of, then use this period for the most powerful effect. You can also use Full Moons to begin a cleanse or detox. (Read more about intentions and detoxing at the bottom of the article.)
Sometimes the events and circumstances that happen to us around the Full Moon will create an awareness within ourselves that we need to change or let go of something. However, this is not always the case. Some Full Moon circumstances might just help you bring something to your awareness to help you make better choices.
Full Moon in Gemini Opposite Sun, Mercury, and Saturn in Sagittarius
Full Moons are a time where you can feel challenged by the energy of two opposite signs. In this case it is the polarity of Sagittarius and Gemini.
Gemini is an Air sign, commonly associated with communicating and information sharing. It is an intellectual sign and loves information from multiple sources, the ultimate student.
Sagittarius is a fire sign ruled by Jupiter. It wants to explore, seek truth, teach, and expand in perspective and experience through travel or spiritual experiences.
While Sagittarius is more intuitive and 'big picture' oriented, it can avoid looking at the details and facts, which ultimately can result in an imbalanced and incomplete perspective. As mentioned above, Gemini is the opposite and therefore it could also get too caught up in the details and have a hard time with 'connecting the dots.'
Therefore, during this Full Moon period we are experiencing this polarity being played out. It is both a dance and a tug of war between the 'facts' and 'higher perspectives.'
Mercury and Saturn in Sagittarius Conjunct the Sun
Mercury is the ruler of Gemini, and is also in Sagittarius conjunct the Sun and Saturn. Traditionally this is considered to be a 'challenged' Mercury because it is located opposite the sign that it rules and also close to the Sun in the Zodiac, which is known as 'combustion.' Mercury here is being forced to look at the 'big picture' under the guidance of the Sun and the restructuring energy of Saturn.
Saturn moved in and out of Sagittarius this past year, and has moved in there for good as of September 17th. This indicates that over the next few years as a collective we are experiencing a restructuring of our perspectives, philosophies, beliefs, and goals. During this Full Moon it is being played out on some level, however, because Saturn is close to the Sun, the stability and solidity of Saturn are not being expressed fully, especially with the Sun in the unrestrictive sign of Sagittarius.
Full Moon Square Neptune, Trine Mars In Libra
Neptune being heavily involved in this Full Moon in a tough way can bring a lot of confusion. Some people may even feel like escaping it all and avoiding everything altogether. The best way to utilize this is by 'escaping' in a productive way, such as meditation or any other spiritual modality or tool that helps you to think more clearly.
In some cases, the events, circumstances, and realizations that occur during this Full Moon could have something to do with taking a look at what we have been avoiding.
Mars is trine Libra, and at best it is helpful for us to be assertive in a way that considers different sides. It is in a sign that is hesitant about taking action otherwise, and as a result it can take a long time to act.
Things To Do For This Full Moon
If there is anything that you feel you need to release from your life, make that intention sometime after the first 24 hours after the exact Full Moon. (Click here to see for your time zone).
This is a good time to take a look at where you have been imbalanced in your perspectives to help you take action in a way that is more considerate of all the variables, options, and/or relationships. Perhaps you have been avoiding something that now requires more serious attention. This is a good time to reflect as much as you can, in a way that is well rounded.
During Full Moons and throughout the following week, it is a good time to start (or take action towards starting) a cleanse or detox. Gemini rules the lungs, therefore it would be best to take products and do activities that help to detoxify them. Holy Basil, also known as Tulsi, is an excellent herb for this but there are many other products as well.
For more information on getting a personalized reading with astrologer Carmen Di Luccio, visit his services page here. These readings are specific to the date, time, and location of your birth. You can also join his email mailing list here to be informed of any future astrology articles written by Carmen.
Related Topics:2015 horoscopeastrologerastrologyfull moon in gemini
We are having a partial Lunar Eclipse in Capricorn which will occur July 16th in the West and early on the 17th in the Eastern part of the world. It will be visible in most countries except for Greenland, the Northern parts of Scandinavia, Eastern Russia, and the majority of North America other than small portions of the furthest Southern and Eastern parts of the continent.
However, even when an eclipse is not visible in your location, it still has astrological significance. They reflect changes and can sometimes be a bit of a wildcard. The energies of a Lunar Eclipse can begin a month prior and also influence the following 3 months. Prior to this we had a Solar Eclipse in Cancer on July 2nd, which also affects this period and the following 5-6 months.
As mentioned in previous articles, this series of Eclipses in the Cancer-Capricorn axis began when it transitioned in mid-2018 and will transition out in late 2020. Therefore, some of the themes mentioned in this article (and my previous one) are actually playing out over a 2-year period with different eclipses triggering it in different ways and areas of your personal astrology chart.
However, this specific eclipse season of Summer 2019 will probably be the most impactful of this series when we consider that the Solar Eclipse was 'Total' and near the North Node, while this Lunar Eclipse is aligned with Pluto and Saturn at the South Node.
Lunar Eclipse In Capricorn Conjunct Pluto and Saturn Near South Node
This is a South Node Lunar Eclipse, which means that the changes and developments that it reflects lean more towards something that needs to decrease. In some cases, it can even bring significant endings or some sort of release. This ultimately will help us with what the North Node is pointing towards, which is currently in Cancer. See my previous eclipse article here to learn more about that.
Capricorn is associated with structures, ambitions, career, strategy, business, and mastery. It strives for excellence and attaining goals, as it is symbolically represented by the Mountain Goat climbing to the peak. Capricorn energy can also be cold, too caught up in social status, overly conservative, serious, controlling, can seek power over others, and be excessively focused on work and/or materialism while creating an imbalance with personal life and emotional needs.
This Eclipse is in a close conjunction to Pluto with Saturn (the ruler of Capricorn) close by at the South Node. All of this emphasizes what was written above as Pluto is associated with purging, death, & transformation.
This can reflect the need to make changes around other Pluto themes as well. This planet is associated with fears, obsessions, compulsive behavior, shadows, dark drives, manipulation, desires, deeply repressed feelings, jealousy, the underworld, and destruction. It shares some themes with Capricorn such as power and control.
This is a period in which we need to reflect on which aspects of Capricorn (and perhaps Pluto) energy we need to reduce in order to help us evolve and move forward in other ways. The events and circumstances around this time may help to push this on us.
Saturn will be near the South Node over the next 3 months, which also emphasizes what has already been written. It makes its final conjunction with it in September and early October, which is when we can experience the next strong wave of this energy after this Eclipse period. For many people there will be some concluding factor at that time in relation to what is currently playing out in our lives.
Venus At North Node While Opposing Saturn/Pluto & Trine Neptune, Mercury Retrograde Reaching its Peak
Venus is currently in Cancer at the North Node while in opposition with Saturn at the South Node. We may feel a push/pull between our relationships, love, values, money and pleasures and at odds with responsibilities, limitations, work or restrictive behavior. However, some relationship developments that occur now and over the following weeks may be highly beneficial for our evolution even if it comes with, or is faced with, complications.
Venus is also in a trine with Neptune, which can help to soften any challenges or conflicts in our relationships. This energy will be strongest on July 18th. Compassion, empathy, oneness, and harmony are themes reflected by this. For some people it can be magical, romantic, or spiritually potent. It may also stimulate creativity and inspiration.
From July 20th-21st, Venus will then be opposing Pluto, which can be a bit challenging and trigger the themes of this eclipse. In relationships (friends or lovers), it can reflect power struggles, intensity and possessiveness, but it could also trigger deep feelings and passion. Issues around hidden matters may come up as well. This can also help us make needed changes in our values or relations. Complications with financial matters can manifest more easily at this time and would be good to be cautious around compulsive spending.
Around the same time as the Venus-Pluto energy mentioned above, Mercury (which is currently retrograde) will be returning to the Sun, which is known as the 'Inferior Conjunction'. This is the halfway point of Mercury Retrograde–a time in which we can have important insights.
It's good to pay attention to what the universe is trying to show you at that time. It can be a period in which new ideas, thoughts, or perspectives are seeded that may develop over the coming months. Depending on what you are doing, it can also amplify the potential complications that these retrogrades are known for, which may or may not be connected to the insights you are getting. You can read more about this Mercury Retrograde here.
What do you need to decrease or completely release from? What is getting in the way of emotional fulfillment? Do you need to find a new balance between different aspects of your life? Do you feel the need to let go of certain attachments, obsessions, or personal shadows? What aspects of your ambitions, duties, or structures are not serving you anymore?
These are just some examples of what to reflect on. It's good to pay attention to how you feel during this eclipse or even during the hours and days surrounding it. It is also possible that things going on at that time can be symbolic for you. Keep in mind that this energy is part of a process that will continue to play out over the coming 2.5 months, and we may experience concluding developments leading up to early Fall. Some of these themes can even extend into later next year, but probably in different ways due to how the upcoming eclipses interact with your personal astrology chart based on your exact birth time.
The partial eclipse will begin at 8:02pm and will peak at 9:31pm (Universal Time). The Full Moon will begin to wane after 9:38pm. You can click here to see when the peak is in your time zone.
I'm doing a Sale on Astrology Readings this month during the Eclipse and Mercury Retrograde Season. Get a reading specific to your birth time to help guide you navigate the astrological energies and to help you understand your potentials better. Sale ends July 31st but can be scheduled for later. More information here.
Follow me on INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, and YOUTUBE for more astrology related content.
Whether You Know It Or Not, You're Being Prepared For Contact With Extraterrestrials
In 2019 UFOs became mainstream. But this truth had already been known for many decades. Collective consciousness is ready now more than ever for contact, and you're being prepared for that.
Why is humanity so deeply interested in the UFO and ET subject. Sure, you might say there is an 'agenda' with ET disclosure, but is there more to this picture? Why has this subject become the most sought after information out there?
UFOs became mainstream in 2019, the next question is who's manning them? The mainstream media, and the agencies that direct them, have hidden the truth about UFOs for decades and they finally changed their story on that this year. Given we had known UFOs were real for many decades prior, and that we also have known ETs are involved in this whole phenomenon, are we really going to wait many more decades for the mainstream to admit ETs are real too? Or are we going to start listening to what independent media has been saying for decades?
Humanity is preparing for contact on a mass level. This is a blunt truth but one that is undeniable when you look at how interested and hungry the masses are for content related to this subject. Some of the most watched, read, and searched content on the internet, Netflix and YouTube all relate to ETs and UFOs. Sure, some might still be in the closet about it, but that's changing QUICK!
But why has this been a secret for so long? The truth is, the biggest secret behind why ET and UFO disclosure has been suppressed is something that isn't discussed all that much. We typically hear about things like technology suppression, specifically energy systems. How do these crafts get here? What propulsion systems do they use? These questions lead people towards the reality that the technologies of UFO craft ultimately would disrupt our fossil fuel energy oligarchy so much that it would also collapse our economies in some ways.
Of course, this would not be such a bad thing. Why? Because when you consider that this would mean having endless and 'free' energy, cost for goods would drop dramatically. Not just that but, when you begin to examine the ease in creating systems based around abundance, it becomes incredible to consider what is truly possible.
An endless supply of food grown locally, everywhere! Endless energy, installed everywhere! Cars and building facilities that do not create pollution. We could essentially live in a society built such that we do not need to be enslaved by money or debt because abundance would simply become a natural happening of a society built with abundant technology, that's harmonious, in place.
We can all see the value of such disclosures, and the reason why this would be covered but. But there is something even deeper.
The Biggest Secret
The question is, if we know these technologies exist, and they are being suppressed. And if we know that whistleblowers and people have already reverse engineered or built these things, and not all have been killed or threatened, what is the reason why these things are held back? Why do we still deny these realities en masse?
The truth is, it comes down to consciousness. We've been saying this since the inception of CE in 2009: solutions are there, but they won't come until humanity is ready. What does this ACTUALLY mean to be ready? It means growing up enough as a race, that we can actually be responsible for what it is we will have access to. Not just that, but to be able to say we have 'graduated' in a sense, to say we are beyond our old ways.
While that sounds like a loaded few sentences, and they are in a sense, all that is really being said here is, humanity has been stuck in a cycle of experience where we continually see everything, and everyone as separate from us. We are individuals, living out our identities and lives and we are simply here to survive. We believe the limiting ideas of what our reality is and should be and thus we create that reality consciously. Our collective belief about how our world should be is directly tied to what actually happens.
But there is this feeling deep within us at this time, and I know you feel it, where we are beginning to deeply question our ways. How we treat one another, our political systems, the elite manipulation and control that exists, the existential reality of who we are and how we are truly just consciousness, all connected. These deep questions are asking us to explore who we truly are and why we are truly here. And many of us are doing so. This is beginning to create instability and change in our system because the consciousness that holds up our old world, is beginning to crack, and a new one is emerging.
Contact: It's On Us
WE are preparing ourselves fro contact. This is not happening through someone else, it's a collective phenomenon that is simply the next stage of humanity's journey. As our consciousness continues to shift, through us truly doing our own questioning, changing our own patterns, habits, thoughts, and actions, we will begin to truly create the solutions necessary to create a world where we can thrive. And disclosure of technologies will come forth. It comes down to US having to do this work, not governments, not someone else coming to save us. It's about creating an entire populace with the mentality of truly being empowered and self-responsible, as opposed to needed governance and feeling helpless.
This is why the greatest reason why ET reality is so suppressed comes down to consciousness because with an introduction to ET life, comes an entire myriad of experience we have not been exposed to.
Our CETV platform is designed to help prepare us for the stages of the personal transformation that is occurring in people's lives. From information, to techniques, to how to guides, CETV is here as a tool to help us move through these confusing and yet expansive times. You can check out CETV here.
In the video below I explain what this means deeply, and how we can begin opening up the doors to mass contact with ET's.
Is The Q Narrative Providing False Hope? Catherine Austin Fitts Weighs In
It appears as though people are becoming too engaged with the Q narrative that it is blinding them from the truth of what Q truly represents.
Instead of viewing Q as right or wrong, what steps does it represent in our awakening process? Is the narrative truly creating a world where humanity thrives? Or is it perhaps only taking us a step forward, if at all?
When the Q narrative began popping up I didn't pay much attention to it. It was only about 1 year into it that I started to do my research and really dive in. What I saw was interesting, but it didn't necessarily get me feeling like we were suddenly all on the right track, and that everything was being taken care of – a sentiment shared by many in the community who follow Q. I'm going to get to my observations down below on a few more things.
Before we continue I want to be clear, I don't feel all who follow Q sit back and just watch the show. In fact, I think there is a good chunk of people who actively do other things to help change themselves and their world, but I do feel for the most part – people seem to think Trump and the gang have humanity's pure best interests at heart, and that they will save America and the world.
I don't agree, and haven't agreed, with this sentiment since day 1. I understand that just this article alone may bring up defensiveness and emotion in those who follow Q deeply, and all I can say to that is am I really saying anything crazy here? Or is it that some of us have become too loyal to a narrative that it's now clouding our judgement? Have we created a new 'political side' that we align with in the same way Dems and Reps align with their party?
One last thing before we go on, Q is certainly part of an awakening for some folks too, further illustrating that I'm not saying it's all bad or anything, nor am I here to discuss whether it's true or not, but that I'm neutral on the subject and instead wish to raise some reflections about it. Also remember, Q material could literally be written by anyone with knowledge of alternative media and 'conspiracy theories,' nothing said is that far outside the basic knowledge of understanding these fields.
Looking At Q Metaphysically
In early April I posted on my Instagram account the following:
I think researching, piecing things together and questioning things when it comes to Q is great, I see nothing wrong with that. But I do feel that a lot of people become very complacent and just sit back 'trusting' that Q and team have it all taken care of.. even when things don't quite go as planned.
I hear people in posts and videos say things like "I want Trump to be right. I want Q to be right.. I don't want to lose my faith cause there is nowhere else to go." etc.
This makes me wonder, are we acting from desperation? Do we really think this is the whole answer? Do those who follow this so deeply really think this is all we have to do? Just follow the posts and just sit back and watch… with POPCORN as is so often said.
The ones we have been waiting for are US.. each and every one of US.. no one is going to get this all done for us, we gotta do the work as a collective.
So sure, maybe there are things that are right going on within the Q drops, I'm not gonna take that away, but I think it's time we start really focusing on having some deeper conversations about where we want to go, how we can empower ourselves as individuals, change as individuals and ultimately make up a collective of empowered people.. instead of just trusting that others have it taken care of.
Remember, it's consciousness that creates this reality.. where is yours at? That's what will decide our future more than 'the plan.'
And if you're looking for deeper, more insightful and action-oriented conversations.. check out cetv.one we're flippin the script over there.⠀⠀⠀
This sentiment was a breath of fresh air for most as it appears many are growing a bit tired of the Q narrative only because every time something happens in the world through Trump that doesn't seem good for humanity, the community continues to spin it so that it becomes good.. and herein lies the blind spots that are being created from choosing sides.
Catherine Austin Fitts Weighs In
When we choose sides we add a lens to our perception, that lens then clouds seeing the totality of what is playing out. I was recently having a conversation about this with my good buddy and filmmaker Michael Mazzola, which you can check out here, he proceeded to tell me about something Catherine Austin Fitts, former Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, recently said that totally summed up my position as well:
Here's what she said:
"In the Red Button Problem, everybody wants their check and they want to pretend that they are good. So it's very important that politicians come up with this story of 'good'. The story of "I'm good," doesn't have to make sense, but it has to be good enough so that I can just take my check and feel good and not have to do anything. It's a way of being free to stay on my couch and do the things that I love instead of being bothered with the responsibility of being a citizen."
So Q is the new story of, "I am good," because, "I can just trust the plan, and these covert operators are going to get their thing done." So I've been nice because I know some very intelligent, capable people who buy this whole thing hook, line, and sinker. It has been really frustrating for you and me. I took FASAB 56 to these Q believers, and they said, "You need to trust the plan."
The reason why I have not gotten on full board with Q is simple: Q could be something written by ANY truther out there that knows a bit about how our world works. Even after all my research, I don't see anything that suggests we're seeing a highly conscious world being created, thus, there is room for further discussions.
Sure, it is helping to wake people up to some extent, but so do many other actions that happen in our world. I'm not against the Q narrative by any means, I simply feel it's important to bring things back to us as individuals. Even is Trump and Q are in fact working together, is all you see happening truly good for humanity? That's simply the question to keep in our minds.
If we're going to truly make change, we must not just wait for others to do it, and we must also question the true path others are suggesting they are taking. For example, can you truly say within yourself that Trump has illustrated he and his alliance are going to create a world where you are truly free? Or is it more so that he might shake up some of the deep state, but there will still be a ton of work to do before humanity truly thrives?
I highlight the piece above because I do feel it's obvious that Trump is shaking things up, and that's important to note.
But what about things like pushing 5G? Why is this not questioned in deep detail?
Ultimately my take Q has been the same since pretty well the beginning. We are not necessarily seeing a human alliance take over the Deep State. We are seeing a deep state alliance take over the Deep State. Meaning, one faction of the DS has split and is going against another. One has a slightly less dystopian view for humanity. I summed this up in a video here.
Things are happening in stages, steps forward are sometimes slow and bit by bit. But it appears as though some of those who follow Q and who align with Trump too heavily, in a religious like sense, are developing blind spots and putting too much faith in having these people save the world.. where might that lead if Trump doesn't create that world? Does he even resonate as someone that will?
I'm inspired to help us out of the one side vs another narrative and simply see things for what they are so we can keep fluidly evolving vs. jumping from one box to the next.
I urge you to check out my deeper explanation of Trump and Q through the 5G unfoldment in this video analysis, it truly helps to lay a deeper framework and understanding of what is taking place here.
Bottom line is, this is all a step into further questioning and beginning to break down the old world, but by no means is this the full picture and we must remember that. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 3,666 |
{"url":"https:\/\/cdndocsjbeh.web.app\/heape74877gu\/774171.html","text":"View badges you can earn by participating in the File Exchange community. Download from GitHub Add the contents of myfile.tex into your LaTeX source code; a convenient way of doing so is to use \\input{\/path\/to\/myfile.tex}. provide to 'floatFormat' is incorrect, it should be something like '%0.3f' or '%0.3g' instead. A Simple PDF File. This is a small demonstration .pdf file - just for use in the Virtual Mechanics tutorials. More text. And more text. And more text. And more text. Aug 28, 2015 In this article, I'll write about several ways to combine text files so that if one method doesn't for %f in (*.txt) do type \u201c%f\u201d >> c:\\Test\\output.txt. Mar 11, 2018 Hi, When I try to knit the vanilla example Rmd file to \"pdf\" I get the below Content type 'text\/plain; charset=utf-8' length 267 bytes downloaded\u00a0 Oct 7, 2013 A LaTeX file is a plain text file (ASCII or Unicode) containing the text to be printed and markup To install TeX Live, simply install texlive using the Ubuntu Software Centre (or aptitude, apt-get, or synaptic). If they do, download the archive containing the files. xdvi.editor: emacsclient --no-wait +%l %f.","date":"2021-07-31 18:33:19","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.6316258907318115, \"perplexity\": 5517.423079639912}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-31\/segments\/1627046154099.21\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210731172305-20210731202305-00390.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
package macromedia.asc.embedding.avmplus;
import macromedia.asc.util.*;
import macromedia.asc.semantics.*;
import static macromedia.asc.semantics.Slot.*;
import static macromedia.asc.parser.Tokens.*;
/**
* Package object builder.
*/
public class PackageBuilder extends Builder
{
public PackageBuilder()
{
}
public PackageBuilder(QName name)
{
classname = name;
}
public void build(Context cx, ObjectValue ob)
{
objectValue = ob;
contextId = cx.getId();
var_offset = 0;
reg_offset = 1; // this, in init
Builder globbui = new GlobalBuilder();
globbui.build(cx, ob);
}
public int Variable( Context cx, ObjectValue ob )
{
// If building an intrinsic instance, then do nothing here.
if( is_intrinsic )
{
return -1;
}
// front-end
int var_id = super.Variable(cx,ob);
// back-end
return var_id;
}
public int Method(Context cx, ObjectValue ob, final String name, Namespaces namespaces)
{
return GetMethodId(cx,name,namespaces);
}
public int ExplicitCall( Context cx, ObjectValue ob, String name, Namespaces namespaces, TypeValue type, boolean is_final, boolean is_override, int expected_id)
{
return ExplicitCall(cx, ob, name, namespaces, type, is_final, is_override, expected_id, -1, -1);
}
public int ExplicitCall( Context cx, ObjectValue ob, String name, Namespaces namespaces, TypeValue type, boolean is_final, boolean is_override, int expected_id, int method_id , int var_id )
{
// Do the frontend binding
TypeValue functionType = cx.useStaticSemantics() ? cx.functionType() : type;
int slot_id = super.ExplicitGet(cx,ob,name,namespaces,functionType,true/*is_final*/,false/*is_override*/,expected_id,-1,var_id);
ob.getSlot(cx, slot_id).setGetter(false);
int implied_id = ob.addSlotImplicit(cx,slot_id,EMPTY_TOKEN,type); // ISSUE: clean up
Slot slot = ob.getSlot(cx,implied_id);
ob.getSlot(cx,implied_id).attrs(CALL_ThisMethod,method_id);
slot.setFinal(is_final);
slot.setOverride(is_override);
slot.setMethodName(classname+"$"+name);
slot.setGetter(false);
// this isn't right
// do backend binding
if( method_id >= 0 )
{
for (ObjectValue n : namespaces)
{
Name(cx,EMPTY_TOKEN,name,n);
}
}
return slot_id;
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,672 |
{"url":"https:\/\/cvgmt.sns.it\/paper\/4884\/","text":"# Lie brackets of nonsmooth vector fields and commutation of their flows\n\ncreated by stepanov on 14 Nov 2020\nmodified on 09 May 2022\n\n[BibTeX]\n\nPublished Paper\n\nInserted: 14 nov 2020\nLast Updated: 9 may 2022\n\nJournal: J. London Math. Soc.\nYear: 2020\nDoi: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1112\/jlms.12597\n\nAbstract:\n\nIt is well-known that the flows generated by two smooth vector fields commute, if the Lie bracket of these vector fields vanishes. This assertion is known to extend to Lipschitz continuous vector fields, up to interpreting the vanishing of their Lie bracket in the sense of almost everywhere equality. We show that this cannot be extended to general a.e. differentiable vector fields admitting a.e. unique flows. We show however that the extension holds when one field is Lipschitz continuous and the other one is merely Sobolev regular (but admitting a regular Lagrangian flow).","date":"2022-05-17 17:43:51","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": false, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8722127676010132, \"perplexity\": 948.2492591192323}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.3, \"absolute_threshold\": 20, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-21\/segments\/1652662519037.11\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20220517162558-20220517192558-00289.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Manet's Olympia & The Shock to Society
If you like someone who challenges tradition and a good scandal, I'd direct you to Édouard Manet who contributed to the modernist art movement despite backlash. Let's start by looking at one of his more controversial works.
A Shocking Reveal
"They are raining insults upon me!"
So said the French artist, Édouard Manet to his friend Charles Baudelaire following a huge negative reaction to the 1865 reveal of his painting Olympia in Paris. What makes this painting so scandalous?
For one, Manet's Olympia depicts a nude female prostitute. A black cat stands near her feet as she reclines on a chaise lounge. Standing behind her is a black female servant who presents a flower bouquet that is probably a gift from a client. By blatantly displaying these elements and their known meanings, Manet utterly bewildered viewers. In fact, he practically insulted artistic academic conventions!
Édouard Manet's Olympia
Challenging Conventions
Paintings in the 19th century were supposed to look towards a classical past to reinvent ideas. Artists usually painted with a smooth blending technique while creating rich atmospheres and depicting conventional figures of a mythological, historical, or allegorical nature. For instance, artists would look towards works like Titian's Venus of Urbino. Titian's painting showed a nude woman but did so through classical references to Venus, the goddess of love, which elevated the nudity to a feminine ideal of beauty and, therefore, was accepted by audiences.
Titian's Venus of Urbino (Left) compared to Manet's Olympia (Right); Move the bar to switch between images.
Despite also taking inspiration from Titian (note the similar poses), Manet's work was far from a respectful homage to Titian. In fact, Manet rejected artistic traditions and stripped its meaning!
For instance, whereas Titian's Venus is rich and delicately contoured, Manet's Olympia is flatly painted and washed out. Olympia appears 'rougher' in order to reflect the contemporary world of a prostitute. Likewise, the fidelity-representing dog in Titian's work is replaced by a black cat which are usually associated with devilry, mischief, and feminine wiles. Furthermore, Olympia gazes coldly yet daringly at us as we are forced to acknowledge this reality. (Fun fact: the name Olympia was associated with prostitutes as many nicknamed themselves after goddesses).
In all, there is no classical illusion or gentle nature. Instead, Manet rejects the past in favor for the modern world. With this rejection, critics struck back harshly as many viewed such a clear depiction of a prostitute as indecent and shameful! Félix Jahyer describes the painting and artist saying,
"Such indecency…he has made himself the apostle of the ugly and repulsive."
Félix Jahyer
Yikes, he's not holding back!
Ready or Not Here Comes Modernism!
Considered too modern, Olympia is a great example of a modernist work. Manet even combined styles of Impressionism and Realism showing his open embrace for new techniques! Since he was not afraid to depict everyday life, Manet often focused on lower classes or 'less desirable' folks. Through Olympia, Manet humanizes prostitution in a society that did not want to be reminded of its existence! In praise for his work, Émile Zola sums Manet's approach nicely saying,
"When our artists give us Venuses, they correct nature, they lie. Édouard Manet asked himself why lie, why not tell the truth; he introduced us to Olympia, this fille of our time, whom you meet on the sidewalks."
émile Zola
Ha! What's repulsive for some people was refreshing for others! Still, I find that the clear representation of a modern world and people's negative reactions towards it shows us that the modern world was full of uncertainty as the classical past began to disappear and a new unknown future emerged.
That said, what do you think?
A Feminist Approach
Maid in Manet's Olympia (Detail)
Looking beyond, feminists view Manet's Olympia in reference to the male gaze which theorizes that painted nude women are objects for male consumption and amusement. In response, Olympia presented a female nude figure that boldly and unashamedly takes charge of her sexuality. Likewise, Black feminists focused on the presence of the black maid which showed a stark contrast between whiteness and blackness and highlighted Western racial stereotypes. Once again, Manet invites us to ponder reality and the people surrounding us!
Manet's prostitute and servant are based off real models: Victorine and Laure, respectively. Besides being a muse for other painters, Victorine Meurent was a fellow artist! The Paris Salon displayed several of her works. In her own right, Meurent is an important female figure.
Likewise, Laure has become an important black female figure. Following the French abolition of slavery, Laure became a member of a growing black working class. She appears in several paintings including Olympia. Laure's modeling alludes to Paris' changing population and a growing presence of black identity. In Olympia, some even claim that her depiction in a clean white dress elevates her beyond the status of a common servant. In relation to this, Denise Murrell states,
"She's not bare-breasted or in the gorgeously rendered exotic attire of the harem servant, […] Here she almost seems to be a friend of the prostitute, maybe even advising her."
Denise Murrell
Overall, Laure prompts us to look beyond stereotypes to see the presence of a black female in a modern society.
Where do you stand? What do you find most compelling about Olympia? Let me know in the comments! To visit this painting, stop by the Musée d'Orsay (and do a treasure hunt too!). For more blog posts on art, click here! Keep an eye out for more content and thanks for reading!
Posted on November 23, 2021 by Mary Brown
Category: Art History 101, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, THATMuse Musings
Tags: 19th century, art, art critics, art history, charles baudelaire, edouard manet, impressionism, laure, male gaze, manet, modernism, Musée d'Orsay collection, Musee d'orsay, Olympia, Paris, Paris Museums, paris salon, realism, THATMuse, Titian, Venus of Urbino, victorine meurent
← The Venus of Urbino: An Inside Look
Perseus with the Head of Medusa: A Triumphant Statue → | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 2,291 |
Published by
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION SCHOLARLY PRESS
P.O. Box 37012, MRC 957
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
<https://scholarlypress.si.edu>
Compilation copyright © 2018 by Smithsonian Institution
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover image: Sterling silver–plated brass single-lug coffin handle from the Coombe vault in Washington, D.C. Photo by Chip Clark. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
**Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:**
Names: Mytum, H. C., editor. | Burgess, Laurie E., editor. | Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, publisher. | Smithsonian Institution.
Title: Death across oceans : archaeology of coffins and vaults in Britain, America, and Australia / edited by Harold Mytum and Laurie E. Burgess.
Other titles: Archaeology of coffins and vaults in Britain, America, and Australia
Description: Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2018. | Series: A Smithsonian contribution to knowledge | Copyright 2018 by the Smithsonian Institution. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017045419 (print) | LCCN 2017047244 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944466169 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944466152 | ISBN 9781944466152(hardcover) | ISBN 9781944466169(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Funeral rites and ceremonies—Great Britain—History. | Funeral rites and ceremonies—North America—History. | Funeral rites and ceremonies—Australia—History. | Human remains (Archaeology)—Great Britain—History. | Human remains (Archaeology)—North America—History. | Human remains (Archaeology)—Australia—History. | Burial—Great Britain—History. | Burial—North America—History. | Burial—Australia—History. | Coffins—Great Britain—History. | Coffins—North America—History. | Coffins—Australia—History. | Tombs—Great Britain—History. | Tombs—North America—History. | Tombs—Australia—History.
Classification: LCC GT3150 (ebook) | LCC GT3150 .D396 2018 (print) | DDC 393.09—dc23 | SUDOC SI 1.60:D 34
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045419
**ISBN-13:** 9781944466152 (print)
**Ebook ISBN** 9781944466169
A full subject index is included in the print edition.
v5.3.1
a
# Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1 United In Death? A Comparative Introduction to Historic Mortuary Culture
_Harold Mytum_
Attitudes and Practices
Chapter 2 Candied Fruit or Carrionlie Carkase? Beliefs about the Dead Body in Early Modern Britain
_Sarah Tarlow_
Chapter 3 Dressing for the Grave: The Archaeological Evidence for the Preparation and Presentation of the Corpse in Post-Medieval England
_Annia Kristina Cherryson_
Chapter 4 In the Footsteps of Thomas Hardy: Archaeology and Exhumation at St. Pancras Burial Ground, London
_Phillip A. Emery_
Chapter 5 Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture: The Dynamic of Power Relations between the Bereaved and the Undertaker
_Harold Mytum_
Material Culture and Classification
Chapter 6 Remember Man Thou Art Dust: A Retrospective on North American Hardware Traditions
_Michael Trinkley and Debi Hacker_
Chapter 7 A Preliminary Seriation of Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Georgia: Thirty Years Later
_Patrick H. Garrow_
Chapter 8 The Need for Greater Precision in Mortuary Hardware Terminology
_Roderick Sprague_
Chapter 9 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Coffin Furniture from St. George's Crypt, Bloomsbury, and the Churchyard and Crypt of St. Luke's, Islington
_Louise Loe and Ceridwen Boston_
Chapter 10 Burial at the Edge of the Empire and Beyond: The Divergent Histories of Coffin Furniture and Casket Hardware
_Megan E. Springate and Hilda Maclean_
Chapter 11 "Making a Box Worthy of a Sleeping Beauty": Burial Container Surface Treatments in the United States during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
_Jeremy W. Pye_
Protecting the Body
Chapter 12 Body Snatchers and Mortsafes: An Archaeology of Fear
_Harold Mytum and Katie Webb_
Chapter 13 Death, Dogs, and Monuments: Recent Research at Washington's Congressional Cemetery
_Laurie Burgess and Douglas W. Owsley_
Chapter 14 Lost Governors, Iron Coffins, and Driven Descendants
_Charles R. Ewen and Sheri B. Crane_
Conclusions
Chapter 15 Where Now? Future Agendas in Historic Mortuary Culture Studies
_Harold Mytum and Laurie Burgess_
About the Contributors
# CHAPTER 1
# United in Death? A Comparative Introduction to Historic Mortuary Culture
_Harold Mytum_
For tens of thousands of years, cultures have confronted death in unique ways that inform archaeologists about beliefs, social structure, economy, and a wide range of cultural practices. Some modes of body disposal, such as excarnation or placing in water, may leave little trace; others such as cremation transform the evidence (Thompson, 2015). In the historic period, however, most mortuary practice has centered around interment, which often provides the archaeologist with the greatest potential for data recovery and analysis. The acquisition of mortuary data from the historic period raises a number of ethical and practical issues that are similar to some ethnographic contexts but also unique because of the range of interested parties and the prospect for alternative data sets such as images, oral history, and documents that might suggest that scientific investigation of the relatively recently deceased is unnecessary. Ethical issues remain, as briefly discussed below, but studies of human remains and the insights they have provided on past health and life experiences and the analysis of cultural data that is the focus of this volume have indicated the rich potential of mortuary data. To date, historical archaeologists have tended to concentrate on either the biological remains from burials or the aboveground commemorative monuments, with relatively few studies of the coffins and their fittings and the structures designed and constructed to protect burials such as vaults and mortsafes. It is the purpose of this volume to address this imbalance by providing the first publication to offer a wide-ranging and comparative perspective on these important aspects of past material culture and the practices and attitudes that they represent. Historic skeletal studies have recently been reviewed elsewhere for a range of perspectives (Sofaer, 2006; Blau and Ubelaker, 2009; British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, 2010; Renshaw and Powers, 2016), and similarly, gravestones have likewise attracted synthetic works on both sides of the Atlantic (Mytum, 2004; Veit and Nonestied, 2008; Baugher and Veit, 2014). In contrast to these relatively well studied aspects of mortuary practice and culture, the contributors to this volume consider other material aspects that have received only cursory attention or have not been placed in their wider comparative context.
Of the few exceptions, many of the most significant scholars (Hacker-Norton and Trinkley, 1985; Garrow, 1987; Tarlow, 1999; Sprague, 2005) have here contributed updates to their earlier work. Sadly, many discoveries, including even those involving large data sets, have been reported only through gray literature reports in all parts of the globe; this limited distribution of results has impeded sharing of discoveries and recognition of patterns across time and space, and this lack of accessibility needs to be addressed (see Mytum and Burgess, this volume).
The first substantial studies of coffins and their fittings took place on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s, but the types of available evidence and approaches taken to the data have varied significantly. In Britain the most influential were Litten's (1985) summary of types of burial vaults and the clearance of the crypt of Spitalfields church, London (Adams and Reeve, 1987; Reeve and Adams, 1993). In North America the seminal studies were from New England by Bell (1990) and in the southeast by Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1985) and Garrow (1987). Sufficient material was available by the early 1990s, largely from North America, for a substantial annotated bibliography to be published (Bell, 1994); in Britain a more historical synthesis was provided (Litten, 1991). The most important data from North America came from earth-dug graves and extended chronologically into the early twentieth century, but most British data were of the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, and that which could be securely dated was largely from crypts and vaults.
In the following couple of decades, several more crypt clearances have been undertaken in Britain (Boyle et al., 2005; Boston et al., 2009), and they have been augmented by substantial excavations of churchyards (Brickley and Buteux, 2006; Miles et al., 2008; Emery and Woodbridge, 2011; Rodwell et al., 2011). Nonconformist burial grounds, including those of Quakers, have also been studied (Bashford and Sibun, 2007), although many of these sites are individually small (McCarthy et al., 2012). Some significant institutional and nondenominational burial grounds have also been excavated and researched (Fowler and Powers, 2012; Miles and Connell, 2012). Many smaller-scale projects have also augmented the data sets, although with varying degrees of preservation, especially of fittings associated with earth burials, and some major projects have yet to enjoy the level of post-excavation study that they deserve. A recent review of historic burial excavation in Britain and Ireland has revealed the extent of excavation to date and provides an important preliminary overview of the evidence, although much further analysis remains to be done (Cherryson et al., 2012). Methodological advances have led to protocols for large-scale work that often has to be completed within the conflicting demands of tight development schedules and the ethics of exhumation and data recovery (Emery and Wooldridge, 2011; Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England, 2013).
In North America, most investigation of historic burial grounds has taken place in advance of major infrastructural development, although some research investigations have been undertaken, for example, at Jamestown, in advance of conservation projects (Riordan, 2009; Riordan and Mitchell, 2011; Burgess and Owsley, this volume) and after requests by descendants, especially on small family burial grounds on private ground (Little et al., 1992; Ewen and Crane, this volume). Baugher and Veit (2014:18–34) provide a useful historiographical review of excavation and study of historic burial and pay particular attention to both the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGRPA) and the African Burial Ground in New York. Excavations within churches have been relatively rare, although they have occurred at a few sites such as Jamestown, St. Mary's City (Miller et al., 2004), and Halifax (Williams et al., 2001). Some contract archaeology projects have been large-scale clearances, often exclusively or with a large African American component (Davidson, 1999; Mack and Blakey, 2004), although others have had an institutional context (Bell, 1990). Large archaeological excavations of vaults or crypts have not taken place within churches in North America, but one of the largest was at Spring Street Presbyterian Church, New York City, with over 200 individuals (White and Mooney, 2010) with four vaults noted. Three brick-lined shafts with barrel-vaulted roofs were investigated at the Little Dutch Church, Halifax (Williams et al., 2001). Although in Britain historic earth-cut graves within churches were popular into the nineteenth century, they seem to be common in only the earliest periods in North America; a mass burial found at Halifax took place prior to the construction of the church, rather than within it, although it may have been deliberately placed over the burial place (Williams et al., 2001:32). Burial grounds associated with churches have been excavated not only at early colonial sites but also from nineteenth-century sites; in some, such as Belleville, Ontario, where 579 graves were investigated, coffin hardware survived in good condition and could be analyzed in detail (McKillop, 1995).
In North America, many excavated burial grounds either were established as serving a rural farmstead or were community burial grounds associated with (but often distant from) a particular place of worship. Although many sites of these types are known, mapped, and, to varying degrees, protected, many more are not known or have no protection. These latter sites are the ones that have often been subject to excavation in advance of development and cover the whole of the historic period and a range of ethnicities and denominations. There have also been major urban cemetery clearances, of which Philadelphia (Crist et al., 1997) and Dallas (Davidson, 2007) are among the best known.
Therefore, some significant sample differences exist between the data sets available for analysis on each side of the Atlantic. In British colonial contexts, such as Australia, the scale of investigation thus far has often been small (Birmingham and Liston, 1974), and where this investigation has taken place on any scale, it has been reported only in gray literature (Higginbotham, 2002). No large-scale crypt clearances have been published from North America, in contrast to Britain, but chronologically, the British data are relatively limited. Early burials in Britain have largely been disturbed by the continued use of burial grounds causing intercutting and redeposition of earlier interments, with the result that few intact earth burials before the eighteenth century have been found. In contrast, sites used for only a limited period in areas such as the Chesapeake have yielded valuable seventeenth-century assemblages. Moreover, the dates of excavated burials in North America continue right through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, unlike the British sample, which is very sparse from the middle of the nineteenth century onward because later burials are generally well protected or are cleared by commercial clearance without any archaeological component; for the challenges of working with exhumation contractors in Britain, see Emery and Wooldridge (2011). Rather more coffin fitting producer catalogs survive for North America (Springate, 2015) than Britain (Mytum, 2016), although these are important for research everywhere. Nevertheless, some important trends can be discerned that indicate similarities and divergences and how other English-speaking contexts such as Australia also sit within these developing traditions (Maclean, 2015).
The studies within this volume examine particular issues and data sets to reveal the complexity, potential, and cultural insights that studies of mortuary culture can bring to historical archaeology. This chapter provides a comparative chronological and geographical synthesis that identifies, for the first time, broad trends across time and space that the research to date reveals. There has been little comparative consideration of aboveground mortuary monuments and the belowground data regarding both graves and tombs, on the one hand, and the body container and its fittings, on the other hand (Mytum, 2004; this volume). Most studies have tended to concentrate on site-based analysis with an emphasis on description and typological classification. This single site focus has been exacerbated by the constraints imposed by developer-funded archaeology, which has meant that most relevant reports have been disseminated only through gray literature reports, although some of them have been extremely valuable for providing comparanda for other researchers.
Some of the classificatory issues are still central to the research focus and are pushed forward in this volume (Garrow, this volume; Sprague, this volume), but the studies here also develop the interpretive aspects of the research in relation to pricing (Trinkley and Hacker, this volume), and some highlight the diverse ways in which mortuary archaeology uniquely links to the interests of descendant communities of all ethnicities (Emery, this volume; Ewen and Crane, this volume). This chapter provides the background context and a wide comparative analysis against which the individual chapters reveal deeper focus on particular issues. The prospects for further research and the key directions that it should take are discussed in the final chapter.
## Ethics and Field Practice
The ethics of burial archaeology are relevant to all periods and places (Sayer, 2010) but have a particular relevance in historic mortuary studies because descendant communities are temporally close and can be closely related. Moreover, in some cases the remains can be identified as documented individuals with their own known beliefs, which adds a further ethical dimension (Beaudry, 2009). This volume is not concerned with forensic archaeology (Crist, 2001), although that contributes to issues of taphonomy (Reeve and Adams, 1993; Nawrocki, 1995) and ethics. Most debate regarding ethics has related to excavation and analysis of human remains, but there are also issues linked to curation and conservation (McGowan and LaRoche, 1996). Retention for further study can sometimes be arranged instead of reburial; how collaboration with state or church authorities can produce solutions has been considered in Britain (Mytum, 1997; Giesen, 2013) and has also been approached in similar ways in Australia (Anson and Henneberg, 2004). Material culture associated with burial is often discarded or reburied with the human remains, usually because it is poorly preserved but also because its potential value is not appreciated and its independent status as a resource that could be retained is rarely considered. It is hoped that this volume, highlighting the potential of such data, will encourage those involved in the setting of project briefs and curation policies to actively consider how the retention and discard policies could be disentangled from those for the human remains; this subject is discussed further in the final chapter.
Although the excavation of mortuary material culture is intimately associated with human remains, it is largely only the issues associated with the latter that have been discussed at length, and not the associated artifacts. This focus on the biological evidence is because the central concern of national and sometimes other levels of legislation is on human remains, linked to issues of health, crime detection, and public decency. Burial structures, body containers and fittings, and the cultural contents of containers such as textiles are, in contrast, rarely given any statutory protection. Some upstanding features may have some prominence in heritage management, which is the case for some high-status tombs and mortsafe structures in Britain, for example, and some historic burial grounds have forms of landscape protection. In England, some cemeteries are registered under parks and gardens (English Heritage, 2013), and others form elements of conservation areas. Under certain circumstances in the United States cemeteries and burial grounds can be placed on the National Register of Historic Places or designated National Historic Landmarks (Potter and Boland, 1992), but these regulations only indirectly protect cultural resources. In Australia, burial ground conservation awareness is relatively well developed, but again, the emphasis is on aboveground features and landscape character (National Trust of Australia (NSW), 2009).
Whether investigation of historic burials should take place, and to what extent that should involve study of the cultural evidence associated with the human remains, has attracted some discussion. Occasionally, a research question, sometimes raised initially by the descendants, prompts demands for investigation (Ewen and Crane, this volume), but investigation is normally prompted by some form of development. In Britain the archaeological clearance of the crypt of Christ Church Spitalfields, London (henceforth Spitalfields throughout this volume), during the early 1980s led to the first published comments on this topic. Although many crypts in London and some elsewhere had already been cleared by commercial exhumation companies without any archaeological recording or even comment from the heritage sector, this detailed investigation revealed so much about past lives and practices that it raised ethical and practical issues (Cox, 1994, 1997; Morris, 1994; Cox and Kneller, 2001). The clearance of human remains could be reconciled by the needs of the present, but the study of the remains and associated artifacts was seen by some as prying into a past that was still too recent; strangely, the far less respectful commercial clearance was not seen as problematic by some. Although archaeology, combined with historical sources, throws light on past attitudes and expectations regarding the dead (Cherryson, this volume; Tarlow, this volume), the views of the deceased are rarely brought to bear in ethical discussions of present practice. The archaeological justification of the Spitalfields project was clear once publication began to set out the advances in understanding that allayed fears of voyeurism (Adams and Reeve, 1987; Reeve and Adams, 1993) and also generated a great deal of interest among the descendants of the Huguenot community strongly represented by those investigated by the project (Molleson and Cox, 1993; Cox, 1996). Similar descendant interests are demonstrated from another London burial ground by Emery (this volume), in this case leading to reinterment in a different country, and in Washington, D.C., in the context of monument conservation (Burgess and Owsley, this volume). Indeed, the sensitivity in the treatment of human remains by archaeologists and the ways in which these remains shed light on past individuals and populations have increasingly led to archaeologists' involvement in British clearance operations and, in some cases, taking them over completely from exhumation companies.
In North America and Australia there is less published literature indicating any archaeological concerns with investigating historic European burials, perhaps in part because an emotional link with early European settlement provides a reason that does not require further justification. Moreover, current overt separation of state and federal law from religious belief may cause utilitarian ethics to be applied without challenge, although what standards should apply to archaeological clearance of human remains has been considered (Garman, 1996). In the case of African American burial grounds, complex sociopolitical structures and attitudes have affected and, indeed, continue to influence choices made by developers, planners, and heritage professionals, including field archaeologists. The American cause célèbre that stimulated debate was that of the New York African Burial Ground (Harrington, 1993; LaRoche and Blakey, 1997; Mack and Blakey, 2004), which revealed different perceptions and expectations and also highlighted how collaboration with descendant communities could be part of the development process, which would include archaeology. Given that most disturbance is not initiated by archaeologists, often, the information retrieved that provides new insights into forgotten or poorly remembered generations and even whole communities is often much appreciated if both gathered and presented in a collaborative and open way (Roberts and McCarthy, 1995), even if this positive reactive behavior may not address all issues (Leone et al., 2005).
The specialist range of material culture that was developed by the funeral industry and that is recovered by archaeologists requires a specialist range of descriptive terms. Many items have been given numerous different names both by different companies in their catalogs and by archaeologists reporting their discoveries. Gradually, however, some level of standardization has been achieved, although the British and North American terms are often different (Table 1). These two different traditions have been recognized within this volume, and others elsewhere have used terms linked to particular catalogs that seem to have been those used to identify items recovered. How far the specialist terminology of the catalogs was used outside the profession is hard to estimate, but probably for many clients these definitions were unimportant, and a suitably priced but seemly funeral package is what was required, with little detailed considerations of style and content except at a generalized level (Mytum, this volume). Certainly, some of the most variable patterning, such as the arrangements of pins on coffin lids and sides and the size and symbolism of lid motifs, indicate a wide range of choices that would never have been individually named. Indeed, many catalogs used names for general styles and numbers and/or letters for individual items. This convention was in part because it made ordering these items easier, as undertakers had to obtain them from distant suppliers after the shift from the use of furniture hardware on coffins to that of customized funerary items in the later eighteenth century.
## Contexts of Disposal and Recovery
Contexts of historic interment vary significantly between countries, in part because of the role of the church and the nature of legislation relating to burial at the time of death. Britain, like much of Europe, had laws whereby the state denomination controlled burial in terms of location and the rites associated with the interment. Even in European countries such as France where the state took the place of religious bodies, the same types of limited choice were offered. The established church in England and Wales (the Anglican denomination) and the established denomination in Scotland (Presbyterianism) set the rules regarding place and type of burial from the Reformation into the early nineteenth century. Alternative burial areas were established by some nonconformist sects, such as Quakers (Stock, 1998), but where possible the established churches restricted these alternatives as they reduced income for clergy derived from burial fees. Only a few powerful individuals could escape from these constraints beginning in the early eighteenth century, the first in England being at Castle Howard with its elaborate mausoleum and estate landscape setting, although even there strong relationships with churches within the estate were maintained (Mytum, 2007). Only social outcasts such as criminals, suicides, and drowning victims might otherwise be interred other than in community burial grounds (Cherryson et al., 2012).
Table 1. Terminology in Britain and its empire and North America as used by archaeology. British twentieth-century catalog terms are in square brackets.
British term | North American term | Description
---|---|---
Coffin furniture | Coffin hardware
|
Coffin, hexagonal/single break | Coffin, hexagonal | Body container, widest at the shoulders
Coffin, rectangular/casket | Casket/coffin | Parallel-sided body container
Pin | Tack | Round-headed upholstery pin used to decorate coffins and, if cloth covered, hold cloth in place; may also have a decorative white-metal head that makes the tack appear like a coffin screw when in use
Breastplate/depositum plate | Coffin plaque/coffin plate | Key details of the deceased are inscribed or painted onto these sometimes large and elaborately shaped and/or decorated plates set on the lid just below its widest point
Lid motif/decoration [Head/foot ornament] | Plates (with text)/ornament | Large decorative pressed-metal designs placed above the breastplate and/or near the foot of the lid
Grip [Handle] | Handle | Handles, often decorative, placed on the sides and sometimes the ends of the coffin
Grip plate | Lug/ear/backing plate | Backing plate behind the handle, often significantly larger and may be decorative in shape or with motifs
Escutcheon/drop | Stud | Small decorative pressed-metal designs placed on the lid and/or sides
Lace | Lace | Decorative strip of metal, usually elaborately perforated, placed along the edges of the coffin lid, serving the same function as the pin/tack
[Screw] | Coffin screw | Iron shank with decorative white-metal heads
[Screw] | Thumbscrew | Later period fixings for lid, often with elaborate decorative heads
[Washer] | Escutcheon/screw plate/diamond plate | Decorative plates through which thumbscrew/stud was inserted
[Screw cover] | Screw caps/diamond caps | Decorative cover for screw
Clip | Box corners | Right-angled fitting fixed onto the lid and side of the coffin/reused shipping box
|
Caplifter | Substantial screw with decorative head used to lift the lid before final closure.
In colonial contexts some alternatives to the ecclesiastical domination model could be explored. In North America, many different religious groups were able to establish their own burial grounds, even in states such as Virginia, where the Anglican church had aspects of the established role confirmed by law until late in the eighteenth century. However, the most notable difference was that family burial grounds on private land, usually farms, were commonplace. This diversity of burial location—and many different sizes of burial grounds with varied life spans—has created a far more dispersed pattern of burial (Sloane, 1991:4–5) and many more burial grounds that are either completely undocumented or poorly recorded. This lack of documentation means that many more of these burial grounds are encountered unexpectedly during development or the scale of the burial component is unknown before on-site evaluation. The disappearance of aboveground evidence of many such burial grounds also inhibits mitigation strategies avoiding these areas during development, with the result that these invisible sites are the ones most frequently investigated and represented in the gray literature. This same pattern is the case in Britain, where undocumented or poorly recorded burial areas of nonconformist sects are relatively far more frequently excavated than others. In Australia, early settlement included casual burial in a diverse range of locations close to the site of death, but farm burial plots were also established, although they were subsequently closed as church influence grew during the first part of the nineteenth century.
Only in the nineteenth century did private and then municipal cemetery locations become important as state legislation relaxed church control in those countries that had this, and internal church burial and, later still, urban churchyard burial were stopped, ostensibly for health reasons. This shift to cemetery burial can be seen across North America, Britain, and Australia (Sloane, 1991; Martin, 2004; Mytum, 2004). Most major cemeteries have remained in use, albeit sometimes in a poorly maintained state, so relatively few opportunities for archaeological investigation have taken place, although in North America some filled with lower-status individuals, without influential descendants to protect the sites from developers, have been investigated, as with the Freedman's Cemetery in Dallas, Texas (Davidson, 2007).
Small-scale work in many British churchyards, often linked to building conservation or introduction of infrastructure such as heating, lighting, and toilet facilities, has led to the collection of small assemblages of fittings, although they are often undated or in poor condition. The same limitations often apply to North American farmstead family cemeteries, although a significant number of burial grounds with several hundred interments have been recovered during CRM mitigations.
Before the shift to urban cemetery burial, churchyards and church crypts were the major recipients of human remains, the latter increasingly popular as graveyards became overcrowded. Crypts were constructed beneath a few North American city churches, but family burial vaults were also erected in many burial grounds. The different types of burial location affected investment in that part of the funeral process, as the costs of the options varied widely in price, but such decisions also greatly affected the chances of survival of intact burials and also the preservation of the body containers and fittings and thus their availability for study. The diverse forms of burial context have already been discussed under terminology; the important point here is that these contexts often present better opportunities for intact coffins with all the fittings in situ, in better condition having not been buried in earth, and often in association with wood and textiles. However, the very presence within a vault or crypt suggests higher disposable income, so although there may be a wide array of material culture, emphasis on vault burial encourages a focus on the more affluent within society. Some counterbalance is provided by investigations at institutional burial grounds such as workhouses and hospitals (Bell, 1990; Fowler and Powers, 2012).
## Trends in Material Choice
The earliest phases of widespread coffin use in the English-speaking Atlantic world indicate similar practices everywhere. During the seventeenth century shroud burial was replaced by coffined interment for a substantial section of society. The use of communal coffins for funerals that were not left in the grave (Litten, 1991) meant that although coffin use appeared almost universal to contemporaries during the funeral ceremony, it was only by the early nineteenth century that everyone was provided with their own coffin, even the destitute.
Some of the earliest coffins were made from lead, and the known English examples have been usefully reviewed by Litten (2009). These were expensive items of funerary consumption and were usually, although not always, chosen by those who could also afford a brick or stone family vault. These coffins were anthropoid in form, with the earliest known examples being royal interments of the early sixteenth century but being more widely used among the aristocracy and upper gentry through the seventeenth century. Some have faces moulded onto the heads of the coffins and may have a limited amount of other decoration. Many display no text, but others have text incised into the lead or on a plaque or with applied lead letters. Lead trapezoidal coffins, tapering toward the feet, also appear from slightly later within the seventeenth century, often encasing a wooden coffin. In some cases the lead lid was formed in a mold that could produce whatever decoration or text was desired. The quality of production and variability in the technical details suggest that local plumbers were employed, rather than there being any specialist trade; a significant number of the known coffins are of infants and children, as well as adults. The earliest known lead coffins in North America are seventeenth-century examples recovered from a vault within Brick Chapel, St. Mary's City (Miller et al., 2004), where the lead encased wooden coffins; one was of a child, and there were two for adults.
Wooden coffins of the early period were of a variety of forms and are best known from North America for a variety of reasons (see above) and even then from few sites. Tapered and rectangular coffins are the most common in St. Mary's City, with the hexagonal form widest at the shoulders becoming dominant in the later seventeenth century (Riordan, 2009), although early examples of this form and the short-lived anthropomorphic shapes are known from early seventeenth-century Jamestown. The hexagonal shape was almost exclusively used throughout the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century, remained the dominant form in Britain for most of the nineteenth century, and sustained high levels of use through the twentieth. Some of the Chesapeake excavations have produced evidence for gabled lids, which also can have distinct patterns of coffin nails (Riordan, 2009). The gabled coffin is known from Britain only through illustrations, although these occur in a range of media, including paintings and funerary sculpture (Llewellyn, 1991). The distribution of such images suggests that it was a common choice across Britain and Ireland, and it is likely that they will be identified archaeologically in due course. All these early wooden coffins have no metal fittings or texts, although it is possible that some were incised or painted with such details, and only constructional nails are found with the coffin stains.
It is during the seventeenth century that the use of metal fittings on wooden coffins becomes widespread in Britain and subsequently appears in North America, although perhaps not until from the mid-eighteenth century, when they are found from Florida to New England (Springate, 2015:56). Handles of forms available because of their use on a variety of items of furniture could be fixed to the sides or ends and mark a phase when fittings were required but there was no specialized production; there was as yet no clearly defined undertaking profession that would be the primary market for producers, although elite members of society could have fittings commissioned in silver. The handles come in a range of designs but are all bail handles with two lugs that fix the handle to the coffin. Copper alloy and sometimes iron pins, as used in upholstery work, were arranged to form initials and year of death of the deceased (Figure 1A), sometimes within a frame or with a heart motif (Bashford and Sibun, 2007). This method of elaboration may be an archaeologically visible manifestation of a tradition previously marked on the wooden lid in some other way, or it could be a wider cultural spread of the identifier tradition seen in some of the earlier lead coffins. It is likely that this demand for naming and dating increased during this period, as it is also seen across a range of material culture and coincides with the first appearance of external burial markers (Mytum, 2007). This wider trend towards naming and dating material culture therefore suggests that the first appearance of coffin fittings does not indicate investment primarily for display but as an indicator of personal identity and place in time and social context. This form of elaboration was not employed on all coffins (although it occurs on both sides of the Atlantic), but it continues until the appearance of specialist coffin hardware in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the use of pins for text and symbol is rapidly abandoned. Instead, pins held cloth covering the coffin in place and were applied in a wide variety of arrangements that complemented the fittings in creating degrees of elaboration (Reeve and Adams, 1993; see Mytum, this volume, fig. 4).
FIGURE 1. British coffins. (A) Coffin of Ramsden Barnard with initials and year of death in pins, North Dalton, East Yorkshire. Adapted from Mytum (1988). (B) Coffin with breastplate and coffin lace in brick-lined grave, Kellington, West Yorkshire. Photo by author.
The development of mass-produced coffin fittings from the later eighteenth century allowed funerary display with a wide range of levels of investment. Although there were very many different designs produced, their aesthetic variation was relatively restricted, being largely based around neoclassical symbols, cherubs, and foliage (see Loe and Boston, this volume; Mytum, this volume). The fittings were manufactured in the metal-bashing workshops of the Midlands and London and used across Britain and Ireland, as well as being exported to colonies and North America (Church and Smith, 1966). One of the most popular grip and grip plate designs (CCS 4 and CCS 3, respectively; see Loe and Boston, this volume, fig. 2) has been found across England and in Philadelphia's and New York's African American burial grounds (Springate, 2011). The bail handle was still the popular form, although now made with many elaborate designs as well as various plain forms. Pins were also replaced during the middle of the nineteenth century with metal strips perforated with designs, termed lace, that ran around the edge of the top and sides of the coffin (Figure 1B). The range of breastplates, escutcheons, and other forms of decorative hardware proliferated, produced by many different manufacturers but often with similar designs, such as an urn with flowers or flames emanating from the top (Figure 2; see Loe and Boston, this volume, fig. 6).
During the early nineteenth century more of the working class could afford coffins with fittings, and exports to the British Empire rose, judging by catalog requests (Maclean, 2015; Springate and Maclean, this volume). In Britain, protection of the body was largely against body snatchers who supplied the medical schools with cadavers, but this practice was far less of a concern among those who could have afforded such protection in North America, where the weak legal and social status of African Americans meant that their remains could be relatively easily obtained (see Mytum and Webb, this volume). The development of body protection measures in North America, which intensified as the nineteenth century passed and are perhaps best exemplified in the relative popularity of the Fisk cast-iron coffins (Owsley et al., 2006), was therefore more associated with social attitudes to the body than actual threat of disturbance.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, in North America the drop handle, with a single lug, becomes an alternative to the bail form (Springate, 2015:17–18), as local mass-produced coffin hardware begins to become available. Another form that appears at this time is the short bar handle, with a straight rod handle held between two brackets by two tips, the whole assembly fixed to lugs attached to the coffin. At the same time as these new handle forms emerged, the rectangular form of burial container—the casket—also becomes an alternative to the hexagonal coffin. The flat-sided design allowed the parallel development of the long bar handle, which had several brackets holding the rail along the side of the casket (see Garrow, this volume, fig. 4; Trinkley and Hacker, this volume, fig. 1). The type of wood and its finish still created various options in coffin style for the middle classes, with the cheapest coffins made from any available supplies, including reused materials; by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries textile coverings, some elaborate, were also available (Pye, this volume). British coffins only rarely had viewing panels, and no hinged lids are known for this period; coffins were not cloth covered in Britain by this time; some children's coffins could be painted white, continuing an earlier tradition that was sometimes selected, but even here many were simply polished.
The new drop and short bar handle forms are known from British catalogs from the late nineteenth century (Figure 3) but are still in a minority compared with bail forms. When the new forms began to be used in Britain is not known because substantial archaeological assemblages and trade catalogs of the mid-nineteenth century are not available. Those few excavated burials from the middle of the century generally show maintained popularity of earlier forms, although there are indications that as the second half of the century went by, some simpler fittings designs and more restrained use of decoration became more dominant. During this time cloth covering, and the attendant use of pins, was abandoned in Britain. The variety of timber species and whether they were polished created complex pricing options, with historical associations evoked by the names used in the catalogs (Mytum, 2016). The casket seems to become a regular alternative to the hexagonal coffin only very late in the nineteenth century, along with some hinged lids for viewing, but the long bar handle is not offered in the extant late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century catalogs in Britain. It may be assumed that these changes were influenced by North American fashions, although the attitudes to the body that became so elaborate and included embalming never became as popular in Britain.
FIGURE 2. Urn with flowers lid motif, St. Pancras, London. Copyright HS1 Ltd/Ramboll UK Limited.
FIGURE 3. Coffin fittings from the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Dottridge Brothers (London and Birmingham) catalog. (A) Bail handle, (B) drop handle, and (C) short bar handle. Courtesy of the Beamish Museum.
The overall trends suggest that North America develops its own pattern of burial container and fittings from the middle of the nineteenth century, whereas the British market continued with earlier styles (including those very similar to the late eighteenth-century designs) for some time. The greater popularity of caskets and long bar handles in North America is also distinctive, as is the extent of the use of textiles (Pye, this volume). The relative frequency of glass viewing windows and hinged lids reflects different expectations and practices during the period prior to the funeral and, together with the greater propensity to embalm the body, suggests different anxieties surrounding the dead. Although more severe climatic conditions may have been a factor, the ways in which burial ground and cemetery design and management also differed in emphasis on each side of the Atlantic are notable. The divergence on either side of the Atlantic suggests that more distinctive and deep-seated attitudes to the body, the funeral, and commemoration seem to have developed during the nineteenth century. It is noteworthy that even in a very different set of environmental conditions, the Australian choices mirrored those of Britain (Springate and Maclean, this volume), further emphasizing cultural over climatic factors.
## Conclusions
Distinctly different current legal, cultural, and taphonomic conditions occur on either side of the Atlantic and in British colonial contexts that affect what we have available for study and how we might approach such data. However, the research outlined in this volume reveals a shared mortuary tradition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which variation in preferences was largely caused by different densities of population, differential access to traded products such as hardware, and the exigencies of creating infrastructures in an era of expanding European settlement. British industrial production of domestic furniture and coffin hardware created a wide range of options available to those disposing of the dead that were suited to different economic and religious circumstances, and these products were consumed at home and exported widely across the English-speaking world. Most excavated evidence for this period comes from London, but sufficient evidence has been recovered from the rest of Britain and in North America to demonstrate this pattern archaeologically, although the regional and religious variations in stylistic choice implied by some of the documentary sources have yet to be explored because of the limited sample size of the recovered material evidence.
The nineteenth century saw a clear divergence of trajectory between the two sides of the Atlantic in which North America developed distinctive industries, a trend also seen in other areas of production such as ceramics, glass, and gravestones. North America (both the United States and Canada) developed particular designs of coffins and hardware and in funeral direction that both reflected and created distinctive attitudes to death, the body, its containment, and its disposal. Britain and most of its colonies continued existing styles even as the undertaking professions adapted to changing technologies in production and distribution. Gradually, some of the shifts seen in North America were adopted, although never to the same degree and always selectively. The extent to which this was emulation or parallel changes caused by similar wider cultural shifts is at present uncertain, in part because of the paucity of all forms of evidence in Britain for much of the second half of the nineteenth century (Cherryson et al., 2012), in contrast to the wide range of sources, both archaeological and archival, available from North America for that period.
The twentieth century changes reveal adaptation to different technologies of body disposal such as coffins and fittings designed for cremation, but they are not explored in this volume. Likewise, recent global trends in "green" coffins of cardboard and basketry reveal wider cultural shifts that indicate that the funeral industry continues to react to changing societal attitudes to death and body disposal. Every generation has to grapple with the disposal of loved ones; their choices reveal much about their aspirations, attitudes, and beliefs through the funerary practices and material selections they prefer. The chapters in this book offer important new data, interpretations, and methodologies for the study of belowground mortuary material culture that will form a secure basis for further exploration of this important aspect of the human life cycle.
## Acknowledgments
I thank all those with whom I have discussed coffin fittings and mortuary archaeology, most recently Megan Springate, Louise Loe, Ceridwen Boston, and Laurie Burgess, although the views expressed here are mine and they may not subscribe to them all. Julian Litten supported my first research interests in this field, and David Gaimster and Lawrence Butler encouraged continued involvement in below- as well as aboveground mortuary material culture.
## References
Adams, M., and J. Reeve. 1987. Excavations at Christ Church, Spitalfields 1984–6. Antiquity, 61(232):247–256.
Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England. 2013. Science and the Dead: A Guideline for the Destructive Sampling of Archaeological Human Remains for Scientific Analysis. London: English Heritage Publishing.
Anson, T. J., and M. Henneberg. 2004. A Solution for the Permanent Storage of Historical Skeletal Remains for Research Purposes: A South Australian Precedent That Keeps Scientists and the Church Community Happy. Australian Archaeology, 58:15–18.
Bashford, L., and L. Sibun. 2007. Excavations at the Quaker Burial Ground, Kingston-upon-Thames, London. Post-Medieval Archaeology, 41(1):100–154.
Baugher, S., and R. F. Veit. 2014. The Archaeology of American Cemeteries and Gravemarkers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Beaudry, M. C. 2009. "Ethical Issues in Historical Archaeology." In International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, ed. T. Majewski and D. Gaimster, pp. 17–29. New York: Springer.
Bell, E. L. 1990. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Historical Archaeology, 24(3):54–78.
Bell, E. L. 1994. Vestiges of Mortality and Remembrance: A Bibliography on the Historical Archaeology of Cemeteries. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press.
Birmingham, J., and C. Liston. 1974. Old Sydney Burial Ground 1974. Studies in Historical Archaeology 5. Sydney: Australian Society for Historical Archaeology.
Blau, S., and D. H. Ubelaker, eds. 2009. Handbook of Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Boston, C., A. Boyle, G. Gill, and A. Witkin. 2009. "In the Vaults Beneath": Archaeological Recording at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury. Oxford Archaeology Monograph 8. Oxford: Oxford Archaeological Unit.
Boyle, A., C. Boston, and A. Witkin. 2005. The Archaeological Experience at St. Luke's Church, Islington. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Brickley, M., and S. Buteux. 2006. St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. 2010. Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology: Code of Practice. <http://www.babao.org.uk/index/ethics-and-standards/> (accessed 4 June 2017).
Cherryson, A., Z. Crossland, and S. Tarlow. 2012. A Fine and Private Place: The Archaeology of Death and Burial in Post-Medieval Britain and Ireland. Leicester Archaeology Monograph 22. Leicester: School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester.
Church, R. A., and B. M. D. Smith. 1966. Competition and Monopoly in the Coffin Furniture Industry. Economic History Review 19: 612–641.
Cox, M. 1994. On Excavating the Recent Dead. British Archaeological News, 18(November):8.
Cox, M. 1996. Life and Death in Spitalfields 1700 to 1850. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Cox, M. 1997. Crypt Archaeology after Spitalfields: Dealing with Our Recent Dead. Antiquity, 71(271):8–10.
Cox, M., and P. Kneller. 2001. Crypt Archaeology: An Approach. Technical Paper 3. Reading, UK: Institute of Field Archaeologists.
Crist, T. A. J. 2001. Bad to the Bone?: Historical Archaeologists in the Practice of Forensic Science. Historical Archaeology, 35(1):39–56.
Crist, T. A. J., D. G. Roberts, R. H. Pitts, J. P. McCarthy, and M. Parrington. 1997. "The First African Baptist Church Cemeteries: African-American Mortality and Trauma in Antebellum Pennsylvania." In In Remembrance: Archaeology and Death, ed. D. A. Poirer and N. P. Bellantoni, pp. 19–50. Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey.
Davidson, J. M. 1999. Freedman's Cemetery (1869–1907): Establishing a Chronology for Exhumed Burials from an African-American Burial Ground, Dallas, Texas. African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter 6(4).
Davidson, J. M. 2007. "Resurrection Men" in Dallas: The Illegal Use of Black Bodies as Medical Cadavers (1900–1907). International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 11(3):193–220.
Emery, P. A., and K. Wooldridge. 2011. St. Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3. London: Gifford Monograph.
English Heritage. 2013. Landscapes of Remembrance. London: English Heritage.
Fowler, L., and N. Powers. 2012. Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men: Excavations in the 19th Century Burial Ground of the London Hospital. London: Museum of London Archaeology.
Garman, J. 1996. "This Church is for the Living": An Assessment of Archaeological Standards for the Removal of Cemeteries in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 25(1):1–12.
Garrow, P. H. 1987. A Preliminary Seriation of Coffin Hardware Forms in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Georgia. Early Georgia, 15(1/2):19–45.
Giesen, M., ed. 2013. Curating Human Remains: Caring for the Dead in the United Kingdom. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press.
Hacker-Norton, D., and M. Trinkley. 1985. Remember Man Thou Art Dust: Coffin Hardware of the Early Twentieth Century. Chicora Foundation Research Series 2. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
Harrington, S. P. M. 1993. Bones and Bureaucrats. Archaeology, 46(2):28–38.
Higginbotham, E. (ed.). 2002. Report on the Archaeological Excavation of the Cadia Cemetery, Cadia Road, Cadia, New South Wales 1997–1998. Volume 1. Main Report. Prepared for Cadia Holdings Pty. Ltd..
LaRoche, C. J., and M. L. Blakey. 1997. Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology, 31(1):84–106.
Leone, M. P., C. J. LaRoche, and J. J. Babiarz. 2005. The Archaeology of Black Americans in Recent Times. Annual Review of Anthropology, 34:575–598.
Litten, J. 1985. Post-Medieval Burial Vaults: Their Construction and Contents. Bulletin of the CBA Churches Committee, 23:9–17.
Litten, J. 1991. The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450. London: Robert Hale.
Litten, J. 2009. The Anthropomorphic Coffin in England. English Heritage Historical Review, 4:73–83.
Little, B. J., K. M. Lanphear, and D. W. Owsley. 1992. Mortuary Display and Status in a Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Cemetery in Manassas, Virginia. American Antiquity, 57(3):397–418.
Llewellyn, N. 1991. The Art of Death: Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual c. 1500–c.1800. London: Reaktion Books.
Mack, M. E., and M. L. Blakey. 2004. The New York African Burial Ground Project: Past Biases, Current Dilemmas, and Future Research Opportunities. Historical Archaeology, 38(1):10–17.
Martin, S. K. 2004. Monuments in the Garden: The Garden Cemetery in Australia. Postcolonial Studies, 7(3): 333–352.
Maclean, H. 2015. Funerary Consumption in the Second Half of the 19th Century in Brisbane, Queensland. Ph.D. thesis, University of Queensland, St. Lucia.
McCarthy, R., S. Clough, A. Boyle, and A. Norton. 2012. The Baptist Chapel Burial Ground, Littlemore, Oxford. Post-Medieval Archaeology, 46(2):281–290.
McGowan, G. S., and C. J. LaRoche. 1996. The Ethical Dilemma Facing Conservation: Care and Treatment of Human Skeletal Remains and Mortuary Objects. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 35(2):109–121.
McKillop, H. 1995. Recognizing Children's Graves in Nineteenth-Century Cemeteries: Excavations in St. Thomas Anglican Churchyard, Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Historical Archaeology, 29(2): 77–99.
Miles, A., and B. Connell. 2012. New Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, Southwark: Excavations at Globe Academy, 2008. Archaeology Study Series 24. London: Museum of London Archaeology.
Miles, A., N. Powers, and R. Wroe-Brown. 2008. St. Marylebone Church and Burial Ground: Excavations at St. Marylebone School, 1993 and 2004–6. Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 46. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Miller, H. M., S. D. Hurry, and T. B. Riordan. 2004. The Lead Coffins of St. Mary's City: An Exploration of Life and Death in Early Maryland. Maryland Historical Magazine, 99(3):351–373.
Molleson, T., and M. Cox. 1993. The Spitalfields Project. Volume 2: The Anthropology. The Middling Sort. York; Council for British Archaeology Research Report 86.
Morris, R. 1994. Examine the Dead Gently. British Archaeological News, 17(October):9.
Mytum, H. 1988. A Newly Discovered Burial Vault in North Dalton Church, North Yorkshire. Post-Medieval Archaeology, 22:183–187.
Mytum, H. 1997. Reinterment of Human Remains: The Kellington Solution. Church Archaeology, 1:50–51.
Mytum, H. 2004. Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Mytum, H. 2007. Materiality and Memory: An Archaeological Perspective on the Popular Adoption of Linear Time. Antiquity, 81:381–396.
Mytum, H. 2016. "The Artefacts of Mortuary Practice: Industrialisation, Choice, and the Individual." In Nineteenth-Century Material Culture Studies from Britain, ed. A. Brooks, pp. 274–304. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
National Trust of Australia (NSW). 2009. Guidelines for Cemetery Conservation. Sydney: National Trust for Australia.
Nawrocki, S. P. 1995. "Taphonomic Processes in Historic Cemeteries." In Bodies of Evidence: Reconstructing History through Skeletal Analysis, ed. A. L. Grauer, pp. 49–66. New York: Wiley-Liss.
Owsley, D. W., K. S. Bruwelheide, L. W. Cartmell Sr., L. E. Burgess, S. J. Foote, S. M. Chang, and N. Fielder. 2006. The Man in the Iron Coffin: An Interdisciplinary Effort to Name the Past. Historical Archaeology, 40(3):89–108.
Potter, E. W., and B. M. Boland. 1992. Guidelines for Evaluating and Registering Cemeteries and Burial Places. National Register Bulletin 41. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service.
Reeve, J., and M. Adams. 1993. The Spitalfields Project. Volume 1: The Archaeology: Across the Styx. CBA Research Report 85. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Renshaw, L. and Powers, N. 2016. The Archaeology of Post-Medieval Death and Burial. Post-Medieval Archaeology, 50(1):159–177.
Riordan, T. B. 2009. "Carry Me to You Kirk Yard": An Investigation of Changing Burial Practices in the Seventeenth-Century Cemetery at St. Mary's City, Maryland. Historical Archaeology, 43(1):81–92.
Riordan, T. B., and R. M. Mitchell. 2011. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Brick-Lined Graves: Their Construction and Chronology. Historical Archaeology, 45(4):91–101.
Roberts, D. G., and J. P. McCarthy. 1995. "Descendant Community Partnering in the Archaeological and Bioanthropological Investigations of African American Skeletal Populations: Two Interrelated Case Studies from Philadelphia." In Bodies of Evidence: Reconstructing History Through Skeletal Analysis, ed. A. L. Grauer, pp. 19–36. New York: Wiley-Liss.
Rodwell, W., C. Atkins, S. Badham, and T. Waldron. 2011. St. Peter's Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire: History, Archaeology, and Architecture. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Sayer, D., 2010. Ethics and Burial Archaeology. London: Duckworth.
Sloane, D. C. 1991. The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Sofaer, J. R. 2006. The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaelogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sprague, R. 2005. Burial Terminology: A Guide for Researchers. Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press.
Springate, M. E. 2011. Coffin Handles from the African Burial Ground, New York City: Notes on Their Source and Context. African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter 14(2).
Springate, M. E. 2015. Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth-Century America. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Stock, G. 1998. "Quaker Burial: Doctrine and Practice." In Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700 to 1850, ed. M. Cox, pp. 129–143. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Tarlow, S. 1999. Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thompson, T., ed. 2015. The Archaeology of Cremation. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Veit, R. F., and M. Nonestied. 2008. New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones: History in the Landscape. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
White, R. L. and Mooney, D. B. 2010. Stories from the Rubble: Analysis of Mortuary Artifacts from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church Vaults. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39(1): 40–64.
Williams, P. B., P. Erickson, and L. Niven. 2001. "Retrieving History: The 18th Century Mortuary History of the Little Dutch Church, Halifax." In A Collection of Papers Presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association, ed. J-L. Pilon, M. W. Kirby, and C. Thériault, pp. 24–41. Ottawa: Canadian Archaeological Association and Ontario Archaeological Society. http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/300/ont_archaeol_soc/annual_meeting_caa/33rd/williamsetal.pdf (accessed 23 June 2017).
# Attitudes and Practices
# CHAPTER 2
# Candied Fruit or Carrionlie Carkase? Beliefs about the Dead Body in Early Modern Britain
_Sarah Tarlow_
What did people really believe about the dead body in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Reading the works of theologians who wrote popular manuals instructing people how to prepare for death, in the ars moriendi tradition, or ruminated on the nature of the resurrection, one answer seems to dominate:
Is not this Body wherein now I dwell,
Nought But my Vassall, Casket, House or Shell?
Compact of dust and Ashes, things most base
asks the Soul in William Prynne's poem "The Soule's Complaint against the Body" published in 1641.
"So soone as my soule shall bee delivered out of the _prison_ of this my body, it shall straight wayes possesse the blessed inheritance of the heavenly kingdome," wrote Thomas Becon in 1568 (112–3; italics added). In 1629, Zacharie Boyd, another theologian, looked forward to the death of Christians as the "translation of their Soule from a prison to a Palace." He went on to ask, rhetorically, "Is it not your greatest desire to flitte from this bodie which is but a Booth, a shoppe, or Tabernacle of clay? Is not your Soule wearie to sojourne into such a reekie Lodge?" (1629:84). In his "Dialogue between bodie and soule," Boyd describes the body as a "carrionlie carkase" (1629:1143).
William Sherlock, over a century later, went further. For him the body was, at best, "a litle organized and animated clay" (1690:36), at worst, just a "dead Carkase." Echoing Becon, he says our bodies are prisons, and we look out from them as through a grate (1690:50–51). Once the soul has gone, the dead body, Sherlock believes, is just food for worms; the life of the body, with its appetites, its lumpishness, its hungers and lusts, is totally opposed to the pure spirit. For Sherlock, the death of the body is a rebuke to sinful, lustful, greedy, undisciplined humanity. Although he believes in the resurrection of the body, it is a far different body than the one we inhabit during life:
Such gross earthly Bodies, as we now carry about with us, cannot live and subsist in those pure regions of light and Glory, which God inhabits; no more than you can lodge a Stone in the air. We should, therefore, he says, accustom ourselves
to live without our Bodies now, as much as possibly we can...to have but very little commerce with flesh and sense; to wean our selves from all bodily pleasures, to stifle its appetites and inclinations, and to bring them under perfect command and government. (1690:53)
Although he sometimes took politically controversial positions, Sherlock was not considered theologically extreme. He was an establishment figure—Dean of St. Paul's—and his discourse concerning death was a seventeenth-century bestseller (Somerville, 1976). Death for Sherlock is a mocking reminder of the worthlessness of the flesh, a rebuke to our vanity. The best death is "freely to give up our Bodies to the Stake, or to the Gibbet, to wild Beasts, or more savage Men. This vindicates our Bodies from the natural shame and reproach of Death; what we call a natural death is very inglorious, it is a mark of dishonour, because it is a punishment of Sin" (1690:67).
In early modern Britain Sherlock's sentiments were not at all unusual. Alicia Woodforde, wife of the diarist Samuel Woodforde, died following the birth of her second child in 1664. Because she was afraid of being buried alive, she had asked to be left in bed for two or three days before being laid out, a fairly common request at the time. But after one day her body smelled so bad and her stomach had swollen so much that it had to be bound to stop it bursting. Her distraught husband Samuel exclaimed in his diary, "Oh God, what things are wee when once thou callest for our Breath into thyne owne hands" (quoted in Houlbrooke, 1998:229).
Common to all these discourses is a more or less explicit contrast between the body and the soul. Whereas the soul is eternal, glorious, divine, beautiful, and pure, the body is ephemeral, material, lowly, mundane. Time and care spent on attending to the needs of the body are vain, futile, and misguided. To return to Prynne's "Soule's Complaint," the soul rebukes us for wasting such time caring for the body, buying clothes and wigs,
Spending more time, craft, thoughts on excrement,
Than upon Mee mans onely ornament,
What is the belly but a filthy sinke,
Jakes which engenders nought but dung and stink?
...yea let mee once withdraw
My selfe from the most faire corps, eyes ere saw,
It's beauty fades, it's flesh to rottennesse
is turned, and all abhorre it's loathsomenesse.
## Theology
The Protestant rejection of the body is theologically coherent. Given a dualistic understanding of human nature where the principal distinction is between body and soul, the one being temporary and worldly, the other divine, it makes sense to value the soul more highly and to value the body principally because it is the container for the soul; a "temple" is among the more positive metaphors regularly used. But when the soul leaves the body, it is no longer a temple but a "jakes" (toilet) or even just a piece of stinking, nasty meat. It is of no particular worth or value. There was no unanimity about the exact nature of the bodily resurrection: the main division was between those who thought that the resurrected body would be just like the earthly one, individuated in the same ways and recognizable but transformed like, as John Bunyan evocatively expressed it, candied fruit, where the fruit itself is still recognizable but made bright, sweet, and fragrant, and those who believed the resurrected body would be of an altogether different nature to the cloddish earthly one. However, the treatment of the body at death matters not at all to the future fate of the soul, say early modern Protestant theologians, in a rare example of consensus. They do not agree about exactly what our resurrected bodies will be like, but they all concede that God will be able to reconstitute the bodies of the righteous for resurrection, no matter what kind of funerary rites they have received. "Vile, or no exequies at all hinder nothing the sepulture of the poore saints," wrote Becon. Even if evil people, said Oxford preacher Thomas Beconsall, "tear Infants from the Womb, to sacrifice to Wolves and Tygers; yet after Wit and Malice, and Cruelty have spent themselves, there will still be Materials enough for Omnipotence to perfect his own Designs, in a glorious and triumphant Resurrection" (1697:23). Beconsall has a forensic approach to the mechanics of bodily resurrection, in which he concludes that God will reform the body out of whatever particles of it can be found, even "those fleeting Particles...that are carried off by more nice and delicate sorts of Evacuation."
## Treatments of the Body: the Archaeology
The actual treatment of dead bodies at this time, however, is not consistent with the rejection of the soulless body by so many theologians and philosophers. Repeated use of a register of stink, filth, and worthlessness is belied by the evidence of care taken to inter the corpse and often also, particularly in the case of the well-off, to preserve both body and memory.
Bodies of the rich were often painstakingly embalmed. In the early seventeenth-century _Description of Leicestershire_ William Burton describes the opening of the coffin of Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, who had died in 1530. He had been buried at Astley in Warwickshire and would not have been disturbed but that the old church had fallen down in 1608 and a new chancel was being built. Thomas's wooden coffin was discovered and "at the curious desire of some, and the earnest motion of others" opened. Inside, the body of the marquis was found wrapped in a cerecloth. When the cerecloth (fabric impregnated with wax) was cut the body was "perfect...nothing corrupted" even after 78 years, but looked like a recently interred corpse (Burton, 1622:51). Burton wondered if the exceptionally good preservation was evidence that the corpse had been embalmed (1622:52), which might well be the case. Additionally, however, the dry conditions of a vault burial probably impeded decay, and the effects of the cerecloth would also reduce microbial action on the body. Thorough washing of the corpse before it was wrapped in cerecloth would not prevent decay from the inside but would severely restrict access to the outside of the body by airborne bacteria and those on the skin. Generally, the cerecloth was wrapped around the body before it had hardened so that it would conform to the shape of the corpse and fit as a close, relatively airtight layer around it.
The use of lead coffins or sheets of lead wrapped around the body as shrouds would have had similar anaerobic effects. Lead coffins were usually enclosed within outer wooden coffins that were sometimes covered in velvet. Because of the cost, lead coffins were generally the preserve of the wealthy. The Cavendish vault at Derby Cathedral contained 35 coffins of the seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries, most of which had identifiable lead inners. The coffin of Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury ("Bess of Hardwick"), who died in 1607, was a large rectangular chest (Butler and Morris, 1994:19). The vault also housed two drums containing two sets of embalmed entrails; their former owners have not been identified, but they probably died during the seventeenth century. Similar attention to the dead body was observed in the vault at Kedington, where even the children's burials were in lead coffins (Barnardiston, 1918).
All the rhetoric applied to the body by early modern Protestant theologians might lead one to predict a decrease in the amount of care and attention given to the preparation of the dead body and its disposal. It would also be consistent to expect the abandonment of the crowded churchyard and the hard-to-access under-floor space within the church itself since the belief that any part of the ground was more holy than any other or that burial close to saints or churches would in any way enhance your prospects of redemption was seen at the time as popery of the worst kind. The Church of Scotland even officially banned burial beneath the church, John Knox memorably admonishing his people "defile not Christ's kirk with your carrion."
But the archaeological evidence of Christian burial in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tells a very different story. The amount of care and money spent on the preparation and disposal of the average dead body, if anything, increased after the Reformation. The use of coffins, usually the preserve of the well-to-do and elite clergy in the late medieval period (Gilchrist and Sloane, 2005), became widespread and normative in many parts of Britain, even for the burials of the poor. Vanessa Harding's (1994) examination of the parish records of St. Bride's in London, not a wealthy part of town, shows that in the mid-seventeenth century even burials at parish expense were generally provided with individual coffins; only the great volume of plague deaths caused the vestry to suspend this practice for a few months in 1665. The cemetery at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in use in the mid-seventeenth century, was excavated to reveal 26 individuals, buried in three neat rows, most of the graves having nails or stains indicating that they had been buried in coffins (Norton et al., 2005). This treatment of the dead bodies is all the more remarkable if, as the excavators surmise from the restricted age profile, the pathology, and the absence of either intercutting or grave markers, the cemetery represents the burial of the victims of an epidemic of a lethal infectious disease. Even if the bodies of those buried at Abingdon were possibly quite unpleasant to look at or smell and were contaminated with disease, their relatives and friends took care to lay them out, coffin them, and inter them singly, rather than piling corpses into a pit. In fact, Harding says that even in London, the number and use of "plague pits" in the early modern period has been much exaggerated in London folklore. Most of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century plague dead were accommodated in parish burial grounds and usually in single graves. At the height of plague mortality in the late summer and autumn of 1665 mass graves were used, but these were overwhelmingly dug within parish churchyards, and the dead were individually shrouded. There were only a couple of overflow burial grounds—most famously the New Churchyard, founded in the sixteenth century, and Bunhill Fields, enclosed during the great plague, and only Bunhill Fields really fits the mold of unconsecrated waste ground used for mass pit burials. In September 1665, when the plague deaths were at their very peak, the city ordered the keeper of the New Churchyard only to dig single graves, and later records confirm that he did so.
At Hemingford Grey, in Cambridgeshire, a late seventeenth-century dissenter cemetery eschewed the conventions of west–east burial, still an almost universal custom in Anglican graveyards. However, the bodies of the dead were still treated with care, being dressed specially for the grave in lace-up shrouds of the nightdress variety, attested by the presence of copper alloy aglets (lace ends) in the coffined burials (McNichol et al., 2007).
In a vault at Blandford parish church one of the five early modern coffins, apparently of sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century date, contained the skeleton of a child and several twigs of bay and rosemary (Goodall, 1970:155). There is widespread evidence throughout the British Isles of continuing care in dressing and preparing the body and, most abundantly, in its placement.
## Documented Attitudes to the Body
Before the Reformation wills usually asked that the body of the testator be buried in consecrated ground, often, in the case of the wealthy, within the church. The most important people and senior clergymen might specify the location of their burial more closely: close to the high altar, in a particular chapel, or adjacent to another burial, for example (Houlbrooke, 1998:111). After the Reformation the vast majority of will preambles did not mention the fate of the dead body at all. Rather, it was the destination of the soul (to God alone and not, as was previously customary, to Mary and the Company of Heaven as well) that occupied the mind of testators. Increasingly, the location of the burial of the body was left to executors; people affected indifference to the treatment of their own corpses (Houlbrooke, 1998:125). By 1640 over 60% of Berkshire wills specified no particular place of burial. In Norwich 84% of wills registered in 1649 did not say where the body should be interred (Houlbrooke, 1998:125, 385).
In tracing the history of attitudes toward the body, however, the picture suggested by wills is not fully borne out by the archaeological evidence. Testators' professed indifference to the fate of their earthy husk seems to bear little relation to the remarkable continuity in their places of burial. Pre-Reformation individuals commonly asked for burial not only in consecrated ground but actually beneath the floor of the church itself. Catholics of the time attributed superior sanctity to certain material objects, in particular, saints' relics, holy water, and the furnishings and substance of the church itself. Through a principle of contagious sanctity, the places in contact with or proximity to those especially holy substances were more holy than elsewhere. Thus, the churchyard was more sacred than the unconsecrated profane land that surrounded it; the church was more sacred than the churchyard, and the chapels housing relics and the high altar were more sacred than the nave. According to Protestant doctrine, however, no ground or thing was more imbued with the spirit of God than any other. There was therefore no spiritual advantage in being buried beneath the altar or, indeed, within the church at all. Devotional literature suggests that this point was frequently made. In the 1629 ars moriendi text _The Last Battell of the Soule in Death,_ Zacharie Boyd has the dying man visited by a "carnall Friend" who asks whether he would like to be buried in a church. The sick man—who at this point in the book has been largely redeemed thanks to more than a week's worth of improving talk with his pastor—emphatically rejects the suggestion:
Wherefore should I make the glorious House of my God a flesh pot of corruption? Fye upon our folie : should it be convenient that my stinking bones cast up anie noysome vapours, for to trouble the living at the service of the everliving?
What advantage shall it be to my Soule to come and fetch this bodie out of a Church more than out of a Church-yard?...Let no man mak me an evill example after my death. (Boyd, 1629:1043)
Nevertheless, in England there was no noticeable change during the Reformation away from church burial and toward burial outside or even, as the logic of Protestant doctrine would seem to indicate, in unconsecrated land altogether. As a pious Glaswegian, Boyd was probably firmer in his resolve upon this issue than many of his Church of England counterparts. In Scotland, unlike England and Wales, intramural burial (interment under the church building) was actually forbidden by the reformed church in the first Book of Discipline, and this prohibition was reinforced by several additional orders of the Church of Scotland. Andrew Spicer (2000:149) records the inscription on the mausoleum of Sir James Melville at Halhill, Fife, who died in 1609. The relevant parts read
Repent amend on Christ the burden cast
Of your sad sinnes who can your sauls refresh
Syne raise from grave to gloir your grislie flesh
Defyle not Christ's kirk with your carrion
A solemn sait for God's service prepar'd
For praier; preaching and communion
Your byrial should be in the kirk yard
In Scotland the construction of mausoleums or burial aisles, such as Melville's, permitted the continued erection of intramural types of commemorative memorials and distinguished those buried in them from those in the rest of the kirkyard. Despite the firmness of the Scottish Church's resolve to prevent church burial as a potentially superstitious action, there is considerable evidence of continuing adherence to the practice. Spicer (2000) cites a number of early post-Reformation aristocratic sources who attached importance to burial in the same place as one's ancestors, even when that meant that the corpse had to undertake a journey of many miles (this significance attached to place of burial also sheds some light on the continuing practice of the predominantly Catholic and continental custom of heart or entrail burial [Weiss-Krejci, 2001], even in Protestant England, like Bess of Hardwick's relatives). When further burial in those places was made difficult or impossible, responses included moving the ancestral remains to a new place of burial or appropriating and walling off parts of churches to act as private mausoleums. The construction of burial aisles in kirkyards was another possible response. However, in some parts of Scotland, burial beneath the floor of the church did not end with the first Book of Discipline. For parishes, kirk burial could be a lucrative source of income, and for parishioners there were reasons other than theological ones for wanting to bury and be buried within the kirk itself. Because of the limited space available, floor space for burial was expensive and prestigious: only the best families of a parish could afford it. Commemoration within the church was more highly regarded than commemoration outside in the graveyard (in the sixteenth century there is very little evidence for any graveyard commemoration at all, especially in Scotland). Intramural monuments were highly visible and were, moreover, regularly and inevitably encountered by the rest of the parish. Both parish authorities and wealthy inhabitants were therefore often unwilling to comply with Church of Scotland dicta that could deprive them of income and opportunity for status display. Despite regular restatements of the official line, some parishes continued to offer burial "lairs" beneath the church floor. At St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, for example, church records and commemorative monuments suggest that intramural interment continued throughout the early modern period and into the nineteenth century (Tarlow, 1999). At Balmerino Abbey in Fife, excavations revealed a considerable number of post-Reformation burials beneath the floor of the nave (Kenworthy, 1980), and Glasgow Cathedral only managed to restrict burials to the nave and crossing as a concession to reformed teaching (Driscoll, 2002).
## The Microcosm
But popular practice is not the only other belief discourse about the dead body. The contrast between soul and body that dominates theological discourse about the dead body is also evident in some poetical and philosophical approaches to the subject. Andrew Marvell's "Dialogue between the Soul and the Body" (1681) is an example of this; the Soul opens the dialogue employing quite anatomical imagery to complain about being imprisoned within the body:
O, WHO shall from this dungeon raise
A soul enslaved so many ways?
With bolts of bones, that fettered stands
In feet, and manacled in hands;
Here blinded with an eye, and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear;
A soul hung up, as 'twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart? (Gardner, 1957:243)
Other written discourses present the human body not as an unworthy counter-presence to the glorious soul but as a demonstration of God's ingenuity, the form of God, the pattern of the universe. The early modern body was not the collection of biological facts that it would become in later centuries. It was an allegory of God, the universe, and the world. In 1615 Helkiah Crooke published his _Microcosmographia_ a highly detailed and illustrated anatomy of the human body. The eponymous microcosm is the human body itself, frequently used in literary and philosophical texts of the period as a conceit for the whole universe (Figure 1). When John Donne referred to his body as "a little world made cunningly / Of elements and an angelic sprite" (Holy Sonnet V; compare George Herbert's line in his poem "Man" that the body is "in little, all the sphere" [Gardner, 1957:128]), he was invoking a view of the self—and the body—as a microcosm of the universe (Patrides, 1985). This microcosmic view held that the whole world was inside the body, including the presence of God. But it was not only poets who meditated on the divine in their own bodies; a study of the introductory chapters and dedicatory epistles of anatomy textbooks in the seventeenth century shows that the ultimate purpose of studying anatomy, as advanced by most of the famous anatomists, was a greater knowledge of God. At the start of the seventeenth century Anthony Nixon's anatomy text, called _The Dignity of Man, Both in the Perfections of His Soule and Bodie_ (1612), describes the practice of anatomy as a meditation upon the divine. The book itself takes the form of a catechistic set of questions and answers. In response to the question "What commoditie commeth by _Anatomy of the body_?" Nixon answers, "It puts us in minde of our mortality, and teacheth us that if the providence of God bee so wonderful in the composition of the vilest and the earthly partes, It must needes follow that it is farre more great, and admirable in the creation of the Noble parts, especially of the Soule." For Nixon and others of his time, anatomy is not primarily a practical discipline for the improvement of medicine or for the development of a scientific clarity of understanding; it is most valuable as a suitable ground for moral exegesis or poetical conceit. Helkiah Crooke says that since God can be known only by his effects, to study the wonder of the body, the architecture of the hand, for example, or the diversity of parts and substances in a body formed only from "a small quantity of Seed (the parts whereof seame to be all homogenie or of one kind) and a few drops of Blood" (1631:14), is to know God. "How profitable and helpful Anatomie is to the knowledge of God," he notes, challenging any atheist to retain his convictions after studying the workings of the brain and eye, "dumb schole-masters" to humanity (1631:15).
FIGURE 1. Frontispiece of _Microcosmographia_ (Crooke, [1615] 1631).
The other area where an attitude to the body different from that promulgated by church leaders is very evident is the treatment of the dead criminal body. Oxford Castle acted as the main prison for the city from 1578, although a jail existed on the site from the eleventh or twelfth century (Norton, 2006). A deep ditch that surrounded the original castle moat was gradually filled in from around the thirteenth century, and it was during the excavation of this ditch that 64 human burials were found by Oxford Archaeology during excavations between 1999 and 2002. The burials were in three phases and are broadly datable to between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Most of the remains belonged to young men. The burials from the castle ditch were not oriented west–east; rather, the majority were deposited along the line of the ditch. Although some were positioned for burial, with arms crossed over the chest or straightened by the sides, others have been casually placed or thrown into their graves. Some, belonging to the second phase, were buried facedown. There is also, most tellingly, abundant evidence of anatomy. Several skulls have had craniotomies; one young man had his skull sectioned on at least three different planes. Other bodies had been buried with the head removed and either nestled inside the chest cavity or placed on top of it (Norton, 2006). Although craniotomies were sometimes carried out on the bodies of respectable and high-status members of society as part of postmortem examination or the process of embalming, given the other circumstances of the Oxford Castle burials, it seems certain that these people were executed criminals whose remains were given to the university anatomists for pedagogical or research anatomy, as part of the criminal sentence.
The body, for the purposes of criminal punishment, acted as an index of the self. Up until the mid-nineteenth century the postmortem fate of the criminal body was often part of their judicial punishment. Unorthodox disposal of the body as a punishment for social deviance persisted as a sanction in popular folk practice for much longer. Execution itself sometimes involved breaking the body into pieces by removing the head (most frequently) and, in the most serious cases, the removal of intestines and partition of the body. The sentence for high treason, passed in England from the thirteenth century until 1870, was "that you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck and being alive cut down, your privy members shall be cut off and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head severed from your body and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the King's pleasure." There are cases of this sentence being enacted in full until the end of the eighteenth century.
Moreover, these bodily punishments often specified ways in which the dead body should be treated. Primarily, the corpses of criminals could be stigmatized by the division or segmentation of the body, by its anatomization, and by special treatment in the place and/or manner of burial. The broken bodies dumped in the ditch around Oxford Castle are the remains of criminals treated in this way. All this suggests that people cared sufficiently about their bodies for the threat of violation of the body after death to work as a deterrent or at least for contemporary legislators to assume that any such threat would have this effect. The eighteenth-century act that set forth what the treatment of the criminal corpse should be was actually called "An Act for Better Preventing the Horrid Crime of Murder." That act ruled that the body of the executed criminal should not receive a normal Christian burial. In the case of criminals the law specified that the body should either be passed to the anatomists for dissection or be gibbeted. Gibbeting involved leaving the body hanging in a cage from a tall edifice, tree, or a specially constructed gibbet until it fell to pieces and was devoured by animals and the natural processes of decay. Archaeological evidence of a former gibbet comes from Dunball Island in the mouth of the Avon, where numerous pieces of disarticulated bone were found when the pilings for the Royal Edward Dock were being sunk (Brett, 1996). Eyre Square in Galway City also produced disarticulated human bone thought to be gibbeting deposits, as well as a number of crania from just below the city walls that are likely to be the remains of heads exhibited on the walls (Lofqvist, 2004).
The bodies of criminals were alternatively given for anatomical dissection. The public dissection has been quite extensively discussed by cultural historians (e.g., Richardson, 1988; Sawday, 1995). From the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford comes a dump of anatomical specimens dating to the nineteenth-century take-over of the Ashmolean basement by chemistry, when they threw out much of the old anatomy collections. These included children's bones as well as adult ones, confirming that the collection was not entirely composed of criminal bodies (Hull, 2003). The cemetery of York prison, however, contains the bodies of adults, some of whose skeletons bear clear evidence of having been dissected (Evans, 1999). These belong to the period between the Murder Act of 1751 and the Anatomy Act of 1832. After 1832, the bodies of the "unclaimed" poor dying in workhouses, asylums, and hospitals were taken to supply the needs of anatomy.
The sanction of denying Christian burial had a long history in Britain and Ireland; archaeological evidence from early medieval sites shows that some individuals were buried outside normal churchyards, sometimes staked and sometimes prone as well. Suicides and those suspected of witchcraft were excluded from consecrated ground and were buried in the road. The bodies of suicides were buried with stakes through their abdomens. Road burial of witches is recorded in Cambridgeshire (Porter, 1969:163) in the early twentieth century and County Durham (for a suicide) in the nineteenth (Brockie, 1886:151).
The threat of having one's body subject, after death, to the intrusions of the anatomists was sufficiently powerful not only to underwrite the law but to inspire great cultural anxiety—especially in the period between the Murder Act and the Anatomy Act—about grave robbing. The fear of resurrectionists, as they were known—men who would steal the new corpse from its grave and sell it at a tidy profit to the teachers and students of anatomy—is thoroughly documented from the historical sources by Ruth Richardson (1988). But there is also archaeological evidence of the care taken to keep the body safe. However, most of the resurrectionist hysteria belongs to a later period than that discussed (see Mytum and Webb, this volume). Whatever the general wisdom might have been when discussing the relative properties of the body and the soul and the theologically coherent teaching on the vanity of caring for the body and the particular insignificance of the dead body—as a body without a soul—in fact, in other contexts or in other belief discourses, they cared very deeply about what happened to the dead body.
## Conclusions
This chapter began with the question "What did people really believe about the dead body in the post-Reformation period?" The problem with the question of belief is that the moment one starts asking what people really believed, it becomes unanswerable. Leaving aside the problems of inferring belief from practice and the potentially enormous distance between what people believe and what they do or say, beliefs are so complicated, contextual, cultural, and ephemeral that such an uncompromising question has no meaning. Instead, we might ask, "In what circumstances did people participate in particular belief discourses?"
Ancient historian Paul Veyne (1983) asks us, "Did the Greeks believe in their myths?" Veyne shows us how what people believed in the classical world could be context specific and appropriate to the moment. The same men who might make devotions to household gods would also be making political strategy to promote the interests of their state. Rather than moving to condemn those people for hypocrisy or attribute their words and actions to a strategic promotion of ideological myth for personal gain, Veyne shows how multiple, and contextual, cultural truth can be. In considering beliefs about the human body I have certainly found it helpful to think of belief not as a fixed interior conviction but a set of parallel discourses and material practices that sometimes contradict each other but that can be drawn upon to provide a contextual way of doing and thinking. The theologians who apparently despised the corpse were not being hypocritical when they buried their own relatives in expensive lead-lined coffins. Rather, they were participating in different discourses with their own traditions or rules. Social belief, religious belief, scientific belief, and folk belief all coexisted in the early modern period, and most people probably participated in many of them. Even William Harvey, one of the major figures in the development of a scientific approach to the body, also participated in folk discourses of belief and recommended to one of his patients that a cancer could be cured by the application of the hand of a hanged man to the affected place (Napier, 1879:92–93). So the human body was not consistently believed to be either candied fruit or a stinking jakes. It was both.
## Acknowledgments
The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and forms part of a larger project on "Changing Beliefs of the Human Body." I am very grateful to Annia Cherryson for her work as a research assistant on this project and for her comments on this paper. The staff of Oxford Archaeology have been extremely helpful in sharing and discussing unpublished data with us. I also thank Harold Mytum for inviting me to write this paper.
## References
Barnardiston, W. B. 1918. Barnardiston Vaults in Kedington Church. _Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History,_ 16:44–48.
Becon, T. 1568. _The Sicke Man's Salve._ London: Company of the Stationers.
Beconsall, T. 1697. _The Doctrine of a General Resurrection: Wherein the Identity of the Rising Body Is Asserted against the Socinians and Scepticks. A Sermon Preached on Easter Monday 1697._ Oxford: George West.
Boyd, Z. 1629. _The Last Battell of the Soule in Death._ Edinburgh: Heires of Andro Hart.
Brett, J. 1996. Archaeology and the Construction of the Royal Edward Dock, Avonmouth, 1902–8. _Archaeology of the Severn Estuary,_ 7:115–120.
Brockie, W. 1886. _Legends and Superstitions of the County of Durham._ Wakefield: E.P. Publishing.
Burton, W. 1622. _The Description of Leicestershire._ London: John White.
Butler, L., and R. Morris. 1994. Derby Cathedral: The Cavendish Vault. _Derbyshire Archaeological Journal,_ 114:14–28.
Crooke, H. (1615) 1631. _Microcosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man._ 2nd ed. London: Thomas and Richard Cotes.
Driscoll, S. T. 2002. _Excavations at Glasgow Cathedral 1988–1997._ Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 18. Leeds: Society for Medieval Archaeology.
Evans, D. T. 1999. The Former Female Prison "Skeletons in the Cupboard." _Archaeology in York (Interim),_ 23(1):17–22.
Gardner, H., ed. 1957. _The Metaphysical Poets._ Harmondworth: Penguin.
Gilchrist, R., and B. Sloane. 2005. _Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain._ London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Goodall, H. G. 1970. A 17th Century Vault in Blandford Parish. _Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeology Society,_ 92:153–155.
Harding, V. 1994. "Burial of the Plague Dead in Early Modern London." In _Epidemic Disease in London,_ ed. J. Champion, pp. 53–64. Working Papers Series 1. London: Centre for Metropolitan History.
Houlbrooke, R. 1998. _Death, Religion and the Family in England 1480–1750._ Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hull, G. 2003. The Excavation and Analysis of an 18th Century Deposit of Anatomical Remains and Chemical Apparatus from the Rear of the First Ashmolean Museum (Now the Museum of the History Science), Broad Street, Oxford. _Post-Medieval Archaeology,_ 37(1):1–28.
Kenworthy, J. B. 1980. Excavations at Balmerino Abbey NE Fife. Report held by National Trust for Scotland, Edinburgh.
Lofqvist, C. 2004. Osteological Report on Human Skeletal Remains from Eyre Square, Galway City. Galway: Moore Archaeological and Environmental Services Ltd.
McNichol, D., S. Clough, and L. Loe. 2007. Hemingford Flood Alleviation Scheme, St. Ives, Cambridgeshire. Watching Brief and Excavation Report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Napier, J. 1879. _Folk Lore: or, Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century._ Paisley, UK: Alexander Gardner.
Nixon, A. 1612. _The Dignitie of Man, Both in the Perfections of His Soule and Bodie._ London: Edward Allde.
Norton, A. 2006. Oxford Castle. Post-excavation Analysis and Research Design. Report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Norton, A., G. Laws, and A. Smith. 2005. Abingdon West Central Redevelopment Area, Oxfordshire. Post-excavation Assessment and Updated Project Design. Report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Patrides, C. A., ed. 1985. _The Complete English Poems of John Donne._ London: Dent.
Porter, E. 1969. _Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore._ London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Prynne, W. 1641. _Mount-Orgueil. A Poem of the Soule's Complaint against the Body Hereto Annexed._ London: Michael Sparke Senior.
Richardson, R. 1988. _Death, Dissection and the Destitute._ London: Penguin.
Sawday, J. 1995. _The Body Emblazoned._ London: Routledge.
Sherlock, W. 1690. _A Practical Discourse Concerning Death._ 2nd ed. London: W. Rogers.
Somerville, C. J. 1976. Religious Typologies and Popular Religion in Restoration England. _Church History,_ 45(1):32–41.
Spicer, A. 2000. " 'Defyle not Christ's Kirk with Your Carrion': Burial and the Development of Burial Aisles in Post-Reformation Scotland." In _The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,_ ed. B. Gordon and P. Marshall, pp. 149–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tarlow, S. 1999. _Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality._ Oxford: Blackwell.
Veyne, P. 1983. _Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes?_ Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Weiss-Krejci, E. 2001. Restless Corpses: 'Secondary Burial' in the Babenberg and Habsburg Dynasties. _Antiquity,_ 75:769–780.
# CHAPTER 3
# Dressing for the Grave: The Archaeological Evidence for the Preparation and Presentation of the Corpse in Post-Medieval England
_Annia Kristina Cherryson_
The boundaries between life and death are far from absolute. Modern medicine imposes a sharp distinction between life and death, the cessation of brain function, the failure of the heart to continue beating, and the inability of the lungs to oxygenate the blood. Yet even here the boundaries can be blurred, particularly when machines are used to support a life no longer able to sustain itself. In a social context the demarcation between life and death is less abrupt. Instead, the time between the death of the physical body and the final deposition of the corpse represents a period of transition between the living and the dead.
According to some folk beliefs, the soul was thought to linger around the body after death, at least for a short time, whereas other mores held that the actions of friends and family could influence the soul's final destination (Richardson, 1988:16; Porter, 2003:217). This period of transition was marked by a series of rituals with the cleaning, adornment and display of the corpse forming a constant component of this process throughout the historic period in England. The body of the Anglo-Saxon Saint, Cuthbert, was washed and re-dressed prior to burial in the seventh century as were the bodies of the dead during the reign of Victoria over a millennium later (Colgrave, 1940:131; Webb, 1965a, 1965b:97; Richardson, 1988:17). During this period attitudes toward the body and its role in the afterlife oscillated wildly, from the bodily resurrection of the early medieval period to the early modern concept of death marking the soul's release from a putrefying prison of flesh (Bynum, 1995:10; Tarlow, this volume). Yet throughout the last 1,400 years, regardless of contemporary eschatological beliefs, a degree of solicitude toward the corpse persisted, ensuring the corpse was washed, garbed, and usually displayed prior to interment. This in part may be explained by the fact that the corpse resembled the body of a known and often beloved individual and, as such, was due the care befitting that individual (Richardson, 1988:16; Cressy, 1997:387). Also, there appears to have been a perception that treating the dead with due respect was a means of ensuring the fate of the soul and the well-being of the bereaved (Richardson, 1988:17). Furthermore, the treatment of the deceased is not just defined by contemporary ideas about the corpse but by traditional beliefs.
Washing the dead is mentioned in some of the earliest British documentary sources and probably dates back much earlier (Webb, 1965a:181, 1965b:97). Such long-held ideas on the treatment of the corpse are deeply ingrained and unlikely to be affected by fleeting contemporary fashions. Yet although the need to prepare and display the body prior to interment remained a constant, the form that these practices took did change over time. This change was particularly true of the way the corpse was dressed for the grave, which during the post-medieval period was influenced by contemporary eschatological views, the rise of the undertaking profession, and even state legislation. This chapter examines the archaeological evidence for the preparation and presentation of the corpse in England between AD 1600 and 1900 and how these practices evolved over time and considers some of the factors influencing these changes.
## Preparing the Corpse
Washing the body after death was an important and constant element of funerary rites in post-medieval England. Misson, writing in the early eighteenth century, described how it was customary to wash the body and shave it if male (1719:89). The release of the bladder and anal sphincter after death may offer a practical explanation for the practice, particularly if the body was to be viewed (Richardson, 1988:18; Janaway, 1993:104). Yet, as Kselman points out, in a period where the living bathed infrequently, the emphasis on washing the bodies of the dead cannot be attributed to reasons of hygiene alone (1993:51). It is possible that the process evoked elements of purification, with the water cleansing at more than just a physical level (Richardson, 1988:18–19). Although well attested in documentary sources, the washing of the body by its very nature has left little trace in the archaeological record.
The next stage in the preparation of the corpse, plugging of the body's orifices, usually with fabric, to prevent the release of the products of decomposition soiling the body (Richardson, 1988:17: Cox, 1998:114), also rarely leaves an archaeological trace. Only a few examples of such textiles have been recovered, and this absence is probably due to problems in the preservation and recognition of these fabrics. A pad of fabric found between the legs of one of the burials from Christ Church, Spitalfields, in London may have been used to absorb the products of decomposition and accidentally left in place (Janaway, 1993:104). Concern over the side effects of putrefaction may also explain why two individuals were interred in the nineteenth century wearing leather trusses at St. Peter's Church, Barton-upon-Humber, in Lincolnshire (Rodwell, 2007:28). Trusses were used in the treatment of hernias to avoid the protrusion of viscera (Buchan, 1789:662; Andrews, 1847:603) and were perhaps left in place on the corpses to prevent the extrusion of the viscera due to the buildup of gases as the body began to decompose.
Embalming was not routinely used when preparing the body for burial between AD 1600 and 1900. However, in some circumstances it was necessary to retard the process of putrefaction if the family had sufficient means. For example, embalming the bodies of those dying away from home allowed them to be returned for interment in the family mausoleum. Also, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, elaborate funerals were essential for members of the aristocracy to maintain their families' social standing. Embalming provided time to plan the funeral and allowed the body to be displayed some time after death (Misson, 1719:93). The bacteria contained in the intestines, which are released after death, are an important element of the process of bodily decomposition, and removal of the viscera, or "emboweling," was a virtually universal element of embalming during this period (Read, 1696:710).
Treatment of the body parts removed during the embalming process varied. Often, they were also interred in close proximity to the body, either within the coffin or in separate containers. For example, the coffin of Charles Lethieullier, who died in 1737 and was interred at St. Mary's Church, Little Ilford, accompanied by a viscera chest. When it was opened in 1984, it was found to contain the internal organs, including the heart, packed in aromatic bran (Litten, 1991:54). The repatriation of the deceased may explain the two lead drums found in the Cavendish vault in Derby Cathedral, Derbyshire, which are thought to contain the entrails of family members who died some distance away and required embalming (Butler and Morris, 1994:26). The drums are thought to contain the viscera of Mary and Henry Cavendish, who died in London and Parma in 1698 and 1821, respectively, although other possibilities include the internal organs of Colonel Charles Cavendish and the second Earl of Northumberland, both Civil War fatalities.
The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw a decline in embalming, and the procedure appears to have been performed infrequently by the early eighteenth century (Gittings, 1984:105). This decline may in part be a result of the distaste expressed by some members of the nobility at having their corpses manhandled by so many people and concerns, particularly of women, about having their body opened (Gittings, 1984:190). Also, the decline in elaborate heraldic funerals during the seventeenth century would have reduced the need to embalm corpses for display during funerals occurring many days or even weeks after death (Litten, 1991:193), although embalming would still have been required for those dying away from home but wishing burial close to their ancestors. The latter half of the eighteenth century saw changes in the nature of embalming and a new reason to embalm bodies: scientific enquiry. The application of science to the art of embalming changed not only the methods used to preserve the dead but the reasons behind such treatment. Although bodies continued to be embalmed, often by undertakers, to facilitate their transport over great distances, in the hands of the anatomist preservation of corpses became an arena for experimentation and display (Dobson, 1953; Litten, 1991:35).
There is little archaeological evidence in England for embalmed corpses from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Apart from the possible examples from the Cavendish vault discussed above, other possible examples include some of the nineteenth-century burials from Ashton-under-Lyme in Lancashire, in which the bodies appear to have been embalmed by injecting formalin (Duff and Johnson, 1974:564). Liquid mercury was found at the base of one of the coffins from the vault under St. Luke's, Islington, London and below the depositum plate in a burial from the burial ground of St. Peter's Church in Wolverhampton (Boyle et al., 2005:87; Adams and Colls, 2007:87). Mercury was used in the treatment of syphilis in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which may explain the metal's presence in the grave, as might the use of a popular homeopathic remedy Mercurius vivus. However, mercury is toxic to many bacteria and may have been used to retard putrefaction and thus preserve the corpse. Finally, it has been postulated that the small open-topped wooden box full of sawdust found above the feet in a coffin from the vault at Christ Church, Spitalfields, may have held viscera (Reeve and Adams, 1993:82). The absence of archaeological evidence for embalming may be a reflection of the comparative rarity of the practice, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, Matthew Baillie (1812:7) stated that embalming occurred so rarely that many surgeons would not be sure how to embalm a body.
## Dressing the Dead
The shroud was the standard attire for the deceased throughout the post-medieval period in England, but significant changes in the form of the shroud occurred between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Textiles rarely survive from the seventeenth century, and much of the information on how the body was clad for burial during this century is derived from artistic representations of the deceased. In contrast to the tightly swaddled enshrouded corpse of the late medieval period, the shroud of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appears to have been a voluminous sheet. It was three times the width of the body and approximately 12 inches longer than the corpse to allow it to be tied above the head and below the feet (Litten, 1991:57, 60).
From the 1630s a cap or bonnet was added to the standard funerary attire, with increasing use of undershirts or smocks placed on the body before it was wrapped in a shroud (Gittings, 1984:112; Litten, 1991:76). During the first part of the seventeenth century shrouds were often sheets belonging to the family, although there are examples of fabric being specially purchased (Gittings, 1984:111–112; Litten, 1991:71). This changed with the passing of the Burial in Woollen Act in 1666 (Litten, 1991:74). This legislation, which required the corpse to the interred in woolen cloth, was designed to support the indigenous wool industry (Gittings, 1984:56). Initially, adherence to the legislation was poor, requiring a subsequent act in 1678 imposing a fine on those failing to adhere to the regulations (1678 30 Cha 2 CAP 3; Litten, 1991:74). An affidavit was required confirming only woolen fabrics had been used to clothe the dead, although for those with means, it was possible to purchase an exemption from the act for £5 (Gittings, 1984:113). It had been possible to procure ready-made shrouds from the mid-seventeenth century, and the restrictions on the use of certain fabrics imposed by this legislation enhanced this trade by allowing undertakers to buy large numbers of woolen shrouds in many sizes (Litten, 1991:72, 74).
Although little textile evidence exists, shroud pins have been found accompanying seventeenth-century burials. Wound wire-headed shroud pins were found with 57 burials from the seventeenth-century burial ground at Abingdon Vineyard in Oxfordshire (Allen, 2006). Copper alloy shroud pins were also found with 7 of the 16 burials in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Quaker burial ground at Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire (McNichol et al., 2007:5). Pins are not found with all burials, and when present, their numbers are relatively low. This rarity suggests that they were not necessarily the primary means of securing shrouds (Gilchrist and Sloane, 2005:110). Shrouds were tied above the head and below the feet during the seventeenth century, and it is possible this practice reduced or eliminated the need for shroud pins. Individuals were also known to have been sewn into shrouds, and pins may have just been used to secure fabric during this process and then removed. As such, examples found in burial contexts may have been missed when the others were removed then may have been accidentally interred with the body.
Funerary representations from the last quarter of the seventeenth century suggest a decline in the use of loose shrouds fastened at the head and feet and the increasing use of open-backed shifts with drawstrings at the wrist and neck (Litten, 1991:76). Misson, writing in the early eighteenth century, describes how the body was dressed in a garment similar to a long flannel shirt with lace or embroidery at the wrists and neck (1719:89). The length of the shirt was sufficient for the fabric to be folded over the feet and tied with woolen thread. The ensemble was completed with a cap, gloves, and a cravat. These changes in funerary attire appear to reflect changes in eschatological beliefs and funerary behavior.
The use of coffins in England did not become widespread until the latter part of the seventeenth century (Litten, 1991:86, 99). During the medieval period some individuals were interred in coffins, but many were simply carried to the grave in the parish coffin and then removed and placed in the grave in just a shroud (Litten, 1991:124; Gilchrist and Sloane, 2005:106, 111). The use of coffins as a container in which to inter the body became increasingly common during the early modern period, and by the end of the seventeenth century burial without a coffin was unusual. Thus, the shroud was no longer the only protection for the corpse within the grave. That role was now served by the coffin, freeing the shroud from its more functional role and allowing its form to be shaped by contemporary perceptions of death (Richardson, 1988:20). In the early modern period death was something to be feared—an enemy whose arrival had to be ameliorated by acts of penitence and fortitude (Porter, 2003:212, 222). During and after the Enlightenment attitudes changed, with death for many becoming the transition between two states, often seen as a final sleep. Death was no longer something to be feared, and for those reaching the end of long and painful illnesses it was often a welcome visitor (Porter, 1989:85–86; Tarlow. 1999:189). This change in attitude toward death was reflected in the shift-like form of the shroud, which mimicked contemporary nightwear (Rogers, 2006:163).
The analogies between shrouds and contemporary nightwear are very apparent in textiles recovered from the late eighteenth- and early eighteenth-century burials from Christ Church, Spitalfields, in London (Janaway, 1993). These shrouds were designed to cover the body from head to foot and had long sleeves (Janaway, 1998:26). These garments were usually of woven wool in accordance with the Burial in Woollen Act, with cotton not appearing until after the act's repeal in 1815 (Janaway, 1998:24–5). Although the textiles assemblage from Spitalfields comprises the largest known assemblage from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, examples of shrouds are known from other sites. Shrouds were found with the bodies of Sarah Latimer and Sarah Brook, who were interred in New Bunhill Fields, London, in 1844 and 1839, respectively (Miles, 1997:46). The remains of shrouds were also found with two child burials from the Cross Bones Cemetery in London (Brickley and Miles, 1999:27). The body of General Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who was buried at St. Nicholas Church, Bathampton, in Somerset in 1853 was found wearing a shroud with a frill on the front and a ribbon at the neck (Cox and Stock, 1994:140). Fragmentary remains of a shroud were found on the body of Catherine Harrison, who was interred at St. Philip's Cathedral in Birmingham in 1870. It was gathered at the waist using a band of cloth tied with a bow, and there was a drawstring at the neck (Patrick, 2001:22). For all their similarities to nightwear, the shrouds were attire for the dead, not the living—the garments were backless, presumably to make dressing the corpse easier. The garments were often roughly sewn with long tacking stitches, and the hems and edges were often finished with pinking shears (Janaway, 1993:110; Patrick, 2001:26, 29).
Funerary clothing was decorated with gathered cloth in the form of frills or ruffles on the chest and by the use of punched decoration, yet there was none of over sewing of the punched designs required for everyday wear, and the frills and ruffles were often pinned or tacked in place. Shrouds lacked the usual dress fastenings such as buttons and buttonholes; instead, they were fastened using ties or copper alloy pins (Janaway, 1998:27). The poor construction and finishing of shrouds is reflective of their function; they had to look respectable for a short period of time before being consigned to the grave, and they did not have to withstand the rigors of everyday wear.
The typical funerary ensemble of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was usually completed by a cap or bonnet for males and females, respectively, as well as long stockings and, occasionally, gloves. Although caps and bonnets were often made especially for the funeral, usually from the same fabric as the shroud and with similar decoration, there are also many examples of existing headwear used in a funerary context (Janaway, 1993:27). Of the 15 caps in the Spitalfields assemblage, only 10 were part of specially constructed sets of funerary attire. The remaining items, including a knitted night cap, were items of normal dress. Elsewhere, two female burials from the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Quaker burial ground in Kingston-upon-Thames were interred with leather caps, whereas a female burial from All Saints Church, Pavement, in York was found wearing a wireframe indoor cap of the early to mid-nineteenth century (MAP Archaeological Consultancy Ltd., 1998:94; Bashford and Sibun, 2007:121). Seven pairs of stockings of silk, wool, or cotton were found among the burials at Spitalfields (Janaway, 1993:108). Stockings were also found on the enshrouded body of Sarah Latimer, who was interred in 1844 at New Bunhill Fields, and on a male burial from St. Martins-in-the-Bullring in Birmingham, whereas a child burial from the Cross Bones Cemetery in London was wearing knitted booties (Miles, 1997:46; Brickley and Miles, 1999:27; Rogers, 2006:172). Although less common, gloves are known from burial contexts. Examples include two pairs of silk gloves and a pair of mittens, made from the same fabric as the shroud, from Spitalfields, and knitted gloves were found on the hands of a nineteenth-century female burial from the Catholic Mission of St. Mary and St. Michael (Janaway, 1998:31; Miles and Powers, 2006:22).
Although the textiles recovered from Spitalfields and the smaller assemblages from other sites have offered invaluable insights into the funerary clothing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is important to recognize that there are inherent biases in the evidence. The majority of evidence comes from within triple-shell coffins, often from burial vaults or brick-lined graves (Janaway, 1998:18). Triple-shell coffins were not cheap, nor was interment in a vault or brick-lined grave. Surviving textiles from such contexts, although providing insight into the burial attire of the upper and middling classes, shed little light on the funerary clothing of the poorer members of society. Moreover, the textile evidence is dominated by the Spitalfields assemblage, and it is unclear to what extent the funerary clothing of a Huguenot community of reasonable means in London can be assumed to be typical of the period in Britain as a whole. Similarities between the shrouds from Spitalfields and those from New Bunhill Fields and Bathampton do suggest a degree of standardization, probably due in part to the undertaking profession, but with such a small sample caution is necessary.
Shrouds dominate the textile evidence from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but everyday clothing has also been recovered from burial contexts indicative of low levels of clothed burial (Janaway, 1993:19). In many cases, the individual was attired as if for bed, but in their own nightclothes rather than a shroud. One nineteenth-century burial from St. Nicholas Church, Sevenoaks, in Kent was interred in a cotton nightshirt that had been darned (Janaway, 1993:29), whereas a number of individuals from Spitalfields wore linen shirts, shifts, or chemises, all of which could conceivably be worn to bed (Janaway, 1993:111). Other corpses at Spitalfields were interred in day clothing, including a jacket, a lace dress, and a silk waistcoat (Janaway, 1993:109, 1998:18). All the clothing from Spitalfields was for the upper body; presumably, the lower body was covered by coffin sheets. However, felt trousers with an accompanying jacket were found on the remains of David Dallas, who was interred at St. Nicholas Church, Bathampton, in Somerset in 1829 (Cox and Stock, 1994:140). The trousers had metal buttons along the outside seams and may have been part of some form of uniform or livery. The remains of trousers and a shirt were found on a burial from the Cross Bones Cemetery along with a pair of leather boots (Brickley and Miles, 1999:27). Shoes were also found on one of the burials from the Catholic Mission of St. Mary and St. Michael and on a child's burial from St. Mark's Church, Lincoln, whereas a 60-year-old male interred at Spitalfields in 1798 wore slippers (Mann, 1986:41; Janaway, 1993:112; Miles and Powers, 2006:39). Footwear appears to have been a rare inclusion within burial contexts, perhaps because such items were not in keeping with the general perception of death being synonymous with sleep. Given the rarity of clothing survival, it is unclear when use of clothing belonging to the deceased began in the post-Reformation period, but the occasional presence of buttons and other fasteners from the seventeenth century onward suggests that it started at that time (Cherryson et al., 2012:29).
Even when textiles do not survive, the presence of clothing as opposed to shrouds can be inferred by the presence of dress fasteners such as buttons and wire hooks. This evidence is particularly useful for periods where little textile evidence survives. For example, seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century artistic representations of the deceased suggest the universal use of the shroud. Yet finds from the seventeenth-century cemeteries at Abingdon and the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Quaker cemetery at Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire suggest that small numbers of individuals were interred in clothes, with the evidence from later cemeteries indicating this practice continued throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Table 1).
Although it is possible that the buttons found at the necks and wrists of some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century burials may be from shrouds, the evidence from Spitalfields suggests that buttons were rarely used (Janaway, 1998:27); instead, woolen ties or copper alloy pins fastened the garments. Yet not all shrouds were commercially produced, and even if the shrouds were supplied by an undertaker, widespread chronological and geographical uniformity should not be assumed. Thus, small glass, bone, shell, and even mother-of-pearl buttons often found at the wrist and necks are probably from shifts, shirts, chemises, or nightgowns, although it is possible that a few may be from shrouds (Cowie, 2002:38). More elaborate buttons made from metal or cartwheel buttons are unlikely to be from shrouds. For example, the five plain copper alloy buttons found in the grave of Richard Gideon Hand, who was interred at 2-4 Church Street, Chelsea, in London, are thought to have come from a jacket (Cowie, 2002:38). The seven copper alloy buttons from a burial at St. Benet Sherehog burial ground are also likely to have originated from clothing, as is the row of wire circles found overlaying the ribcage of a young woman interred at St. Nicholas, Forest Hill, in Oxfordshire (Boston, 2004:21; Miles and White, 2008:68). The position of the buttons may also indicate the use of clothing as opposed to shrouds. For example, the bone buttons recovered from the abdominal area of a nineteenth-century burial from York Prison are likely to have been from trousers (York Archaeological Trust, 1998:13).
Interment in clothes did not necessarily preclude the use of a shroud, and there are of burials from Spitalfields that have a shroud covering day clothes (Janaway, 1993:108). The clothed burials of this period can be attributed to several factors. The buttons found with interments from the prison burial grounds at Launceston and York may be indicative of a lack of care toward the deceased, with the authorities simply depositing prisoners in the clothes in which they died (York Archaeological Trust, 1998:13–14; Saunders, 2006:161, 164). Similar circumstances may account for the buttons found with burials in Newcastle Infirmary's burial ground. Another possibility is that death resulting from an infectious disease might necessitate rapid interment or result in an unwillingness to wash and re-dress the body prior to burial (Nolan, 1998:58). Infectious disease was not confined to hospitals, and fear of contagion may also account for some of the examples of clothed burials found in churchyards and nonconformist burial grounds. Both of the seventeenth-century cemeteries in Abingdon have been linked to the English Civil War, and the disruption caused by the conflict may have prevented adherence to the usual funerary conventions. However, many examples of clothed burial result from choices made by individuals prior to their deaths or by their families, with the corpse interred in garments that had a personal significance to the deceased or the bereaved.
Table 1. Examples of buttons and dress fittings found associated with seventeenth- to nineteenth-century burials.
## Arranging the Dead
The corpse was not just dressed but arranged prior to display—the limbs were straightened, and the eyes and mouth were closed; evidence for this process survives in the archaeological record. Unlike the winding sheets and tightly bound shrouds of the early modern period, the looser funerary attire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allowed the body to move around within the coffin (Janaway, 1993:95). From the eighteenth century onward, ties were used to secure the limbs and hold the body in place during viewing. Examples of textiles were found securing the legs of a number of burials at Christ Church, Spitalfields, either by binding the ankles or tying the big toes together (Janaway, 1993:104, 1998:24). The ties were often commercially produced ribbons, but strips of torn fabric were sometimes used instead. Although less common, fabric securing the arms to the torso was also encountered.
The presentation of the face was important, especially during the nineteenth century with the increased emphasis on the beautification of the corpse and the use of drawings and photographs of the deceased, sometimes in the coffin, for commemorative purposes (Jalland, 1996:288; Tarlow, 1999:194). Coins were sometimes necessary to hold the eyes closed if rigor had set in (Richardson, 1988:19), and the archaeological evidence suggests that they were not always removed prior to interment. At Spitalfields, a two-year-old infant who died in 1826 was found with pennies over the eyes (Cox, 1998:115), as was an adult male (Figure 1) from the nineteenth-century nonconformist burial ground at Ebenezer Chapel in Leicester (Jacklin, 2006a:5). Two George III halfpennies dating to 1799 and 1806–1807 had been placed over the eyes of a three-year-old child buried at St. Marylebone Church, London (Miles et al., 2008:50). The two coins found stacked to the right of the skull of the burial at the eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Baptist burial ground in King's Lynn, Norfolk, may have originally been placed over the eyes but then removed prior to interment and placed next to the head (Boston, 2005:146).
Preventing the mouth from gaping open was also important and was addressed in a number of ways. Ties attached to the funerary bonnets or caps would, in many cases, have been sufficient to prevent the jaw dropping (Janaway, 1998:24). Other options included securing the jaw with silk ribbons or the use of a jaw cloth that was pinned to a cap or bonnet. Surviving jaw cloths include examples from Spitalfields where triangular pieces were wrapped around the head and jaw and then tied below the chin with a cap or bonnet used to obscure the jaw cloth, whereas Colonel John Hume, who was interred at Bathampton in Somerset in 1815, had his jaw strapped up (Cox and Stock, 1994:140).
Concerns over the appearance of the face and the increasing emphasis on the beautification of the corpse during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may also offer an explanation for individuals interred wearing full sets of dentures, as this would have masked the hollowing out of the lower face of edentulous individuals. Examples of burials with in situ dentures are known from a number of sites, including Christ Church, Spitalfields; St. Nicholas Church, Bathampton; St. Pancras Old Church, London; St. Martins-in-the-Bullring, Birmingham; St. Andrew Holborn, London; and St. George's Church, Bloomsbury (Cox and Stock, 1994:141; Boston et al., 2006:99; Brickley, 2006:140; Miles, 2006:33; Powers, 2006:460–461). Why an individual interred at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury, wearing a full set of dentures had a second identical set placed in his coffin is not clear, nor are the reasons for the inclusion in 1785 of two sets of dentures, neither being worn by the occupant, in a lead coffin from St. Nicholas Church in Sevenoaks in Kent (Boyle and Keevil, 1998:92). Dentures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were custom-made and expensive, and this availability only to the wealthy is reflected in the high-status funerary contexts from which most examples were recovered. Their cost may also account for their comparative rarity in burial contexts, and it is possible that in some cases dentures were removed immediately prior to burial (Molleson and Cox, 1993:54).
FIGURE 1. Burial from Ebenezer Chapel with coins over the eyes. Copyright University of Leicester Archaeological Services.
Care in the preparation of the corpse was not confined to just the body. Simple combs found accompanying four eighteenth- and nineteenth-century burials from St. Martins-in-the-Bullring in Birmingham are thought to have been used to comb the hair of the corpse prior to burial (Brickley and Buteux, 2006:180). A reticence to retain items intimately associated with the preparation of the corpse may explain the inclusion of the combs in the coffin. The almost ubiquitous funerary cap or bonnet by its very nature to a great extent negated the need to recreate in death the elaborate hairstyles favored by women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Moreover, the analogies between death and sleep reflected in funerary attire were likely to have extended to the way the hair was dressed. Just as elaborate coiffures were not appropriate when retiring for the night, similarly simple styles were likely to have been favored for those going to their final rest. Yet there is some evidence that at least a few women went to the grave with elaborate hairstyles. The survival of hair is not uncommon in more recent burials, and occasionally, the level of preservation is sufficient to determine how the hair was styled. A 13- to 18-year-old female interred in the Catholic Mission of St. Mary and St. Michael's burial ground in London during the nineteenth century had her hair arranged in a bun held in place with hair grips (Miles and Powers, 2006:22).
Tortoiseshell combs used to support elaborate hairstyles were found in burials from St. Martins-in-the-Bullring in Birmingham and the nineteenth century Bow Baptist Church Burial Ground in London (Brickley and Buteux, 2006:180; Miles and Powers, 2007). Another burial from the former site contained a decorative bone comb. A pad of fabric used both to support and add volume to a hairstyle was found with a tortoiseshell comb among the hair of a burial from the Quaker burial ground at O'Meara Street in London during the site's clearance in 1860 (Brickley and Miles, 1999:51). Wigs and hairpieces were often worn during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, and wigs, hairpieces, wig bases, and a queue recovered from contemporary burials from Christ Church, Spitalfields, indicate that on occasion they were worn in death (Janaway, 1993:109). One elderly lady was interred in a wig of long dark hair at Spitalfields, whereas Anna Barnard was buried in 1792 in the Quaker cemetery in Kingston-upon-Thames wearing a blonde hairpiece (Bashford and Sibun, 2007:111).
The analogies between death and sleep extended to the corpse's surroundings, and during the nineteenth century the body was often displayed on a bed before being placed in a coffin (Jalland, 1996:214). Moreover, once in the coffin, the textiles around the body were arranged to mimic bedding (Litten, 1991:79). The all-encompassing winding sheets of the early modern period were all but replaced by the 1770s by coffin sheets that were wrapped around the corpse in a manner akin to sheets on a bed to suggest that the dead were simply sleeping (Litten, 1991:214; Janaway, 1998:25). Examples of coffin sheets from the burials at Christ Church, Spitalfields, were plain woven fabrics of wool or cotton with pinked or scalloped edges and punched decoration. The analogies between death and sleep are continued in some burials with the use of pillows, often decorated with ribbons and bows, to support the head (Rogers, 2006:163). Pillows, stuffed with a variety of materials, including wool, feathers, and hay, were recovered from Spitalfields (Janaway, 1993:103). Other examples include pillows stuffed with animal hair and straw from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Backchurch Lane burial ground in London (Watson, 1993:17) and a pillow stuffed with wood shavings from the nineteenth-century Bond Street Congregational Chapel burial ground in Leicester (Jacklin, 2006b:3). In some cases the analogies between bed and coffin were taken still further, with the corpse placed on a mattress within the coffin, as seen in some of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century burials from St. Nicholas Church in Bathampton, Somerset, and St. Luke's, Islington, in London (Cox and Stock, 1994:139; Boyle et al., 2005:87).
## Adorning the Dead
Personal adornment in the form of jewelry was a rare inclusion in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century burials, suggesting that it was not considered an appropriate addition when preparing the body for burial, although it has occasionally been found in situ. Finger rings are the most common form of adornment encountered, with gold wedding rings with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century burials from Christ Church, Spitalfields, in London; St. Martins-in-the-Bullring in Birmingham; and St. Peter's Church, Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire (Reeve and Adams, 1993:89; Bevan, 2006:179; Rodwell, 2007:28). Wedding rings tend to be associated with female skeletons, although one ring from St. Martins-in-the-Bullring was found on the remains of a male. This ring was very thin and worn, leading to suggestion that it may represent a memento.
The absence of any seventeenth-century wedding rings may simply be the result of the skewed distribution of burial evidence across the period under consideration but could also be a reflection of changing mores. Wedding rings were in common use by the early modern period, although the Puritans tried to abolish them in the seventeenth century, deeming them symbols of popery (Oman, 1974:35). However, the practice of continuously wearing a wedding ring did not become commonplace until the eighteenth century, and this is perhaps reflected in the burial evidence (Bury, 1984:15). Yet even among burials of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries wedding rings are rare, with only three examples found at St. Martins-in-the-Bullring among 857 burials (Bevan, 2006:179). The very scarcity of such finds in burial contexts suggest that that wedding rings were routinely retained by the family of the deceased as mementoes or heirlooms rather than being consigned to the grave with the corpse. Indeed, the gold ring found on the left hand of Eliza Haines, who was interred at St. Martins-in-the-Bullring in 1904, bore an 1842–1843 hallmark indicating it had been made some years prior to her birth and was probably a family heirloom (Bevan, 2006:179). The occasional finds of wedding rings in burial contexts appear to represent a conscious decision to inter the body with the ring for personal reasons, although in a few instances the inability to remove the band from the finger may also be a factor.
The use of jewelry, especially rings, as a means of commemorating the deceased was a common practice during the post-medieval period (Oman, 1974:71), and it was not just confined to the bequeathing of jewelry owned by the deceased (Jalland, 1996:295). During the early modern period money was left in wills for specially commissioned rings. These took a variety of forms, some having inscriptions or symbols appropriate to their function, whereas others bore little evidence of their significance. These "mourning" rings became increasingly popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were commissioned in batches with the advent of mass production in the latter part of the eighteenth century (Bury, 1984:47). The rings were given out at funerals and worn to commemorate the deceased during and after the period of formal mourning (Jalland, 1996:298). Occasionally, these commemorative items are themselves found in burial contexts. A ring commemorating the death of Thomas Martin in 1808 was found with the burial of a middle-aged male at St. Martins-in-the-Bullring in Birmingham, and another enshrining the memory of Judith Mesman, who died in 1763, was found with a burial at Christ Church, Spitalfields (Reeve and Adams, 1993:89; Bevan, 2006:179).
Jewelry during this period was not only used to signal marital state or mourning but could also be an indicator of faith. Pendants depicting religious figures were found with four burials from the Catholic Mission of St. Mary and St. Michael's burial ground in London (Miles and Powers, 2006:34). The mission lay in a part of London with large numbers of Irish immigrants. Several graves from the same site contained rosaries with wood or glass beads, whereas other burials contained copper alloy crosses worn on chains. A rosary was also found with the body of an eighteenth-century French prisoner of war (Figure 2) buried at Portchester Castle in Hampshire (Cunliffe and Garratt, 1994:119).
FIGURE 2. Burial from Portchester Castle with rosary. Image courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University, 2017.
Jewelry did not have to be a functional symbol of marriage, mourning, or faith to be included in a burial context. A few decorative rings of gold or copper alloy have been recovered from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century burials, including examples from St. Nicholas Church, Bathampton, in Somerset; the Catholic Mission of St. Mary and St. Michael's burial ground in London, St. Peter's Church, Barton-upon-Humber; Sheffield Cathedral; and St. Peter's Church, Wolverhampton (Cox and Stock, 1994:141; Symonds and Sawyer, 2001:9; Miles and Powers, 2006:35; Bevan, 2007:35; Rodwell, 2007:28). Although rings are rare finds in burial contexts of this period, other forms of jewelry are even more infrequent. Individuals wearing a pair of gold earrings have been found at a few sites, including Christ Church, Spitalfields, and St. Peter's, Wolverhampton (Reeve and Adams, 1993:89; Bevan, 2007:35). A female burial from St. Marylebone burial ground was interred with a pair of copper alloy earrings (Miles et al., 2008:65). Another burial at St. Peter's contained just a single earring, as did a burial from the Catholic Mission of St. Mary and St. Michael, and a burial from St. Luke's church in Islington, London, contained fragments of an earring (Boyle et al., 2005:100; Miles and Powers, 2006:35). Bead necklaces were found with two burials from St. Martins-in-the-Bullring, and two bracelets of glass beads were recovered during the excavations at Sheffield Cathedral (Bevan, 2006:180; Ponsford, 2006:376).
The very low incidence of jewelry in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century burials implies that such items were not considered appropriate or necessary for inclusion in the grave. Nor do they appear to have been important in the display of the deceased prior to burial, although the possibility that items used to adorn the corpse were removed prior to interment cannot be completely excluded. Jewelry belonged to the living, not the dead, with pieces owned by the deceased becoming heirlooms and mementoes, passed on and used in commemoration. When jewelry is recovered from a burial context, its inclusion was probably the result of specific wishes of the deceased or the bereaved, although accidental inclusions, perhaps due to the item being overlooked during the preparation of the body, may account for a few occurrences.
## Conclusion
The corpse lies at the center of any funerary process. Initiated by the death of the body, the primary function of the funeral is the disposal of the mortal remains of the deceased. Given the centrality of the corpse to mortuary practices, the care lavished on the remains of the deceased is in many ways understandable. As with the centerpiece in any important social event or ritual, the body must be appropriately prepared and presented. Yet although the need to prepare the corpse for the grave remains constant through time, some aspects of the form that preparation takes, particularly how the body is presented, do change over time. This is well illustrated by changes in the form of shrouds during the post-medieval period.
During the early medieval period the shroud was a voluminous sheet fastened at the head and foot, but by the eighteenth century it had become a more tailored and decorated garment resembling contemporary nightwear. This change can, in part, be attributed to changes in attitudes toward the body of the deceased, from the decaying flesh of the post-Reformation period to beautified sleeping corpse of the nineteenth century (Tarlow, 1999, 2002, this volume). The voluminous shrouds of the seventeenth century would have obscured all recognizable features of the individual, with the body then increasingly hidden from view within a coffin—a fitting treatment for a rotting corpse. By the eighteenth century, attitudes toward death and the corpse had changed. Death was a less fearsome prospect, simply a transitional phase akin to going to sleep, and this change was reflected in the form of the shroud. Instead of the voluminous seventeenth-century garment obscuring the body, the shroud now resembled nightclothes, with the coffin often made up like a bed (Tarlow, 2002:87).
Eschatology was not the only factor to influence the design of shrouds; the development of less substantial examples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was made possible only by the virtually universal use of coffins by this time. The shroud was no longer the corpse's sole protection from the earth of the grave, and the loss of this role allowed a greater flexibility in design. The post-medieval period also saw increasing regulation of burial as the state, as opposed to ecclesiastical authorities, had a direct impact on funerary attire through the Burial in Woollen Acts. This legislation also proved advantageous to the fledgling undertaking profession, allowing bulk purchases of woolen shrouds in a variety of sizes and removing the requirement to provide funerary attire in a variety of fabrics.
By the nineteenth century, the body had also become a focus of both mourning and remembrance (Tarlow, 2002:87). The impression of the body when viewed by loved ones for the final time was increasingly important, and this last view of the body, sometimes in a coffin, could be preserved for posterity in photographs and drawings as an additional means of commemorating the deceased. Care was taken in the presentation of the corpse to make the body beautiful, as seen in the archaeological record with hair combs, wigs, hair pieces, and false teeth, as well as decorative bows, rosettes, and ribbons on shrouds and coffin pillows. In contrast, the rarity of jewelry in burial contexts implies that such items were not considered appropriate adornment for the corpse.
## Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the following individuals and institutions that have generously provided information on unpublished sites: Birmingham Archaeology Unit; Ceri Boston; Harriet Jacklin; Louise Loe; Museum of London Archaeological Services; Oxford Archaeology; Natasha Powers; Duncan Sawyer; University of Leicester Archaeological Services. Thanks must also be extended to Barry Cunliffe and Richard Buckley for allowing the reproduction of the images used in this paper. I also thank to Harold Mytum for the invitation to write this paper and Sarah Tarlow for her advice and comments. This research, which is part of a larger project on "Changing Beliefs of the Human Body," was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
## References
Adams, J., and K. Colls. 2007. _"Out of Darkness, Cometh Light": Life and Death in Nineteenth-Century Wolverhampton._ British Archaeological Reports (British Series) 442. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Allen, T. 2006. Abingdon Vineyard. Unpublished manuscript held at Oxford Archaeology, Oxford.
Andrews, T. 1847. _A cyclopedia of domestic medicine and surgery; being an alphabetical account of the various diseases incident to the human frame; with directions for their treatment, and performing the more simple operations of surgery. Also instructions on administering the various substances used in medicine; for the regulation of diet and regimen; and the management of the diseases of women and children._ Glasgow: Blackie and Son.
Baillie, M. 1812. On the Embalming of Dead Bodies. _Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge,_ 3:7–23.
Bashford, L., and L. Sibun. 2007. Excavations at the Quaker Burial Ground, Kingston-upon-Thames, London. _Post-Medieval Archaeology,_ 41:100–154.
Bevan, L. 2006. "Jewellery and Other Personal Items." In _St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001,_ ed. M. Brickley and S. Buteux, pp. 179–184. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Bevan, L. 2007. "Small Finds." In _"Out of Darkness, Cometh Light": Life and Death in Nineteenth-Century Wolverhampton,_ ed. J. Adams and K. Colls, p. 35. British Archaeological Reports (British Series) 442. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Boston, C. 2004. St. Nicholas', Forest Hill, Oxfordshire: The Human Skeletal Assemblage. Report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Boston, C. 2005. "Appendix 10: Human Bone – Baptist Inhumations." In _Vancouver Centre and Clough Lane Car Park, Kings Lynn. Post-Excavation Assessment and Updated Project Design,_ ed. R. Brown, pp. 121–159. Report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Boston, C., A. Boyle, G. Gill, and A. Witkin. 2009. _"In the Vaults Beneath": Archaeological Recording at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury._ Oxford Archaeology Monograph 8. Oxford: Oxford Archaeological Unit.
Boyle, A., C. Boston, and A. Witkin. 2005. The Archaeological Experience at St. Luke's Church, Old Street, Islington. Report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology. https://lso.co.uk/images/pdf/Oxford%20Archaeology%20Report.pdf (accessed 26 November 2017).
Boyle, A., and G. Keevil. 1998. " 'To the Praise of the Dead, and Anatomie': The Analysis of Post-Medieval Burials at St. Nicholas, Sevenoaks, Kent." In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700–_ 1850, ed. M. Cox, pp. 85–99. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Brickley, M. 2006. "The people: Physical Anthropology." In _St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001,_ ed. M. Brickley and S. Buteux, pp. 90–151. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Brickley, M., and S. Buteux, eds. 2006. _St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001._ Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Brickley, M., and A. Miles. 1999. _The Cross Bones Burial Ground, Redcross Way, Southwark, London: Archaeological Excavations (1991–1998) for the London Underground Limited Jubilee Line Extension Project._ MoLAS Monograph 3. London: Museum of London Archaeological Service.
Buchan, W. 1789. _Domestic Medicine, or a Treatise on the Prevention and Care of Diseases by Regimen and Simple Medicines with an Appendix Containing a Dispensatory for the Use of Private Practioners._ London: W. Strahan.
Bury, S. 1984. _An Introduction to Rings._ London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
Butler, L., and R. Morris. 1994. Derby Cathedral: The Cavendish Vault. _Derbyshire Archaeological Journal,_ 114:14–28.
Bynum, C. W. 1995. _The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336._ New York: Columbia Press.
Cherryson, A., Z. Crossland, and S. Tarlow. 2012. _A Fine and Private Place: The Archaeology of Death and Burial in Post-Medieval Britain and Ireland._ Leicester Archaeology Monograph 22. Leicester: School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester.
Colgrave, B. 1940. "Anonymous Life of Sty. Cuthbert." In _Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert,_ ed. B. Colgrave, pp. 59–139. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cowie, R. 2002. 2-4 Church Street, Chelsea, SW3. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. A Post-Excavation Assessment and Updated Project Design. Report. London: Museum of London Archaeological Service.
Cox, M. 1998. "Eschatology, Burial Practice and Continuity: A Retrospection from Christ Church, Spitalfields." In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700–1850,_ ed. M. Cox, pp. 112–125. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Cox, M., and G. Stock. 1995. Nineteenth Century Bath-Stone Walled Graves at St. Nicholas's Church, Bathampton. _Proceedings of Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society,_ 138:131–150.
Cressy, D. 1997. _Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England._ Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cunliffe, B., and B. Garratt. 1994. _Excavations at Portchester Castle._ Volume 5: _Post-Medieval 1609–1819._ London: Society of Antiquaries.
Divers, D. 2001. Assessment of an Archaeological Excavation at Southwark Cathedral, London Borough of Southwark SE1: Phases 1 & 2. Pre-construct Archaeology Ltd Report. London: Pre-construct Archaeology Ltd.
Dobson, J. 1953. Some Eighteenth Century Experiments in Embalming. _Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences,_ 8:431–441.
Duff, E. J., and J. S. Johnson. 1974. Some Social and Forensic Aspects of Exhumation and Reinterment of Industrial Revolution Remains. _British Medical Journal,_ 1:563–567.
Gilchrist, R., and B. Sloane. 2005. _Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain._ London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Gittings, C. 1984. _Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England._ London: Routledge.
Jacklin, H. A. 2006a. Ebenezer Chapel: The Human Remains and Burial Archaeology. Draft Report. Leicester, UK: University of Leicester Archaeology Service.
Jacklin, H. A. 2006b. Bond Street Congregational Chapel: The Human Remains and Burial Archaeology. Draft Report. Leicester, UK: University of Leicester Archaeology Service.
Jalland, P. 1996. _Death in the Victorian Family._ Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Janaway, R. 1993. "The Textiles." In _The Spitalfields Project._ Volume 1: _The Archaeology: Across the Styx,_ ed. J. Reeve and M. Adams, pp. 92–119. CBA Research Report 85. York: Council of British Archaeology.
Janaway, R. 1998. "An Introductory Guide to Textiles from 18th and 19th Century Burials." In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700–1850,_ ed. M. Cox, pp. 17–32. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Kselman, T. A. 1993. _Death and the Afterlife in Modern France._ Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Litten, J. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: Robert Hale.
Mann, J. 1986. "Small Finds." In _St. Mark's Church and Cemetery,_ ed. B. J. J. Gilmour and D. A. Stocker, pp. 41–42. Archaeology of Lincoln 13, 1. London: Council for British Archaeology for the Trust for Lincolnshire Archaeology.
MAP Archaeological Consultancy Ltd. 1998. All Saints Church, Pavement–York. Archaeological Excavations, Phases I and II, Interim Report. North Yorkshire, UK: MAP Archaeological Consultancy Ltd.
McIntyre, L., and H. Willmot. 2003. Excavations at the Methodist Chapel Carver Street Sheffield. Report. Sheffield, UK: Archaeological Research and Consultancy at the University of Sheffield.
McNichol, D., S. Clough, and L. Loe. 2007. Hemingford Flood Alleviation Scheme, St. Ives, Cambridgeshire. Watching Brief and Excavation Report. Oxford:_Oxford Archaeology.).
Miles, A. 1997. New Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, Gaskin Street, Islington Green, London N1, London Borough of Islington. An Archaeological Watching Brief. Report. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Miles, A. 2006. The Crypt of St. Andrew, Holborn London EC4. An Archaeological Assessment and Updated Project Design. Report. London: Museum of London Archaeological Service.
Miles, A., and N. Powers. 2006. Bishop Challener Catholic Collegiate School, Luken Street, London E1. Borough of Tower Hamlets. A Post-Excavation Assessment and Updated Project Design. Report. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Miles, A., and N. Powers. 2007. Bow Baptist Church Burial Ground, 2–25 Payne Road, London, E3. Report. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Miles, A., N. Powers, and R. Wroe-Brown. 2008. _St. Marylebone Church and Burial Ground: Excavations at St. Marylebone School, 1993 and 2004–6._ Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 46. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Miles, A., and W. White. 2008. _Burial at the Site of the Parish Church of St. Benet Sherehog before and the after the Great Fire._ Museum of London Archaeological Service Monograph 39. London: Museum of Archaeology Service.
Misson, H. 1719. _M. Misson's Memoirs and Observations in His Travels over England: With Some account of Scotland and Ireland. Dispos'd in Alphabetical Order._ London: D. Browne, A. Bell, J. Darby, A. Bettesworth, J. Pemberton et al.
Molleson, T., and M. Cox. 1993. _The Spitalfields Project._ Volume 2: _The Middling Sort: The anthropology._ CBA Research Report 86. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Nolan, J. 1998. The Newcastle Infirmary at the Forth, Newcastle upon Tyne. Volume 1: The Archaeology and History. Report. Newcastle, UK: Northern Counties Archaeological Services.
Norton, A., G. Laws, and A. Smith. 2005. Abingdon West Central Redevelopment Area, Oxfordshire. Post-Excavation Assessment and Updated Project Design. Report. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Oman, C. 1974. _British Rings 800–1914._ London: B. T. Batsford.
Patrick, C. 2001. Churchyard of St. Philips's Cathedral, Birmingham. An Archaeological Watching Brief. Report. Birmingham, UK: Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit.
Ponsford, M. 2006.Post-Medieval Fieldwork in Britain and Northern Ireland. _Post-Medieval Archaeology,_ 40:316–410.
Porter, R. 1989. "Death and the Doctors." In _Death, Ritual, and Bereavement,_ ed. R. Houlbrooke, pp. 77–94. Routledge: London.
Porter, R. 2003. _Flesh in the Age of Reason._ London: Penguin.
Powers, N. 2006. Archaeological Evidence for Dental Innovation: An Eighteenth Century Porcelain Dental Prosthesis Belonging to Archbishop Arthur Richard Dillon. _British Dental Journal,_ 201:459–463.
Read, A. 1696. _Chirurgarum comes, or the whole practice of chirurgery. Began by the learned Dr Read; continued and completed by a member of the Royal College of Physicians in London. To which is added by way of an appendix, two treatise, one of venereal disease, the other concerning embalming._ London: Hugh Newman.
Reeve, J., and M. Adams, eds. 1993. _The Spitalfields Project._ Volume 1: _The archaeology: Across the Styx._ CBA Research Report 85. York: Council of British Archaeology.
Richardson, R. 1988. _Death, Dissection and the Destitute._ London: Penguin.
Rodwell, W. 2007. "Burial Archaeology." In _St. Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire: A Parish Church and Its Community._ Volume 2: _The Human Remains,_ ed. T. Waldron, pp. 15–32. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Rogers, P._W. 2006. "Textiles." In _St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001,_ ed. M. Brickley and S. Buteux, pp. 163–178. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Saunders, A. 2006. _Excavations at Launceston Castle, Cornwall._ Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 24. Leeds: Maney Publishing.
Symonds, J., and D. Sawyer. 2001. Data Structure Report. Excavation of Skeletons from Sheffield Cathedral. Sheffield, UK: Archaeological Research and Consultancy at the University of Sheffield.
Tarlow, S. 1999. "Wormie Clay and Blessed Sleep: Death and Disgust in Later Historical Britain." In _The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain,_ ed. S. Tarlow and S. West, pp. 183–198. London: Routledge.
Tarlow, S. 2002. "The Aesthetic Corpse in Nineteenth-Century Britain." In _Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality,_ ed. Y. Hamilakus, M. Plucienik, and S. Tarlow, pp. 85–97. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Watson, B. 1993. 109–153 Back Church Lane, London, E1. London Borough of Tower Hamlets. An Archaeological Evaluation. MoLAS Report. Lavenham, UK: Museum of London Archaeological Services
Webb, J. F. 1965a. _Eddius Stephanus: Life of Wilfred._ In _The Age of Bede,_ ed. D. H. Farmer, pp. 105–184. London: Penguin.
Webb, J. F., trans. 1965b. _Bede's Life of Cuthbert._ In _The Age of Bede,_ ed. D. H. Farmer, pp. 41–104. London: Penguin.
York Archaeological Trust. 1998. Former Female Prison, Castle Yard, York. Report on an Archaeological Evaluation. York Archaeological Trust Report 26. York: York Archaeological Trust.
# CHAPTER 4
# In the Footsteps of Thomas Hardy: Archaeology and Exhumation at St. Pancras Burial Ground, London
_Phillip A. Emery_
On 14 November 2007 St. Pancras International was opened as the new London railway terminus for High Speed 1 (formerly known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) following major development at the historic St. Pancras Station (Figure 1; Bradley, 2007). To make way for construction of an extended platform deck to accommodate the 400-meter-long Eurostar trains, the southern part of the former burial ground of St. Pancras Old Church, which had been buried beneath the existing railway embankment, was cleared by an exhumation contractor under the provision of Schedule 11 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act 1996. These works were undertaken in 2002 and 2003, with a team of archaeologists in attendance to record the burials. Gifford Ltd. (now Ramboll UK Limited), the archaeological contractor appointed to undertake the investigation at St. Pancras Terminus and King's Cross Lands, assembled a multidisciplinary team to suit the requirements of this complex and challenging project, which culminated in publication of the site report as a book entitled _St. Pancras Burial Ground_ (Emery and Wooldridge 2011).
The buried population housed within the St. Pancras cemetery was unusually diverse in terms of class, religious persuasion, and nationality, reflecting its location on the edge of the growing metropolis at a time of dramatic urban growth and industrialization (Figure 2). Many burials were of refugees from the French Revolution, including aristocrats and churchmen. The discovery of these remains, and the research questions arising from their analysis, provided an important Anglo-French dimension to the project.
High Speed 1 was not the first railway scheme to disturb this famous burial ground—indeed, it remained intact for scarcely a decade after its closure in 1854, when burial within the heart of London itself was ended, with consequent relocation of interment activity to new municipally owned suburban cemeteries, including St. Pancras and Islington at East Finchley. Crossing the disused burial ground posed a challenge for the builders of the Midland Railway and the then new St. Pancras station in the 1860s, and the treatment of human remains during their preliminary excavations caused much controversy. The Bishop of London, Archibald Tait, made representation to the Home Secretary on behalf of the vicar of St. Pancras, who had observed skulls and thigh bones scattered "heedlessly about." A burial pit 40 feet deep was excavated on the site of the present-day Coroner's Court for the reinterment of the remains of over 7,000 individuals. These graphic scenes made a deep impression on one of nineteenth-century England's greatest writers. As a young architecture student working under Arthur Blomfield (clerk of works appointed by Bishop Tait and himself the fourth son of Tait's predecessor, Charles Blomfield), Thomas Hardy oversaw the exhumation works at St. Pancras (Tomalin, 2006:80–81). In 1882, some 16 years later, Hardy—by now a celebrated novelist and poet—was moved by his experiences to write a poem entitled "The Levelled Churchyard," the second verse of which reads
FIGURE 1. Site location plan. Copyright HS1 Ltd./Ramboll UK Limited, drawing by Carlos Lemos.
FIGURE 2. Thomas Moule's map of London, 1836 (detail), showing the location of St. Pancras church and providing a snapshot of early railway developments on the outskirts of the city, including the London and Birmingham Railway terminating at Euston to the west of St. Pancras. Copyright Ramboll UK Limited.
"We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
'I know not which I am!' "
## Excavation Methodologies
Some 135 years later, controversy was to return to St. Pancras burial ground when archaeological attendance on cemetery clearance operations was suspended under pressure from the demanding railway construction program. The situation that led to this suspension had a complex history. The exhumation works by Burial Ground Services (UK) Ltd. (BGS) had begun in February 2002, their scope constrained by the need to maintain various operational railways crossing the site both above- and below-ground. In order to work within these restrictions, it had been decided to expose coffins by mechanically excavating a series of deep shafts separated by baulks in the natural clay. The archaeological drawbacks of this methodology were manifold: Coffins were frequently exposed only partially with elements of burials continuing into the baulk. Access for archaeological staff was seldom permissible for safety reasons, so that remains could only be loosely provenanced and often became separated from their coffins before confident identification could be made from coffin plates. In addition, the absence of direct archaeological supervision led to concerns that the integrity of individual skeletons was not always maintained during lifting.
The project managers (Rail Link Engineering) recognized the flaws in the methodology and so concentrated the archaeologically monitored exhumation into two mutually exclusive operations that were separated spatially on site. While BGS continued to recover coffins, assisted by machine, across a large proportion of the site, the archaeologists were redeployed within a sample area where detailed stratigraphic excavation and recording were undertaken. Even this compromise proved unsustainable in the face of the pressures arising from the project timetable, however, and consequently, on 15 November 2002 all archaeological work on site was suspended. For two days mechanical exhumation by BGS continued without archaeologists in attendance, provoking widespread concern and objections from the Church of England, English Heritage, the Council for British Archaeology, and Rescue (the British Archaeological Trust), as well as the general public and news media (Emery, 2006). It was universally recognized that meaningful engagement by the archaeological team was essential to the successful delivery of the construction project.
The archaeologists proposed an integrated procedure for exhumation and archaeological recording that could be accommodated within the existing groundworks program, with mechanical removal by the exhumation contractor of shallow spits to expose coffins, which were then archaeologically surveyed (Figure 3). Accurate surveying with total station theodolite was the cornerstone of the revised methodology—doubts about the precise three-dimensional location of burials would have undermined any attempts at reconstructing the superimposition of coffins during post-excavation analysis. Horizontal errors of only 300 mm, for example, could have introduced stratigraphic confusion between adjacent stacks of coffins. For individual burials selected for osteological study in accordance with the agreed sampling strategy (below), four corners of the coffin were surveyed. For skeletons excluded from the recovered sample, only two points were taken, located centrally at each end of the coffin.
FIGURE 3. General view (looking north) of mechanical excavation in spits by exhumation contractor. Copyright HS1 Ltd./Ramboll UK Limited.
Each coffin was digitally photographed in situ following opening. Metal coffin fittings were detached and retained for analysis. Sampling of burials was structured with respect to observable characteristics of the coffin and human remains. As disproportionate emphasis on recovery of ornamented coffins could lead to a bias in the osteological sample toward individuals of higher socioeconomic status, a corresponding sample of individuals occupying plain coffins was also retrieved. A statistically significant sample of subadults was prioritized for study, and the implications for biasing the overall age profile were explicitly acknowledged during subsequent analysis. Skeletons exhibiting interesting pathologies were also targeted for recovery, but many of the coffins were filled by groundwater, which hindered the consistent application of this selection criterion. A total of 780 burials were taken to the laboratory for processing, of which 715 underwent the full program of analysis. Soft-tissue survival on several of the skeletons, particularly within the brain cavity, was detected only during washing. Health and Safety and public health protocols required the immediate reburial of such remains by the exhumation specialist.
The quality of preservation of wooden coffins, metal coffin fittings, and human bone was exceptional because of the clay soil in which the remains were buried. Although coffins in the upper, drier levels of the burial ground were in relatively poor condition, those at depth were generally complete and retained their structural integrity. However, ground pressure had caused some to collapse inward, so that they occupied only a fraction of their original width. Decorative coffin fittings, fabricated in thin iron sheet and often coated in tin, had remarkable preservation given their ephemeral nature, reflecting the brevity of the period of mourning for which they were intended to be visible. The collection comprises over 1,100 items and is now permanently retained for specialist reference at the Museum of London. The unusual survival of legible inscribed coffin plates proved to be one of the most valuable facets of the St. Pancras data set as it provided a vital link with the parish burial registers and all of the biographical detail that could be accessed via documentary research (Figure 4). Burial clothes and textile coffin linings were also found. In two coffins, those of Mrs. Mary Arrit (died 1795, aged 55) and Rebecca Maskoll (died 1806, aged 62), plant remains consisting of box and bay indicated the presence of floral tributes.
Direct on-site recording of stratigraphic relationships between individual burials and soil layers was beyond the scope of the integrated exhumation and archaeological process. To compensate for this omission, the three-dimensional survey data were analyzed using a modeling program allowing reconstruction of coffin-stacking sequences. Post-depositional lateral compression of coffins was taken into account to ensure that the full original extent of successive burials could be overlaid for comparison, and the stratigraphic principle of superimposition was applied to infer relationships between coffins. Following initial manipulation in AutoCAD, the data from the survey of burials were imported into Google SketchUp for three-dimensional viewing (Figure 5). In this model, each burial was represented by a three-dimensional coffin-shaped template of standardized proportions. This template was scaled to fit the length of the coffin recorded in the ground and was centered on its longitudinal axis. This manipulation allowed the configuration of recorded coffins in three-dimensional space to be analyzed, with a view to determining sequence of deposition. Comparison of levels taken on the lids of successive coffins within particular grave plots allowed the extent of vertical compaction to be determined. In some cases the model illustrated graphically how one coffin had sunk into another immediately below.
The accurate location of named burials provided the crucial platform for integrated study embracing archaeological data and documents to elucidate the management of the cemetery and the identities of specific burials (Emery, 2007). The parish burial registers contained entries for the period 1793 to 1804, which included alphanumeric grave plot references, but no key plan survived. Of the 119 recorded burials identified by coffin plate inscriptions, 26 could be matched with register entries for which a plot reference was given. This matching allowed the spatial referencing scheme to be decoded: rows of graves apparent in the archaeological record could thus be reconciled with those historically conceived by the cemetery administrators.
FIGURE 4. Breastplates. (A) Lozenge form identifying the coffin of Mrs. Jane Dancer (1766/1767–1798). (B) Rectangular form identifying the coffin of Jacques Philippe, Comte de Marguenat (1739/1740–1793). Copyright HS1 Ltd./Ramboll UK Limited.
A total of 647 headstones and 88 structural elements of tombs originating from both St. Pancras and the adjacent St. Giles burial grounds were recorded during the works. Most of these had been incorporated into a dry-stone wall and railway embankment to the east of the church, probably in the first decade of the twentieth century. Others had been laid horizontally to form a pavement between the pier bases of the original railway viaduct built in 1866. The date range of the memorials, derived from inscriptions recorded off site, was 1708–1862. Unfortunately, none of the St. Pancras memorial stones could be attributed to individual burials recorded during the exhumation, probably reflecting their origin in other areas of the cemetery. Nonetheless, their examination in tandem with that of the metal coffin fittings allowed a comparative investigation of stylistic development between the two forms of funereal ornament. Archaeological recording of memorial stones (Rendall, 2011a, 2011b; Wooldridge and Rendall, 2011) was based upon techniques and typologies developed by Mytum (2000).
The analysis of memorial stones to certain individuals about whom biographical information could be discovered often generated further insights into the relationship between social and religious background and funerary practice. One individual commemorated in stone had a notable American connection. Benjamin Woolsey Muirson died as a local resident in 1809, aged 52, but was the eldest son of Dr. George Muirson of Brookhaven in New York province, who was a prominent supporter of Crown forces at the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1776. As a consequence of his allegiance, the family's land and property were confiscated by the New York Assembly in 1779 (Phillpotts, 2011:109–110). Another headstone with a transatlantic association bore a simple Latin inscription recording the grave of Joseph Littee (died 1798), once curator of the vacant estates in the department of the Stewartry of Martinique in the French West Indies, where he was born in 1749 (Phillpotts, 2011:106–107).
FIGURE 5. Three-dimensional model of buried coffins. Copyright HS1 Ltd./Ramboll UK Limited, drawing by Carlos Lemos.
The results of the osteological study (Powers, 2011:127–153; White, 2011:112–117) were made all the more significant by the very heterogeneous population buried at St. Pancras, ranging from French aristocrats and prelates to paupers who died in the local workhouse. Recorded diseases reflected the changing behaviors and stresses of life in a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing environment, including syphilis, known to contemporaries as the "French disease" (Powers and Emery, 2007). The demographic pattern of those affected by enamel hypoplasia indicated that those who suffered a "stressful" childhood were less likely to survive into adulthood than those who did not, but evidence of healed rachitic changes in the adult population showed that some were able to survive such an onslaught, probably reflecting the variety within the population buried here. The overall high rates of tooth enamel hypoplasia, a relatively high infant mortality rate, and evidence of growth retardation support suggestions that this was a predominantly poor urban population. However, a below-average prevalence of cribra orbitalia, a high prevalence of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (a condition associated with being overweight and therefore with easy access to food), and a high proportion of older adults with diseases of old age, such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, appear to contradict this characterization. The population also had a low prevalence of fractures, suggesting a commensurately low risk lifestyle. An apparent sharp increase in the prevalence of caries in the last years of the eighteenth century may reflect an increase in the consumption of sweetened foods as refined sugars became more widely available (Powers, 2011:152), the bulk of this commodity by this time being shipped to Europe across the Atlantic from plantations in the British and French colonies in the West Indies. Poor dental health seems to have been endemic, and the varied response, including the ownership of expensive, bespoke dentures (see below), further confirms the mixed nature of the group. Indications of other infectious diseases were also lower than might be expected in a poorer, urban group. It is unfortunate that we cannot tell what proportion of the burials was of victims of the series of cholera epidemics that had such an impact upon nineteenth-century London since illnesses of this kind leave no skeletal trace. Evidence of early nineteenth-century autopsy was recorded on several coffined skeletons. Given the likely moderate status of these individuals (inferred from the presence of coffin plates), some of these autopsies may have been occasioned by "enlightened" families seeking scientific answers for the death of their loved ones. Anatomical study or medical instruction, by contrast, may have motivated the dissection of both arms of Ann Hart (died 1798, aged 19), who came from the nearby St. Pancras Smallpox Hospital, the humeri, radii, and ulnae of her skeleton all having been sawn through at the midshaft. The Anatomy Act of 1832, making it easier for surgeons to acquire cadavers for dissection, was passed while the Third Ground at St. Pancras churchyard was in use. Contemporary accounts suggest that inmates of the nearby workhouse and executed criminals would have been prime candidates.
Intriguingly, four of the coffins were found to contain not only human bones, which had been subject to dissection, but also faunal remains (Pipe and Emery, 2011). A carapace of a tortoise was found in one of these coffins, but another contained the most curious find: eight bones from the left forelimb and left hind limb of a very large walrus. All the walrus bones are considerably larger than their equivalents at the National History Museum in London and are most likely from the same adult animal. The size suggests that this was a large male Pacific walrus, with definitely identified knife cuts signaling that they had been prepared for display and study. Alongside the walrus remains were dissected human bones representing at least eight individuals, including three human skulls exhibiting cranial autopsy. The interment of human and animal bone together would seem to reflect a common source and their pragmatic disposal. The coffins were located within the mass burial trenches that were prevalent in the southern part of the Third Ground sometime after November 1822. On 8 November 1853, within the date range of the St. Pancras find (1822–1854), a Professor Richard Owen recorded the dissection of a 1.22-m-long walrus in his paper entitled "On the Anatomy of a Walrus," which was published in the _Journal of Zoology_ (Owen, 1853:103–106). The animal had come to the Zoological Society of London with a ship under the command of Captain Henry von Peterhead, which had been hunting seals around Svalbard (Svanberg, 2010, 123). These pioneering anatomists were polymaths, many, including the famous John Hunter, working on both human and animal subjects and gripped by a sense of scientific adventure. Owen's vivid account was published six years before Charles Darwin's _On the Origin of Species_ (1859), when overarching systems for explaining human and animal evolution were still controversial. In this context it is ironic that the limbs of a walrus may have been mistaken for those of a human among the disused specimens in an anatomist's laboratory.
Documentary research into the composition of the buried population at St. Pancras revealed significant diversity. The cemetery by no means served a purely parochial community, one conspicuous element being immigrants, not only from outside the metropolis but also from abroad, the latter chiefly comprising refugees from the French Revolution who arrived as early as 1792. By the late eighteenth century London's emergence as an industrialized capital city was reflected by the increased representation of paupers and the lower working class at St. Pancras. A workhouse had existed in the parish from 1730; its successor was established in 1805 immediately to the north of the burial ground. Positive identification of pauper burials from monuments and coffin furnishings is not a straightforward matter since it appears that some parish burials made prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 were relatively well provided for. Indeed, some even had individual memorials: Lysons (1795–1811) noted that to Eleanor Bonner from the workhouse, buried in April 1794 (Phillpotts, 2011, 109). Later pauper burials are thought to have been particularly concentrated in the Third Ground and were made in open trenches at the south end, near the charnel house, where there were fewer vaults and gravestones. This hypothesis was borne out by the occurrence in the southernmost part of the cemetery of archaeological evidence for a transition in the 1830s from grave-specific coffin stacks to the excavation of linear trenches within which coffins were laid alternately head to toe. This change in cemetery management may have been in response to increased mortality, partly resulting from the documented cholera epidemics after 1828.
## Interments of French Émigrés
Twenty-four nameplates—approximately 15% of the assemblage recorded during the project—indicated that the coffins to which they were attached contained the remains of émigrés from France and her colonies. Assuming that the cemetery population as a whole included a similar proportion of French people, this suggests that approximately 200 of the 1,300 burials recorded archaeologically were French citizens. Among the burials associated with plates were those of three aristocrats: Jean Charles Julien d'Andigné (born 1749, died 1824), Jacques Philippe, Comte de Marguenat (born 1739/1740, died 1793; Figure 4B), and Paul François Marie, Comte de Monstiers (born 1760, died 1837), who was the abbé de Mérinville. In addition, a fourth individual, Charlotte Henriette de Vogué (born 1764, died 1796), may have been connected with the comtes de Vogué, seigneurs de la Rochecolombe, la Chapelle Saint-Germain, Plantade, and St. Maurice (Phillpotts, 2011:99–102).
In addition to that of Paul François Marie at least four of the coffins recorded during the exhumation works were occupied by French ecclesiastics (Phillpotts, 2011:99–106). Guillaume Alexandre Jacques Langlois (born 1721, died 1798: Bellenger, 1986:209) was a vicar from Rouen diocese, whereas Auguste Poisson (born 1743, died 1806; no further details are known) was a priest in France. Other clerical burials included those of Pierre-Augustin Godart de Belbeuf, bishop of Avranches (born 1730, died 1808), whose coffin was uncovered in 2002. He went into exile from his diocese in 1792 but continued to regard himself as bishop of Avranches. Dying in his armchair after a painful illness on 26 September 1808, he was buried at St. Pancras on 29 September (Beaurepaire, 1935:19). In his absence, the eleventh-century Cathédrale Saint-André, which had been damaged during both the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) and the French Wars of Religion (1562–98) and consolidated repeatedly, finally collapsed in 1796 (Nicolas-Méry, 2011:34).
The discovery of Arthur Richard Dillon, archbishop of Narbonne (born 1731, died 1806), was to arouse particular interest, in France as well as in Britain. Monsignor Dillon's coffin, exposed on 16 January 2003, was triple shelled, comprising inner and outer wooden caskets separated by an intermediate lead lining. While the inner casket bore an inscribed lead plaque, the outer coffin, which was visible at the funeral, was decorated with a breastplate, two lid motifs (a flaming urn and a crucifix), 18 escutcheons, eight grips, and eight grip plates. This burial was located in the second row from the east edge of the cemetery and overlaid the coffin of 59-year-old Mr. Joseph Hudson, who had died only 11 days before the cleric. The archbishop had been buried with his fine set of porcelain dentures, secured in the mouth by a pair of gold springs, although only one was still present. The dentures are likely to be the work of the pioneering dentist Nicholas Dubois de Chemant, who had a furnace at the Sèvres factory and obtained a royal patent for "mineral paste teeth" from Louis XVI in 1789, before leaving for England as an economic migrant in 1792 (Powers, 2006, 2011:132–134).
## The St. Pancras Burial Population
A century before the advent of the French, the burial ground of St. Pancras Old Church was already favored as a resting place for Catholics, particularly for those of the upper social classes (Lysons, 1795–1811, vol. 3, 351, n32), many of them political "outsiders" who supported the exiled Catholic House of Stuart rather than the Hanoverian monarchy in the eighteenth century. Indeed, such was the enduring association between St. Pancras and Catholicism that it has been claimed that this was the last church in England where the bells were tolled for the Latin mass (Brown, 1904:10; Phillpotts, 2011). It is clear, however, that not all of the outsiders buried here were motivated by religion or royalism. Devon-born Maurice Margarot (1745–1815) was living in France at the time of the Revolution but returned to Britain in 1792 and joined the London Corresponding Society, which was inspired by Jacobinism to discuss parliamentary and constitutional reform. Following his arrest and conviction, Margarot was taken with fellow radicals Thomas Muir, Rev. Thomas Fyshe Palmer, and William Skirving to New South Wales on board the _Surprize,_ which set sail in May 1794 (Phillpotts, 2011:107). The lengthy sentence of transportation that he and his wife Elizabeth, who joined him as a free settler, endured in Australia illustrates the authorities' fear and suspicion of revolutionary France—in sharp contrast to the widespread sympathy extended to anti-Revolutionary exiles on their arrival in a nation that was at war with their homeland.
Situated on the fringe of the growing metropolis, St. Pancras experienced a dramatic transition from a rural to an urban character during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with all of the demographic and environmental implications of this transformation. Changes in the composition of the living population, and the conditions in which it lived and worked, have left their mark in the buried remains.
The burial ground extension of the Third Ground witnessed 61 years of sustained heavy use on a scale that was not anticipated at the time that it was opened. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the population of London rise in a manner that must have seemed alarming to many contemporaries. The population of the parish of St. Pancras grew dramatically in the 1780s and 1790s: between 1776 and 1801 it rose from less than 600 to 31,779 (a 53-fold increase; Phillpotts, 2011;30). It had reached 46,333 by 1811, 71,838 by 1821, 103,548 by 1831, 129,763 by 1841, and 166,956 by 1851 (Brown, 1904:7, 9, 11, 14, 19, 23, 26; Sheppard, 1971:25). The influx of immigrants from the French Revolution contributed to this explosion from the 1790s onward. By the 1840s many of the London burial grounds were in an insanitary state as they struggled to accommodate the bodies of the increasing numbers of people who died every year in the fast-growing city. The grotesque crowding of London's churchyards became a focus of hot debate, not least in the light of the cholera outbreaks that rocked the city in the years after 1828. St. Pancras churchyard came under scrutiny from those committed to the closure of London's old burial grounds and the opening of new cemeteries beyond the city limits (Phillpotts, 2011:35–40, 77–78).
Research into the number of burials recorded in the St. Pancras parish registers identified a series of peaks in 1833 (1,754), 1837 (1,653), and 1854 (1,865), with that in 1833 interpreted as resulting from a major cholera epidemic (figures based on unpublished data compiled by amateur local historian Michael Rennie). The wealth of documentary evidence testifies to the complexity and oddness of St. Pancras as a study group. For example, the intimate biographical insights that it affords reveal the importance of tradition, belief, and idiosyncratic personal choice for burial location. In this, the project provides a salutary warning of the dangers of trite or deterministic explanations of funerary practice. With numbers increasing on this scale during the period of the Third Ground's use and with so many social and cultural factors influencing the evolution of funerary practice at St. Pancras, any attempts at generalized explanation may seem unwise.
Definition of a valid sample for osteological study is inherently shaped by our understanding of the social historical questions prioritized by researchers. Although we may seek to view the archaeological evidence from the burial ground as representing the development and customs of an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century community, we need to ask what constitutes "the community" in such a diverse socioeconomic context. Not everyone buried at St. Pancras was a local resident, and the cemetery absorbed outsiders from disparate backgrounds. Social historians must play a key role in informing the archaeological research agenda; at the same time, they may have much to gain from acknowledging the value of archaeological results for this period (Harding, 1998). The specific lesson to be gained from the St. Pancras experience is that articulating the historical records with key archaeological data at an early stage can help researchers formulate and implement intelligent sampling strategies. This interdisciplinary approach to project design is important in the United Kingdom, where the scope of archaeological recording has to be justified to developers, statutory authorities, and archaeological bodies as reasonable. In preparing the project design, cemetery archaeologists can also benefit from the strategic involvement of other specialists, crucially osteologists. The discipline of osteoarchaeology is currently benefiting from rapid technical advances, for example, in the use of radiography, the study of specific pathologies, microsampling of teeth for isotope analysis, dietary insights through study of dental calculus, and sex identification of DNA samples using microfluidics.
Mediating the disparate aims of cemetery clearance and archaeological research—so often manifest on site as incompatible working methods—continues to challenge those responsible for ensuring that such projects are undertaken with academic rigor, scientific integrity, and propriety. The planning of such projects brings together a wide range of stakeholders, including clients, project managers, local authority archaeological advisors, church representatives, and a growing contingent of the general public pursuing an interest in genealogy. It is regrettable that the organizational and methodological debate in which these parties engage is sometimes revisited and reargued with each new case, leading to inconsistencies in approach and a waste of already scanty resources. Strategic uncertainty can be compounded by regulatory idiosyncrasies arising from site-specific issues of current land use and custodianship. Whatever the specific project, the operations of a cemetery clearance contractor should always be acknowledged as an integral part of the implementation of any agreed archaeological research framework. Exclusion of a cemetery population, or parts thereof, from the archaeologist's remit should reflect a conscious sampling decision guided by the research framework. Exhumation contractors provide a range of essential specialist services, particularly in cases where archaeological work is either unnecessary or inappropriate. However, in situations where there _are_ aspirations for archaeological research, their activities should be embedded within an overarching archaeological framework. Archaeological curators should acknowledge the advantages of adopting this nesting of roles where burials have been defined as a potential archaeological resource, and this best practice needs to be enshrined in planning and curatorial policy. The need for the work of clearance companies to be placed "under archaeological supervision and not vice versa" has been recognized by the Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England (2015:10) in its recently launched guidance on the sampling of large burial grounds.
Attitudes to the treatment of the dead remain mutable since they reflect contemporary concerns and mores. The history of the St. Pancras burial ground vividly illustrates how perceptions and values in this context have changed over time; forensic archaeology, through its technical advances and intimate revelations, has itself contributed to a heightened regard for past populations.
## Reinterment Narratives
After osteological analysis the human remains exhumed at St. Pancras had to be returned, in batches, to the exhumation contractor for reinterment at St. Pancras cemetery in East Finchley within two months of discovery. For two individuals, however, this was not the end of the story. Letters proposing repatriation of the two prelates, Dillon and Belbeuf, had been sent to their respective modern dioceses, but the responses from each had been negative. Sensing that there might yet be community interest in seeing these exiled clerics returned home, the author made special arrangements for their reburial on 24 October 2003 in a discrete shared grave at East Finchley, which was accurately surveyed. So on 23 March 2006, when telephoned by international wine merchant Peter Darbyshire enquiring on behalf of Professor Jacques Michaud (president of the Archaeological and Literary Commission of Narbonne), the author was in a position to divulge the precise whereabouts of Monsignor Dillon. This call was just the beginning of 12 months of preparations—legal, logistical, and ceremonial—that took place on both sides of the English Channel, Monsignor Dillon's remains being reexhumed under the author's supervision on 7 March 2007 in the presence of Professor Michaud and the Honorable Mrs. Madeleine Louloudis (née Dillon).
The archbishop set off on his poignant homeward journey (on an Air France freight jet bound for Montpellier) just over 200 years after his death (Amigues and Michaud, 2007; Commission Archéologique et Littéraire de Narbonne, 2008). The enthusiastic welcome by the Narbonnaise during the ensuing ceremonies, culminating on 15 March 2007 in the grand funeral procession from the Canal de la Robine to the Cathédrale Saint-Just et Saint-Pasteur and a service presided over by the late Cardinal Lustiger, with the apostolic nuncio sitting on his right and the Abbot of Downside to his left, was an illustration of Monsignor Dillon's enduring civic legacy (Figure 6). The repatriation of Dillon's fellow countryman, Mgr. Pierre-Augustin Godart de Belbeuf, took place on 13 September 2009, his skeletal remains and inscribed coffin plate being returned by the author to Avranches, the seat of the ancient bishopric that he had occupied when it was suppressed in 1790. The funeral service in the basilica of Saint-Gervais, two years later on 23 September 2011, was attended by family members and Jean-François Le Grand, president of Conseil Général de la Manche (Figure 7).
FIGURE 6. Funeral procession of the repatriated remains of Monsignor Arthur Richard Dillon, last archbishop of Narbonne, on 15 March 2007. Copyright Ramboll UK Limited.
FIGURE 7. Reinterment of the remains of Mgr. Pierre-Augustin Godart de Belbeuf in the basilica of Saint-Gervais, Avranches, 23 September 2011. Copyright Ramboll UK Limited.
Dillon and Belbeuf would have been acquainted with one another in life, sharing their ordeal as refugees. Archaeological research into their émigré community, undertaken as part of this project, sheds light on the complex series of Anglo-French ties that existed despite the bitter and protracted warfare between the two countries at the time. For these two prelates in exile, regime change in 1815 came too late. It seems fitting then that the circumstances of their discovery during the building of a major high-speed railway are the consequence of enhancing the connection between England and France.
## Acknowledgments
The project was funded by HS1 Ltd. Helen Glass (formerly archaeology manager, Rail Link Engineering) is acknowledged for her comments on an earlier draft. The late Trevor Ashwin assisted with recrafting sections of the text, and the late Chris Phillpotts, the project's documentary researcher, also provided helpful input. Gifford Ltd. (now Ramboll UK Limited) subcontracted Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd. (PCA), which delivered the fieldwork under the supervision of Kevin Wooldridge, assisted by Duncan Sayer, and Museum of London Specialist Services (now Museum of London Archaeology), which was responsible for the osteological and environmental analyses, and aspects of the artifact studies, the remainder being undertaken by PCA staff. The osteological research was led by the late Bill White (Museum of London), with Natasha Powers (formerly Museum of London Archaeology) kindly assisting with the osteological element of this chapter. Michael Rennie generously allowed access to his extensive database of burial register entries. Sarah Tarlow (University of Leicester) kindly advised during the latter stages of the post-excavation work. Dom Aidan Bellenger (Abbot of Downside) provided invaluable information about the French émigré clergy. Finally, the author extends his gratitude to Roy Stephenson (Museum of London) and François Amigues, Peter Darbyshire, Mark Meyts, Jacques Michaud, and David Nicolas-Méry.
## References
Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England. 2015. _Large Burial Grounds: Guidance on Sampling in Archaeological Fieldwork Projects._ London: Historic England Publishing, in association with the Advisory Panel on Archaeology of Burials in England.
Amigues, F., and J. Michaud. 2007. _Arthur-Richard Dillon, dernier Président-Né des Etats de Languedoc, de 1793 à 1790; recueil de souvenirs publié à l'occasion du retour de ses restes découverts à Londres, Narbonne, 15 et 16 mars 2007._ Narbonne: Commission Archéologique et Littéraire de Narbonne.
Beaurepaire, C. A. de. 1936. _Monseigneur Godart de Belbeuf, dernier évêque d'Avranches._ Communication faite au Congrès de l'Association Normande tenu à Avranches en Julliet 1935. Bayeux: R. P. Colas.
Bellenger, D. A. 1986. _The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after 1789: An Historical Introduction and Working List._ Bath: Downside Abbey.
Bradley, S. 2007. St. _Pancras Station._ London: Profile Books.
Brown, W. E. 1904. _The St. Pancras Book of Dates of the Principal Events in the History of the Parish._ London: St. Pancras Borough Council.
Commission Archéologique et Littéraire de Narbonne. 2008. _Arthur-Richard Dillon, dernier Président-Né des Etats de Languedoc, de 1763 à 1790. Bulletin de la Commission Archéologique et Littéraire de Narbonne,_ 51 (special issue).
Emery, P. A. 2006. End of the Line. _British Archaeology,_ 88:10–15.
Emery, P. A. 2007. "Cracking the Code: Biography and (Reconstructed) Stratigraphy at St. Pancras Burial Ground." In _Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology,_ ed. S. R. Zakrzewski and W. White, pp. 6–13. BAR International Series 1712. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Emery, P. A., and K. Wooldridge. 2011. St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3._ London: Gifford Monograph.
Harding, V. 1998. "Research Priorities: An Historian's Perspective." In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700 to 1850,_ ed. M. Cox, pp. 205–212. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Lysons, D. 1795–1811. _The Environs of London._ 3 vols. and supplement. London.
Mytum, H. 2000. _Recording and Analysing Graveyards._ York: Council for British Archaeology.
Nicolas-Méry, D. 2011. _Avranches: Capitale du pays du Mont Saint-Michel._ Cully, France: OREP Éditions.
Owen, R. 1853. On the Anatomy of the Walrus. _Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,_ 21:103–106.
Phillpotts, C. 2011. "Documentary Evidence." In St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, passim. London: Gifford Monograph.
Pipe, A., and P. A. Emery. 2011. "Faunal Remains." In St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, p. 157. London: Gifford Monograph.
Powers, N. I. 2006. An Eighteenth Century Porcelain Dental Prosthesis Belonging to Archbishop Arthur Richard Dillon. _British Dental Journal,_ 201:459–463.
Powers, N. I. 2011. "Osteological Evidence." In St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, pp. 127–153. London: Gifford Monograph.
Powers, N. I., and P. A. Emery. 2007. "The 'French Disease": Syphilis and the Burial Ground of St. Paneras." In _Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology,_ ed. S. R. Zakrzewski and W. White, pp. 32–35. BAR International Series 1712. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Rendall, H. 2011a. "Recording Monumental Stonework." In St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, pp. 18–20. London: Gifford Monograph.
Rendall, H. 2011b. "Memorial Stones and Tomb Fragments." In St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, CD Appendix 1. London: Gifford Monograph.
Sheppard, F. 1971. _London 1808–1870: The Infernal Wen._ London: Secker and Warburg.
Svanberg, I. 2010. Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) in Captivity. _Svenska Linnésållskapets Årsskrift,_ 2010:119–136.
Tomalin, C. 2006. _Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man._ London: Viking.
White, W. 2011. "Osteological Evidence." In St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, pp. 112–117. London: Gifford Monograph.
Wooldridge K., and H. Rendall. 2011. "Grave Memorials." In St. _Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, pp. 158–166. London: Gifford Monograph.
# CHAPTER 5
# Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture: The Dynamic of Power Relations between the Bereaved and the Undertaker
_Harold Mytum_
The explanation of product changes in historic contexts tends to rely on one of three assertions, and these have all been emphasized within studies of British mortuary material culture. The first is that fashion is a dominant, inevitable, and inexorable force for change that can be described but not explained (Burgess, 1963; Curl, 1972; Willsher, 1985; Litten, 1991). The second is that the rise in industrial mass production led to the dominance of the producer in the creation of choices from which customers made their selection (Church and Smith, 1966; Buckham, 1999). The third is that the customers by their choices affected the success of competitive options within the range produced and so created the market within which producers operated (Cannon, 1989; Tarlow, 1999); in other words, the producers reacted to public taste rather than created it. This study examines, within the context of consumption within mortuary behavior, how the retailer (here the undertaker or mason) mediated between producer and consumer (usually the bereaved) during the late eighteenth to early twentieth century, in a dynamic relationship where the power relationships vary from one context to another. That this topic has not been explored in mortuary archaeology reflects the limited examination of this issue in historical archaeology more generally, despite the widespread interest in artifact production, on the one hand, and patterns of consumption, on the other (Mullins, 2004).
It can be argued that at different stages in the bereavement process the power relations between retailer and consumer change and also the social importance of details of style varied. It is thus possible to investigate how the dynamics of this relationship affects the rate and nature of stylistic change. Although highly contextualized, this pattern of relationships can be considered important in many other cultural contexts. This is particularly so in the case of mortuary material culture because even though the elements used such as coffin fittings or monument blanks may have been mass produced, the manufacture of the coffin and the arrangement of fittings and the further carving and inscribing of the monument remained under the control of the undertaker or mason throughout the nineteenth century. Here the producer-consumer relationship was similar to that experienced in craftsman-producer economies, although with an awareness of choices derived from an environment within which most material culture was mass produced (Mytum, 2016).
## Context of Choice and Use
In the process of death, burial, and commemoration, two groups of material culture were normally consumed. The first was the coffin, with its associated furnishings and fittings; the second was the memorial, set on a grave plot. Although today undertakers may attempt to arrange for the purchase of the memorial at the same time as the funeral arrangements are made to maximize business and ensure that the bereaved family members consider all aspects of the mortuary process, that was not the case in earlier periods. Although undertakers were responsible for the funeral (Litten, 1991), the various stages in mourning dress were part of the costume and jewelry trade (Morley, 1971; Cunnington and Lucas, 1972; Taylor, 1983), and the stonemason was responsible for the monument (Burgess, 1963; Mytum, 2004a). Memorials were sometimes commissioned and produced ahead of a death, in which case the person to be commemorated could have a significant input into the design, but most were selected after the death and often six months or a year after interment. This allowed time for the grave fill to settle and also meant that the choices were made after a period of grave visiting prior to the commissioning of a memorial. Each of the two categories of material culture were therefore produced and consumed in very different relationships between consumer and producer and with the client in quite distinct emotional states.
The coffin served a functional role of containing the body during the period prior to burial, when it was viewed first in a private setting at home, although by the later nineteenth century in many contexts this viewing had been shifted to the funeral directors' mortuary chapel. The coffin was then visible in public during the journey to the church service and on to the burial ground, unless covered by a rented cloth, usually called a pall or mortcloth. Some individuals viewed the coffin up close, but more saw it only from a distance (Litten, 1991). The closer the view, the more emotionally linked and charged was the viewer. Indeed, those able to examine the coffin prior to interment were more focused on the body within it (and the style of dress and body treatment were important in this respect but are not considered here) and on their relationships with the bereaved and other visitors. By the later nineteenth century, coffins could be provided with viewing windows or hinged sections allowing the face of the deceased to be visible while the rest of the lid was in place (Mytum, 2016); earlier, the whole lid and its fittings would not be in position. This was a highly emotional context for social interaction, and the relationships, memories, and emotions shared by individuals, including those of the deceased, were dominant. The physical form of the coffin and its degree and nature of elaboration would be noted and remembered, particularly by neighbors and friends, but the details of the styles and symbols used on the fittings were arguably less socially important.
The coffin was generally seen on its own; only if several members of a family died at the same time would their coffins be displayed at home and in the church together. Comparison of one coffin with another was therefore intrinsically difficult. Moreover, each coffin was available for inspection only for a few days, and its public visibility lasted only hours at most. Whether placed in private or public vaults or in earth graves, the coffin and its fittings were disposable and served a very short term display purpose. Although concerns with maintaining the integrity of the corpse ensured that the coffin was seen to have a long-term role, this role was in time taken over by the vault or burial plot rather than the inevitably decaying wooden coffin. Cast iron and lead were used to create more permanent containers, but the former was rare in Britain, and the latter tended to be placed within a wooden case that could be covered in colored cloth and display a range of fittings. In all these cases it was the containing and protection of the body (see also Mytum and Webb, this volume) that dominated over symbolic communication. The coffin was part of the paraphernalia associated with the funeral ritual, where socially appropriate norms would be adhered to and a set of elaborations and generalized qualities of the coffin would fit the class and religious affiliation of the family, but the minutiae of the coffin design and fittings would be of lesser importance than other aspects of the funeral ritual, including behavior and dress of the bereaved, entertainment of visitors, and format and content of the funeral service, including the sermon address.
The context in which consumer choice was exercised over the coffin was an emotional and difficult one, and deciding the details of the coffin design may have been a very low priority for the bereaved. Although an early nineteenth-century hand-drawn catalog of fittings shows many individual types (Portfolio of original anonymous drawings, V&A EL1826), by the later nineteenth century catalogs show sets of fittings (Mytum, 2016), even though individual items could continue to be obtained. It would seem that the undertaker took many decisions regarding the coffin under general instructions regarding the overall elaboration and cost of the item. In this situation, the role of the consumer in determining the style and symbolic content of the overall design and of individual fittings could have been very low. The only concern may have been to largely conform, to do that which seemed proper given the family's social status and cultural context. An undated but probably early twentieth-century manual for undertakers and coffin makers emphasizes the importance of assessing the wealth and social standing of the deceased and that taking advantage of clients at an impressionable moment might create a larger sale but, as they reflect on their treatment, could create resentment and a poor reputation that would limit further business (Plume, n.d.).
The graveyard monument was selected at some other time, with due reflection on the values and sentiments that are to be expressed on it through text and decoration. This selection was usually after bereavement, but some memorials were commissioned and sometimes erected prior to death. The monument is of some lasting significance, can be studied at leisure, and can be carefully scrutinized close up or seen from a distance by many. It is also situated within an environment of other memorials already existing and with the expectation of others being erected subsequently, in a landscape of memory with its own dynamic physical and biographical history. Gravestones can also be used to commemorate more than one person and so have long-term use-lives and biographies (Mytum, 2004a); the same cannot apply to coffins. The nature of the decisions made regarding the graveyard memorial are therefore more measured, are seen in a more emotionally balanced and considered situation, and are chosen with greater regard for public comparison and display than the coffin.
Gravestone monuments are culturally and socially more significant items than coffins because they have a long-lasting public role while at the same time providing a personalized commemorative focus for family and friends (Mytum, 2004b). This dual role, and the incorporation of more choices relating to stone type and material, texts, and symbols, creates a vehicle for communication that requires many choices on the part of the commissioner.
Given the very different circumstance within which decisions were made and the type of temporal and locational contexts of their visibility and use, it is perhaps not surprising, therefore, to see a different pattern of variability in the two groups of mortuary material culture and a somewhat divergent trajectory in terms of stylistic and symbolic change. This difference reveals how the dynamics of highly unequal and more equal relationships between producer and consumer have direct effects on the scale, nature, and even direction of cultural change.
## The Nature of the Sample Available for Analysis
Graveyard memorial data collected in a systematic fashion from Britain that are available in the quantities necessary for analysis date mainly from 1780, as there was an exponential rise in external commemoration that began in the later eighteenth century (Mytum, 2006a). However, not all parts of Britain saw memorials with decoration as a major feature of the designs, and even where this was the case, there can be problems in using the data for this analysis. For example, the many headstones known in Gloucestershire were of a limestone that has caused preservation of the deeply carved iconography, but the shallow-cut lettering has eroded away, so most are now impossible to date closely, although stylistically, they can largely be assigned to the later eighteenth century. In contrast, certain forms of earlier headstones, such as the Swithland slate cherubs with mortality symbols, have received more attention (Mytum, 2004c), so they have become overrepresented in the collected data. Nevertheless, the spread of dates can be appreciated, and it will be relatively straightforward, although time-consuming, to increase sample size to reinforce the patterns already becoming visible. For this analysis, however, samples from two areas of Britain, Pembrokeshire in Wales and the hinterland of York, Yorkshire, have been combined to give indications of generalized trends.
The belowground evidence, in contrast to that of memorials, belongs mainly to the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The only large, well-published assemblage of coffin material comes from Spitalfields and belongs to the period 1729–1852 (Reeve and Adams, 1993), and unfortunately, most of the other major London sites at St. Pancras and St. George's, Bloomsbury, largely do not stretch beyond the 1850s (see Emery, this volume; Loe and Boston, this volume) as this was when the crypts were closed, and most datable fittings come from these contexts rather than external earth-dug graves. However, a few excavated coffins give some indication of later patterns, such as a small number from Birmingham (Hancox, 2006) and one from St. Luke's in Islington (Boyle at al., 2005), and from the later nineteenth century there is also the valuable source of illustrated trade catalogs that, although not indicating the popularity of different styles, at least demonstrate what was on offer. These can be compared with one important early nineteenth-century illustrated catalog. Unfortunately, the period 1830–1880 is not well represented in known British catalogs, so that both surviving and recorded coffins and documented sources are limited for several decades; this lack emphasizes how archaeological study can be vital even in what might appear to be well-documented periods.
## The Graveyard Monuments
By the late eighteenth century, the range of external memorial features available to consumers in any one region was very large. That had not been the case earlier, where very limited although often discrete regional schools existed, each with their own defined but limited repertoire and made from local stone (Burgess, 1963; Mytum, 2004b). There are not only headstones but also large numbers of chest and table tombs and flat ledger stones (Mytum, 2000), unlike New England and other parts of eastern North America, where headstones are the overwhelming majority of monuments for the later eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth century. Even within the headstones, there is a bewildering array of shapes, many linked to architectural revival styles such as Gothic or Egyptian. Moreover, beyond the shape comes the decoration, which is also very variable. At any one time, certain motifs or styles may be popular within a region (Mytum, 2002), but these are portrayed in many variations and change over time. Moreover, at the same time many other alternative motifs are usually available and are occasionally used, demonstrating consumer choice was wide, even if often the same forms or motifs were actually chosen by the clients.
Mortality symbols are well known as being among the earliest symbols on external commemorative monuments (Deetz and Dethlefsen, 1967). Although common on many Scottish monuments (Willsher, 1985) and in Ulster (Mytum, 2009), they are less common in large numbers in England and Wales, although unquantified research in Kent demonstrates that there may be some areas where they were at least once widespread (Benes, 1977). One English graveyard, St. Mary the Virgin, Potton, Bedfordshire, does have a significant number of mortality stones (Figure 1A, 1B). Whether this is an unusual survival or an atypical consumer choice in the eighteenth century it is at present not possible to ascertain, although a few survive in adjacent churchyards (Mytum and Chapman, 2006). Although Potton is only a single site, it is valuable because it is relatively close to London, where the coffin data have been recovered, and for a single graveyard has an unusually large number of stones with the relevant motifs (Figure 1C). Death's heads and other symbols of mortality are found alone on 11 stones in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. Slightly later but largely overlapping were four stones with both death's heads and cherubs. Cherubs alone, of which there are 74, begin from around 1720. They are most popular around the middle of the century and are gone by 1820. Thus, we can see a short phase of mortality symbols—the end of their popularity coinciding here with the earliest headstones, whereas in most English regions headstones start only after that phase is over. There is then a century over which cherubs are the preferred choice of motif, with this phase ending significantly in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
Major archaeological recording projects of graveyard monuments have been undertaken in both Pembrokeshire and Yorkshire, and data derived from these can be combined to examine both the cherub and then the urn phases of popularity, although people in these areas started erecting external memorials only after the mortality phase was over and after the use of cherubs began elsewhere. Nevertheless, it is clear that cherubs appear on memorials from the early eighteenth century (Figure 2), the first decades for monument erection in these regions. Popularity of the cherubs peaks in the 1820s in these areas, and although monument erection rates continue to increase with an exponential rise in memorial numbers through most of the nineteenth century (Mytum, 2006a), the selection of cherubs drops rapidly.
FIGURE 1. Potton graveyard. (Top left) Mortality symbols on headstones. (Top right) Mortality and cherub motifs on headstones. (Bottom) Plot of motif popularity over time. Photos by author.
The selection of urns as a symbol starts in the 1770s but also ends in the 1820s. Some memorials indeed display both cherubs and urns. The use of urns appears to be more regionally specific than that of cherubs, but it forms part of a classical revival tradition that is also indicated over a longer time period on elite internal memorials. There is some indication that nonconformist sects preferentially selected a draped-urn monument in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Mytum, 2002), but this phenomenon is quite distinct from the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century pattern shown here (Figure 3).
FIGURE 2. Cherubs on headstones. (A) Double cherub motif on headstone. (B) Single cherub motif on headstone. (C) Bar graph showing percentage of artifacts with cherub motif (dark gray, memorials from Yorkshire and Pembrokeshire; light gray, Spitalfields breastplates). Photos by author.
FIGURE 3. (A) Central urn. (B) Central double urn. (C) Bar graph showing numbers of artifacts with urn motif (dark gray, memorials from Yorkshire and Pembrokeshire; light gray, Spitalfields breastplates). Photos by author.
Beginning in the 1840s, the Gothic revival rapidly takes hold as a major style, and it is more uniform nationally. Many stones are still plain, but features such as tracery and trefoils are also found on such monuments, as well as flowers; the IHS symbol (originally chosen as it is the first three letters of Jesus in Greek, but with other later Christian meanings) also becomes very popular later in the century (Figure 4). Many different forms of Gothic revival monuments can be noted, not only in a range of headstone forms but also with low monuments imitating or inspired by medieval grave slabs. In some areas, the Gothic tradition begins earlier; Brooks (1989:21) notes that it becomes increasingly popular on funerary monuments from the 1800s. At St. Mary's, South Stoneham, Hampshire, 8 of the 33 stones erected in the first quarter of the nineteenth century were of Gothic revival type (Hill and Mays, 1987:72), but generally, it is a mid- and later nineteenth-century style that lasted in a simple form into the first decades of the twentieth century.
Trends in the symbols used on the memorials and changes in their form can be identified from the data and match trends in architecture and other categories of material culture. Variation is very great, even though there are regional and some national trends. The inscriptions also change in their typography and content, but those variables are not examined here. It is clear that memorials are vibrant, adaptive, active, and meaningful, as seen through decoration and form.
## The Coffin: The London Evidence
The archaeological investigation of the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields, in London was a landmark in historical archaeology in Britain and is important here because of the large number of coffins that were recorded (Reeve and Adams, 1993). The published reports do not analyze the complex data regarding the coffins, but it is possible to review in summary the coffins and their fittings. All the designs within each category of lid motifs, breastplates, grips, grip plates, and escutcheons were numbered with the prefix code CCS and have become the standard reference for types recovered elsewhere, and the relevant numbers are used here; originally published on fiche in Reeve and Adams (1993), they are also available online through the Archaeology Data Service.
The coffins recovered from the crypt reflect only a small sample of those buried at Spitalfields; no excavation of earth burials took place, and anyway, later burial and soil conditions would have made the information recovered difficult to compare. As burial in the crypt was significantly more expensive than that in the graveyard, only the wealthier elements of the population are represented. It must be remembered that for the poorest sections of the population, coffin burial was not even the norm in the eighteenth century. However, as most poorer burials, certainly in the period to 1850, were not marked subsequently by inscribed stone memorials, there is a certain equivalence in wealth and status here between crypt burials and graveyard memorials that can make comparison valid.
It is possible that as crypt burial did not give an opportunity for memorialization (except for the most affluent and influential, who could obtain an internal wall memorial), more may have been expended on the coffin than would have been the case with an earth burial with a stone to follow. This supposition is at present impossible to assess, particularly given the consumerist tendencies of the London undertakers so well exposed by Julian Litten (1991).
The coffins were almost certainly almost all made locally; six Spitalfields undertakers were listed in Watkins London Directory of 1852 (Reeve and Adams, 1993), but the fittings could have been manufactured in either London or the Birmingham area (Church and Smith, 1966). All the coffins discussed here are of the single-break hexagonal form, and the various inner shells, including lead ones that many of the more elaborate coffins contained, are not relevant to the external appearance and style issues, although they further increased choices and options for expenditure. All the coffins were covered with upholstery, held in place by pins that also provided a decorative scheme. In total 58 different pin designs were recorded, although they can be largely described under a few broad groupings. From later in the nineteenth century onward, cloth covering of coffins was abandoned in favor of polished wood, leading to the provision of a variety of woods and finishes, with an array of designs (Mytum, 2016), some of which included paneling on the sides that mirrored the earlier stud patterns (which probably themselves reflected paneling of wood).
FIGURE 4. Monuments with Gothic revival designs. (A) Cross and angels. (B) IHS monogram and flowers. (C) Chest tomb with tracery. Photos by author.
At Spitalfields there are plain designs, with simple lines of pins around the lid and defining panels along the sides. These are the most numerous and start the earliest. Triangles or chevrons are also popular, but they start slightly later and finish earlier, although a decade may not be significant given the numbers involved and the many undated examples (Figure 5). More intricately paneled coffins are also a significant group, and these start distinctly later than the previous two broad groups. In all cases, the theme on the top tends to be followed on the sides, although there are some examples of mixed styles. The patterns at Spitalfields show a considerable variety, in some senses similar to that expressed through variations on a theme with gravestones, but given the small number of main groupings that cover most coffins, there is not the same degree of variety shown for a period of well over 100 years.
Excavations by the Museum of London Archaeology Service at St. Saviour's burial ground, Southwark, which served a poor urban neighborhood, recovered160 coffined burials, most of which were made from soft woods and were crudely made (Miles, 1993). Only small numbers of these churchyard burials had fittings or were decorated with patterns of studs. Those that were decorated conformed mainly to the plain category or to the triangle design. It is therefore the case that both the coffin fittings and the majority of the memorials under discussion belong to the middle classes, although the more affluent working classes could by the end of the period considered here also participate in the mortuary trends discussed here, as evidenced from the mortuary monuments that show an increasing proportion of the population able to invest in mortuary display (Mytum, 2002). Earth burials with more elaborate coffins were recovered from St. George's graveyard in Bloomsbury, London (Boston et al., 2009), as the church served an affluent middle-class clientele and the mortuary traditions reflect this.
FIGURE 5. Selection of Spitalfields coffin pin designs.
FIGURE 6. Spitalfields coffin fittings with cherubs: grip plate CCS 3, grip CCS 4, and breastplate CCS 13 (not to scale).
Onto the decorated coffins at Spitalfields were also fixed a series of fittings: grips and grip plates (the handles and the plates on which they were fixed) and lid motifs, which were decorative elements of some size and should be distinguished from the escutcheons, which were small but could be used on the lid or sides and in any number. The breastplate could also be highly decorated but also included the inscribed text identifying the deceased; it is sometimes called the depositum plate. When the designs are considered over time, it is clear that cherubs occur on one particular, extremely popular design of grips (CCS 3) from 1729 (Figure 6), and many of the grip plates often also have cherubs, but in a wider range of designs; on the grips the cherubs remained popular much later than on the gravestones, with CCS 3 now known in use as late as 1880. The evidence on the breastplates is slightly less clear because of the vast array of different designs and elements in those designs, but here also the cherubs remained popular in the 1840s and the 1850s; even though there were very few interments by that stage at Spitalfields, cherubs are now known from other London sites and Wolverhampton. In contrast, cherubs are in rapid decline and virtually disappear despite the increase in actual headstones per decade at that stage in the sample graveyard database (Mytum, 2006a). Unfortunately, the end of interments at Spitalfields in the 1850s prevents identification of how long-lived the cherub designs were, as their decline on memorials was by this stage complete, although it may be significant that the single late dated burial from St. Luke's, Islington, of 1880 still carries this design of grip plate (Boyle et al., 2005).
FIGURE 7. Spitalfields coffin fittings with urns: two grip plates, CCS 10 CCS 20, and one lid motif, CCS 2 (not to scale).
Urns first appear on coffin fittings later in the nineteenth century, as would be expected from the memorial evidence (Figure 2C). Unlike the cherub selection pattern, urn choice on breastplates matches more closely that for memorials. Moreover, use of urns is quite restricted; they are rare on the grip plates and are never used on the grips themselves; the cherubs continue in use instead, reflecting a traditionalist attitude to styles. Many of the lid motifs not only include urns but may actually be urn shaped, and the whole item is this motif (Figure 7); unfortunately, only a few of these are dated, but they are all relatively late, few being eighteenth century. Breastplates at Spitalfields include urns on quite a number of examples from 1773, but it is worth noting that all examples of breastplates with urns also have cherubs in the designs, and this combination occurs also on other categories of coffin furniture (Figure 8).
Grips could have other designs—notably flowers and, at a late date, shields. Shields also occur elsewhere within the coffin fitting repertoire, particularly on breastplates, but always at a late date. Flowers also are popular on a wide range of individually rare designs, sometimes as the major motif and in other cases as a minor space filler, so making chronological measurement of their popularity is difficult to define. However, cherubs and urns do not stop being used. An innate conservatism within the provision of coffins and their fittings can be ascribed to the limited stimulation for change by customers wishing for this aspect of the grieving process to be at the edge of fashion. The only addition of note is the shield (Figure 8), and it can be seen as much to hark back to the supposedly ancient armorial elements of the funeral than to new developments in the wider range of material culture. The eighteenth-century burials from St. Saviour's produced a few breastplates decorated with angels and urns (Miles, 1993), and at St. Mary by the Bourne, Marylebone, coffins from the 1830s had breastplates including a shield design. These albeit very small samples support the patterns identified at Spitalfields. Large samples, sadly mainly overlapping chronologically with Spitalfields, were recovered from St. Luke's, Islington (Boyle et al., 2005), and St. George's, Bloomsbury (Boston et al., 2009), and reinforce the stylistic trends seen at Spitalfields (see also Loe and Boston, this volume).
FIGURE 8. Spitalfields coffin fittings with cherubs and urns or cherubs and shield: breastplates CCS8 and CCS 48 and lid motif CCS 24 (not to scale).
To date, coffin studies are dominated by London assemblages. Material from Penn, Wolverhampton (Loe and Boston, this volume), is contemporary with the London assemblages but does include some later material (Boyle, 2004), and Kellington, North Yorkshire, provides another small sample of later coffins and fittings from outside London (Mytum, 1993), although sadly neither is yet published in detail. These show the increased use of strip edging for the coffins and less elaborate arrangements of the coffin pins, and it would seem that elaborate patterns of coffin pins were never fashionable in the rural north as only simple designs were found in the coffins in an earlier family vault at North Dalton (Mytum, 1988). Because of the limited amount of data, regional traditions within England remain obscure at present.
## Patterns and Relationships
The conservatism of the coffin fitting repertoire compared with that of memorials can be demonstrated in two ways. The first is that certain symbols or motifs are applied to coffin furniture at a later date than on memorials, and then some continue in use even though they are no longer being selected for monuments. The second is that particular categories of stud patterns continue to be placed on coffins for far longer periods than the main monument forms are in popular use.
Clear evidence shows that cherubs appear in numbers of coffin fittings only several decades after they first appear on external memorials (Figure 1C). Although the sample size for memorials from the surveyed areas of Pembrokeshire and Yorkshire is small, a significant number of the earliest external memorials in those areas have cherubs, and this trend has already been demonstrated in the case of Potton, Bedfordshire (Figure 1). Moreover, in other areas not yet systematically studied but where a greater number of early eighteenth-century stones survive, such as the Vale of Belvoir in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, a high proportion of memorials of the period from the 1720s to the 1740s have cherubs. It is only from the 1750s, however, that coffin fittings have this motif, and although it is documented that a cheaper method of producing stamped designs was developed in 1769 (Church and Smith, 1966:621), which may have encouraged more complex designs from that time onward, some stamped designs using other methods were already in use before that date, and motifs could have been added to earlier metalwork using other techniques if they had been required. Decorated breastplate designs such as CCS 95 and CCS 96 were produced from the 1730s and could easily have included cherubs within their decorative repertoire.
The pattern for the urn motif shows no differentiation between memorials and coffin fittings (Figure 2C), but whereas urns are accompanied by cherubs on breastplates and often on other coffin items (Figure 7), this pairing is far less common on memorials, where new fashions replace old ones rather than merely augmenting an outdated repertoire.
The period of time over which particular designs of coffin fittings remained in use is also striking. Although a few simple gravestone shapes have remained popular over long periods, as is the case also with the simplest designs of coffin fittings, that is not the case with more complex designs of monuments. Even at times with quite small samples, the date range for a coffin fitting design can be as much as four or five decades, and this information can be identified in the tables assembled by Loe and Boston (this volume, Appendix), which include some samples that run into the later nineteenth century and so can identify longer-used forms than is possible from Spitalfields alone. These data, however, are not in a format to be included in the bar charts as they are not defined by decade, and total numbers of coffins in the sample that are dated coffins to the decade need to be known. However, the sheer length of time that some designs remained in use indicates an unusual level of conservatism. Examples of breastplates with elaborate decoration that were in use for at least 50 years include CCS 6 (1783–1852; Figure 7), CCS 27 (1788–1839), CCS 31 ((1759–1821), CCS 46 (1771–1846), CCS 61 (1765–1811), and CCS 67 (1769–1826). Likewise, the most popular grip plate, CCS 3 (Figure 7), has a known use of over 110 years (1768–1880), and one of the most frequently found grips, CCS 4 (Figure 5), has an even longer spread of over 130 years (1743–1880).
Urns also demonstrate a long use-life when assemblages that extend the date range beyond that of Spitalfields are included (Loe and Boston, this volume). Examples include grip plate CCS 14 (1824–1847) and breastplate CCS 6 (1783–1852, Figure 7), but surprisingly few of the 65 designs from Spitalfields incorporated urns at all, indicating resistance to using this motif widely. Moreover, the retention of mortality symbols on coffin furniture well into the nineteenth century, albeit as minor symbols, such as on grip plate CCS 33 (1806–1828) and breastplates CCS 6 (1783–1852; Figure 7) and CCS 43 (1793–1797), when mortality symbols had disappeared from Potton memorials by the 1720s (Figure 1), reveals the tendency to retain what would be anachronistic symbols on mortuary monuments.
The conservatism in coffin furniture cannot be explained by lack of competition in the production of the items as many small manufacturers of a variety of metal items included coffin furniture in their repertoires (Church and Smith, 1966). These manufacturers did not sell direct to consumers, but to undertakers, and it is they who would seem to be the conservative brake on fashion change, whereas the customers interacting with monumental masons actively engaged with changing fashions in memorials. The explanation must partly be therefore the conservatism of undertakers, possibly because of their dominant position in controlling choice while interacting with consumers weakened in their bargaining power by grief. It may be argued that the bereaved preferred traditional designs over innovations in coffin or fitting designs in order that the funeral should appear seemly, but the use of non-matching sets (even grips were not always of the same design) suggests that the undertaker had much discretion and the bereaved were not intimately involved in the detail.
Monuments, chosen later in the grieving process, were not subject to this inequality between consumer and coffin producer. The stages of the grieving process as defined by Kübler-Ross (1969) are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Although the length of time and, indeed, the linearity of these stages is far from uniform and disputed (Maciejewski et al., 2007) and may indeed have been different in the cultural setting of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, studies in recent times indicate that at the time of decisions regarding the funeral the bereaved would normally be in one of the first two stages, and most would have largely come to terms with the death by the eighth month (Hardt, 1979) or even by six months (Maciejewski et al., 2007), both well before memorials were normally chosen.
The controlling position of the undertaker was undoubtedly easier to maintain because of the rapid disappearance of the choices made beneath the ground as the deceased was interred. This disappearance meant that the old-fashioned styles could not be compared and commented upon at leisure at a later date or at the time by those not so affected by grief, which would be the case with memorials in their public space of the graveyard or cemetery.
## Conclusions
The patterns revealed on coffin fittings and mortuary monuments show a disparity in the rates of stylistic change and in the variety of choices available. In both sets of data there is at one level a bewildering diversity of options in particular elements and their combination. On closer examination, however, there was a steady increase in the significant options available in the case of memorials (with aspects not discussed here including lettering styles and content of inscriptions, including epitaphs, trade and craft motifs, and other revival styles such as Egyptian and Romanesque, all more or less absent from coffin fittings). Moreover, these options were subject to limited periods of popularity. By considering the basic trends of the cherubs and urns, which can be quantified, and noting the different application of the Gothic revival in qualitative terms, it is clear that coffin furniture lagged behind in the popularity of monument styles, on the one hand, and retained older motifs for longer, on the other.
The coffin decorations—with regard to both upholstery pin designs and the various fittings—are open to very little change over long periods of time. Cherubs are dominant, whereas urns and other classical motifs have a subsidiary, although significant, role by the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Once introduced to the repertoire, there was little change in form. Not only were the motifs fixed, but in many features such as the grips, exactly the same design lasted a century. Although this lack of change could be ascribed to the mass-produced nature of these items, one would expect a more varied output and changes to the designs over time even with mass production. Although the upholstery pin designs are quite varied, this differentiation is again over a long period of time, with most being designs subsumed within three broad groupings. The later coffins from other sites do not suggest greater innovation as the nineteenth century proceeds, although the pattern books of the late nineteenth century suggest a significant shift to a different repertoire that then once more is remarkably stable through much of the first part of the twentieth century (Mytum, 2016).
Memorials, on the other hand, show enormous variation at the small-scale level and frequent and widespread changes in the popularity of shapes and design motifs over time. These trends vary from one part of the country to another (as may the use of coffin fittings and upholstery pin designs if we had enough well-preserved and dated examples outside London), but even so there is no doubt that this arena of material culture production and use was much more vibrant than that for coffins.
The explanation for the different degrees of variation and stylistic change in the two sets of mortuary material reflects the different contexts of choice in which the material is selected. In the case of the coffins, the undertakers are dominant, dealing at short notice with relatives in a state of shock, emotionally distracted and unable to greatly influence details of style. The memorial, however, is erected significantly later when the full implications of the death can be considered and the way in which memorialization and commemoration should take place can be contemplated. Here the family of the deceased has an active and powerful role in negotiating the type of memorial required; the supplier is not dominant.
The dynamics that lead to change in a consumer society can thus be seen to be driven by the interaction of consumer and producer; where that interaction is small, as with the coffin where the undertaker is dominant, the dynamics are not stimulated, and change is slow and limited. This controlling resistance to change is assisted by the limited temporal and social visibility of this category of material culture prior to burial. On the other hand, the memorial is chosen later (when the bereaved is in a more resilient state) and for a purpose of public display. In this context consumer choice is more active in creating the demand for stylistic change and a more powerful force in relation to the producer to ensure that a socially, culturally, and emotionally satisfactory monument, appropriate for its time, is erected. The nature and rate of stylistic change within a market economy can thus be shown to require sufficient power not only on the part of the producer but also the consumer, and it is this dynamic that stimulates change.
## References
Benes, P. 1977. _The Masks of Orthodoxy: Folk Gravestone Carving in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1689–1805._ Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Boston, C., A. Boyle, G. Gill, and A. Witkin. 2009. _Archaeological Recording at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury._ Oxford Archaeology Monograph 8. Oxford: Oxford Archaeological Unit.
Boyle, A. 2004. What Price Compromise? Archaeological Investigations at St. Bartholemew's Church, Penn, Wolverhampton. _Church Archaeology,_ 5/6:69–79.
Boyle, A., C. Boston, and A. Witkin. 2005. _The Archaeological Experience at St. Luke's Church, Old Street, Islington._ Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Burgess, F. 1963. _English Churchyard Memorials._ London: SPCK.
Brooks, C. 1989. _Mortal Remains: The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery._ Exeter: Wheaton Publishers.
Buckham, S., 1999. " 'The Men That Worked for England They Have Their Graves at Home.' Consumerist Issues within the Production and Purchase of Gravestones in Victorian York." In _The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Britain 1550–1950,_ ed. S. Tarlow and S. West, pp. 199–214. London: Routledge.
Cannon, A. 1989. The Historical Dimension in Mortuary Expressions of Status and Sentiment. _Current Anthropology_ 30(4):437–458.
Church, R. A., and B. M. D. Smith. 1966. Competition and Monopoly in the Coffin Furniture Industry. _Economic History Review,_ 19:612–641.
Cunnington, P., and C. Lucas. 1972. _Costume for Births, Marriages and Deaths._ London: Adam and Charles Black.
Curl, J. S. 1972. _The Victorian Celebration of Death._ Newton Abbot, UK: David and Charles.
Deetz, J. F., and E. Dethlefsen. 1967. Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow. _Natural History,_ 76(3):29–37.
Hancox, H. 2006. "Coffins and Coffin Furniture." In _St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001,_ ed. M. Brickley and S. Buteux, pp. 152–160. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Hardt, D. V. 1979. An Investigation of the Stages of Bereavement. _Omega Journal of Death and Dying,_ 9(3):279–285.
Hill, J. D., and S. Mays. 1987. _Dead Men Don't Tell Tales? A Graveyard Project for Schools._ Archaeology and Education Project Report 5. Southampton, UK: University of Southampton.
Litten, J. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral since 1450._ London: Robert Hale.
Kübler-Ross, E. 1969. _On Death and Dying._ London: Collier-Macmillan.
Maciejewski, P. K., B. Zhang, S. D. Block, and H. G. Prigerson. 2007. An Empirical Examination of the Stage Theory of Grief. _Journal of the American Medical Association,_ 297(1):716–723.
Miles, A. 1993. _St. Saviours Burial Ground, Redcross Way London Borough of Southwark: An Archaeological Excavation._ London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Morley, J. 1971. _Death, Heaven and the Victorians._ London: Studio Vista.
Mullins, P. R. 2004. Ideology, Power, and Capitalism: The Historical Archaeology of Consumption. In _A Companion to Social Archaeology,_ ed. L. Meskell and R. W. Preucel, pp. 195–211. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mytum, H. 1988. A Newly Discovered Burial Vault in North Dalton Church, North Humberside. _Post-Medieval Archaeology,_ 22:183–187.
Mytum, H. 1993. Kellington Church. _Current Archaeology_ 133:15–17.
Mytum, H. 2000. _Recording and Analysing Graveyards._ Practical Handbook 15. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Mytum, H. 2002. A Comparison of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Anglican and Nonconformist Memorials in North Pembrokeshire. _Archaeological Journal,_ 159:194–241.
Mytum, H. 2004a. Artefact Biography as an Approach to Material Culture: Irish Gravestones as a Material Form of Genealogy. _Journal of Irish Archaeology,_ 12/13:111–127.
Mytum, H. 2004b. _Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period._ New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Mytum, H. 2004c. "Rural Burial and Remembrance: Changing Landscapes of Commemoration." In _The Archaeology of Industrialization,_ ed. D. Barker and D. Cranstone, pp. 223–240. Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Monograph 2 Leeds: Maney Publishing.
Mytum, H. 2006. Popular Attitudes to Memory, the Body, and Social Identity: The Rise of External Commemoration in Britain, Ireland, and New England. _Post-Medieval Archaeology,_ 40(1):96–110.
Mytum, H. 2009. "Mortality Symbols in Action: Protestant and Catholic Early 18thcentury West Ulster. " _Historical Archaeology_ 42(1):160–182.
Mytum, H. 2016. "The Artefacts of Mortuary Practice: Industrialisation, Choice, and the Individual." In _Nineteenth-Century Material Culture Studies from Britain.,_ ed. A. Brooks, pp. 274–304. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Mytum, H., and K. Chapman. 2006. The Origin of the Graveyard Headstone: Some 17th-Century Examples in Bedfordshire. _Church Archaeology,_ 7–9:67–78.
Plume, S. n.d. _Coffins & Coffin Making._ London: Undertakers' Journal.
Portfolio of original anonymous drawings of coffin fittings with prices. Undated but specimen date on drawings is 1826. V&A EL1826. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Reeve, J., and M. Adams. 1993. _The Spitalfields Project._ Volume 1: _The Archaeology: Across the Styx._ CBA Research Report 85. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Tarlow, S. 1999. _Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality._ Oxford: Blackwell.
Taylor, L. 1983. _Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History._ London: Allen & Unwin.
Willsher, B. 1985. _Understanding Scottish Graveyards: An Interpretative Approach._ Edinburgh: Council for British Archaeology Scotland.
# Material Culture and Classification
# CHAPTER 6
# Remember Man Thou Art Dust: A Retrospective on North American Hardware Traditions
_Michael Trinkley and Debi Hacker_
In 1984 an opportunity arose to examine a collection of late nineteenth-century coffin hardware and trimmings long forgotten at the A. L. Calhoun General Store in Clio, South Carolina, coupled with some early to mid-twentieth-century hardware and catalogs at the Sumter Casket Company in Sumter, South Carolina. Following these discoveries, catalogs ranging in dates from 1865 through 1966 were examined during a brief visit to the National Foundation of Funeral Service in Evanston, Illinois. Our resulting publication was largely descriptive, although we did attempt to relate the collections to the overall economic patterns of rural South Carolina (Hacker-Norton and Trinkley, 1984).
The Calhoun General Store collection evidenced some "stylistic lag," as we called it, containing examples of hardware that predated the store's opening in 1896 by perhaps as much as two decades. We acknowledged that it was impossible to determine if the out-of-style items in the general store were the result of Calhoun's idiosyncratic buying habits or if the antiquated styles were the result of the rural, impoverished nature of Marion County. We found it difficult, although we thought not impossible, to quantify the prevailing cultural and economic biases.
We suggested that there was a shift from the swing bail to the two-lug short bar handles around 1880 and that by 1912 the extension handles were gaining popularity. We offered similar temporal suggestions for studs, escutcheons, thumbscrews, caplifters, hinges, and related items. We also, somewhat naively, attempted to document costs and relate those costs to social status, noting that coffin hardware might reflect either "real" or "apparent" status. Distinguishing between the two might prove difficult.
Finally, remembering that our study was prepared over 30 years ago, we were also able to identify artifacts that colleagues of that time were listing as unknown, such as caplifters. And we were able to explain the "plaques" found in the thoracic region of burial. We also suggested that a more thorough knowledge of coffin hardware might help archaeologists charged with burial removals.
We were criticized—justifiably so—for overreaching, for attempting to do too much with too little. For example, Edward Bell (1987:16, 1990:55) discounts efforts to derive economic data from coffin hardware, suggesting that the "complexity of behaviors, beliefs, and material culture" are too great. Even Bell, however, comments that his Uxbridge almshouse coffin hardware was "unremarkable" and that the "minimal nature of the burials is a clear testimony of the status accorded the poor" (Bell, 1987:151), indicating some socioeconomic observations based on hardware may be possible.
A number of researchers have expanded on, refined, and vastly improved our original research. Mentioning just a very few—and intending no slight to those not included—Pat Garrow used his research at the Nancy Creek Primitive Baptist Church in Georgia to assign broad dates: swing bails were used from the 1870s to shortly after 1900; short bar handles begin replacing swing bails about 1900, and extended bar handles were noted to be a late addition (Garrow, 1987:16–17). Barbara Little and her colleagues suggested that mortuary display might be used to support a desired status, especially in the postbellum when the South's social structure was destabilized (Little et al., 1992:418–419). But perhaps most interesting is the exceptional work conducted by James Davidson (1999a, 1999b) at the Freedman's Cemetery in Dallas, Texas. Davidson went beyond simple handle styles to examine the specific embossed design motifs in order to provide very specific dating of over 1,000 burials. Using hardware catalogs and patent information, he was able to match perhaps 75% of the recovered hardware to a specific manufacturer, an incredible feat. This work was expanded and refined by Davidson (2004) in his dissertation. He also calculates wholesale costs of the hardware and coffin, using the data to document "wealth expended on a mortuary display within the Beautification of Death movement." Although a laborious process, he demonstrates that hardware can be used successfully to document change over time and offer insights on the display of wealth.
Our own research has gone down very similar paths, with very similar results. We have not focused on design motifs—a process that, however, successful is unlikely to be widely duplicated simply because of the extraordinary labor involved. We believe that the simple form of the hardware, harkening back to our original study and Pat Garrow's projections, can be used to provide a broad temporal framework. Although offering far less precision than design motifs, the form can still help to broadly date collections and burials, providing immediate assistance to coroners, medical examiners, and archaeologists faced with small collections and limited budgets.
## Coffin Hardware Catalogs and a Dating Framework
When a series of 15 coffin hardware catalogs (Table 1), dating from 1875 to 1952, are examined and the handles are classified as ring bail/other (i.e., stationary), swing bail, short bar, or extension bar (Figure 1), we can see that there are relatively well defined periods of commercial availability (Figure 2A). Ring bails likely predate the mid-nineteenth century and may reflect a late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century style from England. Swing bails, however, are a dominant style to about 1880, although clearly there were companies that continued to offer—even rely—on the public's acceptance of this style into the early twentieth century (confusing this, however, is the late use of this style on infant coffins). Although short bar handles were offered by at least 1869, they really do not appear to have made much of an impression on wholesalers until about 1880 (replacing swing bails). Extension handles were offered by a few companies as early as 1877–1880 but do not appear to have made much of an impact and disappeared from catalogs for about 20 years until reintroduced in the first decade of the twentieth century. Even then, however, they do not appear to have been particularly popular until about 1920. These results are shown graphically as a more conventional seriation in Figure 2B.
Table 1. Coffin catalogs used to provide data for Figure 1.
Date | Company | Location
---|---|---
1875 | Cincinnati Coffin Co. | Cincinnati, Ohio
1881 | Cincinnati Coffin Co. | Cincinnati, Ohio
1882 | Cleveland Burial Case Co. | Cleveland, Ohio
1900 | Peerman Burial Co. | Richmond, Virginia
1903 | National Casket Co. | Albany, New York
1911 | Milwaukee Casket Co. | Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1913 | National Casket Co. | Albany, New York
1916 | United States Casket Co. | Scottsdale, Pennsylvania
1918 | Atlantic Coffin & Casket Co. | Rose Hill, North Carolina
1922 | Des Moines Casket Co. | Des Moines, Iowa
1927 | Bristol Manufacturing Co. | Bristol, Vermont
1930 | National Casket Co. | Albany, New York
1934 | John Marsellus Casket Co. | Syracuse, New York
1936 | Boyertown Burial Casket Co. | Boyertown, Pennsylvania
1952 | Boyertown Burial Casket Co. | Boyertown, Pennsylvania
FIGURE 1. Handle types from 15 coffin hardware catalogs, dating from 1875 to 1952.
Although these data can certainly be refined, we believe that they offer important general information to a broad range of researchers who simply do not have the collections or time to conduct more exhaustive research. Of course, wholesale availability does not necessarily translate into popular acceptance, especially in areas where there may be considerable conservativism. This potential divergence between catalog repertoire and consumer choice may be illustrated by the three McClung samples from 1891, ca. 1905, and ca. 1912. In each case the catalog illustrates styles that, judging by other catalogs, have already waned in popularity. What is not clear, of course, is why these styles were being offered by McClung and whether they were actually being purchased and used by the public.
FIGURE 2. (A) Periods of commercial availability of handle types and periods of popularity of no coffin handles; black = short bar, mid-gray = no handles, pale gray = extension bar. (B) Seriation of coffin handles.
Another way of examining the data is to look at widely available coffin catalogs to determine the hardware styles used by the manufacturers. Of course, it is important to realize that many coffins were being offered to undertakers without any trimmings, allowing the shell to be purchased separately, and these are frequently illustrated in the catalogs. Moreover, although it seems reasonable that manufacturers would illustrate their wares with the most modern trimmings, this fashionability was perhaps tempered by their equal desire to provide the public with what was popular, regardless of how recently introduced the item might be.
In spite of a substantial collection of coffin catalogs many could not be used since they lacked reliable dating (being identified only as a number or letter), leaving a very small sample of only 15 that we could incorporate in this study. These suggest that during the nineteenth century coffin manufacturers tended to offer their wares without hardware, allowing the local undertaker or furniture dealer to trim the coffin directly. With just a couple of anomalies, by the twentieth century coffin manufacturers began to at least illustrate their wares with "tasteful" trimmings (some casket manufacturers even began producing their own hardware). And again, excepting two catalogs, the prevalence of extension bar handles rises dramatically; by the 1930s they are almost the only style being illustrated.
Thus, although the hardware catalogs continued to offer the short bar (and even swing bails) into the last half of the twentieth century, the coffin manufacturers themselves were rapidly focusing on the new and improved hardware to sell their products.
## Funeral Home Records
Another source of data is funeral home records. Davidson was very fortunate to have a variety of detailed records at his disposal in Dallas. Most of us are not so fortunate, and these records are incredibly scarce. For South Carolina we have been able to identify only three sets—those of the J. M. Connelley Funeral Home in Charleston, South Carolina, spanning 1889–1897; those of the McDougald Funeral Home in Anderson, South Carolina, spanning 1934–1952; and those of the J. W. McCormick Funeral Home in Columbia, South Carolina, spanning 1906–1915 (Trinkley and Hacker, 2004). Unfortunately, the Connelley and McDougald records were transcribed only for their genealogical information and contain no data on burial costs or items purchased. The McCormick records are more fully transcribed and the 10-year period includes 2,101 individuals once those from the South Carolina Penitentiary and South Carolina State Hospital for the Insane are both removed. Only 44 (just 2%) of these are identified as African Americans, so we will discount these as well. That leaves 1,829 burials with costs. Of these, only seven have any details concerning handle hardware, and they are entirely descriptive. None provide style numbers, and only two provide pricing. The only other hardware mentioned is a single plate, with engraving, priced at $1.00.
Thus, the South Carolina data do not offer nearly the precision that Davidson had at the Freedman's Cemetery in Dallas. Nevertheless, we can gain some insights. For example, the average coffin cost was $64.23 (equivalent to $1,578 in 2017, and the mode was $70.00 ($1,720 in 2017), with a range from $4.00 to $600.00 ($98 to $14,745 in 2017). These prices take on greater meaning when we realize that the average family income in 1914 was only about $627 ($15,409 in 2017). The distribution of coffin purchases by price provides a bell curve suggesting a demand curve in simple microeconomics, but with many intervening prices that do not cleanly fit (Figure 3A), although a different graphic presentation is more revealing, helping to identify McCormick Funeral Home's four seemingly well-defined price points, each corresponding to relatively high demand (Figure 3B). Of the coffins priced at $20 or under (332 in all), 29 were for stillborns, with coffins ranging from $5.00 to $15.00 (average was $8.29, and the modal price was $8.00). An additional 94 were for children (on the basis of sizes under 5/0 and/or other features). Thus, of the 332 coffins in the least expensive range, 221 (67%) were for infants and children, accounting for the inexpensive price points. Only 50 (15%) can definitively be considered adult (on the basis of size).
The proportion of children's coffins displayed by price range reveals that more than $45 was rarely spent on a child's coffin and that there are two clearly defined price point ranges: $20 or less and $31–$35 (Figure 4A). Mortality rates for South Carolina children during this time period are difficult to find, but we do know that 37% of the deaths in Charleston (the only reporting city in South Carolina) were of children under the age of 15. The high child mortality rate (estimated at a rate of about 110; Haines, 1998) may have been reason enough to limit the cost of children's coffins. The costs were also limited by size, construction, and materials used.
FIGURE 3. Coffin costs based on catalog data. (A) Frequency of coffin choices at various prices. (B) Demand for coffins indicating the four price points (A–D) defined by the McCormick Funeral Home.
Although the McCormick data allow us to sample socioeconomic issues only among whites, we note that the average cost of coffins for males (using a random sample of 50) is $88, compared to $70 for females. This is not a dramatic difference; moreover, the standard deviation for the coffin prices for males is $73, whereas for females it is only $44, perhaps suggestive of much greater status variation among Columbia area males than females. Differences in coffin styles are far less noticeable. Black coffins were used only for men, and white coffins were not quite twice as common among females. Silver or silver-gray coffins were used nearly equally for both males and females. And although pink was used only for females, plushette was found to be used only for males.
The McCormick records provide a few other details. For example, of the 1,829 itemized coffins, 1,520 (83%) included boxes, suggesting that, at least in this market, archaeologists can expect to find evidence of boxes in the burials. In contrast, only 158 (3%) were sold with vaults. Of those sold with vaults, only nine (6%) were also sold with a box. This difference suggests that boxes were seen as a substitute, albeit a poor one, for a vault. This is borne out by coffin costs. The average cost with vaults was $138.28, compared to an average cost of only $57.27 without a vault.
FIGURE 4. McCormick Funeral Home price data. (A) Proportion of children's coffins by price range. (B) Body "preparation" costs.
Where the vault material was identified, it was consistently slate, ranging in price from $30 to $50 (although $50 was the norm). Where the material was not identified, costs ranged from $5 to $50. Vaults in the $30 to $50 range may also have been slate and, if so, only two (costing $5 and $10) are left. These prices are so low that they may refer only to "lined graves"—graves that had boards placed in them to hold back the soil and create a temporary vault. There are several brick vaults mentioned but never with a burial where the coffin cost was identified. Where they occur, costs range from $25 to $40 and likely represent laid brick linings. These prices seem to be generally in keeping with the few cemetery publications where such work is listed.
One last observation is worth making before leaving the McCormick Funeral Home data. During this period only 729 of the bodies with identified coffin prices were "preserved" or embalmed (about 40%). The conventional wisdom (see, for example, Laderman, 2003:6) is that acceptance of embalming spread rapidly—a view that is certainly not supported by the McCormick data. Although dating at least to the Civil War, five decades later just two-fifths of McCormick's clientele were selecting this service. It may be that some of this resistance (if there was resistance, as opposed to simple poverty that precluded widespread acceptance) was founded on the Protestant belief that embalming mutilated the body and rendered it adulterated, potentially affecting its ultimate resurrection (Habenstein and Lamers, 1955:336; Laderman, 1996:53–54). Regardless, the highest embalming cost was $25, paid for 30 individuals (five of whom were being shipped). With an average cost of $14.87, the vast majority of the 729 bodies received "preparation" costing only $15 (Figure 4B). Where embalming was paid for, the average coffin cost was $91.03, nearly 1.5 times the overall average coffin cost. Moreover, 102 of the 158 (64%) vaults are found with embalmed remains, suggesting a strong correlation.
These data may be compared to very similar records we have identified from Pennsylvania, dating between 1910 and 1918. Although the sample consists of only 81 burials with priced coffins, the average coffin price was $59.92, with a modal value of $65 and a range from $5 to $165. These figures are very similar to McCormick's data, although we do not have the high-end coffins. Of the 81 coffins, 24 were also sold with boxes (30%), far less than for McCormick.
Nineteen of the coffins were sold with vaults. Seven (37%) were clearly identified as planks or lining, with costs of $1 to $10. Eight were slate, ranging in price from $26 to $36. One, for only $40, was steel. One was brick ($3.75), and one was stone. As with McCormick, the vaults are found with more expensive coffins (the average coffin price with a vault was $81.53; without was $53.75).
Embalming was performed on 57 of the bodies (70% of the total), presenting starkly different data than Columbia. In addition, the cost varied from $2 to $10, with a mean of $5.64, reflecting only a third the cost of McCormick. Embalming, however, was still associated with higher prices paid for coffins (average of $70.97 with embalming but only $37.81 without).
These differences suggest that we may see significant regional variation. Of course, this was observed by Quincy Dowd in his 1921 examination of the funeral industry. Speaking of arterial injection, he noted, "in the South it is little practiced as yet, not at all with colored people" (Dowd, 1921:52).
## Coffin Hardware Costs
Turning briefly to the issue of hardware costs, Davidson has been able, with enough catalogs and adequate time, to identify specific hardware and assign specific wholesale costs, allowing very accurate costs to be determined for individual burials. It seems regrettably unlikely that this approach will be widely adapted, especially for small, marginally funded projects. But is there an alternative? We have examined hardware costs for swing bail, short bar, and extension handles, using both period costs and costs standardized to 2005 dollars.
The period costs for swing bail and short bar handles increase only modestly over the nearly 100-year period (Figure 5), and if the period costs are converted to 2005 dollars, the trend is almost stagnant. Of course, there are differences between manufacturers and wholesalers. For example, for whatever reason the 1918 prices by Simmons appear significantly out of line, although we have no close comparisons, and this may reflect the 18% inflation rate caused by World War I. If the catalog was issued late in the year (post-September, perhaps), then the death rate from the influenza pandemic may also have played a role. In addition, many of the distributors offered a wide range in styles and finishes, resulting in the ability to distinguish individual coffins through the use of more expensive hardware, significantly above the overall cost average. This opportunity to elaborate, at least for swing bails, appears to decline into the twentieth century.
FIGURE 5. Coffin hardware prices, 1865–1959, based on catalogs. (A) Swing bail handle. (B) Short bar handle.
Extension bar costs suggest a very different pricing mechanism. Using period costs, the trend prices appear clearly stagnant, whereas the 2005 prices reveal that the costs actually declined as the new style became more firmly entrenched. There remained throughout, however, considerable price variation that allowed families to upgrade the hardware. Curiously, coffin plates exhibit the most noticeable increase in price, whether period or standardized 2005 prices are examined. In addition, plates offered the greatest opportunity for either savings or display by families (Figure 6).
These data, although preliminary and clearly needing larger samples, suggest several conclusions and support the observations of Bryan's 1917 handbook for funeral directors in which he outlines how to match the value of hardware to that of the casket. Arguing that the funeral director is "justly entitled to liberal compensation" and a "legitimate profit," he provided a series of tables that sought to outline the appropriate value of hardware associated with each coffin. He also offered a series of pithy adages, such as "cheap handles to carry a heavy body is poor economy," "your customer will be better pleased to have paid more and had the casket well-trimmed," "proper trimming is more essential for appropriateness than the casket," and "many of the wealthiest class want the least pretentious yet want the Best" (Bryan, 1917). Clearly, the hardware manufacturers were heeding this advice and providing undertakers with a wide variety and cost. This variability in product and price suggests that the level of detail in analysis espoused by Davidson is virtually essential. Very simple analyses will offer only the most basic information. For example, swing bails are typically less costly than short bars, and short bars in turn are less costly than extension handles. Further, a casket with four handles will likely have less hardware costs than a casket with six similar handles. Thus, very simple economic observations may be possible, but they may offer relatively little assistance. Of course, even Davidson's careful attention to design motifs may not provide assistance to determine if the handle tips were silver chased or gold tipped, if bars were crystallized or oxidized, or if they were nontarnish copper-brass or had a top plated finish, all of which could result in a substantial difference in wholesale cost.
FIGURE 6. Coffin hardware prices, 1865–1959, based on catalogs. (A) Extension bar. (B) Coffin plates.
These data suggest that coffin plates may be among the most cost sensitive items, although, again, variation is considerable and analysis must go beyond simple pattern identification. What is interesting to us is how—or perhaps why—these plates not only lasted so long but also had such variability. Even Bryan (1917) observed that "to inform your patrons that the price (on a high-grade casket) includes a solid silver plate stamps value on the entire outfit." Perhaps we are seeing the height of luxury?
Throughout all of these discussions it is important to remember that we—like Davidson—are using wholesale costs, which may have little resemblance to the price actually paid by the consumer. Dowd notes that retail prices on caskets could be 5–10 times the wholesale cost (Dowd, 1921:15). In addition, he observes that a large proportion of the undertakers carried little or no stock, virtually eliminating their overhead costs. Certainly, both coffin and hardware wholesalers promoted this approach through liberal terms and quick shipments. Our own examination of the McCormick Funeral Home records reveals markups beginning at 150% on the wholesale cost. Stillborn coffins that manufacturers sold for 75¢ to 90¢, McCormick was selling for $7 to $10. Coffins being sold for $3.75 to $5.25, McCormick was retailing for $20 to $25. Even considering freight, these prices represent a very hefty profit margin on death.
Thus, when we examine coffin hardware from a burial, wholesale costs may provide a standardized approach, but they fail to truly represent the cost to the consumer or the family's public display to the community.
## Conclusions
Our retrospective reveals the value and potential of the research. Although not prepared to dismiss the potential for this research to provide significant insight into status and economic display, we are also more cautious in the mechanics and approach. We hope that there will be a renewed interest in—at the very least—more carefully documenting the coffins and hardware resulting from relocation projects.
## References
Bell, E. L. 1987. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior at a Nineteenth-Century Almshouse Burial Ground. M.A. thesis, Boston University, Boston.
Bell, E. L. 1990. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. _Historical Archaeology,_ 24(3):54–78.
Bryan, H. C. 1917. _The Funeral Director's Guide._ Pittsburg: McMillen Printing.
Davidson, J. M. 1999a. Freeman's Cemetery (1869–1907): A Chronological Reconstruction of an Excavated African-American Burial Ground, Dallas, Texas. M.A. diss., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Davidson, J. M. 1999b. Freeman's Cemetery (1869–1907): Establishing a Chronology for Exhumed Burials from an African-American Burial Ground, Dallas, Texas. _African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter,_ 6(4): Article 5. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan/vol6/iss4/5 (accessed 28 November 2017).
Davidson, J. M. 2004. Mediating Race and Class through the Death Experience: Power Relations and Resistance Strategies of an African-American Community, Dallas, Texas (1869–1907). Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, Austin.
Dowd, Q. L. 1921. _Funeral Management and Costs: A World-Survey of Burial and Cremation._ Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Garrow, P. 1987. "A Preliminary Seriation of Coffin Hardware Forms in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Georgia." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern States Archaeological Federation, Charleston, S.C.
Habenstein, R. W., and W. M. Lamers. 1955. _The History of American Funeral Directing._ Milwaukee, Wis.: Bulfin Printers.
Hacker-Norton, D., and M. Trinkley. 1984. _Remember Man Thou Art Dust: Coffin Hardware of the Early Twentieth Century._ Research Series 2. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
Haines, M. R. 1998. "The Relationship between Infant and Child Mortality and Fertility: Some Historical and Contemporary Evidence for the United States." In _From Death to Birth: Mortality Decline and Reproductive Change,_ ed. M. R. Montgomery and B. Cohen, pp. 227–253. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Laderman, G. 1996. _The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes toward Death, 1799–1883._ New Haven: Yale University Press.
Laderman, G. 2003. _Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth Century America._ New York: Oxford University Press.
Little, B. J., K. M. Lamphear, and D. W. Owsley. 1990. Mortuary Display and Status in a Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Cemetery in Manassas, Virginia. _American Antiquity,_ 57:397–418.
Trinkley, M., and D. Hacker. 2004. _McCormick Funeral Records, Vols. 2–8, April 1906 through June 1915._ Research Contribution 395. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
# CHAPTER 7
# A Preliminary Seriation of Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Georgia: Thirty Years Later
_Patrick H. Garrow_
Thirty years ago I proposed a preliminary seriation of coffin hardware types found in historic cemeteries in Georgia (Garrow, 1987). That seriation was based on archaeological investigations and observations from two cemeteries, one from the metropolitan Atlanta area (Garrow et al., 1985) and the other from a rural cemetery in Talbot County, Georgia (Garrow and Symes, 1987). Both cemeteries were studied by what was then Garrow & Associates. I subsequently studied two large cemeteries and use them in this paper to update the 1987 seriation.
## The Study Cemeteries
Hopewell Baptist Church was investigated from 1988 to 1991. That cemetery was located in an Atlanta suburb, where 220 graves were moved as the result of civil litigation. An overview of the investigations was presented at the 1992 Society for Historical Archaeology in Jamaica (Garrow, 1992), but detailed grave data were available only in the unpublished field forms prior to the current paper. The Edwards-Attaway cemetery was investigated in 1994, and data from the 63 graves moved from that cemetery have been reported in a limited-distribution contract report (Garrow and Jones, 1996).
The metropolitan Atlanta cemetery was a portion of the Nancy Creek Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery that faced adverse impacts from construction of a proposed Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority rail line. Fifty-six graves were investigated under that project, of which 16 could be identified by individual on the basis of inscribed headstones or other data. The graves of all of the identified individuals were fully removed by a burial removal company, with no archaeological or forensic study. Scaled drawings of selected hardware from those graves were prepared, however, and notes were taken concerning the contents of the graves. Nine of the remaining 40 graves were removed through archaeological excavation and were fully recorded, whereas limited study was allowed on the 31 graves not included in the archaeological sample (Garrow et al., 1985:1). The grave removal protocols employed at the Nancy Creek Cemetery were certainly less than ideal but were dictated by the project memorandum of agreement (MOA) and the research design prepared to address the MOA (Symes and Garrow, 1984).
The rural Talbot County cemetery was excavated as a result of emergency discovery during construction of a state park. That cemetery contained six surviving graves that had been almost completely graded away. Only the coffin chambers remained of the graves when excavation began. Two of the six graves had been almost completely removed prior to arrival of the excavation team, and one of those was too badly damaged to include in the seriation study sample. The graves were thoroughly excavated and recorded, and the physical remains and artifacts were returned to the laboratory for study (Garrow and Symes, 1987).
## Dating Coffin Hardware Forms: 1987
Seven of the graves from the Nancy Creek cemetery could not be used in the seriation study. One of the dated graves contained a sealed concrete vault that could not be opened. One grave yielded a human bone, but no coffin outline was visible, and there was no associated hardware. Another grave was largely destroyed by the backhoe before it was identified, and four other graves could not even be positively identified as graves. The remaining 49 graves from Nancy Creek and the 5 useable graves from Talbot County spanned a time range from the 1850s to 1979. The 15 graves identified by individual at Nancy Creek where the coffins and hardware could be viewed provided crucial dating keys for the coffin forms and hardware those graves contained (Garrow et al., 1985).
Little published information was available about coffin hardware at the time of the Nancy Creek and Talbot County cemetery studies. Fortunately, the excellent studies by Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1984) and Trinkley and Hacker-Norton (1984) were available and provided the terminology for the coffin hardware forms discussed in the 1987 seriation article.
The seriation scheme proposed in the 1987 article was based primarily on changes in coffin handle shapes over time. Three basic handle types were described, and date ranges were proposed for each. The three described handle types, in the order of their historic appearance, were bail, short bar, and extended bar types.
Bail handles (Figure 1), originally defined by Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1984:9), were described as "composed of two lugs connected by bail swing arms and a bar" (Garrow, 1987:29). The bail handles included in the study sample were made of white metal and in some instances had been silver plated.
The second type of handle defined in the 1987 seriation was termed the "short bar" type (Figure 2). That type, also originally defined by Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1984:9), was composed of "two lugs, each with a swing or fixed arm, connected by a bar that contains metal tips added at each end" (Garrow, 1987:29). The most common form of short bar handle had white-metal lugs, swing arms, and finials, with a bar made of wood clad with rolled sheet zinc and finished with a fabric such as velvet. Short bar handles made entirely of white metal were found, but those appear to have been much less common than those with the zinc-clad wood and fabric bars. Short bar handles referred to as white-metal short bars in this paper refer to the early types made entirely of white metal or made with white-metal lugs, swing arms, and finials.
The third coffin handle type defined in the 1987 article was the extended bar type (Figure 3). This type of handle was made of iron in the single case from Nancy Creek. Extended bar handles, as originally defined by Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1984:7), were "similar to the short bar handle, but...can be long enough to extend the full length of the coffin" (Garrow, 1987:34).
FIGURE 1. Bail handle and thumbscrews, Talbot County cemetery (Garrow and Symes, 1987).
FIGURE 2. Short bar handle. Author's collection.
The burials that contained coffin handles from both Nancy Creek and Talbot County were dated using headstone dates, nail types used to make the coffins, patent dates from hardware, and dates assigned to associated artifacts. Those date ranges were then used to construct date ranges when the different coffin handle types were most commonly used. Table 1 illustrates the date ranges assigned for the graves with coffin handles from the study collection.
FIGURE 3. Coffin with long bar handles, Edwards-Attaway cemetery. Photo by author.
Garrow (1987:34) assigned date ranges to the bail handle types of "the 1870s to shortly after 1900," and "short bar handles appear to begin replacing bail types within the Nancy Creek cemetery around 1900." The short bar handles recovered from burial 229 were made of plated iron, whereas those from 212 were made of white metal and zinc-clad wood. A date range of ca. 1900 to ca. 1920 has been used by Garrow (1990), Garrow et al. (1994), Jones et al. (1995), and Garrow and Jones (1996), among others, to date short bar handles with white-metal lugs, arms, and finials with zinc-clad wooden bars, although that date range is not explicitly stated in the 1987 article.
Table 1. Chronological distribution of coffin handles by type (Garrow 1987:35). An X indicates a particular handle type was present; a dash (—) indicates it was absent.
Extended bar handles made of stamped and painted iron or aluminum appear to replace short bar types using white metal after 1920. The only extended bar type included in the 1987 artifact seriation dated to 1943. It is significant to note that the short bar handles found in the 1979 grave at Nancy Creek cemetery were made of aluminum (Garrow et al., 1985:29).
Additional coffin hardware types discussed by Garrow (1987) included coffin tacks or screws with white-metal heads, thumbscrews and escutcheons, glass viewing ports, upholstery items, coffin plates, caplifters, and ornamental metal objects. Coffin closures or fasteners made of iron were recovered from five graves. Tacks and screws with white-metal heads were thought to generally predate thumbscrews and escutcheons and were believed to be lid closure items. Thumbscrews and escutcheons were found with both bail and short bar handles, but not with the extended bar or the late (1979) short bar types (Garrow, 1987:35–41).
Garrow (1987) noted that the size and shape of glass viewing ports may have chronological value. He noted that the earlier ports "were oval and covered the face and parts of the upper torso. As time passed, the viewing ports appeared to get larger to the point they covered the upper half of the body." Glass viewing ports appear to have been used to the point that embalming became common, which would have been the early 1920s in the Atlanta area. It is important to note that the single grave that contained embalming fluid bottles dated to ca. 1921 and lacked a glass viewing port.
Garrow (1987:27) further noted that it was possible to assign very rough date ranges to graves on the basis of coffin shape. Blakely and Beck (1982:188) assigned a date of 1850 for the introduction of rectangular coffins. That date is probably far too early, however, as all of the rectangular coffins found at Nancy Creek and Talbot County appear to postdate the Civil War. Garrow assigned a transition date of the 1870s for hexagonal to rectangular coffins.
## The Hopewell Baptist Church Cemetery
Hopewell Baptist Church is located in Norcross, which is a suburb of Atlanta. The church is reportedly the oldest African American church in Gwinnett County and, according to church oral history, was founded immediately after the Civil War. It is believed that the founding date was ca. 1870, although no solid historical data support that assumption. Hopewell Baptist Church was the only black church in the county that accepted African Americans for burial until 20 to 30 years ago. The church grew from a membership of no more than 200–300 in the early 1980s to a congregation of almost 3,000 by the early 1990s. The minister responsible for the rapid growth of the congregation was from outside of Georgia, and few of the new members had ties to the old church or Norcross (Garrow, 1992:1).
The rapid growth of Hopewell soon required that the church's facilities be expanded, and plans for a new sanctuary building were prepared. The site chosen for the new building was the oldest part of the church cemetery. The church leadership claimed that 169 graves were moved from the cemetery to an adjacent tract called the "Memorial Garden" before construction began (Garrow, 1992:1). An injunction was filed to stop construction after a portion of the cemetery had been leveled and prepared for construction (Garrow, 1992:1). I was hired by an attorney who represented a woman whose husband was allegedly buried in the disturbed cemetery. I was appointed the court's expert as legal action proceeded and undertook investigations in the disturbed cemetery at the order of the Superior Court judge in charge of the case (Garrow, 1992:1).
Legal action in the Hopewell Baptist cemetery case extended from November 1988 to March 1991. It became clear early during that period that few graves had actually been moved, and most of the graves were intact beneath the construction site. Parts of nine individuals were found strewn around the surface of the construction site, and an additional 220 graves were moved from the construction site during February and March 1990 by a team that included the same burial removal firm that moved the Nancy Creek graves and archaeologists from Garrow & Associates. The methods used to move the graves were dictated by the Superior Court judge and were far from ideal for recovery of archaeological data. The remains, coffin hardware, and wood were shoveled out of the graves and into reinterment boxes by the burial removal firm. The Garrow & Associates archaeologists monitored the move and inventoried the contents of each grave to ensure each had been fully moved. Standard forms were used to capture as much physical data and information on the coffins and coffin hardware as possible before the remains were sealed in their reburial boxes. All remains were reburied the same day they were removed. The remains of the plaintiff's husband were found and positively identified during those investigations (Garrow, 1992:7–10).
## The Edwards-Attataway Cemetery
The Edwards-Attaway cemetery was located near Kennesaw, a suburb of Atlanta located north of the city. The cemetery was located in what had been rural Cobb County at the time of the interments and contained members of the Edwards, Attaway, and Kendrick families. Sixty-three graves were identified and moved from this cemetery, and each was excavated and recorded using archaeological methods. Bone preservation was generally quite poor, but physical data were collected as possible (Garrow and Jones, 1996).
The initial attempt to move the Edwards-Attaway cemetery to make way for a car dealership in October 1989 was terminated following a public protest. Litigation over the planned move followed between the developer and Cobb County, and the law under which the initial permit had been granted to move the cemetery was declared unconstitutional. The Abandoned Cemeteries and Burial Grounds Act (sections 36–72) was passed by the Georgia legislature to replace the old law in 1991, and the Edwards-Attaway move was the first relocation to be permitted under the new law. The developer filed suit questioning the constitutionality of the new law, and a group that believed they had relatives buried in the cemetery filed suit in an attempt to overturn approval of the disinterment/reinterment permit. The separate legal actions were settled by the spring of 1994. The graves were moved in October 1994 (Garrow and Jones, 1996:1–3). The disinterment/reinterment plan approved for the cemetery required that the grave contents be placed in their reburial boxes as soon as the graves were recorded; no off-site study of the artifacts or physical remains was allowed. The remains were kept in a secure warehouse until the last grave was removed, and all of the reinterments were made at a nearby cemetery (Garrow and Jones, 1996:5).
The graves excavated at the Edwards-Attaway cemetery spanned the period from ca. 1840 to 1948. Nine of the graves were marked with inscribed headstones that contained death dates. One other grave could be directly associated with Civil War battles in the immediate area and could be tightly dated. The tightly dateable graves thus ranged in age from 1864 to 1948 (Garrow and Jones, 1996).
## Dating Coffin Hardware Forms: 2007
Data recovered from both Hopewell Baptist Church and the Edwards-Attaway cemetery indicate that coffin shape is, indeed, an important dating key. Table 2 summarizes the data from hexagonal coffin forms at those cemeteries, as well as from Nancy Creek and Talbot County.
In addition to the hardware listed in Table 2, one hexagonal coffin from Edwards-Attaway decorated with handles, thumbscrews, and a glass viewing port also contained a caplifter. A second hexagonal coffin from the same cemetery that was otherwise unadorned contained 18 brass upholstery tacks. One set of slotted screws from Edwards-Attaway was made of brass, but all other slotted screws or tacks were made of white metal. The handles from both Hopewell and Edwards-Attaway were bail types.
The earliest date that could be confirmed for hexagonal coffins from the four cemeteries was 1855 from a dated grave at Nancy Creek (Garrow, 1897:28). All eight hexagonal coffins at Hopewell should date to 1870 or later (Garrow, 1992). One of the Edwards-Attaway hexagonal coffins contained what was believed to be the remains of a Civil War soldier since the cemetery was in what had been a battlefield during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, and the grave contained a double amputee and his surgically removed limbs. His amputated limbs were buried next to him in a rectangular box. Patent dates were found on escutcheons that had adorned two of the Edwards-Attaway hexagonal coffins, and those dates were 1878 and 1884. It is clear that the hexagonal shape lasted at least to 1884 at the Edwards-Attaway cemetery, and use of that coffin type overlapped with and was replaced by the rectangular forms (Garrow and Jones, 1996).
Table 2. Coffin hardware found on hexagonal coffins from all four cemeteries (Garrow, 1987:28; Garrow and Jones, 1996).
The balance of the coffins from all four cemeteries were, with a single exception, rectangular. The exception was a tapered form with a rounded end at the head found at Edwards-Attaway that contained an adult male who died on 18 May 1894 (Garrow and Jones, 1996:30). That coffin has been included with the rectangular forms for purposes of these analyses. The rectangular coffins, when adorned with hardware, often contained an array of items such as thumbscrews and escutcheons, caplifters, ornamental items of white metal or brass, glass viewing ports, and brass upholstery tacks. Slotted screws with white-metal heads were found on four rectangular coffins at Nancy Creek, four at Edwards-Attaway, and two at Hopewell. No other types of coffin hardware co-occurred with the white-metal-headed fasteners in any instance.
The number of handles used on a coffin varied by adult and infant/child graves, with children's coffins more often having just four handles. Coffins that contained handles appear to have contained four or six, with two or three to a side. Using only bail examples made of white metal or silver-plated white metal, one adult grave at Nancy Creek had four handles, whereas eight contained six. Five Hopewell graves had four white-metal or silver-plated bail handles versus 30 with six, and Edwards-Attaway had five of each. It is doubtful that the number of handles on a coffin, beyond simple presence or absence, means much in socioeconomic terms.
The coffin handle types observed on the rectangular coffins from all four cemeteries are summarized in Table 3. Two of the 21 (9.5%) rectangular coffins without handles at Nancy Creek contained adults, whereas 7 of the 19 (36.8%) rectangular coffins without handles contained adults at Edwards-Attaway. The highest relative percentage of adult burials in rectangular coffins without handles was at Hopewell, where 33 of the 80 (41.3%) graves without handles contained adults.
The age ranges reflected by the handle types on rectangular coffins from the four cemeteries is clarified by considering the material of manufacture of the handles. Table 4 presents those data. It should be noted that some graves at Hopewell contained more than one handle type. Nancy Creek yielded two graves that clearly postdated 1921, one from 1943 and the other from 1976. The extended bar handle came from the 1943 burial, whereas the aluminum short bar type came from the 1976 interment. The Talbot County interments dated to the early 1900s and earlier. The latest interment at Edwards-Attaway cemetery was placed there in 1948. There was a considerable gap between that interment and the next youngest marked grave (1915), and it is doubtful that there were interments during the intervening time period.
Table 3. Handle types on rectangular coffins by cemetery (Garrow, 1987:28; Garrow and Jones, 1996).
Table 4. Handle types and material of manufacture by cemetery (Garrow, 1987:28; Garrow and Jones, 1996).
The Hopewell Baptist Church cemetery appears to have been continuously used from ca. 1870 to the late 1980s. One grave that was moved and then encroached upon by construction had been buried no more than a year or so before construction began. Another factor encountered at Hopewell is that there were seven instances in which iron bail handles were found along with short bar handles with white-metal elements on the same rectangular coffin. The iron bail handles in those instance probably were functional handles fitted on shipping boxes, whereas the short bar handles were coffin adornments. The iron bail handles that were not used on shipping boxes, as well as the short bars made of iron, tin, or aluminum, probably postdate 1920 and represent a shift from cast white-metal forms to stamped iron or tin elements.
Glass viewing ports were found on coffins decorated with iron handles at Hopewell, which may indicate that embalming was a later introduction at Hopewell than at Edwards-Attaway or Nancy Creek. That observation is not surprising given the probable social and economic positions of those who used the Hopewell cemetery versus those who buried their dead at Nancy Creek and Edwards-Attaway.
The remaining coffin hardware found on coffins from the four cemeteries appears to have minimal value for close dating. Thumbscrews and escutcheons begin to replace slotted white-metal-head screws as coffin closures after the Civil War and disappear with the rise of professionally made coffins with closure mechanisms used to secure the lid. That replacement probably becomes general after ca. 1920. Caplifters are common elements on coffins that have glass viewing ports and are used to raise a cover that was placed over the glass viewing port. That element also largely disappears by ca. 1920. Coffin plates were common on pre-1920s coffins and expressed sentiments such as "At Rest," "Our Darling," "Rest in Peace," or the like. Coffin plates appear to have been cast in white metal prior to ca. 1920 and made of iron or even silver or silver plate after that time.
## Social Dimensions of Relative Grave Sizes
Prior to managed cemeteries and the excavation of graves with heavy equipment, graves were normally hand dug in two stages. The first stage consisted of the main shaft, which was excavated to the depth at which the gravedigger(s) wanted to place the top of the coffin. A coffin chamber the exact size and shape of the coffin was then excavated, which helped protect the coffin from the lateral movement of soils and collapse during backfilling. This method of excavation allows the exact size and shape of a coffin to be determined even after all of the coffin wood is gone (Garrow, 1989:19–21).
The manner in which most of the graves were removed at Nancy Creek and Hopewell made it difficult to record absolute grave sizes, and the grave shafts had been removed to the coffin chamber at Talbot County before excavation began. That said, field observations at Hopewell indicated that the grave shafts were only slightly larger than the coffin chambers. The shaft and coffin chamber sizes were recorded at Edwards-Attaway, and it was noted that most of the shafts were much larger than the coffin chambers. One extreme example, burial 52, had a shaft that measured 6.75 feet long by 2.75 feet wide and contained a coffin chamber that measured only 3.95 feet long by a maximum of 1.05 feet wide (Garrow and Jones, 1996:37). The relative differences in the grave shaft sizes between Edwards-Attaway and Hopewell can be attributed to the manner in which the graves were dug. The smaller entry shafts observed at Hopewell were probably the work of single paid gravediggers. The larger shafts at Edwards-Attaway suggest that more than one person worked on the grave at a time, which probably reflects those graves being dug by the family and friends of the deceased. The Hopewell cemetery was attached to a church, which could have dictated the way the graves were dug. Alternatively, the manner in which the graves were dug at Hopewell and Edwards-Attaway may reflect differential practices among African Americans and whites in the area around Atlanta prior to the rise of professionally managed burials by funeral homes. More research is obviously needed to address this question.
## The 2017 Seriation of Coffin Hardware Types
Research conducted at the Hopewell and Edwards Attaway cemeteries generally supports the preliminary seriation of coffin hardware forms posed in 1987. Data from those cemeteries do allow some dating refinements. Slotted white-metal-headed screws and tacks (Figure 4) should have been more clearly included in the 1987 seriation, because they are early hardware forms. Bell (1990:64) indicated that screws and tacks with white-metal heads can be dated through manufacturer's catalogs from 1853 to "at least 1877." That date range fits the archaeological evidence from Nancy Creek, Hopewell, and Edwards-Attaway, and that coffin hardware form has been added to the 1987 seriation with that date range.
The use dates of specific coffin hardware forms appear to be dependent on two factors. The first factor is the manufacturing date range. This equates to the date range during which a specific type of hardware was produced. The ability to mass produce specific hardware forms such as bail handles and distribute those items to markets throughout the country is a basic determinate of the date range during which that form will be used. Coffin hardware cast from white metal and mass produced in molds provided an inexpensive way to adorn coffins for rich and poor alike (Bell, 1990:55).
FIGURE 4. Slotted white-metal screws, Uxbridge, Massachusetts.
The second factor that influenced the use-life of specific coffin hardware types was popularity. I have used the concept of popularity date ranges to explain decorative changes in ceramics from the mid-nineteenth through the first quarter of the twentieth century on a number of research projects (Henry and Garrow, 1982; Garrow, 1995; Garrow et al., 1996). It has been observed that broad decorative ceramic types become popular and maintain their popularity for about a generation, when that type is, in turn, phased out in favor of decorative types from the previous generation. In simple terms, popularity waves in ceramics appear to stem from children rejecting the decorative types embraced by their parents in favor of versions of decorative types used by their grandparents. It should be noted that popularity date ranges are not designed to capture the absolute earliest or latest potential use of an item but instead to gauge the most likely time span during which an item was used.
The popularity dating of ceramics may or may not be a close fit for the changes in popular acceptance of coffin hardware forms, but the use of white-metal-headed screws and tacks, followed by bail handles, followed by short bar handles to extended handles appears to have a time span of about a generation for each type. Bail and short bar handles never completely disappear but are, in time, expressed in other materials such as stamped iron, tin, or cast aluminum.
The basic seriation of Georgia coffin hardware forms now stands as follows. The oldest coffin hardware forms found, excluding hinges, are white-metal-headed screws and tacks. Those items have a popularity use range from the 1850s to 1870s, when they are replaced by thumbscrews that typically have escutcheons. Bail handles appear by the 1870s in Georgia and were common in white metal or silver-plated white metal until around 1900. Short bar handles with white-metal lugs, arms, and finials with wooden bars clad with zinc and covered with cloth were common from the 1890s to about 1920. Extended bar handles appear by about 1920 and are still used today. It should be noted that coffin elements such as glass ports, caplifters, and thumbscrews appear to disappear by the 1920s.
Coffin forms and the choice of adornments on coffins appear to be the purview of funeral homes and funeral directors by the 1920s in Georgia. Locally made coffins appear to give way to commercially produced coffins by that time, and coffin forms largely become standardized by the funeral industry. It is still possible to buy a hexagonal coffin with bail handles, but today, it is necessary to acquire coffins like that from specialty manufacturers (Trappist Caskets, 2016). The design and supply of coffins were tightly controlled by the funeral industry in this country until the last decade. It is now possible to buy coffins in traditional stores not associated with funeral homes and online (thecasketstore.com, 2016; comparethecoffin.com/coffins, 2016), which should mean that market factors such as popularity could once again affect design and supply of coffins and coffin adornments.
## Conclusions
The basic seriation of coffin hardware forms as suggested in the 1987 article appears to have held up fairly well over the past 30 years. The only major addition to the scheme is that white-metal-headed screws and tacks need to be added as a coffin hardware form that predates and overlaps with bail handles. The screws and tacks were used from the 1850s to the 1870s. Coffins after ca. 1920 are much less heavily adorned than those used earlier, and items such as thumbscrews and escutcheons, glass viewing ports, and caplifters appear to have been phased out by that point. The use of white metal for handles seems to have largely been dropped at around the same time and replaced by stamped iron or tin, with the later addition of cast aluminum.
It now appears that hexagonal coffin forms survived in reduced numbers until at least 1884, as dated from a patent date on an escutcheon mounted on a hexagonal coffin at the Edwards-Attaway cemetery. Rectangular coffins appear to have been in wide scale use by the 1870s, and examples of rectangular coffins with white-metal-headed screws and tacks were found at Nancy Creek, Hopewell, and Edwards-Attaway. None of the coffins that contained white-metal-headed screws or tacks had any other type of coffin hardware, with the exception of a hexagonal form with a hinge at Nancy Creek.
Few differences noted at Hopewell versus the other cemeteries could be attributed to the low socioeconomic position or race of those at Hopewell. The highest percentage of rectangular coffins that had contained adults and lacked handles was at Hopewell with 41.3% (33 of 80), but Edwards-Attaway was close behind with 36.8% (7 of 19). Only 9.5% (2 of 21) of the rectangular coffins that had contained adults at Nancy Creek lacked handles, which may mean that those buried at Nancy Creek had enjoyed a higher economic and perhaps social status than those at both Hopewell and Edwards-Attaway.
One possible factor that requires additional research is the perceived difference in the way graves were dug at Hopewell versus Edwards-Attaway. Field observations that are not supported by consistent field measurements indicate that the grave shafts at Hopewell were only slightly larger than the coffin chambers. The grave shafts at Edwards-Attaway were measured and were much larger than the coffin chambers. The difference in relative grave shaft sizes at Hopewell and Edwards-Attaway probably reflects the use of a professional gravedigger at Hopewell versus graves being dug by friends and relatives at Edwards-Attaway.
## References
thecasketstore.com. 2016. <http://www.thecasketstore.com/> (accessed 4 August 2016).
Bell, E. L.1990. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. _Historical Archaeology,_ 24(3):54–78.
Blakely, R. L., and L. A. Beck. 1982. "Bioarchaeology in the Urban Context." In _Archaeology of Urban America,_ ed. R. S. Dickens Jr., pp. 175–208. New York: Academic Press.
comparethecoffin.com/coffins. 2016. http://www.comparethecoffin.com/coffins (accessed 4 August 2016).
Garrow, P. H. 1987. A Preliminary Seriation of Coffin Hardware Forms in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Georgia. _Early Georgia,_ 15(1–2):19–45.
Garrow, P. H. 1990. Archaeological Investigations of the Sandy Creek Cemetery, Lot 31, Block "B", Sandy Creek Estates, Clarke County, Georgia. Submitted to the Superior Court of Clarke County, Athens, Georgia. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Garrow, P. H. 1992. "At Rest in the Arms of Hopewell." Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Kingston, Jamaica.
Garrow, P. H. 1995. Ballast Point Ceramic Analysis: Study of Two Centuries of Occupation along San Diego Bay, San Diego, California. Submitted to Naval Command, Control, and Surveillance Center, San Diego. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Garrow, P. H., J. L. Holland, L. Pietak, and L. Kennedy. 1996. Knoxville Courthouse Block: Archaeological Data Recovery on Site 40KN145, Knoxville, Tennessee. Submitted to Barber & McMurray, Knoxville, Tenn. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Garrow, P. H., and D. H. Jones. 1996. Archaeological Investigations of the Edwards-Attaway Cemetery, Cobb County, Georgia. Submitted to The Nally Companies, Atlanta. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Garrow, P. H., D. H. Jones, and J. L. Holland. 1994. An Archaeological, Genealogical, and Forensic Study of the Martin Cemetery, Douglas County, Georgia. Submitted to IDI, Sewanee, Ga. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Garrow, P. H., and S. A. Symes. 1987. The Big Lazer Creek Unmarked Cemetery: A Multidisciplinary Investigation. Submitted to the Fisheries Management Section, Game and Fish Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Atlanta. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Garrow, P. H., S. A. Symes, and H. W. Case. 1985. Physical Anthropology and Archaeological Investigations of the Nancy Creek Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery, Chamblee, Georgia. Submitted to Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas/Tudor Engineering Company, Atlanta. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Hacker-Norton, D., and M. Trinkley. 1984. _Remember Man Thou Art Dust: Coffin Hardware of the Early Twentieth Century._ Research Series 2. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
Henry, S. L., and P. H. Garrow, eds. 1982. Archaeological Data Recovery on Blocks 1 and 2 of the Original Phoenix Townsite, AZ T:12:42 (ASM), Phoenix, Arizona. Volume 1: The Historic Component. Submitted to the City of Phoenix, Central Phoenix Redevelopment Agency, Phoenix. Phoenix: Professional Service Industries.
Jones, D. C., P. H. Garrow, and J. L. Holland. 1995. Archaeological Disinterment of the Morrow Cemetery, Gwinnett County, Georgia. Submitted to Pope and Land, Lawrenceville, Ga. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Symes, S. A., and P. H. Garrow. 1984. Research Design Physical Anthropology Studies Cemetery Relocation, MARTA North Line, N760 Contract EX3-1. Submitted to the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, Atlanta. Atlanta: Garrow & Associates.
Trappist Caskets. 2016. From the Monks of New Melleray Abbey Trappist Caskets. http://www.overnightcaskets.com/caskets/ (accessed 4 August 2016).
Trinkley, M., and D. Hacker-Norton. 1984. _Analysis of Coffin Hardware from 38CH778, Charleston County, South Carolina._ Research Series 3. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
# CHAPTER 8
# The Need for Greater Precision in Mortuary Hardware Terminology
_† Roderick Sprague_
Recent efforts to encourage greater detail and precision in the description of burials and associated features (Sprague, 2005) were the third and major effort by me toward this objective. Rather than stopping with this objective, we should be looking for greater precision and detail in minor areas of mortuary practices. Efforts such as that of Litten (1985:53) to make sense of coffin furniture (hardware) through time is admirable but need more chronology and detailed drawings to be useful as a dating device.
Some artifacts, such as nails, used in coffin manufacture are readily categorized through previous studies. The literature on nail dating is fairly extensive but, until recently (Wells, 1998), has not been especially concise. On the other hand, LeeDecker et al. (1995:53–58) and Riordan (2000:4–3) have shown how to accurately draw the configuration of nails in a coffin, a factor that may prove to be more useful than the actual nail chronologies for dating.
One class of coffin hardware that might prove useful in making the point above is the coffin hinge. In earlier periods most locally made coffins were not fitted with hinges, and when they were, the hinges were probably what was easily manufactured by a local blacksmith, what was on hand in stock, or what was quickly available to the builder from mass-produced hinge suppliers. Hinges became important when undertakers started preparing bodies for viewing, especially in cloth-lined or upholstered coffins.
Signal or alarm coffins were designed to alert the living when someone was buried alive and revived, a virtually impossible situation but still a fear before the use of embalming fluid. The earliest model of such a device required a hinge and, according to Habenstein and Lamers (1962:288–289), was patented in 1843. Habenstein and Lamers (1962:291) doubt that any models were sold, and apparently, none have been found archaeologically. An earlier and equally rare use of hinges on coffins was the parish coffin or slip coffin, which had a hinged false bottom permitting the recovery of the coffin for reuse (Litten, 1991:98; Iserson, 1994:472, 603). Such coffins, largely English in use, logically should not be in the ground but could be retired in a grave; however, none have been reported archaeologically.
## Terminology
The archaeological cemetery descriptions found in the literature _may_ mention that hinges are present but usually with no more useful description. As with nails, there may be some possible dating of coffin hinges based on the general hardware literature, but we must have better description in order to make use of such data.
Presented below is a sample of the terminology pertaining to hinges as found in period catalogs as well as from the standard archaeological worked on hinges (Priess, 1978, 2000; Suckling, 1983). Any study should include both the modern contemporary terms as well as the terms contemporaneous with the suspected date of the coffin or site. The most recent work by Peter Priess (2000) is the current standard in archaeology for terminology of building hardware and is recommended for application to coffin and casket hinges whenever possible.
Only as an example of the diverse terminology and in no way a complete glossary, the following is offered (always followed by the word hinge): aesthetic, ball bearing butt, bar pintle strap, bolt and nut pintle, box, butt, butterfly, capped butt, cock's head, continuous (piano), corrugated, crossed garnet, double-action butt, double-action spring butt, dove tail, double strap, face, fast joint, floor, friction, H, half-mortise butt, halved joint strap, HL, hospital, knuckle, leaf, long chest, loose joint butt, loose pin butt, mortise butt, olive knuckle butt, pin, pintle, plate, rattail, prison, screen door, screw hook pintle and strap, shutter butt, spike pintle, spiral spring butt, spring, surface, strap, T, V double-leaf strap, V pintle strap, and wood screw pintle.
Added to such a list would be the complete terminology of parts and special features. Just the hinge pin—consisting of the shaft and tip—can be loose or fixed, whereas the tip of the pin can be flat, oval, button, ball acorn, steeple, hospital, spun, prison, or Baldwin's "patent secret joint." Loose joint butts can be left- or right-handed, and a leaf can be female or male. But hinges and some varieties can be swaged or not swaged, with swaging typical of the more expensive hinges.
The first major division in hinge description beyond the shape terminology should be the type of metal and how it was worked. Any hinge prior to mass production but in the historic period would most likely be made of cast or wrought iron or cast brass. "During the nineteenth century, however, manufacture shifted to machine or mass-produced methods, initially using wrought iron and later steel" (Priess, 2000:51), a factor of more concern below for dating.
## Selection and Use
Prior to the mass production of coffins and in the West, where transportation was still not well established, the types of hinges used would most likely have been loose-pin, external hinges (Priess, 2000) similar to shutter hinges. This type of hinge would be easy to attach by one not trained in carpentry and would have permitted the removal of the lid with little effort. Craftsmen with more ability and/or pride in their work would probably have favored a butt hinge that could be mortised and thus would not have been visible when the box was closed.
Not only was the "on-hand" supply of mass-produced hinges a factor in choice, but the logic of the situation, as erroneous as it may be, is also an important factor. For example, coffins are long and thin in overall shape, as is also a piano or continuous hinge, yet such a hinge is not suited to the task. The most likely hinge selection from stock would have been the square butt hinge. Priess's (2000:60) comments of a door-hanging process speak to the use of the butt hinge on a coffin thus: "Hinges attached to the edge of a door [lid] and to the inside surface of the door [coffin] frame are referred to as 'butt' hinges. They are generally symmetrical and relatively narrow to accommodate the thinness of the door [coffin side]." Priess (2000:61) suggests that cast-iron and brass butt hinges were available by the last quarter of the eighteenth century but "mechanized production" in wrought iron and, later, steel did not begin until the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
What would be found on a coffin or modern casket from the last century would be largely a matter of expertise of the maker, the cost (especially today), the material used for the container, and the need for viewing with an open casket. Modern casket hinges tend to be grouped at either end of the cost scale, largely dependent on the material used in the manufacture of the actual box. Although some wooden containers are made of expensive wood with equally expensive finishing, most wooden caskets today are inexpensive and hinged with very crude and simple hinges of rough cast iron. The hinges have a minimum of finishing and are well below that of any hardware store hinge today. The leaf arrangement is one roughly cut square leaf between two leaves with no more combined surface than the center leaf. The screw holes are countersunk, so the use of flathead screws permits a reasonably tight, but not especially precise, closure of the lid. The rough-finished hinges on these modern wooden caskets are hidden from view by the upholstery.
In contrast to the wooden casket hinges the modern metal casket usually has very elaborate and expensive hinges to permit a tight seal of a rubber gasket. The hinges are integral to the lid and serve, along with latches in the front of the cover or lid, to force the whole top to seal uniformly and around the periphery. In some expensive models, a threaded rod is turned with a wrench from the outside in a mechanism that forces a tight seal. A threaded cap is used to seal the wrench access hole. This type of hinge probably will be dated in the future more by patent records than by typological changes through time.
## Dating
The earliest date for a mass-produced hinge is perhaps the patent date of 1775 for the Baldwin "Secret Joint Hinge" (Hommel, 1944). This hinge is still subject to speculation concerning whether it was truly mass produced and if the 1775 patent describes the hinges imprinted with "Baldwin." Priess (2000:58), in a more precise date than he gives above, states that the "technology for machine production of hinges was probably introduced by the 1840s." Blacksmith production of butterfly-type shutter hinges is briefly described by Romaine (1976) and is used mostly to show the variation possible in these hinges and in blacksmith work. The H- and HL-type hinges are illustrated in only one of more than two dozen catalogs in my collection, which leads to the conclusion that at the beginning of mass production they fell out of popularity and thus explains the lack of small examples of this simple hinge of coffins.
Even more important for dating is the variation noted by Bell (1990:63) in the placement of the hinges. He notes three different configurations for hinges that are transverse and located at the widest point or farthest toward the head (Figure 1 A—1C) and are in contrast to the later and modern pattern of the hinged portion being lateral and at the back and away from the viewer (Figure 1D). Bell (1990:63) describes the three transverse hinge locations with one form of lid opening up and folding forward toward the feet, another opening like window shutters to the sides of the coffin, and the third opening up and folding down the head end. These designs were "probably used between 1831 and 1872" at Uxbridge (Bell, 1990:63).
FIGURE 1. Configuration of hinges on coffins. (A) Opening folds over rest of coffin lid. (B) Two sections open to the coffin sides. (C) Opening folds from the coffin end. (D) Lid folds from the coffin side away from viewer.
Trinkley and Hacker-Norton (1984:12) date the Mount Pleasant cemetery, South Carolina (38CH778), a site with no hinges, as mid-nineteenth century through early twentieth century. They also state in another source (Hacker-Norton and Trinkley, 1984:11) that caplifters "now are obsolete as casket lids are hinged and balanced for easy lifting." Caplifters were small handles much like a drawer pull used to remove the coffin lid. They note that the last catalog they observed as listing caplifters was ca. 1925.
Hinges, dated to the middle of the nineteenth century by Bell (1990:63–64), in the Uxbridge site in Massachusetts were mass-produced cabinet hinges very similar to butterfly hinges. According to Priess (2000:56) both types fall into the double-strap hinge class. If small cabinet-size hinges are considered then Priess (2000:56–57) is in error in stating that "butterfly hinges do not seem to have persisted beyond the hand-forging era."
Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1984:46) list four hardware catalogs dating from 1856 (two), 1871, and 1877, all of which list coffin hinges; however, another three catalogs from the same time period do not list hinges, nor do any contemporary trade journals. Thus, from the sites and the catalog evidence it is difficult to determine which are better for dating: (1) the distinctive shape of the "coffin hinges," (2) the unusual arrangement of the hinged lids, or (3) the presence of or complete absence of hinges. In any event, there is no clear indication of hinges as a precise dating device for coffins in the mid-nineteenth century in the eastern United States. Other factors such a local economies or local cultural practices as well as widespread samples must be collected to aid in future dating studies.
## Conclusions
This brief summary of the use of hinges on coffins and caskets is not intended to present a chronology for dating or in any way to be even a progress report; it is simply an effort to show the range of detail that can be found in the study of any of the various hardware, or "furniture," items of burial containers. A first step in this kind of study would be a complete review of the hardware and archaeological burial literature of the specific hardware type. Second, we need to reproduce as many catalogs of coffin and mortuary devices as is possible to find. With this basic collection in hand, we can then begin to seriously work on mortuary hardware.
## References
Bell, E. L. 1990. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. _Historical Archaeology,_ 24(3):55–78.
Habenstein, R. W., and W. N. Lamers. 1962. _The History of American Funeral Directing._ Rev. ed. Milwaukee, Wis.: Bulfin Press.
Hacker-Norton, D., and M. Trinkley. 1984. _Remember Man Thou Art Dust: Coffin Hardware of the Early Twentieth Century._ Research Series 2. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
Hommel, R. 1944. The Secret Joint Hinge. _Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association,_ 3(1):3–4. Reprint, South Burlington, Vt.: Early American Industries Association, 1976.
Iserson, K.V. 1994. _Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies._ Tucson, Ariz.: Galen Press.
LeeDecker, C. H., J. Bloom, I. Wuebber, and M.-L. Pipes. 1995. _Final Archaeological Excavations at a Late 18th-Century Family Cemetery for the U.S. Route 113 Dualization, Milford to Georgetown, Sussex County, Delaware._ With K. R. Rosenberg. DelDOT Archaeology Series 134. Dover: Delaware Department of Transportation.
Litten, J. W. S. 1985. Post-Medieval Burial Vaults: Their Construction and Contents. _Bulletin of the Council for British Archaeology Churches Committee,_ 23:9–17.
Litten, J. W. S. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: Robert Hale.
Priess, P. J. 1978. _An Annotated Bibliography for the Study of Building Hardware._ History and Archaeology 21. Ottawa: Parks Canada.
Priess, P. J. 2000. "Historic Door Hardware." In _Studies in Material Culture Research,_ ed. K. Karklins, pp. 46–95. Tucson, AZ: Society for Historical Archaeology.
Riordan, T. B. 2000. _Dig a Grave Both Wide and Deep._ St. Mary's City, Md.: Historic St. Mary's City Commission.
Romaine, L. B. 1976. Butterfly Hinges. _Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association_ 1(19):7. First published South Burlington, Vt.: Early American Industries Association, 1936.
Sprague, R. 2005. _Burial Terminology: A Guide for Researchers._ Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press.
Suckling, M. D. 1978. "A Preliminary Report on the Hinges Excavated from English Camp (45-SJ-24) San Juan Island, Washington." In _Miscellaneous San Juan Island Reports 1976–1977,_ by C. Johnson and Mark D. Suckling, pp. 55–114. University of Idaho Anthropological Research Manuscript 46. Moscow: Laboratory of Anthropology, University of Idaho.
Suckling, M. D. 1983. "The Comparison of Hinges from American Camp and English Camp." In _San Juan Island Archaeology,_ ed. R. Sprague, pp. 735–757. Moscow: Laboratory of Anthropology, University of Idaho.
Trinkley, M., and D. Hacker-Norton. 1984. _Analysis of Coffin Hardware from 38CH778, Charleston County, South Carolina._ Research Series 3. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation
Wells, T. 1998. Nail Chronology: The Use of Technologically Derived Features. _Historical Archaeology,_ 32(2):78–99.
# CHAPTER 9
# Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Coffin Furniture from St. George's Crypt, Bloomsbury, and the Churchyard and Crypt of St. Luke's, Islington
_Louise Loe and Ceridwen Boston_
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century coffin furniture provides a wealth of information about Georgian and Victorian England (Litten, 1991), but it still continues to be an underexploited resource. Reeve and Adams (1993) first highlighted this when publishing the corpus of coffin fittings from the crypts at Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, and establishing a chronological sequence for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century burials. The classification of coffin fittings at Spitalfields has become the standard against which all new finds are compared, although some of the forms could not be dated on the evidence from that site and more designs have subsequently been discovered. The Spitalfields publications and also some of the background archival data used to create the classification are now widely available online through the Archaeology Data Service, which allows anyone in Britain or across the world to consult it.
## Background to the Sites
Since the early 1990s, the number of archaeological recording projects on coffin furniture assemblages has been increasing markedly, but only a limited number of these reach publication (for example, see Hancox, 2006; Bashford and Sibun, 2007; Miles et al., 2008). Work undertaken throughout England by Oxford Archaeology since the early 1990s has identified many new coffin fitting styles, which, in comparison with the Spitalfields data, has made it possible to refine their dating and to identify many hitherto unrecognized designs. Two assemblages, both from London, are presented here: from St. Luke's, Islington, and St. Georges, Bloomsbury, each comprising over 700 furnished coffins in variable states of preservation and completeness. The frequency and range of the different types of fittings are explored, and their date ranges are refined beyond that possible at Spitalfields. Some of the main trends in styles, symbolism, and metal used are also discussed in relation to status and chronology. This chapter therefore provides an important adjunct to the Spitalfields research and outlines the current range of designs across the whole range of coffin fittings used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in London.
## St. Luke's Crypt and Churchyard, Old Street, Islington, London
St. Luke's Church, Old Street, is a Grade I listed eighteenth-century church that was designed by Hawksmoor as part of the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches (Cherry and Pevsner, 1998), which was set up in 1711, to alleviate the lack of places of worship caused by the Great Fire and exacerbated by rapid population growth at the time. Consecrated in 1733, it was built over a brick semi-subterranean crypt, with a number of vaults or bays. This space was originally prohibited from use for burial, but that did not remain the case for long; the vestry minutes list burial fees in 1740 (St. Luke's, Islington, 1740).
By 1810 the vaults were being described as large and commodious but dark, damp, neglected, and highly offensive. Sufficient ventilation had not been secured, and wooden coffins rather than lead had been admitted. The committee recommended that funerals of opulent individuals should be promoted in the vaults and churchyards and that the fees for interment in the vaults and churchyards should not be enhanced. They also wished that no corpse be permitted to be placed in the vaults except in leaden or metal coffins and that 3-foot-diameter apertures be made in the walls at the east and west ends of the church to ventilate the vaults. In 1853 the vestry minutes record that a petition to Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston for an extension of time before closing burial grounds and vaults was turned down: burials (including those in the vaults) were to be discontinued at the end of the year and the vaults sealed (St. Luke's, Islington, 1853).
An archaeological recording program was undertaken at the church in 2000 in advance of construction and refurbishment works to provide new educational and rehearsal facilities for the London Symphony Orchestra (Boyle et al., 2005). This program included the recording and removing of all the burials in the crypt and in the southern and northern sides of the churchyard; 1,053 burials were recorded and removed.
## St. George's Crypt, Bloomsbury, London
The Grade I listed church of St. George, Bloomsbury, was designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor and completed in 1732 (Downes et al., 2008). Like St. Luke's, it was constructed as part of the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. For its first 90 years, the vaults were not used, until in 1803 when the vestry met to consider "adopting measures for depositing dead bodies in the vaults under the church as they foresaw the burial ground would otherwise be full within 30 years." It was resolved that "an opening be made in the floor of the church and an apparatus constructed from thence into the vaults" (St. George's, Bloomsbury, 1803). The fee for the privilege of intramural burial was 10 guineas if buried under the church nave and 14 guineas under the chancel. It was a condition that all bodies be encased within lead coffins.
Clearly the expense both of the interment and the cost of a lead shell precluded all but the affluent of the parish—a factor that has considerable ramifications when interpreting the funerary material culture from the crypt. Despite the prescribed lead lining to all coffins interred within the crypt, by 1844 many coffins were in such a decayed and "offensive" state that the vestry decided they should be placed in a side vault and bricked up. In 1856 the vestry finally resolved "hermetically to seal the entrance to the vaults." It was made clear that "parties whose connections lie in the vaults take the necessary steps for the removal of the remains of their connections" (St. George's, Bloomsbury, 1856). It is unclear to what extent this directive was followed, but one memorial in the church records the removal of the remains of Sophia (surname illegible) to the family vault in the newly fashionable cemetery of Kensal Green.
The crypt was closed for burial in 1856, a directive that was both due to the poor state of the coffins within the crypt and overcrowding of the burial ground and also in accordance with the Burial Act of 1852, which prohibited further burial within crypts and churchyards in London in favor of the new garden cemeteries such as Kensal Green and Highgate (Curl, 2002; Friar, 2003:69).
In advance of major refurbishment of the church, Oxford Archaeology was appointed to record and remove all of the burials from within the crypt (Boston et al., 2009). These totaled 781 coffined burials within seven vaults, dating between 1800 and 1856.
## Background to British Coffin Furniture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
The period spanning the late eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries saw a marked change in the style and use of coffin furniture (Litten, 1991). The introduction of the power-assisted stamping method in 1769 allowed a wider range of coffin furniture to be produced more cost effectively than had been possible on hand-operated machines. This development coincided with popular sentiment that placed great emphasis on providing a decent burial, even among the poor, with significant financial investment in the funeral. Throughout the course of the eighteenth century, coffin decoration became increasingly elaborate, the latter part seeing coffins that were furnished with a suite of metal fittings, often lavishly decorated with motifs that were heavily imbued with symbolism. By the late nineteenth century such effusive displays of mourning were regarded as excessive and undesirable, and coffin furniture became much simpler in terms of both its design and the number of fittings used (Mytum, 2004).
During the eighteenth century London was at the center of coffin furniture production, but by the early nineteenth century the focus had shifted to Birmingham. The principal types of coffin furniture used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are referred to by the trade catalogs of the day as "grips," "grip plates," "breast plates" or "depositum plates," "motifs," "nails," and "escutcheons" or "drops" (side decorations; Litten, 1991:107). Grips were the handles that were mounted onto grip plates, which themselves were attached to the outside of the coffin. Depositum plates were plaques that bore biographical details of the deceased and were attached to the front (breastplates), foot end (foot plates), and head end (head plates) of the coffin. Motifs and escutcheons were decorative metal plates that were attached to the front and sides of the coffin, respectively. The outer coffin was usually upholstered, in either velvet or baize, and fixed with studwork or upholstery pins ("nails"). Also used, but less frequently, was coffin lace, a metal strip alternative to upholstery nails, coronets, and decorative hinges.
## Methods
All coffin fittings were recorded on pro forma sheets, and fittings were classified with reference to the published catalog of coffin fitting styles from Christ Church, Spitalfields (Reeve and Adams, 1993). Those that matched were assigned the style code as it is given in the catalog (a number prefixed with the code CCS). Individual types that could not be paralleled were drawn and/or photographed and assigned a new style code: a number prefixed by OLR (for St. Luke's) or BBM (for St. George's). The fittings from St. George's were recorded at a later date than those from St. Luke's, and therefore, any styles not observed at Christ Church were also compared with new styles from St. Luke's. If a match was made, fittings were classified under the OLR code.
No agreed standards exist for identifying new styles of coffin fitting in Britain. Thus, the extent to which two fittings need to differ before they are classified as two different types has not been established. For the present study, if three or more differences were observed between types, they were classified as being different. The coffin fittings have been analyzed by the following categories: depositum plates, grips and grip plates, lid motifs and escutcheons, and upholstery studwork.
## Depositum Plates
The inner breastplate and foot and head plates were generally far less decorative than the outer breastplate. Many were completely plain, bearing nothing but the inscription, but a number were bordered with simple lines of punched circles or stylized leaf or flower motifs. Only outer breastplate styles are considered here.
### **St. Luke's**
A total of 188 breastplates survived in good enough condition to observe their styles, although none are illustrated here (Table A1). There were 62 different designs in total. Sixteen of these matched those from the Spitalfields (CCS) taxonomy, being present on 101 breastplates. In addition, 46 new styles (OLR 1–46) were identified on 87 breastplates. The most common styles were all rectangular in shape and largely comprised variations on floral motifs, often with a small shield at the top of the plate. Cherubs featured occasionally. These most popular styles accounted for 43% (81/188) of the total number of breastplates observed, or 18% (11/62) of the different designs observed (Table 1).
Less popular styles (i.e., those occurring only once or twice) accounted for 79% of the designs (49/62), or 30.8% of all breastplates (58/188). These findings show that a wide range of styles was used at St. Luke's, but each tended to be limited to only one or two coffins.
### **St. George's**
At St. George's 226 breastplates were observed (Table A1). Fifty-five different styles were identified, 29 of which were matched to Spitalfields (192 breastplates); 7 matched St. Luke's (13 breastplates), and 19 were identified as new styles and prefixed with the code BBM (21 breastplates). As at St. Luke's, the most frequent styles were already known forms, CCS 82, CCS 21, and CCS 20, comprising flowers, foliage, and shields, with cherubs featuring occasionally. Rectangular, tapered, and lozenge-shaped breastplates were among the most common shapes observed. Again, as at St. Luke's, the use of a wide range of designs is reflected by the fact that 78% of the styles (43/55) occurred in only one or two cases, but a lower percentage, 23% (53/226), of the total number of breastplates observed was of these less popular types.
Table 1. Breastplate styles observed at St. Luke's having three or more occurrences (in order of the most frequent). A dash (—) indicates that a particular style is not known from multiple sites. Comparator sites are: Christ Church, Spitalfields; St Luke's Islington; St George's, Bloomsbury; St Bartholomew's Penn, Wolverhampton.
## Grips and Grip Plates
Usually, eight grips were fitted to the sides of adult coffins, and four were fitted to the coffins of children. Grip plates are backings for the grips and are often decorative.
### **St. Luke's**
Grip plates from 142 coffins were recovered, many very poorly preserved and consisting of small fragments corroded onto the reverse of the more robust grips, but 73 coffins had grip plates that were well enough preserved for identification (Table A2). There were 17 different styles, including 11 (59 coffins) that matched the Spitalfields taxonomy and 6 new styles (OLR 1–6) on 14 coffins (Figure 1).
The most common style was an elaborate oval plate with foliage, winged cherubs, and fans (CCS 3), which was found on 30 coffins (30/73; 41.0%; Figure 2). A rectangular, plain plate (OLR 1) was the next most frequent, observed on 8 coffins (8/73; 11%), followed by CCS 6, a simple oval plate with a winged cherub, found on 7 coffins (9.6%; 7/73). Less popular were a simple, plain rectangular plate with linear borders, CCS 5, on 6 coffins (8.2%; 6/73); CCS 4, a simple V-shaped plate with a winged cherub, on 5 coffins (6.8%; 5/73); and CCS 31, an elaborate oval plate with winged cherubs and foliage on 3 coffins (4.1%; 3/73). As with depositum plates, a high prevalence of designs (11 in total, or 65% of all 17) were seen in only one or two instances, reflecting the overall tendency toward individuality.
FIGURE 1. Selection of newly identified grip plate styles OLR 3–OLR 6 from St. Luke's, Islington.
FIGURE 2. Grip plate CCS 3 and grip CCS 4, common forms first identified at Christ Church, Spitalfields.
Coffin grips were recovered from 243 coffins; predominantly of iron, many had suffered considerable corrosion, and the style of decoration could be identified for only 171. Among these were 18 different designs, with 135 grips (79%; 135/171) matching 9 types from Spitalfields. In addition, nine new styles (OLR 1–9) were identified (Figure 3), of which one (OLR 7) was also seen at St. George's, Bloomsbury (BBM 2).
The most common grip types were CCS 3b (28.7%), CCS 2a (17%), and OLR 4 (16.4%) (Table A3). These are detailed in Table 2, which presents the prevalence of all grip styles that occurred three or more times. Nine other grip types occurred only once (50% of the total number of designs identified). Frequently, but certainly not in all cases, grip plate CCS 3 and grip CCS 4 were found together as a set (Figure 2).
> Table 2. Incidence of common grip types at St. Luke's for which three or more examples were identified.
>
> Type | Number found | Percentage of total
> ---|---|---
> CCS 3b | 49 | 28.7
> CCS 2a | 29 | 17.0
> OLR 4 | 28 | 16.4
> CCS 1 | 12 | 7.0
> CCS 4 | 12 | 7.0
> CCS 3a | 11 | 6.4
> CCS 6 | 10 | 5.8
> CCS 5 | 8 | 4.7
> CCS 3 | 3 | 1.8
FIGURE 3. Additional grip styles OLR 1–OLR 7, recovered from St. Luke's, Islington.
### **St. George's**
Eleven grip plate styles were recorded on 61 coffins, 7 with new types noted. By far the most common design was CCS 3 (Figure 2), which accounted for 54% (33/61) of all coffins (Table A2). The next most common types were CCS 31 (6/61; 10%) and CCS 14 (4/61; 7%). Three previously unrecorded grip plate types (BBM 1–3) were identified (Figures 4, 5), and they include stylized foliage (BBM 1), a geometric design (BBM 2), and a cartouche with foliage and cherubs (BBM 3). Frequently, but certainly not in all cases, grip plate CCS 3 and grip CCS 4 were found together as a set.
In total 13 different grip styles were observed, including 8 that matched the Spitalfields typology (90 coffins) and 1 that matched a type seen at St. Luke's (1 coffin, OLR 7). Four newly identified designs, BBM 1–BBM 4, were recognized, found on 6 coffins (Figure 5). The most common grips were, in order of frequency, CCS 4 (71/97; 73%), CCS 5 (7/97; 7%), CCS 6 (5/97 coffins; 5%), and CCS 3 (3/97; 3%; Table A3).
## Lid Motifs and Escutcheons
Lid motifs and escutcheons are stamped pieces of metal decorating the upholstery of the outer wooden case. Lid motifs are larger than escutcheons and tend to be located centrally in the chest and knee areas of the coffin lid. Escutcheons are most commonly found in the corners and along the margin of the upholstery studwork panels of the coffin lid and side panels of the outer wooden case.
FIGURE 4. Newly identified grip plate styles BBM 2 and BBM 3 from St. George's, Bloomsbury, and escutcheon OLR 1 from St. Luke's, Islington.
FIGURE 5. Additional grip styles BBM 1–BBM 4 recovered from St. George's, Bloomsbury. Illustration of grip BBM 1 also includes additional grip plate BBM 1.
### **St. Luke's**
Nineteen lid motifs, representing 13 different styles, could be classified (Table A4), with 13 (8 different styles) matched at Spitalfields. They include three motifs (CCS 4, CCS 14, and CCS 19) that could not be dated at Spitalfields owing to poor preservation, but the dated coffins at St. Luke's has made this possible. This places them in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Five newly discovered designs (OLR 1–5) were identified on six coffins. These included three flaming urns and one _resurgam_ motif (Figure 6). The most common lid motif was CCS 4 (3/19; 16%), with a snake eating its tail forming a circle, with a downward-pointing torch. Other common types comprised urns (CCS 2 and OLR 3, both 2/19; 11%), angels with a coronet and cherubs (CCS 6, 2/19; 11%), and winged cherubs (CCS 14, 2/19; 11%).
Twenty-one escutcheons were recovered from 15 coffins (Table A5), and all but one can be paralleled at Spitalfields in 9 different styles, the most common of which was CCS 1 (5/21; 23.8%), an oval motif with a leaf border and plain center. Other common styles were CCS 12 (4/21; 19%), a slightly more elaborate variation of CCS 1; CCS 4 (3/21; 14.3%), the same as CCS 1 but with an angel at the top of the leaf border; and CCS 6 (3/21; 14.3%), a stylized flower design. One newly discovered style, OLR 1, an oval stylized leaf design comparatively less elaborate than the former (Figure 4), was identified.
### **St. George's**
Lid motifs from 83 coffins were sufficiently preserved to observe their styles (Table A4); 67 (10 different styles) matched Spitalfields, and 16 were in new styles (13 different designs). The most popular motif was CCS 6 (19/83; 22.9%), two angels holding aloft a crown, followed by CCS 14 (17/83; 20.5%), essentially the same design as grip plate CCS 3, a design of a cartouche encircled by scrolls and foliage and surmounted by two cherubim. It was possible to assign date ranges to four previously undated Spitalfields styles (CCS 12, 13, 14, and 25).
FIGURE 6. Newly identified lid motifs from St. Luke's, Islington, including flaming urns and resurgam motif.
The new lid motif types that were identified (BBM 1–13; Figure 7) included four that were composite motifs, composed of between three and five separate pieces of decorative molded metal placed together (BBM 6, 7, 9 and 10). Some of the smaller elements were used elsewhere singly as escutcheons. For example, BBM 9 is composed of four corner escutcheons placed together to form a star, and BB7 was made of escutcheon BBM 5 (a flower motif) and a stylized foliage motif. BBM 10 is composed of four escutcheons: two BBM 4 and two CCS 9. The other lid motifs were single pieces of lead, tin, or copper. They depict a crown, a bible, an angel, the crucifixion of a very Herculean Christ, tombs, and flaming urns. Lid motif BBM 11 was the same style as grip plate CCS 16 but was found attached to the coffin lid in the position of a lid motif and hence has been included here as a new type. A single match was found between lid motifs from St. George's and St. Luke's, Islington: BBM 9, a circular ray (dated 1830), which very closely resembles OLR 5.
Escutcheons from 80 coffins could be recorded in detail (Table A5), with 72 (12 different styles) matched with types from Spitalfields (Table 3) and 8 (all different designs) classified as new types (BBM 1–8; Figure 8). The most common style was CCS 1 (a cartouche motif surrounded by swirling foliage), accounting for 33.8% (27/80) of the total assemblage. This was followed by CCS 6, a stylized flower motif (14/80; 17.5%). Of the new types, three depicted stars in different stylistic forms (BBM 1, 2, and 6; Figure 8); one depicted an angel (BBM 3), one depicted a flower (BBM 5), and three were abstract designs of foliage of classical inspiration (BBM 4, 7, and 8). All were made of brass, except for BBM 7, which was of black painted tin, matching the other fittings on coffin 2007.
## Upholstery Studwork
### **St. Luke's**
The preservation of upholstery fabric was very poor, with only 33 coffins retaining vestiges of recognizable textile on the outer wooden coffin. Of these, 28 were of baize, and 2 were of velvet. On 3 coffins a loosely woven, coarse fabric was identified. It was probably shoddy, a rough cloth made of woolen yarn often used as a backing for velvet upholstery that had presumably since decayed. Traditionally, the color of coffin upholstery was black, but colored cloth began to be used in the early nineteenth century (Litten, 1991); coffin 158 was covered with yellow fabric, and coffin 188 was covered with green fabric.
Because of the poor preservation of the outer wooden coffins little of the decorative arrangement of the studs could be identified. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases only single loose studs or short rows of 3–10 studs were recovered from the grave backfill. Only two coffins' upholstery stud designs could be matched to those from Christ Church, Spitalfields: CCS 3 (coffin 479) and CCS 36b (coffin 1089).
### **St. George's**
Although the charcoal that had overlaid the coffin stacks had blackened many of the coffins' upholstery, colored velvets were observed in the adult and child coffins. Black was overwhelmingly the most common, but mustard yellow, dark blue, dark green, red, and brown were also observed. Several infant coffins were upholstered in turquoise, a color particularly popular for baby burials in the early nineteenth century (Litten, 1991). Because of vertical crushing of many of the lower coffins, few of the side panels of the outer wooden cases were preserved. The lids fared better, with large numbers being preserved sufficiently well to identify the upholstery stud decoration (Table A6). In addition to the 47 matches made with Spitalfields, 29 new upholstery stud styles were identified, in most cases from the lid pattern alone.
FIGURE 7. Additional lid motif types from St. George's, Bloomsbury.
Table 3. Types of metals used for coffin fittings at St. Luke's, Islington (total = 750).
FIGURE 8. Newly identified escutcheon types from St. George's, Bloomsbury.
## Metals Used in Coffin Fittings
### **St. Luke's**
Two hundred and four _depositum_ plates were recorded (Table 3), the majority (153) made of lead (75.37%). Other metals used for plates in the assemblage were iron (9.36%), silvered tin (7.88%), brass (7.38%), and tin pewter (0.49%). Iron was overwhelmingly popular for grips, constituting 99.18% of the total assemblage, the remainder being of brass. Iron was also the most popular metal for grip plates (85.92%), followed by tin pewter (8.45%), lead (4.23%), and silvered tin (1.41%).
Only 23 lid motifs were recovered, probably because of poor preservation rather than a genuine absence from the original assemblage. The vast majority comprised very thin sheets of stamped iron, and many more had probably rusted away altogether. The surviving lid motifs were made of iron (74%), tin pewter (17%), and lead (9%). Eight coffins had escutcheons made from iron (53.33%), four from tin pewter (26.67%), two from brass (13.33%), and one from silvered tin (6.67%).
Upholstery studs were exclusively brass or iron. Of the 123 coffins with extant studs, 82 used iron, and 41 used brass. In a number of cases these were painted black, and in one case the brass studs had been gilded.
### **St. George's**
Most outer breastplates (403) were made of lead or brass, the former being heavily decorated with a stamped central motif and borders. Of the assemblage of known material (9 were unrecorded), 62% (244) were lead, 32% (125) were brass, 3% (11) were iron, 2% (8) were silvered tin, and 1.5% (6) were tin pewter. Lead breastplates were occasionally enameled or painted black, with brass ones more plain, although four bore inscribed coats of arms. These were difficult to discern because of the fineness of the inscription and the oxidation of the brass.
Other depositum plates (i.e., inner breastplates, head plates, and foot plates) were almost exclusively of lead (Table 4). Of the 427 inner breastplates recovered from St. George's Church, only 3 were not of lead (0.7%). These were composed of iron. The material for the end plates (176), likewise, was overwhelmingly of lead (98%). Three exceptions were composed of iron.
One hundred and eight of the 134 coffins with grips of recognized metal (81%) were of iron. Of the remainder, 25 were of brass (19%), and 1 was of ormolu (0.746%). Of the 67 coffins with grip plates of known material, 43% were of brass, 31.34% were of iron, 12% were of silvered tin, 9% were of tin pewter, and 4% were of lead.
Table 4. Summary of known metals used for coffin fittings from St. Luke's and St. George's (total = 1,623).
Two hundred and twenty-one lid motifs were recovered at St. George's Church. Being composed of thin stamped sheets of metal, lid motifs are more prone to corrosion than thicker, more robust coffin fittings. The worst-preserved lid motifs were those made of iron, the details of the decoration often being indiscernible because of rusting. The metal composition of 49 lid motifs was recorded, with brass being the most popular material (60%), followed by iron (30%), lead (8.16%), tin pewter (6%), and silvered tin (4%).
At St. George's Church, upholstery studs were made exclusively of brass or of iron (Table 4). Of the 395 coffins with extant studwork, recordings of the metals used were made on 325 coffins (82%). Copper alloy was the more popular metal, recovered from 173 coffins (54%), and iron was recovered from 152 coffins (47%). Of the latter, 5 had been painted or enameled black, and 2 had been dipped in tin to create a silvered effect.
## Discussion
Data collected on coffin furniture from St. Luke's and St. George's have been analyzed with the primary aim of expanding the corpus of published styles and expanding and refining date ranges. Through this analysis, it is possible to be more confident in exploring the frequency and range of styles. The evidence clearly demonstrates that for all categories of fittings, simple designs were uncommon. Most styles tend to be elaborate but also very varied, with many examples of just one style being identified. More variation was seen at St. Luke's than at St. George's. Many designs were found to match those at Christ Church, Spitalfields, but date ranges have been identified or extended, and the tables will now provide an important checklist for future researchers against which to compare new discoveries.
## Some Limitations of the Data
The present analysis has focused on only broad patterns in the incidence of fitting styles. With a few exceptions, it has not attempted to explore this in relation to different variables, such as age, sex, intramural versus extramural burials, and different occupations. These analyses would afford far greater insight into the prevalence and distribution of fitting styles in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as has been demonstrated by Hancox (2006), who compared fitting materials found in two contemporaneous vaults from St. Martin's-in-the-Bullring, Birmingham.
Between them, St. Luke's and St. George's comprise one of the largest assemblages of coffin fittings to have been examined to date. Unfortunately, despite this size, the number of actual fittings that could be examined was reduced (sometimes drastically) as a result of poor preservation. Although X-radiography probably would have increased sample size in some cases, this facility was not available at the time of analysis. In particular, the poor preservation of the outer wooden coffins at St. Luke's and vertical crushing of many of the lower stacked coffins at St. George's meant that little of the decorative arrangement of the upholstery studs could be identified. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases, only single loose studs or short rows of 3–10 studs were recovered from the grave backfill. The absence of identified patterns therefore should not be taken to imply that upholstery studs were not used to create elaborate patterns on these coffins, but rather only that the designs could not be recognized. Fittings composed of thin stamped sheets of metal, such as lid motifs, also suffered particularly badly, being more prone to corrosion and rust (especially those composed of iron) than thicker, more robust coffin fittings. Thus, the original prevalence of different fitting styles was probably significantly higher than that presented here.
Comparisons between styles seen at St. George's and St. Luke's have been limited to that of the Spitalfields corpus. No doubt many more matches with fittings from other sites would further refine dating, as well as expand taxonomies. Similarly, no comparison with the trade catalogs held at the Victoria and Albert Museum has been made and would, no doubt, signal further significant trends.
## Incidence of Coffin Fitting Styles
The vast majority of styles identified at St. Luke's and St. George's matched those that were seen among the crypt burials at Christ Church, Spitalfields. All of the types observed at St. Luke's and St. George's, including new types, are tabulated with their assigned date ranges in the Appendix.
Some of the most popular motifs included the winged cherub, seen on grip plates OLR 3 (Figure 1) and BBM 3 (Figure 4). This motif is very common in post-medieval graveyards (see Mytum, "Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture," this volume) and is associated with all social classes (Boore, 1998:73). This motif dates to the period 1740–1850, but at the churchyard of St. Martin's, Birmingham, it makes an appearance only in the first third of the nineteenth century. Oval grip plates with a repoussé design of winged cherub's heads and stamped iron depositum plates with a concave oval cartouche encircled by a garland of flowers design first appear at the end of the seventeenth century (Litten, 1991). The urn motif is popular at St. Martin's, Birmingham. The greater variation of styles that was seen at St. Luke's may be a result of a burial population that comprised a broader cross section of society, being composed of crypt and churchyard burials, rather than just crypt burials, as was observed from St. George's and, indeed, Spitalfields. However, St. Luke's was also used for a slightly longer period of time, and therefore, the greater variation may be a result of this.
The styles seen at both sites are consistent with the expected range for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as reflected in the trade catalogs from this period. Using the trade catalogs, Hancox (2006:159–160) has summarized chronological trends in coffin furniture, further explored by Mytum (2016; "Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture," this volume). In the late eighteenth century fittings were elaborate, with the urn and flower design and angels and cherubs being popular motifs. Coffin lace was not used, and upholstery studs were employed only in simple decorations, either in single or double rows around the edges of the coffin. By the early nineteenth century there were more varied designs, with new motifs appearing, such as the rose and thistle and Masonic eye (but cherubs, angels, and urn and flower designs also remained popular). Upholstery studs were employed in more elaborate designs, including diamonds and triple rows, and coffin lace was used. By the late nineteenth century, angel, cherub, and flower motifs had disappeared, and simpler designs were being selected.
The predominance of rectangular or tapered plates is paralleled in other London assemblages (for example, Christ Church, Spitalfields, and St. Marylebone Church) but is in contrast to the lower-status assemblage from St. Martin's, Birmingham, where the majority of plates were shields (Hancox, 2006).
Table 5. St. George's lozenge- and shield-shaped breastplates by age, sex, and marital status (includes only those that were legible).
Other breastplate shapes observed include the lozenge and shield. Where it was possible to observe relevant details, at St. George's all lozenge shapes were associated with females, both children and adults (Table 5). The titles of the females were all "Miss," indicating that they were unmarried. The two shield breastplates that could be associated with sexed individuals were, in contrast, associated with adult males. Although admittedly these samples are small, these observations are consistent with heraldic convention in which the shape of depositum plates referred to the sex and marital status of the deceased. Thus, lozenge shapes were reserved for young girls and spinsters; shields were reserved for boys and young men (Litten, 1993:109).
Only two examples of lozenge-shaped breastplates and one example of a shield-shaped breastplate were found at St. Luke's. The extent to which the dictates of heraldry prevailed at St. George's and St. Luke's requires further analysis. From the beginning of the eighteenth century heraldic convention started to fall out of popularity, with the result being that by the nineteenth century coffin fitters were unfamiliar with this convention, even though the shapes continued to be used (Litten, 1993). It is therefore noteworthy that the use of lozenge and shield shapes at St. George's reflects a familiarity with heraldic convention by undertakers and possibly also their clients. In contrast, this familiarity was not seen at Christ Church, Spitalfields, and St. Martin's, Birmingham (Hancox, 2006). Other claimed conventions were rectangles with a central cartouche and rectangles with central squares, which were associated with married women or widows and married men or widowers, respectively, but these have not yet been tested against archaeological assemblages.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries grips tended to be of a plain, rounded style with no embellishments (Miles et al., 2008). At St. Luke's and Bloomsbury, this plainness was not the case, with the majority of grips having some form of decoration, including the form with two winged cherubs at the center above a central flower with floral and leaf motifs (Figure 4), which is a very common design from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Miles et al., 2008:64) and is similar to CCS 4.
## Symbolism
Winged cherubs, angels, flowers, foliage, and urns were all popular motifs on the fittings from both St. Luke's and St. George's and are typical of the period (see Mytum, "Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture," this volume). The urn, an ancient Greek symbol of mourning, was especially popular, used well into the 1850s, but it was not very prevalent at St. Luke's or St. George's. Cherubim were favored for the coffins of infants and children but at both St. Luke's and St. George's were associated with adults and children alike. Most often, they were depicted as just a head without a body, a symbol of the soul. Angels refer to heaven and the afterlife and, when shown blowing trumpets (as some were at St. Luke's and St. George's), represent God's glory and victory over death or, alternatively, the day of judgment.
Flowers and foliage were very frequent among the coffin fittings from both sites, in particular on breastplates and grip plates. Many represented stylized and generic plants that could not be identified to species, but roses, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves were identified and frequent. Lilies and chrysanthemums have long been associated with death. Lilies, seen to represent purity, resurrection, and restoration of innocence of the soul at death, are particularly associated with the Virgin Mary. They were most commonly associated with the burial of women. Roses represent beauty, hope, and unfailing love. Depending on the stage of their opening, roses may represent the age of the person at the time of death: a bud denotes a child, a partial bloom indicates a teenager, and a rose in full bloom denotes an adult, but sample sizes are too small to see if this symbolism was actually the motive for choices on coffin fittings. Oak leaves are associated with stability, strength, honor, eternity, the cross of Jesus, and liberty.
## Socioeconomic Status
The predominance of elaborate coffin fittings from both churches is consistent with the high status held by those who were buried there. Lawyers, doctors, members of Parliament, imperial administrators, and librarians of the nearby British Museum are all listed in the burial registers. Individuals from less elevated professions were also present, however. For example, a carpenter, servant, and butcher are recorded in burial registers. Unfortunately, none of these individuals could be identified from their coffin fittings.
St. Luke's vestry minutes indicate that the wealthy were also buried in the southern and northern churchyards, as well as within the crypt. Indeed, the vestry minutes record that on 12 October 1810, the committee recommended that funerals of opulent inhabitants should be promoted in the vaults and churchyards, with the pest ground reserved for poor inhabitants, which implies this had not always been the case up to that point. Further, the cost of burial was most expensive in the crypt, followed by the southern part of the churchyard (a more visible location because the entrance to the church was on that side), then the northern part of the churchyard, with the pest ground being the cheapest burial location. A cursory analysis of the distribution of coffin materials in the crypt, southern churchyard, and northern churchyard reflects this hierarchy of burial practice. Unlike St. George's, very little information on the occupations held by individuals who were recovered from St. Luke's survives. In fact, only two occupations, both ecclesiastical (one a rector, the other listed as just "church"), are listed (Boston and Scott, 2009).
## Metal Used in Coffin Fittings
Relatively little analysis has been undertaken on the metals used for coffin fittings within Britain, although it was developments in the manufacturing and finishing processes that were so important in creating this form of funerary display. The range of materials found includes lead, pewter, tin, brass, and stamped iron.
It is not surprising to find that many of the breastplates from St. Luke's and St. George's consisted of stamped lead plates (Tables 1, 5). These continued to be common in vaults in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a more expensive alternative to the tin-dipped stamped iron furniture that could not be engraved (Litten, 1991:108–109). Pure tin was rare because of its expense, but by the end of the eighteenth century pewter and pure tin—natural or silvered—were being used for breastplates, grip plates, and lid motifs, although the nobility and others appear to have remained loyal to brass as more convenient for the engraver to work, especially if a coat of arms was to be included.
The stamped iron furniture, shiny and bright if tinned or made black through a variety of processes, formed the majority of fittings from the later eighteenth century onward, notably for breastplates, lid motifs, escutcheons, and grip plates. Needing to be robust, the metals used for grips were restricted to iron and brass, and most grips were made of iron.
## Conclusions
The excavation of assemblages from London has increased the range of identified coffin fitting designs and has refined the dating of those already classified from Christ Church, Spitalfields. The assemblages provide a complex set of data that will allow further analysis according to social and religious categories. The analysis of fittings by materials on a large scale for the first time indicates that material choice was among the options available for the bereaved and demonstrates further the complexity of choice in the production and distribution of coffin furniture. As more assemblages are recovered, the chronology of forms will become clearer, and the chronological gap between largely later eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth century archaeological examples, and the data largely derived from the later nineteenth century trade catalogs, will be closed.
## Appendix
Tables A1–A6 present the frequency and date ranges assigned to all of the Christ Church, Spitalfields, types by site, including St. Luke's, Islington, and St. George's, Bloomsbury. Data from St. Bartholomew's, Penn, available at the time of data entry are also included.
Table A1. Breastplates. A dash (—) indicates a particular type was not identified at a particular location.
Table A2. Grip plates. A dash (—) indicates a particular type was not identified at a particular location.
Table A3. Grips. A dash (—) indicates a particular type was not found at a particular location.
Table A4. Lid motifs. A dash (—) indicates a particular type was not identified at a particular location.
Table A5. Escutcheons. A dash (—) indicates a particular type was not identified at a particular location. No escutcheons of the types listed here were found at St. Bartholomew's, Penn.
Table A6. Upholstery studwork. A dash (—) indicates a particular type was not identified at a particular location. No upholstery studwork of the types listed here was recovered from St. Bartholomew's, Penn.
## References
Bashford, L., and L. Sibun. 2007. Excavations at the Quaker Burial Ground, Kingston-upon-Thames, London. _Post-Medieval Archaeology,_ 41(1):100–154.
Boore, E. 1998. Burial Vaults and Coffin Furniture in the West Country. In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700 to 1850,_ ed. M. Cox. Council for British Archaeology Research Report, 113
Boston, C., A. Boyle, G. Gill, and A. Witkin. 2009. _Archaeological Recording at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury._ Oxford Archaeology Monograph 8. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Boston, C., and I. Scott. 2009. "The Church, the Parish and Parishioners." In _Archaeological Recording at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury,_ by C. Boston A. Boyle, G. Gill, and A. Witkin, pp. 61–94. Oxford Archaeology Monograph 8. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology.
Boyle, A., C. Boston, and A. Witkin. 2005. _The Archaeological Experience at St. Luke's Church, Islington._ Oxford: Oxford Archaeological Unit.
Cherry, B., and N. Pevsner. 1998. _The Buildings of England. London 4. North._ Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Curl, J. S. 2001. _Kensal Green Cemetery: The Origins and Development of the General Cemetery of All Souls, Kensall Green, London, 1824–2001._ Chichester, UK: Phillimore.
Downes, K., C. Amery, and G. Stamp. 2008. _St. George's, Bloomsbury: A Hawksmoor Masterpiece Restored._ London: Scala Books.
Friar, S. 2003. _The Sutton Companion to Churches._ Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing.
Hancox, H. 2006. "Coffins and Coffin Furniture." In _St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001,_ ed. M. Brickley and S. Buteux, pp. 152–160. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Litten, J. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: Robert Hale.
Miles, A., N. Powers, and R. Wroe-Brown. 2008. _St. Marylebone Church and Burial Ground: Excavations at St. Marylebone School, 1993 and 2004–6._ Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 46. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Mytum, H. 2004. _Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period._ New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
Mytum, H. 2016. "The Artefacts of Mortuary Practice: Industrialisation, Choice, and the Individual." In _Nineteenth-Century Material Culture Studies from Britain,_ ed. A. Brooks, pp. 274–304. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Reeve, J., and M. Adams. 1993. _The Spitalfields Project._ Volume 1: _The Archaeology: Across the Styx._ CBA Research Report 85. York: Council for British Archaeology.
St. George's, Bloomsbury. 1803. Vestry Minutes. May. London: St. George's, Bloomsbury.
St. George's, Bloomsbury. 1856. Vestry Minutes X. London: St. George's, Bloomsbury.
St. Luke's, Islington. 1740. Vestry Minutes. 5 December. London: St. Luke's, Islington.
St. Luke's, Islington. 1853. Vestry Minutes. 27 October. London: St. George's Bloomsbury.
# CHAPTER 10
# Burial at the Edge of the Empire and Beyond: The Divergent Histories of Coffin Furniture and Casket Hardware
_Megan E. Springate and Hilda Maclean_
Coffin furniture, as it is known in the United Kingdom and parts of the Commonwealth, or casket or coffin hardware, as it is known in North America, consists of handles, hinges, nameplates, and other decorative motifs found on the exterior of burial containers. The rise in the use of coffin furniture coincided with the adoption of the coffin as a burial container for the corpse across all social classes (Litten, 2002:86). Functional elements such as handles and nails became decorative, and purely decorative elements such as lid ornaments emerged. Mass-produced coffin ornamentation has its origins in mid-eighteenth-century England and remains part of contemporary burial practices around the globe. Beginning with an overview of the British origins of coffin furnishings, we will compare the divergent histories of coffin furniture use in Australia, at the edges of the British Commonwealth, and in North America.
Prior to the late eighteenth century, most coffin furniture was made by punching, chasing, and engraving sheet metal using hand-operated die stamping machines. In 1769, John Pickering of London patented a power-assisted stamping process for raising patterns in sheet metal (Church and Smith, 1966:621; Hamilton, 1967:347). This new process led to an 80% decline in the cost of manufacture, making coffin furniture increasingly available to the developing middle class and increasingly profitable to the undertakers (Church and Smith, 1966:622–623; Litten, 2002:106).
By the middle of the nineteenth century, British coffin furniture manufacturers could depend upon their customers to bury several hundred tons of metal every year (Church and Smith, 1966:623). Catalogs of British coffin furniture from the late 1700s through the mid-nineteenth century depict motifs of skulls, crossbones, extinguished torches, and weeping mourners that represent human mortality. Also present are winged cherubs' heads, angels, crowns, and trumpets that represent Christian immortality and the afterlife. On the whole, the mortality symbolism precedes the immortality symbolism (Richmond, 1999:151). These designs were widely copied throughout the coffin furnishings trade, and many remained in circulation into the early twentieth century. For example, the "flowerpot" motif appears in a catalog identified as JB 1783 (located in the Victorian and Albert Museum) and was still available in a Newman Brothers of Birmingham catalog dating from the 1920s (Newman Brothers, 1920s:57).
The Copyright of Designs Act 1839 (2 & 3 Vict c 17) and Ornamental Design Act 1842 (5 & 6 Vict c 100) protected registered designs from being copied and sold by competitors. Coffin furnishings protected by the acts were known as registered coffin furniture and were generally sold in sets; the other furnishings were known as common or general coffin furniture and sold in mix-and-match bulk ( _Sydney Morning Herald,_ 1851:3). Common furniture was made from the thinnest japanned iron and has often undergone such taphological change that archaeological examples are virtually indistinguishable other than by broad design, and variations that may be associated with individual makers are seldom observed. Registered coffin furniture is often cast rather than pressed and is more likely to retain extensive detail when it is recovered. This differential preservation biases the sample somewhat, as registered furniture is most likely to be found in high-status burials in crypts and vaults.
Although coffin furniture produced in Britain went predominantly to the vast domestic market, a few manufacturers exported some of their wares, supplying undertakers in the British colonies, including India, Australia, Canada, and what was to become the United States (Church and Smith, 1966:622).
## Coffin Furniture in Australia
Coffin furniture from England was exported to all of the Australian colonies from the earliest days. The first advertisement for the sale of coffin furniture, recently imported aboard the _Atlas,_ appeared in the _Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser_ in April 1803. This, Australia's first newspaper, had commenced publication in the previous month. From that time on, advertisements for the sale of shipments of coffin furniture appeared regularly in the colony's newspapers. The fact that coffin furniture was being imported so early into New South Wales when even currency to pay for it was in short supply indicates that it was highly sought after and a ready market could be found for it. Edward Hunt, cabinet maker and undertaker of Sydney, accepted "wheat and other property taken in part payment" for his services in 1819 ( _Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser,_ 1819:4).
Inexpensive to buy in bulk and easy to transport, there were other economic reasons to import rather than manufacture. The small and widespread population of the Australian colonies would have made it uneconomic to import the large powered metal stamping machines as well as the raw materials (lead, copper, tin, and zinc). The first Australian lead was mined in South Australia in 1841, and copper was mined in the same colony a year later (Blainey, 2003:106–108). The first payable quantities of tin were not discovered until the early 1870s with discoveries in Tasmania and New South Wales (Blainey, 2003:130–131). Zinc, alloyed with copper to form brass, was not widely mined until the mid-1870s (Blainey, 2003:254–255). Coffin furniture was imported in bulk by wholesale merchants who dealt in a variety of different imported wares. They then sold the furnishings on to undertakers and general store proprietors. For example, among the unsold stock from the Wong General Store in Fullerton, New South Wales, dating from when the store closed in 1916, is coffin furniture imported from manufacturers Hickman and Clive and Ingall and Parsons, both of Birmingham, England (Powerhouse Museum, 2003).
Data for the discussion of coffin furniture in this section come largely from the North Brisbane Burial Grounds (NBBG), which were active between 1842 and 1875, serving the capital of the colony of Queensland. Seven separate denominational burial grounds made up the total site. Three of these (Episcopalian/general, Presbyterian, and Catholic) were partially excavated between 2000 and 2002 to permit the development of a sporting stadium (Prangnell, 2003). A number of artifacts were recovered from 397 burials, providing a subset of coffin furniture that was actually consumed but not the total range that was available for purchase at the time (Murphy and Rains, 2003). Some examples also come from the Cadia Cemetery in New South Wales, which operated between 1864 and 1927 (Higginbotham, 2002), as well as advertisements, trade catalogs, and other archival sources.
The coffin furniture recovered from the North Brisbane Burial Grounds is consistent with that advertised in British coffin furnishings catalogs and identified in English burial excavations (e.g., Ives and Hogg, 2012). Three burials at North Brisbane had identifiable lid motifs. A common arrangement of these motifs in England is to have one above the nameplate or depositum at head height and another below it. At the City of London Burial Ground at Golden Lane, the most common motifs are an angel or pair of angels at the head and an urn containing flowers at the foot (Connell and Miles, 2010). The urn with flowers was an evolution from the urn containing flames, which tends to be earlier in the English record. Both the flaming urn and flowerpot motifs were recovered from overlapping time periods from the Cadia Cemetery, indicating a time lag in the transmission of style change (Higginbotham, 2002). An urn with a sunflower motif was recovered from the Episcopalian section of the North Brisbane Burial Grounds. The excavation report indicated that there was also a nameplate and motif at head height but that they were too fragmentary to record or recover (Murphy and Rains, 2003:17). Approximately two-thirds of the lid motifs and depositum designs recovered from the North Brisbane Burial Grounds appear in the 1783 catalog, confirming these to be common coffin furniture. One of the two sets positively identified as registered designs is presented below.
A stamped, japanned metal shield-shaped depositum (FS242) was recovered from a grave (F17) in the Episcopalian portion at the North Brisbane Burial Grounds (Murphy and Rains, 2003:18; Figure 1A). It was attached to an adult-sized (190 cm long) hexagonal wooden coffin. The coffin furniture recovered from F17 matches a design registered by Birmingham brass founder and coffin furniture manufacturer John Hands, who was in business by October 1839 (Robson, 1839:50) when he took advantage of the new Copyright of Designs Act (1839) to register and protect his designs for a coffin breastplate and coffin lace (Board of Trade, 1863: 42/1/59 & 60). In October 1863, John Hands registered the design of the breastplate and matching set consisting of a choice of handles, lace, and lid motifs shown in Figure 1B. Coffin handles were more uniform in shape and were interchangeable across a range of handle plates, which, because of the thinness of their construction, usually survive in the archaeological record only as an imprint and are less useful for identification purposes. The poor preservation of grave F17 generally does not allow easy identification of the size of the handles used with the depositum. The only identifiable feature, the palmette pattern, is common to all three handle plate designs (Figure 1B). As the coffin is adult sized, one of the two coffin handle and plate designs on the right-hand side of Figure 1B was most likely to have been used.
Registered design depositum and lid ornaments were purchased in sets with the matching handles available separately because the number required per coffin varied (Hasluck, [1905] 2010:47). There was no evidence found at excavation that the matching lid decorations and lace were purchased in addition to the depositum and handles. The coffin handle had completely corroded, leaving only an impression in the soil that matched the Hands design (Figure 2).
FIGURE 1. Matching excavated evidence with catalogs. (A) Coffin plate (FS242) in situ at the North Brisbane Burial Grounds (UQASU F17_C7–10). (B) Complete set of coffin furniture registered by John Hands in October 1863 (Board of Trade: Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Office, National Archives, Kew 43/15/166773). Photographs H. Maclean.
In 1885, Brisbane undertaker John Smith obtained supplies of coffin furniture by direct importation from a Birmingham manufacturer and through a wholesaler located in Sydney. In May 1885, Smith sent a bank draft of £131 to Oswald Caldicott of Birmingham in reply to a letter received by him from that firm (Smith, 1885:6). Later in the same month Smith sent a check for £20 to Sydney coffin furniture importer and wholesaler James Walford and Co. for "20 sets of No. 9," which he received within the fortnight (Smith, 1885:6). As no coffin furniture catalogs survive in the records of M. K. Smith Undertakers, it is impossible to determine what this coffin furniture looked like, but as it only cost 10 shillings per set, it can be assumed that it was mass-produced pressed-tin furniture of an unregistered design. Smith also sold on some of his excess stock to out-of-town (i.e., not in direct competition) undertakers. He quotes S. W. Whiting of Toowoomba, Queensland, "Silver plate Furniture cost 35/- Adults, 27/6 Youths" (Smith, 1885:13). Undertakers such as John Smith mediated the range of coffin furniture available for purchase by the end client through their ordering practices, which were a combination of their personal taste and their knowledge of what would be most profitable.
Dottridge Brothers advertised directly to Queensland undertakers in 1898, perhaps to cut out the middlemen such as James Walford (Figure 3A). Birmingham manufacturer Gordon and Monro also placed classified advertisements in the Queensland post office directory for the same period but did not go to the expense of a display advertisement (H. Wise and Co., 1898:xxxv). There was certainly a market for their products as 132 undertakers were listed Queensland-wide the same year (Gordon and Gotch, 1898:483–484).
FIGURE 2. Coffin handle plates. (A) Impression of coffin handle plate in situ (grave F17) North Brisbane Burial Grounds (UQASU F17_C7–32). (B) The middle-sized coffin handle and plate from set (Board of Trade: Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Office, National Archives, Kew 43/15/166773). Photographs H. Maclean.
No evidence that metal coffin furniture was manufactured in the Australian colonies has been uncovered. After federation in 1901, coffin furniture continued to be imported into Australia. For example, Newman Brothers of Birmingham continued to export coffin furniture into the Australian market well into the late 1940s (H. Wise and Co., 1947:iii). Coffin furniture in Australia, then, appears to have closely followed manufacturing trends in the United Kingdom, imported en masse and distributed through the funerary trade.
## American Coffin Hardware
In America, however, the trajectory of the mass-produced coffin hardware industry is very different. Data for this section come from archaeological excavations, coffin hardware catalogs, and advertisements. Preceded by locally craft-made hardware, mass-produced coffin hardware did not gain a strong foothold in North America until the middle of the 1800s; there are, however, a handful of early examples extending into the eighteenth century, including those from African American contexts (Springate, 2015:52–56). Advertisements by merchants offering coffin handles and other coffin hardware for sale appear as early as 1738 in Philadelphia, well before Pickering's advances in the production of stamped coffin furnishings. Beyond 1748, advertisements of coffin hardware for sale appear nearly every year in Philadelphia until trade was disrupted by the American Revolution (although there is at least one documented example of smuggling; Tharp, 1996, 2003:118). Imported coffin hardware was also advertised in other port cities, including Boston, as early as 1758 (Habenstein and Lamers, 2007:160). Examples of early imported hardware have been recovered archaeologically, including British wrought-iron furniture handles found on coffins buried between circa 1730 and 1776 in the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan, New York City (see Figure 3B; Perry et al., 2006a:129, 2006b, burial 101; Springate, 2011). English-made handles, with the large single-lug plate and cherubs, angels, and trumpets as well as the "Glory and Urn" design advertised as early as the 1790s in English pattern books, were recovered from the Tenth Street Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Associated with the First African Baptist Church, the cemetery was in use from 1810 through 1822 (Crist et al., 1995:242–243).
FIGURE 3. (A) Dottridge advertisement in the Queensland Official Directory of 1898–1899 (H. Wise and Co, 1898:9). (B) Composite sketch of iron handles from burials 90 and 176 (ca. 1730 to ca. 1765 or 1776), African Burial Ground, New York City (Perry et al., 2006b, burial 176). Drawing by Cheryl LaRoche and Robert Schultz. Courtesy of the National Park Service.
Unlike in Australia, where coffin furniture was imported throughout the nineteenth century, by the late 1850s and early 1860s, American firms had begun to manufacture coffin hardware in the United States. Predating the coffin hardware industry there was the patent metallic burial case business, providing cast-iron burial cases in various forms from the mid-1840s through the late 1850s (Laderman, 1996:46; Springate, 2015:38–39). This American business may be considered a precedent for the domestic manufacture of burial goods.
FIGURE 4. (A) Drop handle with praying-angel motif from the 1856 burial of Carter Weir (burial 24), Weir Family Cemetery, Manassas, Virginia (Little et al., 1992:410). Drawing by Carey O'Reilly and courtesy of Barbara J. Little. (B) Children's handle with lamb, lion, and sunburst motif (Sargent & Co., 1874). Courtesy of the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, New York.
One of the earliest hardware catalogs of an American manufacturer containing coffin hardware was published in 1859 by the P & F Corbin Company of New Britain, Connecticut. Mass-produced hardware has been recovered archaeologically from burials dating as early as 1854. Of particular note are burials from both the Quaker Burying Ground and the Weir Family Cemetery in Virginia, dating from 1854 and 1856, respectively (Little et al., 1992; Bromberg et al., 2000). Handles recovered from these burials, with their cherubs and tableaux of angels, may well have been imported from England (see Figure 4A). British-identified iconography, including cherubs, angels, and extinguished torches, did appear on early American mass-produced coffin hardware. Coffin handles with cherubs and angels appear in the 1861J. B. Sargent & Co. and the 1865 Russell & Erwin (Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Company, [1865] 1980) catalogs but are not present in the 1865 Markham and Strong catalog. Although the number of coffin hardware catalogs published expands greatly in the late nineteenth century, angels and cherubs make only fleeting appearances again in single catalogs in 1874 (Sargent & Co.) and 1895 (Kregel Casket Co.) but do not survive into the offerings of future years. This lack of cherubs and angels in the iconography of American coffin hardware is one example of where the American industry diverges significantly from its British roots. Also almost entirely absent from American iconography is the urn or flowerpot of flowers seen in British catalogs from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, an example of which was excavated from the North Brisbane Burial Grounds.
American coffin hardware is generally less ornate than British coffin furniture. Handle lugs, for example, are smaller, and coffin plates have less ornate borders. Unlike British hardware, which shows remarkable continuity in design and motif over 140 plus years, American hardware designs and forms were always shifting. For example, bail and drop style handles appeared in the earliest coffin hardware catalogs and were the only styles offered through the mid-1860s (see, for example, Markham and Strong, 1865; Russel and Erwin Manufacturing Company, [1865], 1980). First patented in 1866, short bar handles appeared in catalogs in 1867 (see Figure 5; J. H. Lewis & Co., 1867; Mainfort and Davidson, 2006:124–125). Extended bar handles were also introduced in 1867 (Crane, Breed & Company, 1867). Although each of these styles remained on offer throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trend was toward more and more bar styles and fewer bail and drop handles styles.
FIGURE 5. Short bar handle showing construction (Strong, 1873).
Shifts over time in the types of motifs offered and emphasized in catalogs can also be seen. As the nineteenth century progressed, there was less emphasis on designs that incorporate foliage and flowers or scallops and beads in favor of plainer and more geometric designs. Although traditionally associated with changes in ideas about death—following the work of pioneers Deetz and Dethlefsen (Dethlefsen and Deetz, 1966)—recent work finds that many changes in motif can be more appropriately associated with changes in secular design trends (Heinrich, 2013; Springate, 2015:66–67). Uniquely American themes that appear on coffin hardware include American eagles and stars and stripes; symbols of the Independent Order of Oddfellows (who split from their British founders in the 1830s); and the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Civil War veterans (Springate, 2015:68). One design, the lamb and sunburst child's handle (see Figure 4B), shows remarkable continuity in both form and presentation (McKillop, 1995). The persistence of this design from the earliest catalogs through the twentieth century reflects continuity in how the death of children was perceived.
Certainly, it was because American industrialists began manufacturing coffin hardware domestically as the common use of hardware was just gaining a foothold that the American trajectory of mass-produced coffin hardware was so different than that in Australia, which relied on British imports. This development allowed American manufacturers to respond directly to American consumers, reflecting uniquely American ideas and ideals shaped, for example, by the developing American middle class; changing ideas about religion, salvation, and death that came out of the Second Great Awakening and the Civil War; the Beautification of Death movement that distanced reminders of death and decay from funerals; architectural design trends; and increasing urbanization and romanticism of nature. Commonly up through the mid-1870s and into the 1880s, coffin hardware was offered for direct purchase to the largely rural public via mail order in general hardware catalogs, as well as marketed to undertakers who worked in urban areas via specialty coffin hardware catalogs. The general public, then, had considerable say regarding styles and types of hardware available during the early years of the industry, voting with their wallets across the country. As the undertaking business professionalized and became more widespread in the 1870s and 1880s, undertakers and funeral directors had more influence as gatekeepers on what coffin hardware would be offered to their clients (Springate, 2015:62–63).
Canada, although sharing a border with the United States, was through much of the nineteenth century still part of the British Empire. Like Australia, it did not develop its own coffin hardware industry, and therefore, one would expect to find imported British hardware in Canadian burials. Although coffin hardware use in Canada appears to have begun later than in the United States, the pattern appears similar to that of its southern neighbor: early use of British imported hardware, followed by a reliance on American manufacturers.
Excavation of an 1855 burial in Ontario, Canada, uncovered a British breastplate like those illustrated in catalogs from the Victoria and Albert Museum in England and those recovered from the North Brisbane Burial Grounds in, Australia; in the same Ontario burial were American-made coffin screws and handles (Woodley, 1992; Murphy and Rains, 2003). Another British breastplate was recovered from an undated context at the same cemetery (Woodley, 1992, figs. 7, 10). Hardware from only American manufacturers is found in Canadian burials from 1861 onward (Woodley, 1991). Not found in Canada are specifically American-themed designs like the stars and stripes. A reason for a Canadian reliance on American product may be proximity to a developed industry—with many of the American manufactories located in the northeastern states, trade to urban Canadian centers like Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City was often closer and easier than to interior American locations. This trade would have become easier after 1867, with the signing of the British North America Act. With the signing of the act, Canada became the first dominion within the British Empire, gaining autonomy in domestic and foreign affairs and therefore able to negotiate trade and tariffs with its southern neighbor.
This chapter serves as an initial investigation into colonial and postcolonial industrial and consumer experiences, exploring how a common history is and is not reflected materially. Although stemming from the same British source, the histories of mass-produced coffin hardware in Australia and in the United States, as seen in the documentary and archaeological records, are very different. By comparing them side by side, we can see some of the effects that geography, politics, availability of raw materials, economics, globalization, and national histories can have on the development of an industry and how consumers relate to and shape it.
## References
Blainey, G. 2003. _The Rush That Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining._ Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press.
Board of Trade. 1863. _Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Office and Predecessor: Ornamental Design Act 1842 Representations._ Volume 15. BT 43. Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Office, The National Archives, Kew.
Bromberg, F. W., S. J. Shephard, B. H. Magid, P. J. Cressey, T. Denee, and B. K. Means. 2000. _"To Find Rest from All Trouble": The Archaeology of the Quaker Burying Ground, Alexandria, Virginia._ Alexandria, Va.: Alexandria Archaeology, Office of Historic Alexandria.
Church, R. A., and B. M. D. Smith. 1966. Competition and Monopoly in the Coffin Furniture Industry, 1870–1915. _Economic History Review,_ n.s., 19(3):621–641.
Connell, B., and A. Miles. 2010. _The City Bunhill Burial Ground, Golden Lane, London: Excavations at South Islington Schools, 2006._ London: Museum of London Archaeology.
Crane, Breed & Company. 1867. _Crane, Breed & Co.'s Wholesale Price List of Patent Metallic Burial Cases and Caskets...._Trade Catalogs Collection, microfilm item 671. Winterthur Museum.
Crist, T. A. J., R. H. Pitts, A. Washburn, J. P. McCarthy, and D. G. Roberts. 1995. "A Distinct Church of the Lord Jesus": The History, Archeology, and Physical Anthropology of the Tenth Street First African Baptist Church Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Report prepared by John Milner Associates, on file at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg.
Dethlefsen, E. S., and J. F. Deetz. 1966. Death's Heads, Cherubs, and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries. _American Antiquity,_ 31(4):502–510.
Gordon and Gotch. 1898. _Pugh's Almanac and Queensland Directory for 1898._ Brisbane: Gordon and Gotch.
Habenstein, R. W., and W. M. Lamers. 2007. _The History of American Funeral Directing._ 6th ed. Brookfield, Wis.: National Funeral Directors Association.
Hamilton, H. 1967. _The English Brass and Copper Industries to 1800._ 2nd ed. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, Bookseller.
Hasluck, P. N. (1905) 2010. _Coffin-Making and Undertaking: Special Appliances, Lancashire Coffins, Southern Counties and Other Coffins, Children's Coffins, Adults' Covered Coffins, Polishing Coffins, Inscription Plates, Coffin Furniture, Trimming or Lining, Ornamented and Panelled._ Reprint, Redditch, Worcestershire, England: Read Books Design.
Heinrich, A. R. 2013. Cherubs or Putti? Gravemarkers Demonstrating Conspicuous Consumption and the Rococo Fashion in the Eighteenth Century. _International Journal of Historical Archaeology,_ 18(1):37–64.
Higginbotham, E. 2002. _Report on the Excavation of the Cadia Cemetery, Cadia Road, Cadia, NSW 1997–1998._ Volume 5: _Plans, Figures and Photographs._ Report for Cadia Holdings Pty Ltd. Haberfield, NSW: Edward Higginbotham and Associates Pty Ltd.
H. Wise and Co. 1898. _Queensland Official Directory 1898–1899._ Brisbane: H. Wise.
H. Wise and Co. 1947. _Wise's New South Wales Post Office Commercial Directory._ Sydney: H. Wise.
Ives, R., and I. Hogg. 2012. _St. John's School, Peel Grove, Bethnal Green, London Borough of Tower Hamlets: A Post-Excavation Assessment Report._ Twickenham, UK: AOC Archaeology Group.
JB. 1783. _Trade Catalogue._ Southwark, London.
J. B. Sargent & Co. 1861. _J. B. Sargent & Co., New Britain, Conn., Sargent & Co., No. 85 Beekman St., New York, New York._ New York: J. B. Sargent.
J. H. Lewis & Co. 1867. _Wholesale Manufacturers of Coffins and Caskets...._ Facsimile edition, American Broadsides and Ephemera Series I, 1760–1900, Readex. American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.
Kregel Casket Co. 1895. _Illustrated Catalogue._ Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at the Strong, Rochester, N.Y.
Laderman, G. 1996. _The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883._ New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Litten, J. 2002. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: Robert Hale.
Little, B. J., K. M. Lanphear, and D. W. Owsley. 1992. Mortuary Display and Status in a Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Cemetery in Manassas, Virginia. _American Antiquity,_ 57(3):397–418.
Mainfort, R. C., and J. M. Davidson. 2006. _Two Historic Cemeteries in Crawford County, Arkansas._ Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Series 62. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archaeological Survey.
Markham & Strong. 1865. _Revised Price List with Illustrations._ Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.
McKillop, H. 1995. Recognizing Children's Graves in Nineteenth-Century Cemeteries: Excavations in St. Thomas Anglican Churchyard, Belleville, Ontario, Canada. _Historical Archaeology_ 29(2):77–99.
Murphy, A., and K. Rains. 2003. "Material Culture of Burials from the Lang Park Redevelopment Site." In _Suncorp Stadium Archaeological Salvage._ Volume 4: _Skeletal Material and Grave Artefacts,_ ed. J. Prangnell, pp. 1–54. University of Queensland Archaeological Services Unit Report 358. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Archaeological Services Unit.
Newman Brothers. 1920s. _Coffin Furniture, Shrouds, Frillings, Side Sheets Etc._ Birmingham: Newman Brothers.
P & F Corbin. 1859. _P. & F. Corbin's Illustrated Catalogue and Price List._ Hugh M. Morris Library, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware.
Perry, W. R., J. Howson, and B. A. Bianco, eds. 2006a. New York African Burial Ground Archaeology Final Report. Volume 1. Prepared for the U.S. General Services Administration, Northeastern and Caribbean Region. Washington, D.C.: Howard University.
Perry, W. R., J. Howson, and B. A. Bianco, eds. 2006b. New York African Burial Ground Archaeology Final Report. Volume 2: Descriptions of Burials 1 through 200. Prepared for the U.S. General Services Administration, Northeastern and Caribbean Region. Washington, D.C.: Howard University.
Powerhouse Museum. 2003. Coffin Furniture from the Wong Store: Made in England, 1875–1916. Object 2003/35/26. https://collection.maas.museum/object/12070 (accessed 26 November 2017).
Prangnell, J., ed. 2003. _Suncorp Stadium Archaeological Salvage._ Volume 4: _Skeletal Material and Grave Artefacts._ University of Queensland Archaeological Services Unit Report 358. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Archaeological Services Unit.
Richmond, M. 1999. "Archaeologia Victoriana: The Archaeology of the Victorian Funeral." In _The Loved Body's Corruption: Archaeological Contributions to the Study of Human Mortality,_ ed. J. Downes and T. Pollard, pp. 145–58. Glasgow: Cruithne Press.
Robson, W. 1839. _Robson's Birmingham & Sheffield Directory._ London: William Robson.
Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Company. (1865) 1980. _Illustrated Catalog of American Hardware of the Russell and Erwin Manufacturing Company._ Reprint, Ottawa: Association for Preservation Technology.
Sargent & Co. 1874. _Price List and Illustrated Catalogue of Hardware._ Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong, Rochester, N.Y.
Smith, J. 1885. Diary. K. M. Smith Records, OM75-127. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Springate, M. E. 2011. Coffin Handles from the African Burial Ground, New York City: Notes on Their Source and Context. _African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter_ 14(2).
Springate, M. E. 2015. _Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth-Century America._ Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Strong, C. 1873. Improvement in Coffin-Handles. United States Patent No. 138,768. Patented May 13, 1873.
_Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser._ 1803. Coffin furniture advertisement. 21 April, 3.
_Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser._ 1819. Advertisement for Edward Hunt, cabinet maker and undertaker. 30 January, 4.
_Sydney Morning Herald._ 1851. Coffin furniture advertisement. 25 August, 3.
Tharp, B. W. 1996. "Preserving Their Form and Features:" The Role of Coffins in the American Understanding of Death, 1607–1870. Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.
Tharp, B. W. 2003. " 'Preserving Their Form and Features': The Commodification of Coffins in the American Understanding of Death." In _Commodifying Everything: Relationships of the Market,_ ed. Susan Strasser, pp. 119–140. New York: Routledge.
Woodley, P. J. 1991. "Coffin Hardware and Artifact Analysis." In _The Links That Bind: The Harvie Family Nineteenth Century Burying Ground,_ ed. Shelley Saunders and Richard Lazenby, pp. 41–56. Occasional Papers in Northeastern Archaeology 5. Dundas, ON: Copetown Press.
Woodley, P. J. 1992. The Stirrup Court Cemetery Coffin Hardware. _Ontario Archaeology,_ 53:45–64.
# CHAPTER 11
# "Making a Box Worthy of a Sleeping Beauty": Burial Container Surface Treatments in the United States during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
_Jeremy W. Pye_
Relatively little has been systematically presented in the published archaeological literature about the types of surface treatments encountered during historic period cemetery or burial excavations. This lack is largely due to the fact that surface treatments are not commonly found preserved in burial contexts. Degree of physical preservation does, indeed, limit the scope of observation, but absence of evidence does not necessarily indicate absence of practice. For example, paint or cloth may not preserve except in association with metal hardware. It is up to the excavators and artifact analysts to piece together enough of the extant information to make accurate, data-informed hypotheses about burial practice and not just assume that no elaboration was present. Not only do researchers need to be observant and document the presence of surface treatments, they also need to document treatments on all surfaces. When surface treatments have been addressed in the previous literature, primacy has been given to the exterior surface treatments. Both exterior and interior surface treatments played a role in the social presentation of the deceased during the funeral, both affected cost of the burial container, and both contribute important information to the archaeological record.
The 1831 price list of the District of Columbia Cabinetmaker's Society illustrates the importance of surface treatment and records costs for various coffins (Garrett, 1975:890), including fees paid for labor involved in the production of certain types and sizes of coffins, as well as the prices paid for extra services, such as finishing (Table 1). The price list attests to the fact that the cost of the burial container could be influenced not only by the selection of different woods and sizes but also by the types of surface treatments chosen. To complicate matters, raw materials with which the craftsman constructed the burial container may have required different types of surface treatments. For instance, mahogany coffins mentioned in the price list were to be oiled, whereas the poplar coffins were to be stained and then oiled. The oil acts as a sealant preserving the wood, whereas the stain has no functional purpose. The practice of staining cheaper varieties of wood developed through a process of socially elevating negotiation whereby the lighter-colored wood was transformed into something more reminiscent of an expensive dark hardwood. Although the economic impact of certain practices can be more easily determined, the cultural perception of certain surface treatments tends to be more elusive, and there is little agreement or synthesis about the occurrence or social importance of various surface treatments.
> Table 1. List of products and services offered by the 1831 Cabinet Makers' price list (Garrett, 1975).
>
> Product or servicea | Cost
> ---|---
> A coffin 2 feet 6 inches long poplar | $1.00
> Do. 2 do.—do. mahogany | $1.25
> Do. 3 do.—do. poplar | $1.25
> Do. 3 do.—do. mahogany | $1.50
> Do. 4 do.—do. poplar | $1.50
> Do. 4 do.—do. mahogany | $1.75
> Do. 5 do.—do. poplar | $2.00
> Do. 5 do.—do. mahogany | $2.50
> All above 5 feet do. poplar | $2.25
> Do. 5 do.—do. mahogany | $3.00
> Extra.—If polished with hard wax | $0.50
> If top is hinged | $0.50
> Putting on breastplate | $0.12
> Lining with flannel | $0.31
> Covering with cloth | $1.00
>
> aThe following note accompanied the list: "The above mahogany coffins to be oiled, the poplar to be stained and oiled." Do./do = ditto.
## Exterior Surface Treatments
Mainfort and Davidson (2006:113) state that there are generally three methods to finish the exterior of a burial container: (1) staining (including blackening with soot), to which will be added varnishing and waxing; (2) painting; and (3) fabric or cloth covering. Each of these types of surface treatments will be discussed in greater detail below. Other types of exterior embellishments or adornments, such as the addition of decorative hardware (i.e., handles, hinges, coffin screws, coffin tacks, thumbscrews, escutcheons, plaques, caplifters, ornaments, decorative upholstery tacks, etc.) and the addition of wreaths or floral sprays, garland, and wire, can also be considered to be part of the exterior surface treatment of a burial container, but as they are secondary to the actual finishing of the burial container, they are not discussed here (however, see many of the other chapters in this volume).
## Staining, Varnishing, and Waxing
Coffins and caskets have historically been constructed from many different types of raw materials, including various qualities of wood. Utilizing light-colored softwoods for the construction of unseen parts of cabinets or furniture tends to be less expensive. In the same way, the bases or bodies of burial containers were sometimes constructed of cheaper materials, whereas more visible parts, such as the lid, were constructed of darker-colored hardwoods. Stains, waxes, and varnishes have been used to create a fine finish on the exterior surface of burial containers, with dark stains being used on light-colored woods (i.e., poplar and pine), most of which are softwoods, to mimic darker hardwoods (i.e., walnut and mahogany), which were more expensive (Coffin, 1976:103; Lang, 1984; LeeDecker et al., 1995; Bastis, 2006:44; Mainfort and Davidson, 2006:114). It has been suggested that this practice of emulating expensive woods is the poor to middle class's attempt to symbolically, or superficially, rise to the socioeconomic appearance of the elite (Bybee, 2007:86–87).
### _Wood Stain_
Wood stain is applied to wood with the intention of transferring pigment into the pores in the substrate of the wood. Stain is composed of three main components: pigment, solvent, and a binding agent. Traditional solvents include turpentine or alcohol, whereas the binding agents used historically ranged from linseed oil to lacquer and resin (Hasluck, 1905; Flexner, 1993). Stain is composed largely of pigment and solvent, designed not to cover the wood like paint but to penetrate and add color to the wood while leaving the grains of the substrate visible (Flexner, 1993).
### _Varnish_
True varnishes, unlike stains, are translucent wood finishes with no pigment added and are designed to create a clear protective coat on the surface of the wood. Varnish is usually composed of two types of binding agents, drying oils and resins, as well as a solvent, such as turpentine. Drying oils include linseed oil, tung oil, and walnut oil, whereas resins include amber, aspaltum, kauri gum, damar (or dammar), copal, rosin, sandarac, balsam, benzoin, shellac, and a wide variety of lacquers. After application, the binding agents in the varnish harden when the solvent has evaporated, leaving the hard protective coating (Flexner, 1993:176). The 1899 Brown-Hutchison Company general hardware catalog provides descriptions and costs for a number of resin varnishes available for purchase in the late nineteenth century (Table 2).
Drying oils, such as linseed oil, have been used historically in England to create a dull finish on the exterior of coffins (Flexner, 1993:50; Plume, n.d.:63–64). Drying oils are single-component varnishes but are not considered true varnishes because the oils cure through an exothermic reaction between the oxygen in the surrounding air and the polyunsaturated fats contained in the oils rather than through the evaporation of a solvent. In contrast to quick-curing resin varnishes, oils remain moist through the curing process, sometimes taking weeks to completely dry (Flexner, 1993:70). Because of this slow drying time and the haste with which most individually tailored coffins were constructed, it is unclear how practical the application of raw oils would have been.
Table 2. Descriptions and costs of varnishes from Brown-Hutchison Company (1899). A dash (—) indicates not applicable.
Two commonly used resin varnishes are lacquer and shellac. Lacquer refers to a quick-drying, resin varnish that is either clear or can be colored by the addition of iron oxide pigments, which can be used to create various shades of black, red, or yellow (Flexner 1993:162). Lacquer is a resin derived from a tree indigenous to China, known as the varnish tree ( _Toxicodendron vernicifluum),_ and has been used in the region for thousands of years. Urushiol, the toxic oil present in poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac, is the active ingredient in lacquer resin and requires a humid, warm environment for the curing process to be successful (Webb 2000:3–8).
Shellac is a single-component resin varnish derived from the excretions of the female lac bug ( _Kerria lacca),_ which lives in the forests of India and Thailand. Shellac comes in clear, amber, and even ruby and yellow colors in its refined form. Unlike lacquer, shellac can be dissolved in alcohol. It came into popular usage in the 1800s due to its quick-drying nature and the durability of its protective coating compared with various types of waxes that were previously used for wood finishing (Flexner 1993:144–155).
### _Waxing_
Coffin (1976:103) makes note of the use of beeswax, in particular, which would have been worked into coffin wood using a smoothing iron. Other types of waxes were possibly used in surface treatments of burial containers, but no additional sources noting specific varieties have been located.
### **Staining, Varnishing, and Waxing in the Archaeological Record**
Archaeologically, stains and varnishes are difficult to detect because the exterior surface of the wood is usually in a state of poor preservation when uncovered by archaeologists. Dark varnishes or stains might appear similar to dark-colored paint; however, they would be absorbed into the wood rather than sitting on the surface. Three such cases were identified during burial recovery at the Alameda-Stone Cemetery, Tucson, Arizona, including a black or dark colored lacquer/resin on the burial containers of two infants of unidentified sex, as well as on the burial container of a middle-aged, adult, male (Pye 2010). If varnish or stain is suspected, a cross-section of the wood should indicate only a partial penetration of the dark material in question into the substrate of the wood. Care should be taken in this type of observation since the natural decomposition of the wood may also produce such an appearance. Some researchers have report that varnish and stains can be identified via smells reminiscent of the solvent or oil components of those products (Bybee, personal communication 2007).
## Painting
Painting was a very common surface treatment for coffins and caskets historically in the United States. Paints are composed of two elements, the pigment and the vehicle (Lambourne and Strivens, 1999:6). The vehicle consists of components similar to wood stains, including the binder (resin) and the solvent or diluent. The binder effectively seals the surface of the wood after drying, and the liquid solvent dissolves the binder and allows for the application of the coating (pigment). The pigment consists of small particles of minerals or organic compounds that are relatively insoluble in the vehicle, giving coloration to the application through the adhesion of the binder (Zollinger, 2003:1–2). The pigment consists of the following materials: additives, which include catalysts, driers, and flow agents; primary pigments, which are fine particles of organic or inorganic pigment that provide opacity and color and may add anticorrosive properties to primers; and extenders, or coarse particles of organic or inorganic pigments, used to further develop opacity and obliterate undercoat visibility (Lambourne and Strivens, 1999:6).
Many of the period catalogs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sold burial containers with white painted exteriors, known as "gloss white" (Cleveland Burial Case Company, 1882; Hazelton Coffin and Casket Company, 1883; Chappell, Chase, Maxwell & Company, 1884; Paxson, Comfort & Company, 1884, 1898; National Casket Company, 1899; St. Louis Coffin Company, 1901). Mainfort and Davidson (2006:114) posit that this gloss white was likely made of an organic material, possibly a milk-based, or casein-based, paint. Casein is a prominent phosphoprotein in cow's milk and was used commonly as an ingredient in paints in the nineteenth century (J. M. Davidson, University of Florida, personal communication, 2009). It is also possible, however, that this gloss white paint was made with a white mineral pigment, such as zinc white, a popular late nineteenth-century pigment, rather than an organic paint. Whatever the nature of the paint composition, Mainfort and Davidson (2006:114) assert that this white painted coffin was the most common color advertised, especially for children's burial containers; however, it would seem that in the catalogs mentioned above, there were just as many gloss white adult containers as there were child-sized containers.
Other paint colors, such as red, yellow, and blue, have also been noted in the popular funeral literature. Coffin (1976:103–104) noted that some softwood coffins were painted. One "old-timer" in Coffin's discussion is said to have stated,
> The old red paint? Gosh, the kind they put on cheers [ _sic_ ] and coffins and light stands? That was the plain yellow ochre got out of the ochre pits and roasted or burned into a soft clinker. Same as they get darker ends on the bench bricks 'cause they're laid nearest the fire, you get red instead of yellow ochre after this extry roasting. Then they ground it up. 'Twas awful cheap so they used it on most everything. I seem to have forgot but I reckon this was the old Venetian Red that folks bought for two cents a pound and mixed with oil or milk. Those that lived down Maine way and was handy to fish, used fish oil to stir it up with, and it kept the powder from flying off. Yes, they was uncommon generous with that old paint.
Yellow ochre was also mentioned by Hasson (2001) in the production of yellow paints. Plume discusses the use of blue pigments in the exterior treatment of children's coffins in England: "it is usual to cover, or colour small coffins with blue...pigment, indigo, or ultramarine blue" (Plume, n.d.:39, 41). The 1899 general hardware catalog of the Brown-Hutchison Company shows many different colors of mixed "American" paints that were offered for sale in half-pint to five-gallon cans (Table 3). This resource provides an idea of the types of colors, and therefore the types of pigments, that were available for use in the late nineteenth century. It is the pigments, which give paint color, that will be the focus here.
### **Paints Commonly Utilized in Exterior Surface Treatments**
Linton (1849:412) describes in great detail a number of primary pigments utilized in England in the early nineteenth century, and many of the same pigments would have been used in the production of paints in the United States. Brief discussions are given here for those mineral pigments known to have been, or likely to have been, utilized in the surface treatment of burial containers in the United States on the basis of archaeologically identified paints or those mentioned in period catalogs. These paints include lead white, zinc white, carbon black, Venetian red, cobalt blue, ultramarine, chrome green, emerald green, and yellow ochre.
### _Whites (Lead White and Zinc White)_
Lead occurs naturally in the basic lead (II) carbonate (PbCO3) form in the mineral hydrocerussite (Terry, 1893:183). The pigment lead white is known to have been produced even in ancient Greece (Gettens et al., 1967:126), and it is claimed that it was historically the most important of all white pigments. In fact, it was the only white pigment available in some parts of the world until 1834 when zinc white was introduced as a healthier alternative to lead white (Gettens et al., 1967:127; Casas and de Andrés Llopis, 2002:73). To make lead white, sodium chloride and lead nitrate are combined and heated in a solution to form a white precipitate, lead white. This precipitate, once formed, can be washed, dried, and ground into powder that is ready to be mixed into paint (Lambourne and Strivens, 1999:12). White paints can be tested for both zinc and lead during paint analysis to determine which types of pigments were utilized (Gettens et al., 1967; Casas and de Andrés Llopis, 2002).
Zinc white (zinc oxide, ZnO) was introduced in 1834; however, until the 1850s when domestic production began in the United States, it was always imported and therefore would have been less common in some areas of the country farther from shipping hubs (Casas and de Andrés Llopis, 2002:73). Downs (1976:90) recorded an advertisement for zinc paint in the _Brooklyn Daily Eagle,_ dated 14 October 1850, which documents the shift from lead white to zinc white paints:
Table 3. Descriptions of ready mixed "American" paints from Brown-Hutchison Company (1899). Prices: ½ pt. = $0.13; 1 pt. = $0.22; 1 qt. = $0.35; ½ gal. = $0.60; 1 gal. = $1.10; 5 gal. = $5.
Color group | Color descriptiona
---|---
Browns |
Turkey burnt umber
Turkey raw umber
Italian burnt siena
Italian raw siena
Van Dyke brown
Blacks |
Lamp black
Coach black
Drop black
Ivory black
Blues |
Prussian blue
Ultramarine blue
Chinese blue
Cobalt blue
Greens |
Vernal green, L.M. & D.
C[h]rome green, L.M. & D.
3A green, L.M. & D.
Phoenix green, L.M. & D.
Bronze green
Reds |
English Venetian red
English Tuscan red
Imperial Tuscan red
English Indian red
Rose pink
Rose lake
Aramingo vermilion
Kensington vermilion
English Ver[million]., pale and deep
Flat brick red, L.M. & D.
Yellows |
French ochre
C[h]rome yellow, L.M. & D.
Dutch pink
Golden ochre
aMeaning of "L.M. & D." not provided in original.
> ZINC PAINT. Perhaps the most important of modern discoveries is that of a white material manufactured from zinc, which, when generally known, must entirely supersede the use of white lead. In the manufacturing of this article, there is nothing deleterious to affect the system of the laborers, while in the process of making white lead, thousands of human beings have been, and still are, yearly sacrificed. The discoverers of the zinc paint are the Messrs. Le Clair & Co., of Paris. We saw, on Saturday, a house that had been painted with it, and it was in every way superior to any specimen of house painting we had previously examined. The paint is of snowy whiteness, and as hard as enamel. For new work it requires about four coats; for old, about three; and afterwards a coat of varnish. Its surface resembles that of a well painted coach panel. In using it there is no risk of taking what is well known to the trade as the "painter's cholic." No dangerous consequences are to be apprehended from the smell of a newly painted house, if painted with the new zinc material. It is cheaper than white lead, and the color stands for any length of time without changing.
After the development of American zinc oxide production in the 1850s, the native product became much more economical than the imported zinc oxide. It quickly surpassed lead white in popularity and spurred the development of the ready mixed paint industry. Zinc white was still widely used through the twentieth century (Downs, 1976:91; Richter and Harlin, 1974:81).
### _Carbon Black_
Carbon black consists of pure elemental carbon and is produced by charring various materials and collecting the black ash or soot produced as the materials break down (Guy, 2004). Lamp black is a type of carbon black formed through the imperfect combustion of oils, fats, resins, etc., on burning oil lamps, whereas ivory black was produced through the charring of ivory or bones (Linton, 1849:412; Terry, 1893:11). Carbon black is one of the simplest of all nineteenth-century pigments and could be used by itself to blacken wood or could be used as an additive into a paint medium for application (Plume, n.d.:63–64).
### _Blues (Cobalt Blue and Ultramarine)_
Ultramarine has been in use in some form since the sixth century in the Near East. Natural ultramarine was made from ground powder of the precious mineral lapis lazuli and was very costly (Terry, 1893:70). This mineral was mixed with wax and kneaded in a solution of diluted lye, thus releasing the color from the minute crystals (Linton, 1849:412; Guy, 2004).
Artificial ultramarine was first discovered in 1787 when blue deposits were observed on the walls of lime kilns. It was not, however, until 1828 that a suitable, inexpensive synthetic ultramarine was produced in France from heating a finely ground mixture of soda ash, china clay, coal, charcoal, silica and sulfur. The resultant compound could then be washed of excess sodium sulfate and ground into fine blue pigment (Guy, 2004).
Cobalt blue is a pigment produced by sintering the stoichiometric mixture of ground CoO and Al2 O3 at 1200°C to produce cobalt (II) aluminate (CoAl2O4). It was first produced as a synthetic pigment in 1802, even though cobalt blue has been known since the Middle Ages in Europe (Guy, 2004). Increased production of cobalt blue did not begin until 1807 in France; it thereafter became a durable substitute for ultramarine in the painting arena (Linton, 1849:412; Terry, 1893:28).
### _Chrome Green_
Chrome green consists of chromium (III) oxide (Cr2O3), which occurs naturally in the mineral eskolaite. It is derived from chromite (Cr2O4) through a heated reduction with sulfur. Chrome green was a favored pigment of the nineteenth century, being first produced in Europe in 1814 (Richter and Harlin, 1974:79; Guy, 2004).
### _Emerald Green_
Emerald green is produced through a combination of acetate and arsenite of copper. It was commonly used from the early nineteenth century and varied in tint from a dark to a pale green, oftentimes with a bluish cast. Mixed into oil paints without the appropriate balance of components, cobalt blue has the tendency to turn to a greenish tone (Linton, 1849:412; Terry, 1893:28; Guy, 2004). Emerald green is soluble in acids, ammonia, and caustic soda, turning into a blue solution (Terry, 1893:121–124).
### _Yellow Ochre_
Yellow ochre is a natural mineral consisting of silica and clay and is found throughout the world. It is principally a ferric oxide (Fe2O3) and has been used to produce pigments ranging in color from yellows to oranges to browns. Yellow ochre is not heat resistant; through the loss of water in the heating process, the yellow ochre becomes calcined and turns into red ochre (Lambourne and Strivens, 1999:74; Guy, 2004).
### _Venetian Red/Red Ochre_
Venetian Red is a pigment derived from pure ferric oxides (Fe2O3), also known as red ochre (Terry, 1893:153). The term "Venetian red," according to Linton (1849:412), refers specifically to an inferior quality of red ochre gathered from a mineral source in Italy. The pigment is a dark shade of scarlet. The calcinations of iron oxide produce a range of colors from yellow-toned to blue-toned reds that can easily be dispersed into paint vehicles. Since ferric oxides occur naturally throughout the world, they are one of the cheapest and most durable of pigments available for use historically in the United States (Guy, 2004).
### **Painting in the Archaeological Record**
A number of historic cemetery excavations across the United States and Canada have revealed paints of various colors, including red, green, yellow, orange, pink, blue, gold, and brown, as well as both organic and lead whites (Table 4). The paint that was once present on the coffin or casket does not generally preserve well in most archaeological settings, although it does have a higher probability to be preserved on the underside of hardware or near other metal artifacts. Mainfort and Davidson (2006:114) suggest that what is most often seen archaeologically is the primer layers and not the paint itself. Although this may be true in some cases, some instances of layered pigments clearly represent actual paint layers. For instance, at Meadowlark Cemetery in Manhattan, Kansas, two types of color combinations were notably used as exterior surface treatments (Pye, 2007:134–135). One combination consisted of six layers and the other five. The six-layer variety began near the wood with a whitish-gray, porous, primer layer over which a powdery yellow ochre was applied, followed by a thin, carbonaceous black pigment, a second whitish-gray primer, a white lead-based paint, and, finally, a powdery yellow ochre on the supposed exterior (Pye, 2007:135). The five-layer variety of treatment was observed on both the interior and exterior of several burial containers. Near the surface of the wood lay a yellowish-white pigment possibly consisting of yellow ochre mixed with oil or milk or possibly a beeswax treatment, as mentioned by Coffin (1976:103). Over the yellow lay a carbon black layer, followed by red, a second carbon black, and, finally, a yellow ochre layer (Pye, 2007:134). It is unclear what the final appearance of such a surface treatment would have been or what design elements might have been represented.
Table 4. Sample of archaeological cemetery excavations showing evidence of painting.
In the Alameda-Stone Cemetery, Tucson, Arizona, at least 165 burial containers had been painted on the exterior surfaces (Pye, 2010). Colors encountered, and their frequencies, included green ( _n_ = 114), blue ( _n_ = 26), white ( _n_ = 22), black ( _n_ = 7), yellow ( _n_ = 4), pink ( _n_ = 3), red ( _n_ = 2), and gray ( _n_ = 1). In a number of cases, however, multiple colors were noted on the same burial container. Layered pigments included green over white ( _n_ = 2), green over yellow ( _n_ = 1), green over black ( _n_ = 1), green over blue ( _n_ = 9), and green over blue over yellow ( _n_ = 2). In other instances, multiple colors occurred, but it was not clear whether they had been layered or applied to different parts of the burial container. These color combinations included one each of yellow and black; blue and white; pink and red; and green, pink, and blue. Instances where only single colors occurred included 98 burial containers that exhibited only green paint, 19 white, 13 blue, 5 black, 1 pink, 1 red, and 1 gray. Yellow pigment appears not to have been used as a stand-alone surface treatment. As suggested by other archaeological cemetery excavations (e.g., Mainfort and Davidson, 2006; Pye, 2007), it is likely that the yellow and gray pigments, and possibly the red pigments, were primer layers rather than true paint coatings.
Decorative paint patterns have also been encountered archaeologically. One burial container at the Alameda-Stone Cemetery seemed to have been painted green and then embellished with yellow swirl patterns, one burial container had a green cross painted on the footboard, and another appeared to have been decorated with green floral and leaf patterns on the top of the lid (Pye, 2010). All of these decorated burial containers contained fetal or infant remains, with the embellishments likely holding some cultural or personal significance to the family or the community.
Although formal chemical paint analyses are rarely undertaken in archaeological studies to date, it is possible to make some general observations and hypotheses about the compositions of paints present in archaeological assemblages. The green and blue paints, although distinct at their extremes, had a great deal of color variation in the blue-green range, possibly a result of the mineral pigments. Some grades of emerald green pigment tended to have a bluish cast, whereas paints produced with cobalt blue pigments had a tendency to turn green under certain conditions. Yellow and red paints were likely produced using some form of ferric oxide. The white paints present in the cemetery were possibly produced using mineral pigments but were more likely formed from organic components such as casein. Pink paints would have been produced using a combination of a base white and an additive such as blood or some other red substance (see Coffin, 1976). The black paints would have been produced using a mineral such as lamp black or some other carbon-based pigment.
It would be wise to follow the advice of Welsh (1982:30), who suggests the use of the Munsell color charts in the identification of paints in order to gain conformity in paint analysis while remaining aware of how certain types of paints might degrade or be stained while buried, thus altering the color and appearance. When only a small fragment of paint remains (e.g., under hardware), the larger decorative elements that might have been on the container might have been obliterated or obscured. For instance, if a small fragment of green paint is recovered, it could mean that the entire burial container had been painted green, but it might also be part of the stem of a flower that was painted on the surface of the burial container.
Merely noting the presence of certain paint colors does not reveal the meaning behind those colors and their importance in the creation of design elements on the surface of burial containers through the application of social traditional knowledge. For example, the Pennsylvania Dutch at Voegtly Cemetery used a wide variety of colors on their coffins and on the furniture produced in the community at large. For them, bright colors represented nature, and the use of such colors was a celebration of God's universe, with death being an integral part of life (Beynon, 1989:108). Future research should focus on the identification of elements of surface treatments with respect to certain culture-specific associations of certain treatments, wood types, and demographics and how these would preserve archaeologically as a comparison to those that are recovered in historic cemetery settings.
## Cloth Covering
Cloth coverings evolved out of the pall or mortcloth, which was draped over the burial container or body prior to interment (Mainfort and Davidson, 2006:114). A British guide to coffins and coffin making by Sable Plume was published in the _Undertakers' Journal_ and later reprinted in book form, likely sometime in the 1880s, and details the process of covering a coffin with cloth. In this source, a common black (broad)cloth and velvet are mentioned as the most common types of cloth covering. This method of covering was useful because the wood could be of lower quality and left relatively rough (Litten, 1991:103). If the cloth was wide enough to cover both sides, it was divided in such a way as to cover the sides of the coffin. Both pieces would then be tacked at the foot end going in the same direction, the first piece being brought around one side until it reached the head, whereas the second would be folded back over the tacks, hiding them from view, and brought around the opposite side until it met the end of the first piece at the head of the coffin. In this way, only a few tacks at the head would be visible (Plume, n.d.:64). The bottom edges of the material would be folded under and tacked or glued on the bottom of the coffin. In the same way, a piece of material was cut for the lid and folded in to attach to the underside of the lid (Plume, n.d.:65).
One of the earliest recorded cloth-covered coffins was that of Queen Elizabeth I, who died in 1603 (Mainfort and Davidson, 2006:114). The practice was carried over from Europe to the Americas during the colonial period. Coffin (1976:109–110) recorded excerpts from the daybooks of David Evans, a Philadelphia cabinetmaker, from 1774 to 1811. In one entry dated 7 March 1793, Evans states, "Daniel Rundle, making a coffin for his wife Ann Rundle, covered in black cloth, lined with white flannel. Inscription plate, flowerpots, cherubs, handles and full lace, £15" (quoted in Coffin, 1976:109–110).
Mainfort and Davidson (2006:114) state that in the early nineteenth century, people in the United States commonly covered coffins and caskets with broadcloth of various colors. It was not until 1872, however, that a specific line of cloth-covered caskets was patented by Samuel Stein of Stein Manufacturing Company, Rochester, New York (Stein 1872; Habenstein and Lamers, 1955:277; Mainfort and Davidson, 2006:114). Stein specialized in cloth-covered caskets, and later, the National Casket Company, known for its cloth-covered caskets developed out of the Stein cloth-covering department (Habenstein and Lamers, 1985:173–174). Table 5 shows the variety of fabrics and colors one could order from the 1899 National Casket Company's _National Casket Company Complete Price List and_ _Telegraph Code Accompanying Pocket Catalogue "D."_ Included are broadcloths, plushes, piqués, crepe, momie cloth, satin, sateen, and velvet.
Table 5. Descriptions of colors of fabrics advertised for cloth covering in National Casket Company (1899). Piqué, crepe, momie cloth, satin jewel, and velvet combinations, as well as sateen combinations, are also listed, but no colors are given.
Material | Color code | Color
---|---|---
Broadcloth | C-5 | Silver gray
| P-5 | Medium slate
| G-9 | Ashes-of-roses
| E-3 | Navy blue
| M-17 | Silver drab
| G-2 | Dark slate
| A-7 | Coachman drab
| G-1 | Lavender
| H-12 | Purple
| P-18 | Cream
Silk plushes | H-7 | Lavender
| V-2 | Purple
| V-2 | Cream
| H-6 | Baby blue
| Z-12 | Peach pink
| V-5 | White
| V-6 | Black
| S-7 | Steel gray
| V-3 | Ashes-of-roses
| V-10 | Tan drab
| H-8 | Coachman drab
| H-5 | Rose pink
Embossed plushes | R-7 | White
| R-8 | Cream
| R-14 | Baby blue
| R-25 | Purple
| R-26 | Lavender
| R-28 | Heliotrope
| R-24 | Ashes-of-roses
| R-18 | Silver gray
| R-10 | Dark slate
| R-11 | Coachman drab
| R-13 | Peach pink
Although Stein was the first to have been issued a patent mentioning cloth covering, his specific invention was for improvements in casket design rather than being primarily focused on cloth covering. The practice of cloth covering was already well developed; other coffin and casket manufactures began to advertise cloth-covered caskets at least by the early 1880s and likely even earlier. Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company produced a line of cloth-covered coffin and caskets as early as 1882. Table 6 indicates the range of cloth-covered caskets available in the 1884 Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company _Revised Price List of Varnished & Cloth-Covered Burial Cases and Caskets._ Multiple types of fabrics could be chosen, such as broadcloth, brocatelle, piqué, and velvet, in several different colors. Alternatively, combinations of fabrics and trimmings could be ordered.
Archaeologically, it is very difficult to make observations of cloth covering because of the lack of preservation of fabrics in most cases. Unless kept within a protective vault, cloth coverings on coffins or caskets were particularly vulnerable to processes of decomposition because of their immediate contact with the soil. Evidence of cloth coverings may be preserved, however, on certain types of coffin hardware or in special circumstances where preservation is good (Mainfort and Davidson, 2006:114). Therefore, it is important to outline fabrics were commonly used to cover burial containers in order to produce informed archaeological analyses.
### **Fabrics Commonly Utilized in Exterior Surface Treatments**
Brief discussions are provided below for select fabrics known to have been utilized in the exterior surface treatment of burial containers in the United States during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries on the basis of period catalogs. These fabrics include broadcloth, brocatelle, crepe, momie cloth, piqué, plush, satin, sateen, and velvet.
### _Broadcloth_
Broadcloth is a densely woven fabric composed originally of wool, but cotton and silk varieties have also been produced. It is a durable and heavy, but also soft and glossy, material used widely for men's clothing, upholstery, insulating fabric, and even the robes of clergymen (Curtis, 1921). Broadcloth is so named because its breadth is usually 60 inches, as it is constructed on an extra wide loom with the warp (lengthwise/longitudinal threads/yarns, also known as "ends") and weft (transverse threads/yarns drawn through the warp, also known as "picks") tightly woven in a twilled or a plain-weave pattern (Cole, 1892; Curtis, 1921). After weaving, the cloth is dipped in water, causing the wool to shrink before being put through a fulling or felting process, which entangles the wool fibers of the weft and the warp, producing the soft, glossy, and durable quality of the cloth (Cole, 1892).
### _Brocatelle_
Brocatelle is a coarse, brocaded fabric, which is constructed traditionally of cotton, silk, linen, or wool. The silk or wool forms the face of the fabric, whereas the cotton or linen forms the back. Brocatelle fabrics are commonly used for tapestries and upholstery and are classed as a double-cloth fabric with two interwoven warps and fillings. As the face and back are constructed of different materials, the weave is constructed in such a way that the face warp threads do not show on the back of the fabric but the face filling threads do and vice versa. Brocatelle fabrics have a satin or twill weave pattern on a plain-weave backing (Cole, 1892).
Table 6. Descriptions and costs of cloth-covered burial cases and caskets advertised in Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company (1884a). A dash (—) indicates not applicable.
Elaborate brocatelles were originally woven with figuring threads of silver and gold but are now commonly woven with threads of harmonious colors often forming intricate floral designs (Curtis, 1921). The fabric itself requires no finishing as the colors are dyed on the silk, wool, or cotton yarns. Colors include light slate, olive brown, light brown, olive green, green, black, violet, scarlet, salmon, rose, and lavender for wool yarns. Silk yarns can be dyed salmon, light lavender, olive green, rose, navy blue, red, light green, and light yellow. Cotton yarns can be dyed blue, light brown, olive brown, tan, green, navy blue, olive, and red. Finished, brocatelle fabrics with silk faces can have approximately 200 ends per inch (epi), with the filling having about 116 picks per inch (ppi; Frank P. Bennett & Company, 1914:528–532; hereafter referred to as Bennett & Co.).
### _Crepe_
Crepe (also crêpe or crape) is a thin, semitransparent material made from silk or cotton. It is characteristically crinkled in either irregular or long parallel ridges, and it comes in white, black, or colored varieties (Cole, 1892; Curtis, 1921). Black crepes were traditionally used in nineteenth-century funeral settings (Cole, 1892; Coffin, 1976). These so-called mourning crepes are produced from hand-spun yarns and crimped by being passed through heavy steel rollers with irregular surfaces. The irregular wavy appearance of the fabric is not purely a product of the crinkling process but also a result of some of the weft threads being constructed with a reverse twisted pattern. Four left-twisted weft threads are then fed into the weave from one side while four right-twisted weft threads are fed from the other side. The fabrics are removed from the loom and boiled for shrinking before being dried, dyed, and/or printed. During the boiling process, the weft loses its twist and gives the fabric its characteristic appearance (Cole, 1892; Curtis, 1921).
### _Momie Cloth_
Momie, the French word for mummy, refers to the linen material that was used to wrap human bodies during the mummification process in ancient Egypt. The original mummy cloth was in the form of bandages wrapped around the bodies and had a rough and irregular weave with a fine warp thread intersecting a heavy weft at irregular intervals. The term "momie" now refers to this type of weave rather than the materials from which the fabric is composed. Linen, cotton, and wool varieties have all been made in various regions and time periods (Cole, 1892).
### _Piqué_
Piqué refers to a quilted weave applied to cotton fabrics and is also known as marcella, or, more appropriately, Marseilles. It has a double-cloth construction characterized by parallel cords or fine ribbing, with the face being moderately close, plain weave and the back being a more open, plain weave. The two sides of the cloth are then stitched together with stuffing or wadding, forming an intermediate layer. In order to give it its characteristic embossed effect, it is necessary to use considerably more tension on the back warp than on the face, requiring cotton yarns that can withstand greater tension. Analysis of the fabric yields 64 warp threads per inch on the face and only 32 on the back. Piqué is a stiffer fabric often used for ties and shirt collars (Bennett & Co., 1914:336–337).
### _Plush_
Plush is a fabric composed of the pile and the back. The pile has been made of various materials such as mohair, worsted yarn, or silk. It has a distinctive soft, cut nap, with its manufacturing process being nearly identical to that of velvet; however, the pile of plush is generally ⅛ inch thick or more, in contrast to velvet, which has a low-profile pile. Traditionally, plush has been used for upholstering furniture but has also been used in the making of stuffed animals. Embossed plush is most commonly used as a cloth covering for burial containers. The embossing process for the manufacture involves the application of an embossing agent and often a coloring agent, working these agents to the base of the pile. The fabric is then heated through a calendaring process with decorated rollers that effectively burn the design into the fabric (Cole, 1892).
### _Satin_
Satin is a warp-dominated, silken fabric with both a glossy side and a dull side. The glossy side has a high luster produced because of the high number of floats and low frequency of interlacing used in its construction. The term "float" refers to the placement of the warp thread over the top of the weft thread, or vice versa, without interlacing. The warp passes under the weft at irregular intervals, such as every eighth, tenth, twelfth, or even sixteenth thread. This weaving technique allows light to reflect from the arrangement of fine silk warp threads visible on the face, thus producing the glossy appearance on one side of the fabric. The glossy surface is enhanced by rolling the fabric through a calendaring process. The threads of satin are often dyed prior to construction of the fabric because the open, floating character of the fabric may become frayed in the dyeing process. Satin has been used primarily in garments and is often used as a backing for wool and velvet fabrics. It has also been used for fine slippers and pillows (Cole, 1892).
### _Sateen_
Sateen, or satine, is a cotton fabric with a smooth, lustrous surface, made to resemble satin fabrics. Sateens are produced using long-fibered cottons that have been mercerized—the cotton fibers have been soaked in a pool of sodium hydroxide, thus strengthening the fibers and producing a surface luster. The yarns are often dyed prior to construction of the fabric. Colors used include pink, heliotrope, navy blue, gray, light slate, peacock blue, red, slate, royal blue, tan brown, sky blue, brown, wine, and scarlet. A satin-weave construction technique is then used to make sateens, which means that they are formed by the same number of ends as picks, with each end and each pick interlacing twice in each repeat. Sateens are sheared and then calendered with hot steam rollers to further enhance the luster of the fabric. Characteristics of sateens differ depending on the quality of the material and its intended use; for example, a warp sateen striped cloth used for upholstery may have 96 ends and 52 picks per inch, whereas a finer-quality warp sateen may have 152 ends and 80 picks per inch (Bennett & Co., 1914:535–536).
### _Velvet_
Velvet is a densely woven fabric with a low-cut pile less than ⅛ inch long. It has a soft texture and other fine qualities that, historically, set this fabric apart for royalty and other special individuals or events. The origin of this fabric is somewhat ambiguous, but the most expensive varieties of velvet have been produced in Genoa, Florence, and Venice. The first velvet mill was established in the United States 1865 but was short-lived, so the majority of velvet sold in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was imported. The dominant colors of velvet on the market prior to the early nineteenth century were black and scarlet. During the early nineteenth century, midnight-blue, holly-green, and turquoise varieties appeared. Additionally, combination velvets were produced with black and scarlet being the main colors with blue or green forming borders (Litten, 1991:112–113).
Velvet is produced by inserting short pieces of silk thread (known as pile thread) under the weft threads so that the ends of the silk stand upright. These threads are so densely packed that the foundation of the fabric is entirely concealed. The pile threads are inserted into the loom running parallel to the regular warp threads, so that they may be taken up together and passed over the weft threads. Long brass wires are laid across the width of the fabric, and the weaving commences with the pile threads forming a loop over these wires, which are secured by the subsequent weaving of the next weft thread. When the wires are removed, the loop is cut, forming the dense pile characteristic of velvet. Fine qualities of velvet contain 40 to 50 pile loops to an inch of fabric, resulting in 80 to 100 silk fibers per inch when cutting. After weaving, the fabric is brushed and trimmed. It can be stamped or embossed. The stamping is effected through the application of stamping irons on the face of the fabric, whereas the embossing process takes the fabric through hot steam rollers (Cole, 1892).
### **Cloth Covering in the Archaeological Record**
Preservation of exterior cloth covering is poor in most archaeological contexts, although there are some situations in which the cloth covering, or large portions of fabric, might be preserved, such as within crypts, mausoleums, or sealed/intact burial vaults. Smaller portions of fabric might also be preserved in association with metal hardware or other adornments on the exterior of the burial container. Evidence of cloth covering in most archaeological contexts, however, is typically less overt than the above examples and is often overlooked by researchers conducting burial relocations. Two of the most common indicators of exterior cloth covering are the presence of fabric impressions on the surface of metal hardware that would have been in contact with cloth covering and the specific types of hardware designed for, or used in association with, cloth covering or specifically designed for use in association with cloth covering.
Fabric impressions can be left on the heads of nails used in the construction of the burial container, on the heads of tacks used to secure folds of the cloth covering, or on the backs of decorative hardware. A fabric impression can be defined as the transference of a fabric's construction pattern to the surface of another material. In the case of iron nails and tacks, the development of ferrous corrosion on the head of the hardware forms around the threads of the cloth forming the fabric's structure. Upon deterioration of the actual fabric, the impression remains.
Lining tacks (Figure 1) are typically used to affix cloth lining within a burial container but may also be employed on the exterior perimeter of the burial container. The presence of exterior lining tacks or upholstery tacks is also a good indicator of cloth covering; however, because of collapse of the burial container and/or disturbance of the burial feature, the context of exterior tacks is often mingled with tacks used originally to affix interior linings. The heads of tacks should be inspected for fabric impressions, but as some types of tacks were cloth headed, fabric impressions on the heads of tacks should be taken as evidence of the presence of a cloth head rather than an impression of burial container cloth covering. Other types of hardware that specifically indicate the use of cloth covering are certain types of catches designed specifically to be used in conjunction with cloth work (Figure 2).
FIGURE 1. Iron cut lining tacks and gimp tacks illustrated in the Evansville Coffin Company catalog, circa 1909.
FIGURE 2. Catches used for cloth work as advertised for sale in a Langenau Manufacturing Company catalog, circa 1920s-1930s.
A note of caution is warranted, however. One should not be too quick to assume the presence of cloth covering on the basis of the mere identification of exterior "lining" tacks or other types of tacks without consideration of the archaeological context. Small tacks were also used to secure other decorative elements such as tassels or cordage on the exterior of a burial container. Beynon (1989) reports the presence of serpentine, copper wire rickrack tacked around the outside perimeter of some cloth-covered coffins present at the Voegtly Cemetery in Pennsylvania. As evidenced by excavations from earlier cemeteries, such as the New York African Burial Ground (Perry et al., 2006), in New York, and the Bulkeley Tomb, in Colchester, Connecticut (Bastis, 2006), tacks could also be used by themselves to decorate the exterior of the burial container. Small tacks were often placed on the lids of coffins in order to give information such as death dates or names, or merely as aesthetic elements (Lang, 1984:23; Rauschenburg, 1990:41; Bromberg et al., 2000:162).
Little attention has been given to fabric analysis in recent cemetery projects, so no synthesis is yet possible, although fabric impressions found on the heads of nails in a number of burial containers recovered from the Meadowlark Cemetery in Manhattan, Kansas (Pye, 2007), indicate the potential. A more detailed analysis of fabrics used as cloth coverings on burial containers was possible during the study of materials from the Alameda-Stone Cemetery in Tucson, Arizona. At least 219 burial containers in the Alameda-Stone Cemetery showed clear evidence of having been covered with some sort of cloth (Pye, 2010). This evidence most often took the form of fabric impressions on the heads of nails or on the surfaces of other metal hardware. Small pieces of preserved fabric were present in some instances, however, and were represented by black velvet, scarlet velvet, floral embossed plush, and white cotton plain-weave fabrics with thread structures preserved to the extent that the epi and ppi of the material could be reasonably estimated. Judging by the exhibited characteristics of the plain-weave fabrics, it is possible that these fabrics represented muslins and piqués. Other fabrics or fabric impressions noted during excavations were not as easily identified because of limited preservation. Colors noted in this category were cream, tan, brown, black, and green. Approximately 26 burial containers appeared to have been covered with a plain or balance-weave fabric. The texture of such fabrics ranged from very fine (possibly silk or satin) varieties to fine, medium-coarse, and coarse varieties. A larger sample would be needed for a definitive identification (Pye, 2010).
## Combination Treatments
Although many exterior surface treatments would have been uniform and exclusive on a single burial container, sometimes combination treatments were applied. Combination treatment refers to the occurrence of more than one type of surface treatment. Although it would have been unusual for a painted surface to then be varnished and vice versa, it was not unheard of for a cloth-covered burial container to also be painted. Painted cloth covering was reported in 60 graves investigated at the Alameda-Stone Cemetery in Tucson, Arizona. Green was the most common paint color associated with fabric, with 39 occurrences. There were also four blues, five whites, two blacks, five blue and green combinations, one green and yellow combination, one green, pink, and blue combination, and two green, blue, and yellow combinations. In all of these instances, it appeared that the paint was applied to the outer surface of the fabric. It is possible that the paint and fabric were applied to different portions of the exterior of some burial containers. For example, one grave held a burial container that exhibited green and black paint on the exterior surface of the lid, whereas fabric impressions were located on nails on the sides of the container. This combination could suggest that only the body of the container had been cloth covered, while the lid had been painted (Pye, 2010).
## Interior Surface Treatments
The interior of a burial container sometimes would have been left bare for various reasons, but more often than not, the interior surface also received some form of treatment. For the local craftsmen, cabinetmakers, undertakers, and commercial coffin and casket manufacturers, just as much time, energy, and money were devoted to treating the interior of burial containers as the exterior. The most common interior treatment would have been simple cloth lining, although occasionally the interior surfaces were painted (see the exterior treatment section on painting).
Just like the exterior treatment, the interior treatments of coffins and caskets reflected cultural traditions and beliefs and carried certain social meanings. Coffin (1976:102) states,
> Traditionally, old-time carpenters brushed together all of the sawdust and shavings accumulated from making a coffin and placed these scraps inside it. Superstition taught that if these bits of leftover wood were tracked into a house or carelessly shaken from clothing, they would endanger whomever they touched, and that person might become death's next victim.
These wood shavings, although having a social reason for inclusion in the coffin, also served a functional purpose. After construction of the burial container, the cracks were filled with pitch as a sealant, and the sawdust acted as extra padding to prevent shifting of the body but primarily was used to absorb the fluids resulting from primary decomposition (Litten, 1991:92, 1998:11; Janaway, 1998:23; Stock, 1998:148). In some cases, newspapers, bran, straw, or cotton waste was also used to make linings appear fuller, more textured, and more luxuriant (Hasson, 2001; Plume, n.d.:21).
In the late nineteenth century, the development of the professional funeral industry and the perception of the burial container as a bed-like vessel prompted further elaboration of coffin and casket linings. Mattresses developed out of the layer of sawdust, or other absorbent material, upon which the linings were placed. Mattresses covered the entire bottom of the burial container and consisted of plain woven covers or cloth embellished with frills or rosettes (Janaway, 1998:22). Pillows were also often included in the burial container. Sets of linings could often be purchased from period catalogs that sometimes included both mattresses and pillows of the same decorative style (Janaway, 1998:22). In the following text, burial container liners will be discussed in greater detail. Lining tacks and pillows will also be discussed, as they played important parts in the lining of the burial container.
## Burial Container Linings
Davidson (2004:417) asserts, "except in the cheapest of burials, all coffins were once upholstered and then lined in cloth." In fact, one of the more substantial portions of the total cost of a funeral, or at least of a burial container, would have been the lining. The National Casket Company (1899) listed the prices associated with lining a coffin with materials such as muslin, satin, merino, and canton flannel (Table 7). This price list shows that prices could vary considerably for different materials and for lining burial containers of different dimensions.
Plume (n.d.:21–23) details the process of lining a coffin (for a description of lining a casket, see also Hohenschuh, 1900:126–132). At the very least, coffins required only a simple inside lining or heading (Figure 3, top). This lining could be a single piece of fabric depending on the width of the material or could be composed of side wall pieces and a bottom piece. After placing the pitch around the inside of the coffin to seal the container, a layer of sawdust, or excelsior, was used to stabilize the body. Over this sawdust was placed a piece of cloth cut to the shape of the bottom. This bottom piece of fabric would later earn the title of a "mattress." The side pieces were cut from a cloth long enough that the pieces might reach along one side, across the head, and 4 inches over, matching the shape of the side of the coffin. Either the lining could be tacked near the top edge of the coffin, thus allowing the wood to show, or the fabric could be pulled over the edge and tacked down from the top, covering the wood.
Table 7. Prices for lining coffins and caskets as advertised in National Casket Company (1899). A dash (—) indicates not applicable. Length given as feet (′) and inches (″).
To this most basic level of coffin lining it is possible to add several varieties of trimming, including a top, fringe, gimp, lace, tassels, and cords. The development of the hinged half lid on the coffin, and later the fully or half-hinged lid of the casket, prompted the introduction of the skirt and the overskirt. A glance through the price lists of burial robes and linings of the Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company (1882, 1884a, 1884b, 1886a, 1886b; Table A1) reveals that almost 200 types of linings were offered for sale, with a variety of trimmings in different combinations and colors. Lining and trimming materials were also sold individually as piece dry goods. The descriptions and costs of such items as they were advertised in Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company's revised price list (1884b) are also a valuable resource (Table A2). Analysis of these price lists suggests that buying the full range of materials needed to line a coffin or casket piecemeal would incur a greater total cost than purchasing combination sets of linings.
### **Fabrics Commonly Utilized in Interior Burial Container Treatments**
Several of the fabrics utilized as cloth coverings for burial containers were also used as interior linings. Specifically, broadcloth, momie cloth, piqué, sateen, and velvet were utilized for various parts of linings or trimmings on the basis of product offerings in period catalogs. These fabrics have been previously discussed and will not be discussed below; however, brief descriptions of some of the other fabrics used as interior cloth linings are provided below and include brocade, cambric, canton flannel, cashmere, China gauffer, coburg, Henrietta cloth, Italian cloth, lawn, merino, muslin, serge, and silk.
FIGURE 3. Coffin linings. (top) Linings in the F. H. Hill catalog, 1881. (bottom) Lining set and pillow, Crane, Breed & Company catalog, 1910.
### _Brocade_
Brocade fabrics are shuttle-woven fabrics made with a variety of silks mixed with cotton yarns and/or metallic threads. Brocade has, historically, been used for upholstering furniture as well as making tapestries and drapes. It is created using a standard weft and a supplemental weft, which produces a final product showing patterns similar to embroidery. It is stated that these fabrics were expensive to produce at their finest quality and represented some of the most expensive fabrics in the domestic market. Black was the most common base color for brocades, which would exhibit gold interlacings. Brocades average 50 epi and 60 ppi, but the thread counts could vary depending on quality of the weave (Bennett & Co., 1914:307–309; Hunter, 1918).
### _Cambric_
Cambric was a fine linen fabric, also known as batiste, produced by the weaver Baptiste of Chambray in southern France. Cambric now more commonly refers to a finely woven cotton fabric made of hard, twisted cotton yarns, more closely resembling muslin. Cambric has a plain weave and a glazed, smooth surface appearance. This glossy effect is obtained in the finishing process when the fabric is passed through the calendar and heated with steam rollers, tightening the fibers and bringing them into alignment. Prior to being sent through the calendar, the fabric is dyed. Colors commonly used for cambric include black, sulfur black, bottle green, pea green, navy blue, dark slate, brown, light brown, old gold, slate, maroon, green, blue, wine, pink, sky blue, and heliotrope. Although various types and qualities of cambric exist, analysis of the finished fabrics reveals an average of 70 epi and 54 ppi (Bennett & Co., 1914:544–547).
### _Canton Flannel_
Canton flannel is an all-cotton fabric showing a twill effect on one side and a soft nap on the other, constructed from one warp layer and one filling layer. The warp is produced from regular cotton yarns woven in the twill weave with characteristic diagonal ribs or twill lines, and the filling is made with a slack twist to facilitate finer napping. Regular quality canton flannel typically has 68 epi and 48 ppi when finished. It can be dyed in various colors, such as light blue, light brown, pink, red, heliotrope, green, scarlet, olive, orange, blue, slate, and maroon (Bennett & Co., 1914:395–398).
### _Cashmere_
Cashmere is a woolen fabric made from the fur of the Kashmir goat ( _Capra hircus laniger_ ), which originated in the Kashmir region of the Himalayas, along the border of India and Pakistan. The goats have also been raised in China, Tibet, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and Iran. Cashmere fabric has a silken texture and is relatively light weight. The fur of the goat is harvested by combing during molting, or it is shorn. The fibers are then woven, spun, or worsted before being used in the manufacture of fabric. Cashmere naturally comes in whites, grays, and browns, although it can be dyed easily into darker colors (Frank, 2001:136–140).
### _China Gauffer_
China gauffer refers to a type of ornamental fringe made of silk. As the name implies, this particular trim is primarily made in China (Frank, 2001). No further information could be gathered about the specific qualities of this particular item; however, it was listed for sale in the 1884 price list of Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company (see Table A2).
### _Coburg_
Coburg is a thin fabric made from all cotton, cotton and worsted wool, or cotton and silk. Coburg fabric derives its name from the city in Germany where it was first manufactured. Coburg fabric is commonly used for dress goods, including wrappers, shirtwaists, and suits. Coburg is produced using an uneven-sided twill weave with twice as many epi as ppi. In the analysis of some coburg fabrics, one will find 120 epi and 54 ppi. The weave repeats after three ends and two intersections.
Coburg fabrics are woven with gray yarns. After weaving, they are finished through either dyeing, printing, or bleaching, followed by printing. All-cotton coburgs are commonly dyed black, wine, light blue, navy blue, brown, green, scarlet, slate, red, olive, peacock blue, sky blue, or mauve (Bennett & Co., 1914:650–653).
### _Henrietta Cloth_
Henrietta cloth is a light-weight, woolen fabric often used for women's wear. The cheaper varieties are made with cotton and worsted wool, with more expensive varieties of worsted yarn and silk. The fabric is generally constructed using a twill weave with a one-up, two-down pattern with the weave repeating on three ends and three picks. The twill weave produces a pattern of parallel, diagonal ribs. Approximately one-third of the warp is visible on the face, whereas two-thirds of the filling is visible. The twill weave and the fact that the coarser of the yarns is used for the warp give the face a finer feel than the back of the material. Good-quality Henrietta cloth has approximately 76 epi finished fabric with a filling of 66 ppi.
The cloth is dyed after it is woven. It is dipped once using the worsted dyeing process for which the cotton yarns are specially prepared; otherwise, two dyeing processes would be necessary. Colors represented in the historical literature include union black, light brown, navy blue, red, light tan, slate, purple, scarlet, pea green, royal blue, dark green, and ruby (Bennett & Co., 1914:541–544).
### _Italian Cloth_
Italian cloth is made of cotton and worsted, cotton and wool, or cotton and mohair but can also be an all-cotton variety. It is characterized by a light, glossy appearance and is commonly said to be reminiscent of satin fabric, with some varieties being known as "farmer's satin" or "Spanish satin." It was used as linings for garments, such as ladies' dresses, as well as for undergarments. It is constructed of gray yarns in a satin foundation weave, meaning that the intersections of the warp and weft are arranged as evenly as possible across the surface of the fabric. After construction, the fabric is boiled, bleached, and then dyed in various colors, such as pink, salmon, light buff, light slate, light gray, light brown, red, sky blue, pearl, black, navy blue, and light green. The final step in the finishing process is to run the fabric through a calendar with heated rollers, which gives the fabric a glossy face. The finished fabric yields 102 epi and ppi if the threads are evenly distributed (Bennet & Co., 1914:483–487).
### _Lawn_
Lawn is a light-weight, sheer, single-cloth, all-cotton fabric that uses a plain-weave pattern. It is produced in various quality grades of cotton yard but is always made of simple gray yarns. Any design elements present on the fabric are printed rather than woven. Lawns have a very smooth surface when finished through a process of brushing and light starching. After bleaching, lawns are often tinted light shades of blue, pink, cream, ecru, pearl, or green, using dyes added directly to the starch. The finished product usually contains 64 epi and 62 ppi (Bennett & Co., 1914:447–448).
### _Merino_
Merino is the name of a wool-bearing sheep bred originally in Spain. The term now refers to a wide variety of wools from this species of sheep raised throughout the world. The climate of different regions where the sheep are bred greatly affects the quality of the wool produced, however. The fabric constructed from the merino fleece is a thin, light-weight material with an identical back and face. This characteristic is produced through a double-twilled weaving technique (Cole, 1892; Frank, 2001).
### _Muslin_
Muslin is a soft cotton fabric used for a variety of purposes, such as garments and sheeting. It is called by a number of different names typically alluding to the location of its manufacture or its intended function (i.e., butcher's muslin). Often, the functions of certain types of muslin are reflected by the quality of their production. A fair grade of butcher's muslin may have around 52 epi and 38 ppi. Butcher's muslin is a plain-weave fabric that can be purchased either in an unbleached form, which means no finishing is required, or in a finished form. The finished form must be boiled and then subjected to bleaching chemicals after being removed from the loom (Bennett & Co., 1914:539–540).
### _Serge_
Serge is a type of twill weave fabric that has wool, silk, and cotton varieties. The cotton variety itself is very similar to fine satin aside from the fact that serge is constructed with a twill weave. Cotton serge was used regularly in dressmaking but had many different applications. Wool serge has been primarily used for uniforms and suits, whereas the more fragile silk serge is used for fine inner linings of garments. Historically, in Europe, serge was expensive to produce because of the amount of labor that was necessary to process the raw materials and to weave the fabric. Because of the fine quality of the yarns required, the weave in this cloth has a high thread count, with as many as 100 epi and 172 ppi (Bennett & Co., 1914:273–275).
### _Silk_
Raw silk thread was too fine to be woven and therefore was subjected to a "throwing" process in which several threads were twisted together, forming more substantial yarns for fabric manufacture. The yarns could be dyed prior to weaving or knitting, or the fabric could be piece dyed using a variety of dye colors (Cole, 1892). In order for the dye to adhere to the silk fibers or fabric, the natural sericin in the silk fibers must be removed through a degumming or boiling process, thus producing the fine, soft quality of silk fabric.
Silks are constructed in a number of different ways. Frank (2001:30) discusses four main families of silk weaves: tabby (or plain weave), serge, satin, and crepes. Crepe, serge, and satin have been discussed previously and will not be further detailed here. The plain-weave tabby silk is constructed through a weaving process whereby one warp thread is passed over one weft thread and then under the next weft thread (Frank, 2001:31).
### **Secondary Components and Trimmings of the Burial Container Linings**
The primary burial container liners were composed of the mattress and the head lining, but a number of secondary lining components were introduced over the course of the nineteenth century, including the top, skirt, overskirt, and pillow (Figure 3). In addition, interiors of burial containers were often accentuated by a variety of decorative elements known as trimmings. Common types of liner trimmings available for sale in period catalogs included fringe, gimp, lace, tassels, and cords. Each of these secondary components are discussed briefly below.
### _Top_
The top refers to the piece of fabric affixed to the underside of the coffin lid or that which is inserted into or tacked onto the lid of a casket. The top is cut to the shape of the lid, with the edges turned under and tacked down to fit just inside the top edge of the coffin.
### _Skirt_
In modern terminology the skirt refers to the piece of fabric that hangs down from the closed, lower portion of the lid, which reaches the deceased near the midsection and hides the interior foot of the container from view. This item would not have been popularly used with hexagonal coffins but was primarily a product seen with rectangular, hinged caskets. During the earlier period, the skirt possibly could have referred to the extralarge fringe that could be unfolded to drape over the side of the burial container when the lid was open.
### _Overskirt_
The term "overskirt" is somewhat esoteric and is not known to have modern usage. It could have referred to a couple of modern components of the casket lining: the apron/throw or the extendover. The apron, or throw, is the fabric piece that lies across the foot panel, the skirt of which hangs into the casket as mentioned above. The extendover is the piece of fabric that attaches to the inside of the casket and hangs down around the exterior to the level of the handle lugs. Overskirts, whatever their function and placement, much like skirts, were used primarily for caskets rather than for coffins.
### _Fringe_
The fringe, also known as frilling, is an ornamental border at the top of the head lining (Plume, n.d.:23). It could consist of an assortment of loose threads or yarns of various lengths joined together via stitching onto a solid border. Fringes may also consist of frayed, textured, or otherwise ornamented fabrics (Cole, 1892). A number of such fringes are depicted in the undated (but probably pre-1878) _Illustrated Catalogue of Undertakers' Supplies,_ published by Paxson, Comfort & Company.
Fringes could be attached in a couple of different ways according to Plume (n.d.:23). The first way involved creating a fold in the fringe fabric leaving a narrow and a long portion. The fabric fold could then be tacked to the upper inside edge of the burial container, allowing the long part of the fringe to drape inside the coffin while the narrow edge would fold up and inward, creating a fabric lip at the edge of the coffin. This first method was used when the top of the coffin wood was left visible. The second method was to tack the fringe down in such a way that it is on top of the coffin edge and completely covering the wood. In this case, Plume suggests using brass gimp tacks to secure the fringe; these tacks would be visible and so should be attractive. The fringe should be started at the head of the coffin, and the corners should be folded rather than cut (Plume, n.d.:23).
### _Gimp_
Gimp is the term for a flat trimming made from twisted silk, worsted wool, or cotton yarns. The term originally referred to the stiff metallic wire or coarse cord that runs through the center and acts as a foundation for the braids, beads, or spangles characteristic of certain types of gimp (Cole, 1892). Several different varieties of cotton gimps are depicted in the undated (but probably pre-1878) _Illustrated Catalogue of Undertakers' Supplies,_ published by Paxson, Comfort & Company. Gimps usually range from a quarter of an inch to an inch wide and are tacked to the top of the fringe using gimp tacks, either on the upper inner margin of the coffin or along the top of the coffin walls.
### _Lace_
Lace is a very old type of ornamental fringe; originally meaning a braid or a tie, it evolved into the current form by interweaving fine linen laces with other fine threads on a parchment pattern. Designs and ornamentation are incorporated into the lace either through the weaving process or through needlework and embroidery, the latter type known as point lace. The lace was often applied to the interior of the coffin in place of a fringe or frill to cover the corners of the interior lining or as a border for the top. It could also be used to decorate the exterior of the coffin (although it should not be confused with metal lace, which may have imitated the cloth form; see Figure 3 (bottom). Plume (n.d.:40) describes using lace to cover the seam of cloth coverings by bringing the seam near one corner of the coffin and then folding lace around each corner. Different types of lace could be considered to be in the gimp and fringe categories, but it is not known what type of lace was used in burial container ornamentation.
FIGURE 4. Tassels and cords on casket, Paxson, Comfort & Company catalog, 1898.
### _Tassels_
Tassels, often made of silk or other fine fibers, were often used to augment the aesthetic quality of the fringe on the interior of the coffin. If a scalloped fringe was used, then the tassels would be placed in the depression between two adjacent scallops. The 1895 _Illustrated Catalogue of Hearses and Trimmings_ , published by Crane, Breed & Company, depicted several types of such tassels. Tassels came in various sizes and designs and were also commonly used with decorative cords to wrap around the exterior of coffins, caskets (Figure 4), and even hearses (Paxson, Comfort & Company, 1898).
### _Cords_
Cords are braided or twisted decorative ropes made from various fibers, yarns, or threads, such as cotton, silk, or metallic wire. Such cords are generally one-quarter to a half inch thick and would be used as border material across the top inner edge of the burial container. They were also often used with tassels and wrapped around the exterior of the coffin or casket, as in casket design 41 from the 1898 Paxson, Comfort & Company catalog (Figure 4).
### _Pillows_
One other aspect of interior coffin treatment yet to be discussed is the presence of a pillow or some object upon which the head of the deceased is laid. During the late nineteenth century's Beautification of Death Movement (Bell, 1990, 1994), the deceased was often characterized as sleeping, a conception that acted to normalize the view of the coffin or casket as a bed. Pillows were often formed initially from the bottom lining by adding extra stuffing in the head region (Janaway, 1998:23). Alternatively, separate pillows could be included in the burial container (Litten, 1991:103). Pillows appeared in period catalogs once mortuary supply companies expanded production beyond hardware.
A review of period mortuary merchandise catalogs indicates that pillows could be made from a variety of materials and came in many different styles. The Paxson, Comfort & Company ([ca. 1890]: 161) catalog _Wholesale Pricelist of Burial Robes, Wrappers, Dresses, Suits, Habits_ advertises "very fine artistic hand-embroidered pillows made from coburg, sateen, cashmere, wool merino, silk and satin." Those fabrics could be produced in colors such as white, cream, drab, steel gray, pink, blue, and black to match the style and color of associated Paxson, Comfort & Company coffin and casket linings. Several styles mentioned include puffed, plaited, and honeycomb, although it is mentioned that other popular designs could be ordered for a cost ranging between $0.25 and $25.00.
Table 8. Satin pillows listed for sale in Stein Manufacturing Company (1887).
No. | Description | Cost
---|---|---
1 |
White or cream satin, bonanz embroidered spray?, edged with fine fringes, 3 inches deep
| $3.50
2 |
White or cream satin, bonanz embroidery, and words "At Rest," edged with fine silk fringes, 3 inches deep
| $4.00
3 |
White satin pillow, made plain, with medium satin
| $3.00
4 |
Finest satin, any color; princess puffing on top, edged with rose satin trimming, made for either octagon, elliptical, or round end caskets
| $10.00
5 |
Satin pillow similar to No. 4, made for 3 foot, 6 inch child's casket (other sizes to order)
| $5.00
6 |
Finest ribbon-embroidered satin pillow, similar in design to one placed in the "Grant State Casket"
| $20.00
7 |
Medium satin, double row of puffing
| $1.80
|
No. 7, unfilled, in dozen lots
| $18.00
8 |
Reverse plaited satin top of extra fine quality, tulip trimmed
| $8.50
9 |
Princess satin plaited top, tulip trimming, medium quality
| $7.00
10 |
Duchess satin puffed top, tulip trimmed
| $6.00
11 |
Circle end, box plaited top, trimmed with lace
| $4.00
12 |
Circle end, princess top, finished with lace ribbon
| $5.00
Satin was by far the most popular material for manufacturing pillows, as evident in the available catalogs. Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company's price list of 1 November 1886 (1886b) lists six types of satin pillows for adult-sized caskets with three different levels of product quality ranging in price from $2.00 to $6.00 and three types of satin pillows for children's caskets ranging in price from $0.80 to $1.75. Unfortunately, no illustrated catalogs were available for comparison matches to be made with the Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company price lists. The most complete description of a series of pillows for sale comes from the 1 June 1887 Stein Manufacturing Company _Revised Price List and Telegraph Key._ They list 12 types of satin pillows ranging in price from $0.80 to $20.00 (Table 8).
### **Burial Container Linings in the Archaeological Record**
Preservation of interior cloth linings is typically poor in most archaeological contexts, although when preservation is favorable, the linings tend to survive better than exterior cloth coverings. Smaller portions of fabric might also be preserved in association with metal hardware or even jewelry or other items placed within the burial container. As was the case with the exterior cloth covering, when preservation is not ideal, evidence of cloth linings may be limited to the presence of lining tacks, complex internal hardware designed for use with cloth, or, less commonly, fabric impressions on the heads of tacks located under folds of the lining fabric. All of these situations have been discussed above in regard to external cloth covering.
Davidson (1999, 2004:417) suggested that any number of small tacks recovered from a burial probably served as lining tacks. Lining tacks include ferrous or cuprous flat-headed cut tacks, ferrous or cuprous domed-headed gimp tacks (see Figure 1), and 7-line to 14-line silk-headed lining tacks. Davidson (2004:417) reported that the most common type of tack found in excavations at Freedman's Cemetery in Dallas, Texas, was composed of two parts: a short iron shank and a plain, domed lead head. Furthermore, the presence of these supposed lining tacks could act as a proxy indicator for the presence of lining materials in cases of poor preservation of organic materials. Evidence of coffin lining is most commonly found on the underside of tack heads or in association with other metal coffin elements or metallic personal items such as cuprous medallions or crosses. It is often very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between coffin lining material and articles of clothing, but the presence or absence of coffin or casket lining is an important economic observation. The recovery and accurate analysis of lining tacks serves to give greater assurance to the presence of coffin lining (Davidson, 2004:418).
Table 9 reveals the listings of lining tacks present in the 1884 Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company (1884a) price list. As the names of the tacks sometimes imply, certain types of tacks were designed to be used in specific contexts or for specific purposes. The gimp tack, for instance, would tack down the gimp around the upper margin of the burial container perimeter, whereas the lace tack and tufting tack fixed those textiles. Although certain types of tacks were commonly used as lining tacks, other varieties could also be used, including upholstery tacks, or French nails. Indeed, any simple steel, iron, or brass tack and even small brads or nails could be utilized to tack down interior linings or exterior cloth covering.
Table 9. Descriptions of tacks listed in Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company (1884a). A dash (—) indicates not applicable. "Per M" probably indicates "per 1,000 items."
Little attention has been given to fabric analysis in recent cemetery projects, so no synthesis of interior cloth linings in the archaeological literature is yet possible. A detailed analysis of burial container fabrics was possible on the Alameda-Stone Cemetery project, however, and it indicates the potential. Approximately 500 burial containers in the Tucson cemetery appeared to have been lined with some sort of fabric, suggested either by the presence of interior lining tacks or by remnants of lining fabric. Because it is difficult to distinguish between remnants of clothing and lining fabric, interior lining tacks are a better indicator of burial container linings. Five types of tacks were present: silk head lining tacks, which appeared in 28 burials; domed-head ferrous tacks, found in 21 burials; flat-head ferrous tacks, recovered in 456 burials; flat-head brass tacks, included in 7 burials; and decorative French nails/upholstery tacks found in only 1 burial. All flat- and domed-head brass and ferrous tacks were cut with sheared, pointed tips. The silk head tacks and upholstery tacks appeared to have rounded, pointed shafts (Pye, 2010).
In those situations where fabric was preserved, a range of colors and materials was indicated: brown, yellow/brown, white/cream, white, green, black, and pink/green. All fabrics were somewhat degraded, and colors may not represent the originals. Types of fabrics included finely woven silks, fine cottons, pleated cottons, medium-coarse woven fabrics, coarse grass fiber matting, coarse twilled fabric, possible felts, and velvet. Because of poor organic preservation, little can be said of the grand demographic pattern of burial container linings, although some observations can be made. Velvets, or possible velvets or felts, occurred with at least two adult males and one subadult. Satin, silk, or other finely woven fabrics seemed to occur with the burials of infants and adult females. A preserved segment of gimp in one burial of an adult of unknown sex or cultural affiliation consisted of dark green and yellow/white yarns interwoven so that the dark green strands formed distinct vertical bands while the white threads were visible on the face, forming X patterns horizontally across the gimp. This material had been tacked to the upper margin of the interior of the burial container (Pye, 2010).
The presence of pillows within burial containers is also rarely discernable because of lack of preservation, although three individuals in the Alameda-Stone Cemetery were buried with their heads resting on some type of object, including an adobe brick, a degraded satin-covered pillow filled with a sawdust material, and a possible pillow stuffed with cotton or wool and covered with a degraded wool fabric (Pye, 2010). Even though fabric pillows were identifiable in these two cases, a much higher degree of physical preservation would be necessary to be able to match the style of the pillow to period merchandise catalogs.
## Painting
Painting was a widely used exterior surface treatment on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century burial containers, but the interior could also be painted. A wide range of colors were applied to the interiors of 72 burial containers recovered during the Alameda-Stone Cemetery project in Tucson, Arizona. Colors included green, blue, white, brown, black, pink, and red; in most cases the paint was preserved only in small patches on wood or associated with metal hardware. Because the evidence of paint was scant, it is difficult or impossible to say whether the entire interior surface had been painted or only certain portions. In one burial container, two types of paint were identified: green paint was found on the bottom of the container, and a dark gray paint was applied to the underside of the lid. This observation allows for the possibility of multiple paints within the same burial container in other burials in the cemetery. There were also two cases where blue and green paints were layered (Pye, 2010).
## Combination Treatments
The presence of paint on the interior of a burial container does not preclude the presence of a lining. In 26 cases in the Alameda-Stone Cemetery both paint and fabric were present. In most cases, as with the paint-fabric combinations on the exterior surfaces, the paint was applied to the outer surface of the fabric. It is unknown to what extent the paint and fabric were applied together or applied to different portions of the interior, such as paint on the underside of the lid and fabric on the bottom and side walls. No burial containers suggested that paint and fabric were used for separate portions of the interior surface, but it is a possibility (Pye, 2010), one that can be extended to other cemeteries throughout the country.
## Conclusion
Period mortuary merchandise catalogs and price lists from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries attest that burial container surface treatment could be quite varied, with both the exterior and interior surfaces being means of expression and elaboration. Relatively little has been systematically presented in the published archaeological literature about the types of surface treatments encountered during historic period cemetery or burial excavations, largely because of limited preservation. This may restrict the scope of observation, but through careful scrutiny of the archaeological record such as in corrosion products of coffin hardware and an appreciation for the valuable information present in the period mortuary and general supply catalogs, it is possible to develop a fuller understanding of the socioeconomic role a burial container might have played during the funeral.
## Appendix
Tables A1 and A2 present the descriptions and costs of items listed in price lists published by Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company.
Table A1. Descriptions and costs of coffin and casket linings combined from partial listings in Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company (1882, 1884a, 1884b, 1886a, and 1886b).
Table A2. Descriptions and costs of piece dry goods listed in Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company (1884a). A dash (—) indicates not applicable.
## References
Bastis, K. 2006. Health, Wealth, and Available Material: The Bioarchaeology of the Bulkeley Tomb in Colchester, Connecticut. Master's thesis, University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Bell, E. L. 1990. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. _Historical Archaeology,_ 24(3):54–78.
Bell, E. L. 1994. _Vestiges of Mortality and Remembrance: A Bibliography on the Historical Archaeology of Cemeteries._ Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press.
Beynon, D. E. 1989. _Remember Me as You Pass By: Excavation of the Voegtly Cemetery. A Nineteenth Century German-American Churchyard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania._ 3 vols. Report to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Monroeville, Pa.: GAI Consultants.
Bromberg, F. W., S. J. Shepard, B. H. Magid, P. J. Cressey, T. Dennée, and B. K. Means. 2000. _"To Find Rest from All Trouble": The Archaeology of the Quaker Burying Ground, Alexandria, Virginia._ Alexandria, Va.: Alexandria Archaeology, Office of Historic Alexandria.
Brown-Hutchison Company. 1899. _Illustrated Catalog and Cash Price List No. 3 [September 21, 1899]._ Pittsburgh: Brown-Hutchison.
Bybee, A. D. 2002. Bioanthropological Investigations of the Reynolds Cemetery (46Ka349) in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Prepared for Dr. Robert F. Maslowski, Huntington District Corp of Engineers, Huntington, W.Va. Hurricane, W.Va.: Cultural Resource Analysts.
Bybee, A. D. 2003a. Bioanthropological Investigations of the Burning Spring Branch Cemetery (46Ka142) in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Prepared for Dr. Robert F. Maslowski, Huntington District Corps of Engineers, Huntington, W.Va. Hurricane, W.Va.: Cultural Resource Analysts.
Bybee, A. D. 2003b. Bioarchaeological Investigations of Unmarked Graves at the Samuel Robinson and Upper Prater Cemeteries (15PI190 and 15PI191), Pike County, Kentucky (Item No. 12-263.00). Prepared for Mr. Doug Lambert, Palmer Engineering, Winchester, Ky. Lexington, Ky.: Cultural Resource Analysts.
Bybee, A. D. 2004. Old Branham (15Fd94): Bioarchaeological Investigations of an Historic Cemetery, Floyd County, Kentucky (Item No. 12-301.00). Prepared for Mr. David Waldner, P. E., Director, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Division of Environmental Analysis, Frankfort, Ky. Lexington, Ky.: Cultural Resource Analysts.
Bybee, A. D. 2007. Bioarchaeological Investigations of the Evans Cemetery (46MD62), McDowell County, West Virginia. Contract Publication Series WV07-03. Prepared for Mr. Timothy B. Sedosky, Potesta & Associates, Inc., Charleston, W.Va. Hurricane, W.Va.: Cultural Resource Analysts.
Casas, A. P., and J. de Andrés Llopis. 2002. A Spot Test for Zinc White. _Studies in Conservation,_ 47(4):273–276
Chappell, Chase, Maxwell & Company. 1884. _Illustrated Catalogue: Cloth, Velvet-Covered, and Wood Finished Burial Caskets._ Oneida, N.Y.: Chappell, Chase, Maxwell.
Cleveland Burial Case Company. 1882. _Illustrated Catalogue of Wood, Cloth Covered, and Metallic Caskets._ Cleveland: Cleveland Burial Case.
Coffin, M. M. 1976. _Death in Early America._ Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
Cole, G. S. 1892. _A Complete Dictionary of Dry Goods, and History of Silk, Cotton, Linen, Wool and Other Fibrous Substances Including a Full Explanation of the Modern Processes of Spinning, Dyeing and Weaving, with an Appendix Containing a Treatise on Window Trimming, German Words and Phrases, with Their English Pronunciation and Significance, Together with Various Useful Tables._ Chicago: W. B. Conkey.
Costello, J. G. 1991. Excavation of Burials from the Madam Felix/Hettick Cemetery, CA-CAL-1122H. Prepared for Meridan Gold Company, Copperpolis, Calif. Mokelumne Hill, Calif.: Foothill Resource Associates.
Crane, Breed & Company. 1895. _Illustrated Catalogue of Hearses and Trimmings._ Cincinnati: Crane, Breed.
Crane, Breed & Company. 1910. _Catalogue "D" Burial Garments, Robes, Casket Linings, Pillow and Lining Sets, Door Crapes_. Cincinnati: Crane & Breed.
Crawford, K., A. Hutcheson, E. MacDonald, B. Nahri, D. Robertson, and R. Williamson. 2008. Ontario Cemeteries Act Site Investigation, the Old Don Jail Burial Area. Proposed Draft Plan of Subdivision, Part of Lot 15, Concession 1. From the Bay, Geographic Township of York and Part of Block U, Don Improvement Plan, City of Toronto Archaeological Services, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Prepared for Bridgepoint Health and Cemeteries Regulation Unit, Ministry of Small Business and Consumer Services, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Curtis, H. P. 1921. _Glossary of Textile Terms._ Manchester, U.K.: Marsden.
Davidson, J. M. 1999. Freedman's Cemetery (1869–1907): A Chronological Reconstruction of an Excavated African-American Burial Ground, Dallas, Texas. Master's thesis, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Davidson, J. M. 2004. Mediating Race and Class through the Death Experience: Power Relations and Resistance Strategies of an African-American Community, Dallas, Texas (1869–1907). Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin. University Microfilm International, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Downs, A. C., Jr. 1976. Zinc for Paint and Architectural Use in the Nineteenth Century. _Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology,_ 8(4):80–99.
Evansville Coffin Company. [ca. 1909]. _Catalogue._ Evansville, Ind.: Evansville Coffin.
Ezell, R., and C. A. Huston. 2006a. Archaeological Removal of Historic Burials at the Williams-Green Cemetery (44CU134) on the Continental 181 Fund, LLC Tract in Culpeper County, Virginia. Prepared for Ms. Sara Schrank, Continental Properties Company, Inc., Continental 181 Fund, LLC, Menomonee Falls, Wis. Fredericksburg, Va.: ECS Mid-Atlantic.
Ezell, R., and C. A. Huston. 2006b. Archaeological Removal of Five Historic Burials from Site 44ST00613 at the Quantico Corporate Center Tract, Stafford County, Virginia. Prepared for Mr. Samer Shalaby, Development Consulting Services, PLC, Fredericksburg, Va. Fredericksburg, Va.: ECS Mid-Atlantic.
Ferguson, B. H., S. K. Ireland, G. A. Agogino, and R. Holloway. 1993. _"And They Laid Them to Rest in the Little Plot Beside the Pecos": Final Report on the Relocation of the Old Seven Rivers Cemetery, Eddy County, New Mexico._ Denver: Denver Office, Bureau of Reclamation.
F. H. Hill & Company. 1881. _Illustrated Catalogue of Burial Cases and Caskets, and Undertakers' Supplies._ Chicago: F. H. Hill.
Flexner, B. 1993. _Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish._ Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press.
Frank, R. R., ed. 2001. _Silk, Mohair, Cashmere and Other Luxury Fibres._ Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.
Frank P. Bennett & Company. 1914. _A Cottons Fabrics Glossary._ Boston: Frank P. Bennett.
Garrett, W. 1975. The Price Book of the District of Columbia Cabinetmakers, 1831. _Antiques,_ 107(5): 888–897.
Gettens, R. J., H. Kuhn, and W. T. Chase. 1967. Lead White. _Studies in Conservation,_ 12(4): 125–139.
Guy, A. 2004. "Coatings Components beyond Binders." In _The Chemistry and Physics of Coatings,_ 2nd ed., ed. A. Marrion, pp. 267–316. London: Royal Society of Chemistry.
Habenstein, R. W., and W. M. Lamers. 1955. _The History of American Funeral Directing._ Milwaukee, Wis.: Bulfin Printers. Originally published 1955
Habenstein, R. W., and W. M. Lamers. 1985. _The History of American Funeral Directing._ Milwaukee, Wis.: National Funeral Directors' Association.
Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company. 1882. _Excelsior Coffin and Casket Works: Price Lists of Hardware, Robes, Linings, Trimmings, etc. Manufactured by Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company._ Pittsburgh: Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold.
Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company. 1884a. _Excelsior Coffin & Casket Works Price List of Hardware, Robes', Linings, Trimmings, &c. Manufactured by Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company._ Pittsburgh: Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold.
Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company. 1884b. _Revised Price List of Varnished & Cloth-Covered Burial Cases and Caskets Manufactured by Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company, Excelsior Coffin & Casket Works'._ Pittsburgh: Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold.
Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company. 1886a. _Excelsior Coffin & Casket Works: Revised Price List of Coffin & Casket Hardware, Manufactured by Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company._ Pittsburgh: Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold.
Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company. 1886b. _Excelsior Coffin and Casket Works: Price List of Wrappers, Robes, Linings, Trimmings, &c. Manufactured by Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company._ Pittsburgh: Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold.
Hasluck, P. N., ed. 1905. _Coffin Making and Undertaking._ Mechanics' Manuals. London: Cassell.
Hasson, J. S. 2001. _Widows, Weepers & Wakes: Mourning in Middle Tennessee._ Nashville: Parris Printing.
Hazelton Coffin & Casket Company. 1883. _Illustrated Catalogue of Wood and Cloth Covered Burial Cases and Caskets._ Hazelton, Pa.: Hazelton Coffin & Casket.
Hohenschuh, W. P. 1900. _The Modern Funeral: Its Management—A Treatise on the Management of Funeral, with Suggestions for the Guidance of Funeral Directors._ Chicago: Trade Periodicals.
Hunter, G. L. 1918. _Decorative Textiles: An Illustrated Book on Coverings for Furniture, Walls and Floors, Including Damasks, Brocades and Velvets, Laces, Embroideries, Chintzes, Cretons, Drapery and Furniture Trimmings, Wall Papers, Carpets and Rugs, Tooled and Illuminated Leathers._ Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
Janaway, R. 1998. "An Introductory Guide to Textiles from 18th and 19th Century Burials." In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England, 1700 to 1850,_ ed. M. Cox, pp. 17-32. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Lambourne, R., and T. A. Strivens. 1999. _Paint and Surface Coatings: Theory and Practice._ 2nd ed. Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing.
Lang, K. A. 1984. Coffins and Caskets: Their Contribution to the Archaeological Record. Master's thesis, University of Idaho, Moscow.
Langenau Manufacturing Company n.d. [ca. 1920s–1930s]. Hardware Specialities. Cleveland, OH: Langenau Manufacturing Company.
LeeDecker, C. H., J. Bloom, I. Wuebber, and M.-L. Pipes. 1995. _Final Archaeological Excavations at a Late 18th-Century Family Cemetery for the U.S. Route 113 Dualization, Milford to Georgetown, Sussex County, Delaware._ With K. R. Rosenberg. DelDOT Archaeology Series 134. With Karen R. Rosenberg. Dover: Delaware Department of Transportation.
Linton, W. 1849. A List of the Principal Colours Used in Painting, with Notices of Their Chemical and Artistical Properties. _Builder,_ 7(1 September):412.
Lipovitch, D., E. MacDonald, I. Miklavcic, D. Robertson, and R. Williamson. 2003. Archaeological Investigations of the Elmbank Church and Cemetery, Former Lot 8, Concession 5, Toronto Township, Peel County, Ontario. Prepared for Greater Toronto Airports Authority, Lester B. Pearson International Airport, Toronto AMF, ON, Canada. Toronto: Archaeological Services.
Litten, J. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: Robert Hale.
Litten, J. 1998. "The English Funeral 1700–1850." In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England, 1700 to 1850,_ ed. M. Cox, pp. 3–16. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Mainfort, R. C., Jr., and J. M. Davidson, eds. 2006. _Two Historic Cemeteries in Crawford County, Arkansas._ Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Series 62. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey.
Marmor, J., S. Crownover, and W. Breece. 1990. The Location and Preliminary Description of Eleven Historic Burials Located in Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California. Prepared for City of San Bernardino, Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Department, San Bernardino, Calif.
Marmor, J., P. L. Walker, and C. Lippo. 1991. Phase II Archaeological Investigations and Removal of Human Burials from an Historic Cemetery in Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California. Prepared for City of San Bernardino, Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Department, San Bernardino, Calif. Irvine, Calif.: LSA Associates.
Mills, E. S. 1979. Graves in the Gravel: The Unmarked Cemetery of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Master's thesis, New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas.
National Casket Company. 1899. _National Casket Company Complete Price List and Telegraph Code Accompanying Pocket Catalogue "D."_ New York: National Casket.
Oster, W. J., G. G. Weaver, J. P. Richardson, and J. M. Wyatt. 2005. Archaeological and Osteological Investigations of the Providence Baptist Church Cemetery (40SY619), Memphis-Shelby County Airport, Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee. Submitted to Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority, Memphis, Tenn., and Allen & Hoshall, Memphis, Tenn. Memphis, Tenn.: Weaver & Associates.
Parrington, M., D. G. Roberts, S. A. Pinter, and J. C. Wideman. 1989. The First African American Baptist Church Cemetery: Bioarchaeology, Demography, and Acculturation of Early Nineteenth Century Blacks. 3 vols. Report submitted to the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia. West Chester, Pa.: John Milner Associates.
Paxson, Comfort & Company. n.d. _Illustrated Catalogue of Undertakers' Supplies._ Philadelphia: Paxson, Comfort.
Paxson, Comfort & Company. 1884. _Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of Wood, Metallic, and Cloth Covered Burial Caskets._ Philadelphia: Paxson, Comfort.
Paxson, Comfort & Company. [ca. 1890]. _Wholesale Pricelist of Burial Robes', Wrappers, Dresses, Suits, Habits, &c, &c._ Manufactured by Paxson, Comfort & Co. Philadelphia: Paxson, Comfort.
Paxson, Comfort & Company. 1898. _Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of Wood, Cloth-covered and Metallic Burial Caskets and Coffins for Sale to the Trade Only by Paxson, Comfort & Co.._ Philadelphia: Paxson, Comfort.
Perry, W. R., J. Howson, and B. A. Bianco, eds. 2006. New York African Burial Ground, Archaeology Final Report. 4 vols. Prepared for the U.S. General Services Administration, Northeastern and Caribbean Region. Washington, D.C.: Howard University.
Peter, D. E., M. Prior, M. M. Green, and V. G. Clow, eds. 2000. _Freedman's Cemetery: A Legacy of a Pioneer Black Community in Dallas, Texas._ 2 vols. Geo-Marine, Inc., Special Publication 6. Texas Department of Transportation, Environmental Affairs Division, Archaeology Studies Program, Report 21. Plano, Tex.: Geo-Marine.
Plume, S. n.d. _Coffins and Coffin Making._ London: Undertakers' Journal.
Pye, J. W. 2007. _A Look through the Viewing Glass: Social Status and Grave Analysis in a Nineteenth Century Kansas Cemetery._ M.A. thesis, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Pye, J. W. 2010. Analysis of Burial Container Construction and Elaboration at the Tucson City Cemetery, Tucson, Arizona. Prepared for Statistical Research Inc., Tucson, and Pima County Cultural Resources and Historic Preservation Office, Tucson.
Rauschenburg, B. L. 1990. Coffin Making and Undertaking in Charleston and Its Environs, 1705–1820. _Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts,_ 16(1):19–63.
Richter, E. L., and H. Harlin. 1974. A Nineteenth-Century Collection of Pigments and Painting Materials. _Studies in Conservation,_ 19(2):76–82.
Sewell, K., and P. Stanton. 2008. Dove Cemetery: Reflections on Cultural Identity at the Edge of Western Expansion—The Excavation and Interpretation of Dove Cemetery, CA-SLO-1892H, San Luis Obispo County, California. Technical Report 06-55. Prepared for Grant Robbins, Centex Homes, Central Coast Division, San Luis Obispo, Calif. Redlands, Calif: Statistical Research.
Stein, S. 1872. Improvements in Burial-Caskets U.S. Letters Patent 132,605, issued 29 October 1872.
Stein Manufacturing Company. 1887. _Revised Price List and Telegraph Key for Stein Mfg. Company Producer of Fine Funeral Supplies and Textile Covered Caskets (June 1, 1887)._ Rochester, N.Y.: Stein Manufacturing.
St. Louis Coffin Company. 1911. _Catalog No. 22 (Coffins, Caskets, Vaults, Hearses)._ St. Louis, Mo.: St. Louis Coffin.
Stock, G. 1998. "The 18th and 19th Century Quaker Burial Ground at Bathford, Bath and NorthEast Somerset." In _Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England, 1700 to 1850,_ ed. M. Cox, pp. 129–143. CBA Research Report 113. York: Council for British Archaeology.
_Sunnyside_ (New York). 1892. Cincinnati Coffin Company advertisement. 1 July.
Terry, G. 1893. _Pigments, Paint and Painting: A Practical Book for Practical Men._ London: E. & F. N. Spon.
Webb, M. 2000. _Lacquer: Technology and Conservation._ Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Welsh, F. S. 1982. Paint Analysis. _Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology,_ 14(4):29–30.
Zollinger, H. 2003. _Color Chemistry: Syntheses, Properties, and Applications of Organic Dyes and Pigments._ 3rd ed. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.
# Protecting the Body
# CHAPTER 12
# Body Snatchers and Mortsafes: An Archaeology of Fear
_Harold Mytum and Katie Webb_
During the eighteenth century in Britain it was normal for the middle classes to commission coffins elaborately decorated with cloth covering, panel pins, and tin plate fittings, and even those from the workhouse were interred in wooden coffins, albeit simple (Mytum, 2004). Gradually, the relevance of the reusable parish coffin diminished (Houlbrooke, 1998:341), and bodies were not placed in the ground wrapped only in a shroud. During the same century an increasing number of burials were made within family vaults or brick-lined shafts or church crypts or were at least marked by a permanent stone marker, often proclaiming ownership of the plot or "here lies" the deceased (Mytum, 2004).
The important changes in mortuary behavior regarding body and grave protection can be explained in part by the increasing overcrowding in burial grounds and the desire to protect the recently deceased from disturbance, and this form of insurance is seen in its most dramatic physical form through mortsafes and other types of protection offered to fresh interments. These were created not to prevent the disarticulation of the skeleton by gravediggers preparing the ground for subsequent interments but the illicit removal of the corpse soon after the funeral by body snatchers, often called resurrection men or resurrectionists, who would obtain cadavers for sale to students of medical schools for dissection. Although there has been a long archaeological and historical interest in mortsafes and other protective strategies (Ritchie, 1912, 1921; Gorman, 2010; Holder, 2010), there has previously been no classification, analysis, or placement of these material remains in the context of the documentary sources derived from newspapers and mortsafe and watching society records. The main focus of this chapter is on the relatively plentiful Scottish data, with reference to the smaller amounts of English and Irish material. The conclusions also consider why body protection against body snatching was little considered in North America.
Increased interest in medical knowledge during the Enlightenment meant that anatomy schools, both attached to hospitals and privately run, were founded during the eighteenth century in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Dublin, and New England (Waite, 1945). In the nineteenth century, for surgeons to have a working knowledge of the human body, dissection was used to understand the way body systems worked. In 1800, the Royal College of Surgeons was founded by royal charter (Bailey, 1896:23), and by the 1820s, it was believed that 800 corpses were dissected by the London anatomy students alone (Brooks, 1989:6). Although a few bodies—those of executed murderers—were provided by the state (this being the case for Britain, Ireland, and North America), they were not sufficient for the number of students studying anatomy. Many of the Scottish universities did not provide bodies, and therefore, the students were left to obtain bodies for their own use. The Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society, founded in 1789, was essentially a body-snatching organization for the medical students (Fido, 1988:19), but by 1795 there were professional body snatchers operating in and around cities to supply the medical schools (Richardson, 1987:57). Adult bodies could cost between 3 and 20 guineas, whereas children cost about 6 shillings for the first foot and 7 pence per inch thereafter (Richardson, 1987:57; Wise, 2005:30). Body snatching was a lucrative business, and therefore an attractive one, since it was possible to earn £600 per year—five times more than most unskilled laborers (Roach, 2003:44). From 1800 to 1831, there was a fivefold increase in enrollment in British medical schools, so the demand for bodies also quintupled (Fido, 1988:33). A similar pattern of behavior could be found in Ireland (Fleetwood, 1959, 1988, 1993) and in North America (Sappol, 2002).
In some instances, bodies were illegally acquired before interment. Those who had died at workhouses or hospitals but had yet to be claimed by their families could be obtained, or undertakers or sextons could be bribed to hand over the bodies from any source before they were buried. Gravediggers were also known to sell bodies to earn extra money (Bailey, 1896:55). There is archaeological evidence of bodies being replaced with rocks to simulate the correct weight. These methods, however, did not produce a sufficient supply of cadavers, so obtaining recently interred remains was also necessary.
The method used by body snatchers to extract a buried body varied depending on the circumstances and might involve removal of all the recent grave backfill, a method particularly desirable if there were several paupers who had been buried together at the same time (Shultz, 1992:33). For a single corpse it was sometimes possible to excavate down to the head of the coffin to then break open the lid and tie a rope either around the neck or under the arms so that the body could be pulled from the grave (Bailey, 1896:61). Resurrectionists would be sure to remove all clothing and jewelry from the body and leave these behind as they were legally considered property, so taking them would be theft. The removed body, however, was not considered property, so it could not be stolen; the greatest threat from the law would seem to have been an offense against public mores (Bailey, 1896:98; Richardson, 1987:58–59). It was against these activities, with legal threats of little more than fines, that communities developed patterns of observation and physical impediments to prevent this activity; some still surviving early in the twentieth century were recorded in Scotland (Ritchie, 1912, 1921), and some remain to this day. Following the passing of the Anatomy Act of 1832 in Britain and Ireland, which allowed for unclaimed cadavers from workhouses and hospitals to be used for dissection, and greater regulation of the sources of human remains for medical purposes, the threat of body snatching disappeared. After the passage of the Anatomy Act, 57,000 bodies were used between 1832 and 1932. Of these bodies, 99.5% were from institutions for the poor (Marshall, 1995:32). From 1832 the equipment and structures to prevent body snatching were either abandoned or reused, but they can still reveal considerable information about the process of body snatching, the ingenuity of those concerned with preventing it, and the emotions engendered by the fear of the resurrectionists. Although at one level they are explained by the threats from this gruesome trade, they also reflect changing attitudes to the body.
In North America, the fear of body snatching led to riots in New York, New Haven, and Baltimore during the eighteenth and very early nineteenth centuries (Waite, 1945; Frank, 1976). As in Britain, the use of those whose bodies were not claimed—usually the poor from workhouses, hospitals, and asylums—was made legal through state legislation (Nystrom, 2017). Massachusetts was the first to pass such laws in the 1830s, but even states such as New York did not do so until the 1850s, and many western and southern states brought in such legislation only in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century (Humphrey, 1973; Davidson, 2007). Demands grew particularly after the 1820s when dissection practiced by students, rather than only observed, became a necessary part of many medical training programs, requiring thousands of illicitly obtained bodies each year (Humphrey, 1973:822). These were taken mainly from burial grounds of the poor and during the winter when they were required for practical classes (Highet, 2005:420; Crist et al., 2017). There is clear evidence that African American bodies were often taken, and indeed, before emancipation sick but live slaves could be sold to medical schools (Halperin, 2007:492). The relative powerlessness of African Americans meant that it was relatively easy to acquire their bodies, sometimes with the connivance of cemetery officials, as at Lebanon Cemetery, Philadelphia (Kaufman and Hanawalt, 1971).
## The Archaeological Evidence for Body Snatching
Archaeological evidence has shown that autopsy and dissection were occurring before 1832, although the evidence is very scattered and merely examples are given here. Only where preservation has been very good and later grave digging has not destroyed the evidence will the absence of a body in a coffin be easily identifiable. For example, the Cross Bones Burial Ground in Southwark was a site that seems to have been a target for body snatchers, but the density of burial and frequency or disturbance of interments with the insertion of later burials were such that no such evidence could be identified (Brickley et al., 1999). Nevertheless, other excavations have also shown that empty coffins occur in several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century churchyards and vaults.
During the clearance of the vault at Christ Church, Spitalfields, a coffin was found filled with building rubble. Traces of bones were not found within the coffin, so either a coffin was placed in the vault empty and later filled with rubble or a weighted coffin was placed in the vault because the body had been removed. A number of the Spitalfields coffins were reinforced with iron bands, which would have impeded any attempt to break them open; 3 rectangular and 27 single-break coffins were so reinforced, one also having an iron chain also wrapped around it. (Reeve and Adams, 1993:81–82). A further sign that the threat of robbing was justified is demonstrated by the fact that the most protected coffin in the Spitalfields crypt was that for William Horne, an undertaker, who was likely to be more aware than most of the risks. He had commissioned a layered coffin, reinforced with iron bars on the inner and outer coffins (Cox, 1996:107–108). An iron coffin that could be locked survives from St. Bride's church crypt, Fleet Street, London (Fowler and Powers, 2012:146). At Dunfermline Abbey (Robertson et al., 1981), several interments were protected by mortsafes that had been left in place; these are discussed within the mortsafe classification outlined below.
Other forms of illegal examination of cadavers can also be recognized archaeologically. At the Newcastle Infirmary burial ground, 10% of the 600 individuals show craniotomies. Several of these individuals have bones sawn in such a way as to show structure or demonstrate pathology (Chamberlain, 2012). Although these marks on the bone may have been a result of an autopsy, hospital doctors would have used the opportunity to teach students. One skeleton was found incomplete below the fourth vertebrae. In order to disguise that a dissection had taken place, the coffin was buried with a stone slab to substitute for the weight of the lower half of the body (Chamberlain, 2012). Doctors at hospitals had the opportunity to perform postmortem examinations on those patients without relatives to claim them or those too poor to cover the cost of their burial (Marshall, 1995:138). Dissected human and animal remains were also discovered in London buried on an anatomist's property (Chamberlain, 2012), in London Hospital's burial ground (Fowler and Powers, 2012:151–200), and in Trinity College Dublin's Herb Garden (Murphy, 2011).
In North America, the most dramatic evidence of illicit body snatching was that recovered from beneath the cellar floor of the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta (Blakely and Harrington, 1997). In this case, 80% of the remains could be identified as African American. The Freedman's Cemetery, Dallas, revealed some additional evidence from grave 558, with two bodies showing signs of use as medical cadavers placed within one simple wooden coffin (Davidson, 2007). The presence of two individuals, an adolescent and an infant, with craniometries from Spring Street Presbyterian Church burial vaults may have been subject to illegal dissection (Novak and Willoughby, 2010). A number of excavations have now produced evidence for dissection and anatomical teaching, although most are within a legal context even if the ethics of cadaver supply and disposal often now seems hardly ethical (Nystrom, 2017).
## Reactions to the Threat
Once the fear of body snatching became prevalent, many parishes would collect money to add security measures to the churchyard. The height of walls was frequently increased to make it more difficult for the body snatchers to climb over. At St. Cuthbert's churchyard in Edinburgh, the walls were raised to a height of 8 feet in 1738 to help prevent body snatching (Willsher, 1985:10).
One method was for the family to keep watch over the grave or hire watchmen until the body would no longer be useful to the anatomists (Bailey, 1896:72). Frequently, protection societies were founded within cities to take turns watching over the graves of the recently buried (Cole, 1964:97). One watching society has extant records, and others are mentioned in passing, but they are not discussed further here. Watching societies often constructed small buildings in churchyards to house the watchers in some comfort (Ritchie, 1912, 1921; Willsher, 1985:10). Watchhouses could be a dwelling house close by with a view of the churchyard, or they could be small buildings placed within the churchyard, such as at Dunbog, Fife, which has the inscription "ERECTED for protection of the dead." Watchtowers were often more substantial structures, where the first floor could be used to store tools and the second floor provided a more complete view of the burial ground (Ritchie, 1912:292). A large number of watchhouses are known from Scotland, with others in Ireland and a few in England (Gorman, 2010), but as yet there has been no academic study of these as a category, and they are beyond the scope of this chapter to analyze in detail. These visible buildings were meant to deter the body snatchers from frequenting these churchyards, but it was not difficult to ply the watchmen with drink, distracting them while other resurrection men went to work.
Alternatives to watching arrangements involved direct physical protection of the corpse, and three methods are discussed here: morthouses or deadhouses, in which bodies were stored for a period before interment; mortstones that covered the grave and impeded exhumation; and mortsafes, which were more elaborate items of equipment or structures that protected the coffin and could be either temporary or permanent. The forms that these took are discussed below, after consideration of the societies that were formed beyond the existing parish committees to manage these deterrents.
## Mortsafe and Watching Societies
Mortsafe and watching societies were developed in some areas of Scotland by parishioners who that felt the corpses of the area were under threat from the body snatchers. Watching society members were required to keep watch over the graves of the recently deceased until a sufficient period had passed to make the remains unusable for the anatomists, whereas mortsafe society members pledged money for the purchase of mortsafes that would be used for a designated period to protect the coffin from being disturbed by resurrection men. The mortsafes employed by these societies were typically iron shells that were placed around the coffin, then buried for a period of time, although their designs varied greatly (see below). These mortsafes were heavy objects that would require a great deal of time to remove from the grave in order to reach the corpse. It was hoped that the effort required to move the mortsafe and to open it would deter the body snatchers from stealing the body. The wealthy had a permanent cast-iron cage constructed around the grave, with precautions to prevent tunneling from the side.
Four mortsafe societies were created in the early nineteenth century that have surviving records, at Auchtertool, Newburn, and Anstruther in Fife and Newbattle (Rae, letters to Lord Ancram) in Midlothian. Unfortunately, no documentation is known for the sites where mortsafes survive, although a much-damaged janker stone survives at Auchtertool and some other societies are mentioned in passing and some mortsafes may have been commissioned by individuals or families. For example, the Anstruther Mortsafe Society is known only from an item in the _Glasgow Herald_ when in 1874 the society was dissolved after about 45 years of activity and its equipment, described as iron safes, was sold for scrap; the Linlithgow Mortsafe Society was founded in 1819, but little else is known about its operation.
The ways the societies allocated use of the mortsafes, the amount of time that the recently deceased were placed within them, and the cost of membership can be obtained from kirk records containing mortsafe society minutes. Mortsafe society cashbooks also make it possible to determine the amount of money required to maintain membership in the society, which would give one the ability to use the mortsafe upon death.
The Auchtertool Mortsafe Association was established 12 April 1830 when "a number of the inhabitants of this [Auchtertool] area and neighbouring parishes met and formed themselves into an association for the purposes of protection the corpses of the deceased" (Auchtertool Accounts, 12 April 1830). The first order of business for the society was to obtain mortsafes, so bids were accepted to create a mortsafe "the same as those adopted by the Aberdour Association, with this exception; that they should have each three bars, 3 inches broad and 1½ thick, plate of iron not joined" (Auchtertool Accounts, 21 April 1830). The mention of the Aberdour Mortsafe Association indicates that the mortsafe society founded in Auchtertool was not alone in its fear of resurrection men.
Many mortsafe societies did not keep records in the same detail as those at Auchtertool or even Newburn, perhaps only using a cashbook to record when the members had paid their subscriptions. For example, a cashbook for the mortsafe society at Inchinnan provides very basic information about the society and does not explain the exact reasons the parish decided to create a mortsafe society in the first place, but it is likely that their reasons were similar to those of the parishioners of Auchtertool and Newburn.
By 1824, body snatching was occurring with regularity in Scotland, so in that year the parish of Newburn founded its mortsafe society, and the parish at Traquair established its watching society. It was not until the murderers Burke and Hare began selling bodies to surgeons in Edinburgh in 1827 and 1828 that a large-scale panic spread through the country. Auchtertool did not found their mortsafe society until 1830, which was after the Burke and Hare murders and the activities of the resurrection men were becoming even better known within Scotland. At Inchinnan, the cashbook begins in 1834 and runs through to 1843. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, all of the societies continued to gain members, even though the Anatomy Act had been passed. Although the cashbook from the mortsafe society at Inchinnan shows only subscriptions until 1843, the cashbook was taken into evidence in a murder trial (Gilmour Evidence, 1844), so if the society had continued, another cashbook would have been recalled. The other groups remained intact through to the latter half of the nineteenth century, well beyond the passage of the Anatomy Act in 1832, which would have made it unnecessary for body snatchers to take bodies from churchyards. The Traquair watching society had to fold in 1858 because there were only 15 members in the watching society, which was not sufficient to keep watch properly for six weeks. The mortsafe societies of Auchtertool and Newburn were dissolved in 1863 and 1877, respectively. The long life of these societies, and presumably the use of mortsafes and watching procedures for decades after the end of body snatching, indicates a level of fear about desecration of the body that was not linked to a reasoned calculation of risk. It reveals attitudes to the body and the necessity of its integrity.
To protect the recently deceased from the resurrection men, the parishioners had to keep the body safe until it was unusable by the anatomists. At both Newburn and Traquair, this time of protection is specified as six weeks. The records from Auchtertool do not give a specified time, but the records indicate that mortsafes remained on the coffins for several weeks before being removed. In order for the societies to work properly, each member had to make a contribution. At Traquair, every member of the watching society was required to do their part, unless they were unable. Each member had to keep watch or was required to find a substitute. Failing that, the person was fined 5 shillings. Two members of the society were to be on watch one and a half hours after sunset until one and a half hours before dawn in winter or until 4 AM in summer (Traquair Watching Society, 7 January 1824). At Newburn and Auchtertool, each member of the mortsafe society was required to pay a subscription to purchase and maintain the mortsafe and the janker mechanism for moving the mortsafes. The price of initial subscription at Newburn is 3 shillings, and 6 pence was also required at the time of interment (Newburn Mortsafe, April 1824). To avoid the physical effort of working the janker (a long pole with wheels used to maneuver the mortsafe), a payment of 15 shillings could be made. If anyone wanted to use the mortsafe for someone who had not been a member of the society, the cost was 1 guinea. At Auchtertool, the subscription was 3 shillings and 6 pence. Frequently, those seeking use of the mortsafes were required to pay an additional sum, often to pay the janker men for their work (Auchtertool Accounts, 3 October 1836). Occasionally, paupers or members of the society who had made significant contributions were able to use the mortsafes without paying fees at the time of interment (Auchtertool Accounts, 22 June 1831 and 30 September 1835).
The average cost of the adult mortsafes was just about £4. At Auchtertool, the society paid £6 3s. 0d. for a large mortsafe and a small mortsafe and £7 0s. 7½d. for two large mortsafes, one of which was slightly enlarged (Auchtertool Accounts, 26 June 1830 and 7 February 1832). At Newburn, the price of three large mortsafes and one small one was £19 12s. 0d. (Newburn Mortsafe, April 1824). Since these mortsafes were constructed by local craftsmen, no standard price existed for such items, and costs would also have varied according to the design.
Money collected from the societies was commonly used for general upkeep of equipment, as well as for the purchase of new mortsafes. At Auchtertool, a set of wheels were purchased in order to move the mortsafe from the janker house, the shed where the janker and spare mortsafe were stored, to the grave (Auchtertool Accounts, 21 January 1833). Repairs of the mortsafes were also required, such as a coating of lead tar to slow the rusting; the janker also had to be repaired and painted (Auchtertool Accounts, 16 August 1833). The Kilninver watching society agreed to subscribe money for half of the price of a watch-house if the heritors agreed to provide the other half of the cost. The watchhouse was used to accommodate the watch and also to keep the wheels and shovels dry (Campbell Family Papers, 15 May 1856).
The subscriptions to the societies provided additional benefits beyond the protection of the recently deceased. In 1835, the Auchtertool mortsafe society decided to pay 5 shillings to the Beadle, on behalf of the deceased, for the digging of the grave (Auchtertool Accounts, 15 August 1835). In 1836, the society also agreed to provide 3 shillings in order for the family to have a mortcloth for the funeral, although because of a lack of funds, the society was not able provide the mortcloth after 1847 (Auchtertool Accounts, 12 August 1836 and 13 August 1847). The Traquair watching society used the funds received from members to pay to have a fire to be laid for those on watch during the night (Traquair Watching Society, 7 January 1824).
Although the records do not explicitly state the manner in which the mortsafes were recovered from the graves or exactly when this was done, the Auchtertool parish society mentions the janker men. Since the stone used to cover the grave, as an addition to the security provided by the mortsafe, is called a janker stone, it is likely that is was the job of the janker men to remove the stone and the mortsafe after the allotted time of six weeks was over. A wooden mechanism was constructed by a local wright, which would be used in the moving of the mortsafe since it would have been extremely heavy (Auchtertool Accounts, 21 April 1831). Each year the person in charge of organizing the janker men did not wish to continue in his post, so a new person had to be elected (Auchtertool Accounts, 12 November 1830). The reason is possibly because the job of removing the mortsafe from the grave was inconvenient as it had to be done at times when no one in the parish would have to witness the exhumation, which itself was perhaps traumatic and unpleasant, opening a grave six weeks after the deceased was interred and by which time decomposition would have become quite advanced.
Both the mortsafe societies at Auchtertool and Newburn required more than one mortsafe in order to be able to accommodate all of the deaths that occurred within the parish. At Auchtertool, the society began by purchasing three adult mortsafes and one small mortsafe for children (Auchtertool Accounts, 21 April 1830), but only two months later, the members of the Auchtertool mortsafe society decided that another small and another large one were required by the parish (Auchtertool Accounts, 26 June 1830). The number of mortsafes seemed sufficient until 1837, when a wooden mortsafe had to be constructed for James Scott's grave since all of the iron mortsafes were buried (Auchtertool Accounts, 9 January 1837). Only a few weeks later, Mr. Lindsay requested the use of a mortsafe for his wife's body, but no mortsafes were free, and the members decided to create a watch to protect her body until a mortsafe was available (Auchtertool Accounts, 27 January 1837). Newburn also purchased three large mortsafes and one small mortsafe in March 1824 (Newburn Mortsafe, 26 March 1824) yet had to order another mortsafe in 1826 while another mortsafe was being repaired (Newburn Mortsafe, 3 April 1826). Even then, there were not enough safes in 1829 to accommodate all of the recently deceased, so the members decided to remove a mortsafe from a relation of the newly deceased. They then placed the older coffin below, the newer coffin above, and, finally, the mortsafe on top. Although this solved the immediate problem, the society ordered another mortsafe, one that could be dismantled and stored when not in use (Newburn Mortsafe, 12 April 1829). The society also resolved that upon the next occasion when there were not sufficient mortsafes to accommodate all of the deceased, the one that had been in use the longest would be disinterred, and then a watch would be created to protect the body until the end of the six weeks (Newburn Mortsafe, 27 April 1829). The information concerning the Inchinnan mortsafe society indicates only that there were six mortsafes and does not explain what sizes or when they were acquired (Gilmour Evidence, 1844).
Through the later part of the nineteenth century, fewer members joined the mortsafe and watching societies. Society funds were in short supply, and it was difficult for the watching societies to find enough able-bodied individuals to complete the allotted six weeks. Eventually, the mortsafe and watching societies disbanded, well after the fear of body snatching had diminished from the public mind. These mortsafe and watching societies provided a service for the parishes in Scotland during a time when many families were afraid that their recently deceased relations would become the anatomists' "victims." After the passage of the 1832 Anatomy Act, sufficient cadavers were provided to the anatomists for the purpose of teaching and research; in Edinburgh, for example, the relatively steady demand for dissections—between 100 and 150 cadavers per annum—was always supplied by one official means or another, even with church or family resistance (Smith, 2009). This supply meant that body snatching was no longer a lucrative business and that parishioners no longer had to rely on mortsafes to ensure the bodies of their loved ones remained in their grave. It is surprising not that the societies failed in the later nineteenth century but that they continued for so long. East Anstruther closed in 1869 ( _Dundee Courier and Argus,_ 1869), and Anstruther closed in 1874, over 40 years after the act was passed ( _Glasgow Herald,_ 1874). This time span suggests that the fear of the resurrection men became so ingrained in the psyche of those alive before the Anatomy Act, even if they were only children, that they continued the protection routines long after the threat had gone.
## Morthouses or Deadhouses
The storing of coffins in a temporary structure until decomposition had reached a stage such that the cadavers would no longer be suitable for dissection usually lasted about six weeks (Ritchie, 1912:311). At this point they would be interred in a normal earth grave. This solution required the construction of a secure aboveground or semisubterranean structure, and a number of these survive. They should be differentiated from particular family vaults in which the dead were placed in perpetuity, although they share some similar characteristics, and indeed, some of the structures are simply larger versions of family vaults and were clearly inspired by their design.
Some family vaults were largely sunken, and this design was also chosen for a number of morthouses. Some appear as grassy mounds with a simple passage or opening on a slope, such as at Belhelvie, Aberdeenshire, with rubble masonry walling hidden beneath a grassy mound and rendered internally to create a chamber that could store only a small number of coffins. Perhaps because of its small size, an upstanding morthouse was also built at the site in 1835, with floor dimensions of 20 feet by over 17 feet and two shelves on each side. At morthouses in Fintray and Kemnay in Aberdeenshire, erected in 1830 and 1831, respectively, the problem of damp entering the chamber was alleviated by metal interior lining of the roofs (Ritchie, 1912:312–313).
The upstanding morthouses are generally rectangular, with the door in one of the short sides, and often have two stone shelves running around two or three sides so that coffins could be placed on these and on the floor. Most morthouses also were designed with some form of ventilation through either small apertures in the walls or a flue. They are found in a range of styles, often with a simple gabled roof but sometimes with a more elaborate one, such as that at Crail, Fife, with its crenellations and a date stone with the inscription "ERECTED for securing the DEAD: ANN DOM MDCCCXXVI" over the door (Figure 1A).
Perhaps the most elaborate surviving example is at Udny, Aberdeenshire. An unusual circular public vault was built in Udny Green (Figure 1B). The bodies were placed on a wooden turntable within the vault, and when a new body was placed in the deadhouse, the table would be turned. By the time the first body came around, it could not be used for dissection, and it would be subsequently buried (Cole, 1964:50).
In many cases where the original features survive, the doors are elaborate and are designed to maximize security. At the later Belhelvie morthouse, the outer oak door had a protective bar and two keyholes, and behind that was a second iron door. A similar pattern of double doors was used at Culsalmond, Aberdeenshire, whereas the Udny example has an iron-studded outer door with a protected keyhole, with the iron door sliding up and down in vertical grooves in the door jamb (Ritchie, 1912:321). Where one door was present, it is usually iron, and at Kemnay the lock was hidden behind a thick iron bar that was held in place by a padlocked chain (Ritchie, 1912:313).
Not everyone was protected by a time in the morthouse, and at Culsalmond, Aberdeenshire, the two-floor structure housed a morthouse below that could hold 12 adults and a watchhouse above. As the morthouse was apparently also used by those to be buried in nearby parishes, there may have been times when it was full; this overcrowding certainly occurred elsewhere, where arrangements were made for the oldest body to be interred and a watch to be kept until the full six weeks since death were reached. Clearly, all resources for body protection could be stretched at times of peak mortality.
Willsher (1985:10) suggests that many of the morthouses built in Scotland are the result of the 1828–1829 panic over the Burke and Hare murders, and although some are earlier, those at Duffus, Moray, and Fintray, Aberdeenshire, are dated 1830, with Kemnay being a year later; therefore, these match this period of concern. Others, however, were not erected until after the passing of the Anatomy Act, when all threat of disturbance should have passed. Thus, Udny was commissioned and completed in 1832, with regulations for its use issued in 1833 (Ritchie, 1912:324–325), and the larger morthouse at Belhelvie was not built until 1835. At Marnoch, Banffshire, a stone built into the structure is incised "Built by Subscription in the year 1832. Addition 1877" (Ritchie, 1921:228). Therefore, this is an original construction that was completed just as the threat receded, but its extension was long after.
FIGURE 1. Morthouses. (A) Walls protected by embanked soil, Kemnay, Aberdeenshire. Photo by authors. (B) Round morthouse at Udny, Aberdeenshire. Photograph by Sagaciousphil, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Udny_Mort_House_02.JPG. Photo was made black and white.
## Mortstones
Mortstones are large rocks, often roughly the size and space of the grave, that were placed over the recent interment to deter grave robbing. They were normally rectangular, but more roughly shaped and heavier than most ledgers or body stones, such as at Inverurie, Aberdeenshire (Figure 2A), although ledgers in effect served the same purpose and were permanent features of family plots.
FIGURE 2. (A) Body stone, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. (B) Type 1 mortsafe, Colinton, Aberdeenshire. (C) Type 2 mortsafe, Cluny, Aberdeenshire. All photos by authors.
Mortstones would have been less effective than the morthouses or mortsafes but much cheaper and only needed a simple block and tackle to move into place. They were, however, equally easy to move away, or digging down from beyond the confines of the grave could allow the body to be extracted. Nevertheless, a number of such stones can still be seen in Scottish graveyards, and some, such as those at Gullane, East Lothian, at Kinghorn, Fife, and at Logierait, Perthshire, have two iron rings set in the surface to allow easy lifting. The Prestwick, Argyll, example is unusual in having curved sides reminiscent of but not exactly mirroring a single-break coffin and in having three hooks; two iron straps stretch across the stone and are attached to iron rods that have been inserted into the ground, suggesting that it was more like some of the mortsafes described below.
## Mortsafes
Mortsafe is a term that has been used for a variety of physical grave protectors that vary from the mobile and reusable coffin covers through low grave protectors to more substantial aboveground structural features forming cages over the whole plot. All types survive only in a few locations; reusable coffins were often sold off when the mortsafe societies were wound up ( _Glasgow Herald,_ 1874). Others were reused as water troughs for livestock on farms (Ritchie, 1912:307, 309, 1921:225), and much of the iron was collected, along with many sets of cast-iron railing around curbed plots, as part of the World War II war effort. Nevertheless, the variations in providing both mobile and fixed protection demonstrate that many were local designs, although some foundries clearly found a market in producing products that they probably added to their catalogs of ironwork.
To place the mortsafe into the ground, several members of the parish would be needed, and some form of pulley system was required. One example of this tackle, or janker, survived at Inverurie (Ritchie, 1921:222–223) and was held by the now-closed Carnegie Inverurie Museum (Figure 3B). Some mortsafes show perforations or loops for hooks to be attached to assist with lowering and lifting. An example with cast handles on the side panels comes from Cadder, East Dunbartonshire, whereas the examples from Airth, Falkirk, have two substantial loops extending above the top on each side, and at Banchory-Devenick, Aberdeenshire, there are two perforations on each side panel to allow hooks to be attached. Holes in the stone tops of the mortsafes at Towie, Cluny, Skene, and Old Kinnernie in Aberdeenshire were also probably to allow attachment of lifting gear, although the openwork sides of this form would easily allow chains or ropes to be placed under the slab for lifting purposes.
### **Mortsafe Types**
Mortsafes protected the coffin underground for adequate time for the body to be decomposed sufficiently to be unsuitable for dissection. At this point, the grave would be opened once more, and the mortsafe removed. Some mortsafes were left in place when they were no longer required, but many were removed, even if no one subsequently requested their use. These are mainly the ones that have survived for study, although occasionally a buried example is revealed as old graves are opened for new interments. The mortsafes had to be larger in size than the coffins. From documentary sources and surviving examples, it is possible to ascertain that there were relatively standard adult sizes such as those used at Auchtertool, measuring 6½ feet by 2¼ feet, but that a larger adult form was ordered by the Auchtertool mortsafe society to measure 7½ feet by 2½ feet, allowing taller individuals to use the mortsafes (Auchtertool Accounts, 9 January 1832). In addition, a record of mortsafes for children exists, although only one from Logierait, Perthshire, survives. Five broad types of coffin-shaped mortsafes are identified here, with varying degrees of disturbance to the coffin once it was time for the mortsafe to be removed and with various forms of construction: the baseless coffin, the stone-topped form, the enclosed iron shell, the iron plate with attachments, and the iron strip form (Figure 3C).
FIGURE 3. (A) Interior of type 1 mortsafe, Durris, Aberdeenshire. Photo by authors. (B) Janker to raise and lower mortsafes, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. Photograph by Wellcome Images, Wellcome Library, London. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0012145EA.html. No changes made. (C) Adult and child mortsafes with no base formed from a mesh of iron rods, Logierait, Perthshire. Photo by authors.
### _Type 1: Baseless Coffin-Shaped Form_
The least disturbance was caused by type 1A, a baseless coffin form. This design could be lowered down into the grave over a coffin that had already been placed there. In some cases it was then bolted onto the coffin beneath. Minimal disturbance to the coffin occurred when the mortsafe was being disinterred as the bolts were simply removed and the entire mortsafe was lifted away from the coffin. The example from Colinton, Edinburgh, is of this type (Figure 2B). The top of the mortsafe had four rectangular openings, one containing an iron plate with a bolt attached. It is likely that all these openings contained similar plates, and they may have been bolted to the top of the coffin. This form of coffin was made of sheet iron soldered together. At Durris, Kincardineshire, the inner surface of the top was further strengthened by iron rods, one placed longitudinally and two across the mortsafe (Figure 3A), and Ritchie (1912:308) notes a similar example at Maryculter. A pair of round holes toward the top of the vertical sides of the mortsafe at Banchory-Devenick, Aberdeenshire, would have allowed hooks to be affixed to allow the raising and lowering of the cover over the coffin. Other arrangements for movement of these heavy items included loops on top at Aberfoyle, Perthshire. Three mortsafes that functioned as coffin covers survive at Logierait, Perthshire, but were not formed from solid iron panels and instead were made from square-section iron rods with iron bands around the sides to form a cage; one of these is a child-sized mortsafe and is a most unusual survival (Figure 3C), although they are often mentioned in the documentary sources.
### _Type 2: Stone-Topped Mortsafe_
The second form of mobile mortsafe combined the concept of the mortstone with that of the iron baseless coffin form, providing some protection against those who would dig down and attempt to tunnel in from the sides with a lattice of iron bands on the sides that would hold the stone above the coffin within the grave. This type did not require complex smithing skills and used locally available stone rather than iron sheets and, indeed, may even have evolved in response to body snatchers digging around body stones. Examples survive at the Aberdeenshire sites of Cluny (Figure 2C), Old Kinnernie, Skene, and Towie (Ritchie, 1912:298–301).
### _Type 3: Enclosed Coffin-Shaped Form_
This design of mortsafe acted as an outer shell to the permanent body container. Multiple layers of coffin were a concept familiar in the funerary industry, and some elaborate coffins could have several shells of wood and lead (Litten, 1991). This shell design fully enclosed the coffin, and there was often a hinged lid, usually in two sections. Several examples from Airth, Falkirk, dated 1831, 1832, and 1837, have the two parts of the lid hinged at the head and foot (Figure 4A). Loops on each lid met and allowed a padlock to seal it securely. Both the coffin and the mortsafe would have to be disinterred after a period of days. The coffin then would have to be unlocked from the mortsafe and returned to the grave.
### _Type 4: Iron Plate with Bolted Components_
A fourth form of mortsafe was a cast-iron plate, hexagonally shaped to be placed within the grave or possibly just to cover it with a cutout pattern of apertures to reduce the weight and make it easier to lower and raise. This plate could be cast as a single piece, such as at Kilmun, Argyll, or could be of two equal portions hinged at what would be about the waist of the deceased. The patterns on the plates vary, so they were not one mass-produced form, and some have rings to attach chains, ropes, or hooks, whereas others must have had these placed through the apertures in the plate. An example at Ayr has "MORT SAFE" in relief at the head of the mortsafe and 1816 in the center of the upper half, indicating its date of production; details of the manufacturer are placed at the foot. Two examples at Alloway, Ayrshire, are of similar design but not identical and are of different dimensions (Figure 4B). The lower portion of the frame contained perforations that allowed iron rods to be placed around the coffin to prevent tunneling from the side, with a top plate that sealed the ends of the rods to prevent them being removed. An example from Bolton, East Lothian, was similar in form but made from a lattice of iron strips and had perforations around the edge that allowed the additional rods to be inserted. In this case there was no cover, but the rods required specific tools to unscrew them from the frame.
### _Type 5: Iron Strip Frame_
This type comes in a wide range of designs, suggesting local smiths created a mortsafe from basic instructions without a specific template to work from. Iron bars or bands run across several points of the width of the coffin, joined together by a longitudinal element that runs down the axis of the coffin, such as at Kincardine (Figure 4C). In some examples the bars ran across the top and down the sides of the coffin, but in others, such as at Dunfermline, they wrapped around the base of the coffin. Another example of this kind was used at Clifton Street Cemetery, Belfast. This type of mortsafe is a relatively low investment version, perhaps designed to be disposable and left in place, which was the case with those fragmentary examples identified during archaeological excavation at Dunfermline Abbey. There, graves 4, 5, and 6 had portions of the iron strip form of mortsafe still in place over the coffins, although corrosion meant that they were incomplete (Robertson et al., 1981). Grave 5 was housed within a lead coffin, with grave 6 being wood with a pattern of brass studs that would originally have held the textile covering in place and created a design on the top and sides of the coffin (see Mytum, "Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture," this volume); only part of grave 4 was uncovered, but the mortsafe type was similar to the others. Another mortsafe was noted as belonging to a lead coffin below a wooden one containing the remains of Maria Wellwood, who died in 1847. However, safety concerns prevented further investigation of the mortsafe and its associated container. It is notable that even within the church, relatively wealthy families felt it necessary to prevent body snatching through investing in mortsafes. The desire to limit disturbance within the building by any form of removal of mortsafes may have encouraged the use of ones that permanently remained over the interments. Two similar mortsafes clearly meant to remain buried were recovered by gravediggers in the early twentieth century, with that from Oyne (Ritchie, 1921:223–224) being very like the Dunfermline examples, whereas that from Tough also had blocks of stone added at the head and foot (Ritchie, 1912:304–305).
FIGURE 4. (A) Type 3 mortsafe, Airth, Falkirk. Photograph by Velvet, Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edimbourg_mortsafe.JPG. Photo was made black and white. (B) Type 4 mortsafe, Alloway, Ayrshire. Photograph from the Geograph project collection and copyright owned by Mary and Angus Hogg, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mort-Safe_In_Alloway_Auld_Kirk_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1213375.jpg. Photo was made black and white. (C) Type 5 mortsafe, Kincardine, Kincardineshire. Photograph from the Geograph project collection and copyright owned by Mike Searle, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0), http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1870295. Photo was made black and white.
### **Low Protectors**
Low, permanent cast-iron structures can be found largely at urban burial grounds, most notably in Edinburgh and Glasgow. An example at Glasgow Cathedral, constructed for the burial of Maria MacAulay in 1849 by W. Fulton and Sons, is a typical example. Four stout legs form the corners of the mortsafe, with a thick iron rail placed around the sides. Each side has a series of iron bars connected to the rail at the top that then extend down into the ground. The top of the plot is covered with an iron lattice. Some examples have hinged covers, usually with two parts that meet in the center that could be locked together. This arrangement allowed maintenance of the plot and also access for further interments. Some designs used cast-iron panels set across the plot to record the details of the deceased. The mortsafe in Edinburgh Greyfriars covering the grave of Elizabeth Jane Lindesay, who died in 1832, has recently been restored (Figure 5A).
### **Cage Mortsafes**
Many of the cage mortsafes are now hard to identify as the stone curbs with sawn-off iron bars are similar to those left by plots with railings. However, a sample still survives intact, with vertical bars to a height of over 2 m and with some form of covering, always designed to cover a double or larger plot. These cages may in some cases be bespoke local productions, but others were cast by foundries who placed their names on their products, such as the case of James Russell in the Ramshorn burial ground, Glasgow, made by Walton & Sons of that city (Figure 5B). The cages all have a hinged door at the foot end of the plot to allow access for grave maintenance, grieving, and further interments. A small number are completely freestanding and contain typical headstones or ledgers, but most are built against a wall at the head end of the grave, and memorials are placed on plaques set into or onto the wall. One example of this form of mortsafe is known to still survive in Ireland, at Drumcondra, County Dublin (Mytum, 2013).
The cage mortsafe is a form that can be linked to a much older Scottish tradition of the enclosed lair, where walls and sometimes a roof created a not only secure but private burial location. With the banishment of burial within churches, the Scottish elite created alternative enclosed forms, and some of these walled plots seem to have continued but with iron rod covers as a protection against body snatching. This mix of traditions can be best seen at Old Calton Cemetery in Edinburgh, where many examples of this form survive, some still with all their ironwork (Figure 5C).
A few grave protectors in America have been interpreted by some as mortsafes, most notably the grave covers at the Old Mount Zion burial ground, Catawissa, Pennsylvania, although these would appear to merely be elaborate covered versions of other forms of grave railings rather than mortsafes, as they are neither large nor substantial. Many documentary sources indicate that the middle classes, who would have been able to afford such protection, did not need to concern themselves with threats of the disinterment of their loved ones because the burial grounds of the poor and disadvantaged, notably but not exclusively African Americans, were easily available, sometimes with the connivance of those working at the burial grounds. It is possible that emphasis was placed on the use of metal coffins and burglar-proof vaults as a way of protecting bodies, and these were relatively popular in North America (Springate, 2015:43–50), although rare in Britain. This method may be how undertakers assuaged the fears of the affluent.
FIGURE 5. Aboveground grave protection. (A) Low protector for Elizabeth Jane Lindesay, Edinburgh Greyfriars. (B) Cage mortsafe for James Russell's plot, Ramshorn burial ground, Glasgow. (C) Walled lair for Daniel Munro's plot with iron gate and cover, Old Calton Cemetery, Edinburgh. All photos by authors.
## Miscellaneous Solutions
Probably many ad hoc designs were tried out by local communities to prevent or at least deter body snatching, although few survive. One solution similar to a mortsafe but not requiring disinterment was provided at Bolton, East Lothian, where a coffin-shaped iron grid known as a graveguard was placed over the grave. Then 28 iron rods were driven into the ground through perforations in the graveguard, and they were secured using three types of nut, each requiring its own bespoke key (Gorman, 2010). A similar solution was provided at Kilmun, Argyle, and Bute, but here the bolts were protected by an additional frame that was locked over the top to cover the bolt heads. This solution was, in effect, a combination of some features of both the low protectors and the coffin-shaped mortsafe and demonstrates how local ingenuity (perhaps informed by observing other forms) could create unique solutions to a widespread problem.
Some coffin protectors were made to be left permanently under the ground, but they are known only if subsequent grave digging reveals them and they are considered worthy of record or preservation. At Tough, Aberdeenshire, an iron cage made heavy by attaching large stones to the head and foot of the coffin was placed within a grave to protect the body (Ritchie, 1912:304). A less substantial iron frame was used at Oyne, Aberdeenshire (Ritchie, 1921:223–224). An even simpler form of body protection was recovered from Kingskettle, Fife, and is now in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. A simple collar was placed around the neck of the corpse and bolted to the base of the coffin, preventing the body from being dragged out by body snatchers; a similar type was used at St. Andrews.
## Conclusions
The documentary and archaeological evidence demonstrates that body snatching was a real threat in the eighteenth and particularly the early nineteenth centuries. In English urban centers it would appear that little beyond heightening graveyard walls and occasionally mounting a guard was done to protect the graves of the poor, often left open as long trenches to be rapidly filled with the bodies of those dying daily in the cramped slums. These bodies were easily obtained by body snatchers, and it may be that the middle classes were largely safe in their burial crypts or suburban graveyards as there was little effort to create the physical protection seen in Scotland. There a range of protective measures can be identified, and many stories of successful and failed attempts at grave robbing are known. This frequency of bodysnatching may be because Scotland had a large number of medical schools, and those at Aberdeen and St. Andrews would have had particularly limited slum churchyards from which to draw, resulting in widespread searching for bodies across the countryside. A plentiful supply of bodies of the poor in cities such as London or Dublin or across North America meant that the scale of investment in body protection was rarely felt to be required.
It may be that the publicity arising from the prosecution of Burke and Hare, although not for grave robbing, led to hysteria and the rapid creation of security measures that with the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act were no longer necessary. It is clear, however, that some measures were in force decades before, and others were put in place only after the threat had gone. This time span suggests that there was a more widespread and deeper fear of body desecration and that after 1832 it was largely illusory; although there was resistance to bodies going for dissection from both the church and relatives, the evidence suggests supplies were maintained, although the main study has a focus on Edinburgh (Smith, 2009). What is noteworthy is that mortsafe societies were being wound up as late as the 1870s and that investment in buildings such as the Marnoch morthouse extension was as late as 1877. Even the portable mortsafes, such as one of the Airth examples that is cast with the date 1837, were being ordered well after 1832, and stone slabs were buried over a man buried in 1854 at the United Free Church burial ground at Banchory-Devenick, Aberdeenshire (Ritchie, 1912:301–311). Perhaps the propensity for mortality symbols on memorials and the erection of markers at an early date in Scottish burial grounds reflect a certain attitude to the body that was later reinforced by the stories of body snatching and the efforts of those preventing it. The threat may have passed, but there may have been a residual attitude to the body that was much more strongly manifested communally in Scotland and institutionalized in organizations, structures, and equipment that was regularly used in a set of what became ritualized acts of body protection that no longer served a practical function but formed part of the respect offered to the body that those with the resources could demonstrate in their communities.
## References
Anstruther Easter Mortsafe Society. Minutebook. 1830–1874. MS 37478. St. Andrews University Library Special Collections.
Auchtertool Accounts. Burials and Minutes. 1830–1863. CH2/25/4. National Archives of Scotland.
Bailey, J. B. 1896. _The Diary of a Resurrectionist: 1811–1812 To Which Are Added an Account of the Resurrection Men in London and Short History of the Passing of the Anatomy Act._ London: Swan Sonnenschein.
Blakely, R. L., and J. M. Harrington, eds. 1997. _Bones in the Basement: Postmortem Racism in Nineteenth-Century Medical Training._ Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Brickley, M., A. Miles, and H. Stainer. 1999. _The Cross Bones Burial Ground, Redcross Way, Southwark, London: Archaeological excavations (1991–1998) for the London Underground Limited Jubilee Line Extension Project._ MoLAS Monograph 3. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Brooks, C. 1989. _Mortal Remains: The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery._ Exeter: Wheaton Publishers.
Campbell Family, Earls of Breadalbane. Papers. Reports and Inventory. 15 May 1856. GD112/16/3/6. National Archives of Scotland.
Chamberlain, A. T. 2012. "Morbid Osteology: Evidence for Autopsies, Dissection and Surgical Training from the Newcastle Infirmary Burial Ground (1753–1845)." In _Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond: Autopsy, Pathology and Display,_ ed. P. Mitchell, A. Cunningham, and O. P. Grell, pp. 11–22. History of Medicine in Context. London: Routledge.
Cole, H. 1964. _Things for the Surgeon: A History of the Bodysnatchers._ London: Heinemann.
Cox, M. 1996. _Life and Death in Spitalfields: 1700 to 1850._ York: Council for British Archaeology.
Crist, T. A., D. B. Mooney, and K. A. Morrell. 2017. " 'The Mangled Remains of What Had Been Humanity': Evidence of Autopsy and Dissection at Philadelphia's Blockley Almshouse, 1835–1895." In _The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy in the United States,_ ed. K. C. Nystrom, pp. 259–278. New York: Springer.
Davidson, J. M. 2007. "Resurrection Men" in Dallas: The Illegal Use of Black Bodies as Medical Cadavers (1900–1907). _International Journal of Historical Archaeology,_ 11(3):193–220.
_Dundee Courier and Argus_. 1869. 20 May, no. 4927. "Anstruther".
Fido, M. 1988. _Bodysnatchers: A History of the Resurrectionists, 1742–1832._ London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Fleetwood, J. F. 1959. The Irish Resurrectionists. _Irish Journal of Medical Science,_ 34(7):304–321.
Fleetwood, J. F. 1988. The Dublin Body Snatchers Part One. _Dublin Historical Record,_ 42(2):42–52.
Fleetwood, J. F. 1993. Dublin Private Medical Schools in the Nineteenth Century. _Dublin Historical Record,_ 46(1):31–45.
Fowler, L., and N. Powers 2012. _Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men: Excavations at the 19th-Century Burial Ground of the London Hospital, 2006._ MOLA Monograph 62. London: Museum of London Archaeology.
Frank, J. B. 1976. Body Snatching: A Grave Medical Problem. _Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine,_ 49:399–410.
Gilmour Evidence. 1844. Trial papers relating to Christian or Christina Gilmour for the crime of murder at Inchinnan, Renfrewshire or South or West Grange, Dunlop, Ayrshire. Tried at High Court, Edinburgh. Inchinnan Mortsafe Cashbook. 12 January 1844. JC25/1844/369. National Archives of Scotland.
_Glasgow Herald._ 1874. 16 November, no. 108851. "Kilmarnock. Anstruther".
Gorman, M. 2010. Echoes of the Resurrection Men. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bodysnatchers/index.php (accessed 26 November 2017).
Halperin, E. C. 2007. The Poor, the Black, and the Marginalized as the Source of Cadavers in United States Anatomical Education. _Clinical Anatomy,_ 20:489–495.
Hamilakis, Y., M. Pluciennik, and S. Tarlow, eds. 2002b. _Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality._ Kluwer: New York.
Highet, M. J. 2005. Body Snatching & Grave Robbing: Bodies for Science. _History and Anthropology,_ 16(4):415–440.
Holder, G. 2010. _Scottish Bodysnatchers: A Gazetteer._ Stroud: History Press.
Houlbrooke, R. 1998. _Death, Religion and the Family in England, 1480–1750._ Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Humphrey, D. C. 1973. Dissection and Discrimination: The Social Origins of Cadavers in America, 1760–1915. _Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine,_ 49(9):819–827.
Kaufman, M., and L. L. Hanawalt. 1971. Body Snatching in the Midwest. _Michigan History,_ 55:22–40.
Litten, J. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: Robert Hall.
Marshall, T. 1995. _Murdering to Dissect: Grave-Robbing, Frankenstein and the Anatomy Literature._ Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Murphy, C. 2011. What Can Osteological Investigation Reveal about Medical Education in Eighteenth-Century Dublin? _Archaeology Ireland,_ 25(3):30–34.
Mytum, H. C. 2004. _Mortuary Monuments and Burials Grounds of the Historic Period._ London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Mytum, H. 2013. Combating Dublin Body-Snatchers: The Drumcondra Mortsafe. _Archaeology Ireland,_ 27(3):23–25.
Newburn Mortsafe. Newburn Mortsafe Subscribers' Cash Book. 1824–1877. CH2/278/21. National Archives of Scotland.
Novak, S. A., and W. Willoughby. 2014. Resurrectionists' Excursions: Evidence of Postmortem Dissection from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church. _Northeast Historical Archaeology,_ 39(1):134–152.
Nystrom, K. C., ed. 2017. _The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy in the United States._ New York: Springer.
Rae, J. M., factor at Newbattle. Letters to Lord Ancram, later seventh Marquess of Lothian. 10 April 1826–1 March 1829. GD40/9/295/3. National Archives of Scotland.
Reeve, J., and M. Adams. 1993. _The Spitalfields Project._ Volume 1: _The Archaeology: Across the Styx._ CBA Research Report 85. London: Council for British Archaeology.
Richardson, R. 1987. _Death, Dissection and the Destitute._ London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Ritchie, J. 1912. An Account of the Watch-Houses, Mortsafes and Public Vaults in Aberdeenshire Churchyards. _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,_ 46:285–326.
Ritchie, J. 1921. Relics of the Body-Snatchers: Supplementary Notes on Mortsafe Tackle, Mortsafes, Watch-Houses, and Public Vaults, Mostly in Aberdeenshire. _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,_ 55:221–229.
Roach, M. 2003. _Stiff': The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers._ London: Viking.
Robertson, T. M., G. H. Williams, G. Haggarty, and N. Reynolds. 1981. Recent Excavations at Dunfermline Abbey, Fife. _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,_ 111:388–400.
Sappol, M. 2002. _A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America._ Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Schultz, S. M. 1992. _Body Snatching: The Robbing of Graves for the Education of Physicians in Early Nineteenth Century America._ Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company.
Smith, M. 2009. The Church of Scotland and the Funeral Industry in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh. _Scottish Historical Review,_ 88(1):108–133.
Springate, M. E, 2015. _Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth-Century America._ Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Traquair Watching Society. Papers relating to the watchhouse at Traquire churchyard: Minutes and accounts of the Traquair Watching Society. 1821–1879. GD314/114. National Archives of Scotland.
Waite, F. C. 1945. Grave Robbing in New England. _Bulletin of the Medical Library Association,_ 33(3):272–294.
Willsher, B. 1985. _How to Record Scottish Graveyards._ Edinburgh: Council for British Archaeology Scotland.
Wise, S. 2005. _The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London._ London: Macmillan.
# CHAPTER 13
# Death, Dogs, and Monuments: Recent Research at Washington's Congressional Cemetery
_Laurie Burgess and Douglas W. Owsley_
Nineteenth-century brick burial vaults line the main walkways of historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and hold the remains of some of the city's most prominent nineteenth-century families (Figure 1). These semisubterranean structures are showing the effects of time, and as funding becomes available, the cemetery engages historic preservation experts and conservators to repair and restore them. To protect the remains during the restoration, a Smithsonian team excavated each vault and temporarily removed the remains to the National Museum of Natural History, providing an opportunity to study the remains and mortuary material culture of the city's nineteenth-century elite.
The remains and any associated mortuary material culture—coffin hardware, nails, buttons, buckles, and the occasional nameplate—were temporarily transferred to the museum for safekeeping and analysis. While at the museum, the skeletons were aged and sexed by the physical anthropology team, and the associated objects were analyzed to help date the burials. These data were then compared to the excellent records of the cemetery to link names to burials, when possible, and the individuals were reinterred once the restoration was complete. So far, the Smithsonian team has had the opportunity to work in six of the cemetery's high-status burial vaults over the past few years. Four of those six will be discussed here: two brick vaults with sunken, semisubterranean chambers and two subsurface vaults topped by elaborate monuments.
Constructed first in the 1820s, these brick houses of the dead usually contain dozens of coffins to the point where they are often completely filled (Figure 2). The coffins are frequently stacked three deep and have collapsed over time, creating a sort of stratigraphy: coffin base, bones, and coffin lid for each interment, although not always in perfect horizontal alignment since the coffins do not always collapse neatly and elements and coffin hardware sometimes intrude into other interments. Coffin hardware has become a valuable dating tool for burials from the second half of the nineteenth century, and its role in assessing status has also been explored in recent decades.
Status and death go hand in hand in terms of archaeological studies, almost regardless of time period or culture. Archaeologists, long believing in a link between status and mortuary practices, attempt to infer social and/or economic position on the basis of material culture associated with an individual's burial. Using data from Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., this chapter explores the degree to which material culture, in this case coffin hardware, can be a reliable indicator of status in historic period burials.
FIGURE 1. Brick vaults at the Congressional Cemetery. Photo by Laurie Burgess, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
## Cemetery History
Congressional Cemetery, originally located at the very fringes of the city in a rural setting overlooking the Anacostia River, now sits well within an urban landscape, near the heart of the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The cemetery was founded by private citizens in 1807 and was transferred to the Episcopalian Christ Church in 1812, but most notably, in 1816, 100 of the best sites were allocated for members of Congress who died in office (Sienkewicz, 2005). The allocation of these sites gave the cemetery strong federal ties and gave rise to the name Congressional Cemetery. Although still owned by the Episcopalian church today and leased to the Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery, in 1816 the cemetery's identity began to shift from sacred to secular, an overtone that remains to this day.
These congressional plots and monuments wrought a change upon the landscape, lending gravitas and a strong federal identity to the cemetery, even though most of the monuments are truly cenotaphs, or empty tombs, and bear only the name of the congressman or senator while the body lies elsewhere. The federal overtones embedded in the presence of the cenotaphs still give the perception of ties to the nation's halls of power, a perception that likely resonated even more in the nineteenth century. In addition to the cenotaphs, in the nineteenth century a gravel road ran straight from the cemetery to the Capitol, providing a direct physical link to one of Washington's seats of power, and as Sienkewicz (2005:2) wrote of the cemetery, "it began to embody the social structure of the nation's capital." Although archaeologists have been cautioned against using this as a broad assumption, McGuire (1988:451), on the basis of his work with cemeteries in Broome County, New York, has said that for the time period spanning the mid-nineteenth century through the 1920s, "archaeological assumptions concerning a direct relationship between mortuary investment and wealth or power are valid for this time."
FIGURE 2. Causten vault interior showing the matrix formed by collapsed wooden coffins. Photo by Laurie Burgess, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
This finding holds true for Congressional Cemetery, where the city of the dead did mimic the city of the living during the nineteenth century, with Washington's social structure still very evident in the range of burial vaults and monuments that dot the cemetery's landscape. The wealthy and influential occupy vaults and family plots in the most desirable locations, near the main axes of the cemetery roads and located in predominantly upland areas, and the charitable burials of the poor are physically marginalized and lie in unmarked graves at the cemetery's edges, whereas the burials of the middle class and average citizen cover acres.
It is usually the cemeteries and remains of marginalized people, at least in North America, that have been studied and reported in the literature (Bell, 1994; Nawrocki, 1995; Buikstra, 2000). For the burials studied here, elite status is not to be inferred from a nuanced reading of material culture but is instead writ large in the form of elaborate funerary monuments and in the spatial aspects of social hierarchy that are embedded in the cemetery.
Status is frequently inferred from mortuary practices almost regardless of time period or culture. But the analysis of the materials from the Congressional Cemetery burial vaults, like the findings from other studies, has shown that a direct relationship between the presence and amount of coffin hardware in burials and status cannot necessarily be assumed. Edward Bell's (1990) work at the Uxbridge Almshouse, a nineteenth-century poorhouse, challenged this correlation when he found that 45% of the burials contained coffin hardware. He attributed the high percentage to the Beautification of Death movement, when death was idealized and mortuary material culture became elaborate. He urged archaeologists to consider the effects of popular culture on mortuary practices that influenced even the burials of the poorest members of society (Bell, 1990).
Bromberg and Shephard (2006) also looked at the coffin hardware—status correlation by comparing their research at a Quaker burial ground with the Uxbridge burials and with Little et al.'s (1992) work at the Weir Family Cemetery in Manassas, Virginia. They compared the three assemblages and found that status and coffin hardware were not directly related since the Quakers were of high status but actively chose not to decorate coffins in keeping with their belief system. The higher-status Weir Family Cemetery had 75% of burials with coffin hardware, the Uxbridge Almshouse had 45%, and the Quakers had a low of 33%. The cultural preferences of Quakers appear to have been represented in the low percentage, and the Weirs' inclusion of a much higher percentage of coffin ornamentation clearly reflected another point of view. The active choice inherent in the quantities of hardware variously present in these burials speaks to another aspect of mortuary practices and cemeteries: their role as communication systems.
McGuire (1988:474) has said, "The dead...can establish discourse, but not maintain it." As he and others have noted, it is also the living who establish this discourse through the material culture of death, in status displays and social competition, as discussed by Cannon (1989) and others. Little et al. (1992) illustrate this point particularly well at the Weir Family Cemetery; the family had fallen on hard times, yet the amount of mortuary display, in terms of coffin hardware, increased. Little et al. argue that the family wanted to be seen not as they actually were but as they wished to be perceived and link the use of ornamentation to the Beautification of Death movement prevalent at the time. They argue for incorporating "a specific historic context" into any assessments of status using coffin hardware (Little et al., 1992:415).
Status display relates not just to a reflection of status as it is or was but instead represents an idealized display of status, something that is very present in cemeteries (Pearson, 1982). Indeed, it can be argued that an idealized expression of power relations is negotiated through burial rituals (McGuire, 1988), and this negotiation is readily apparent at Congressional Cemetery. Both the idealized display of status and the expression of power relations are especially persistent themes in Washington, then and now.
At Congressional Cemetery, the cenotaphs—the empty tombs of members of Congress—illustrate idealized displays of status in the sphere of death. They show how effective this strategy can be since only about one-third of the cenotaphs actually contain remains, and they make up a tiny percentage of the 67,000 individuals buried at the cemetery, yet for two centuries their presence has conferred status upon the cemetery, in the name it became known by and in the perception of strong links to the uppermost echelons of government and thus to power. The cemetery monuments do function as a communication system: they have carried this and other messages forward into the future and continue to shape the perception of the landscape, whether on the scale of cultural landscape or embodied in individual monuments and vaults.
The vault projects have provided an opportunity to examine the mortuary practices and coffin hardware of high-status families in nineteenth-century Washington, D.C. Two of the vaults studied are semisubterranean brick vaults: the Coombe vault was in use from the late 1820s to the early twentieth century, and the Causten vault was used from ca. 1835 to 1899. The other two vaults are subsurface, situated beneath elaborate monuments: the Macomb vault, completed in 1842 and apparently used once, and the Wirt vault, constructed in 1853, although two burials dating to the 1830s were moved to the vault. It remained in use until 1885.
Table 1. Coffin hardware from Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.C. An X indicates specific hardware was present, and a dash (—) indicates it was not.
The coffin hardware (Table 1) and burial practices of these vaults have been analyzed on multiple scales: on the site-specific level and also within the larger scale of shifting trends of nineteenth-century cemeteries. Since the interments were already known to be those of Washington's wealthy residents, this project provided an opportunity to examine the correlation between coffin hardware and status within known, elite contexts.
## The Coombe Vault
Griffith Coombe was one of the founders of the cemetery, and the Coombe vault is located along the main walkway of the cemetery, in the company of the vaults of some of Washington's other leading families. These rather low-roofed brick structures line the walkway that goes from 18th Street SE to the upland area of the cemetery, which progresses to what were sweeping views of the Anacostia River during the nineteenth century.
The Coombe vault interior consists of a vaulted brick burial chamber with an open shaft in the floor to allow for the drainage of groundwater. Because of underlying soil conditions, drainage is a problem in the cemetery. This semisubterranean vault, built in 1828, is much more integrated with the surrounding landscape than many of the later memorials in the cemetery and, in a way, has the appearance of a very large, stylized grave with a small entry door. Although it is substantial, it has a low profile, and it and the other brick vaults of the time period have grass-covered roofs, which tie them directly to the natural landscape. The brick vaults, the earliest in the cemetery, are far less elaborate than the later memorials like the Macomb and Wirt vaults, which were built in the 1840s and 1850s. McGuire (1988) notes that the change in mortuary practices from naturalization (here, low-profile vaults integrated with the surrounding landscape) to denial (in the later creation of parklike settings where the reality of death is minimized or, in the case of Wirt and Macomb, glorified in the abstract) mirrors changes in attitudes about death. With the exception of the Coombe vault and a few others, the brick vaults resemble small houses with ornamented fronts and a small door leading down to the interior floor, sometimes 4 to 5 feet below the surface.
Many of the earlier interments in the Coombe vault, those predating the 1850s, contained no coffin hardware since it was not generally used during that time period. The earlier interments were placed at the far end of the vault, and the more recent ones were closer to the entrance. Many of the coffins had been stacked on top of each other, and the wooden coffins had collapsed over time. In general, in tightly packed vaults a degree of stratigraphy remains after stacked coffins collapse, with the coffin lid and base encapsulating the remains and forming layers. But in the Coombe vault the effects of the collapse were intensified by water damage: a water line was evident on the walls, about 3 feet above the floor, enough to impact all of the coffins. The deteriorated wood, bone, garments, and hardware formed a denser matrix than we encountered in other vaults that were not subject to flooding.
It is noteworthy that both ornate and very plain coffin handles were found in the Coombe vault, reinforcing that the link between coffin hardware and status is context driven, at best. Plain, double-lug swing bail handles were present. If recovered from a different burial context, they would not automatically suggest a high-status burial. This coffin handle variety, according to Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1984), appears in the 1860s and persists until the early twentieth century. Davidson (2004) points out that single and double lug forms were the predominant type of handles available since the late 1700s and also says that the double lug variety persist until the 1880s, saying that its low cost helped maintain its popularity when the more expensive short bar handles appeared.
The Coombe vault swing bail handles (Figure 3A) were plated with a base metal, probably containing nickel, and this variety of coffin hardware was recovered from multiple interments within the vault. But some of the other hardware does appear to relate to status, like a single-lug coffin handle made from silver-plated cast brass; the presence of sterling silver was verified by using x-ray fluorescence (XRF; Figure 3B). As a side note, XRF was also used on dentures recovered from the Coombe vault on what appeared to be a gold palate, with beautifully rendered porcelain white teeth and pink gums. The gold turned out to be 20 carat. More elaborate short bar coffin handles were also recovered, including handles with crosses and matching cross-shaped thumbscrews.
The appearance of identical coffin hardware types in more than one burial in this vault may indicate several possibilities. It may suggest choice in funerary treatment on the part of the family, or it may represent the hardware stock of the coffin maker. There is also the possibility that some of the smaller hardware elements, like thumbscrews, were intrusive in one or more burials and may have been part of adjacent burials since the collapse and deterioration of many coffins were substantial and subsidence of the burial matrix and some commingling of elements may have occurred over time, especially when the vault flooded. Regardless, the presence of plain and ornate forms within a high-status tomb supports the premise of Bell (1990), Little et al. (1992), and others that a direct correlation between hardware and status cannot be assumed.
FIGURE 3. Coffin handles from Coombe vault. (A) Plain swing bail coffin handle from the Coombe vault. Photo by Chip Clark, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution. (B) Sterling silver–plated brass single-lug coffin handle from the Coombe vault. Photo by Chip Clark, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
## The Causten Vault
In addition to having a potentially indirect relationship to status, in rare instances coffin hardware could be misleading in terms of establishing dates for elite burials. In another Congressional Cemetery vault, the Causten vault (1835–1899), cemetery records showed that 9 (31%) of the more than 20 interments in the semisubterranean brick vault dated to the first half of the nineteenth century, and 20 (69%) dated to the last half of the century, so we expected that the earlier burials would have little or no coffin hardware and the later burials would potentially contain the typical progression of single-lug handles, swing bail handles, then short bar handles. This particular vault was completely filled with coffins, wall to wall. The cemetery staff told us that the family had had a number of the burials recoffined in the 1870s and produced a receipt showing this (record on file, Historic Congressional Cemetery). The receipt gave totals but did not address any specifics as to which individuals were recoffined.
Of the 29 total interments, 17, or 59%, predated 1870 and so would presumably not contain short bar coffin handles. Seven burials, or 24%, had short bar handles, which would be fairly consistent with the date range of the vault. Although single-lug handles were recovered from three burials, only one swing bail handle was recovered from debris in the SW corner of the vault; it seems likely that it is from one of the recoffined burials. The virtual absence of swing bail handles, commonly used from the 1860s through the 1880s, in any of the excavated interments may be a reflection of the recoffining, but the impact of this activity on the coffin hardware assemblage is difficult to assess. The occurrence of recoffining was an unexpected aspect of elite interments, one we had not previously encountered. Only a high-status family would have had the means to recoffin burials—and potentially alter the material record.
## The Wirt Vault
The Wirt vault differs significantly from the Coombe and Causten vaults in that it lies beneath a massive monument that dominates all of the surrounding headstones and memorials (Figure 4). Although the name "Wirt" appears prominently on the front, Wirt's credentials are listed on the side of the vault, "Attorney General of the United States from 1817 to 1820," ensuring that all who pass know who lies within this impressive grave site. The monument and vault date to 1853 and fall well within the time period of the Rural Cemetery and Beautification of Death movements. Here, death and status are clearly linked on a large and public scale.
The monument rests above a subsurface chamber lined with stone slabs with three stone shelves holding the burials. The contents had been vandalized decades ago, but the recent appearance of a skull possibly belonging to William Wirt prompted a forensic anthropological investigation that confirmed this identification (Grabowski et al., 2010). Within the Wirt vault, where dates of death were available for all eight of the interments, the two burials from the first half of the nineteenth century, dating to 1830 and 1834, had no coffin hardware. However, Agnes Wirt (1830) had domed brass tacks decorating her coffin, and William Wirt's lead-lined coffin (1834) had a silver nameplate.
The 1863 burial of Lt. Goldsborough, Wirt's grandson, had very ornate and very large single-lug handles. Davidson (200:104) reports that "larger, more solidly cast" coffin handles cost more than lighter versions and refers to short bar coffin handles in particular, saying that they cost the most. The short bar handles that were recovered from the Wirt vault are massive and ornate (Figure 5). Notably, ornate extension bars were present with the 1877 burial of Rear Admiral Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough, Wirt's son-in-law, and appear to be the earliest documented occurrence of extension bars in the United States. A cast-iron coffin, dating to an 1857 burial, was also present in the vault.
FIGURE 4. The Wirt monument dominates the surrounding burials. Photo by Laurie Burgess, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
FIGURE 5. Massive short bar coffin handles from the Wirt vault. Photo by Chip Clark, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
The coffin hardware from the Wirt vault is consistent with the time period of the burials, and some of the more substantial hardware is consistent with higher-cost items. However, as with the Coombe vault, very plain, nickel-plated swing bail handles were also recovered here, from burial 3, that of Lizzie Goldsborough. Since only five of the eight interments in the Wirt vault postdate 1850, when coffin hardware use was prevalent, for at least this series of interments one out of five elite burials had very plain hardware. Although this is a very small sample, the presence of simple, unadorned hardware in both the Wirt and Coombe vaults again indicates that a direct correlation between coffin hardware and status—and between different varieties of coffin hardware and status—cannot always be assumed.
## Macomb Vault
This project focused on the 1842 burial vault of General Alexander Macomb, renowned veteran of the War of 1812 and later commander in chief of the U.S. Army. Unlike the other projects, this excavation was part of a multiagency project to stabilize the 7-ton marble monument that marks General Macomb's grave. And unlike the other vault projects, the work on the Macomb vault culminated in a second funeral for the general.
The National Cemetery Administration (NCA), which is part of the Department of Veterans Affairs, oversees more than 800 of the 67,000 lots within Congressional Cemetery, including the Macomb vault. The NCA enlisted the National Park Service's Historic Preservation Training Center (HPTC) to restore the monument, which was listing 6° out of plumb. The investigations led to the unexpected discovery of a brick burial vault beneath the listing monument (Figure 6). Many subsurface vaults are present in the cemetery, but this one was not known. The Macomb vault is located near the main ceremonial walkway of the cemetery on a gently rising slope, near the cenotaphs and in the company of other large monuments. Although Macomb died in 1841, he was placed in the cemetery's public vault until his vault was completed in 1842.
FIGURE 6. Macomb vault during the restoration project. Photo by Laurie Burgess, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
Early in the process, HPTC team leader Moss Rudley inserted a scope fitted with a camera into the Macomb vault chamber, which revealed partial wall collapse, a large amount of slumped soil, and what appeared to be a white metal coffin liner that seemed to be in reasonably good shape. Alarmingly, the camera revealed that the entire monument was supported by a single span of bricks that formed the vault's ceiling. Moss and his team then oversaw the removal of the monument, a neoclassical figure with a Greek warrior's helmet resting on a section footed with lion's paws and an underlying marble plinth.
The NCA had been able to locate lineal descendants of General Macomb, some of whom still live in the D.C. area. They were in attendance for much of the project and even participated in some of the work.
Unlike other vaults, which were large enough to stand and move around in, this vault turned out to be only 3 feet high. The western and southern walls of the vault had been breached, and a substantial amount of soil and bricks had intruded into the interior.
Excavation of the slumped soil revealed the presence of a secondary interment of a woman. A number of her long bones and other bones were commingled at the west end of what had been the coffin. Excellent wood preservation can occur within burial vaults, but no coffin wood remained with this interment, although many nails were present. General Macomb's first wife, Catherine, died in 1822, was buried in Georgetown, and then was moved to the Macomb vault for the 1842 interment. The disarray of the bones was consistent with the exhumation and reburial of a skeletonized individual. Her coffin was likely tilted at a steep angle during the disinterment in Georgetown or during her subsequent interment in Congressional Cemetery, causing many of the bones to shift to one end of the coffin.
The general was buried in a wooden coffin with a lead liner, and some wood fragments were still present. A sterling silver nameplate on top of the coffin read "Alexander Macomb, Major General Commanding [ _sic_ ] in Chief the Army of the United States, Born Detroit Michigan, Died at Washington, 25th June 1841." Since the coffin liner appeared to be generally intact, it was decided to remove the entire interment and transfer it to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, where it could be analyzed.
A week later the Macomb descendants, NCA staff, cemetery staff, and HPTC staff gathered in one of the museum's labs. The team, including family members, began the careful process of excavating the general from his silt-lined coffin.
Skeletal analysis revealed that General Macomb's remains were consistent with those of a 59-year-old man of European ancestry, but his bones provided no clues as to the cause of death. In an announcement for Macomb's funeral the 28 June 1841 _National Intelligencer_ stated, "Little did we expect, when we attended the funeral of General Harrison, on which occasion Gen. Macomb commanded the Military escort, that we should so soon have to follow the remains of the living General to the tomb." The comment in the paper suggests that his death was unexpected, perhaps from illness.
Catherine's remains were consistent with what would be expected for a 36-year-old woman. She was said to have died in childbirth, and her bones provided no evidence to suggest another cause of death.
The family viewed the remains at the museum the night before the reinterment. A master carpenter with the National Park Service created a mahogany burial container, and in accordance with the wishes of the family, it was constructed to hold both the general and Catherine. All of the family members present helped place the bones into the burial container, wrapped in unbleached muslin.
FIGURE 7. The second funeral for General Alexander Macomb. Photo by Chip Clark, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
The next morning, on 17 July 2008, a second funeral was held for General Alexander Macomb at Congressional Cemetery, 166 years after he died (Figure 7). A well-attended service was held in the cemetery's chapel. Family members spoke, and one of them read a poem written by Catherine Macomb, in which Catherine called her husband Sandy, a detail that would otherwise be lost to history, but one that reminded everyone there of the very personal nature of cemetery excavations. The coffin was escorted to the gravesite with War of 1812 reenactors and HPTC team members serving as pallbearers. A second ceremony was held at the now restored monument, and the flag that covered his coffin was folded and presented to the family. The mahogany coffin was lowered out of sight, and General and Catherine Macomb were laid to rest for the second and final time.
The 1842 Macomb vault just predates the period when coffin hardware came into use, but his burial dates to the period when lead liners were being used in high-status interments.
The monument, topped by a Greek warrior's helmet, reflects the neoclassical period of style, when classical Greek and Roman elements were revived and incorporated into architecture—in this case, they were used in mortuary architecture. The Macomb vault, like the Wirt vault, provides an example of displaying status and wealth through means other than coffin hardware. The 7-ton monument memorializes Macomb's military career and evokes a time of ancient warriors and mythic battles. The monument is decorated with symbols, with one side of the base showing a sword clad in oak leaves, evoking war and valor. Another side displays the Greek _ouroboros,_ a serpent with its tail in its mouth that is symbolic of cycles and of the eternal return, which is further emphasized by the presence of a butterfly, a symbol of resurrection. A combined design element contains the wings of time, an hourglass, a scythe, and a weeping willow: tempus fugit, death, and mourning. An article in the 29 June 1841 _National Intelligencer_ describes Macomb's first funeral, whose list of attendees is perhaps the ultimate mortuary status marker:
The Funeral of General Macomb, Commander of the Army took place yesterday...and was attended by the President, and all the Officers of the Government, both Houses of Congress, the Diplomatic Corps, Military and Naval Officers....The solemn military and civic array which filled the broad avenue through the city presented an imposing spectacle, in keeping with, appropriately closed by, the impressive ceremonies at the tomb.
## Conclusion
The material culture of death, including objects and mortuary architecture, and issues of status are clearly related, but the projects in Congressional Cemetery support other studies in finding that the relationship is not always a direct one when it comes to coffin hardware. Very plain and simple hardware occurs in these elite vaults, often alongside burials containing elaborate coffin hardware. As with all things archaeological, context is paramount.
The Coombe and Wirt vaults demonstrate that the connection between coffin hardware and status cannot be assumed. The Causten vault, although it could not provide data to either support or reject the correlation between hardware and status, does provide a valuable lesson about the possibility of rewriting the material record. The Macomb vault reveals an entirely different set of principles for reading status from material culture since it, like the Wirt vault, is topped by a large and imposing monument.
How we bury our dead continues to reflect the social trends of the time period, ranging from the more naturalistic and integrated early vaults of the 1820s to large monuments, some with neoclassical elements, to the pronounced increase in the amount of coffin hardware as the nineteenth century progressed. Underlying all these changes is the deliberately bucolic landscape of the cemetery itself, where the effects of the Rural Cemetery movement can be clearly seen in the pathways, the tree-lined drives, and even the former carriage turn, long gone now, at the most scenic point overlooking the Anacostia River.
In an era when we are kept at arm's length from death, where the care of the dead has moved from the province of home and family to a more detached and commodified state, where the dead are relinquished to the funeral home industry, Congressional Cemetery, unlike other cemeteries, has become a place where the living are a constant part of the landscape of the dead. It is an active cemetery, with plots available and funerals conducted in its chapel and at grave sites. The cemetery's condition and financial support have waned and waxed in the two centuries since it was created, and during a challenging period a number of years ago, the cemetery association engaged the local community in an unconventional way: they created a membership-based dog park.
In the mornings and evenings neighborhood residents walk and visit among the headstones, monuments and vaults while their dogs have the run of over 30 fenced acres. This action revitalized community involvement, helped preserve the grounds and monuments, and reduced vandalism. After spending many days in the cemetery, both above- and belowground, it is hard not to agree with Sienkewicz (2005), who suggests that elements of the Rural Cemetery movement have come into play here once more. As in the nineteenth century, families and friends gather, walk, and socialize in the cemetery, but this time with their canine companions in tow.
## References
Bromberg, F. W., and S. J. Shephard. 2006. The Quaker Burial Ground in Alexandria, Virginia: A Study of Burial Practices of the Society of Friends. _Historical Archaeology,_ 40(1):57–88.
Buikstra, J. 2000. "Historical Bioarcheology and the Beautification of Death." In _Never Anything So Solemn: An Archeological, Biological and Historical Investigation of the Nineteenth Century Grafton Cemetery,_ ed. J. E. Buikstra, J. A. O'Gorman, and C. Sutton, pp. 15–20. Kampsville Studies in Archeology and History 3. Kampsville, Ill.: Center for American Archeology.
Bell, E. 1990. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. _Historical Archaeology,_ 24(3):54–78.
Bell, E. 1994. _Vestiges of Mortality and Remembrance._ Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press.
Cannon, A. 1989. The Historical Dimension in Mortuary Expressions of Status and Sentiment. _Current Anthropology,_ 30(4):437–458.
Davidson, J. M. 2004. "Material Culture, Chronology and Socioeconomics." In _Two Historic Cemeteries in Crawford County, Arkansas,_ ed. R. C. Maintfort Jr. and J. M. Davidson, pp. 73–194. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey.
Grabowski, M. W., D. W. Owsley, and K. Bruwelheide. 2010. Cemetery Vandalism: The Strange Case of William Wirt. _Washington History,_ Vol. 22:57–68.
Hacker-Norton, D., and M. Trinkley. 1984. _Remember Man Thou Art Dust: Coffin Hardware of the Twentieth Century._ Research Series 2. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
Little, B. J., K. Lamphear, and D. W. Owsley. 1992. Mortuary Display and Status in a Nineteenth Century Anglo-American Cemetery in Manassas, VA. _American Antiquity,_ 57(3):397–418.
McGuire, R. H. 1988. "Dialogues with the Dead: Ideology and the Cemetery." In _The Recovery of Meaning,_ ed. M. P. Leone and P. B. Potter, pp. 435–480. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
_National Intelligencer._ 1841. The Funeral of General Macomb. 28 June.
_National Intelligencer._ 1841. Description of the Funeral of General Macomb. 29 June.
Nawrocki, S. P. 1995. "Taphonomic Processes in Historic Cemeteries." In _Bodies of Evidence: Reconstructing History through Skeletal Analysis,_ ed. A. L. Grauer, pp. 49–66. New York: Wiley-Liss.
Pearson, M. P. 1982. "Mortuary Practices, Society and Ideology: An Ethnoarchaeological Study in Symbolic and Structural Archaeology." In _Symbolic and Structural Archaeology,_ ed. I. Hodder, pp. 99–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sienkewicz, J. A. 2005. _Congressional Cemetery._ Historic American Landscapes Survey HALS DC-1. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, Department of the Interior.
# CHAPTER 14
# Lost Governors, Iron Coffins, and Driven Descendants
_Charles R. Ewen and Sheri B. Crane_
Richard Caswell is one of the most enigmatic men in North Carolina history. His impressive resume includes serving as governor of North Carolina from 1776 to 1780 and again from 1784 to 1787. That alone should have earned a couple volumes, yet a comprehensive work on Caswell was not published until 218 years after his death (Alexander, 2007). Richard Caswell was born in Maryland on 3 August 1729. He moved to Dobbs County (now Lenoir County), North Carolina in 1746 and began a long and controversial career of public service. His political star began to rise during the Revolutionary War. Caswell distinguished himself at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge in 1776. Here, the militia force he commanded prevented a large group of Tories from joining an army of British Regulars. His men completely overcame and routed loyalist General MacDonald's forces at the bridge crossing Moore's Creek and thus dampened the Tory uprising in the state (Alexander, 2007:69–70). The accolades accompanying this victory played no small role in winning him the nod as first federal governor of North Carolina then a second term a few years later. He also held the posts of comptroller general, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and state senator (Alexander, 1946:307–312). Unfortunately, his later life was clouded by fiscal and electoral difficulties. One of the most surprising omissions in our knowledge is the location of his final resting place.
While serving his Senate term in November 1789, Caswell was struck with paralysis (now thought to be a stroke) and, after remaining speechless for several days, died on 10 November, at 60 years of age. A eulogium was pronounced over Caswell's remains, and his body was "conveyed to his family burial-place in Lenoir County, N.C., and there interred," where he was presumed to have been buried in a manner befitting a former grand master of the Masonic Order (Fletcher, n.d.:2).
In the intervening centuries since Caswell's death, the exact location of his grave became lost. Caswell owned two cemeteries at the time of his death. Historical documents that have survived have conflicting information as to which one claims his grave. Even the descendants had lost track of which cemetery houses Caswell's remains. Caswell, himself, confuses the situation by reserving in his will, plots of land for two cemeteries:
In THE NAME OF GOD AMEN. I, Richard Caswell, of Dobbs County in the State of North Carolina, Do this second day of July, in the Year of our Lord, one thousand, Seven hundred and eighty seven, make and declare this to be my last Will and Testament as the one I made on the death of my dearly beloved son, William Caswell, will not suit with my present circumstances. I declare that and all former Wills and Testaments by me made, null and void, holding this and this only for firm and effectual, which is as follows:
First, I reserve for the use of a burying ground for all those of my family and Connections who may choose to bury their Relations and friends there, one half acre of land where the Bones of my dear father and Mother lie, at a place called the Hill, to be laid out East, West, North and South so as to leave those Bones near the center of the said half Acre of Ground, and I also reserve in like manner, one half Acre of Land where the Bones of beloved wife (and) son, William, now lie near the red house, to be laid out in the same manner and for the same purpose as the above half Acre is directed; and these two half Acres to be reserved for the uses afores'd forever. (Quoted in Alexander, 2007:177)
Caswell is traditionally thought to have been buried in the cemetery "near the red house" (Figure 1), now part of the Governor Richard Caswell Memorial/CSS _Neuse_ Historic Site on U.S. 70 in Kinston (Alexander, 2007:177). In this cemetery, his grave was said to be marked only by an oak tree. A monument was later placed there in his honor by the Masonic Order since Caswell was a former grand master for North Carolina. However, others hold that Caswell is buried in the cemetery next to Vernon Hall (also referred to as "the Hill"), a house he owned in downtown Kinston. His parents and siblings are also believed be buried there, although their graves are also unmarked.
FIGURE 1. Locations of Caswell cemeteries. (1) Vernon Hall, or "the Hill." (2) Governor Richard Caswell Memorial/CSS _Neuse_ Historic Site.
A series of articles in North Carolina newspapers (e.g., Sampley, 1999) concerning Caswell's resting place jogged the memory of a Kinston resident, who suggested the cemetery at Vernon Hall was, indeed, a likely site. Stephanie Bourdas-Smith, a long-time resident of Kinston, believed she discovered Caswell's vault when she was 10 years old while playing around in the cemetery behind the Kinston Clinic. Four decades after the event, she recounted that a severe storm blew over a large oak. Venturing out after the storm, she and her friends discovered a brick tunnel leading to a wooden coffin and a skeleton. Concerned parents backfilled the "tunnel," but the sight made such an impression that she never forgot it. Her letter to the editor published in the _Kinston Free Press_ (Bourdas-Smith, 2000) prompted the dean of the Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University, himself a native Kinstonian, to request that archaeologists from the Department of Anthropology follow up this newly revealed lead.
## The Project Phase 1
The undertaking had seemingly little probability of success from the outset. Preliminary research indicated that it was far more likely that Richard Caswell would have been buried in the cemetery west of Kinston, where his wives and children are buried. The authors' experience with alleged tunnels in historic contexts is that they are more properly relegated to the category of urban legend. It also seemed unlikely that Ms. Bourdas-Smith could relocate the exact spot she recalled seeing the tunnel since in the intervening decades the area had become densely overgrown. However, one does not lightly ignore a request from the dean's office, so the undertaking was turned into a class project.
To our amazement, Ms. Bourdas-Smith was able to lead investigators to the location she recalled, which was referenced by a small family cemetery and a large, rotted tree stump. Ewen and student members of his public archaeology course (ANTH 5201) proceeded to formulate a research design and carry out archaeological excavations at the site. It is important to note that our goal was _not_ to find the grave of Richard Caswell. That goal had a high probability of failure. The objective was to archaeologically test the hypothesis that Governor Caswell was buried at the Vernon Hall cemetery in the location indicated by Ms. Bourdas-Smith. This subtle difference assured us of an answer to our question, no matter who was or was not found.
## Methodology
On Wednesday, 25 October 2000, before excavation began, some preliminary work was done to clear the area of vegetation and to establish a site grid. The entire site was covered by a dense stand of bamboo. Although easily cleared, the extensive root system would make digging difficult. On the following Saturday, 28 October 2000, Richard McCarn and Roy Dail from ProMark, a utilities locating firm, conducted a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the area surrounding the location that Ms. Bourdas-Smith had indicated. The GPR registered several anomalies, two of which would later be identified as burial crypts. The other anomalies probably denote additional unmarked burials in the area but were left unexcavated. On the basis of the GPR data, excavation units were set out, and two graves were almost immediately encountered.
FIGURE 2. First phase of excavations at Vernon Hall. (A) The iron casket within the first brick crypt. (B) The second brick crypt during excavation. Photos by authors.
The first grave appeared at about 5 cm below the ground surface when excavators uncovered a brick arch. They removed this layer of bricks, and directly underlying them was a zone of red clay fill approximately 30 cm thick. This, in turn, overlaid another brick arch two courses thick. We determined this feature to be a brick crypt, within which we subsequently found a cast-iron coffin (Figure 2A). Lying on top of the coffin was a scattering of wood, cut nails, and other debris.
The second grave did not have a surface covering of brick. Instead, it was identified by a rectangular stain of dark soil with some disturbance obscuring the northern edge of the feature. After excavating approximately 10 cm into the second feature, a brick arch similar to the upper arch of the first burial was encountered. The brick arch in the second crypt had several missing bricks (Figure 2B), presumably a result of the disturbance caused by a tree falling directly above that location, no doubt the tree Ms. Bourdas-Smith remembered being blown over in the storm. A cast-iron coffin similar to the one found in the first crypt was located within the light-brown loam that filled this crypt. Recovered artifacts include cut nails, wood fragments, and a sample of mortar.
Both of the coffins were tapered from shoulder to foot and from shoulder to head. The head and foot ends were slightly rounded. The coffins consisted of upper and lower halves bolted together with 22 fasteners. Both upper and lower halves were faceted with three sides, giving the cross section a hexagonal shape. Four handles, sporting a winged cherub motif, were located at the head and foot ends on either side of the coffin in line with the seam and closure bolts. Habenstein and Lamers (1962:269) describe a coffin very much like these as a Fisk Model 3 made by Crane, Breed and Company in 1854. They are described as "the 'Plain, or Octagon' pattern, finished in imitation rosewood and polished equal to the finest furniture." These were not inexpensive coffins.
In spite of initial skepticism, the excavators were now confronted with not one but two graves of high status. The two coffins were left in situ until their dates could be determined. The scarcity of published literature led Ewen to consult with several individuals with prior cemetery excavation experience (Pat Garrow, Douglas Owsley, Ed Bell, and James Davidson) concerning the dating of the caskets. All were in agreement that the coffins dated to the mid-nineteenth century, making these burials too recent to be Richard Caswell. Much to the dismay of the legions of onlookers, Ewen had the vaults backfilled with clean sand.
This appeared to be the end of the project. We did not find Governor Caswell, but the project was a resounding success as a class exercise. Ewen's students designed, executed, and reported on an interesting project, and East Carolina University received a lot of good, free publicity. One of the descendants, however, would not let the project die. Susan Burgess Hoffman, a direct descendant of Richard Caswell, relentlessly emailed and called Ewen in hopes of exhuming the coffins and identifying their occupants. Her persistence took its toll.
Ewen agreed to open the coffins only after three criteria had been met: (1) There had to be good candidates as to the occupants of the coffins, and their descendants had to be willing to grant permission for the exhumation. (2) The opening and analysis of the remains needed to fulfill a legitimate research interest. (3) Finally, someone needed to cover the expenses that such excavation and analyses would entail. Confident that these criteria would prove insurmountable, Ewen turned to other projects. However, supporters of the project's continuance redoubled their efforts.
## Phase 2: Back to "The Hill"
After research into the sketchy historical records of Lenoir County (the county courthouse burned down twice during the nineteenth century), the descendants, led by Susan Burgess Hoffman, thought they had a handle on who might be buried in the coffins: Lewis Caswell (grandson of governor Richard Caswell) and his wife, Tuscumbia, a Native American. Hoffman, a lineal descendant, was still more than willing to proceed; indeed, she was insistent! So the first criterion for our involvement had been met.
Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, had examined several other iron coffins (Owsley and Compton, 1997) and was interested in adding two more to his sample. After being informed of our discovery by Hoffman, Owsley contacted Ewen about analyzing the occupants of the caskets. As in his previous investigations, he would assemble a team of specialists to examine the remains. Thus, the second criterion was satisfied. The dean of the Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, who had compelled Ewen to undertake the original project, agreed to cover the expenses of exhumation and transportation of the coffins, Ewen, and two students to Washington, D.C. Thus ensnared in a trap of his own devising, Ewen undertook the second phase of the project.
On 28 July 2005, within an hour the excavation area was cleared, and the graves were relocated. Unlike the previous project, where we had been forced to hack through a dense root mat, digging through the layer of clean sand with which we had backfilled the graves was easy. The first coffin (NC-2) was extracted using three sets of rope looped beneath the casket and raised by four men on each side. The coffin, although extraordinarily heavy, was removed and secured to a 2-foot by 8-foot sheet of plywood with straps and set on a waiting wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow was then maneuvered to the parking lot, and the secured coffin was placed in the bed of the lab pickup truck. It should be noted that although heavier than expected, the coffin appeared intact. There were no visible breaches in the exterior and no evidence of leakage.
The second coffin (NC-1) was more deeply buried and in a narrower crypt. Scraps of wood were encountered in the fill, which in 2000 were interpreted as part of the form for building the crypt. However, the wood consisted of relatively thin strips of what appeared to be cedar, probably the remains of the faux rosewood box referred to by Habenstein and Lamers (1962:269) that may have originally encased the casket. The coffin was initially lying partially on its side, and it was much heavier than the first coffin. It had to be tilted further on its side to extract it from the narrow opening but was secured next to the other coffin in the back of the pickup by early afternoon.
Both coffins, although heavy, appeared to be in excellent shape. The 22 bolts securing the coffin halves and the iron plate covering the glass faceplate all appeared intact. Comparison with pictures taken when they were originally exposed in October 2000 showed little deterioration since their first exposure. No fluid was leaking from either of the coffins. Both coffins and their pallets were lashed to the back of the pickup for transport to the Smithsonian.
## At the Smithsonian
The coffins were unloaded and weighed at the museum's loading dock. The second coffin reexcavated (NC-1) weighed 517 lbs., much more than would be expected with only a body inside. Although the casket appeared to be intact, a hole was drilled in the bottom half to drain any water that might be present, and it was completely filled with water. After draining, the bolts were drilled out, and the sprue was then ground off with a grinder/cutting blade. The halves were carefully separated with a series of wedges, then removed.
When the coffin was opened, it was discovered that the bones in the coffin had been jumbled around over time. The skull was located at the foot end, and the pelvis was at the head end. Curiously, the faceplate was not broken, and close examination of the inside of the top half of the coffin suggested that the gasket around the faceplate had pulled away from the glass. It appears that the brick crypts had, rather than protecting the coffins, acted as cisterns that retained water that eventually seeped into them.
Decomposition of the soft tissue was nearly complete, although the skeleton was well preserved. A surprising discovery was that a large quantity of hair was present as well as the fingernails of the deceased. These remains are composed primarily of protein and resist decay. The hair had been elaborately styled and held in place with various combs and pins. The bones exhibited evidence of abrasion, probably due to their movement over time in the casket. The abrasions were not fresh and did not appear to be a consequence of transporting the coffins.
Owsley and another forensic anthropologist, Kari Bruwelheide, had assembled an impressive team to examine the remains. Skeletal analysis would be undertaken by Owsley and Bruwelheide with physical anthropologist David Hunt consulting. The soft tissue, had there been any, was to be analyzed by Arthur and Mary Auferderheide and pathologist Larry Cartmell. Tom Goulick was standing by to extract DNA if necessary or possible. Shelly Foote and Beth Eubanks were on hand to examine the burial clothing. Laurie Burgess and Ewen provided archaeological expertise. Rounding out the analytical team were two East Carolina University students, Mattie Rasberry and Tracy Gurnsey, and the chair of the Department of Anthropology, Linda Wolfe. The students were assigned the task of straining the sediment and fluids from the coffins to recover even the smallest remains.
Analysis indicated that the skeleton was that of a woman aged between 35 and 42 with robust limbs, indicating that she was very active and probably right-handed. She appeared to have given birth to at least one child (Owsley et al., 2006:3–7). She had extensive and expensive dental work; several teeth had gold fillings, and a porcelain crown was recovered. Although bones and hair were present, no soft tissue was visible, except for some extremely degraded brain tissue. The hair was dark, wound in a chignon, and held in place with a snood. Artifacts (Figure 3) included hairpins, tortoiseshell hair comb fragments, hairpins, a wedding ring (18-karat gold), and two Prosser-type white buttons, with a terminus post quem of 1840 (Sprague, 2002). The buttons indicated that the woman had been buried only in a nightgown, which had been fastened at the neck.
The coffin was completely emptied, and the dark, fine sediment at the bottom was scooped out and sieved through a fine mesh in an effort to collect everything of interest. It should be noted that none of the sand fill that was used to rebury the coffins was found inside the coffins. Its absence indicated that water had infiltrated the coffins prior to our original investigation in October 2000.
The other coffin (NC-2) was somewhat smaller and weighed only 341 lbs. The experience with the first coffin caused Owsley to order a CT scan, which showed the casket to be half full of water and the bones similarly jumbled. The coffin's midline seal appears to have failed, and water had leaked where the two halves were joined. When opened, the second skeleton was in a condition similar to the first one. The bones were concentrated at the head and foot ends, although the skull was at the head end this time. Again, there was evidence of extensive dental work (i.e., gold fillings) similar to the teeth in the first coffin. Hair was present but not as elaborately styled, and there were no other hair ornaments.
The occupant of the second coffin was determined to be another woman (age 40–49) who was also right-handed. Two large gallstones were recovered, which may have contributed to her death. She also had a herniated disk in her spine. The only artifacts recovered were two white porcelain buttons. Interestingly, rosemary leaves were also present. Rosemary is considered the herb of remembrance and affection (Owsley et al., 2006:7–13).
After completion of the analyses, the skeletons were replaced into the coffin, and the halves were rebolted. They were returned to their crypts and reburied in a ceremony conducted by Reverend A. Michael Singer of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Kinston.
FIGURE 3. Artifacts from the first casket. (A) Gold wedding band. (B) Prosser buttons and straight pin. (C) Hair combs and pins. (D) Porcelain crowns. Photos by authors.
Clearly, Lewis Caswell was not in either of the coffins, but who were the ladies? After extensive genealogical research by local genealogist Martha Marble (personal communication, 2006), who was involved with the project from the outset, the following identifications were proffered. The first burial was a 36 year-old married woman who died shortly after childbirth, tentatively identified as Mrs. Louisa Hernandez Washington, wife of George Washington of Kinston. Born in St. Augustine, Florida, she died on the 12 May 1859. The second burial was a woman in her mid-forties, who may have died of gallstones (identification still pending), but remains unidentified. Both women were wealthy but probably not related, at least by birth. Both died between 1854 and 1864. The project did not end with the reburial of the coffins. New information concerning the location of Richard Caswell's grave surfaced early in 2007. An investigation of the documentation associated with the Caswell cemetery west of Kinston suggests that this was, indeed, the governor's final resting place.
## Phase III: The Red House Cemetery
The third phase of the Caswell grave project began with a black-and-white photograph of the Red House cemetery taken by Erastus A. Parker sometime between 1900 and 1914 and currently housed in the North Carolina Museum of History (Alexander, 2007). At that time the graves appear to be on the edge of a partially cleared wooded lot. Written across the bottom of the photograph from left to right are the numbers 1 through 4, which correspond to an attached note explaining the numbers (Figure 4). It is believed that a local Kinston historian and genealogist, Sybil Hyatt, wrote the inscription since she donated the photograph to the North Carolina Museum of History (Alexander, 2007).
FIGURE 4. Photograph of the Red House cemetery in Kinston, North Carolina, taken 1900–1914.
Number 1, written below an overgrown pile of bricks, marks the grave of Caswell's first wife, Mary Mackilwean Caswell. Richard Caswell's grave is denoted with a number 2, written below a large tree, which according to oral history was the aforementioned oak tree marking his grave. The grave of Caswell's second wife, Sarah Herritage Caswell, is indicated with the number 3 upon the ground. Last, the number 4 is directly below the headstone of Susan Caswell Gatlin, Caswell's daughter. Susan's headstone, although slightly damaged, is still standing at the Red House cemetery (Figure 5A).
Additional historical documents include later historical newspaper accounts, mainly from the mid- to late 1800s, which describe visits to Caswell's grave at the Red House cemetery ( _American Advocate,_ 1859a, 1859b; _Fayetteville Observer,_ 1863; North Carolina Collection Clipping File, n.d.). For example, there is reference to Caswell's burial between his first and second wives, both of whom are presumed to be buried at the Red House cemetery ( _American Advocate,_ 1859a, 1859b; _Fayetteville Observer,_ 1863; Alexander, 2007).
In addition to the similar narratives about the grave's location, the articles exhibit other parallels. For instance, all authors express their distress at finding nothing marking his grave apart from an oak tree that one article explained was "growing from an acorn, accidentally dropped directly at the head of the grave of the first governor" (North Carolina Collection Clipping File, n.d.:802). The belief that Caswell's grave was marked by an oak tree continued into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with the 1900–1914 black-and-white photograph of the Red House cemetery showing an oak tree growing over what is marked as Caswell's grave (Alexander, 2007).
Further evidence supporting the Red House cemetery as Caswell's final resting place is found in an 1862 Confederate map, a 1929 land deed, newspaper articles from the mid-1950s, a 1954 petition, and a 1955 proposed bill. The Confederate map, depicting the route the troops were to take to Goldsborough, North Carolina, places Caswell's grave near the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad and the Neuse River in Kinston (O'Reilly et al., 1987).
FIGURE 5. Surviving memorials at Vernon Hall. (A) Susan Gatlin's headstone. (B) Base of the current Caswell memorial. Photos by authors.
On 19 June 1929, Rachel L. Brown Watford and her husband, John R. Watford, donated the Red House cemetery to the Moseley-Bright Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The deed in trust states the land included an oak tree marking the grave of Governor Caswell (Lenoir County Register of Deeds, 1929, book 105:164). Rachel Watford's reason for donating the cemetery was "for patriotic reasons in a desire to share the hallowed ground with the public and to insure its restoration and perpetual care' " (North Carolina Society Daughters of the American Revolution, 1998:191). In the early spring of 2008 at the CSS Neuse/Richard Caswell Memorial site in Kinston, North Carolina, the cemetery was spatially oriented with a total station for the subsequent GPR survey. Both the cemetery and the land immediately to the west and south of the cemetery fence line were surveyed in two overlapping grids, one 60 feet by 135 feet and the other 24 feet by 85 feet. Each survey began in the southwest corner of the grid and collected data along a unidirectional south-to-north transect every 3 feet. Because the surviving headstones and footstones indicate an east–west burial pattern, surveying in a north-south direction greatly increased the probability of consistently locating unmarked graves.
All GPR data were analyzed for the detection of anomalies in plan, profile, and slice views with RADAN software. Additionally, the total station and GPR data were combined to gain a fuller understanding of the data and to discern any patterns of anomalies. Typically, historic burial GPR anomalies assume the shape of diffraction hyperbolas (Bevan, 1991; Mellett, 1992; Moore, 2007), and analysis indicated a number of anomalies in the area of interest. Combined with the historical documents, the 1910–1914 photograph, and oral history, the anomalies led researchers to believe there was sufficient evidence for further testing of the area through excavation.
On 18 April 2008, one north–south excavation trench was laid out on the east side of the current Caswell memorial. After topsoil was mechanically stripped and the area was cleaned with hand trowels, three closely aligned grave shafts and one brick grave surface feature aligned east to west appeared (Figure 6A). Taking into account the historical evidence, the second northernmost shaft, believed to be Richard Caswell's, was partially excavated to a depth of approximately 5 feet until water was encountered. A small test pit, approximately 6 inches square and 1 foot deep, was dug into the wet sediments of the grave shaft until we encountered a solid wood plank. A small white rectangular cut stone was located within the fill near the west end of the grave shaft approximately 2 feet below the ground surface.
The small test pit was expanded to further confirm the preservation status of the wood and any human remains, to obtain photographs, and to design a strategy for the future excavation of the entire grave shaft. Two degraded nails and a few rust stains were discovered at the transition between a lighter sandy soil and a darker sandy soil underneath. The darker soil continued within the grave shaft until it met the very well preserved wooden planks approximately 6 feet below the ground surface.
In retrospect, the dark sandy soil and nails appeared to represent the remnants of the top of the coffin, which had decayed beyond preservation. The dark soil may be indicative of decomposed organic matter, such as human remains. The wooden planks were the bottom of the coffin. Given the limited nature of the testing, however, the researchers were prepared for a situation in which the wooden planks were the top of the coffin. If this were the case, any human remains and associated artifacts would have been submerged under the water table and potentially extremely well preserved. A number of conservators were standing by to assist when the remaining grave shaft was excavated.
The final phase of fieldwork occurred over two days, 13 and 14 May 2008. A backhoe removed the soil from the foot of the grave shaft to create a north–south sump trench. A second small white rectangular cut stone was discovered approximately 2.5 feet below the current ground surface while digging the trench at the other end of the shaft. Its location could have indicated either the foot of Caswell's grave or the head of an adjoining grave that was located to the east of Caswell's grave.
Continued excavation yielded a transition between the lighter sandy soil of the grave shaft and the darker sandy soil of the coffin fill and yielded what may have been the wooden coffin lid. The dark sandy soil continued within the grave shaft, taking on the shape of a hexagonal coffin. Directly beneath this dark sandy soil were two wooden planks cut into a six-sided hexagonal coffin (Figure 6B). The coffin was constructed out of two southern yellow pine planks supported by two long rectangular wooden blocks, one at each end of the coffin. The base of the coffin, measuring 6 feet, 3 inches in length, 1 foot, 9 inches in width, and 1 inch in thickness was also accompanied by a long, thin strip of wood on the southern edge, the remainder of one of the sides of the coffin. In total, eight highly degraded nails were discovered both near the edge of the coffin and within the screened soil from the coffin fill. Additionally, a small, cupped iron concretion was discovered within the fill. No human remains were recovered from the grave. All artifacts with the exception of the coffin bottom, which was reburied, were transported to the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University for further analysis in the Phelps Archaeology Lab.
FIGURE 6. Later phases of excavations at Vernon Hall. (A) Grave shafts after removal of topsoil in April 2008: Susan Caswell Gatlin, Sarah Herritage, Richard Caswell (possible), and Mary Mackilwean Caswell. (B): Planks of coffin bottom revealed in May 2008. Photos by authors.
Although initially discouraging, the lack of skeletal remains did not necessarily preclude the possibility that this was Caswell's grave. The examination of eighteenth-century funeral customs that can directly be related to Caswell's funeral, burial taphonomy, and organic chemistry soil analyses suggested not only that the excavated grave belonged to Richard Caswell but that his body decomposed within the grave.
Caswell was thought to have attended the early Episcopal Christ Church in New Bern, North Carolina, and Caswell's childhood and teenage years were spent in Harford County, Maryland, a large Quaker area (Alexander, 2007), but details of his beliefs at death are unknown. Deaths frequently occurred within the individual's home, or in Caswell's case a tavern, and it was in the home that the corpse was prepared for burial and subsequent funeral (Geddes, 1981; Larkin, 1988; Sloane, 1991). Preparation of the body by the women of the household or a town or village midwife or nurse included washing, straightening of the limbs, "laying out" or shrouding, and situating the body within a made-to-order coffin (Geddes, 1981; Sloane, 1991). Shrouds, prefabricated from linen or cerecloth, a wax-impregnated unbleached linen, had the appearance of a long dress or shirt and were bound at the head and feet with strips of cloth (Geddes, 1981; Litten, 1991; LeeDecker et al., 1995). Impoverished individuals were often clothed in a winding sheet, a solitary lengthy piece of sheeting fabric (Larkin, 1988).
It was customary in colonial times to utilize the shroud as the sole means of dressing the corpse with no additional clothing (Bybee, 2003; LeeDecker, 2001). However, in seventeenth-century England and in some parts of the New World, the individual may also have worn a shirt, cap, and chin cloth underneath the shroud (Litten, 1991). One of the only documents to refer to a shroud and cap for Caswell is a letter dated 22 November 1789, written by William Blount to William White, a close Caswell family friend. The letter reads in part
Arants charges £3 for shaving, washing and laying out the Corps. Boyakin £3 for making the Shroud and dressing. Mr McAustin's Bill for Linen for scarfs and Bands, for Ribband to tie the scarfs & Bands and for Cambrick for the Cap of the Shroud and other little Articles must be between £36 and £40. The Price of the Coffin will be from £6 to £8 and the Doctors Bill can't be over £10 that is Cutler's, Ingram and Maclaine attended him as Friends. (Keith, 1952, vol. 1:517–518).
The most common eighteenth-century coffin style found in historic cemeteries across the colonies is the hexagonal flat-lidded coffin that continued to be utilized until the mid- to late nineteenth century (Larkin, 1988; Riordan, 2000, 2009; LeeDecker, 2001; Bromberg and Shephard, 2006). The selection of wood was determined by local availability, preference, and financial standing of the deceased's family members. It has been suggested that pine was preferred for its easy working qualities (Larkin, 1988). Members of higher socioeconomic classes could afford burial in lead or metal-clad wood coffins, whereas those at the other end of the financial spectrum commonly used pine for their unadorned coffins (Parrington et al., 1989; Bromberg et al., 2000; LeeDecker, 2001; McKeown and Owsley, 2002). The coffin bottom that was discovered during excavation corresponds well to eighteenth-century customs in that it was hexagonal in shape, but that form was also the norm through most of the nineteenth century. Also, if the coffin did, in fact, belong to Caswell, who died destitute, it is not surprising it was constructed out of pine. In addition to examining eighteenth-century mortuary behavior in an attempt to determine if the excavated grave belong to Richard Caswell we also utilized burial taphonomy and organic chemistry soil analyses to establish if a body decomposed within the grave (Haglund and Sorg, 1997; Connor, 2007). In this case, this type of soil analysis can be used to explain why a skeleton can decompose completely, leaving no observable trace except for a soil silhouette.
One of the primary threats to the preservation of historic period inhumations is water from precipitation, melting snow or ice, or the groundwater table (Henderson, 1987; Nawrocki, 1995). In all cases of exposure, water hydrolyzes bone collagen proteins into smaller polypeptides. In turn, this causes a breakdown of the mineral-protein bonds, the relationship that is crucial to the integrity of the bone structure, thereby causing deterioration of the skeletal remains. Because of the intermittent nature of rainfall, the amount of damage to the bones it causes is much less than the degradation caused by the water table. Extremely wet burial surroundings, such as the groundwater table, can accelerate skeletal decay, resulting in poor preservation, and can cause total destruction within a few years (Rodriguez, 1997; Forbes, 2008).
Fluctuation of the water table level, causing some or all of the human remains to become waterlogged then dried out, and then waterlogged again can also be skeletally destructive (Bromberg et al., 2000). The fluctuating rise and fall of the water table causes chemical and/or microorganism activity to occur on a more repeated basis, leading to what one researcher has deemed "catastrophic" skeletal disintegration (Hugh Matternes, mortuary archaeologist, New South Associates Inc., personal communication, 2008). Both the fluctuation of the water table and an overall interaction with water were almost certainly the primary cause for the total destruction of Caswell's skeletal remains within the grave.
A covering, such as a shroud, clothing, or coffin, can slow down the rate of decomposition by limiting meso- and microorganisms, insects, and other environmental elements from gaining access to the corpse. Undoubtedly, Caswell's coffin and shroud reduced the rate of decomposition (Keith, 1952, vol. 1). Paradoxically, wooden coffins, which can aid in the overall preservation of the individual, can also be detrimental to preservation. The accumulation of water, moisture, or body decomposition liquids within the coffin can accelerate the decomposition of the submerged remains and of the coffin (Garland and Janaway, 1989; McKeown and Owsley, 2002; Forbes, 2008). Saturated coffin walls and lids, if constructed of wood, increase the moisture content in the enclosed coffin and therefore speed up skeletal degradation (McKeown and Owsley, 2002). Also, if the wood itself is acidic, as in the case of Caswell's pine coffin, it can contribute to skeletal degradation (Matternes, personal communication, 2008).
Clothed individuals buried for an extended period of time in moist, permeable soil in the presence of bacteria typically produce a preservative known as adipocere, or grave wax, a lipid mixture of primarily the fatty acids (palmitic, hydrostearic, stearic, myristic, and oleic), with a waxlike consistency (Evans, 1963; Nawrocki, 1995; Bereuter et al., 1996; Janaway, 1996; Pfeiffer et al., 1998; Forbes et al., 2005; Connor, 2007; Carter and Tibbett, 2008; Forbes, 2008). It is produced by the breakdown of neutral fats into fatty acids in adipose tissue and manifests itself in areas of fatty tissue or lipids on the exterior and internal surfaces of the decomposing individual. Adipocere has been discovered in moist environments; damp, warm, anaerobic environments; dry climates; and cool-water immersion (Garland and Janaway, 1989; Mellen et al., 1993; Forbes et al., 2005).
Not only can soil composition alter the preservation of buried human remains, but it is also altered by the decomposing remains. Bone diagenesis can directly impact the surrounding soil matrix when the remains have decomposed beyond observable existence, as in the excavated grave at the Red House cemetery. This completely decayed organic material, notably phosphorous, produces dark stains or deposits within the grave known as a soil silhouette or pseudomorph (Biek, 1963; Bethell, 1989; Janaway, 1996; Beard et al., 2000; Killam, 2004; Connor, 2007).
The lack of both skeletal material and any soil silhouette within the excavated grave meant that organic chemistry soil analyses were necessary to identify whether a human had decomposed within the grave. The presence of the water table within the grave shaft excluded the more traditional analysis of trace elements in favor a total carbon and total organic carbon ratio analyses and a lipids test, performed under the supervision of Dr. Siddhartha Mitra at East Carolina University's Organic Chemistry Lab and the University of California, Davis, Stable Isotope Facility. Samples were taken from the grave shaft at 70, 130, and 170 cm below the surface (cmbs) of the eastern profile wall and grave soil from approximately 5 feet below the ground surface and from the sump area below the grave at 210 cmbs. The grave soil sample was obtained from the dark sandy soil lying above the wooden coffin planks at a depth approximating 5 feet.
Only recently has grave soil surrounding decomposing human remains, and therefore the presence of carbon and nitrogen isotopes, gained the attention of forensic researchers (Hopkins et al., 2000; Van Nest, 2000; Benninger et al., 2008; Carter and Tibbett, 2008; Forbes, 2008). These isotopes are useful indicators of human remains since, in conjunction with oxygen and hydrogen, they are the most abundant and essential elements for all organic tissue (Sandford, 1993). Also, the organic component of bone is resistant to isotopic exchange during decomposition (Hopkins et al., 2000).
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios are preserved within organic bone collagen and are represented by 13C/12C (δ13C) and 15N/14N (δ15N), respectively, and are expressed as delta values in parts per mil (thousand), or ‰ in relation to international standards. Carbon isotopes are measured against the international standard Pee Dee belemnite, and nitrogen is measured against the ambient inhalable reservoir (Cox and Sealy, 1997). These isotopes are a consequence of the individual's dietary protein intake over a period of years (Larsen et al., 1992; Houdek et al., 2000; Privat and O'Connell, 2002; Ambrose et al., 2003; Schulting et al., 2008).
The stable carbon and nitrogen analysis revealed that the soil samples from the shaft above the grave soil had such low organic matter content that they could not be measured. These samples included six total carbon and six total organic carbon samples, one in each category from the eastern profile wall at depths of 70, 130, and 170 cmbs. The low organic matter content in these samples prohibited measurement; however, it does support the hypothesis of a body having decomposed within the grave. In other words, all of the carbon and nitrogen were concentrated in the four grave samples and the four samples from the bottom of the sump trench at 210 cmbs. Total carbon and nitrogen concentrations and mean concentrations were higher than total organic and nitrogen concentrations in all of the 210-cmbs sump trench samples compared to the grave samples, which can probably be attributed to the presence of inorganic carbon and nitrogen in the total carbon and nitrogen samples. Likewise, all 210-cmbs sump trench sample concentration and mean concentration results for total organic carbon and nitrogen displayed an increase over the grave sample concentration results (Figure 7A,B). The increased 210-cmbs results could be due to the trench soil being composed of an impermeable layer of clay, or the water table could have transported isotopes out of the grave soil, not only decreasing the amount of grave soil isotopes but possibly also raising the amount in the trench.
Two grave and four above-grave soil samples were analyzed for the adipocere unsaturated fatty acids (palmitoleic and oleic) and saturated fatty acids (lauric, myristic, palmitic, hydrostearic, and stearic) using gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) (Bereuter et al., 1996; Forbes et al., 2005a; Vane and Trick, 2005; Connor, 2007; Carter and Tibbett, 2008). The use of GC-MS is a documented technique for the detection of adipocere in soil associated with decomposing human or animal fat tissue (Forbes et al., 2002, 2003; Vane and Trick, 2005). The GC-MS detects any fatty acids, both unsaturated and saturated, and displays them (Figure 7C) as peaks in a total ion chromatograph.
FIGURE 7. Analysis of soils in the grave revealed in May 2008. (A) Mean carbon concentration (%) in soil samples in micrograms. (B) Mean nitrogen concentration (%) in soil samples in micrograms. (C) Total ion chromatograph of sample 24 (grave soil) from a retention time of 15 to 30 minutes.
The eastern profile wall sample displays palmitic acid, a fatty acid associated with adipocere, but it is also found in the two grave samples. Additional fatty acids found in the grave samples but not in the eastern profile wall samples include octadecanoic acid (stearic acid) and 9-octadecenoic acid (oleic acid). All three fatty acids can be attributed to adipocere from decomposing human remains with confidence because those fatty acids associated with flora, fauna, or fungi would be insignificant at such deep depths (Forbes et al., 2003). Through the application of organic chemistry analyses, specifically stable carbon and nitrogen and a lipids analysis, it was determined with some confidence that a body had decomposed in the grave.
## Conclusions
Governor Richard Caswell was a monumental figure within North Carolina's eighteenth-century history whose repose was lost to that history (Figure 5B). The initial fieldwork conclusively demonstrated high-status burials that were not Caswell, although putative identifications can now be proposed following genealogical and archaeological study. The combination of documentary research with geophysical, archaeological, and organic soil chemistry techniques demonstrates that a fully interdisciplinary approach to the study of historic burials can repay great dividends. Our tentative identification of Caswell's grave at the Red House cemetery, using data from many disciplines combined in a sensitive manner, will allow North Carolina to commemorate an individual who figured so highly in its early history. The evidence is enough to bestow Governor Richard Caswell peace at long last.
## References
Alexander, C. B. 1946. Richard Caswell's Military and Later Public Services. _North Carolina Historical Review,_ 23(3):287–312.
Alexander, C. B. 2007. _The First of Patriots and Best of Men: Richard Caswell in Public Life._ Ed. and annot. W. Keats Sparrow. Kinston, N.C.: Lenoir County Colonial Commission.
Ambrose, S., J. Buikstra, and H. W. Krueger. 2003. Status and Gender Differences in Diet at Mount 72, Cahokia, Revealed by Isotopic Analysis of Bone. _Journal of Anthropological Archaeology,_ 22:217–226.
_American Advocate._ 1859a. Hon. Edward Everett in Newbern. 21 April.
_American Advocate._ 1859b. "B" Sketches of Eastern North Carolina. 19 May.
Beard, L., J. Hillard, and G. Akridge. 2000. Historical and Chemical Traces of an Ozark Cemetery for Enslaved Africa-Americans: A Study of Silhouette Burials in Benton County, Arkansas. _North American Archaeologist,_ 21(4):323–349.
Benninger, L. A., D. O. Carter, and S. L. Forbes. 2008. The Biochemical Alteration of Soil Beneath a Decomposing Carcass. _Forensic Science International,_ 180:70–75.
Bereuter, T. L., E. Lorbeer, C. Reiter, H. Seidler, and H. Unterdorfer. 1996. "Post-Mortem Alterations of Human Lipids—Part I: Evaluation of Adipocere Formation and Mummification by Desiccation." In _Human Mummies: A Global Survey of Their Status and the Techniques of Conservation,_ ed. K. Sprindler, H. Wilfing, E. Rastbichler-Zissering, D. zur Nedden, and H. Nothdurfter, pp. 265–274. New York: Springer.
Bethell, P. 1989. "Chemical Analysis of Shadow Burials." In _Burial Archaeology: Current Research, Methods, and Developments,_ ed. C. A. Roberts, F. Lee, and J. Bintliff, pp. 205–214. BAR British Series 211. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Bevan, B. W. 1991. The Search for Graves. _Geophysics,_ 56(9):1310–1319.
Biek, L. 1963. "Soil Silhouettes." In _Science in Archaeology; A Comprehensive Survey of Progress and Research._ ed. D. R. Brothwell and E. Higgs, pp. 118–123. New York: Basic Books.
Bourdas-Smith, S. 2000. Woman Thinks She Found Caswell's Grave Years Ago. _Kinston Free Press,_ August.
Bromberg, F. W., and S. J. Shephard. 2006. The Quaker Burying Ground in Alexandria, Virginia: A Study of Burial Practices of the Religious Society of Friends. _Historical Archaeology,_ 40(1):57–88.
Bromberg, F. W., S. J. Shephard, B. H. Magid, P. J. Cressy, T. Dennee, and B. K. Means. 2000. _"To Find Rest from All Trouble": The Archaeology of the Quaker Burying Ground, Alexandria, Virginia._ Alexandria, Va.: Alexandria Archaeology, Office of Historic Alexandria.
Bybee, A. 2003. "Bioanthropological Investigations of Historic Cemeteries: What Can We Learn from Biological, Cultural, and Mortuary Remains?" Paper presented at the 5th Annual Council for West Virginia Archeology Spring Workshop, Charleston, W.Va.
Carter, D. O., and M. Tibbett. 2008. "Cadaver Decomposition and Soil: Processes." In _Soil Analysis in Forensic Taphonomy: Chemical and Biological Effects of Buried Remains,_ ed. M. Tibbett and D. O. Carter, pp. 203–223. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.
Connor, M. 2007. _Forensic Methods: Excavation for the Archaeologist and the Investigator._ Lanham, Md.: Altamira Press.
Cox, G., and J. Sealy. 1997. Investigating Identity and Life Histories: Isotopic Analysis and Historical Documentation of Slave Skeletons Found on the Cape Town Foreshore, South Africa. _International Journal of Historical Archaeology,_ 1(3):207–224.
Evans, W. E. D. 1963. _The Chemistry of Death._ Springfield, Ill.: Charles Thomas.
_Fayetteville Observer._ 1863. "From the North Carolina Soldiers." Correspondence of the Fayetteville Observer. March.
Fletcher, I. n.d. Life, Character, Services, and Death of Richard Caswell, First Governor of North Carolina under the Constitution. Manuscript, collection 21, Inglis Fletcher Papers. East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C.
Forbes, S. L. 2008. "Decomposition Chemistry in a Burial Environment." In _Soil Analysis in Forensic Taphonomy: Chemical and Biological Effects of Buried Remains,_ ed. M. Tibbett and D. O. Carter, pp. 203–223. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.
Forbes, S. L., J. Keegan, B. H. Stuart, and B. B. Dent. 2003. A Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Method for the Detection of Adipocere in Grave Soils. _European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology,_ 105(12):761–768.
Forbes, S. L., B. H. Stuart, and B. B. Dent. 2002. The Identification of Adipocere in Grave Soils. _Forensic Science International,_ 127:225–230.
Forbes, S. L., B. H. Stuart, and B. B. Dent. 2005. The Effect of Burial Environment of Adipocere Formation. _Forensic Science International,_ 152:24–34.
Garland, A. N., and R. C. Janaway. 1989. "The Taphonomy of Inhumation Burials." In _Burial Archaeology: Current Research, Methods, and Developments,_ ed. C. Roberts, F. Lee, and J. Bintliff, pp. 82–127. BAR British Series 211. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Geddes, G. E. 1981. _Welcome Joy: Death in Puritan New England._ Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.
Habenstein, R. W., and W. M. Lamers. 1962. _History of American Funeral Directing._ Milwaukee, Wisc.: National Funeral Directors Association of the United States.
Haglund, W. D., and M. H. Sorg. 1997. "Method and Theory for Forensic Taphonomy Research." In _Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains,_ ed. W. D. Haglund and M. H. Sorg, pp. 13–26. Boca Raton, Fla: CRC Press.
Henderson, J. 1987. "Factors Determining the State of Preservation of Human Remains." In _Death, Decay, and Reconstruction: Approaches to Archaeology and Forensic Science,_ ed. A. Boddington, A. Garland, and R. Janaway, pp. 43–54. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hopkins, D. W., P. E. J. Wiltshire, and B. D. Turner. 2000. Microbial Characteristics of Soil from Graves: An Investigation at the Interface of Soil Microbiology and Forensic Science. _Applied Soil Ecology,_ 14:283–288.
Houdek, D., J. E. Buikstra, and C. Stojanowski. 2000. "Osteological Analysis." In _Never Anything So Solemn: An Archaeological, Biological, and Historical Investigation of the Nineteenth-Century Grafton Cemetery,_ ed. J. E. Buikstra, J. A. O'Gorman, and C. Sutton, pp. 91–114. Kampsville Studies in Archaeology and History 3. Kampsville, Ill.: Center for American Archeology.
Janaway, R. C. 1996. "The Decay of Buried Human Remains and Their Associated Artifacts." In _Studies in Crime: An Introduction to Forensic Archaeology,_ ed. J. Hunter, C. Roberts, and A. Martin, pp. 58–85. New York: Routledge.
Keith, A., ed. 1952. _The John Gray Blount Papers._ Raleigh, N.C.: State Department of Archives and History.
Killam, E. W. 2004. _The Detection of Human Remains._ 2nd ed. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas.
Larkin, J. 1988. _The Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790–1840._ New York: Harper and Row.
Larsen, C. S., M. J. Schoeninger, N. J. van der Merwe, K. M. Moore, and J. A. Lee-Thorp. 1992. Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Signatures of Human Dietary Change in the Georgia Bight. _American Journal of Physical Anthropology,_ 89(2):197–214.
LeeDecker, C. 2001. The Coffin Maker's Craft: Treatment of the Dead in Rural Eighteenth Century Delaware. _Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology,_ 17:1–14.
LeeDecker, C. H., J. Bloom, I. Wuebber, and M.-L. Pipes. 1995. _Final Archaeological Excavations at a Late 18th-Century Family Cemetery for the U.S. Route 113 Dualization, Milford to Georgetown, Sussex County, Delaware._ With K. R. Rosenberg. DelDOT Archaeology Series 134. Dover: Delaware Department of Transportation.
Lenoir County Register of Deeds. 1929. John R. and Rachel L. Brown Watford to the Moseley-Bright Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution of Kinston. Deed in Trust. Book 105:164.
Litten, J. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: R. Hale.
McKeown, A., and D. Owsley. 2002. In Situ Documentation of Historic Period Burials for Bioarchaeology. _Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology,_ 18:77–95.
Mellen, P. F. M., M. Lowry, and M. S. Micozzi. 1993. Experimental Observations on Adipocere Formation. _Journal of Forensic Sciences,_ 38(1):91–93.
Mellett, J. S. 1992. "Location of Human Remains with Ground-Penetrating Radar." Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar, Rovaniemi, Finland, 8–13 June.
Moore, C. R. 2007. Ground Penetrating Radar Investigations of an Historic Unmarked Cemetery in Boone, North Carolina. Unpublished paper, presented to Dr. Thomas R. Whyte, Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C., 16 August.
Nawrocki, S. P. 1995. "Taphonomic Processes in Historic Cemeteries." In _Bodies of Evidence: Reconstructing History through Skeletal_ Analysis, ed. A. L. Grauer, pp. 49–66. New York: Wiley & Son.
North Carolina Collection Clipping File. n.d. Joyner Library, East Carolina University.
North Carolina Society Daughters of the American Revolution. 1998. _North Carolina Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Inc: The First One Hundred Years, 1898–1998._ Monroe: North Carolina Society Daughters of the American Revolution.
O'Reilly, N., D. C. Bosse, and R. W. Karrow Jr. 1987. _Civil War Maps: A Graphic Index to the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies._ Chicago: Newberry Library.
Owsley, D., K. Bruwelheidi, S. Foote, A. Aufderheidi, C. Cartmell, and L. Burgess. 2006. North Carolina Iron Coffin Notes. Manuscript on file. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology.
Owsley, D., and B. Compton. 1997. "Preservation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Iron Coffin Burials." In _Forensic Taphonomy: Post Mortem Fate of Human Remains,_ ed. W.D. Haglund and M. H. Sorg, pp. 511–526. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.
Parrington, M., D. G. Roberts, S. A. Pinter, and J. C. Wideman. 1989. The First African American Baptist Church Cemetery: Bioarchaeology, Demography, and Acculturation of Early Nineteenth Century Blacks. 3 vols. Report submitted to the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia. West Chester, Pa.: John Milner Associates.
Pfeiffer, S., S. Milne, and R. M. Stevenson. 1998. The Natural Decomposition of Adipocere. _Journal of Forensic Sciences,_ 43(2):368–370.
Privat, K. L., and T. C. O'Connell. 2002. Stable Isotope Analysis of Human and Faunal Remains from the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Berinsfield, Oxfordshire: Dietary and Social Implications. _Journal of Archaeological Science,_ 29:779–790.
Riordan, T. B. 2000. _Dig a Grave Both Wide and Deep: An Archaeological Investigation of Mortuary Practices in the 17th-Century Cemetery at St. Mary's City, Maryland._ St. Mary's City Archaeology Series 3. St. Mary's City, Md.: Historic St. Mary's City.
Riordan, T. B. 2009. "Carry Me to You Kirk Yard": An Investigation of Changing Burial Practices in the Seventeenth-Century Cemetery at St. Mary's City, Maryland. _Historical Archaeology,_ 43(1):81–92.
Rodriguez, W. C. 1997. "Decomposition of Buried and Submerged Bodies." In _Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains,_ ed. W. D. Haglund and M. H. Sorg, pp. 13–26. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.
Sampley, T. 1999. Richard Caswell's Grave. Searching for Richard Caswell's Grave: The Evidence. _Olde Kinston Gazette,_ March. http://ncccha.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/richard-caswells-grave.html (accessed 10 August 2016).
Sandford, M. K. 1993. "Understanding the Biogenic-Diagenetic Continuum: Interpreting Elemental Concentrations of Archaeological Bone." In _Investigations of Ancient Human Tissue: Chemical Analyses in Anthropology,_ ed. M. K. Sandford, pp. 3–57. Langhorne, Pa.: Gordon and Breach.
Schulting, R. J., S. M. Blockley, H. Bocherens, D. Drucker, and M. Richards. 2008. Stable Carbon and Nitrogen Isotope Analysis on Human Remains from the Early Mesolithic Site of La Vergne (Charente-Maritime, France). _Journal of Archaeological Science,_ 35:763–772.
Sloane, D. C. 1991. _The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History._ Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Sprague, R. 2002. China or Prosser Button Identification and Dating. _Historical Archaeology,_ 36(2):111–127.
Vane, C. H., and J. K. Trick. 2005. Evidence of Adipocere in a Burial Pit from the Foot and Mouth Epidemic of 1967 Using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry. _Forensic Science International,_ 154:19–23.
Van Nest, J. 2000. "A Report on the Analysis of Soil Samples from the Historic Grafton Cemetery Site, Jersey County, Illinois." In _Never Anything So Solemn: An Archaeological, Biological, and Historical Investigation of the Nineteenth-Century Grafton Cemetery,_ ed. J. E. Buikstra, J. A. O'Gorman, and C. Sutton, pp. 91–114. Kampsville Studies in Archaeology and History 3. Kampsville, Ill.: Center for American Archeology.
# Conclusions
# CHAPTER 15
# Where Now? Future Agendas in Historic Mortuary Culture Studies
_Harold Mytum and Laurie Burgess_
The chapters in this volume reveal how far the subject of mortuary culture studies has developed since the early work of Litten (1991) and Reeve and Adams (1993) in Britain, and Hacker-Norton and Trinkley (1985), Garrow (1987), and Bell (1990) in North America. It is clear, however, that there is also much still to do, and many of the issues are similar whether in America, Australia, or the British Isles. It is therefore useful to review the major challenges both to the practice of mortuary archaeology, which considers the cultural aspects of historic communities, and to the exciting new interpretive directions that our existing and expanded data could allow. These initiatives would contribute to our wider understanding within historical archaeology and, indeed, form part of an interdisciplinary understanding of historic death ways. That the cultural materials we study can so often be linked directly to particular communities, families, and, often, specific named individuals and their remains provides unique opportunities for highly contextualized analysis.
Various constraints have thus far impeded appreciation of cultural mortuary data beyond a restricted group of researchers, most of whom are represented in this volume. Integration within wider archaeological, anthropological, and historical debates should be the ambition in the next phase of research. The purpose of this chapter is to indicate some of the potential developments, considering first data collection in the field, which will assist in the second—the creation of more robust, representative, and accessible data sets. The ultimate ambitions are interpretive; they can immediately move on from the state of the art as expressed here, but they can be more powerful and extensive if an enhanced resource base is created during the numerous, although often opportunistic, fieldwork interventions.
## Policies and Practices in Data Collection in the Field
Although there are important professional statements regarding the excavation, treatment, storage, and reinterment of human remains (Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England, 2013), at least in Britain (there is nothing comparable in the United States), there has been far less attention paid to standards and methodologies for the recording of artifacts associated with historic burials. A similar lack of protocols applies to sampling procedures for retention of whole or fragments of artifacts. A number of contractors have developed their own recording procedures, but it would be desirable for the various professional archaeological bodies to set standards in this regard, recognizing that some burial clearance operations are largely outside the control of heritage professionals. However, the existence of such professionally accredited method statements would strengthen provision of archaeological conditions on the cultural dimension of exhumation and also assist in the planning of such work to limit any impediments to clearance logistics. Agreed recording protocols with varying scales of detail, from minimum to ideal, can match external circumstances, and advice on techniques to be applied will create data sets that will be to known standards, which will enable comparison and also contribute to the combined data available for comparative study.
Curation policies for coffin hardware have never been developed, in part because in many cases the prospect of retention has not even been considered. However, there is now sufficient experience of dealing with the often fragile state of such items that advice could be produced to indicate what can be sensibly retained and what requires field recording but cannot be conserved in the long term. This should apply not only to individual items of hardware but also to sampling or retention of coffin wood and textiles, as well as the relatively rare but steadily noted associated artifacts such as coins, buttons, ceramics, and other personal items found within the coffins.
Nondestructive investigation of burial grounds and vaults forms part of existing fieldwork but could be encouraged. Geophysical survey, notably magnetometry, has been successful in North America in locating interments and can be used to differentiate and locate those with iron coffins or large amounts of coffin furniture (King et al., 1993). Vaults and brick-lined shafts can also be located by this method but may also be identified using resistivity (Ellwood, 1990) or ground-penetrating radar (Bevan, 1991; Conyers, 2006). Although geophysical survey still cannot confidently identify the full extent of historic cemeteries, as some backfilled earth-dug graves are so similar in their characteristics to undisturbed subsoil that they can be hard to identify even with excavation, it can provide a minimum extent and density and should be used more frequently. Unfortunately, in long-lived churchyard situations in Britain, only shafts and vaults can often be located, although ground-penetrating radar has been successfully used in church interiors, and recent fieldwork in external graveyard areas without intense historic reuse have produced promising results (Hansen et al., 2014).
One of the main components of mortuary investment was the construction of spaces in which to safely house coffins. The investigation of burial shafts, crypts, and family vaults has already produced important assemblages of well-preserved cultural remains, and these areas should continue to be targeted (Figure 1). This type of investigation could take place not only when development poses a threat but also when access can be granted for noninterventionist recording and study. Litten (1999, 2009) has demonstrated that mere visual examination and recording can be extremely informative. Earth graves can provide excellent data on coffin forms and decoration, but only in the most benign of soil conditions; the unpredictability of the data quality makes these important assemblages hard to recover efficiently. The challenge of obtaining earth grave samples, which reflect wider sections of society, remains dependent upon opportunities during development and burial clearance that can be seized by having the necessary recovery protocols designed and ready to be implemented when necessary.
The range of vault and shaft construction designs has been considered in only a few locations, and given that they are probably dependent on local building traditions and materials, they should reveal significant spatial variation over both time and space. This regionality is visible in church building and in burial monuments, so it would be informative to add the belowground structures to the evidence base. Understanding the structural characteristics of these voids is also important in building conservation and would contribute to solving problems such as building subsidence and damp. Mortsafes and other structural components such as aboveground mausoleums are intimately linked to interments, and how they relate to belowground data requires further consideration. The investment in all aspects of the mortuary process—from mourning jewelry and clothing and funerary meals, through the coffin, its fittings, and contents, to the grave structure, setting, and, finally, any commemorative monument—should be considered as a whole. Past actors decided how to apportion resources at various stages of the grieving process to these socially and emotionally important investments, and the more stages we can consider, the more robust our conclusions will be.
FIGURE 1. Neatly maintained barrel vault, Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.C., with an iron coffin to the left of the steps. Photo by Laurie Burgess, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
The speed with which many fieldwork operations have to be conducted should be addressed in part by developing new techniques of data recovery. It would be beneficial if commercial projects could collaborate with researchers in the development of on-site recording regarding both improved protocols and the use of innovative equipment. There is clear potential for the use of portable X-ray equipment, reflectance transformation imaging, and physical sampling of coffin furniture for later chemical analysis of materials and study of the manufacturing process, as well as having the recording protocols on handheld devices so data can be input electronically in the field. The relationships between contractors and researchers need to be developed ahead of any potential project, so that the collaboration can be planned into the project design without impeding completion on time and within budget. This collaboration could also enable experimentation within the inevitable health and safety constraints often at the fore in projects associated with historic human remains.
## Providing a Robust Data Set
The provision of effective protocols and the development of collaborative teams and research designs can incorporate the wide range of necessary recording and analytical methods. This enhancement of practice should all help to create more comprehensive and defined data sets, as indicated by the example of coffin hinges outlined by Sprague (this volume). At a higher level, however, there are clear biases in our samples. For some periods and regions, such as for eighteenth-century middle-class London or the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, relatively sophisticated questions may now be tackled. In contrast, for most regions and periods there are, at present, no or too little data to make any generalizing statements. Some of these lacunae can be easily identified and can be considered first geographically and socially and then chronologically. These samples will not often be available through planned research investigations, but in response to calls for mitigation strategies in advance of development. Given the relatively short time scales often involved and also the need to educate heritage managers so that the potential of such sites can be built into the planning control process, it is incumbent on those of us with an interest and understanding of the potential of mortuary data to have set out in advance what is required for greater understanding and how that can be obtained. Only then can the appropriate conditions be placed on any archaeological intervention. In England, Historic England's revision of their regional research framework documents provides an opportunity for this relevant data collection to be stated, but how this can be done varies greatly according to legislative, funding, and cultural factors.
## Geographical and Social Spread
In Britain, the intensity of London's development, combined with the increased social outreach of its inner-city churches, has led to the destruction of a significant number of historic burial contexts. In recent years this has increasingly been at least in part mitigated by archaeological interventions. City churches have taken on social roles such as supporting the homeless and, in order to maintain their existing liturgical roles in their buildings, have often converted their underground crypts from repositories for the dead to resources for the living. In addition, many burial grounds that were either in institutional grounds or already built over have been redeveloped, and clearance has been necessary with the more substantial belowground impact of modern construction, whether for buildings or infrastructure.
There is now a formidable assemblage of data available regarding the London dead (Figure 2), but in contrast, other cities have experienced few or even no major projects of this kind, with small-scale work far more common. In one respect this is positive, in that the resource remains undisturbed, but it is also the case that the high expense of archaeological removal and study is such that only those London sites with prime land values allow archaeological strategies to be fully employed. Elsewhere, work is either limited because of expense or is avoided by development being placed in less costly locations. The result is that our understanding of the geographical spread of funerary customs, styles, and practices is extremely limited, with only a few relatively small urban assemblages and a restricted number of small town and rural populations having been investigated. Some of these have revealed highly important data, notably the various Quaker and other nonconformist burial grounds, but there are still not enough data to separate out regional from denominational preferences confidently (bearing in mind also class, chronology, and differential preservation). The existing assemblages are insufficient to consider in detail regional, urban versus rural, class, or religious variation. There are some indications of sexual distinctions regarding a few items of coffin fittings (see Loe and Boston, this volume), but this finding requires further investigation with larger samples to be conclusive.
FIGURE 2. Examples of breastplates from early nineteenth-century middle-class graves, St. Pancras, London. Copyright HS1 Ltd/Ramboll UK Limited.
The North American situation is also geographically constrained, with some cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Dallas having a few substantial excavated assemblages, but they are insufficient for wider comparative analysis of urban patterns. The same issues of land values and intensity of development, particularly in older cities with more abandoned and often already built-over burial grounds, apply as much to some East Coast cities as to London, but in North America burial clearance of cemeteries has generally been a far more frequent occurrence than in Britain. The importance of including an archaeological dimension to clearance needs to be emphasized in the development control process on private city locations.
Rural burial data are often recovered from farmstead and small, now abandoned community cemeteries in the face of government infrastructure schemes. In North America many rural cemeteries, especially family cemeteries, are characterized by "low archaeological visibility," with graves that are no longer marked. Their excavation can provide valuable information on rural lifeways (LeeDecker et al., 1995:124). Unlike that of their urban counterparts, where the excellent preservation of the contents of elite vaults and mausoleums can provide information on social strata, the excavations of rural cemeteries, on a regional or broader level, could help balance our understanding of death ways across wider segments of society. There are indications that denomination might affect choice of coffin fittings (most notably identified thus far for Roman Catholics); this finding clearly requires further exploration.
Perhaps reflecting greater archaeological interest but also possibly revealing how such modern development is differentially planned across the continent, more published and accessible gray literature reports seem to detail investigations in the South and southeast than in the Midwest or the West. In North America in general, a wealth of burial information is likely contained in gray literature, which, in the case of reports deriving from contract archaeology, also referred to as cultural resource management in the United States, is generally not in the public domain in the interest of protecting sites. However, each state's State Historic Preservation Office generally maintains a library of archaeological reports for their state. The largest body of citations for reports is housed online at the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), which incorporated the National Park Service's National Archeological Database with over 300,000 report citations; tDAR is overseen by Digital Antiquity, a group of universities and organizations dedicated to tDAR's long-term support. For Britain, the Archaeological Data Service at the Department of Archaeology, University of York, holds the online Library of Unpublished of Fieldwork Reports, which contains over 38,000 reports, with more being added. Notably, full PDFs of reports are available. Gray literature represents a significant and relatively untapped data source to help frame and answer broader questions about death ways on both sides of the Atlantic.
In all cases, however, given the areas involved, the total amount of recovered evidence is geographically very thin, and where present, it is difficult to generalize on a spatial level. Numerous ethnic identities are represented in the style and content of commemorative monuments (Meyer, 1993), but how far this also applied to coffin design and choice of hardware is not known. Separating ethnicity and religious affiliation might be difficult in some cases, but these various aspects of identity and influences on cultural practice are well worth teasing out.
In both Britain and North America the industrial production of coffin hardware was concentrated in relatively few centers and distributed through choices made from catalogs (Figure 3) and then delivered by the ever-increasing railway network (Springate, 2015; Mytum, 2016). In that regard the patchy geographical representation might be seen as irrelevant, but it is in the combination of availability through catalogs and their relative popularity in purchase and use that geographic and social factors came into play. These regional trends in consumer choice have yet to be addressed, and only further data sets will enable them to be considered. It is important, therefore, that the potential of new coffin assemblages (and, indeed, forms of burial structure such as vaults) be emphasized in any project designs. These sample selections all have implications regarding regional and local identities, practices, and attitudes, even if many of the components used to create such funerary repertoires were mass-produced.
## Chronological Spread
Contemporary attitudes toward the dead affect what excavations might take place, and in North America now abandoned burial grounds of some of the earliest European settlers feed into a set of pioneering nationalist tropes that facilitate their investigation. Notably, these investigations have been at early sites of English origin, as opposed to equally early sites of Spanish origin, like Santa Fe or St. Augustine, since the history of English settlements played into the narrative of the dominant culture in North America for the past several centuries as well as today. For this reason, there have been relatively more investigations—often with a high research component—in such contexts in states such as Virginia and Maryland. Postemancipation to early twentieth-century rural burial grounds in the South have often been subject to clearance and investigation during development, although in these cases often because of poor official documentation or assigning low cultural significance by planning authorities rather than archaeologists' priorities. In contrast, eighteenth- and earlier nineteenth-century burials have not attracted such attention, and although some notable urban assemblages have been recovered, generally, they are proportionally less well represented. In particular, crypt and vault burials of this period, where intact coffins with all their fittings and relatively well preserved human and material contents are available for study, have rarely been investigated. The result is that the early period when coffins were less adorned and most were placed in earth graves is relatively well understood, but the next century and beyond has insufficient samples to assess the popularity and range of coffin hardware, coffin types, and other aspects of funerary rituals and practices. For part of this period catalogs indicate what was available but not what was selected. In the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries the combination of catalog and excavated data has produced a rich and highly contextualized opportunity for research, analysis, and interpretation (see Trinkley and Hacker, this volume; Pye, this volume).
FIGURE 3. The Beaumont fittings set in the Ingal, Parsons Clive & Company catalog, the major UK supplier at the turn of the twentieth century. Courtesy of the Beamish Museum.
The British situation is paradoxically almost the reverse of that in North America. Intact seventeenth-century burials in large numbers have not been recovered, mainly because churchyards where they were placed have been overburied for many generations, and in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries graves were dug deeper than previously, thus increasing the degree of disturbance even though ground levels gradually rose in intensively used burial grounds. At present the best evidence for British earth burial practices comes from the Chesapeake! For the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, a large amount of data, including substantial assemblages from both communal church crypts and family vaults, has been recovered in the last three decades. From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, burial within churches and their crypts was no longer possible except in a few family vaults, and urban graveyards were closed. Interment shifted to newly established cemeteries, and these burial locations are rarely available for excavation. Small-scale development around rural churches, such as with additions of toilets and parish rooms, can lead to the recovery of small numbers of later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century burials. However, these are rare as development is designed, where possible, to leave them in situ. Only the relatively small number of catalogs known from this period indicate what was on offer.
In arguing for investment in archaeological mitigation and analysis, these chronological biases need to be borne in mind, alongside regional and social factors. Gradually, the chronological range of coffin hardware use is becoming clear, but the creation of online resources—both digitally available catalogs from producers on both sides of the Atlantic and typologies of excavated artifacts and burial assemblages—will assist in the dissemination of existing knowledge and its expansion and refinement. Integration of already recovered data now languishing in gray literature across the globe would be an essential part of this process. The creation of an online database similar to the highly successful Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, a collaboration between archaeologists and a range of institutions with funding from the Mellon Foundation and others, would provide a way to make both the scholarly and gray literature data broadly accessible.
## Research Questions
Collecting data may be all that is possible in some of the rushed and underfunded mitigation situations, but the accumulated data can be used to study important cultural questions relevant not only to historical archaeology but also to the wider fields of anthropological, sociological, historical and thanatological research. Systematic data collection should enable researchers and those on large well-funded development-inspired projects to integrate data sets with highly contextualized and often closely dated and personalized assemblages. Some suggestions are offered here of the types of research issues that could be addressed; using mortuary data should also be promoted alongside other types of information in the investigation of wider cultural questions linked to the themes of gender, class, and identity and to cultural change brought about by industrialization, secularization, and changes in attitude to the body.
## Style
Coffin fittings were produced by manufacturers making many other items for domestic and industrial use, so aspects of their style naturally sat within the broad aesthetic preferences of the time. However, particular motifs and themes may relate to the function of the items, which has been considered more for commemorative monuments than for coffin furniture (Mytum, 2004). Memorials have often been thought to have a significant religious element in their symbolism and their textual content, although some motifs such as cherubs could have obtained their popularity as much because of wider cultural preferences as ideological ones (Heinrich, 2014). However, motifs can carry more than one meaning at once, so fashionable choices could still convey other implications. Springate (2015) notes that the relationship between above- and belowground styles deserves further consideration, and a long-running investigation in Britain has produced preliminary results (Mytum, "Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture," this volume). Despite similarities in style and symbolic content across the range of mortuary and commemorative material culture, the coffin fittings were far more conservative, whereas monuments were more susceptible to change. The subject requires further investigation even in Britain, although obtaining comparative samples of sufficient size in terms of date, region, and social status is not easy. The issue has not yet been addressed in any detail in North America.
Clear changes in style of fittings, their arrangement on the coffin, and the shape and surface treatment of the coffin occur over time, as indicated by many chapters here. How these changes interrelated and whether coffins had sets as sold in catalogs or partial or mixed sets require further study. The catalogs often show a variety of styles available at any one time; the trends of selection require further analysis. The order and coherence of sets of coffin fittings seen in catalogs may not be replicated on actual coffins; indeed, there is evidence of some coffins having very mixed collections of items, not the sets as illustrated in print.
The ways in which style operates on coffin furniture in relation to wider taste and symbolism in society have, as yet, received limited attention. Mytum notes the conservatism of coffin fitting styles compared with those of memorials, but otherwise, the material is seen as an isolated phenomenon. Memorials have been placed within the wider trends of architectural revivals—classical, Gothic, Egyptian—although most focus has been on the larger monuments. These styles, together with art nouveau, art deco, modernism, and brutalism, all may be relevant to shaping popular taste, which, perhaps largely unconsciously, influences changes in coffin fitting styles, combined with the form and finish of the coffin or casket. In addition, religious affiliation may be relevant; crucifixes were manufactured for Roman Catholics (Figure 4), and other patterns of choice may be manifested among various denominations, as has been demonstrated for aboveground memorials. Mortuary studies must begin to integrate more fully with the wider dialogues of archaeology, anthropology, and cultural history, rather than be an inward-looking archaeological specialism alone, and in the case of study of style this is particularly important.
## Craft and Industry
The study of mortuary culture offers insights into a range of craft and industrial practices, some of which were dedicated to the funerary trade but many of which were part of a wider portfolio of production or service provision. As the undertaking industry became more specialized and as the treatment of the corpse moved from the deceased's abode to the funeral home, the social and body treatment practices, material culture used, and the wider meanings of the preburial stages of the funeral all changed in significant ways. The material evidence recovered archaeologically can be highly informative with regard to body treatment and viewing and what was placed within the coffin. Body treatment can be discerned in some cases, although it is clear that body position can be highly influenced by taphonomic processes, which can lead many parts of the body to move. This consideration of post-depositional processes, including bodily decay and movement of skeletal parts, in itself requires study to understand what might indicate past cultural practices and what is caused by decay processes.
FIGURE 4. Crucifix lid motif on the coffin of Elizabeth O'Bryan, died 1806, aged 70. St. Pancras, London. Copyright HS1 Ltd/Ramboll UK Limited.
The coffins and caskets may be discerned in terms of shape and size by fittings and stains even if no wood survives. The chronology of viewing windows, always very rare in Britain but with a clear rise in popularity in parts of North America, needs to be mapped and then understood—the increase in embalming and the beautification of death may not be the only factors to consider here (Figure 5).
FIGURE 5. Glass viewing plate in coffin lid; human remains still visible beneath. Photo by Laurie Burgess, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
Many large-scale excavations reveal a minority of coffins containing items personal to the deceased and, in some cases, other items such as ceramic plates, flowers, or those placed by mourners (see Cherryson, this volume). Some seem to be sentimentally associated with the deceased, whereas others, such as plates possibly used for salt, may in some examples be associated with African traditions (McCarthy, 1998), but many of the British examples suggest a wider practice (Miles and Connell, 2012). In contexts such as burial shafts, vaults, and crypts and some waterlogged or highly desiccated environments, a wide range of materials can be represented.
The large number of catalogs reveals the diversity of choice, used to particularly good effect in both Trinkley and Hacker (this volume) and Pye (this volume), but these sources can be combined with the archaeology to reveal what was actually selected and used. How marketing across countries and, indeed, the globe was advanced through catalogs but then mediated through undertakers and selected by clients underpins several of the other chapters here for coffin fittings (Garrow, this volume; Mytum, "Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture," this volume; Springate and Maclean, this volume). This integration of trade sources with undertaker and consumer choices revealed through the archaeology offers exciting opportunities for local and regional studies.
Crafts and industries that served undertakers as part of their marketing include plumbers creating complete lead coffins in the seventeenth century and contributing to the multiple shell coffins of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The details of coffin construction have not been analyzed beyond relatively simple site-based classifications. Linked to this, identification of timber species and, where well preserved, surface treatments (including pigments and cloth coverings) should be the focus of study when such evidence is available. The textiles that survive in many coffins—both those clothing the deceased (which may be their own clothes or those specially purchased for the funeral) and that within and covering the coffin can be linked to wider consumer fashions and textile production technologies, as seen in Pye's study here.
Builders and bricklayers used their local skills and traditions in the design and construction of family vaults and burial shafts, and only once sufficient detailed study of these structures is achieved will they be able to be placed within the wider local vernacular traditions. In Britain these structures are largely belowground, although in parts of Ireland and across many states in North America they are semisubterranean structures that were constructed to withstand weathering. Locations of such features, even without any visible surface remains, are now likely to be identified using ground-penetrating radar or other geophysical prospection methods.
Mortsafes were produced by a few foundries in some numbers, but most were locally made by blacksmiths as ad hoc solutions to the problem of body snatching (Mytum and Webb, this volume), again reflecting local skills and traditions but requiring further contextual analysis. Magnetometry would locate mortsafes or iron coffins very easily and with highly distinctive signatures.
Scientific analysis of coffin fittings and understanding the technology of production of these items can offer important insights into not only coffin hardware but the wider technological development of metal trades in both Britain and North America. Analysis of metal content of fittings is noted by Loe and Boston (this volume), and a preliminary study of a small sample of breastplates from Kellington church, North Yorkshire, has indicated the potential for a more systematic study (Byrne-Sweeney, 2012). Here, two brass (copper-zinc alloys) plates and a tin plate were examined, as well as three tin-dipped iron plates that suggested the use of both wrought and possibly ingot iron. Organic coatings, probably shellac, which could create different color finishes, were identified on some coffin plates from St. Pancras (Doub, 2011), again indicating the potential for scientific analysis. Because many of the fittings will not be permanently preserved given their condition and potential conservation costs, both destructive and nondestructive methods may be more applicable to this category of material culture than many of those found on settlement sites.
## Taphonomy and Burial Management
Some studies have already indicated the potential for understanding decay processes in various conditions. The close dating of many interments allows close correlation of time and other factors such as soil chemistry and the interaction of different material in the ground. It is notable that survival is extremely unpredictable and also variable by material; a coffin may survive almost intact, but the textiles and skeleton within may be poorly preserved. Study of such processes requires an interdisciplinary team and substantial resources for postexcavation analysis, but it has implications for other aspects of archaeology and contemporary social uses of our discipline such as forensic archaeology.
Coffin fittings provide key chronological and social information that contributes to the understanding of burial site management—who is buried where, when, and with whom. The three-dimensional analysis at sites such as St. Pancras, London, reveals the complexities of these patterns (Figure 6) and how careful archaeological excavation, analysis, and illustration can reveal the patterns within these large data sets. Here, the excavations have indicated the potential for understanding the filling up of intensely occupied urban graveyards in not just two but three dimensions (Emery and Wooldridge, 2011), and although some important phasing has been recognized elsewhere, there has been little wider consideration of the decision-making behind the patterns so produced and the ways in which urban graveyard overcrowding was mitigated beyond particular site-specific issues. The frequently documented periodic reuse of burial space in crowded nineteenth-century urban churchyards, which should create distinct phases of burial on each zone of the burial ground, has not yet been clearly demonstrated.
FIGURE 6. Part of the graveyard of St. Pancras, London. Dark shading indicates plots used that year; light shading shows already used plots. Note the spread of use but also continued placement of interments in plots already containing coffins. Copyright HS1 Ltd/Ramboll UK Limited, drawing by Carlos Lemos.
The human element in taphonomy—creating different environments for the enclosure of the body and its container—from the earth grave through the brick- or stone-lined shaft to the family or communal vault is an important factor in the preservation of the materials we wish to study, but even within each of these types, the ways in which these spaces were managed varied. Earth burials may be left untouched or overburied and may become disarticulated, with any coffin fittings displaced also; family vaults may be managed with care and respect with all coffins laid out carefully, or they may have times when coffins are swept to one side to make room for new arrivals. The Spitalfields evidence revealed complex patterns of stacking, rearranging, and blocking off of sections of the crypt below the church (Reeve and Adams, 1993), but the data could no doubt reveal more about crypt management if also considered with evidence from other sites. Moreover, family vaults used over a long period of time have been researched in terms of individual burials but not as complex structures that have their own biographies.
The spatial development of earth-cut graveyards with limited intercutting can be challenging unless many have fittings with dates, but some aspects of phasing based on hardware typologies are possible. In Britain, stratigraphic sequences can often be determined with numerous intercut graves (Figure 7), even if the integrity of many of the interments has suffered from this process; as yet the various site sequences have not been considered comparatively.
The analysis of soils within coffins might support analyses of the skeletal remains, with discoveries such as adipocere and lipids, as investigated on the project reported here by Ewen and Crane. Soils can also provide indications of the changing environments within the grave and coffin and also the presence of now decayed items such as floral tributes or vegetation packed within the coffin. Soil chemistry has a profound effect on the survival and condition of coffin fittings, and the recording of such data would also be valuable in assisting in planning for subsequent excavations in similar conditions.
## Relating the Past to the Present
Understanding how descendant families and communities relate to disturbance of burial grounds requires its own dedicated research program, linking historical archaeology with wider issues of contemporary ideology and politics at the level of race, ethnicity, and class. The projects may be in the context of maintenance and conservation works, on the one hand, and cemetery removal, on the other. Some chapters here reveal the complex dynamics between present and past in particular cases (Burgess and Owsley, this volume; Emery, this volume; Ewen and Crane, this volume), but many other investigations do not include this element in their project design. It often surfaces during late stages of planning and during implementation, by which time either conflicts emerge or opportunities for collaboration and mutual learning and understanding cannot be maximized. Understanding the complex and at times incompatible views regarding death and burial in the past (see Tarlow, this volume) helps contextualize the emotional turmoil often caused by cemetery clearance in the present. Research questions about the past need to be intertwined with those of relevance to the descendant communities today, and ideally, they should be explored during the earliest planning stages of the project. The opportunities for education, collaboration, and celebration of lives and communities past and present can be one of the greatest outcomes from our fieldwork in this often emotionally draining form of archaeology.
FIGURE 7. Isometric projection of coffin stacks, together with schematic cross sections, showing the rows of burials in St. Pancras churchyard, London. Note the level of recording even though not all graves could be archaeologically excavated but were removed by a commercial exhumation company. Copyright HS1 Ltd/Ramboll UK Limited, drawing by Carlos Lemos.
## Conclusions
All policies and practices have to be contextually designed within the ethical and legislative frameworks of the jurisdiction where the work is planned, but many aspects of this type of archaeological fieldwork and research would benefit from an international comparative perspective, as this volume demonstrates. The establishment of a network of interested professionals and researchers would be a valuable medium through which experiences could be shared and solutions to common problems sought, even if these have to be adapted to local circumstances. Indeed, such a network would also help to highlight where there are excellent data and where they should be enhanced. There is a danger that some fieldwork associated with clearance will, in time, begin to recover data that are, in effect, redundant and would not require such a level of investment; instead, different data should be collected that augment our understanding in productive ways, potentially linking protocols to data quality and quantity, and to research questions worth asking.
We have reached a point where a basic chronology is being worked out for at least some periods and places, and we see that there is considerable support from descendant groups for the cultural study of mortuary data as well as the biological dimension. The mortuary archaeology discussed throughout this volume has a bright future, building on the foundations of the pioneer scholars, with a new generation also represented here, and we all hope yet more scholars will be inspired by what this volume contains.
## Acknowledgments
The editors thank all the contributors for their encouragement in developing this book and pushing forward the subject of historic mortuary material culture. The volume has taken far longer to come to print than was originally intended, but the delays have meant that several younger researchers have also now been included. We are gradually reaching a point where the cultural material associated with historic burial is being more widely recognized as having distinct value, but we all agree that it is important that its significance is further emphasized. Only by following up initiatives such as those suggested in this chapter may its full potential may be realized.
## References
Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England. 2013. _Science and the Dead: A Guideline for the Destructive Sampling of Archaeological Human Remains for Scientific Analysis._ London: English Heritage Publishing.
Bell, E. L. 1990. The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. _Historical Archaeology,_ 24(3):–78.
Bevan, B. W. 1991. The Search for Graves. _Geophysics,_ 56(9):1310–1319.
Byrne-Sweeney, J. 2012. Analysis of Coffin Plates from North Yorkshire by SEM and Light Microscopy. Report submitted as partial fulfilment of a M.A. in archaeology, University of Liverpool.
Conyers, L. B. 2006. Ground-penetrating radar techniques to discover and map historic graves. _Historical Archaeology,_ 40(3):64–73.
Doub, N. 2011. "FT-IR Analysis of Organic Coatings on Five Coffin Plates from St. Pancras Burial Ground." In _St. Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3,_ by P. A. Emery and K. Wooldridge, CD-ROM Appendix 3. London: Gifford Monograph, Museum of London Archaeology.
Ellwood, B. B. 1990. Electrical Resistivity Surveys in Two Historical Cemeteries in Northeast Texas: A Method for Delineating Unidentified Burial Shafts. _Historical Archaeology,_ 24(1):91–98.
Emery, P. A., and K. Wooldridge. 2011. _St. Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St. Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–3._ London: Gifford Monograph, Museum of London Archaeology.
Garrow, P. H. 1987. A Preliminary Seriation of Coffin Hardware Forms in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Georgia. _Early Georgia,_ 15(1/2):19–45.
Hacker-Norton, D., and M. Trinkley. 1985. _Remember Man Thou Art Dust: Coffin Hardware of the Early Twentieth Century._ Chicora Foundation Research Series 2. Columbia, S.C.: Chicora Foundation.
Hansen, J. D., J. K. Pringle, and J. Goodwin. 2014. GPR and Bulk Ground Resistivity Surveys in Graveyards: Locating Unmarked Burials in Contrasting Soil Types. _Forensic Science International,_ 237:e14–e29.
Heinrich, A. R. 2014. Cherubs or Putti? Gravemarkers Demonstrating Conspicuous Consumption and the Rococo Fashion in the Eighteenth Century. _International Journal of Historical Archaeology,_ 18(1):37–64.
King, J. A., B. W. Bevan, and R. J. Hurry. 1993. The Reliability of Geophysical Surveys at Historic-Period Cemeteries: An Example from the Plains Cemetery, Mechanicsville, Maryland. _Historical Archaeology,_ 27(3):4–16.
LeeDecker, C. H., J. Bloom, I. Wuebber, and M.-L. Pipes. 1995. _Final Archaeological Excavations at a Late 18th-Century Family Cemetery for the U.S. Route 113 Dualization, Milford to Georgetown, Sussex County, Delaware._ With K. R. Rosenberg. DelDOT Archaeology Series 134. Dover: Delaware Department of Transportation.
Litten, J. 1991. _The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450._ London: Robert Hale.
Litten, J. 1999. Tombs Fit for Kings: Some Burial Vaults of the English Aristocracy and Landed Gentry of the Period 1650–1850. _Church Monuments,_ 14:104–128.
Litten, J. 2009. The Anthropomorphic Coffin in England. _English Heritage Historical Review,_ 4:73–83.
McCarthy, J. P. 1998. Plates in Graves: An Africanism? _African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter,_ 5(2):3.
Meyer, R. E., ed. 1993. _Ethnicity and the American Cemetery._ Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Miles, A., and B. Connell. 2012. _New Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, Southwark: Excavations at Globe Academy, 2008._ Archaeology Study Series 24. London: Museum of London Archaeology.
Mytum, H. 2004. _Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period._ New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Mytum, H. 2016. "The Artefacts of Mortuary Practice: Industrialisation, Choice, and the Individual." In _Nineteenth-Century Material Culture Studies from Britain,_ ed. A. Brooks, pp. 274–304. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Reeve, J., and M. Adams. 1993. _The Spitalfields Project._ Volume 1: _The Archaeology: Across the Styx._ CBA Research Report 85. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Springate, M. E. 2015. _Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth-Century America._ Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
# About the Contributors
Ceridwen Boston is an experienced independent funerary archaeologist and physical anthropologist, working primarily in Britain, with a D.Phil. from Oxford for her research on trauma patterning in the British Royal Navy (1748–1856). She has worked for ten years in commercial archaeology, mostly for Oxford Archaeology, with particular interests in eighteenth to early-nineteenth century burial practices and physical anthropology. Projects have included small and large churchyard and crypt excavations in which she analysed skeletal assemblages, coffin furniture, and memorials.
Laurie Burgess is associate chair of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. She is a historical archaeologist whose research focuses on the material culture of historic period North America, with an emphasis on glass trade beads and on mortuary practices.
Annia K. Cherryson was a researcher on the Leverhulme-sponsored "Changing Beliefs about the Human Body" project and is one of the co-authors of A _Fine and Private Place: The Archaeology of Death and Burial in Post-Medieval Britain and Ireland_ (2012).
Sheri Crane received an M.A. from East Carolina University in anthropology with a focus on historical archaeology and studied a year at the University of Durham, England. She participated in various archaeological digs along the East Coast, but the closest she comes now to digging is planting her organic vegetable garden. Sheri is currently employed at the University of Virginia in beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia.
Phillip A. Emery is a senior heritage advisor for the Canal & River Trust, previously having worked as a contract archaeologist leading major projects including the excavations at St. Pancras, London. He is a trustee of the Fulham Palace Trust and has co-written two books, _Norwich Greyfriars: Pre-Conquest Town and Medieval Friary_ (2007) and _St Pancras Burial Ground: Excavations for St Pancras International, the London Terminus of High Speed 1, 2002–2011._
Charles R. Ewen is a professor of anthropology and director of the Phelps Archaeology Laboratory at East Carolina University. His research interests focus on the historical archaeology of the Contact and Colonial periods. He is currently undertaking a long-term archaeological study of Brunswick Town, North Carolina. He is the author or editor of six books, including most recently _Pieces of Eight: More Archaeology of Piracy_ (2016).
Patrick H. Garrow, RPA, is a retired professional archaeologist who worked in cultural resource management. He has published nine books, most on archaeological projects conducted under his supervision. His interest in cemetery studies dates from 1985, when he directed excavations in the Nancy Creek Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery. Since then he directed delineation and/or removal projects in more than 50 cemeteries across the southeastern United States.
Debi Hacker has more than three decades of experience in Southeastern archaeology and is Chicora's laboratory supervisor and conservator. She was assistant archaeologist at the Charleston Museum, responsible for conducting laboratory analyses and conservation, later serving as conservation administrator with the South Carolina State Museum. She is a member of the International Association of Identification, SC Division, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, and the Southeast Regional Conservation Association.
Louise Loe is head of burials at Oxford Archaeology, where she has worked since 2006, previously being a lecturer in biological anthropology at Bournemouth University. She has led large archaeological projects, including of World War I mass graves in Fromelles, Northern France and of a rare Viking-age execution burial from Weymouth, Dorset. Louise has managed and published on many post-medieval and Industrial period cemeteries including crypts, hospitals, Non-conformist and Church of England flat cemeteries, and most recently on burials from Cure's College Almshouse (1587–1831), Southwark, London. She is currently working on the remains from Oxford Radcliffe Infirmary hospital burial ground (c. 1770–1852).
Hilda Maclean has a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland in historical archaeology focusing on Victorian-era burial practices in Brisbane, Queensland. She has developed the Funerary Consumption Model, articulating the purchasing pattern of funerary goods and services by individual, institutional, and intermediary consumers. Hilda examined coffin furniture design in the United Kingdom and the trade route that developed from its source of manufacture in Birmingham to Brisbane.
Harold Mytum is professor of archaeology at the University of Liverpool and director of its Centre for Manx Studies. His research interests include investigating identity and memory through mortuary evidence (seventeenth to twentieth centuries) from not only Britain and Ireland, but also diasporic communities in North America and Australia. His 13 authored and edited books include _Recording and Analysing Graveyards_ (2000) and _Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period_ (2004).
Douglas W. Owsley is division head of Physical Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. A forensic anthropologist, he has worked on many collaborative projects within historical archaeology, with the most significant in this field being in Washington, D.C., Jamestown and St. Mary's City, Maryland, and those aboard the submarine H. L. Hunley. He is co-author of numerous articles and six books linked to many aspects of forensic anthropology.
Jeremy W. Pye holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida and has more than 14 years of archaeological experience in many regions of the United States. His primary research interests include historic bioarchaeology, archaeo-parasitology, and archaeological geophysics. He is particularly focused on the study of nineteenth and twentieth century mortuary merchandise and burial container construction, amassing a physical and digital comparative library of more than 700 period trade catalogs, 2,000 patent records, and 200 archaeological cemetery relocation reports.
†Roderick Sprague was professor emeritus of anthropology and director emeritus of the Laboratory of Anthropology at the University of Idaho after a long career in historical archaeology with a focus on mortuary studies. He received both the J. C. Harrington Medal and the Carol Ruppé Service Award from the Society for Historical Archaeology. His books include _Burial Terminology: A Guide for Researchers_ (2005).
Megan E. Springate is a post-doctoral associate with the Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland. A historical archaeologist with extensive experience in academia, museums, and cultural resource management, her research interest in identity formation and expression is what drew her to the study of coffin hardware. She is author of _Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth-Century America_ (2014). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2017.
Sarah Tarlow is professor of archaeology at the University of Leicester, with particular interests in emotion, historical mortuary practice, and past attitudes to the human body. She is currently leading a Wellcome Trust–funded project, Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. She has written and co-edited a number of books, including _Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality_ (2001), _Ritual, Belief, and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland_ (2011), and _The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial_ (2013).
Michael Trinkley has more than 40 years of experience in southeastern archaeology and graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He served as a senior archaeologist with the State of South Carolina prior to assuming the directorship of Chicora Foundation in 1983, a position he has held since. He is also active in public outreach programs, speaking to teachers, historical organizations, and museums, and is a leader in cemetery conservation. Dr. Trinkley is a registered consultant with numerous state and international agencies. He has published numerous scholarly studies with Chicora Foundation, University of Alabama Press, and others.
Katie Webb was a Masters student at the University of York with particular interest in historical archaeology. She took part in fieldwork in the United Kingdom and in Ireland before carrying out field research on Scottish mortsafes.
## Contents
1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Copyright
4. Contents
5. Chapter 1: United In Death? A Comparative Introduction to Historic Mortuary Culture
6. Attitudes and Practices
1. Chapter 2: Candied Fruit or Carrionlie Carkase? Beliefs about the Dead Body in Early Modern Britain
2. Chapter 3: Dressing for the Grave: The Archaeological Evidence for the Preparation and Presentation of the Corpse in Post-Medieval England
3. Chapter 4: In the Footsteps of Thomas Hardy: Archaeology and Exhumation at St. Pancras Burial Ground, London
4. Chapter 5: Explaining Stylistic Change in Mortuary Material Culture: The Dynamic of Power Relations between the Bereaved and the Undertaker
7. Material Culture and Classification
1. Chapter 6: Remember Man Thou Art Dust: A Retrospective on North American Hardware Traditions
2. Chapter 7: A Preliminary Seriation of Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Georgia: Thirty Years Later
3. Chapter 8: The Need for Greater Precision in Mortuary Hardware Terminology
4. Chapter 9: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Coffin Furniture from St. George's Crypt, Bloomsbury, and the Churchyard and Crypt of St. Luke's, Islington
5. Chapter 10: Burial at the Edge of the Empire and Beyond: The Divergent Histories of Coffin Furniture and Casket Hardware
6. Chapter 11: "Making a Box Worthy of a Sleeping Beauty": Burial Container Surface Treatments in the United States during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
8. Protecting the Body
1. Chapter 12: Body Snatchers and Mortsafes: An Archaeology of Fear
2. Chapter 13: Death, Dogs, and Monuments: Recent Research at Washington's Congressional Cemetery
3. Chapter 14: Lost Governors, Iron Coffins, and Driven Descendants
9. Conclusions
1. Chapter 15: Where Now? Future Agendas in Historic Mortuary Culture Studies
10. About the Contributors
1. i
2. ii
3. iii
4. iv
5. v
6. vi
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
140.
141.
142.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
149.
150.
151.
152.
153.
154.
155.
156.
157.
158.
159.
160.
161.
162.
163.
164.
165.
166.
167.
168.
169.
170.
171.
172.
173.
174.
175.
176.
177.
178.
179.
180.
181.
182.
183.
184.
185.
186.
187.
188.
189.
190.
191.
192.
193.
194.
195.
196.
197.
198.
199.
200.
201.
202.
203.
204.
205.
206.
207.
208.
209.
210.
211.
212.
213.
214.
215.
216.
217.
218.
219.
220.
221.
222.
223.
224.
225.
226.
227.
228.
229.
230.
231.
232.
233.
234.
235.
236.
237.
238.
239.
240.
241.
242.
243.
244.
245.
246.
247.
248.
249.
250.
251.
252.
253.
254.
255.
256.
257.
258.
259.
260.
261.
262.
263.
264.
265.
266.
267.
268.
269.
270.
271.
272.
273.
274.
275.
276.
277.
278.
279.
280.
281.
282.
283.
284.
285.
286.
287.
288.
289.
290.
291.
292.
293.
294.
295.
296.
297.
298.
299.
300.
301.
302.
303.
304.
305.
306.
307.
308.
309.
310.
311.
1. Cover
2. Cover
3. Title Page
4. Table of Contents
5. Start
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaBook"
} | 4,720 |
{"url":"http:\/\/tex.stackexchange.com\/questions\/30970\/pecha-kucha-20x20-using-beamer?answertab=active","text":"# Pecha Kucha 20x20 using Beamer?\n\nI create a code in LaTeX using Beamer class to produce a Beamer presentation in 20x20 format, but in stackoverflow someone tell me that is horrible! Why? the code is:\n\n\\documentclass[12pt,xcolor=x11names]{beamer}\n\\usecolortheme[named=darkgray]{structure}\n\\usetheme{Warsaw}\n\\usepackage{fourier}\n\\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}\n\\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}\n\\usepackage[spanish]{babel}\n\\usepackage{hyperref}\n\\usepackage{graphicx}\n\\usepackage{pdfpages}\n\\usepackage{tikz}\n\n\\hypersetup{%\npdfpagemode=FullScreen,%\npdfstartpage=1,%\npdftitle={Lorem Ipsum},%\npdfauthor={Dolor, Et},%\npdfsubject={Lorem},%\npdfkeywords={lorem, ipsum, dolor}%\n}\n\\title{Dolor Ipsum}\n\\subtitle{Lorem Ipsum et}\n\\author{Dolor Et}\n\\date{}\n\n\\begin{document}\n{\n\\setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=darkgray}\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{5}\n%\\titlepage\n\\centerline{\\textcolor{white}{\\textbf{\\large{Dolor Ipsum}}}}\n\\vspace{.3cm}\n\\centerline{\\textcolor{white}{\\textbf{\\large{Lorem Ipsum}}}}\n\\vspace{1cm}\n\\centerline{\\textcolor{black}{\\textbf{Dolor Et}}}\n%\\centerline{\\small\\color[rgb]{0.01,0.33,0.58}\n%\\textbf{http:\/\/www.lorem.org}}\n\\end{frame}\n}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image1.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image2.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image3.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image4.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image5.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image6.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image7.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image8.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image9.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image10.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image11.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image12.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image13.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image14.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image15.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image16.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image17.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image18.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image19.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{image20.jpg}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n\n\\end{document}\n\n-\n\nIn both cases below, I assume your images are literally named imageN.jpg, where N is 1, 2, 3, ... , 20:\n\nOption 1 (removes 180 lines of code, adds back 30, and lets you change the style of all frames in one place):\n\n\\newcommand{\\myframe}[1]{\n\\begin{frame}[plain]\n\\transduration{20}\n\\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]\n\\node[at=(current page.center)] {\n\\includegraphics[height=\\paperheight]{#1}\n};\n\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{frame}\n}\n\n\nand replace each of your 20 frames with 20 \\myframe{imageN.jpg} commands.\n\nOption 2, replacing the 20 \\myframe commands with a loop (saves another 17 lines):\n\n\\foreach \\n in {1,...,20} {\n\\myframe{image\\n.jpg}\n}\n\n\nAlso, in this particular example, the pdfpages package seems to be unused. Stripping out all the commented lines and the pdfpages package, and converting the original presentation to the looped version, what was 263 lines of code is now 58 lines long.\n\nHere's a start at a lightning style beamer presentation class and demonstration:\n\nbeamer-lightning.cls\n\n\\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}\n\\ProvidesClass{beamer-lightning}[2011\/10\/09 v0.1 Modified beamer class for lightning'' presentations]\n\n\\newcommand{\\slideduration}{15}\n\\DeclareOption{ignite}{%\n\\renewcommand{\\slideduration}{15}%\n}\n\\DeclareOption{pechakucha}{%\n\\renewcommand{\\slideduration}{20}%\n}\n\n\\DeclareOption*{\\PassOptionsToClass{\\CurrentOption}{beamer}}\n\\ProcessOptions\n\n\\RequirePackage{hyperref}\n\\hypersetup{pdfpagemode=FullScreen}\n\n\\newenvironment{slide}[1]\n{\\begin{frame}[environment=slide]\n\\transduration{\\slideduration}\n\\frametitle{#1}}\n{\\end{frame}}\n\n\\endinput\n\n\npk-example.tex\n\n% class option ignite: 15 second slide duration\n% class option pechakucha: 20 second slide duration\n\\documentclass[ignite]{beamer-lightning}\n\n\\title{There Is No Largest Prime Number}\n\\subtitle{With an introduction to a new proof technique}\n\\institute[Alexandria]{Department of Mathematics \\\\\nUniversity of Alexandria}\n\\author[Euclid]{Euclid of Alexandria \\\\ \\texttt{euclid@alexandria.edu}}\n\\date[ISPN '80]{27th International Symposium of Prime Numbers}\n\n\\usepackage{pgffor} % for \\foreach command below\n\n\\begin{document}\n\n% The slide environment creates a slide with an automatic transition time\n\\begin{slide}\n\\titlepage\n\\end{slide}\n\n% For presentations where each slide is regular text and content:\n\\begin{slide}{What Are Prime Numbers?}\n\\begin{definition}\nA \\alert{prime number} is a number that has exactly two divisors.\n\\end{definition}\n\\begin{example}\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item 2 is prime (two divisors: 1 and 2).\n\\item 3 is prime (two divisors: 1 and 3).\n\\item 4 is not prime (\\alert{three} divisors: 1, 2, and 4).\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{example}\n\\end{slide}\n\n% For presentations where each slide is a giant image named\n% imageN.png or similar:\n\\foreach \\slidetitle in {\n{Title 3, which has a comma}, Title 4, Title 5, Title 6, Title 7, Title 8,\nTitle 9, Title 10}\n{\n\\begin{slide}{\\slidetitle}\n\\begin{center}\nHere lies image\\thepage{}.png\n\\end{center}\n\\end{slide}\n}\n\n% For presentations where each slide is a giant image named\n% arbitrarily:\n\\foreach \\slidetitle \/ \\imagefile in {\n{Title 11 (with embedded \/)} \/ imagexi.png,\nTitle 12 \/ image12.pdf,\nTitle 13 \/ number13.jpg,\nTitle 14 \/ file14.png,\nTitle 15 \/ 15.png,\nTitle 16 \/ sixteen.pdf,\nTitle 17 \/ xvii.png,\nTitle 18 \/ 18.pdf,\nTitle 19 \/ 19.png,\nTitle 20 \/ twenty.pdf}\n{\n\\begin{slide}{\\slidetitle}\n\\begin{center}\nHere lies \\imagefile\n\\end{center}\n\\end{slide}\n}\n\n\\end{document}\n\n-\nGracias. Lo primero que debo decir es que soy hablante de la lengua espa\u00f1ola (por eso del uso de babel=spanish y para los acentos de T1). Lamento escribir esto en espa\u00f1ol, pero es la \u00fanica forma de que se entienda mi error. No puedo estar m\u00e1s que agradecido por sus comentarios, en particular, este perteneciente al Sr. Mike Renfo, de nuevo muchas gracias. Ha sido Ud. muy claro y eficiente. \u2013\u00a0hsigrist Oct 11 '11 at 12:55\n\nI wouldn't go as far as calling your code \"horrible,\" but I do notice, among other things:\n\n\u2022 packages fontenc, inputenc, babel, hyperref, and pdfpages needn't be loaded at all, and the lengthy \\hypersetup{...} command can be omitted too;\n\u2022 you set up the macros \\title, \\subtitle, \\author, and \\date, but then they're not used;\n\u2022 AFAICT, all you need the tikz package for is to center the images on the respective pages. This can be done much more economically with a simple \\centering instruction after the \\transduration and before the \\includegraphics commands;\n\u2022 On frame 1, you have several \\centerline and \\textbf commands. Remove them all, and simply insert \\centering\\bfseries at the top of the frame;\n\u2022 The option xcolor=x11names in the \\documentclass statement is unnecessary because the only \"colors\" you use are white, black, gray and darkgray -- which are always available when xcolor is loaded;\n\u2022 I see Mike Renfro has, in the meantime, provided some comments on how to streamline looping over images 1 to 20. I have nothing to add to that, except to say that I fully agree with them. Aside: If you do use Mike Renfro's code, you will need to load the tikz package or, at the very least, the pgffor package (which is loaded by the tikz package) in order to load the \\foreach macro.\n-\nThe pgffor package also provides \\foreach. \u2013\u00a0Bruno Le Floch Oct 9 '11 at 2:40\nWhy don't you need babel? Is there no hyphenation in beamer? (I don't use beamer.) \u2013\u00a0doncherry Oct 9 '11 at 9:09\n@doncherry: Given that the document mainly consists of 20 images, I can't see where babel gets to do anything at all. Of course, I may be mistaken! \u2013\u00a0Mico Oct 9 '11 at 12:49\n@BrunoLeFloch: Thanks for this. In fact, I believe, the tikz package also accesses the code in pgffor. Hence, loading pgffor instead of tikz might (marginally) accelerate execution of the program, right? \u2013\u00a0Mico Oct 9 '11 at 12:50\nYes. tikz loads pgffor. \u2013\u00a0Bruno Le Floch Oct 9 '11 at 12:55\n\nFirst they did not say horrible but horribly bloated which probably means that it is far more lengthy than it is supposed to be. Second, somebody asked how to change slides in every 20 seconds and you provided a 20-many slides which is repeated 20 times with literally identical code.\n\nI don't know if this was your intention but I have to agree with the comment over SE that your answer does not contribute to the answer the OP is looking for. What you might have done is to use animate package to replay your 20-many images changing at the rate of one at every 20 seconds. I don't know what else might have been said.\n\n-","date":"2015-11-26 00:19:22","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8730248808860779, \"perplexity\": 10390.963420552553}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2015-48\/segments\/1448398446248.56\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20151124205406-00349-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
require 'test_helper'
class FilmsControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
setup do
@film = films(:one)
end
test "should get index" do
get :index
assert_response :success
assert_not_nil assigns(:films)
end
test "should get new" do
get :new
assert_response :success
end
test "should create film" do
assert_difference('Film.count') do
post :create, film: { description: @film.description, image_id: @film.image_id, title: @film.title }
end
assert_redirected_to film_path(assigns(:film))
end
test "should show film" do
get :show, id: @film
assert_response :success
end
test "should get edit" do
get :edit, id: @film
assert_response :success
end
test "should update film" do
patch :update, id: @film, film: { description: @film.description, image_id: @film.image_id, title: @film.title }
assert_redirected_to film_path(assigns(:film))
end
test "should destroy film" do
assert_difference('Film.count', -1) do
delete :destroy, id: @film
end
assert_redirected_to films_path
end
end
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 1,147 |
\section{Introduction}
Classical solutions to vacuum five-dimensional gravity independent of the fifth coordinate confined to a circle (Kaluza-Klein theory) were extensively studied in the past, most notably in Refs. ~\cite{leut, Dobiasch:1981vh,Chodos:1980df,Gross:1983hb,Sorkin:1983ns,Clement:1986bt,Clement:1985gm,Gibbons:1985ac,Rasheed:1995zv}. Other important work developing mathematical tools and studying the exact solutions includes Refs. \cite{neuge, Maison:1979kx,BeRu80,Clement:1986dn,Frolov:1987rj, matos,Poletti:1995yq,Aliev:2008wv} and references therein. Previous interest in this subject was concentrated on regular black hole solutions of this theory and their relevance to supergravity/string theory \cite{Gibbons:1982ih,Gibbons:1984hy,Gibbons:1987ps,Breitenlohner:1987dg,Garfinkle:1990qj,Cvetic:1994hv,Ortin:2015hya}.
For regular black holes the dilaton charge is not an independent parameter in accordance with the famous no-scalar hair theorems.
Later, new generalizations and extensions attracted attention, such as solutions depending on the fifth coordinate with asymptotics of five-dimensional vacuum \cite{Giusto:2007fx,Niarchos:2008jc,Tomizawa:2008rh,Horowitz:2011cq}, hairy black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theories with more general coupling functions \cite{Herdeiro:2015waa,Mejias:2019aio,Astefanesei:2019pfq,Grunau:2019bsd}, solutions relevant to holography \cite{Azeyanagi:2008kb,Goldstein:2009cv} and astrophysical applications \cite{Hirschmann:2017psw,Jai-akson:2017ldo,McCarthy:2018zze}. Another aspect concerns solutions containing naked singularities: if earlier these were rejected completely as nonphysical, they have recently attracted interest for modeling the metrics of ultracompact astrophysical objects outside the Kerr paradigm \cite{Jusufi:2018gnz}, or as sources for generating regular solutions of modified gravity \cite{Galtsov:2018xuc,BenAchour:2019fdf,Domenech:2019syf}. One particular type of singularity is the Misner string in solutions endowed with a NUT charge. It was suggested \cite{Clement:2015cxa} that in the Bonnor interpretation (as generated by some singular matter source) such solutions can be rehabilitated in a sense, and within the Einstein-Maxwell theory may give rise to new type of wormholes \cite{Clement:2015aka}.
Keeping in mind the possible physical relevance of singular solutions and solutions with NUT, we undertook a revision of more general classes of solutions of the original KK theory, in which the dilaton charge is considered as an independent parameter.
Our study is based on the sigma-model representaion of the KK theory along the line of the Refs.
~\cite{Dobiasch:1981vh,Clement:1986bt,Clement:1986dn,Rasheed:1995zv}.
In four dimensions the KK theory is equivalent to the four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMD) theory \cite{Galtsov:1995mb} with the dilaton coupling constant $\alpha=\sqrt{3}$.
The main generating method to construct stationary solutions for $\alpha=\sqrt{3}$ is further dimensional reduction to a three-dimensional sigma model \cite{neuge, Maison:1979kx,BeRu80,Clement:1986dn}
on the coset space $G=SL(3,R)/SO(2,1)$. It turns out that the Einstein-Maxwell and KK theories are the only ones from the family of EMD theories with general dilaton coupling which admit a coset representation \cite{Galtsov:1995mb} (solutions for arbitrary $\alpha$ were studied numerically, in particular, in \cite{Poletti:1995yq,Galtsov:2014wxl}). To solve the sigma-model equations one can apply the geodesic approach first introduced by Kramer and Neugebauer \cite{Neugebauer:1969wr}, in which the potentials are parameterized by the so-called charge matrix $A\in SL(3,R)$. Using this approach, Rasheed~\cite{Rasheed:1995zv} found a general rotating NUT-less dyon solution.
A more detailed study of thermodynamics, dual symmetries and the study of geometry near the horizon was given in \cite{Larsen:1999pp}.
Meanwhile, some questions related to KK solution space still remain underexplored which motivates the present paper. These include the following.
First, in most of the cited papers, only NUT-less dyonic solutions were explored. Second, most of the metrics constructed by the sigma-model approach
corresponded to degenerate $A$, the $\det A=0$ constraint being considered as the cosmic censorship condition \cite{Breitenlohner:1987dg}. But, as we will see here, the relation between the regularity of the horizon and the degeneracy of the charge matrix is not so direct, the condition $\det A=0$ being only a necessary one. The charges of the static locally asymptotically flat solutions in EMD theory to which we restrict here, include the mass $M$, the NUT parameter $N$, the electric and magnetic charges $Q,\,P$ and the dilaton charge $D$. For this degenerate class the dilaton charge is not an independent parameter, in consistency with the no-hair theorems of Einstein-scalar theory \cite{MasoodulAlam:1993ea,Yazadjiev:2010bj,Chrusciel:2012jk}. But the EMD theory also admits solutions without electric and magnetic charges and with non-zero dilaton charge, known as Fisher-Janis-Newman-Winicour (FJNW) solutions~\cite{Fisher:1948yn,Bergmann:1957zza,Penney:1968zz,Janis:1968zz,Abdolrahimi:2009dc}. These have a singular horizon and they attracted wide interest recently as a simple model of naked singularities \cite{Gyu}, which could be used to describe observable properties of compact objects beyond the Kerr paradigm \cite{Jus}. The FJNW solution corresponds to a particular non-degenerate charge matrix of the static sector of EMD~\cite{Rasheed:1995zv}. But the full KK generalization of the FJNW solution was not explored so far. Here we construct the generic KK locally asymptotically flat static solution with an independent dilaton charge and explore various particular cases.
At the same time, as we show here in detail, the $\det A=0$ subclass also contains singular solutions. The charge matrix degeneracy condition is a cubic equation with respect to the dilaton charge $D$ which generically has three solutions defining three branches of KK dyons. Between them, one branch contains the previously known black holes, while the two other branches (related by electric-magnetic duality) are new and generically describe naked singularities. Another new interesting feature that we reveal here consists in periodicity of the solution family in the space of parameters. Namely, by introducing two mixing angles for the electric/magnetic charges and mass/NUT charges, we find that the cubic constraint equation exhibits periodicity in terms of a certain linear combination of these angles, which entails periodicity of the solution properties in the parameter space.
Let us recall that electric and magnetic KK configurations are related by a discrete duality inverting the sign of dilaton. The corresponding four dimensional spacetime metrics are similar. But from the five-dimensional point of view, they are essentially different: the electric solution is singular, while the magnetic monopole is regular and corresponds to the product of the Euclidean Taub-NUT metric with time. Chodos and Detweiler~\cite{Chodos:1980df} have found another 5D-regular solution, which is purely electric in the four-dimensional interpretation and represents a five-dimensional wormhole. But it was unknown whether it admits dyonic and Nutty generalizations, and if yes, what would be their four-dimensional interpretation. On the other hand, as was recently shown in~\cite{Clement:2015aka}, the four-dimensional Brill solution, which is essentially the Reissner-Nordstrom solution of the Einstein-Maxwell theory endowed with a NUT parameter, becomes a four-dimensional wormhole in the overcharged case, in other words, the RN naked singularity is converted to a wormhole once the NUT charge is added. The question arises whether the superextremal non-rotating KK ($\alpha=\sqrt3$ EMD) black hole can similarly be converted into a wormhole. We show that the answer is negative: contrary to the Einstein-Maxwell case, in the KK theory the NUT charge does not convert the superextreme naked singularities into four-dimensional wormholes. But the five-dimensional wormholes in the KK theory are shown to exist; they generalize the Chodos-Detweiler electric solution to a more general solution with four independent parameters constrained by two inequalities.
We also investigate geodesics in the new metrics, aiming to clarify the potential troubles associated with the Misner string. Although Nutty solutions run into interpretational problems due to the presence of a chronology-violating region around the Misner string, it was shown in Ref.~\cite{Clement:2015aka} within the Einstein-Maxwell theory that there are no closed timelike geodesics. We address here the same question within the KK theory.
The plan of the paper is as follows.
In Section II we briefly describe the derivation of the three-dimensional $\sigma$-model and recall the associated matrix representation. In Section III we derive the asymptotically locally flat solution with free scalar charge, corresponding to the KK generalization of the Fisher solution. In Section IV we construct the solutions corresponding to a degenerate charge matrix, splitting them into three dilaton classes in Section V. Extremal solutions are classified in Section VI. Then we discuss the five-dimensional interpretation with an emphasis on wormholes (Section VII). Finally, in Section VIII we discuss the geodesic structure, in particular, inside the chronosphere around the Misner string. In Appendix A we analytically prove the absence of four-dimensional wormholes, while Appendix B is devoted to the relationship between five and four-dimensional geodesics.
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Generating technique}
\label{sec:technique}
We start with five-dimensional vacuum Einstein gravity
\be\label{ac5}
S = \int d^5x\sqrt{|g_5|}R_5,
\ee
assuming the existence of a spacelike Killing vector $\partial/\partial x^5$. The standard Kaluza-Klein ansatz reads:
\be\label{met5}
ds_5^2 = \e^{-2\phi/\sqrt3}ds_4^2 - \e^{4\phi/\sqrt3}(dx^5+2\A_\mu dx^\mu)^2,
\ee
where the dilaton $\phi$, the KK vector $\A_\mu$ and the four-dimensional spacetime metric depend only on $x^\mu=t, x^i$. Integrating the action (\ref{ac5}) over the cyclic coordinate $x^5$, adjusting gravitational constants and the compactification radius, and omitting some total derivative, one obtains the four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMD) action:
\begin{equation}\label{ac4}
\mathcal{S} = \frac{1}{16\pi}
\int d^4x \;\sqrt{-g} \Big(
- R + 2(\partial \phi)^2 - \e^{-2\alpha\phi} F^2
\Big),
\end{equation}
with the dilaton coupling constant $\alpha=\sqrt3$, where $F=d\A$ is the Maxwell 2-form.
\subsection{3D $\sigma$-model}
With the assumption of a time-like Killing vector $\partial_t$, this four-dimensional theory in turn can be reduced to a three-dimensional $\sigma$ model (see details in \cite{Galtsov:1995mb}). One parameterizes the four-dimensional interval as
\begin{equation}
ds_4^2 = f (dt - \omega)^2 - f^{-1} h_{ij} dx^i dx^j,
\end{equation}
where $f$ is a real function, $\omega = \omega_i dx^i$ is a three-dimensional 1-form, and $h_{ij}$ is the 3-metric, $i=1,2,3$, depending only on $x^i$. Resolving part of the Maxwell equations and Bianchi identities, one introduces electric $v$ and magnetic $u$ potentials
\begin{equation}\label{eq:sigma.F}
F^{ij} = \frac{f}{\sqrt{2}} \e^{2\alpha\phi} \epsilon^{ijk}\partial_k u,
\qquad
F_{i0} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \partial_i v,
\end{equation}
where $\epsilon^{ijk}=\pm (\text{det}\,h_{ij})^{-1/2}$ is the three-dimensional anti-symmetric tensor. Further, one assumes that three-dimensional indices are raised and lowered with $h^{ij}$ and $h_{ij}$. Following \cite{Israel:1972vx, Galtsov:1995mb}, one can solve the ${}^{i}_{\;\;0}$-components of the Einstein equations by introducing a twist-potential $\chi$
\begin{equation}\label{eq:sigma.chi}
-f^2 \epsilon^{ijk} \partial_j \omega_k
=
v \nabla^i u - u \nabla^i v + \nabla^i \chi.
\end{equation}
The remaining equations coincide with those of a three-dimensional gravity-coupled $\sigma$ model \cite{Galtsov:1995mb}:
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{S}_\sigma = \int d^3x \sqrt{h} h^{ij}
(
\mathcal{R}_{ij} - \mathcal{G}_{AB} (\varphi) \partial_i \varphi^A \partial_j \varphi^B
),
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{R}_{ij}$ is the three-dimensional Ricci tensor calculated with the metric $h_{ij}$, the target space coordinates (potentials) are $\varphi^A = \left(f, \chi, u, v, \phi \right)$ and the target space metric $\mathcal{G}_{AB}$ reads
\begin{equation}\label{eq:sigma.target_space}
\mathcal{G}_{AB} d\varphi^A d\varphi^B
= \frac{1}{2f^2} \left(df^2 + (d\chi + vdu - udv)^2\right)
-\frac{1}{f} \left(\e^{-2\alpha\phi}dv^2 + \e^{2\alpha\phi}du^2\right)
+2d\phi^2.
\end{equation}
The target space (\ref{eq:sigma.target_space}) with $\alpha=\sqrt{3}$ possesses 8 Killing vectors \cite{Galtsov:1995mb}, forming the $sl(3,R)$ algebra and revealing that it is a coset space $SL(3, R)/SO(2,1)$.
Computing the covariant derivative of the Riemann tensor of the target space metric, one finds that there are only two values of the dilaton coupling constant $\alpha=\sqrt{3},\,0$
for which the Rieman tensor is covariantly constant~\cite{Galtsov:1995mb}. The second case corresponds to the Einstein-Maxwell theory, minimally coupled to the scalar field.
\subsection{Matrix representation}
For generation purposes it is convenient to present the target space metric
in the matrix form
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{G}_{AB} d\varphi^A d\varphi^B=\frac14\Tr \left(\M^{-1}d\M \M^{-1}d\M \right).
\end{equation}
$\M$ is a symmetric matrix belonging to the coset $SL(3, R)/SO(2,1)$. The matrix $\M$ transforms under the target space isometry as
\be
\M\to \M'=P^T\M P
\ee
with some matrix $P\in SL(3,R)$. In terms of $\M$, the sigma-model equations read
\be \lb{Meq}
\nabla_i\left(\M^{-1}\nabla^i\M \right)=0,
\ee
where $\nabla_i$ is a covariant derivative in the three-space,
and the three-dimensional Einstein equations are
\be \lb{RM}
\mathcal{R}_{ij}=-\frac14 \Tr\left(\nabla_i \M \nabla_j \M^{-1}\right).
\ee
In terms of the above variables, the matrix representation of the coset was found in~\cite{Galtsov:1995mb}. We give it here in a slightly different form related by a similarity transformation:
\begin{equation}\lb{Ma}
\M =
\e^{2\alpha\phi/3}f^{-1}
\begin{pmatrix}
-f^2 + 2 v^2 f \e^{-2\alpha\phi} - (\chi - u v)^2
&
\sqrt{2} v f \e^{-2\alpha\phi} + \sqrt{2}u(\chi - u v)
&
\chi - u v
\\
\sqrt{2} v f \e^{-2\alpha\phi} + \sqrt{2}u (\chi - u v)
&
f \e^{-2\alpha\phi} - 2u^2
&
-\sqrt{2} u
\\
\chi - u v
&
-\sqrt{2} u
&
-1
\end{pmatrix}.
\end{equation}
An alternative (and more familiar) derivation of the sigma-model has the advantage to directly use the $SL(2,R)$ structure of the compactification space~\cite{Maison:1979kx}.
One starts with the parametrization of the five-dimensional metric as
\begin{equation}
ds^2_{(5)} = \lambda_{ab} (dx^a + a^a_i dx^i)(dx^b + a^b_j dx^j) + \tau^{-1} h_{ij} dx^i dx^j,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
h_{ij} dx^i dx^j = dr^2 + Fr^2\left(d\theta^2 + \sin^2\theta d\varphi^2\right)
\end{equation}
with $\tau=-\det\lambda_{ab}$, $a,b = 0,5$ and $i,j=1,2,3$. Comparing with our previous ansatz we get
\begin{equation}
\e^{-4\alpha\phi/3} = \lambda_{55},\qquad
A_t = \lambda_{05} / 2 \lambda_{55},\qquad
f = \tau / \sqrt{\lambda_{55}},
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
a^0 = -\omega d\varphi = 2N\cos\theta d\varphi,\qquad
a^5 = 2\left( \omega A_t + A_\varphi \right) d\varphi = 2P\cos\theta d\varphi.
\end{equation}
Now we will define the dualized two-vector $V_a$:
\begin{equation}
V_{a,i} = \tau \lambda_{ab} h_{il} \varepsilon^{ljk}a^b_{l,k}
= \left( \lambda_{a0} N + \lambda_{a5} P \right)\sin\theta,
\end{equation}
then the matrix $\M$ will read
\begin{equation}\lb{Mb}
\M = \frac{1}{\tau}\begin{pmatrix}
\tau \lambda_{ab} - V_a V_b & V_a \\
V_b & -1
\end{pmatrix}.
\end{equation}
To solve the equations (\ref{Meq},\ref{RM}) for non-rotating configurations, we assume, following Kramer and Neugebauer \cite{Neugebauer:1969wr}, that the target space variables $\varphi^A$ depend on the coordinates through a single scalar function $g(x^i)$, i.e., $\varphi^A(x^i)=\varphi^A\left[g(x^i)\right]$ which is a harmonic function in the three-space:
\be
\nabla^i\nabla_i g(x^i) =0.
\ee
Then $\varphi^A(g)$ will be a geodesic in the target space, parameterized by $g$ as an affine parameter. In the matrix form, the geodesic equation reads
\be\lb{Mge}
\frac{d}{dg}\left(\M^{-1}\frac{d\M}{dg}\right) =0.
\ee
Assuming that $g\to 0$ at spatial infinity, and denoting the value of the matrix $\M$ at $g=0$ as $\eta=\text{diag}(-1,1,-1)$, one can present the solution of the Eq. (\ref{Mge}) as
\be\lb{exp}
\M=\eta{\rm e}^{gA},
\ee
where $A$ is some constant matrix belonging to the Lie algebra $sl(3,R)$ satisfying the conditions
\be
A^T=\eta A \eta, \qquad \Tr A=0.
\ee
To find $A$ explicitly, we normalize the harmonic function $g$ so that at spatial infinity
\be
g\sim \frac2{r},
\ee
and assume
an asymptotic behavior of the target space potentials
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:sigma.new_asymptote}
f \to 1 - \frac{2M}{r},\quad
\chi \to \frac{2N}{r},\quad
u \to \frac{\sqrt{2}P}{r},\quad
v \to \frac{\sqrt{2}Q}{r},\quad
\phi \to \frac{\alpha D}{r}.
\end{equation}
We then find that the asymptotic value of $\M$ is the constant matrix $ \eta = \text{diag}(-1,1,-1) $, while the charge matrix $A$ will be parameterized by six independent charges as follows:
\begin{equation}
A = \begin{pmatrix}
-M+D & -Q & N \\
Q & -2D & P \\
N & -P & M+D
\end{pmatrix}
\ee
The isometries of the target space preserving the asymptotic conditions (\ref{eq:sigma.new_asymptote}) induce a transformation of the charge matrix $A$ of the form:
\be
A\to A'= P^{-1} A P,\qquad P^T\eta P=\eta.\ee
The new coset matrix $\M'=\eta {\rm e}^{gA'}$ will lead to a new solution with the same asymptotics. Clearly, for this to be true, the transformation matrix $P$ must belong to the isotropy subgroup $H=SO(2,1)$ of the isometry group. This is a convenient way to present transformations of the solution preserving its asymptotic form.
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Solutions with independent dilaton charge}
Following the approach of \cite{Clement:1985gm}, we classify solutions according to the rank of the charge matrix $A$.
Solutions with an independent dilaton charge correspond to the rank three, i.e., non-degenerate matrix, $\det A\neq 0$. The matrix exponential can then be found using the Lagrange interpolation formula
\begin{equation}
\e^{gA} = \sum_{i=-1}^{+1} \e^{g \lambda_i} \prod_{i \neq j} \frac{A - \lambda_j}{\lambda_i - \lambda_j},
\end{equation}
where $\lambda_k$ are eigenvalues of $A$ satisfying the equation
\begin{equation}
\lambda_k^3 - \delta^2 \lambda_k - c = 0,
\end{equation}
where we denoted
\begin{equation}
\delta^2 = \frac{1}{2} \text{tr}{A^2} = M^2 + N^2 + 3D^2 - P^2 - Q^2,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
c = \det A = 2 D (M^2+N^2-D^2) + P^2 (D-M) + Q^2 (D+M) - 2 N P Q.
\end{equation}
In the generic case, the eigenvalues labeled by $k=\pm 1, 0$ read:
\begin{equation}
\lambda_k = \frac{2\delta}{\sqrt{3}} \cos \phi_k ,\qquad
\phi_k = \frac{1}{3}\text{arccos}\left(z\right) + \frac{2\pi}{3} k,\qquad
z = \frac{3\sqrt{3}}{2} \frac{c}{\delta^{3}}.
\end{equation}
Since the matrix $A$ is traceless, one may simplify the product
\begin{equation}
\prod_{i \neq j} \frac{A - \lambda_j}{\lambda_i - \lambda_j} =
\frac{A - \lambda_{j_1}}{\lambda_i - \lambda_{j_1}}\frac{A - \lambda_{j_2}}{\lambda_i - \lambda_{j_2}}
=
\frac{A^2 - (\lambda_{j_1}+\lambda_{j_2})A + \lambda_{j_1}\lambda_{j_2}}{\lambda_i^2 - (\lambda_{j_1}+\lambda_{j_2})\lambda_i + \lambda_{j_1}\lambda_{j_2}
}.
\end{equation}
Then using the relations between the eigenvalues
\begin{equation}
\lambda_{-1} + \lambda_0 + \lambda_{+1} = 0, \qquad
\lambda_{-1}^2 + \lambda_{0}^2 + \lambda_{+1}^2 = 2 \delta^2,\qquad
\lambda_{-1} \lambda_0 \lambda_{+1} = c
\end{equation}
we obtain
\begin{equation}
\prod_{i \neq j} \frac{A - \lambda_j}{\lambda_i - \lambda_j} =
\frac{
A^2 + \lambda_i A + c/\lambda_i
}{
2 \lambda_i^2 + c/\lambda_i
} =
1 + \frac{ \lambda_i }{ 2 \lambda_i^3 + c }
\left(A^2 + \lambda_i A - 2 \lambda_i^2\right).
\end{equation}
One can notice that
\begin{equation}
\frac{ \lambda_i }{ 2 \lambda_i^3 + c } - \frac{1}{3\lambda_i^2 - \delta^2} =
\frac{ \lambda_i^3 - \delta^2 \lambda_i - c }{ (2 \lambda_i^3 + c)(3\lambda_i^2 - \delta^2) },
\end{equation}
where the numerator is zero by virtue of the eigenvalue equation for $\lambda_i$. The denominator can be zero only if the spectrum of $\lambda_k$ is degenerate (and the second bracket $3\lambda_i^2-\delta^2$ is zero), or $c=0$ (this condition is necessary to make the first bracket $2\lambda_i^3+c$ equal to zero). These cases will be discussed later. So one has:
\begin{equation}
\prod_{i \neq j} \frac{A - \lambda_j}{\lambda_i - \lambda_j} =
1 + \frac{
A^2 + \lambda_i A - 2 \lambda_i^2
}{
3 \lambda_i^2 - \delta^2
} =
\frac{
A^2 + \lambda_i A + \lambda_i^2 - \delta^2
}{
3 \lambda_i^2 - \delta^2
}.
\end{equation}
The matrix $\M$ can then be rewritten as
\begin{equation}
\M = \eta \e^{Ag} = \eta g_2 + \eta A g_1 + \eta (A^2 - \delta^2)g_0,
\end{equation}
where we denoted
\begin{equation}\label{gn}
g_n = \sum_{i=-1}^{+1} \frac{ \lambda_i^{n} \e^{g \lambda_i} }{ 3 \lambda_i^2 - \delta^2 },
\end{equation}
and the two matrix terms in the expansion read
\begin{equation}
\eta A = \left(
\begin{array}{ccc}
M-D & Q & -N \\
Q & -2 D & P \\
-N & P & -D-M \\
\end{array}
\right),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\eta (A^2-\delta^2) = \left(
\begin{array}{ccc}
2 D^2+2 M D-P^2 & N P-(D+M) Q & P Q-2 D N \\
N P-(D+M) Q & D^2-M^2-N^2 & -D P+M P+N Q \\
P Q-2 D N & -D P+M P+N Q & 2 D^2-2 M D-Q^2 \\
\end{array}
\right).
\end{equation}
This solution provides the NUTty EMD dyonic generalization of the FJNW solution if we chose
\begin{equation}
ds_{(3)}^2 = dr^2 + r(r-2\delta)(d\theta^2 + \sin^2\theta d\varphi^2),
\end{equation}
with the harmonic function
\begin{equation}
g = -\frac{1}{\delta} \ln F,\qquad
F = 1 - \frac{2\delta}{r}.
\end{equation}
The $2\times 2$ matrix $\lambda_{ab} = \M_{ab} + V_a V_b / \tau = \M_{ab} - \M_{3a} \M_{b3} / \M_{33}$ and $\tau=-\det \lambda_{ab}$ read explicitly:
\begin{align}\label{lam}
\lambda_{00}& = -g_2 + (M-D)g_1 + (2D(D+M)-P^2) g_0 + \tau (-N g_1 + (-2DN + PQ) g_0)^2,\nn\\
\lambda_{05} &= Qg_1 + (-(M+D)Q + NP)g_0
+\nn\\&+ \tau (-N g_1 + (-2DN + PQ) g_0) (P g_1 + ((M-D)P + NQ) g_0 ),\nn\\
\lambda_{55} &= g_2 - 2D g_1 + (D^2 - M^2 - N^2) g_0 + \tau (P g_1 + ((M-D)P + NQ) g_0 )^2,\nn\\
\tau^{-1} &= g_2 + (M+D)g_1 - (2D(D-M)-Q^2)g_0.
\end{align}
This can be simplified using the form
\begin{align}\label{lam1}
\lambda_{ab} = \tau
\sum_{i,j=-1}^{+1} \frac{ \e^{g (\lambda_i+\lambda_j)} P_{ab}^{ij} }{ (3 \lambda_i^2 - \delta^2)(3 \lambda_j^2 - \delta^2) },
\end{align}
where $P_{ab}^{ij}$ are some polynomials of $\lambda_i$, $\lambda_j$ and charges. Then, the diagonal part $i=j$ turns out to be proportional to the eigenvalue equation
\begin{subequations}
\begin{equation}
P^{ii}_{00} = (2D+\lambda_i)(c + \delta^2\lambda_i - \lambda_i^3),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
P^{ii}_{05} = -Q(c + \delta^2\lambda_i - \lambda_i^3),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
P^{ii}_{55} = (D-M-\lambda_i)(c + \delta^2\lambda_i - \lambda_i^3),
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
and thus zero, while the non-diagonal part is non-zero. The non-diagonal term $i\neq j$ cannot be simplified further, but we can notice that $e^{g (\lambda_i+\lambda_j)}= \e^{-g \lambda_k}$, where $k\neq i,j$. Thus, functions $\tau^{-1}\lambda_{ab}$ are linear with respect to $\e^{-g\lambda_k}$.
When both topological charges are zero, $N=P=0$, we have $\lambda_{ab} = \M_{ab}$. The quantity $c$ can then be written as
\begin{equation}
c = (D+M)(D+M+\delta)(D+M-\delta),
\end{equation}
and the equation on $\lambda$ can be resolved in terms of charges
\begin{equation}
\lambda_0 = D+M, \qquad
\lambda_{\pm1} = \frac{- D - M \pm \sqrt{(M - 3 D)^2 - 4 Q^2}}{2}.
\end{equation}
\subsection{Degenerate cubic $z = \pm 1$}
In this case the cubic equation has a degenerate spectrum $\lambda_i$, so we have to rearrange the Lagrange formula. Expanding the eigenvalues near $z = s$, with $s=\pm 1$ in terms of a small deviation $\epsilon $, we find (changing the numeration for convenience):
\begin{equation}
\lambda_0 = \frac{2s\delta}{\sqrt{3}}(1-2\epsilon^2/3 + \ldots),\qquad
\lambda_{\pm} = \frac{2s\delta}{\sqrt{3}}(-1/2 \pm \epsilon +\epsilon^2/3 + \ldots).
\end{equation}
The limiting form of the Lagrange formula will read:
\begin{equation}
\e^{Ag} =
\frac{(A-\lambda )^2 }{3 \delta^2}\e^{-2 g \lambda }
-\frac{(A+2 \lambda ) (A - 4 \lambda)}{3 \delta^2} \e^{g \lambda }
+\frac{(A+2 \lambda ) (A - \lambda )}{3 \lambda} \e^{g \lambda } g
,\qquad
\lambda = -\frac{s\delta}{\sqrt{3}}
\end{equation}
\subsection{The case $ \text{tr}{A^2}=0$}
When $\delta = 0$, one eigenvalue is real and the two others are complex conjugate:
\begin{equation}
\lambda_k = c^{1/3} \e^{i2\pi k / 3},
\end{equation}
while the relevant combinations (\ref{gn}) remain real:
\begin{equation}
g_n = \frac{1}{3}\sum_{i=-1}^{+1} \lambda_i^{n-2} \e^{g \lambda_i}
=
\frac{c^{(n-2)/3}}{3} \left(
\e^{g c^{1/3}}
+
2 \e^{-g c^{1/3}/2}\cos\left(\sqrt{3}g c^{1/3}/2 +2\pi (n-2) / 3\right)
\right),
\end{equation}
where the harmonic function is
\begin{equation}
g = \frac{2}{r}.
\end{equation}
\subsection{ Complex eigenvalues }
If $|z| > 1$, the arc-cosine function has an imaginary value and $\lambda_0$ is purely real (with the hyperbolic functions), while $\lambda_{\pm1}$ are mutually complex conjugate. The sum of the same expressions in the Lagrange formula gives a real value, so the solution is physical.
The super-extremal solutions with imaginary $\delta$ also correspond to one real and two complex eigenvalues conjugate to each other. All expressions in the Lagrange formula contain the square $\delta^2$, which is real. Again, the terms with conjugate eigenvalues result in a real value. To make the function $g$ real, one can perform the shift $r \to r + \delta$:
\begin{equation}
g \to
\frac{-1}{\delta} \ln \left(\frac{r - \delta}{r+\delta}\right)
=
\frac{2}{|\delta|} \left(
\text{arccot} \frac{r}{|\delta|}
+ \pi \theta(-r/|\delta|)
\right).
\end{equation}
Thus, as expected, the super-extremal solutions are physical too. The inverse cotangent functions has a discontinuity at $r=0$ which can be eliminated by choosing the correct sheet using the step function $\theta$.
\subsection{Singularities}
The four-metric would represent a regular black hole if the surface $f=0$ was a regular Killing horizon. Let us first show that the function $f$ can vanish only if $F$ vanishes, i.e. at $r=2\delta$ in the non-superextremal case. We will then show that the corresponding Killing horizon is 4-singular.
The function $f$ is of the form
\begin{equation}
f = (\tau^{-1} \Lambda_{55} )^{-1/2}
\end{equation}
where, from the last equation (\ref{lam}) and (\ref{lam1}), $\tau^{-1}$ is a linear combination of the functions $\e^{g \lambda_i}$, and $\Lambda_{55} = \tau^{-1}\lambda_{55}$ is a linear combination of the functions $\e^{-g \lambda_i}$. Thus $f$ can be zero if and only if $\tau^{-1}$ or $\Lambda_{55}$ diverges. These functions can diverge only if $g$ tends to $\pm\infty$. For the subextremal case $g = -\delta^{-1} \ln F$, and the outermost divergence of the function $g$ occurs for $F=0$ ($r=2\delta$). For the extremal case $g=2/r$, it diverges for $r=0$. For the super-extremal case it doesn't diverge. So, $f=0$ can be satisfied only if $F=0$.
While the 5-metric is singular if $\tau^{-1} = 0$, the 4-metric is singular if the four-dimensional Ricci scalar
\begin{equation}
R = 2 f (\partial_r \phi)^2 = \frac{3}{8} \frac{\tau \lambda_{55}^{'2}}{\lambda_{55}^{5/2}} = \frac{3}{8}f \left(\frac{\lambda'_{55}}{\lambda_{55}}\right)^2
\end{equation}
diverges.
\underline{$\delta^2 > 0$, $|z| < 1$.}
In this case all the $\lambda_k$ are real and the spectrum contains both positive and negative $\lambda_k$. The functions $\e^{g\lambda_k}$ behave for $x\to0$ ($x = r - 2\delta$) as $x^{S_k}$, where
\begin{equation} \label{eq:F}
S_k = - \lambda_k / \delta .
\end{equation}
Assuming that the $S_k$ are ordered so that $S_{-1} < S_0 < S_{+1}$, the leading asymptotic behaviours are $\tau^{-1} \sim x^{S_{-1}}$, $\Lambda_{55} \sim x^{-S_{1}}$, $\lambda_{55} \sim x^{S_{0}}$, resulting in
\begin{equation}
R \sim S_{0}^2\, x^{\frac{S_{+1}-S_{-1}}{2} - 2}.
\end{equation}
As $|S_k| \leq 2/\sqrt{3}$ from (3.5), the power of $x$ is always negative. And the coefficient $S_0$ is different from zero in the non-degenerate case, so that the Ricci scalar diverges on the horizon.
The case of the saturated boundary \underline{$\left|z\right| = 1$} is similar to the one just analyzed, with the difference that in the expressions for $\tau^{-1}$ and $\lambda_{ab}$ terms logarithmic in $F$ appear.
\underline{$\delta^2 > 0$, $\left|z\right| > 1$.}
Let us denote
\begin{equation}
y = \frac{1}{6}\ln\left(2 z \left(\sqrt{z^2-1}+z\right)-1\right),\qquad
s_z = \text{sign}(z),
\end{equation}
and rewrite $S_k$ as
\begin{equation}
S_k =
- \frac{s_z}{2}\left(\cosh y \pm i\sqrt{3} \sinh y\right),\;
s_z \cosh y.
\end{equation}
If $s_z=-1$ we can perform calculations similar to those of the previous case. Keeping only the real parts, one can show that $R \sim x^{-\frac{1}{4} \cosh y - 2}$ diverges for any $y$. For the case $s_z=+1$ we look at $\tau^{-1}$, for small $x$ this behaves as
\begin{equation}
\tau^{-1} \sim F^{-\frac{1}{2}\cosh y } \cos\left(\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}\sinh y \ln F + \text{const}\right).
\end{equation}
This function oscillates infinitely fast when $F$ approaches zero, introducing infinitely many zeroes (singularities of the 5-metric). Near one such zero, $\tau^{-1} \sim u$ ($u\to0$), $f \sim u^{-1/2}$ and $R \sim u^{-5/2}$, so that there are infinitely many singularities outside the event horizon.
The extremal case \underline{$\delta = 0$} with $c \neq 0$ can be considered as the limit $\left|z\right| \to \infty$. In \cite{Clement:1985gm} some 5-regular solutions belonging to this case were given; they cannot be 4-regular because of the oscillations of $\lambda_{55}$. Also, these 5-regular solutions are presumably exceptional among the class of extremal solutions, the generic case being 5-singular because of oscillations of $\tau^{-1}$.
The super-extremal solutions \underline{$\delta^2 < 0$} can be regular if they represent wormholes. Though it is natural to expect that all non-degenerate $\det A \neq 0$ cases are 4-singular, it is a hard problem to prove the absence of regular wormholes in the general case. In the following paragraph we will give some singular super-extremal examples. Examples of regular wormholes are not found. In Appendix \ref{sec:4d_wormholes} we prove the non-existence of four-dimensional wormholes among the degenerate solutions $\det A = 0$. Our conjecture is that there are no four-dimensional wormholes for all values of $\det A$.
\subsection{Examples}
We will analyze the Ricci scalar for several nondegenerate examples given in the Table \ref{tab:cases}. For the subextremal solutions one can consider the quantity $r^4 R$ as a function of $F \in [0, 1)$. The multiplier $r^4$ cannot remove singularities because the function $F$ vanishes for a positive value of $r$. Analogically, for superextremal solutions one can consider $(r^2 + |\delta|^2)^2R$ as a function of $g \in (0, \pi)$, where $0$ corresponds to $r\to+\infty$ and $\pi$ to $r\to-\infty$.
Expectedly, all of these examples are singular solutions (fig. \ref{fig:ricci}). Subextremal solutions with A.I and A.II have a singularity at $F=0$ (fig. \ref{fig:ricci_sub}). Solutions A.III (fig. \ref{fig:ricci_sub}) and E.I (fig. \ref{fig:ricci_ext}) have an infinite set of singularities in the vicinity of $F=0$ and $r=0$ correspondingly. The abscissa axis has a logarithmic scale, so only few singularities are drawn. Each tuning-fork-like curve corresponds to a compact space between two singularities. Solutions with an infinite number of singular points have $|z|>1$. Superextremal solutions are represented by B.I and B.II and contain a finite set of singular points.
\begingroup
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{10pt}
\begin{center}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{| c | c c c c c c c c |}
\hline
Case & $M$ & $N$ & $D$ & $Q$ & $P$ & $c$ & $\delta^2$ & $z^2$ \\
\hline
\multicolumn{9}{|c|}{Subextremal}\\
\hline
A.I & $1$ & $0$ & $2$ & $0$ & $1$ & $-11$ & $12$ & $121/256$ \\
\hline
A.II & $1$ & $2$ & $1/2$ & $0$ & $1$ & $17/4$ & $19/4$ & $7803/6859$ \\
\hline
A.III & $1$ & $0$ & $1/2$ & $1$ & $0$ & $9/4$ & $3/4$ & $81$ \\
\hline
\multicolumn{9}{|c|}{Extremal}\\
\hline
E.I & $1$ & $1$ & $-\sqrt{2}$ & $2$ & $2$ &$-8(1+\sqrt{3})$ & $0$ & $\infty$ \\
\hline
\multicolumn{9}{|c|}{Superextremal}\\
\hline
B.I & $1$ & $1$ & $1/2$ & $2$ & $2$ & $-9/4$ & $-21/4$ & $-81/343$ \\
\hline
B.II & $1$ & $0$ & $-1$ & $0$ & $3$ & $-18$ & $-5$ & $-2187/125$ \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Examples of nondegenerate subextremal, extremal and superextremal solutions.}
\label{tab:cases}
\end{table}
\end{center}
\endgroup
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.31\textwidth]{figures/ricci_sub.eps}
\label{fig:ricci_sub}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.31\textwidth]{figures/ricci_ext.eps}
\label{fig:ricci_ext}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.31\textwidth]{figures/ricci_sup.eps}
\label{fig:ricci_sup}
}
\caption{
Ricci curvature $R$ for solutions from the Table \ref{tab:cases}.
(\ref{fig:ricci_sub}) $r^4 R$ as a function of $F$ for subextremal solutions A.I, A.II and A.III;
(\ref{fig:ricci_ext}) $R$ as a function of $r$ for extremal solutions E.I;
(\ref{fig:ricci_sup}) $(r^2 + |\delta|^2)R$ as a function of $g$ for superextremal solutions B.I and B.II.
The scale is logarithmic (except the abscissa of the fig. (\ref{fig:ricci_sup})). The spike in the lower direction corresponds to $R=0$ and is not a singularity.
}
\label{fig:ricci}
\end{figure}
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Degenerate charge matrix}
\label{sec:solution}
It is known \cite{Clement:1986bt} that the regular black holes correspond to a degenerate charge matrix satisfying
\be
\det A=0,
\ee
which means
\begin{equation}\label{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}
P^2 (M - D) - Q^2 (M + D) + 2 N P Q
= 2 D (M^2 + N^2 - D^2).
\end{equation}
In this case the general expressions (\ref{lam}) remain valid,
while the eigenvalues are
$\lambda = -\delta, 0, +\delta$, so that
\begin{align}
g_0 &=
\frac{ -2 + \e^{g \delta} + \e^{-g \delta} }{ 2\delta^2 } =
\frac{ (F - 1)^2 }{ 2\delta^2 F},\nn\\
g_1 &=
\frac{ \e^{g \delta} - \e^{-g \delta} }{ 2 \delta } =
\frac{ 1 - F^2 }{ 2 \delta F},
\\
g_2 &=
\frac{ \e^{g \delta} + \e^{-g \delta} }{ 2 } =
\frac{ 1 + F^2 }{ 2 F },\nn
\end{align}
Substituting $\lambda_{ab}$, $\tau^{-1}$, $g_n$, and $\delta$ into $f$, $\A_t$, and $\e^{-4\alpha\phi/3}$ and performing the shift $r \to r + \delta - M$ one finds:
\begin{equation}
f = \frac{\Delta}{\sqrt{AB}},\qquad
\A_t = \frac{C}{B},\qquad
e^{-4\alpha\phi/3} = \frac{B}{A},
\end{equation}
where
\begin{subequations}
\begin{equation}
\Delta = r(r - 2M) - 3D^2 - N^2 + P^2 + Q^2,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
A = (r+D)^2 - 2D (D - M) + N^2 - P^2 + Q^2,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
B =
(r-D)^2 - 2 D (D+M) + N^2 + P^2 - Q^2,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
C = Q r + D Q - N P
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
together with the constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}).
In terms of these functions the solution will read:
\begin{align} \label{eq:static_solution}
&ds^2 = f ( dt - \omega d\varphi )^2 - f^{-1} \left(
dr^2
+ \Delta \left(
d\theta^2
+ \sin^2\theta d\varphi^2
\right)
\right),
\nn\\
& \mathcal{A} = \frac{C}{B} (dt - \omega d\varphi) + \omega_5 d\varphi,\qquad
\e^{2\alpha\phi/3} = \sqrt{\frac{A}{B}},
\\
&f = \frac{\Delta}{\Sigma},
\quad
\Sigma = \sqrt{A B},
\quad
\omega = - 2 N \cos\theta,
\quad
\omega_5 = P \cos \theta.\nn
\end{align}
This generalizes the solution given in \cite{Gibbons:1985ac} to include a NUT charge. The solution has outer and inner event horizons which can be found from the equation $\Delta=0$, defining two spheres with radii $r^\pm_{H}$
\begin{equation} \label{eq:solution.general.horizon}
r^\pm_{H} = M \pm \sqrt{M^2 + N^2 + 3 D^2 - P^2 - Q^2} \equiv M \pm \delta_H.
\end{equation}
The extremal solutions (with $\delta_H=0$) will be discussed in details in section \ref{sec:extremal}.
The Eqs. $A = 0$ and $B = 0$ define up to four surfaces where the dilaton field tends to $-\infty$ and $+\infty$ respectively. These singular surfaces are spheres with radii
\begin{subequations} \label{eq:solution.general.singularity_AB}
\begin{equation} \label{eq:solution.general.singularity_A}
r^\pm_{A} = - D \pm \sqrt{2D(D-M)-N^2+P^2-Q^2} \equiv -D \pm \delta_A,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation} \label{eq:solution.general.singularity_B}
r^\pm_{B} = D \pm \sqrt{2D(D+M)-N^2-P^2+Q^2} \equiv D \pm \delta_B.
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
This is confirmed by the evaluation of the scalar curvature
\begin{equation}\label{eq:solution.static.invariant_1}
R = -\frac{
8 \Delta \left(
4 N^2 - 2 \Sigma \Sigma '' +\Sigma'^2
\right)
}{\Sigma^3},
\end{equation}
where primes denote derivatives with respect to $r$. The Ricci scalar (\ref{eq:solution.static.invariant_1}) diverges at $\Sigma = 0$ for any set of parameters, including the case of coincident roots for both $\Delta$ and $\Sigma$. The straightforward calculation of other curvature scalars shows that $r_{A,B}^\pm$ are the only singularities.
The novel feature due to NUT is the chronology boundary given by the equation $g_{\varphi\varphi} = 0$, behind which the coordinate lines of $\varphi$ become closed timelike curves. This equation can be solved with respect to $\theta$:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:solution.general.chronology}
\tan^2\theta = 4N^2 \frac{\Delta}{AB}.
\end{equation}
Some examples of the relative location of the above surfaces are shown\footnote{
The figures were constructed with transformations $r = \sqrt{x^2 + y^2},\quad \theta = \arccos\left(y/r\right)$ after a shift $r \rightarrow r - \Delta r$, where $\Delta r$ is indicated for each figure. The shift $\Delta r$ was executed to reflect the whole structure of the surfaces. Black dots indicate the center of figures. Black circles are horizons. If a black circle is dashed, then it coincides with another surface. Red and blue curves are surfaces of $\phi = + \infty$ and $\phi = - \infty$ respectively. Purple curves stand for points where both $A$ and $B$ are zero, so the dilaton field is bounded. Orange curves are chronology boundaries.
} in the fig. \ref{fig:surfaces.all}. Depending on the asymptotics of the expression $\Delta/AB$, the chronology boundary can touch the corresponding surface either at the polar axis (fig. \ref{fig:surfaces.surface_3}) or at the equator (fig. \ref{fig:surfaces.surface_1}), or intersect (fig. \ref{fig:surfaces.surface_2}).
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[height=0.2\textheight]{figures/surface_1.eps}
\label{fig:surfaces.surface_1}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[height=0.2\textheight]{figures/surface_2.eps}
\label{fig:surfaces.surface_2}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[height=0.2\textheight]{figures/surface_3.eps}
\label{fig:surfaces.surface_3}
}
\caption[]{
Important surfaces of static solutions. Solution parameters are shown in the table \ref{tab:params1}.
}
\label{fig:surfaces.all}
\end{figure}
\begin{table}[!ht]
\centering
\caption{ Parameters for the solutions depicted in fig. \ref{fig:surfaces.all}. \label{tab:params1}}
\begin{tabular}{ |c||c|c|c|c|c|c| }
\hline
$\quad$Figure$\quad$ & $\quad M\quad $ & $\quad N\quad $ & $\quad Q\quad $ & $\quad P\quad $ & $\quad D\quad $ & $\quad \Delta r\quad $ \\
\hline
\hline
\ref{fig:surfaces.surface_1} & 0.665 & -0.6 & 1.1 & 0.7 & -0.5 & 1.5 \\
\ref{fig:surfaces.surface_2} & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 3 \\
\ref{fig:surfaces.surface_3} & $\sqrt{3}$ & 1 & 1.96 & -1 & -0.76 & 3 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
Before going to the general classification of the degenerate class of solutions, we briefly mention two well known particular cases.
\paragraph{FNJW}
~
The solution (\ref{eq:static_solution}) without NUT and with trivial Maxwell field ($N=P=Q=0$), like its counterpart in the family $\det A\neq 0$ considered in the previous section, belongs to the particular case of FNJW \cite{Fisher:1948yn,Abdolrahimi:2009dc}
\begin{align} \label{eq:solution.em.fisher}
&
ds^2 = F^S dt^2 - F^{-S}dr^2 - r^2 F^{1-S}d\Omega^2_{(2)},\qquad
\phi = \frac{\sqrt{3}DS}{2M} \ln|F|,
\\\nonumber &
F = 1 - \frac{2M}{Sr},\qquad
S = \cfrac{M}{\left(
M^2 + 3D^2
\right)^{1/2}},
\end{align}
with $|S|=1/2,\,1$, corresponding to the dilaton charge $D = \pm M$ or $0$ respectively. Note that the metric functions in the case $|S|=1/2$ have only square root singularities.
\paragraph{Singly charged solutions}
~
Singly charged solutions without NUT always have horizons \cite{Gibbons:1985ac,Horne:1992bi} {because $\delta_H = M \pm D$ is always real}. Nevertheless, such solutions can be either black holes, or naked singularities, depending on whether the outermost root is that of $\Delta$ or of one of the metric functions $A$, $B$. Here we consider the purely electric case with NUT charge ($Q \neq 0,\, P = 0$). From the constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}) the electric charge is
\begin{equation}\label{eq:solution.single.charge}
Q^2 = -2 \frac{ M^2 + N^2 - D^2 }{ M/D + 1 }.
\end{equation}
Considering (\ref{eq:solution.single.charge}), the outer roots of the functions $\Delta, A, B$ for purely electric solutions have the form (\ref{eq:solution.general.horizon}), (\ref{eq:solution.general.singularity_AB}) with
\begin{subequations}
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:solution.single.delta_h}
\delta_H^2 = (M+D)^2 + N^2 \frac{M + 3D}{M + D},
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:solution.single.delta_a}
\delta_A^2 = N^2\frac{D-M}{D+M},
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:solution.single.delta_b}
\delta_B^2 = 4D^2 - N^2 \frac{3D+M}{D+M}.
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
The solution is physical and the function $\Delta(r)$ has no roots if the following two conditions hold: (\textit{i}) $Q^2 > 0$ and (\textit{ii}) $\delta_H^2 < 0$. From (\ref{eq:solution.single.delta_h}) the condition (\textit{ii}) is satisfied for $N^2 > -(M + D)^3/(M + 3D) > 0$, requiring a non-zero NUT charge. The fraction is negative if
\begin{equation}\label{eq:solution.single.int}
1 < - M/D < 3,
\end{equation}
hence the denominator in (\ref{eq:solution.single.charge}) is negative and we require $M^2 + N^2 - D^2 > 0$ to satisfy the condition (\textit{i}). Substituting the lower bound of $N^2$ in the expression (\ref{eq:solution.single.charge}) for $Q^2$, one can get its lower bound $(Q^2)_\text{min} = 8 D^3(M + 3D)$, which is always positive under the condition (\ref{eq:solution.single.int}). Thus, for the interval (\ref{eq:solution.single.int}) and large enough $N^2$, the purely electric solution has a positive-definite $\Delta(r)$. This could give worholes, but as we will show further, there is no static wormholes among the 4D solutions (\ref{eq:static_solution}), which become naked singularities (contrary to the case of the Brill solution \cite{Clement:2015aka}).
With the discrete symmetry $N\to-N$, $D\to-D$ and $Q\to P$, the similar conclusions are also valid for purely magnetic solutions.
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Three dilaton branches }\label{sec:classification}
Now we discuss a feature which apparently has not been sufficiently studied before, due to cubic narture to the constraint equation (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}). First note that electromagnetic and gravitational duality properties suggest the following reparametrization of the charges:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:charge_parametrization1}
P = e\cos\alpha\,, \;
Q = e\sin\alpha\,, \;
N = \mu\cos\beta\,, \;
M = \mu\sin\beta\,,
\end{equation}
where $\alpha,\, \beta \in [0, 2\pi)$ and $e,\, \mu \geq 0$. The cubic constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}) with new parameters reads
\begin{equation} \label{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}
D^3 - \frac{e^2+2\mu^2}{2}D + \frac{1}{2}e^2\mu\sin(2\alpha+\beta) = 0\,.
\end{equation}
The constraint equation (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) can be solved with respect to the charge $D$. All roots of the cubic equation $x^3 + px + q = 0$ are real if and only if its discriminant $\Delta_x(p,q) = -4p^3 - 27q^2$ is non-negative. Actually, the discriminant of the constraint equation (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) is
\begin{equation} \label{eq:constraint_discriminant}
\Delta_D =
\frac{1}{4}
\left(e^2 - 4 \mu^2\right)^2
\left(2 e^2 + \mu^2\right)
+ \frac{27}{4} e^4 \mu^2 \cos^2( 2\alpha + \beta ),
\end{equation}
which is a non-negative polynomial. Therefore, $D$ has three real roots (two of them can coincide when $\Delta_D=0$). Introducing new parameters
\begin{equation}
h^2 = e^2 + 2 \mu^2\,,\qquad
f^3 = e^2 \mu \sin(2\alpha+\beta),\qquad
\gamma = \arccos{\frac{3^{3/2}f^3}{2^{1/2}h^3}}\,,
\end{equation}
the solution can be represented as
\begin{equation}
D_k = \sqrt{\frac{2}{3}} h \cos\frac{\gamma - (2 k - 1)\pi}{3},
\end{equation}
where $k=-1,0,+1$. Electromagnetic duality ($\alpha \to \pi/2 - \alpha,\;\beta \to \pi - \beta,\;D\to-D$) transforms $D_{-1} \leftrightarrow D_{+1}$ into each other and $D_{0}$ into itself. As the constraint equation (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) does not contain the square term, thus the sum of all roots is zero $D_{-1} + D_0 + D_{+1} = 0$.
To classify the solutions as regular black holes, singular black holes and naked timelike singularities, one should find solutions to the equations $\delta_H = 0$, and $\delta_{A,B} = 0$, and reveal the outermost real root among $r^\pm_{H,A,B}$.
\subsection{Domains of dilaton charge branches $D_k$}
The solutions $D_k$ for the constraint equation (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) entirely belong to the regions with boundaries $\mu^2 = D^2$ (fig. \ref{fig:D_boundaries}). The branch $D_0$ satisfies the condition $D_0^2 \leq \mu^2$, while the other two branches satisfy the inequality $\pm D_{\pm 1} \geq \mu$. These branches will be shown to have different behaviour in our classification.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{figures/D_boundaries.eps}
\caption{Values of $D_{0}/\mu$ (blue), $D_{+1}/\mu$ (brown), $D_{-1}/\mu$ (green) for different values of $e/\mu = 0, 1, 1.5, 2, 3$ as a function of $2\alpha + \beta$. Arrows demonstrate the direction of $e/\mu$ growth.}
\label{fig:D_boundaries}
\end{figure}
The branch $D_0$ touches the other branches $D_{\pm 1}$ at the points $2\alpha + \beta = (2 \mp 1)\pi/2$ with $e=2\mu$, which allows for finding a continuous path in the charge space to connect solutions from different branches. For $e=2\mu$ the branches $D_k$ are not smooth, but they can be piece-wisely glued into smooth functions:
\begin{equation}
\tilde{D}_k = 2 \mu \sin\left(\frac{2\alpha+\beta + 2\pi k }{3}\right),\quad k \in \mathds{Z},
\end{equation}
which follows straightforward from the constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}).
According to these boundaries for each branch, one can suggest further developments of charge parametrization to simplify calculations. For example, the branch $D_0$ permits the following parametrization
\begin{equation}
\mu = \sigma \cosh \gamma,\qquad
D = \sigma \sinh \gamma,\qquad
\sigma \geq 0,\qquad
\gamma \in \mathds{R}.
\end{equation}
Then the constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) reads
\begin{equation} \label{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new_2}
\sigma \left( e^2 \cosh\gamma \sin(2 \alpha + \beta) - \sinh\gamma \left( e^2 + 2 \sigma^2 \right) \right) = 0.
\end{equation}
Similar parametrizations can be introduced for the branches $D_{\pm1}$. The constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new_2}) can be easily resolved with respect to the parameter $\gamma$ in terms of inverse hyperbolic functions, which allows to write the metric functions in a simple, but lengthy way with independent parameters.
\subsection{Degenerate singularity}
If the solution is a naked singularity, the singularity can originate from the function $A$, $B$ or both of them. When the functions $A$ and $B$ have the same outer roots $r^+_A=r^+_B$, which do not coincide with their inner roots $r^-_{A,B}$, then the dilaton value at the corresponding surface is finite and only vector potential $A_\mu$ has a singularity. We will call this case a ``degenerate'' naked singularity. The equation $r_A^+ = r_B^+$ for such degenerate singularity reads
\begin{equation} \label{eq:double_singularity_1}
2D = \delta_A - \delta_B.
\end{equation}
Squaring the equation (\ref{eq:double_singularity_1}) and using the definitions (\ref{eq:solution.general.singularity_AB}) gives
\begin{equation}
N^2 + \delta_A \delta_B = 0,
\end{equation}
which holds if $N = 0$ and $\delta_A \delta_B = 0$. Substituting it back into (\ref{eq:double_singularity_1}) results in $\delta_A = 2D,\,\delta_B=0$ for positive $D$ and $\delta_B = 2D,\,\delta_A=0$ for negative $D$. Each of this pair of equations can be rewritten in a simple form
\begin{equation} \label{eq:double_singularity_general_1}
-2D M + P^2 - Q^2 = 2 D|D|,
\end{equation}
Considering the constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}) one can find 3 different cases with $N=0$: ${D > 0, Q = 0}$; ${D = 0, Q^2 = P^2}$; ${D < 0, P = 0}$.
In the case of a non-zero dilaton charge $D\neq 0$, the outer singularity $r^+_A=r^+_B$ necessarily coincides with one of the inner singularity $r^-_A$ or $r^-_B$, so the dilaton field is not regular at this point. These degenerate singularities are not permitted. On the other hand, the case $D=0$ is a regular black hole, corresponding to the extremal dyonic Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m solution.
\subsection{$D_{0}$-branch $\mu^2 \geq D^2$}
\textbf{Event horizon existence.}
The necessary condition for horizon existence is $\delta_H^2 \geq 0$. The Killing horizon becomes extremal for
\begin{equation}
2\alpha + \beta = n \pi \pm l,
\qquad
l = \arcsin\left(
\frac{
\sqrt{e^2-\mu^2} \left(e^2+8\mu^2\right)
}{
3 \sqrt{3} e^2 \mu^3
}
\right),\qquad
n \in \mathds{Z}.
\end{equation}
The quantity $l$ is not real for $e/\mu < 1$ and $e/\mu > 2$. One can make sure that the quantity $\delta_H^2$ is strictly positive for $e/\mu < 1$ and strictly negative for $e/\mu > 2$. The Killing horizon does not exist in the intervals $ 2\alpha + \beta \in {(n \pi - l, n \pi + l)} $ with any integer $n$ when ${1 \leq e/\mu \leq 2}$.
\textbf{Singularities.} The transformations $\alpha \to \pi/2 - \alpha$ ($P \leftrightarrow Q$) and $\beta \to \pi - \beta$ ($N \to -N$) lead to the change of the dilaton charge sign $D_{0}\to-D_{0}$ and translate the function $A$ to the function $B$ and vice verse. Therefore, results for $\delta^2_B$ can be obtained from results for $\delta^2_A$ after such transformations. The functions $\delta^2_{A,B}$ in terms of the parameters (\ref{eq:charge_parametrization1}) are
\begin{subequations}
\begin{equation}
\delta^2_A =
-\mu^2 \cos^2\beta
+ 2D_{0}(D_{0}-\mu\sin\beta)
+ e^2 \cos(2\alpha),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\delta^2_B =
-\mu^2 \cos^2\beta
+ 2D_{0}(D_{0}+\mu\sin\beta)
- e^2 \cos(2\alpha).
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
For the branch $D=D_{0}$, the functions $\delta^2_{A,B}$ are invariant under the transformation $\alpha \to \alpha + \pi$ or another transformation $\beta \to \beta + \pi$, which can be observed as a symmetry in the fig. \ref{fig:classification_singularity_2}. For the case $e/\mu=0$ the dilaton charge is $D_0=0$, and the singularities exist ($\delta^2_{A} \geq 0$ or $\delta^2_{B} \geq 0$) only if $\beta = \pi / 2, \; 3\pi /2$, which corresponds to the NUTless case $N=0$. Increasing the ratio $e/\mu$, these lines distend (fig. \ref{fig:classification_singularity_2} a and b). At the point $e/\mu=1$, the regions distended from the two lines touch each other and merge (fig. \ref{fig:classification_singularity_2} c and d). The regions for the values $1 < e/\mu \leq 2$, where the $A$- or $B$-singularity is absent, can be distinguished as ellipse-like, with ellipses touching each other at $\beta=\pi/2, 3\pi/2$ (fig. \ref{fig:classification_singularity_2} d, e, f). For the value $e/\mu=\sqrt{1+\sqrt{2}}$ the whole plane $(\alpha,\beta)$ is covered by regions where at least one singularity exists. This value can be found from the equation $\delta_A=\delta_B=0$ for $\beta = 0$, where the $A$- singularity touches the $B$-singularity (fig. \ref{fig:classification_singularity_2} e). For the values $e/\mu>2$ ellipse-like regions merge into vertical strips (fig. \ref{fig:classification_singularity_2} g, h). The boundaries of the strips tend to the solutions for $\mu=0$, which for $\delta^2_{A,B}=0$ is solved by $\alpha = (2n+1) \pi / 4$ with $n \in \mathds{Z}$.
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{figures/D0_sings.eps}
\caption{
Regions of singularity existence (red for $\delta^2_B > 0$ and blue for $\delta^2_A > 0$, purple for existence of both of them) for different values $e/\mu$: (a) $0.5$, (b) $0.95$, (c) $1.0$, (d) $1.05$, (e) $\sqrt{1+\sqrt{2}}$, (f) $2.0$, (g) $2.1$, (h) $3.0$. The x- and y- coordinates stand for $\alpha$ and $\beta$ respectively.
}
\label{fig:classification_singularity_2}
\end{figure}
\textbf{Singular horizon.} A singular horizon can appear if the equation $r_A^+ = r^+_H$ or $r_B^+ = r^+_H$ holds, where the quantities at both sides should be real. Actually, such solutions may not be singular black holes due to covering of the event horizon by an another singularity. As these equations are complex enough to find their solutions analytically, they can be found numerically. The simplest case is $e=0,\,\beta=3\pi/2$ which is the Schwarzschild solution with negative mass $M$. All the other singular black holes are extremal with $r_H^+=r_A^+,\,\delta_A=0$ or $r_H^+=r_B^+,\,\delta_B=0$, i.e.
\begin{equation}
M=-D,\qquad
Q=\pm2M,\qquad
P=\mp N
\end{equation}
or
\begin{equation}
M=D,\qquad
P=\pm2M,\qquad
Q=\pm N.
\end{equation}
Nevertheless, not all extremal solutions are singular (fig. \ref{fig:classification_cls}). There are twice more singular black holes for $1 < e/\mu < \sqrt{2}$ than for $\sqrt{2} < e/\mu < 2$. A half of the singular black hole solutions disappear at $e/\mu = \sqrt{2}$ because a new singularity appears and covers a singular horizon.
\textbf{Classification.}
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{figures/D0_classification.eps}
\caption{
Classification of solutions (red for naked singularities coming from $r_B$, blue for naked singularities coming from $r_A$, green for black holes, black lines for extremal black holes, red dots for singular black holes) for different values $e/\mu$: (a) $0.5$, (b) $0.95$, (c) $1.0$, (d) $1.05$, (e) $\sqrt{1+\sqrt{2}}$, (f) $2.0$, (g) $2.1$, (h) $3.0$. The abscissa and ordinate stand for $\alpha$ and $\beta$ respectively.
}
\label{fig:classification_cls}
\end{figure}
The full classification can be found in fig. \ref{fig:classification_cls}. For $e/\mu=0$ all the plane ($\alpha,\beta$) represents a regular black hole, except the case $\beta=3\pi/2$, where it becomes a singular black hole. Increasing $e/\mu$, naked singularities appear in the vicinity of the line $\beta=3\pi/2$. There are only regular black holes for $0 \leq e/\mu \leq 1$ and positive $M$. For $1 \leq e/\mu \leq 2$, naked singularities appear in the region $M>0$ ($0<\beta<\pi$) as well. For $e/\mu\geq2$ (including $\mu = 0$) there are naked singularities only. Singular black holes appearing in $1\le e/\mu \le 2$ are extreme.
\subsection{$D_{\pm1}$-branch $\mu^2 \leq D^2$}
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[height=0.2\textheight]{figures/D1_example.eps}
\includegraphics[height=0.2\textheight]{figures/D1_SBH.eps}
\caption{
left: $r_H/\mu$ (black), $r_A/\mu$ (blue), $r_B/\mu$ (red) for $e=1.75, \beta=5\pi/4$ as a function of $\alpha$;
right: $r_B=r_H$ for $e=0.5$ (black), $2$ (blue), $4$ (purple), $32$ (red).
}
\label{fig:classification_cls_2}
\end{figure}
In this section we will consider only the positive branch $D_{+1}$. To obtain results for $D_{-1}$ one should perform EM-duality and swap functions $A$ and $B$ in conclusions. As can be found numerically, the functions $\delta^2_{H,A,B}$ are always non-negative for these branches and the inequality $r_A^+ \leq r_H^+ \leq r_B^+$ always holds (fig.\ref{fig:classification_cls_2} left). Generally, these solutions are naked singularities, except particular cases of singular black holes in the vicinity of $\alpha=n\pi, n\in\mathds{Z}$ (fig.\ref{fig:classification_cls_2} right). This conclusion is consistent with the uniqueness theorem. In \cite{Yazadjiev:2010bj} Yazadjiev proved the uniqueness of asymptotically flat regular black holes (without NUT) with respect to charges $M, Q, P$ and rotation $J$. We can expect that static black hole solutions with NUT charge should be uniquely defined by the four charges $M, N, P, Q$. Despite the existence of three distinct roots $D_k$ of the charge constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}), only one of them $D_0$ can be the regular black hole solution, while the two others $D_{\pm1}$ represent either a singular black hole or a naked singularity.
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Extremal solutions} \label{sec:extremal}
The condition of extremal horizon $\delta_H=0$ reads
\begin{equation} \label{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_1}
3 D^2 = P^2 + Q^2 - M^2 - N^2.
\end{equation}
Substituting $D$ from (\ref{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_1}) into the charge constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}) we get
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_2}
& 27 \left[M \left(P^2-Q^2\right)+2 N P Q\right]^2 = \left(-M^2-N^2+P^2+Q^2\right) \left(8 M^2+8 N^2+P^2+Q^2 \right)^2
\end{eqnarray}
The equation (\ref{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_2}) is more compact in terms of the parameters (\ref{eq:charge_parametrization1})
\begin{equation}\label{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_4}
(e^2 - 4\mu^2)^3 + 27 e^4\mu^2 \cos^2\left(2\alpha + \beta\right) = 0.
\end{equation}
Additionally, there is the condition of a real dilaton field $D^2 \geq 0$. From the condition of extreme horizon (\ref{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_1}), this corresponds to $3D^2 = P^2 + Q^2 - M^2 - N^2 \geq 0$, i.e. $e \geq \mu$. At the same time, the equation (\ref{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_4}) has no real solutions for $e < \mu$ and $e > 2\mu$. Thus, any solution of the equation (\ref{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_4}) leads to a real dilaton charge $D$.
It can be checked that the solution of this equation is
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:cases.extreme.static.condition_2}
\left(\frac{2\mu}{e}\right)^{2/3} =
\sin^{2/3} \left(
\alpha +\frac{\beta}{2} -\frac{3\pi}{4}
\right)
+
\cos^{2/3} \left(
\alpha +\frac{\beta}{2}-\frac{3\pi}{4}
\right)
\end{eqnarray}
Multiplying by $(2\mu e^2)^{1/3}$ and rewriting the trigonometric functions in terms of the initial charges, one can find
\begin{eqnarray} \label{eq:cases.extreme.static.condition_3}
&2\sqrt{M^2 + N^2}
= \\\nonumber & =
\left[
(P^2+Q^2)\sqrt{M^2 + N^2}
+ (P^2 - Q^2) M
+ 2 P Q N
\right]^{1/3}
+\\\nonumber&+
\left[
(P^2+Q^2)\sqrt{M^2 + N^2}
+ (Q^2 - P^2) M
- 2 P Q N
\right]^{1/3}
\end{eqnarray}
This solution is represented in the fig. \ref{fig:surfaces.extreme_static}. Note that these extreme solutions are not necessary extreme black holes, as the extreme horizon may be covered by a naked singularity or coincide with a singularity.
For $N = 0$ (fig. \ref{fig:surfaces.extreme_NUTless_static}) the equation (\ref{eq:cases.extreme.static.condition_3}) takes the form $(2M)^{2/3} = P^{2/3} + Q^{2/3}$ which agrees with Rasheed's result \cite{Rasheed:1995zv}.
\begin{figure}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.55\textwidth]{figures/extremal.eps}\label{fig:surfaces.extreme_static_1}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{figures/extremal_nutless.eps}\label{fig:surfaces.extreme_NUTless_static}
}
\caption{Extreme static solutions in the charge space (\ref{fig:surfaces.extreme_static_1}) and extreme NUTless static solutions (\ref{fig:surfaces.extreme_NUTless_static}).}
\label{fig:surfaces.extreme_static}
\end{figure}
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Oxidation to five dimensions}\label{sec:5d}
As already mentioned, solutions of EMD theory with $\alpha^2 = 3$ can be oxidized through (\ref{met5}) to solutions of five-dimensional vacuum Einstein gravity periodic in the fifth dimension, i.e. Kaluza-Klein theory. We will only discuss here the degenerate case $\det\,A = 0$. The non-rotating stationary five-dimensional metric is such that ${\rm det}\,g = A^2\sin^2\theta$, with metric elements ($x^0 = t$)
\begin{subequations}
\ba
&&g_{55} = -\dfrac{B}A\,, \quad g_{05} = -\dfrac{2C}A\,, \quad g_{00}
= \dfrac{F}{A} \,, \\ && g_{5\varphi} = -\dfrac{2B}A\omega_5 +
\dfrac{2C}A\omega_t \,, \quad g_{0\varphi} = -\dfrac{4C}A\omega_5 -
\dfrac{F}{A}\omega_t\,, \\ && g_{\varphi\varphi} =
-\dfrac{4B}A\omega_5^2 + \dfrac{8C}A\omega_5\omega_t +
\dfrac{F}{A}\omega_t^2 - A\sin^2\theta \,,
\ea
\end{subequations}
where
\be
F = \dfrac{A\Delta-4C^2}B\,,
\ee
with an apparent singularity for $B=0$. However, after taking (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}) into account,
one obtains for the solution (\ref{eq:static_solution})
\be \label{eq:oxidation.F}
F = (r+2D-M)^2 - M^2 - N^2 + D^2 - Q^2 - P^2\,,
\ee
so that (as conjectured by Chen \cite{Chen:2000yi}), the 5D metric is
singularity-free provided $A>0$ for all real $r$.
\subsection{Wormholes}
If furthermore $\Delta>0$ for all real $r$, the five-dimensional metric does not correspond to a black hole,
but to a five-dimensional wormhole. So the two conditions for the existence of non-rotating five-dimensional wormholes are
\ba
-\,\delta_A^2 &=& Q^2 - P^2 + N^2 + 2MD - 2D^2 > 0 \,, \lb{A} \\
-\,\delta_H^2 &=& Q^2 + P^2 - N^2 - M^2 - 3D^2 > 0 \,. \lb{Da}
\ea
Adding the two together one obtains $2Q^2 > (M-D)^2 + 4D^2$, so that
$Q\neq0$ is a necessary condition for the existence of five-dimensional wormholes. The
Chodos-Detweiler wormhole \cite{Chodos:1980df} has only electric charge $Q$,
however it is not traversable \cite{AzregAinou:1990zp}. This was generalized by
Chen \cite{Chen:2000yi} to a dyonic wormhole ($M=N=D=0$) with $Q^2>P^2$ on account of
(\ref{A}).
Using the parametrization (\ref{eq:charge_parametrization1}) the constraint (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) may be used to eliminate
$\sin(2\alpha+\beta)$ in terms of the three charges $e,\mu,D$,
while the two wormhole conditions (\ref{A}) and (\ref{Da}) read
\ba
&& -e^2\cos{2\alpha} + \mu^2\cos^2\beta + 2D\mu\sin\beta - 2D^2 >
0\,, \lb{A1} \\
&& e^2 - \mu^2 - 3D^2 > 0\,. \lb{Da1}
\ea
Then, the condition $\sin^2(2\alpha+\beta)\le1$ is equivalent to
\be\lb{second}
(\mu^2-D^2)[(e^2-2D^2)^2-4\mu^2D^2] \ge 0\,.
\ee
The term in square brackets is strictly positive because
\be
2D(D\pm\mu) \le \mu^2 + 3D^2 < e^2
\ee
on account of (\ref{Da1}). Therefore the secondary condition
(\ref{second}) is equivalent to
\be\lb{second1}
\mu^2 \ge D^2\,.
\ee
This condition is satisfied by the branch $D_0$.
The general analysis of the system (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}), (\ref{A1}), (\ref{Da1}) is complicated by the cubic character of the constraint
(\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint}). However the numerical investigation of the $D_0$-branch of the solution leads to the classification of five-dimensional solutions summarized in Fig. \ref{fig:classification_cls_5d}. For $e<\mu$, solutions with positive mass $M>0$ ($0<\beta<\pi$) are black holes,
while those with negative mass can be either black holes or naked singularities. For $\mu \leq e \leq 2\mu$ the solution can be a wormhole, a black hole
(either with regular or singular horizon) or a naked singularity. Solutions with $e > 2\mu$ can represent naked singularities or wormholes,
depending on both angles, but purely electric solutions are wormholes and purely magnetic ones are naked singularities.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{figures/D5_classification.eps}
\caption{
Classification of solutions in 5D for different values $e/\mu$: (a) $0.5$, (b) $0.95$, (c) $1.0$, (d) $1.05$, (e) $\sqrt{1+\sqrt{2}}$, (f) $2.0$, (g) $2.1$, (h) $3.0$. Green for black holes, red for naked singularities and yellow for wormholes. Blue lines satisfy $\delta_A^2=0$ and black lines satisfy $\delta^2_H=0$. The $x$ and $y$ axis stand for $\alpha$ and $\beta$ respectively.
}
\label{fig:classification_cls_5d}
\end{figure}
From the analysis of the 4D case, the inequality $r_B \geq r_\Delta \geq r_A$ always holds for the branch $D_{+1}$ and $r_A \geq r_\Delta \geq r_B$ for $D_{-1}$. Therefore, $D_{+1}$ and $D_{-1}$ are black holes and naked singularities in 5D respectively, consistent with (\ref{second1}).
\subsection{Special cases}
Two special cases are particularly simple:
1) \underline{$D=0$}. Then, if $\mu\neq0$ the constraint
(\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) is solved by $\beta=-2\alpha \, (\text{mod} \, \pi)$, with
$\cos2\alpha < 0$ from (\ref{A1}) (using $\mu^2<e^2$ from
(\ref{Da1})). In terms of the five charges $M,N,D,Q,P$, this
solution, such that
\be
Q^2 > P^2\,, \;\; M = 2\lambda QP\,, \;\; N = \lambda(Q^2-P^2)\,,
\;\; D = 0\,,
\ee
with $\lambda$ real bounded by
\be
\lambda^2(Q^2+P^2) < 1\,,
\ee
is a generalisation of Chen's dyonic wormhole.
2) \underline{$D^2=\mu^2$} ($D=\pm\mu$), which saturates the bound
(\ref{second1}). Then (\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}) is solved by $\beta=-2\alpha
\pm \pi/2$. In terms of the original charges,
\be
M = \lambda(Q^2-P^2)\,, \;\; N = -2\lambda QP\,, \;\; D =
-\lambda(Q^2+P^2)\,.
\ee
The bounds (\ref{A}) and (\ref{Da}) lead to simple equations when
expressed in terms of $M$ and $D$, or
\be
x=\lambda M = - \dfrac{MD}{Q^2+P^2}\,, \quad y = -\lambda D =
\dfrac{D^2}{Q^2+P^2}\,.
\ee
These are respectively
\ba
x - (x+y)^2 &>& 0\,, \\
y - 4y^2 &>& 0\,,
\ea
and are solved by
\be
0 < \dfrac{1-2y-\sqrt{1-4y}}2 < x < \dfrac{1-2y+\sqrt{1-4y}}2\,,
\quad 0 < y < \dfrac14\,.
\ee
Note that $x>0$ implies $Q^2>P^2$. A simple subcase is $x=y$,
leading to
\be
P = 0\,,\;\; N = 0\,,\;\; M = - D\,,\;\; Q^2 > 4M^2\,.
\ee
One can directly check that this is the only solution of the system
(\ref{eq:sigma.charge_constraint_new}), (\ref{A}), (\ref{Da}) with $P=N=0$. This massive
generalization of the Chodos-Detweiler wormhole (which is recovered
for $M=0$) was previously discussed in \cite{AzregAinou:1990zp}, where it was
shown to be non traversable. The CD wormhole was shown in \cite{AzregAinou:1999}
to be unstable under small radial perturbations, the stability
status of its massive generalizations is undecided.
\subsection{Chronology boundary and ergo-region}
The chronology boundary $g_{\varphi\varphi}=0$ is the solution of
\begin{equation}
\tan^2\theta = -4\frac{ P^2 B + 4PNC - N^2F}{A^2}.
\end{equation}
Asymptotically for $r\to\infty$ one can find
\begin{equation}\label{eq:chronology_5d}
\tan^2\theta \approx
\frac{4 \left(N^2-P^2\right)}{r^2}
-\frac{8 \left(P (2 N Q - 3 D P) + M N^2\right)}{r^3}
+\mathcal{O}(r^{-4}).
\end{equation}
If $N^2 > P^2$ the chronology boundary envelops the polar axis at the infinity with radius $\rho_s = r\sin\theta \approx 2\sqrt{N^2-P^2}$.
For the case $N^2<P^2$ the equation (\ref{eq:chronology_5d}) does not have real roots for large $r$, so the chronology boundary is compact.
One can discover an interesting case $N^2=P^2$, where the radius of the chronology boundary tends to zero at infinity. Furthermore,
we can impose the condition of extremal horizon (\ref{eq:cases.extreme.horizon_1}), and specialize to $P =\pm N$, $Q=\mp 2M$, $D=-M$.
After transformations $r\to r + M$ and $t \to t \pm x^5$ this solution has the form
\begin{equation}
ds^2 = \left(1-\frac{4M}r - \frac{2N^2}{r^2}\right)dt^2 \pm 2dt(dx^5 \pm 2N\cos\theta d\varphi)dt - dr^2 - r^2 (d\theta^2 + \sin^2\theta d\varphi^2).
\end{equation}
We recognize in this extremal metric the one-center case of a multi-center five-dimensional metric constructed in \cite{Clement:1985gm} (Eq. (49)).
It represents an electric monopole endowed with NUT charge. Remarkably, although two Dirac-Misner strings extend along the symmetry axis from the source $r=0$
to $\pm\infty$, it is free from closed timelike curves.
Another chronology boundary appears for $g_{55} = 0$, that is $B=0$. An ergo-region appears at $F=0$ due to the rotation in the plane ($t$, $x_5$) with radius
\begin{equation}\label{eq:5d_ergo}
r_F^\pm = M - 2D \pm \sqrt{M^2 + N^2 + P^2 + Q^2 - D^2}.
\end{equation}
The branch $D_0$ always possesses real roots of (\ref{eq:5d_ergo}) as $D_0^2 \leq M^2 + N^2$.
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Geodesics}
\label{sec:geodesics}
\subsection{Constants of motion}
The solution (\ref{eq:static_solution}) possesses the same Killing vectors as the Schwarzschild-NUT solution \cite{Clement:2015aka}
\begin{subequations}\label{eq:geo.killing}
\begin{equation}
K_{(t)} = \partial_t,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
K_{(\varphi)} = \partial_\varphi,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
K_{(x)} = 2N \frac{\cos\varphi}{\sin\theta} \partial_t - \sin\varphi \partial_\theta - \cos\varphi \cot\theta \partial_\varphi,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
K_{(y)} = 2N \frac{\sin\varphi}{\sin\theta} \partial_t + \cos\varphi \partial_\theta - \sin\varphi \cot\theta \partial_\varphi.
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
The analysis of geodesic motion in the static case is similar to that for the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m-NUT metric (RN-NUT), which possesses spherical symmetry at the level of algebra. The geodesic motion for the RN-NUT metric was analyzed in \cite{Clement:2015aka, Zimmerman:1989kv}. The Killing vectors $K_{(t)}$ and $K_{(\varphi)}$ lead to the conservation laws of energy $E$ and angular momentum projection $J_z$
\begin{subequations}\label{eq:geodesics.static.constant_eJ}
\begin{equation} \label{eq:geodesics.static.constant_e}
E = f \left(\dot{t} + 2 N \cos\theta \dot{\varphi}\right),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics.static.constant_J_z}
J_z =
\Sigma \sin^2\theta \dot{\varphi}
- 2NE\cos\theta,
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
where the dot $\dot{}$ means the derivative with respect to the affine parameter $\tau$. In addition, the metric admits three Killing vectors ($K_{(x,y,\varphi)}$) corresponding to the generators of the rotation group $SO(3)$. The spatial Killing vectors allow to introduce a conserved total angular momentum vector $\vec{J}$, which can be divided into two parts -- the orbital angular momentum $\vec{L}$ and the spin angular momentum $\vec{S}$
\begin{equation} \label{eq:geodesics.static.sum_angular}
\vec{J} = \vec{L} + \vec{S},
\end{equation}
with
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics.static.angular_defs}
J_i = - K_{(i)}^\mu \dot{x}_\mu, \quad
\vec{L} = \Sigma \left[\hat{r} \times \dot{\hat{r}} \right], \quad
\vec{S} = S \hat{r},
\end{equation}
where $S=-2 N E$ and $\hat{r}$ is a unit vector normal to the 2-sphere
\begin{equation*}
\hat{r} = \left(
\sin\theta \cos\varphi,
\sin\theta \sin\varphi,
\cos\theta
\right).
\end{equation*}
The statement (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.sum_angular}) can be verified with the definitions (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.angular_defs}) and the substitution $\dot{t}$ from (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.constant_eJ}). From the orthogonality of $\vec{L}$ and $\vec{S}$, it follows
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics.static.jls}
J^2 = L^2 + S^2.
\end{equation}
As $J^2$ and $S^2$ are constants, $L^2$ is a constant as well. Squaring $\vec{L}$ from the definition (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.angular_defs}) gives the following relation
\begin{equation} \label{eq:geodesics.static.sphere_L}
L^2 =
\Sigma^2 \left(\dot{\theta}^2+\sin^2\theta \dot{\varphi}^2\right).
\end{equation}
\subsection{Angular and temporal motion}
Following \cite{Kagramanova:2010bk} and \cite{Clement:2015aka} let us introduce a new parameter, "Mino" time $\lambda$, instead of the affine parameter $\tau$, a new variable $\xi$, and divide the coordinate time $t$ into two components:
\begin{equation}
d\tau = \Sigma d\lambda,\qquad
\xi = \cos\theta,\qquad
t(\lambda) = t_r(\lambda) + t_\theta(\lambda),
\end{equation}
such that
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:geodesics.static.tr_eq}
t_r' = E \frac{\Sigma}{f},
\end{equation}
where ${}'$ denotes derivative with respect to $\lambda$.
Then, equations (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.sphere_L}) and (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.constant_eJ}) can be resolved with respect to $t, \xi, \varphi$
\begin{subequations}
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:geodesics.static.xi_eq}
\xi'^2 = - J^2\xi^2 +2S J_z \xi + L^2 - J_z^2,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:geodesics.static.phi_eq}
\varphi'
= \frac{1}{2}\left(
\frac{J_z + S}{1 + \cos\theta}
+
\frac{J_z - S}{1 - \cos\theta}
\right),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:geodesics.static.ttheta_eq}
t_\theta' =
N \left(
-2S
+
\frac{S + J_z}{1 + \cos\theta}
+
\frac{S - J_z}{1 - \cos\theta}
\right),
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
Equations for (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.xi_eq}), (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.phi_eq}) and (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.ttheta_eq}) coincide with the equations for the RN-NUT solution in Einstein-Maxwell theory, which were solved in \cite{Clement:2015aka}:
\begin{subequations}
\begin{align}
& \label{eq:geodesics.static.theta_functions}
\cos\theta = \cos\psi \cos\eta + \sin\psi \sin\eta \cos(J\lambda),
\\
& \label{eq:geodesics.static.phi_solution}
\phi = \phi_0
+ \arctan\left[
\frac{\cos\psi - \cos\eta}{1 - \cos(\psi - \eta)}
\tan\frac{J\lambda}{2}
\right]
+ \\\nonumber & \quad\quad
+ \arctan\left[
\frac{\cos\psi + \cos\eta}{1 + \cos(\psi - \eta)}
\tan\frac{J\lambda}{2}
\right],
\\
& \label{eq:geodesics.static.t_theta_solution}
\frac{t_\theta}{2N} =
-S \lambda
- \pi \left(
\text{sgn}(J_z - S)
- \text{sgn}(J_z + S)
\right)
\left\lfloor
\frac{J\lambda}{2\pi} + \frac{1}{2}
\right\rfloor
- \\\nonumber & \quad\quad
- \arctan\left[
\frac{\cos\psi - \cos\eta}{1 - \cos(\psi - \eta)}
\tan\frac{J\lambda}{2}
\right]
+ \arctan\left[
\frac{\cos\psi + \cos\eta}{1 + \cos(\psi - \eta)}
\tan\frac{J\lambda}{2}
\right],
\end{align}
\end{subequations}
where
\begin{align*}
& J \cos\eta = S,
& J \sin\eta = L,\\
& J \cos\psi = J_z,
& J \sin\psi = J_\perp,\\
\end{align*}
with
$$J_\perp^2 = J^2 - J_z^2.$$
As discussed in \cite{Clement:2015aka}, it follows from $\vec{J}\cdot\hat{r} = S$ that all the orbits with $r'=0$ are circular, whatever the plane in which they lie.
\subsection{Radial motion}
The radial equation can be obtained from the constraint $\dot{x}_\mu \dot{x}^\mu = \varepsilon$ with $\varepsilon = 1, 0, -1$ for time-like, null and space-like geodesics. Substituting $E$, $J_z$ and $L$ instead of $\dot{t}$, $\dot{\varphi}$, $\dot{\theta}$, and rewriting the equation for Mino time, one can get the radial equation
\begin{equation} \label{eq:geodesics.static.radial_mino}
r'^2 = E^2 \Sigma^2 - \Delta \left( \varepsilon \Sigma +L^2 \right).
\end{equation}
\textbf{Scattering on the string inside the chronology boundary.}
We will show that null and time-like geodesics can scatter near the Misner string inside the chronology boundary. For large $r$, the radial equation is $\dot{r}^2 = E^2 - \varepsilon$, imposing the only condition $E^2 \geq \varepsilon$. Now, consider the equation (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.xi_eq}) for $\xi'$ with $\xi = \pm (1 - \epsilon)$ and $J_z = \pm (2NE + \mathcal{O}(\epsilon))$ with infinitesimal $\epsilon > 0$. Then, the equation takes the form
\begin{equation}
\xi'^2 = 2L^2\epsilon + \mathcal{O}(\epsilon^2),
\end{equation}
which gives real $\xi$ for any $L$. Therefore, the geodesic curve, moving from spatial infinity, can cross the string vicinity at least when $r$ is large enough.
\textbf{Null geodesics.}
Rewriting the radial equation (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.radial_mino}) in terms
of the affine parameter $\tau$ in the form
\be
\dot{r}^2 + U_{\text{eff}}(r) = E^2,
\ee
the effective potential for null geodesics is
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics.effective_null}
U_{\text{eff}} = L^2 \frac{\Delta }{ A B }.
\end{equation}
It diverges at the surface of naked singularities and becomes zero at the surface of regular black holes. If the solution is a singular black hole, the behaviour of $U_{\text{eff}}$ can be either bounded or diverging, depending on the root multiplicity of the numerator and denominator. Another interesting question is the existence of stable or unstable photon circular orbits. The equation of circular orbits $dU_{\text{eff}}/dr = 0$ is difficult to solve analytically. Picking up a large number of different solutions with random parameters, one can find that usually regular black holes has one unstable circular orbit, while naked singularities have neither stable nor unstable circular orbits. For the case of singular black holes with $D_{\pm1}$ or $D_0$ with $e=2\mu$, there are no circular orbits. At the same time singular black holes with $D_0$ and $e=\mu$ have a maximum of the effective potential at the surface of the horizon.
Though one can conjecture these rules are general, there is a set of fine tuned counterexamples representing naked singularities, for example ${e/\mu = 1.5,}\,{\beta = \pi/2,}\,{\alpha = 3\pi/2 + \epsilon}$, where $0.099665\lesssim \epsilon \lesssim 0.123340$. Such solutions possesses both stable and unstable circular null orbits (fig. \ref{fig:eff_potential_1}). At the lower bound $\epsilon \approx 0.099665$, the solution becomes an extremal black hole, so the stable orbit lies on the horizon. At the upper bound $\epsilon \approx 0.123340$ the minimum and maximum of the effective potential disappear. Generally, such solutions are small deviations (in the charge space) from extremal black holes with a singularity situated close enough to the horizon from the inner side. The existence of stable circular photon orbits indicates at the possibility to accumulate the energy of the electromagnetic field, leading to the solution instability.
\begin{figure}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{figures/4D_Ueff_null.eps}
\label{fig:eff_potential_1}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{figures/4D_Ueff_timelike.eps}
\label{fig:eff_potential_2}
}
\caption{
Effective potential $U_{\text{eff}}$ for solutions ${\mu=1,}\,{e = 1.5,}\,{\beta = \pi/2,}\,{\alpha = 3\pi/2 + \epsilon}$. Left: $U_\text{eff}$ of null geodesics ($L^2 = 1$) for $\epsilon = 0.099665,\,0.105,\,0.11,\,0.115,\,0.123340$ (from lower to upper curves). Right: $U_\text{eff}$ of timelike geodesics with $L$ from 0 to 5 for $\epsilon=0.105$; the scale is logarithmic for better visualisation. The red line represents the naked singularity.
}
\label{fig:eff_potential}
\end{figure}
The effective potential (\ref{eq:geodesics.effective_null}) represents a 4th degree polynomial. Integration of this equation leads to the following solution
\begin{equation}\label{geodesics.r_eq}
\int_{r_0}^{r} \frac{dr}{\sqrt{P_4(r)}} =
\kappa(\lambda - \lambda_0),
\end{equation}
where $\kappa \equiv \pm \left|E\right|$, $P_4(r) =\Sigma^2 - L^2\Delta/E^2 = (r - r_1)(r - r_2)(r - r_3)(r - r_4)$ is a fourth degree polynomial, factored into its roots. The integral can be evaluated
\begin{align}\label{geodesics.r_int}
\int_{r_0}^{r} \frac{dr}{\sqrt{P_4(r)}} \equiv I(r) - I(r_0)
=
\frac{ 2 }{\sqrt{(r_1 - r_3)(r_2 - r_4)}}
\left.
\text{F}\left(
\arcsin\left(m(r)^{-1/2}\right)
\Big|
m(r_3)
\right)
\right|^r_{r_0},
\end{align}
\begin{equation*}
m(r) = \frac{(r_2-r)(r_1-r_4)}{(r_1-r)(r_2-r_4)},
\end{equation*}
where $\text{F}(\varphi|m)$ is the elliptic integral of the first kind, and the roots $r_i$ can be permuted with any order. If the chosen constant $r_0$ is placed between two real roots $r_i$ and $r_j$ (or infinity), the solution will describe the motion inside the region $r\in[r_i, r_j]$. For simplicity we will choose $r_0 = r_1$, so $I(r_0) = 0$. The function $r(\lambda)$ can be expressed from (\ref{geodesics.r_eq}) and (\ref{geodesics.r_int})
\begin{equation}\label{geodesics.r_func}
r(\lambda) =
\frac{
r_1(r_4-r_2) +
r_2 (r_1-r_4) R(\lambda)
}{
r_4 - r_2 + (r_1-r_4) R(\lambda)
},\\
\end{equation}
\begin{equation*}
R(\lambda) = \text{sn}\left(
\frac{\kappa}{2} (\lambda - \lambda_0) \sqrt{(r_1-r_3)(r_2-r_4)}
\Big|
m(r_3)
\right)^2,
\end{equation*}
where $\text{sn}(u|m)$ is the Jacobi elliptic function. Two examples of null geodesics, scattered on the black hole are shown in fig. \ref{fig:null_geodesics}. The first example (figs. \ref{fig:null_geodesics_11}, \ref{fig:null_geodesics_12}) demonstrates the family of geodesic curves crossing the chronology boundary, providing a proof of their existence. When the turning point is close enough to the potential minimum, the geodesic curve has enough time to make any number of revolutions around the horizon (fig. \ref{fig:null_geodesics_21}, \ref{fig:null_geodesics_22}).
\begin{figure}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[height=0.18\textheight]{figures/geodesic_11.eps}
\label{fig:null_geodesics_11}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[height=0.18\textheight]{figures/geodesic_12.eps}
\label{fig:null_geodesics_12}
}
\hfill
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[height=0.18\textheight]{figures/geodesic_21.eps}
\label{fig:null_geodesics_21}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[height=0.18\textheight]{figures/geodesic_22.eps}
\label{fig:null_geodesics_22}
}
\caption{
Null geodesics in the space-time with parameters $P = -0.7, Q = 1.1, D = 0.1, N = -5, M = 2.187$. The spheres are horizons and red surfaces are chronology boundaries.
Fig. \ref{fig:null_geodesics_11}, \ref{fig:null_geodesics_12}: a family of geodesics, scattering on the Misner string ($E = 0.2,\,J = 5.5,\,J_z = 0.5$).
Fig. \ref{fig:null_geodesics_21}, \ref{fig:null_geodesics_22}: geodesic curve with a turning point which is close to the minimum of $U_\text{eff}$, $E = 0.24148,\,J = 5.5,\,J_z = 0.5$.
}
\label{fig:null_geodesics}
\end{figure}
\textbf{Time-like geodesics.}
The effective potential for time-like geodesics is
\begin{equation}
U_\text{eff} = \frac{\Delta}{\Sigma} + L^2\frac{\Delta}{\Sigma^2}.
\end{equation}
Solutions with $M \neq 0$ have one stable circular timelike orbit with $r \approx L^2 \sqrt{M^2+N^2} / M$ for large $L$. Regular solutions additionally possess an unstable circular timelike orbit near the horizon if $L$ is large enough. Usually, there are no other circular orbits, but this is not a general rule. For the same special class of naked singularities we have considered for null geodesics, there is a stable circular timelike orbit near the singularity for any $L$ (fig. \ref{fig:eff_potential_2}).
\subsection{Closed null and timelike geodesics}
For a geodesic curve to be a closed curve, all the coordinates should again take the same values after a finite lapse of $\tau$ or $\lambda$. The Mino period of the angular functions $\theta$ and $\varphi$ is $\Delta\lambda = 2\pi/J$. Considering $J,E>0$, one can find the inequality on the corresponding $\Delta t_\theta$ from (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.t_theta_solution})
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics.static.ctc_1}
\Delta t_\theta \geq - \frac{2\pi |S|}{JE}\left(J - |S|\right)
\end{equation}
Also, using (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.tr_eq}) with $f=\Delta/\Sigma$, and the condition $r'^2 \geq 0$ in (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.radial_mino}), with $\varepsilon$ non-negative for non-tachyonic matter,
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics.static.ctc_2}
\frac{dt_r}{d\lambda} = E \frac{\Sigma}{f}
\geq
\frac{1}{E}\left( \Sigma\varepsilon + L^2 \right)
\geq
\frac{L^2}{E}.
\end{equation}
Combining all together we get
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics.static.ctc_4}
\Delta t_\theta + \Delta t_r \geq
\frac{2\pi}{E} \left( J - |S| \right)
\end{equation}
As $J \geq \left| S \right|$ from the definition (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.jls}), this inequality ensures that $\Delta t \geq 0$ and can be saturated only for null geodesics with $J = |S|$ (i.e. $L=0$). But in this special case $\Delta t_\theta = 0$ and $\Delta t_r > 0$, so that these null geodesics cannot be closed.
\subsection{Geodesics in 5D}
In this subsection, we will denote the fifth coordinate as $x_5\equiv\chi$. Because of the existence of a non-vanishing dilaton field, leading to a non-constant $g_{\chi\chi}$, and the possibility of a non-vanishing constant momentum $p_\chi$ conjugate to the cyclic coordinate $\chi$ (which would be associated in four dimensions with the electric charge of a test particle), five-dimensional geodesic motion cannot be simply uplifted from that in four dimensions (see Appendix \ref{sec:geodesic_reduction}), but must be analyzed separately. The Killing vectors of the five-dimensional metric are
\begin{subequations}\label{eq:geo.5d_killing}
\begin{equation}
K_{(\chi)} = \partial_\chi,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
K_{(t)} = \partial_t,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
K_{(\varphi)} = \partial_\varphi,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
K_{(x)} = \frac{\cos\varphi}{\sin\theta} ( 2P \partial_\chi + 2N \partial_t) - \sin\varphi \partial_\theta - \cos\varphi \cot\theta \partial_\varphi,
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
K_{(y)} = \frac{\sin\varphi}{\sin\theta} ( 2P \partial_\chi + 2N \partial_t) + \cos\varphi \partial_\theta - \sin\varphi \cot\theta \partial_\varphi.
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
Proceeding in the same way as we have done for the four-dimensional case with another affine parameter $\tau$ and another Mino time $\lambda$ such that $d\tau = A d\lambda$, one can get an analogous equation $\vec{J} = \vec{L} + \vec{S}$ with
\begin{equation}
\vec{L} = A \left[\hat{r} \times \dot{\hat{r}} \right], \quad
\vec{S} = S \hat{r}, \quad S = 2(Pp_\chi - N E),
\end{equation}
where $E$ is the constant momentum canonically conjugate to the cyclic coordinate $t$, and the same equations (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.xi_eq}), (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.phi_eq}), (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.ttheta_eq}) up to the redefinition of $S$ and equations
\begin{subequations}
\begin{equation}
t_r' = \frac{A}{\Delta }(B E+2 C p_\chi),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\chi_r' = \frac{A}{\Delta }(F p_\chi-2 C E),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\chi_\theta' = \frac{P}{N} t_\theta',
\end{equation}
\end{subequations}
where the coordinate $\chi$ has been split into two parts, $\chi = \chi_r + \chi_\theta$. The solutions for the functions $\varphi$, $\theta$ and $t_\theta$ are again given by (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.theta_functions}), (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.phi_solution}), (\ref{eq:geodesics.static.t_theta_solution}), up to the redefinition of the constant $S$, and $\chi_\theta = P t_\theta/N + \text{const}$. The radial equation is
\begin{equation} \label{eq:radial_5d}
r'^2 =
A \left( B E^2 + 4 C E p_\chi - \Delta \varepsilon - F p_\chi^2 \right)
-\Delta L^2,
\end{equation}
which from $r'^2 \geq 0$ implies
\begin{equation}\label{eq:geodesics5d_constraint1}
\frac{A}{B} \left( B E + 2C p_\chi \right)^2
\geq \Delta (A \varepsilon + L^2 + \frac{A^2}{B}p_\chi^2).
\end{equation}
In five dimensions the function $B$ may be non-positive in the physical domain (outside the horizon). At the same time, in the region $B<0$ the timelike coordinate is $\chi$, in which case the compactification of $\chi$ leads to a compact time-like direction. The radial equation can be solved similarly to (\ref{geodesics.r_eq}) for any $\varepsilon$. In the outer region with $A,B,\Delta>0$ the right-hand side of (\ref{eq:geodesics5d_constraint1}) is positive for all geodesics except purely radial null geodesics ($\epsilon=L=p_\chi=0$), therefore the left-hand side cannot be negative, which makes the surface $B E + 2C p_\chi = 0$ unreachable. Particularly, if $p_\chi = 0$, the geodesic cannot cross the surface $B=0$. Generally, the radial equation may be rewritten as
\begin{equation}
r'^2 = AB \left(E - V_+\right)\left(E - V_-\right),\qquad
V_\pm = 2p_\chi \frac{C}{B} \pm
\sqrt{ \Delta \left(
\frac{\varepsilon}{B}
+ \frac{A}{B^2} p_\chi^2
+ \frac{ L^2 }{A B}
\right)}
\end{equation}
When a geodesic curve approaches the surface $B=0$, every branch of the effective potential has form
\begin{equation}
V_\pm \approx \frac{2p_\chi C \pm |p_\chi|\sqrt{\Delta A}}{B}.
\end{equation}
As the fraction $(\Delta A - 4C^2)/B$ is a polynomial (\ref{eq:oxidation.F}), then at $B=0$ we have the identity $\sqrt{\Delta A} = 2|C|$, and one of the branches $V_\pm$ is finite, but another one is diverging, depending on the sign of $C p_\chi$ (fig. \ref{fig:5D_eff_potential_1}).
Let us consider the upper potential branch $V_+$ in the region $A,B,\Delta > 0$. If the sign of $C p_\chi$ is negative and at some point $V_+=0$, then we can observe the Penrose process (fig. \ref{fig:5D_eff_potential_2}), extracting energy from the rotation in the plane $(t,\chi)$. From the point of view of a four-dimensional observer, the momentum $p_\chi$ corresponds to the electric charge of a test particle. Therefore, the Penrose process increases both the ``electric charge'' and the energy of the particle.
\textbf{Traversability.} 5D wormholes are traversable if at least some timelike or null geodesics extend from one end $(r\to\infty)$ to the other end $(r\to-\infty)$. The condition for this is obviously that the right-hand side of the radial equation (\ref{eq:radial_5d}) is positive for all real $r$. If such geodesics exist, then there are radial geodesics among them $L=0$. As $A$ and $\Delta$ are positive for wormholes and $\varepsilon$ is non-negative, a necessary condition is therefore
\be\label{eq:radial_5d_condition_1}
y(r) \equiv E^2 B(r) + 4Ep_\chi C(r) - p_\chi^2 F(r) > 0.
\ee
Assuming $p_\chi\neq0$ (it is clear that geodesics with $p_\chi=0$ will turn back at a zero of $B(r)$, which always exists due to the absence of wormholes in 4D), the condition (\ref{eq:radial_5d_condition_1}) can be rewritten
\be
y(r) = p_\chi^2 B(r)(x-x_+(r))(x-x_-(r)),
\ee
with $x=E/p_\chi$, and
\be
x_\pm = \frac{-2C\pm\sqrt{A\Delta}}B.
\ee
The allowed range ($y>0$) is thus:
\ba
{\rm For}\; B(r) > 0 & (x_+>x_-): & x > x_+(r) \quad {\rm or} \quad x < x_-(r), \\
{\rm For}\; B(r) < 0 & (x_+<x_-): & \qquad x_+(r) < x < x_-(r).
\ea
At infinity, $B(r)> 0$, and $x_\pm(r) \to \pm 1$, so that geodesics coming from or extending to infinity
(either wormhole end) must have $x>1$ or $x<-1$.
The function $B(r)$ has two zeroes, $r_{B-} < r_{B+}$. Assume without loss of generality $C(r_{B+}) > 0$. Then,
\be
x_+(r_{B+}) = \frac{F(r_{B+})}{4C(r_{B+})}, \quad x_-(r) \simeq - \frac{4C(r_{B+})}{B(r)} \;\; (r\simeq r_{B+}).
\ee
Geodesics coming from $r \to + \infty$ with $x < -1$ must be such that $x < x_-(r)$, and thus will necessarily turn back at
some $r_{\rm min}$ before reaching $r_{B+}$. Only geodesics with $x>1$ can possibly extend further.
The function $C(r)$ has a single zero $r_C$, and the outcome depends on whether $B(r_C)$ is positive or negative.
1) \underline{$B(r_C)>0$}. Then $C(r_{B-}) > 0$, and
\be
x_+(r_{B-}) = \frac{F(r_{B-})}{4C(r_{B-})}, \quad x_-(r) \simeq - \frac{4C(r_{B-})}{B(r)} \;\; (r\simeq r_{B-}).
\ee
So, in the range $r_{B-} < r < r_{B+}$, the curve $x_-(r)$ goes to $+\infty$ at both ends $r = r_{B\pm}$, and lies above the curve
$x_+(r)$. Geodesics coming from infinity can therefore go through provided $x_{- \rm min}$ (the relative minimum of $x_-(r)$)
is larger than 1, and can proceed to the other wormhole end if $x_{- \rm min} > x_{+ \rm max}$ (the absolute maximum of $x_+(r)$).
2) \underline{$B(r_C)<0$}. Then $C(r_{B-}) < 0$, and
\be
x_+(r) \simeq \frac{4|C(r_{B-})|}{B(r)} \;\; (r\simeq r_{B-}), \quad x_-(r_{B-}) = - \frac{F(r_{B-})}{4|C(r_{B-})|},
\ee-
In the range $r < r_{B+}$, the curve $x_-(r)$ goes continuously from $+\infty$ at $r = r_{B+}$ to $-1$ for $r \to -\infty$, and
so must cross the line $x=+1$ for some finite value of $r$. All geodesics with $x>1$ will necessarily turn back at a value
$r_{\rm min} < r_{B+}$ such that $x_-(r_{\rm min}) = x$.
\begin{figure}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{figures/5D_Ueff_1.eps}
\label{fig:5D_eff_potential_1}
}
\subfloat[][] {
\includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{figures/5D_Ueff_2.eps}
\label{fig:5D_eff_potential_2}
}
\caption{
Left: effective potential $V_{\pm}$ of a wormhole ${\mu=1,}\,{e = 1.5,}\,{\beta = 3\pi/4,}\,{\alpha = 3\pi/4}$ for $L=0.1$ and different $p_\chi$ from $0$ to $-0.75$ with a step $0.25$. Right: effective potential {\bf $V_{\pm}$} of a black hole ${\mu=1,}\,{e = 1.5,}\,{\beta = \pi/2,}\,{\alpha = 3\pi/2}$ for $L=0.1$ and different $p_\chi$ from $0$ to $-1$ with a step $0.1$. The red line is $B=0$ and the black vertical line is a horizon. The darker curve stands for larger $|p_\chi|$.
}
\label{fig:5D_eff_potential}
\end{figure}
\setcounter{equation}{0}
\section{Conclusions}\label{sec:conclusions}
Building on the pioneering work of \cite{Dobiasch:1981vh}, we have constructed and analyzed the general non-rotating locally asymptotically flat solution of five-dimensional vacuum gravity with two Killing vectors (one of which is timelike), and its reduction to four dimensions as a solution of $\alpha=\sqrt{3}$ EMD. The constructive charge-matrix approach we have followed is complementary to the solution-generating approach followed e.g. in \cite{Rasheed:1995zv} -- applying special $SL(3,R)$ group transformations to the Schwarzschild solution embedded in 5D. This leads to a wider class of dyonic solutions, possessing also a NUT charge and a dilaton charge which is not related to the other charges by the usual cubic regularity constraint. These solutions include as special cases both the FJNW solutions with singular horizon and the regular locally asymptotically flat KK black holes.
We found that the cubic constraint, which states that the $sl(3,R)$ charge matrix is degenerate, is only a necessary condition for regularity of the horizon. A second condition is the proper choice of a particular solution of the cubic constraint from three possibilities. The two other solutions of the cubic equation lead to generically singular solutions belonging to the degenerate type. Also, the condition of extremal solutions was generalized for arbitrary NUT charge.
In all cases we included an independent NUT charge, with the hope that it could perhaps convert superextremal solutions into wormholes, as in the case of the Brill solution of Einstein-Maxwell theory. But in the KK theory this turned out not to be possible: no combination of five charges can give rise to a four-dimensional non-rotating wormhole. Still, there exist five-dimensional solutions of the KK theory with the wormhole topology, but these wormholes are not geodesically traversable.
From the analysis of geodesics in the background of the obtained NUTty solutions, we found that time-like and null geodesics cannot be closed in the vicinity of the polar axes inside the chronology violating region surrounding the Misner string, and showed that time-like geodesics include a class of geodesics with circular orbits lying in arbitrary (generically non-equatorial) planes.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 3,146 |
NIMS professor A K Meena passes away in UK
By Newsmeter NetworkPublished on 18 Jan 2020 1:27 PM GMT
Hyderabad: Doctor A.K Meena, Professor of Neurology at the Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) Hyderabad, days after she suffered a cardiac arrest in the UK, passed away on Saturday.
The doctor was admitted to St Bartholomew's Hospital – W Smithfield in London where the doctors categorised her condition as 'serious'. The professor was been put on a ventilator for 48 hours, however, took her last breath on January 18th.
While she was in a critical condition, the NIMS management wrote to the Special Chief Secretary – (health, medical & family welfare department-government of Telangana), requesting the state to provide financial help in case the hospital bill exceeds her travel insurance.
The letter read, Dr A. K Meena, while attending a conference in UK Professor Meena suffered a cardiac arrest and was resuscitated in the venue. Her condition kept deteriorating, the hospital administrators in UK have communicated on her serious condition. NIMS is coordinating with Dr Vishnu -Neurologist from AIMS who is part of the same conference'. This letter was before the professor took her last breath.
The NIMS management has decided to send to London Dr B. Srinivas – clinical haematologist on the institutions expenses. However, have requested the government to fund the hospital bill if the cost exceeds the travel insurance.
NIMS professor suffers a heart-attack in UK, put on ventilator
An independent digital media platform that brings you credible news stories and Analysis of current affairs as they unfold. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 2,492 |
Givenchy steht für:
Givenchy (Unternehmen), von Hubert de Givenchy gegründetes Mode- und Kosmetikunternehmen
Hubert de Givenchy (1927–2018), französischer Modeschöpfer
Givenchy ist Namensbestandteil folgender Gemeinden im französischen Département Pas-de-Calais:
Givenchy-en-Gohelle, Gemeinde im Arrondissement Arras
Givenchy-le-Noble, Gemeinde im Arrondissement Arras
Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée, Gemeinde im Arrondissement Béthune | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 5,638 |
Q: Alternative to switch statement to call methods in c# I have a method which calls other method based on input parameter using switch statement as shown below:
switch (reportName)
{
case A:
return GenerateReportA(reportName, model, language);
case B:
return GenerateReportB(reportName, model, language);
case C:
return GenerateReportC(reportName, model, language);
case D:
return GenerateReportD(reportName, model, language);
case E:
return GenerateReportE(reportName, model, language);
and so on...
}
I know this switch statement will keep on increasing as more and more reports are added to system. Is there an alternate way to achieve this? ...Delegate? ...Lambda? All I know is all my GenerateReport methods will have same signature.
A: As SLaks said, you could refactor your switch into a dictionary. I assumed your three input parameters were strings. Adjust as you need it:
// the dictionary value is a function delegate with three string input
// parameters and a string result
var _generateReport = new Dictionary<string, Func<string, string, string, string>>()
{
{"A", GenerateReportA},
{"B", GenerateReportB},
{"C", GenerateReportC},
{"D", GenerateReportD},
{"E", GenerateReportE}
...
};
Then you can rewrite your switch statement as
if (_generateReport.ContainsKey(reportName))
_generateReport[reportName].Invoke(reportName, model, language);
A: This might be overkill for you but you could do something like this. I learned this approach when researching the O part of S.O.L.I.D (design principles). The nice thing about this method is that when a new report is required you just create a class that derives from BaseReportGenerator for it. I've demonstrated the method using assembly scanning to get the relevant classes but another method would be to have them all injected as dependencies.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;
namespace AltToSwitch
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var myReportType = "A";
var model = "myModel";
var language = "myLanguage";
var reportGenerators = new List<BaseReportGenerator>();
//use assembly scanning to get all report generator implementations
foreach (Type type in
Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(BaseReportGenerator)).GetTypes()
.Where(myType => myType.IsClass && !myType.IsAbstract && myType.IsSubclassOf(typeof(BaseReportGenerator))))
{
reportGenerators.Add((BaseReportGenerator)Activator.CreateInstance(type));
}
var reportGeneratorToUse = reportGenerators.SingleOrDefault(x => x.ReportName == myReportType);
Console.WriteLine(reportGeneratorToUse.GenerateReport(model, language));
}
}
public abstract class BaseReportGenerator
{
public abstract string ReportName
{
get;
}
public abstract string GenerateReport(string model, string language);
//common report functionality could go here
}
public class TheAReportGenerator : BaseReportGenerator
{
public override string ReportName => "A";
public override string GenerateReport(string model, string language)
{
return "The A report";
}
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 4,863 |
import React from 'react'
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'
import { browserHistory } from 'react-router'
import configureStore from './redux/configure-store'
import Root from './containers/Root'
import debug from 'debug'
import { addLocaleData } from 'react-intl'
import en from 'react-intl/locale-data/en'
import es from 'react-intl/locale-data/es'
addLocaleData(en)
addLocaleData(es)
if (__DEBUG__) {
debug.enable('app:*')
}
const store = configureStore({}, browserHistory)
// Render the React application to the DOM
ReactDOM.render(
<Root history={browserHistory} store={store} />,
document.getElementById('root')
)
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 4,127 |
Der Straußblütige Gilbweiderich (Lysimachia thyrsiflora), auch Strauß-Gilbweiderich genannt, ist eine Pflanzenart aus der Gattung Gilbweiderich (Lysimachia) in der Unterfamilie der Myrsinengewächse (Myrsinoideae) innerhalb der Familie der Primelgewächse (Primulaceae). Sie kommt in weiten Teilen der borealen und der gemäßigten Zone der Nordhalbkugel vor.
Beschreibung
Erscheinungsbild und Blatt
Der Straußblütige Gilbweiderich wächst als ausdauernde krautige Pflanze, die Wuchshöhen von 30 bis 80 Zentimetern erreicht. Die aufrechte und meist unverzweigte Stängel sind schwarz drüsig punktiert. Der untere Stängelbereich ist kahl, während der obere fein behaart ist. Die kräftigen Rhizome wachsen waagerecht und es werden keine Tochterknollen gebildet.
Die gegenständig, annähernd gegenständig oder wirtelig an den Stängeln angeordneten Laubblätter sind in Blattscheide sowie Blattspreite gegliedert und sind meist ungestielt, können selten aber auch einen 0,1 bis 0,2, selten bis zu 0,4 Zentimeter langen Blattstiel aufweisen, der nicht bewimpert ist. Die untersten Blätter sind zurückgebildet und schuppenartig. Die einfachen Blattspreiten sind bei einer Länge von 5 bis 16 Zentimetern sowie einer Breite von 0,5 bis 2, selten bis zu 6 Zentimetern lanzettlich über linealisch-lanzettlich und elliptisch-lanzettlich bis elliptisch. Der untere Teil der Blattspreite verjüngt sich zur keilförmigen, gerundeten oder halb den Stängel umklammernden Basis hin. Die Blattspitze ist spitz zulaufend, zugespitzt oder stumpf. Die flachen oder am Rand etwas umgerollten Spreitenränder sind ganzrandig und nicht bewimpert. Beide Oberflächen der Blattspreite sind, mit Ausnahme der auf der Spreitenunterseite spärlich zottig behaarten Mittelrippe, kahl und ist spärlich schwarz drüsig punktiert. Es liegt Fiedernervatur vor.
Blütenstand, Blüte und Frucht
Die Blütezeit erstreckt je nach Standort und Verbreitungsgebiet vom Frühjahr bis in den Sommer hinein. Der im mittleren oder oberen Stängelbereich, blattachselständige Blütenstandsschaft ist 1,5 bis 3 Zentimeter lang, glatt oder spärlich drüsig oder zottig behaart. Der dichte, kopfige bis ährige, traubige Blütenstand ist 1 bis 3 Zentimeter lang. Der Blütenstiel ist 1 bis 3 Millimeter lang, kahl oder spärlich zottig oder drüsig behaart.
Die zwittrigen Blüten sind radiärsymmetrisch und fünf- bis sieben-, selten auch bis neunzählig mit doppelter Blütenhülle. Die fünf kahlen, 1 bis, meist 2 bis 3,5 Millimeter lang Kelchblätter sind nur an ihrer Basis verwachsen und sind von dunklen Harzkanälen durchzogen. Die meist sechs oder sieben lanzettlich bis linealisch-lanzettlichen Kelchzähne sind schwarz drüsig punktiert und besitzen dünne Ränder, die fast bis zur Basis der Kelchblätter reichen. Die hellgelben bis cremefarbenen Kronblätter sind bei einer Länge von 3 bis 7 Millimetern sowie einer Breite von 0,5 bis 1 Millimetern nur kurz an ihrer Basis trichterartig verwachsen. Sie sind mit schwarzen bis rötlich braunen Harzkanälen durchzogen. Die sechs oder sieben Kronlappen sind linealisch mit gerundetem oder zugespitztem oberem Ende sowie ganzrandigen Rändern. Die fünf bis sieben, selten bis zu neun Staubblätter sind etwa so lang oder etwas länger als die Kronblätter. Die annähernd untereinander freien oder nur an ihrer Basis verwachsenen Staubfäden sind mit der Kronblattbasis verwachsen, sind 4 bis 5 Millimeter lang, können aber auch etwa zweimal so lang sein wie die Kronblätter. Die länglichen Staubbeutel sind dorsifix und etwa 1 Millimeter lang. Es sind keine Staminodien vorhanden. Der Fruchtknoten ist spärlich fein behaart. Der Griffel ist 4,5 bis 6 Millimeter lang. Die Staubblätter und der Griffel überragt die Blütenkrone.
Die Blütenformel lautet: .
Die Kapselfrucht ist bei einem Durchmesser von 2 bis 3 Millimetern annähernd kugel- bis eiförmig und öffnet sich bei Reife mit fünf bis sechs Fruchtklappen. Ihre Oberfläche ist kahl und dunkel drüsig punktiert.
Chromosomensatz
Für den Straußblütigen Gilbweiderich werden in der Literatur vier verschiedene Chromosomenzahlen angegeben. Die Chromosomengrundzahl beträgt x = 9 bis 14. Es liegen unterschiedliche Ploidiestufen vor; so findet man neben 2n = 20 auch 2n = 40 oder 2n = 42 sowie bei Hexaploidie 2n = 54.
Ökologie
Beim Straußblütigen Gilbweiderich handelt es um einen helomorphen Geophyten oder Hemikryptophyten. Die Vermehrung kann auch vegetativ erfolgen.
Blütenökologisch handelt es um Pollenblumen. Es liegt Selbstkompatibilität vor. Es liegt Dichogamie vor; der Straußblütige Gilbweiderich ist protogyn, in der Blüte sind also zuerst die weiblichen, später die männlichen Blütenorgane fertil. Der Straußblütige Gilbweiderich ist xenogam, es erfolgt also obligate Fremdbefruchtung. Bei ausbleibende Fremdbestäubung kann Geitonogamie, als Selbstbestäubung von einer benachbarten Blüte erfolgen. Meist erfolgt Fremdbestäubung durch Insekten. Als Belohnung für Bestäuber ist wenig Nektar sowie reichlich Pollen vorhanden. Bestäuber sind kurzrüsselige Bienen, Schwebfliegen (Syrphidae), Käfer oder Fliegen.
Diasporen sind die Same. Die Ausbreitung der Diaporen erfolgt durch Autochorie.
Der Straußblütige Gilbweiderich ist ein Frostkeimer.
Vorkommen und Gefährdung
Das natürliche Verbreitungsgebiet des Straußblütigen Gilbweiderichs umfasst weite Teile der borealen und der gemäßigten Zone der Nordhalbkugel. Es gibt Fundortangaben für Deutschland, Österreich, Liechtenstein, die Schweiz, Frankreich, Luxemburg, Belgien, die Niederlande, das Vereinigte Königreich, Irland, Dänemark, Norwegen, Schweden, Finnland, Estland, Litauen, Lettland, Kaliningrad Polen, Ungarn, Tschechien, die Slowakei, Slowenien, Bulgarien, Rumänien, Belarus, die Ukraine, die Krim, Karelien, Archangelsk, die Republik Komi, die beiden Gebiete in Russlands Fernem Osten Oblast Amur sowie Region Kamtschatka, Kasachstan, Korea, Japan, Sachalin, die Kurilen, die Innere Mongolei und die chinesischen Provinzen [Heilongjiang], Jilin, Shaanxi sowie Yunnan und in Nordamerika für die Aleuten, Alaska, und die kanadischen Gebiete Yukon-Territorium, Neufundland, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Islands, Saskatchewan, Québec, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, British Columbia und die US-Bundesstaaten Washington, nördliches Kalifornien, nördliches Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, nördliches Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin sowie Wyoming.
In einigen Gebieten der Welt nehmen zwar die Bestände ab; da Lysimachia thyrsiflora so weit verbreitet ist, gilt sie bei der IUCN jedoch als LC = "least concern" = "nicht gefährdet". In der Roten Liste der gefährten Pflanzenarten Deutschland war der Straußblütige Gilbweiderich 1998 noch als "gefährdet" bewertet worden; bei Metzing et al. 2018 erfolgte eine Einstufung V also in die "Vorwarnliste".
Lysimachia thyrsiflora gilt in der Roten Liste der gefährdeten Art der Schweiz 2016 als "verletzlich". Gefährdungsursachen sind: Aufgabe der traditionellen Streunutzung, Melioration, Auffüllung, Austrocknung, Entwässerung, Überbauung, Eutrophierung besonders aus benachbarten Fettwiesen und Äckern, Verbuschung, Beschattung, Verdrängung durch Neophyten, Verschilfung, Sukzession, Trittschäden durch Menschen, Wellenschlag, mechanischer Schaden durch Boote, Ablagerung von Aushubmaterial und manche Populationen sind sehr klein sowie isoliert.
Der Straußblütige Gilbweiderich kommt je nach Standort und Verbreitungsgebiet in Höhenlagen von 0 bis 2000 Metern vor. Er steigt am Wildsee bei Seefeld in Tirol bis in Höhenlagen von 1170 Metern auf. Er wächst vor allem in Sümpfen und Mooren, auf feuchten Wiesen sowie in feuchten Wäldern.
Er ist in Mitteleuropa eine Charakterart des Verbands des Magnocaricion, kommt aber auch in Pflanzengesellschaften des Alnion oder Salicion cinereae vor.
Die ökologischen Zeigerwerte nach Landolt et al. 2010 sind in der Schweiz: Feuchtezahl F = 3+w+ (feucht aber stark wechselnd), Lichtzahl L = 3 (halbschattig), Reaktionszahl R = 3 (schwach sauer bis neutral), Temperaturzahl T = 3+ (unter-montan und ober-kollin), Nährstoffzahl N = 2 (nährstoffarm), Kontinentalitätszahl K = 3 (subozeanisch bis subkontinental).
Taxonomie
Die Erstveröffentlichung von Lysimachia thyrsiflora erfolgte 1753 durch Carl von Linné in Species Plantarum, Tomus 1, Seite 147. Das Artepitheton thyrsiflora bedeutet "straußblütig". Synonyme für Lysimachia thyrsiflora sind: Lysimachusa thyrsiflora , Naumburgia thyrsiflora , Naumburgia thyrsiflora , Nummularia thyrsiflora , Naumburgia guttata , Thyrsanthus palustris , Lysimachia capitata , Lysimachia capitellata , Lysimachia kamtschatica , Lysimachia subcapitata , Lysimachia thyrsantha , Lysimachia thyrsiflora var. verticillata .
Einzelnachweise
Weiterführende Literatur
Bertram Münker: Wildblumen Mitteleuropas (= Steinbachs Naturführer). Neue, bearb. Sonderausgabe. Mosaik, München 1996, ISBN 3-576-10563-8.
Irma Podolak, Zbigniew Janeczko, Agnieszka Galanty, Marta Michalik, Danuta Trojanowska: A triterpene saponin from Lysimachia thyrsiflora L. In: Acta poloniae pharmaceutica, Volume 64, 2007, S. 39–43. online.
Weblinks
Karte zur weltweiten Verbreitung.
Günther Blaich: Datenblatt Lysimachia thyrsiflora mit Fotos.
Gerhard Nitter: Steckbrief Lysimachia thyrsiflora mit Fotos.
Thomas Meyer: Gilbweiderich Datenblatt mit Bestimmungsschlüssel und Fotos bei Flora-de: Flora von Deutschland (alter Name der Webseite: Blumen in Schwaben).
Datenblatt Lysimachia thyrsiflora mit Fotos und Verbreitung in Tschechien bei Pladias – Database of the Czech Flora and Vegetation. www.pladias.cz.
Datenblatt Lysimachia thyrsiflora mit Fotos und Verbreitung in Frankreich bei Tela Botanica.
Datenblatt Lysimachia thyrsiflora Verbreitung auf den Britischen Inseln bei Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora.
Datenblatt Lysimachia thyrsiflora (Naumburgia thyrsiflora) - Strauß-Gilbweiderich mit Fotos bei Botanik im Bild / Flora von Österreich, 2008.
Datenblatt Lysimachia thyrsiflora bei Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center - the Botanic Garden of University of Texas.
Datenblatt Tufted Loosestrife - Lysimachia thyrsiflora mit Fotos bei John Hilty: Illinois Wildflowers.
Gilbweiderich | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 7,630 |
\section{Introduction}
\IEEEPARstart{W}{ith} the rapid development of the fifth generation (5G) and beyond communication systems, the security of wireless communication has received increasing attention~\cite{zou2016survey}.
Due to the open nature of wireless channels, attackers can initiate various attacks such as eavesdropping, which pose a huge threat to wireless security. Traditionally, the cryptographic approaches including symmetric key cryptography and asymmetric key cryptography have been used to protect confidential information from eavesdroppers \cite{william2019cryptography}. However, due to the three typical characteristics of 5G Internet of Things (IoT) networks, concerning mobility, massive IoT with resource constraints and heterogeneous hierarchical architecture, the traditional cryptographic mechanisms face problems such as difficulty in key distribution, excessive reliance on mathematical complexity, etc., and are not suitable or efficient \cite{wang2019physical}. To mitigate these issues, researchers have developed a new secure communication method from the physical layer in wireless communication, termed as \textit{physical-layer key generation (PKG)}~\cite{10.1145/3140257,zhang2016key,zhang2020new}. This technique uses the inherent randomness of fading channels between two legitimate users, namely Alice and Bob, to generate keys without the need for a third party.
The realization of PKG depends on three unique propagation characteristics of electromagnetic wave, namely channel reciprocity, temporal variation and spatial decorrelation. Among them, channel reciprocity indicates that the same channel characteristics can be observed at both ends of the same link, which is the basis for key generation~\cite{zhang2016key,zhang2020new}.
For time division duplexing (TDD) systems, both the uplink and downlink are in the same carrier frequency band, and the channel responses obtained by Alice and Bob are reciprocal.
However, for frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems, the uplink and downlink transmit over different carrier frequencies, and the uplink and downlink experience different fading. Hence, most of the mutually accessible channel parameters used in TDD systems, such as received signal strength, channel gain, envelope, and phase, may be completely different between the uplink and downlink in FDD systems \cite{Li2019physical}. Therefore, it is challenging to find reciprocal channel features for key generation in FDD systems. On the other hand, FDD dominates existing cellular communications, such as LTE and narrowband IoT. Key generation for these FDD-based systems will provide information-theoretically secure keys for them, hence is strongly desirable.
There have been several key generation methods developed for FDD systems~\cite{wang2012wireless,liu2019secret,goldberg2013method,wu2013secret,qin2016exploiting,allam2017channel,li2018constructing}. Those methods generate keys by extracting frequency-independent reciprocal channel parameters or constructing reciprocal channel gains, which have many limitations, i.e., high overhead and security problems \cite{goldberg2013method}. Therefore, how to design a key generation scheme in a secure manner at a low communication overhead for FDD systems is still an open question.
To address this open problem, we consider how to construct the reciprocal features used to generate the key in FDD systems firstly. In \cite{alrabeiah2019deep}, the channel-to-channel mapping function in frequency is proved to exist under the condition that the channel mapping of the candidate position to the antenna is bijective, and the condition is realized with high probability in several practical multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Inspired by this, we reveal the existence of band feature mapping function for a given environment in a FDD orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system, which means that the feature mapping can be used to construct reciprocal features in FDD systems. However, the feature mapping between different frequency bands is difficult to be described by mathematical formulas.
To solve this problem, we construct the reciprocal channel features by using deep learning to learn the channel mapping function between different frequency bands.
Then a new key generation method based on the band feature mapping is proposed for FDD systems. The features of one frequency band is estimated simultaneously by both Alice and Bob to generate the key.
In particular, this is the first time to apply deep learning for secret key generation in FDD systems.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows.
\begin{itemize}
\item We prove the existence of the channel feature mapping function between different frequency bands for a given environment under the condition that the mapping function from the candidate user positions to the channels is bijective. Then, we prove that the channel feature mapping between different frequency bands can be approximated by a feedforward network with a single hidden layer. The above conclusions prove the feasibility of using deep learning to construct reciprocity features, and provide a new solution for the PKG in FDD systems.
\item We propose a Key Generation neural Network (KGNet) for band feature mapping to generate reciprocal channel features, and verify the performance in the simulation. Compared with three benchmark deep learning networks, the performance of KGNet can achieve good fitting and generalization performance under low signal-noise ratio (SNR). In addition, we artificially add noise by combining the noise-free and 0 dB dataset at a certain size to construct the training dataset, which improves the robustness of KGNet under low SNR.
\item Based on the KGNet, we propose a novel secret key generation scheme for FDD systems, in which Alice and Bob both estimate the features of one frequency band without any loop-back. Numerical results verify the excellent performance of the KGNet-based key generation scheme in terms of randomness, key generation ratio, and key error rate. Besides, the overhead analysis shows that the method proposed in this paper can be used for resource-contrained IoT devices in FDD systems.
\end{itemize}
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section \ref{Related work}
presents the related work. The system model for FDD systems is introduced in Section \ref{System Model}. In Section \ref{DL}, we prove the existence of the band feature mapping for a given environment under a condition that the mapping function from the candidate user positions to the channels is bijective, and a feedforward network with a single hidden layer can approximate the mapping. The channel feature construction algorithm based on KGNet is presented in Section \ref{KGNet}. Section \ref{KGNet-based KG} designs the key generation scheme. The simulation results for evaluating the performance of the KGNet and the proposed key generation scheme are provided in Section \ref{Simulation}, which is followed by conclusions in Section \ref{conclusion}.
\section{Related Work}
\label{Related work}
This section introduces related work, including the previous FDD key generation methods and the application of deep learning in the wireless physical layer.
\subsection{Secret Key Generation for FDD Systems}
In the past few years, several secret key generation methods have been developed for FDD systems. The main methods of FDD key generation are summarized as follows.
\begin{enumerate}
\item Extracting the frequency-independent reciprocal channel parameters to generate the key \cite{wang2012wireless,liu2019secret}. In \cite{wang2012wireless}, the angle and delay are used to generate the key as they are supposed to hold the reciprocity in FDD systems. However, the accurate acquisition of the angle and delay requires a lot of resources, such as large bandwidth and multiple antennas \cite{vasisht2016eliminating}. In addition, a secret key generation method based on the reciprocity of channel covariance matrix eigenvalues is also proposed in FDD systems \cite{liu2019secret}. But this method requires special configuration of the antenna array.
\item Establishing the channel with reciprocal channel gain by means of the additional reverse channel training phase to generate the key, called the loopback-based methods \cite{goldberg2013method,wu2013secret,qin2016exploiting,allam2017channel}. In \cite{goldberg2013method}, Alice and Bob generate the key by estimating the channel impulse response (CIR) of the combinatorial channel which is the combination of uplink and downlink channels. In \cite{wu2013secret}, instead of the CIR of the combinatory channel, only the uplink channel state information (CSI) is estimated by both sides of the communication using a special CSI probing method to generate the key. Furthermore, there are two secret key generation schemes, which generate secret key by exploiting shared physical channel information on non-reciprocal forward and reverse channels \cite{qin2016exploiting}. However, the loopback-based key generation methods require additional reverse channel training and multiple iterative interactions, which not only increase the complexity of channel detection, but also increase the risk of eavesdropping. Furthermore, it has been proved not security in~\cite{linning2018investigation}.
\item Constructing reciprocal features based on the prior knowledge of the channel model by separating channel paths to generate keys \cite{li2018constructing}. However, in the complex multi-path environment, separating the channel paths is not simple.
\end{enumerate}
Through the analysis of the previous FDD key generation methods, the existing key generation methods in the FDD systems have problems such as large overhead and insecurity. The key generation method proposed in this paper uses the mapping function between different frequency bands to construct reciprocal channel features from a new perspective. Alice and Bob only need to probe the channel once, without additional reverse channel training. In addition, we use deep learning to learn the mapping function between frequency bands, which is data-driven, so there are not many restrictions on the model, and no complicated calculations are needed to extract reciprocal channel parameters.
\subsection{Deep Learning for Wireless Physical Layer}
Deep learning has been introduced to the wireless physical layer and achieved excellent performance in many areas such as channel estimation \cite{yang2019deep1}, CSI feedback \cite{wen2018deep}, downlink CSI prediction \cite{wang2019ul}, modulation classification \cite{lin2020improved}, etc.
Gao et al. \cite{gao2019deep} proposed a direct-input deep neural network (DI-DNN) to estimate channels by using the received signals of all antennas.
Wen et al. \cite{wen2018deep} used deep learning technology to develop CSINet, a novel CSI sensing and recovery mechanism that learns to effectively use channel structure from training samples.
Yang et al. \cite{yang2019deep} used a spare complex-valued neural network (SCNet) for the downlink CSI prediction in FDD massive MIMO systems. Safari et al. \cite{safari2019deep} proposed a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a generative neural network (GAN) for predicting downlink CSI by observing the downlink CSI.
To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no study on deep learning-based secret key generation method for FDD systems.
Alrabeiah et al. \cite{alrabeiah2019deep} used a fully-connected neural network to learn and approximate the channel-to-channel mapping function. Inspired by this, we propose KGNet to generate reciprocal channel features and propose a KGNet-based key generation scheme for FDD systems. The KGNet is able to learn the mapping function by off-line training. After training, KGNet is used to directly predict the reciprocal features. Therefore, the method proposed in this paper has a small overhead in practical application and great potential for practical deployment. In particular, This paper applies deep learning to key generation for the first time.
\section{System Model}
\label{System Model}
\subsection{Channel Model}
Key generation involves two legitimate users, namely Alice (one base station) and Bob (one user) as well as an eavesdropper, Eve, located $d$ m away from Bob. Alice and Bob will send signals to each other alternately and obtain channel estimation $\hat{h}_A$ and $\hat{h}_B$. In a TDD system, the channel estimation of Alice and Bob is highly correlated based on the channel reciprocity. Hence we can design a key generation protocol, $\mathcal{K}(\cdot)$, which will convert the analog channel estimation to a digital binary sequence.
The process can be expressed as
\begin{align}
K_A &= \mathcal{K}(\hat{h}_A),\\
K_B &= \mathcal{K}(\hat{h}_B).
\end{align}
The above protocol has worked well in TDD-based systems, e.g., WiFi \cite{mathur2008radio}, ZigBee \cite{aono2005wireless}, and LoRa \cite{xu2018lora,ruotsalainen2019experimental}. However, its adoption in FDD systems is extremely challenging, because the uplink and downlink are not reciprocal any more. For the first time, this paper will employ deep learning to construct reciprocal channel features at Alice and Bob and extend key generation for FDD-based systems.
Specifically, this paper considers Alice and Bob are equipped with a single antenna and operate at the FDD mode. Alice and Bob simultaneously transmit signals on different carrier frequencies, $f_{AB}$ and $f_{BA}$, respectively. We denote the links from Bob to Alice and from Alice to Bob as Band1 and Band2, respectively. The CIR consists of $N$ paths and can be defined as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
h(f,\tau)=\sum_{n=0}^{N-1}\alpha_{n}e^{-j2\pi f\tau_n+j\phi_n}\delta(\tau-\tau_n),
\end{split}
\label{CIR}
\end{equation}
where $f$ is the carrier frequency, $\alpha_{n}$, $\tau_n$, and $\phi_n$ are the magnitude, delay, and phase shift of the $n^{th}$ path, respectively. Note that $\alpha_{n}$ depends on (i) the distance $d_n$ between Alice and Bob, (ii) the carrier frequency $f$, (iii) the scattering environment. The phase $\phi_n$ is determined by the scatterer(s) materials and wave incident/impinging angles at the scatterer(s). The delay $\tau_n = \frac{d_n}{c}$, where $c$ is the speed of light.
In OFDM systems, the channel frequency response (CFR) of the $l^{th}$ sub-carrier can be expressed as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
H(f,l)=\sum_{n=0}^{N-1}\alpha_{n}e^{-j2\pi f\tau_n+j\phi_n}e^{-j2\pi\tau_{n}f_{l}},
\end{split}
\label{CFR}
\end{equation}
where $f_{l}$ is the frequency of the $l^{th}$ subcarrier relative to the center frequency $f$. Now, we define the $1\times L$ channel vector ${\mathbf{H}(f)}=\{H(f,0),...,H(f,L-1)\} $ as the CFR of frequency $f$, and $\mathbf{H}_{1}=\mathbf{H}(f_{BA})$ as the CFR of Band1, $\mathbf{H}_{2}=\mathbf{H}(f_{AB})$ as the CFR of Band2, where $L$ is the total number of sub-carrier.
\subsection{Attack Model}
Based on the assumptions of most key generation schemes \cite{8314118}, \cite{9123376}, we also focus on passive adversary. The eavesdropper, Eve, is assumed to be located at least half of the larger wavelength in Band1 and Band2 away from the legitimate users, which can be mathematically given as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
d>\max\{\frac{c}{2f_{AB}}, \frac{c}{2f_{BA}}\}.
\end{split}
\label{d}
\end{equation}
Since wireless channel gains decorrelate over half a wavelength in a multipath environment, Eve's channel is assumed to be independent of the channel of legitimate users. Therefore, Eve cannot infer the channel between legitimate users to generate the key from the channels he listens on.
\subsection{Key Generation Scheme for FDD Systems}
According to the channel model, the carrier frequency will affect the phase and amplitude of the CFR, and the CFR difference is more obvious in the superposition of multiple paths at different frequencies \cite{zhang2016efficient}.
This paper aims to construct reciprocal channel features in FDD systems for Alice and Bob based on the feature mapping function between different frequency bands. In Section~\ref{DL}, we first proved that there is a feature mapping function between different frequency bands that can be obtained through deep learning. We designed a KGNet-based key generation scheme, as shown in Fig. \ref{KGNet_ALL_1}. It consists of two stages, i.e., the KGNet training and KGNet-based key generation stages.
\begin{itemize}
\item We designed a KGNet model to learn the feature mapping function, which will be described in detail in Section \ref{KGNet}. Specifically, Alice trains KGNet to learn the feature mapping function between Band1 CFR $\mathbf{H}_{1}$ and Band2 CFR $\mathbf{H}_{2}$ stored in the database. The dataset in the database can be obtained by Alice collecting the CSI obtained by multiple channel detection measurements and the CSI feedback from Bob. The trained KGNet model will be used for key generation.
\item In the KGNet-based key generation stage, Alice and Bob send a pilot signal at the same time and perform channel estimation to obtain $\mathbf{H}_{1}$ and $\mathbf{H}_{2}$, respectively. Alice and Bob then preprocess their channel vector and obtain channel features $\mathbf{x}_{1}$ and $\mathbf{x}_{2}$. Alice will use KGNet to map the Band1 features $\mathbf{x}_{1}$ to the estimated Band2 features $\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_{2}$, which enables Alice and Bob to obtain highly correlated channel characteristics $\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_{2}$ and $\mathbf{x}_{2}$, respectively.
They will finally perform quantization, information reconciliation, and privacy amplification to generate the same key. The key generation scheme will be described in Section \ref{KGNet-based KG}.
\end{itemize}
\begin{figure*}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/total_KG-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The KGNet-based Key Generation scheme for FDD systems. }
\label{KGNet_ALL_1}
\end{figure*}
\section{Deep Learning for Band Feature Mapping}
\label{DL}
In this paper, our main theme is to construct reciprocal channel features for the FDD system to generate a key according to the feature mapping function between frequency bands. However, according to (\ref{CFR}), we CANNOT determine whether the features between different frequency bands have a definite mapping function. And if there is a mapping function, how can we map the features on one frequency band to the features on another frequency band?
In this section, we define the band feature mapping function according to the approach in \cite{alrabeiah2019deep}. Then, we prove that leveraging deep learning can find the mapping function.
\subsection{Existence of the Band Mapping}
Consider the channel model in (\ref{CFR}), the channel is completely defined by the parameters $\alpha_{n}$, $\tau_n$, $\phi_n$, which are functions of the environment and the carrier frequency. Supposed that Alice is fixed, for a given static communication environment, there exists a deterministic mapping function from the position $P_B$ of Bob to the channel $\mathbf{H}{(f)}$ at every antenna element $m$ of Alice \cite{vieira2017deep}. Therefore, when the number of antenna is 1, there is also a deterministic position-to-channel mapping function when Alice and Bob are both equipped with a single antenna.
\begin{myDef}
The position-to-channel mapping $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_f$ can be written as follows,
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\Phi}_f:\{P_B\}\rightarrow\{\mathbf{H}(f)\},
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where the sets $\{P_B\}$ represent the possible positions of Bob and the sets $\{\mathbf{H}(f)\}$ represent the CFR of the corresponding channels.
\label{definition1}
\end{myDef}
Then, we investigate the existence of the mapping from the channel vector $\mathbf{H}(f)$ to the position of Bob. For that, we adopt the following assumption.
\begin{assumption}
The position-to-channel mapping $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_f:\{P_B\}\rightarrow\{\mathbf{H}(f)\}$, is bijective.
\label{assumption1}
\end{assumption}
This assumption means that every position of Bob has a unique channel vector $\mathbf{H}(f)$. The bijectiveness of this mapping depends on the number of subcarries, the set of candidate user locations and the surrounding environment. In massive MIMO systems, the probability that $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_f$ is bijective is actually very high in practical wireless communication scenarios, and approaches 1 as the number of antennas at the BS increased \cite{alrabeiah2019deep}. The same with a OFDM-FDD system, the probability that this mapping is bijective is also very high in practical wireless communication scenarios, and approaches 1 as the number of subcarries increases. Therefore, it is reasonable to adopt Assumption \ref{assumption1} in OFDM-FDD systems.
Under the Assumption \ref{assumption1}, we define the channel-to-position mapping $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_f^{-1}$ as the inverse of the mapping $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_f$, which can be written as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\Phi}_f^{-1}:\{\mathbf{H}(f)\} \rightarrow \{P_B\}.
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\begin{proposition}
If Assumption \ref{assumption1} is satisfied, there exists a channel-to-channel mapping function for a given communication environment, which can be written as follows,
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\Psi}_{f_{BA}\rightarrow f_{AB}} = \boldsymbol{\Phi}_{f_{AB}} \circ \boldsymbol{\Phi}_{f_{BA}}^{-1}:\{\mathbf{H}(f_{BA})\} \rightarrow \{\mathbf{H}(f_{AB})\},
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_{f_{AB}} \circ \boldsymbol{\Phi}_{f_{BA}}^{-1}$ represents the composite mapping related to $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_{f_{AB}}$ and $\boldsymbol{\Phi}_{f_{BA}}^{-1}$.
\label{proposition1}
\end{proposition}
\begin{proof}
See Appendix \ref{proof1}.
\end{proof}
Proposition \ref{proposition1} illustrates that channels on different frequency bands have a certain mapping function. Therefore, we believe that it is possible to construct reciprocal channel features from different frequency bands to generate keys.
\subsection{Deep Learning for Band Feature Mapping}
Since the channel vectors are all complex numbers and differ in the order of magnitude of each subcarrier, they cannot be directly used in the deep learning algorithm and the quantization part of subsequent key generation. Therefore, we propose a feature extraction mapping function $\boldsymbol{\xi}$ to preprocess $\mathbf{h}$, which can be written as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\xi}_f:\mathbf{H}(f)\rightarrow\mathbf{x}(f).
\end{split}
\end{equation}
Supposed $\boldsymbol{\xi}_f$ is linear, we can denote the inverse mapping of $\boldsymbol{\xi}$ as $\boldsymbol{\xi}^{-1}$ that can be given as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\xi}_f^{-1}:\mathbf{x}(f) \rightarrow \mathbf{H}(f).
\end{split}
\label{inverse of feature extraction mapping}
\end{equation}
Next, we investigate the existence of the Band feature mapping as shown below.
\begin{proposition}
With Proposition \ref{proposition1}, there exists a Band feature mapping function for a given communication environment, which can be written as follows,
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\Psi}^{'}_{f_{BA}\rightarrow f_{AB}} =\boldsymbol{\xi}_{f_{AB}} \circ \boldsymbol{\Psi}_{f_{BA}\rightarrow f_{AB}} \circ \boldsymbol{\xi}_{f_{AB}}^{-1} : \mathbf{x}(f_{BA}) \rightarrow \mathbf{x}(f_{AB}).
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\label{proposition2}
\end{proposition}
\begin{proof}
See Appendix \ref{proof2}.
\end{proof}
Although Proposition \ref{proposition2} proves that there is a feature mapping function between frequency bands, this function cannot be expressed as mathematical formulas. Therefore, based on the universe mapping \cite{hornik1989multilayer}, we introduce deep learning and obtain the following theorem.
\begin{theorem}
For any given error $\varepsilon>0$, there exists a positive constant $M$ large enough such that
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\sup_{\boldsymbol{x}\in\mathbb{H}} \parallel \textbf{NET}_M(\mathbf{x}(f_{BA}),\boldsymbol{\Omega})-\boldsymbol{\Psi}^{'}_{f_{BA}\rightarrow f_{AB}}(\mathbf{x}(f_{BA})) \parallel \leq \varepsilon,\\
\mathbb{H}=\{\mathbf{x}(f_{BA})\},
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $\textbf{NET}_M(\mathbf{x}(f_{BA}))$ is the output of a feedforward neural network with only one hidden layer. $\mathbf{x}(f_{BA})$, $\boldsymbol{\Omega}$ and $M$ denote the input data, network parameters, and the number of hidden units, respectively.
\label{theorem1}
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
See Appendix \ref{proof3}.
\end{proof}
Theorem \ref{theorem1} reveals that the Band feature mapping function can be approximated arbitrarily well by a feedforward network with a single hidden layer. Thus, we can use deep learning to obtain the feature mapping function between frequency bands, and generate reciprocal channel features to generate the same key.
\section{KGNet-based Reciprocal Channel Features Construction}
\label{KGNet}
As a feedforward network with a single hidden layer can approximate the mapping of band features with different carrier frequencies, we propose a KGNet for channel feature mapping to construct reciprocal channel features. We will first introduce the dataset preprocessing. Then, we introduce the KGNet architecture and describe how to train and test the KGNet.
\re{
\subsection{Dataset Generation}
Since the wireless environment is complex and changeable, there are datasets $\{\mathbb{D}_{O}^{e}\}_{e=1}^E$ of E different environments, and $E \to \infty$. It is impossible to get datasets in all different environments. This paper currently only considers a scenario in a given environment. In the future, techniques such as transfer learning and meta learning can also be used to extend this method to new environments.
In a given environment, we denote the CSI of Band1 and Band2 as the original dataset, which is divided into the training dataset and testing dataset as $\mathbb{D}_{OTr}$ and $\mathbb{D}_{OTe}$, respectively. $\mathbb{D}_{OTr}=\{(\mathbf{H}_{1}^{(n)},\mathbf{H}_{2}^{(n)})\}_{n=1}^{N_{tr}}$, including $N_{tr}$ training label samples. $\mathbb{D}_{OTe}=\{(\mathbf{H}_{1}^{(n)},\mathbf{H}_{2}^{(n)})\}_{n=1}^{N_{te}}$, including $N_{te}$ testing label samples. It should be emphasized that the training dataset cannot include all possible channels between Alice and Bob. As long as the training dataset is sufficiently representative of the environment, the trained neural network can learn the band feature mapping of the environment. Therefore, Alice only needs to collect enough data that is sufficient to represent the environment.
}
\subsection{Preprocessing of Dataset}
\label{Preprocessing of Dataset}
In order to enable the deep learning model to perform efficiently, data samples usually go through a sequence of preprocessing operations, including realization and normalization. The first operation is realization. Since deep learning algorithms work in real domain, we introduce the mapping $\boldsymbol{\xi}^{(1)}$ to stack the real and imaginary parts of the complex channel vector, which can be written as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\xi}^{(1)} :\mathbf{H}'\rightarrow(\mathfrak{R}(\mathbf{H}),\mathfrak{T}(\mathbf{H})),
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $\mathfrak{R}(\cdot)$ and $\mathfrak{T}(\cdot)$ denote the real and imaginary parts of a matrix, vectors or scales, respectively. Through realization, the complex channel vector becomes $1\times2L$ real channel vector $\mathbf{H}'_1$ and $\mathbf{H}'_2$.
The second operation is normalization. Since each dimension of the original dataset usually has a different order of magnitude, directly using the original dataset to train the network will affect the efficiency of the network. Normalization is commonly used to normalize the dataset so that the range of the dataset is between 0 and 1. It is performed using the maximum and minimum value in the dataset. The value is given by:
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\begin{cases}
H_{1,max}^{'l}=\max\limits_{n=1,...,N_{tr}}\{H_1^{'l}\}^{n}\\
H_{1,min}^{'l}=\min\limits_{n=1,...,N_{tr}}\{H_1^{'l}\}^{n}
\end{cases}
l=0,...,2L-1,
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $H_1^{'l}$ is the $l$th element of $\mathbf{H}'_1$. We introduce the mapping $\boldsymbol{\xi}^{(2)}$ to normalize the dataset, which can be written as:
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\boldsymbol{\xi}^{(2)}:
x_{1}^{l} \rightarrow \frac{H_{1}^{'l}-H_{1,min}^{'l}}{H_{1,max}^{'l}-H_{1,min}^{'l}},l=0,...,2L-1 ,
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $x_1^{l}$ is the $l$th element of $\mathbf{x}_1$. The normalization of $\mathbf{H}'_2$ follows the same procedure.
After the above processing, the training dataset and testing dataset as $\mathbb{D}_{Tr}=\{(\mathbf{x}_{1}^{(n)},\mathbf{x}_{2}^{(n)})\}_{n=1}^{N_{tr}}$ and $\mathbf{D}_{Te}=\{(\mathbf{x}_{1}^{(n)},\mathbf{x}_{2}^{(n)})\}_{n=1}^{N_{te}}$ that can be directly put into the network are obtained. We can define $\boldsymbol{\xi}_f=\boldsymbol{\xi}^{(2)}\circ\boldsymbol{\xi}^{(1)}$, which is a linear transformation that satisfies the supposition of (\ref{inverse of feature extraction mapping}).
Note that $H_{1,max}^{'l}$, $H_{1,min}^{'l}$, $H_{2,max}^{'l}$, $H_{2,min}^{'l}$ used to normalize the testing dataset are all derived from training dataset.
\subsection{KGNet Architecture}
\label{KGNet Architecture}
Based on the feedforward network, we propose the KGNet, which consists of one input-layer, four hidden-layer and one output-layer. As shown in Fig. 1, the input of the network is $\mathbf{x}_{1}$ obtained after preprocessing $\mathbf{H}_{1}$. The output of the network is a cascade of nonlinear transformation of $\mathbf{x}_{1}$, i.e.,
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_{2}=\textbf{KGNet}(\mathbf{x}_{1},\boldsymbol{\Omega}),
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $\Omega$ is all the trainable parameters in this network. Obviously, KGNet is used to deal with a vector regression problem. The activation functions for the hidden layers and the output layer are the rectified linear unit (ReLU) function and the sigmoid function, respectively.
\subsection{Training and Testing}
\label{Training and Testing}
In the training stage, the dateset $\mathbb{D}_{Tr}$ is collected as the complete training dataset. In each time step, $V$ training samples are randomly selected from $\mathbb{D}_{Tr}$ as $\mathbb{D}_{TrB}$.
The KGNet is trained to minimize the difference between the output $\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_{2}$ and the label $\mathbf{x}_2$ by the adaptive moment estimation (ADAM) algorithm \cite{kingma2014adam}. The loss function can be written as follow:
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
Loss_{\mathbb{D}}(\boldsymbol{\Omega})=MSE(\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_{2}, \mathbf{x}_{2})=\frac{1}{VN_\mathbf{x}}\sum_{v=0}^{V-1}\|\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_{2}^{(v)}-\mathbf{x}_{2}^{(v)}\|_2^2,
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $V$ is the batch size, the superscript $(v)$ denotes the index of the $v$-th training sample, $N_\mathbf{x}$ is the length of the vector $\mathbf{x}_{2}$, $\mathbb{D}=\{(\mathbf{x}_{1},\mathbf{x}_{2})\}_{v=0}^{V-1}$ is a batch-sized training dataset, and $\|\cdot\|_2$ denotes the $\ell_2$ norm.
Various loss functions can be used to train the neural network, e.g., mean square error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and logcosh. Since the performance of using these loss functions is basically the same when dealing with this problem, we choose MSE as the loss function, which is also used in most works to deal with similar problems \cite{yang2019deep}.
In the testing stage, the KGNet parameter $\boldsymbol{\Omega}$ is fixed. The testing dataset $\mathbb{D}_{Te}$ is generated and is used to test the performance of the KGNet. Furthermore, the dataset can also be used to evaluate the performance of the initial key after quantization.
\section{The KGNet-based Key Generation Scheme}
\label{KGNet-based KG}
The KGNet-based key generation scheme for FDD systems consists of five steps including channel estimation, reciprocal channel features construction, quantization, information reconciliation and privacy amplification, which are designed in this section.
\subsection{Channel Estimation}
\label{Channel Estimation}
Channel estimation is the first step for the key generation scheme, during which Alice and Bob send a pilot signal to each other simultaneously and estimate the CSI. Through this step, Alice and Bob can obtain the channel coefficient vector of Band1 and Band2, namely $\mathbf{H}_1$ and $\mathbf{H}_2$, respectively.
\subsection{Reciprocal Channel Features Construction}
Reciprocal channel features construction is a process in which Alice and Bob construct reciprocal channel features according to the CSIs estimated in Section \ref{Channel Estimation}, which is the most important step for the key generation scheme.
For Alice, this step consists of two parts: preprocessing channel coefficient vector $\mathbf{H}_1$ and Band2 feature mapping. The first part includes realization and normalization, as explained in Section \ref{Preprocessing of Dataset}. In the second part, Alice performs feature mapping using the pre-trained KGNet designed in Section \ref{Training and Testing}. For Bob, this step only involves the preprocessing channel coefficient vector $\mathbf{H}_2$. Through the above steps, Alice and Bob can obtain the $1\times2L$ channel feature vector $\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_2$ and $\mathbf{x}_2$, respectively.
\subsection{Quantization}
Upon acquiring the channel features, Alice and Bob should apply the same quantization algorithm to convert channel features into a binary bit stream with low key error rate (KER). In this paper, based on the equal probability quantization method, we propose a Gaussian distribution-based quantization method with guard-band (GDQG) for OFDM systems.
Different from \cite{zenger2015security} that estimates the mean and variance of the amplitudes of CFR samples in a time sequence, we estimate the mean and variance of the real and imaginary parts of CFR across subcarriers, which can be expressed as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\mu=\frac{1}{2L}\sum_{l=0}^{2L-1}x^l,
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\sigma^2=\frac{1}{2L-1}\sum_{l=0}^{2L-1}(x^l-\mu)^2,
\end{split}
\end{equation}
The distribution of channel features can be approximated by a Gaussian distribution. Therefore, we fit the probability of the channel features into a definite Gaussian distribution $\mathcal{N}_Q=\mathcal{N}(\mu,\sigma^2)$.
The $k^{th}$ quantization interval is calculated as,
\begin{equation}
[F^{-1}(\frac{k-1}{K}+\varepsilon), F^{-1}(\frac{k}{K}-\varepsilon)], k=2,...,K-1
,
\label{equation20}
\end{equation}
and the $1^{st}$ quantization interval is $[0, F^{-1}(\frac{1}{K}-\varepsilon)]$, $K^{th}$ quantization interval is $[F^{-1}(\frac{K-1}{K}+\varepsilon,1]$, where $F^{-1}$ is defined as the inverse of the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of $\mathcal{N}_Q$ and $K$ is the quantization level. The $\varepsilon \in (0,1/2K)$ is defined as the quantization factor, which is used to set the limit of the guard band. Then, we use the common binary encoding to convert the features into a bit stream, where all the features that are not in the quantization intervals are set to -1.
The steps of the quantization method are given in the Algorithm \ref{alg:quantization}.
\begin{algorithm}[htb]
\caption{Gaussian distribution-based quantization method with guard-band}
\label{alg:quantization}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\REQUIRE
The band feature vector $\mathbf{x}$; The quantization factor $\varepsilon$;
\ENSURE
The quantized binary sequence $\mathbf{Q}$;
\STATE Calculate the mean $\mu$ and variance $\sigma^2$ of the feature vector $\mathbf{x}$;
\STATE Construct Gaussian distribution $\mathcal{N}_Q=\mathcal{N}(\mu,\sigma^2)$;
\STATE Calculate the inverse of the CDF $F^{-1}$ of $\mathcal{N}_Q$;
\STATE Initialize the value of $\varepsilon$;
\STATE Calculate the quantization intervals using (\ref{equation20});
\FOR{$i = 0 : 2L-1$}
\IF {$x^{i} \in k^{th}$ quantization interval}
\STATE Binary encoding
\ELSE
\STATE Coded as -1
\ENDIF
\ENDFOR
\RETURN $\mathbf{Q}$.
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
Finally, Alice and Bob send each other indexes whose values are -1 and delete all these bits.
They can get the initial secret key $\mathbf{Q}_A$ and $\mathbf{Q}_B$.
\subsection{Information Reconciliation and Privacy Amplification}
To further reduce the KER, we can adopt information reconciliation to correct the mismatch bits. Through information reconciliation techniques, which can be implemented with protocols such as Cascade \cite{zhu2013extracting} or BCH code \cite{dodis2004fuzzy}, etc, the performance of KER can be significantly improved.
Privacy amplification can apply hash functions to distill a shorter but secret key. However, to ensure fairness of comparison, we only compare the performance of the initial secret key without information reconciliation and privacy amplification.
\section{Simulation Results}
\label{Simulation}
In this section, we evaluate the performance of our proposed deep learning-based key generation scheme for FDD systems. We first describe the simulation setup and metrics, and then we discuss the simulation results and overhead.
\subsection{Simulation Setup}
\label{Simulation Setup}
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/scenario_new-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{An approximate depiction of the considered environment. The green little box on the ceiling represents the distributed antennas of the base station. The two maroon rectangles are two grids representing possible user locations.}
\label{scenario}
\end{figure}
We consider the indoor distributed massive MIMO scenario `I1' that is offered by the DeepMIMO dataset \cite{alkhateeb2019deepmimo} and is generated based on the accurate 3D ray-tracing simulator Wireless InSite \cite{Remcom}.
As depicted in Fig. \ref{scenario}, the model involves one BS with single antenna and 100,000 users. We assume that the BS is Alice and multiple users are possible locations for Bob and Eve. This scenario is available at two operating frequencies 2.4 GHz and 2.5 GHz, which emulate the Band1 and Band2 carrier frequencies of the singer-input singer-output (SISO) setup in Section \ref{System Model}. We set the number of OFDM subcarriers as 64, the number of paths as 5, and the bandwidth as 0.5 GHz to generate the dataset. This dataset constructs the channels between every candidate user location and a single antenna at the Band1 and Band2 frequencies. To form the training and testing dataset, we take the first 100,000 of the generated dataset and shuffle, and then split into a training dataset $\mathbb{D}_{OTr}$ with 80\% of the total size and a testing dataset $\mathbb{D}_{OTe}$ with the rest 20\%. These datasets are used to train the KGNet and evaluate the performance of the proposed key generation scheme.
\begin{table}[!t]
\caption{Parameters for the KGNet.}
\label{tab:KGNet-setup}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|p{5cm}<{\centering}| c|}
\hline
\bfseries Parameter & \bfseries Value\\ \hline
Number of neurons in hidden layers& (512,1024,1024,512)\\\hline
Optimization & ADAM \cite{kingma2014adam} \\ \hline
Kernel initializer & glorot\_uniform\\ \hline
Bias initializer & zeros\\ \hline
Exponential decay rates for ADAM: ($\rho_1,\rho_2$) &(0.9,0.999)\\ \hline
Disturbance factor for ADAM & 1e-8\\ \hline
Learning rate& 1e-3\\\hline
Number of epochs& 500\\\hline
Batch size& 128\\\hline
Number of training samples& 80,000\\\hline
Number of testing samples& 20,000\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
The KGNet is implemented on a workstation with one Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660Ti GPU and one Inter(R) Core(TM) i7-9700 CPU. Tensorflow 2.1 is employed as the deep learning framework. The parameters of the KGNet are given in Table \ref{tab:KGNet-setup}.
\subsection{Performance Metrics}
\label{7.2}
We use the \textit{Normalized Mean Square Error (NMSE)} to evaluate the predictive accuracy of the network, which is defined as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\mathrm{NMSE}=E\left[\frac{\parallel\widehat{\mathbf{x}}_{2}-\mathbf{x}_2\parallel_2^2}{\parallel \mathbf{x}_{2}\parallel_2^2}\right],
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $E\left[\cdot\right]$ represents the expectation operation.
We evaluate the performance of the initial key using the following metrics.
\begin{itemize}
\item \textit{Key Error Rate (KER)}: It is defined as the number of error bits divided by the number of total key bits.
\item \textit{Key Generation Ratio (KGR)}: It is defined as the number of initial key bits divided by the number of subcarriers. If all the real and imaginary features of the subcarriers are used to generate the key bits and the guard band is not used during quantization, then the KGR reaches a maximum of 2.
\item \textit{Randomness}: The randomness reveals the distribution of bit streams. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) statistical test \cite{rukhin2001statistical} will be used for the randomness test for the key.
\end{itemize}
We evaluate the performance at Eve by using the \textit{Normalized Vector Distance (NVD)} between two vectors $\mathbf{K}_1$ and $\mathbf{K}_2$, which is defined as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\mathrm{NVD(\mathbf{K}_1,\mathbf{K}_2)}=\frac{\parallel\mathbf{K}_1-\mathbf{K}_2\parallel_2^2}{\parallel \mathbf{K}_2\parallel_2^2}.
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\subsection{Results}
\label{7.3}
In this section, we evaluate the performance of KGNet and the initial key. Then, the security of the secret generation scheme proposed in this paper is analyzed.
\subsubsection{The Performance of KGNet}
The performance of the KGNet is critical to whether Alice and Bob can generate highly reciprocal channel characteristics. Besides KGNet, we also considered the following three benchmark models.
\begin{itemize}
\item FNN. A FNN is originally designed in \cite{huang2019deep} for uplink/downlink channel calibration for massive MIMO systems, which can be used for the band feature mapping for SISO-OFDM system. It consists of three hidden layers and we choose the numbers of neurons in the hidden layer are (512, 1024, 512) by adjustments. FNN in \cite{huang2019deep} differs from KGNet proposed in this paper not only in the number of layers of the network, but also in all layers of the FNN, the tanh function is used as the activation function.
\item Advanced-FNN. It has the same architecture as FNN but its activation functions are the same as KGNet.
\item 1D-CNN. Its structure is to add a 1D convolutional layer with 8 convolution kernels of size 8 and a max pooling layer with step size 2 and pooling kernel size 2 between the input layer and the first hidden layer of Advanced-FNN.
\end{itemize}
We will compare the KGNet with the three benchmark networks from three aspects, namely, the size of training data required, the fitting performance of the network, and the generalization performance under various SNR.
The size of training dataset is crucial in the KGNet training. Fig. \ref{Training_dataset_size} shows how the performance of the KGNet improves as the size of the training dataset grows. The network is trained from scratch for every training dataset size and is tested on the fixed 10,000 test set. We compare the size of training data required for each of the four networks to achieve optimal results. As expected, the performance of the four networks has improved as the size increased. However, all four networks achieve a stable NMSE after 80,000 training sets. Hence, we use 80,000 sets of data for training and 20,000 sets of data for testing in the rest of the paper.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/Training_dataset_size-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The NMSE of the four networks versus the size of training dataset.}
\label{Training_dataset_size}
\end{figure}
In Fig. \ref{Performance_differentNN}, we compare their fitting performance. From the perspective of fitting performance, KGNet and 1D-CNN structures can be selected for band feature mapping. In addition, the NMSE of the four networks is at a basic level when the number of epochs is 500, which is used in the rest of the paper.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/Performance_differentNN-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The NMSE of the four networks versus the number of epochs.}
\label{Performance_differentNN}
\end{figure}
Moreover, the generalization of the network is critical to the performance of key generation.
The four networks were trained with the original dataset (without noise).
We then added complex white Gaussian noise to the test dataset to generate new test datasets with different SNR levels in the range of 0-40 dB with a 5 dB step.
As shown in Fig. \ref{NMSE_SNR_differentNN}, as the SNR increases, the NMSE of the network decreased. Compared with the other three networks, KGNet has better performance in the range of 0-40 dB.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/NMSE_SNR_differentNN-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The NMSE of the four networks versus SNR of test sets.}
\label{NMSE_SNR_differentNN}
\end{figure}
Based on the analysis in the above three aspects, KGNet is the best choice for band feature mapping.
Besides the above model, we tried other architectures by adding more convolutional layers and full connection layers based on the 1D-CNN and Advanced-FNN. Although the performance of network is slightly improved under high SNR, it also declines under low SNR. Hence they are not compared in this paper.
\subsubsection{Adding Artificial Noise to Improve Robustness}
In order to improve the generalization performance of the network under low SNR, we added artificial noise to the original training dataset. Firstly, we used the dataset under a single SNR as the training dataset, and observed the NMSE of KGNet when tested under different SNRs. As shown in Fig. \ref{NMSE_SNR_differentSNR_training}, when the SNR of the training dataset is lower, the NMSE of KGNet is better when the SNR is lower than 15 dB, and the NMSE is worse when the SNR exceeds 15 dB. When the training dataset is the original noise-free data, the network has the best performance under high SNR while the network performs well under low SNR when the training dataset is SNR of 0 dB. Therefore, we choose to cross the original noise-free dataset with the dataset with SNR of 0 dB, so that the KGNet can achieve excellent performance under 0 - 40 dB.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/NMSE_SNR_differentSNR_training-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The NMSE of the KGNet trained with different SNR dataset versus SNR of testing dataset.}
\label{NMSE_SNR_differentSNR_training}
\end{figure}
Then, we combined the noise-free dataset and the 0 dB dataset in different sizes to form the new training dataset. We constructed five cross datasets:
\begin{itemize}
\item Cross dataset 1: A dataset combining 80,000 sets of 0 dB dataset and 0 sets of noise-free dataset;
\item Cross dataset 2: A dataset combining 60,000 sets of 0 dB dataset and 20,000 sets of noise-free dataset;
\item Cross dataset 3: A dataset combining 40,000 sets of 0 dB dataset and 40,0000 sets of noise-free dataset;
\item Cross dataset 4: A dataset combining 20,000 sets of 0 dB dataset and 60,000 sets of noise-free dataset;
\item Cross dataset 5: A dataset combining 0 sets of 0 dB dataset and 80,000 sets of noise-free dataset.
\end{itemize}
As shown in Fig. \ref{NMSE_SNR_crossSNR_training}, when the network is trained with the cross dataset 5, the performance of the network is the best when the SNR is above 25 dB, but its test performance under low SNR is too bad compared to the other four cross datasets. The test performance of the network trained with the cross datasets 1-4 is almost the same in the low SNR. Therefore, in order to ensure the excellent performance under high SNR and improve the performance under low SNR to a certain extent, we choose the cross dataset 4.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/NMSE_SNR_crossSNR_training-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The NMSE of the KGNet trained with cross datasets 1 - 5 versus SNR of testing dataset. }
\label{NMSE_SNR_crossSNR_training}
\end{figure}
Finally, we used the cross dataset 4 to train the four networks, and the NMSE of the four networks tested under different SNRs is shown in Fig. \ref{NMSE_SNR_differentNN_crossSNR_training}. Compared with the network performance shown in Fig. \ref{NMSE_SNR_differentNN}, the use of cross dataset to train the network reduces the performance of the four networks under high SNR, and the performance of the four networks under low SNR is improved. It is obvious that the generalization performance of the four networks has been improved, and the generalization performance of KGNet is still better than the other three networks.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/NMSE_SNR_differentNN_crossSNR_training-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The NMSE of the four networks versus SNR when all networks are trained with the cross dataset 4.}
\label{NMSE_SNR_differentNN_crossSNR_training}
\end{figure}
\subsubsection{The Performance of Initial Key}
The performance of the initial key plays the most important role in secret key generation problems as it provides the capability Alice and Bob can achieve the same secret keys.
\begin{table}[!t]
\caption{SNR thresholds to achieve KER = $10^{-1}$ when $\varepsilon=\frac{0.2}{2(K-1)}$.}
\label{tab:multiquantization}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|p{3cm}<{\centering}| c|c|c|}
\hline
\bfseries Quantization level& \bfseries $K=2^1$ & \bfseries $K=2^2$ & \bfseries $K=2^3$\\ \hline
\textbf{SNR threshold (dB)}& 5 & 15 & --\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
In practice, the commonly used information reconciliation methods can correct the initial key with KER less than $10^{-1}$. Table \ref{tab:multiquantization} compares the lowest SNRs under different quantization levels to achieve this goal when $\varepsilon=\frac{0.2}{2(K-1)}$. $\varepsilon=\frac{0.2}{2(K-1)}$ means that regardless of the level of quantization, about 20\% of the channel characteristics are discarded. When $K=2^{3}$, the KER under 40 dB is 0.15, which still cannot meet the target. In order to better analyze the impact of other parameters on the performance of the initial key, the quantization level in the subsequent analysis is $2^{1}$.
Fig. \ref{KERKGR_SNR_differentNN} compares the average KER performance of the four networks under 20,000 testing dataset. We chose the quantization factor $\varepsilon$ of 0.1.
As the SNR increases, the KER of the four networks decreases, and the KER of KGNet is always lower than the other networks. When the SNR is higher than 30 dB, the KER performance of KGNet is lower than $10^{-3}$. Furthermore, Fig. \ref{KERKGR_SNR_differentNN} compares the average KGR performance of the three networks under 20,000 testing dataset. When the SNR is low and the network performance is not good enough, there will be more features in the isolation band, and its KGR performance is reduced. At the theoretical level, we choose the quantization factor to be 0.1, which means that about 20\% of the channel features in the total $2L$ channel features are deleted during the quantization process, so the number of quantized key bits generated is $1.6L$ and the KGR is 1.6. As shown in Fig. \ref{KERKGR_SNR_differentNN}, with the growth of SNR, the KGR performance of the four networks also continues to increase and is close to 1.6 when it is above 25 dB, which means the Gaussian distribution fits the distribution of channel features well.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/fig9_new-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The KER and KGR of the initial key based on the four networks versus SNR. All networks are trained with the cross dataset 4. The quantization factor is 0.1. The solid line represents KER and the dashed line represents KGR.}
\label{KERKGR_SNR_differentNN}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/fig10_new-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The KER and KGR of the initial key based on the KGNet versus SNR. The KGNet is trained with the cross dataset 4. The solid line represents KER and the dashed line represents KGR. }
\label{KERKGR_SNR_quantization_factor}
\end{figure}
Additionally, the choice of the quantization factor has a great influence on the performance of KER and KGR. Fig. \ref{KERKGR_SNR_quantization_factor} compares the performance of KER and KGR under the quantization factor is 0.005, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3. The outcomes show that when $\varepsilon$ is higher, the KER becomes smaller and the KGR becomes larger. In practice, to satisfy the high agreement, the KER need to be less than $10^{-3}$. To reduce the KER as well as the information exposed during the information reconciliation, different quantization factors can be set under different SNRs. For example, we can set $\varepsilon$ is 0.1 when SNR exceeds 25 dB, $\varepsilon$ is 0.2 when SNR is between 15 dB to 25 dB, $\varepsilon$ is 0.3 when SNR is under 15 dB.
The NIST is a common tool to evaluate the randomness feature of binary sequences \cite{8314118}, which is also adopted in our work.
The output of each test is the p-value. When the p-value is greater than a threshold, which is usually 0.01, the detected sequence passes the test.
Since the quantization method we adopted was discarded in the quantization process, the length of each group of keys cannot reach the minimum requirement of 128 bits for NIST detection. We splice 20000 sets of keys together to form $t$ sets of 128-bit keys, generally $t$ is less than 20000.
We perform 8 NIST statistical tests on $t=15,981$ sets of keys generated under 25 dB. The serial test includes two types of tests; the serial test is deemed passed when both tests pass. Table \ref{table_randomness} shows the pass rate of the test with different quantization intervals, which is the ratio of the number of sets passed to the number of all sets.
\begin{table}[!t]
\caption{NIST statistical test pass ratio.}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|p{4cm}<{\centering}| p{3cm}<{\centering} |}
\hline
\bfseries Test&\bfseries Pass ratio \\ \hline
Approximate Entropy & 0.8363 \\\hline
Block Frequency & 0.9158\\\hline
Cumulative Sums &0.9972 \\\hline
Discrete Fourier Transform & 0.9995 \\\hline
Frequency & 0.7103\\\hline
Ranking & 0.8511\\\hline
Runs & 0.8733 \\\hline
Serial & 0.7461\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\label{table_randomness}
\end{table}
\subsubsection{The Performance at Eve}
The performance of Eve is related to whether the key can be eavesdropped. Since Eve is close to Bob and Bob receives the channel on $f_{AB}$, it is assumed that Eve eavesdrops on the channel over frequency $f_{AB}$ without loss of generality.
Alice, Bob and Eve can have channel feature vectors $\mathbf{x}_A$, $\mathbf{x}_B$ and $\mathbf{x}_E$ respectively. Fig.~\ref{fig:hor_2figs_1cap_2subcap_1} shows the channel features obtained by Alice, Bob and Eve with Bob at position 1 and Eve at position 2. The distance between position 1 and position 2 is 0.15 m, which just satisfies (\ref{d}) .The channel features obtained by Alice and Bob come from two channels with the same relative position and different frequencies, while those obtained by Bob and Eve come from two channels with different positions and the same frequencies. As Fig. \ref{fig:hor_2figs_1cap_2subcap_1} shown, changes in location and frequency both cause changes in channel characteristics. Fig.~\ref{fig:hor_2figs_1cap_2subcap_2} shows the channel features obtained by Alice, Bob and Eve after Alice used KGNet for band feature mapping. The channel features obtained by Alice and Bob have a high degree of reciprocity, which are greatly different from those obtained by Eve.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\subfigure[Before Alice uses KGNet for channel feature mapping. SNR is 25 dB.]{
\begin{minipage}[b]{\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/eve_1-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\end{minipage}
\label{fig:hor_2figs_1cap_2subcap_1}
}
\subfigure[After Alice uses KGNet for channel feature mapping. SNR is 25 dB.]{
\begin{minipage}[b]{\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/eve_2-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\end{minipage}
\label{fig:hor_2figs_1cap_2subcap_2}
}
\caption{The performance of Alice, Bob and Eve.}
\label{fig:hor_2figs_1cap_2subcap}
\end{figure}
Fig. \ref{NMSE_SNR_Eve} compares the NVD performance of channel features obtained by Alice and Bob before and after using KGNet for band feature mapping and between Eve and Bob under different SNRs, when Bob and Eve are fixed at positions 1 and 2, respectively.
We can find that when Alice does not use KGNet for feature mapping, the NVD of channel features obtained by Alice and Bob and the NVD of channel features obtained by Eve and Bob are similar. However, after Alice uses KGNet, the NVD between the channel feature obtained by Alice and Bob are much smaller than those obtained by Eve and Bob. Therefore, we believe that even when Eve and Bob are close in the same room, Eve has limited access to the channel features that Alice and Bob can use to generate keys.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Figure/eve_3-eps-converted-to.pdf}
\caption{The NVD of the channel features between Alice and Bob originally, between Alice and Bob after Alice uses KGNet, and between Eve and Bob versus SNR when Bob and Eve are fixed in position 1 and position 2, respectively. }
\label{NMSE_SNR_Eve}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Overhead Analysis}
\begin{table*}[!t]
\caption{Complexity analysis and time cost for the four networks.}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{p{3cm}<{\centering}| p{2.5cm}<{\centering} | p{2.5cm}<{\centering} |p{2.5cm}<{\centering}|p{2.5cm}<{\centering}|p{2.5cm}<{\centering}}
\hline
\bfseries Network&\bfseries Training time & \bfseries CPU average load & \bfseries GPU memory utilization &\bfseries FLOPs & \bfseries The number of trained parameters\\ \hline
FNN in \cite{huang2019deep}&12min 13s &15.2\%& 4.8 / 9.9 GB&2,357,120 &1,181,824\\
Advanced-FNN in \cite{huang2019deep}&12min 25s &15.6\%&4.8 / 9.9 GB&2,357,120 &1,181,824\\
KGNet & \textbf{14min 42s} & 15.2\% &4.8 / 9.9 GB & \textbf{4,453,248}& \textbf{2,231,424} \\
1D-CNN &14min~~2s&\textbf{18.0\%}&\textbf{5.1 / 9.9 GB}&2,850,688&1,362,120\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\label{table_complexity}
\end{table*}
To measure the complexity of the KGNet, multiple indicators are used in this paper. Table \ref{table_complexity} compares the complexity of the four networks in terms of five indicators, i.e., training time, CPU average load, GPU memory utilization, the number of float-point operations (FLOPs), and the number of trained parameters. We calculate the number of FLOPs with reference \cite{molchanov2017pruning}.
In terms of training time, it takes about 14min 42s to train the KGNet, which takes longer than other networks.
In terms of the numbers of FLOPs and trained parameters, the numbers of FLOPs and training parameters required by the KGNet are nearly twice that of other networks.
In terms of CPU and GPU cost, the training of the KGNet requires approximately 15.2\% of the CPU load and 4.8 G of GPU memory (the total GPU memory is 9.9 G), which is similar to the cost of other types of networks.
In general, the resource consumption required for the KGNet training is higher than that of other networks.
However, this overhead is considered acceptable, and the performance improvement brought about by these excess consumption is more important. The reasons are summarized as follows.
\begin{itemize}
\item We choose to train and deploy the network at the base station, and the base station usually has a large amount of computing resources, which is sufficient to meet the resources required for network training and storage. The training time required to train the network on the base station will be greatly reduced than in the simulation. Besides, the training of the neural network can be done on the cloud without spending any resources of the base station.
\item We are modeling based on location, and only need to train a network for a large area. All terminal devices in this area can establish a secure connection with the base station by using this network. As long as the environment in the area does not undergo large-scale changes, the trained network can be used forever. Even if the environment changes, we can fine-tune the network through a small number of datasets.
\item The networks with better performance can generate initial keys with lower BER and higher BGR, which will reduce the overhead of subsequent information reconciliation. Therefore, from a long-term perspective, it is very cost-effective to exchange the additional cost required for training for a network with better performance.
\end{itemize}
Besides, it needs to be emphasized that compared with the key generation for TDD systems, the base station does not have any additional overhead except for the additional use of the KGNet for frequency band feature mapping in FDD systems. In particular, the terminal does not need to train and save the neural network, and there is no additional overhead other than regular key generation, which means it is suitable for resource-constrained IoT devices.
\section{Conclusion}
\label{conclusion}This paper is the first work to apply deep learning to the design of FDD key generation scheme. We first demonstrated the mapping of channel features in different frequency bands under a condition that the mapping function from the candidate user positions to the channels is bijective. Then, we proposed the KGNet for frequency band feature mapping to construct reciprocal channel feature between communication parties. Based on the KGNet, a novel secret key generation scheme for FDD systems was established. Simulation results have demonstrated that the KGNet performs better than other benchmark neural networks in terms of both fitting and generalization under low SNR. In addition, training the neural network with a cross dataset that combines noisy dataset and noise-free dataset can improve the robustness of the neural network. Moreover, the proposed KGNet-based FDD system key generation scheme is evaluated from the KER, KGR and randomness, and it is verified that it can be used for key generation for FDD systems. Our future work will extend this approach to design key generation for FDD-MIMO systems.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 4,535 |
package org.http4s
package server
import org.http4s.websocket.Websocket
import org.http4s.websocket.WebsocketBits.WebSocketFrame
import fs2._
package object websocket {
val websocketKey = AttributeKey[Websocket]
/**
* Build a response which will accept an HTTP websocket upgrade request and initiate a websocket connection using the
* supplied exchange to process and respond to websocket messages.
* @param read The read side of the Exchange represents the stream of messages that should be sent to the client
* @param write The write side of the Exchange is a sink to which the framework will push the websocket messages
* received from the client.
* Once both streams have terminated, the server will initiate a close of the websocket connection.
* As defined in the websocket specification, this means the server
* will send a CloseFrame to the client and wait for a CloseFrame in response before closing the
* connection, this ensures that no messages are lost in flight. The server will shutdown the
* connection when it receives the `CloseFrame` message back from the client. The connection will also
* be closed if the client does not respond with a `CloseFrame` after some reasonable amount of
* time.
* Another way of closing the connection is by emitting a `CloseFrame` in the stream of messages
* heading to the client. This method allows one to attach a message to the `CloseFrame` as defined
* by the websocket protocol.
* Unfortunately the current implementation does not quite respect the description above, it violates
* the websocket protocol by terminating the connection immediately upon reception
* of a `CloseFrame`. This bug will be addressed soon in an upcoming release and this message will be
* removed.
* Currently, there is no way for the server to be notified when the connection is closed, neither in
* the case of a normal disconnection such as a Close handshake or due to a connection error. There
* are plans to address this limitation in the future.
* @param status The status code to return to a client making a non-websocket HTTP request to this route
*/
def WS(read: Stream[Task, WebSocketFrame],
write: Sink[Task, WebSocketFrame],
status: Task[Response] = Response(Status.NotImplemented).withBody("This is a WebSocket route.")): Task[Response] =
status.map(_.withAttribute(websocketKey, Websocket(read, write)))
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 532 |
The newspaper called the cartoon a "journalistic piece".
IS, also known as Isis, is a militant Islamist group fighting a brutal campaign in Syria and Iraq.
Published on 3 July, the cartoon replaces the oval shape on the original flag with a skull and crossbones but leaves the Arabic religious phrase "Laa ilaaha illallaah", meaning "there is no God but Allah".
It also shows the words Allah and Muhammad, which are sacred to Muslims and found on IS flags, inside the skull shape.
The Post, a leading English-language daily, said the cartoon was meant as a critique of the use of religious symbols in acts of violence.
But some Muslim groups said the cartoon was offensive towards Islam. The Post apologised and retracted the cartoon on 8 July, saying it regretted the "error in judgement".
On Thursday, police named the Jakarta Post's editor-in-chief, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, a suspect for religious defamation.
"We are amazed because the fact is we did not commit a criminal act as accused," the newspaper responded in a statement on Thursday.
"What we produced was a journalistic piece that criticised the Isis movement, which has carried out violence in the name of religion. It means that the Isis caricature was not blasphemous."
Rights group Amnesty International has condemned the move by police. In a statement the group said the incident went against President Joko Widodo's commitment to press freedom in Indonesia.
A police spokesman told the BBC Mr Suryodiningrat could be summoned next week. He could be facing five years in prison for religious blasphemy. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 7,338 |
{"url":"https:\/\/physics.stackexchange.com\/questions\/190861\/why-is-energy-associated-with-the-electric-field-given-as-u-dfrac-epsilon-0","text":"Why is energy associated with the electric field given as $U = \\dfrac{\\epsilon_0}{2} \\int E^2 dv$?\n\nThis is an excerpt from Edward M. Purcell's Electricity & magnetism:\n\nSuppose a spherical shell of charge is compressed slightly, from an initial radius of $r_0$ to a smaller radius. This requires that work be done against the repulsive force $\\dfrac{\\sigma^2}{2\\epsilon_0}$ for each square meter of the surface. The displacement, being $dr$ , the total work done is $\\left(\\dfrac{\\sigma^2}{2\\epsilon_0}\\right)\\left(4\\pi r_0^2\\right)$. This represents an increase in the energy required to assemble the system of charges, the energy $U$: $$dU =\\dfrac{\\sigma^2}{2\\epsilon_0}r_0^2\\sigma^2$$. Now, notice how the electric field $E$ has been changed. Within the shell of thickness $dr$, the field was $0$ & is now $4\\pi\\sigma ^1$. Beyond $r_0$, the field is unchanged. In effect, we have created a field of strength $E= \\dfrac{\\sigma}{\\epsilon_0}$, filling a region of volume $4\\pi r_0^2 dr$. We have done so by investigating an amount of energy given by the above equation which, if we substitute $\\epsilon_0 E$ for $\\sigma$, can be written as $$dU = \\dfrac{E^2 \\epsilon_0}{2} 4\\pi r_0^2 dr$$. This is an instance of a general theorem: The potential energy $U$ of a system of charges, which is the total work required to assemble the system, can be calculated from the electric field itself simply by asssigning an amount of energy $\\dfrac{E^2 \\epsilon_0}{2}dv$ to every volume element $dv$ & integrating over all space where there is electric field.\n\n$$U = \\dfrac{\\epsilon_0}{2} \\int_\\text{entire field} E^2 dv$$\n\nMy questions are:\n\n1)What is actually meant by assembling of charges? To bring the charges to make the desired arrangement, right? In order to find the energy, wouldn't we need to find the work done from bringing the charges from infinity to the desired configuration?? But here, Mr. Purcell just squeezed the sphere & found the energy required to squeeze the shell against the repulsive force! How can the energy required for squeezing be the energy required for assembling the charges? I am not getting the intuition. Please explain.\n\n2)$^1$ How can $4\\pi\\sigma$ be the field? How did he deduce it? Moreover, can anyone tell me what he is saying in the second para?\n\nHow can the energy required for squeezing be the energy required for assembling the charges?\n\nThe energy required for squeezing the sphere from initial radius $r_0 \\to (r_0-dr)$ is not the energy required to assemble the charges. He merely calculated the change in energy (or the work required) each time you squeezed the sphere by a displacement of $dr$. To find the work required for assembling the charges you'll have to integrate over all space (As in you had a sphere of Radius $\\to$ infinity and squeeze it to the desired radius).\n\nMr. Purcell just squeezed the sphere & found the energy required to squeeze the shell against the repulsive force! ...\n\nHe found how much work is required to squeeze a sphere a little bit, and again the entire energy required to assemble the charges is to sum over all this little bit of energy from infinity to the desired radius.\n\nIt's some how like recursion; Suppose you know the energy $U$ required to assemble the charges at their current state, and now you want to squeeze them a little bit closer so you must invest extra work: $$U(r_0-dr)=U(dr)+U(r)=2U(dr)+U(r+dr)= \\cdots =\\text{[integration over all} \\qquad U(dr) \\qquad \\text{from infinity to the current radius]} + U\\text{(infinity)} \\text{[Which is 0]}$$\n\nIf you go backwards, and let the electrons move freely to infinity (If they can do that), you'll gain back energy which is basically equal ,in value, to the work required in assembling them in the first place.\n\nHow can $4\\pi\\sigma$ be the field? How did he deduce it? Moreover, can anyone tell me what he is saying in the second para?\n\nI think you have an old version of the book; The one I have has $\\dfrac{\\sigma}{\\epsilon_0}$ instead of that. By the way, there is a \"1\" near the sigma, there must be an explanation at the bottom of the page I believe.\n\nHope this helps!\n\nWhat is actually meant by assembling of charges? To bring the charges to make the desired arrangement, right? In order to find the energy, wouldn't we need to find the work done from bringing the charges from infinity to the desired configuration?? But here, Mr. Purcell just squeezed the sphere & found the energy required to squeeze the shell against the repulsive force! How can the energy required for squeezing be the energy required for assembling the charges? I am not getting the intuition. Please explain.\n\nUse the work-energy theorem and the conservation of electrostatic potential. Then you'll know that the work of taking the electron from infinity to its place is equal to the potential energy-difference.","date":"2021-09-22 21:24:20","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8378736972808838, \"perplexity\": 110.4194575003261}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-39\/segments\/1631780057388.12\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210922193630-20210922223630-00517.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
trosfans.com
http://www.trosfans.com/forum/
General's Hall
http://www.trosfans.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=57 Page 3 of 4
Author: ashren [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:53 pm ]
Post subject: Re: General's Hall
I think this I is slightly problematic. Not so much due to the MRB stating that the Geluroise "have always been a religious folk" – this single fact can easily be ignored – but due to the rest of the history of Weyrth. Gelure was for many centuries ruled by the highly religious Xanarian Empire, it is adjactent to the very centre of this religion and the Imperial Xanarians have a past history of mercilessly persecuting pagans and proselytizing far and wide. These well-established facts make it unlikely in the extreme that the Imperial Faith would not have long since penetrated all of Gelure and driven Paganism into very few, scattered, and tiny pockets. And while Uglub could certainly try to reintroduce Paganism, this would surely be a project of several lifetimes, not a few scant decades – if Uglub was not using magic of a colossal scope.
I think you could look at the Moors in Europe and see an interesting parallel. Look at Don Alfonso Henriques and his rebellion against the Moors of portugal. Further, remember how quickly the English went protestant over a King's desire to divorce... Both scenarios had several other contingent variables but in each case the societies of each country vehemently or violently overthrew the dominant religion.
Also, remember that Gelure was never a place of dominant Xanarian faith. The Pagan traditions of rural life were likely never fully overcome. Also, with crusades constantly pushing south and east and with pagan or atheist nations to the north, north east and north west, Gelure is not necessarily dominated by the Xanarian Empire's influence.
In my fluff for the supp I address this by introducing a history of failed missionary campaigns into the north of Gelure. The inspiration came from the movie "the mission" with the scene of the missionary on the cross going over the waterfall after being rejected by the indiginous tribes. Imagine that but on a grander scale. This discouragement and the distraction of the crusades left the missionaries to the more urban cities and the southern areas. Combine that with corruption at the highest levels during the dispute and the church taking ever higher tithes and indulgences, and you have a populace that is willing to go against a faith they either never thought of as their own or think of as already apostasized.
Remember that all the reformationists and protestant breakaways also did what they did with the threat of infinite damnation hanging over their heads.
Then there is also the influence of the Thayrs in Weyrth. My fluff inserted them as a heavy pagan influence in Gelure which also has some other effects.
Lastly, Uglub's claim of being the dark betrayer reborn is somewhat tongue in cheek. He sees the church as a total hypocritic lie that uses its misunderstanding of real events centuries ago to enrich itself and enslave its followers. They withold the truth from their followers and impverish and punish them not for faith or salvation but for their own worldly lusts. If speaking the truth makes him the devil incarnate and therefore the scourge of the Xanarian church, why should he deny it? Instead he embraces the label.
Being a fantasy realm with little direct historical model, it is especially hard to make Gelure believable. At the core of this problem lie the relations between Uglub, the feudal nobility and the general populace. If this is implausible, Gelure will probably never feel right.
Throughout absolutely all cultures and all eras, a few facts hold true about the nobility:
1) They resent any monarchs limiting their power.
2) They resent outsiders or those of low birth to rise to their rank of power, let alone surpass them.
3) They want none out of their number to rise above themselves.
These are generalizations and therefore generally applicable. However, two factors can mitigate several of these:
Greed and fear.
Uglub emplys greed by offering rapid promotions within nobility for success and he uses fear to counteract the resentment mentioned. Uglub could care less about internal tensions and infighting, and infact encourages cutthroat competition if it increases results so he could care less about what nobles might resent. Blowing up a few heads with his otherworldy power in public works wonders for discontent.
To usurp power, prospective tyrants use the masses to remove monarchs and nobles from power. And it is vital for them to stay in the masses' good graces. As soon as they loose the masses' favour, they are invariably overthrown by the powers they themselves overthrew in the beginning. This played out thousands of time in the course of human history and seems to be one of the unalterable patterns of history.
So yes, the nobles resent those that rise from below, but those that do are also most popular with the masses. Pissing off the masses is problematic. Also, those that Uglub raises tend to be favored by Uglub. Pissing off Uglub tends to be bad for the lifespan. The Nobles that figure out that the system can work to their gain are the ones that stick around, the others are usually lost to quick attrition.
However, the points you make are excellent reasons why Uglub is sorely hated by the neighboring countries.
"Look what he is doing to his own country! What will he do when he conquers ours?"
So the opposition to him is easy to rile in the more stratified Cyrinthmeir and slightly less on this ground (more from religious grounds) in the slightly more egalitarian Empire with its pseudo greek democratic roots.
The problem I see with Uglub is not gaining favour with the masses, but keeping it. Consider: You have got a people with a late-medieval outlook, meaning that religion is central to their lifes. To them, the scripture is absolutely true down to the last letter. Now this people finds out that its secular leader is the very son of the devil and leading them on a path of sure damnation. Try to envision it. The certainty of an eternity in Hell for a few decades of slightly increased economical well-being and a few legal privileges. Not the best of deals.
You base this on an assumption of the faith of the masses that I addressed above. Let me know if you think that would resolve this concern or if more detail on the Gelurian faith system and demographics would be useful. I admit I did not flesh this out as deep as I could have in my notes.
I sincerely can't think of any way how Uglub could stay in favour with the Geluroise. But if he looses this favour, there is little between himself and a counter-coup by the nobility.
Another inspiration when considering this is post weirmach (SP?) germany. Poverty and unrest was the leverage needed for a certain charismatic personality to rise to power, nationalism and wealth were the tools of retention followed by war against long standing enemies that united the masses behind the sense of country before self. This was backed by brutal suppression of dissent and rich rewards for service to the country.
I liberally pulled ideas from Lenin's dynasty after the Czar's and Hitler's recovery of Germany from a destitute nation to a threat to all of europe in but a decade.
Because of this scarcity of allies, some very serious thought should be given to Uglub avoiding anything that might alienate the nobility, to him courting the nobility, allying himself with them and heaping honours and privileges on them.
Combine all that with a heaping handful of gut wrenching fear and paranoia and you have what I was aiming at.
Unless it can be made plausible why the masses would trade the salvation of their souls for a few gold coins.
Lets just say "Judas" and replace gold with silver and leave it at that.
Author: GaGrin [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 4:20 pm ]
ashren wrote:
A long list of very good points.
^ What he said.
Author: Grettir [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 5:14 pm ]
I think you could look at the Moors in Europe and see an interesting parallel. Look at Don Alfonso Henriques and his rebellion against the Moors of portugal. Further, remember how quickly the English went protestant over a King's desire to divorce...
Religiously, the Muslim Moors were a minority. The majority of Iberians had clung to Christendom – for over 350 years of Muslim domination. And the switch between Catholicism and Protestantism certainly can not be compared with a switch from Christianity to, well, Satanism.
Also, remember that Gelure was never a place of dominant Xanarian faith. The Pagan traditions of rural life were likely never fully overcome.
How so? The survival of pagan traditions in more than scattered, remote and tiny pockets goes clearly counter to everything we have learned from European history, especially for an area adjacent to the very centre of Christendom/Xanarism. That the Xanarians would have left their own backyard pagan is, IMO, plainly absurd. At least for me a Gelure that is by around 1400 Weyr not at the very least 90% of the Xanarian faith could never be even remotely believable.
This discouragement and the distraction of the crusades left the missionaries to the more urban cities and the southern areas.
If you read what Jake has written about Weyrth's history, the period of strong missionary activity is long before the onset of the crusades. Even if one discounted this, how likely is it that the Church made its effort to proselytize Krym-Kahan while its own backyard is still largely pagan?
However, two factors can mitigate several of these:
These have worked not even for a single historical usurper I know of when he lost the support of the masses. And with Uglub posing as the Dark Betrayer reborn, I cannot see how he can retain this support, as I have already voiced my opinion that the vast population majority in Gelure would certainly have to be adherents of the Imperial faith.
Let me know if you think that would resolve this concern or if more detail on the Gelurian faith system and demographics would be useful.
Yes, it certainly would. But I fear that we will never see eye to eye on this, as I consider anything but a vast majority of Geluroises being of the Imperial faith absurd in the extreme.
A nation of Judases? Come on!
You make my point for me. 350 years dominated by a religion and BLAM tossed it overboard to return to what they and their parents worshipped. It can happen if the factors are right. I found it is just as easy to make the assumption in creating fictional background material that the factors are right rather than make the same assumption that the factors are wrong.
Also, the satanism reference is abit off since its all relative to perspective. The heresy is, well, heretical and gets you expressly damned to hell all the same and many a reformer was called a servant of the devil or accused of being possessed by the devil and so on. Plus the xanarian faith has not, in my fluff, endeared itself to the public.
We can think of Uglub as making a case that what the Xanarians call the dark betrayoer was actually the hero of the story who valiantly sacrificed himself to stop Xanar, the man who claimed a divine right to enslave humanity and who raped the women of every land he conquered to promote his own progeny and whose church continues to abuse and enslave mankind to fulfill its worldly lusts yadda yadda yadda.
The key is whether or not the Xanarian faith was set in stone in Gelure for all time and eternity and whether the faith was absolutist throughout. If the assumption is yes, then there is a problem, if the assumption is not necessarily so then the willing suspension of disbelief is possible. I propose a scenario where the faith was not 100% embraced for a variety of reasons and then in recent history was filthy corrupt and horribly abusive.
How not so? The established fiction is not even there in the core book and we can simply create the background necessary for the situation we need. I would contend that the xanarian faith as a way of life is centered in the south and Urban where as the pagan traditions common in Angharad and Picti and Stahl (including its fashionable atheism) can be present in the rural areas and the north. Given the terrain in the north its hardly improbable. I would point out that historic christianity has hardly been monolithic near the seat of catholocism much less so in the area of it's birth. Many aspects of the Roman Empire after its conversion to official christianity never adopted christianity as a bedrock faith. Even the official conversion of many of the roman states to christianity was arguably political. What is there to say that this is not the case in Gelure? Nothing but our imaginations. Remember that the xanarian expansion was miltaristic and imperialistic and it may not have endeared itself overwhelmingly to its conquered inhabitants, they did afterall rebel and become independent.
Point in fact, the discussion of Gelure's independence from the empire is probably key to this whole discussion! I will carry on in the same vein a while longer but we can probably reconcile everything we need in the discussion of the separation of Gelure from the empire. I have that in my notes somewhere too...
Lenin? Stalin? Mao? Hitler? Modern history alone is rife with real examples of shortlived and lasting dictatorships that used these methods.
Further, you are again assuming that Uglub's reign will be long term and lasting and that everybody just loves him. Those assumptions need not be true. In my draft there are large contingents of the populace that hate uglub for precisely the reason you mention, but they operate in secrecy for the same reason that resistance to most tyrannies operate in secret - fear.
Maybe the support will be short lived, maybe it won't. Thats the fun of the game and open to groups and players to decide in the course of their games. Maybe they are religious members of the rebellion against Uglub or loyalists to the old regime, or maybe they are converts to the nationalist cause and seeking to protect Uglub from such rebels... it makes for fun story telling at the least and lots of SA opportunities. Imagine -Faith : 3 become 1- or -Passion: Loyalty to king in exile- or Faith: -thayr-.
The problem we have is in reconciling what little we know from Jake's core book with what would make for a fun game. We know that Uglub claims to be the dark betrayer, we know that he overthrew the old rulers, and that now people generally support him if they are uncomfortable with the religious impacts of his rhetoric. Remember, not only is he claiming to be the devil but he is inviting witches to come and be part of his reign. The implications of an express trip to hell are fairly well strewn throughout the fluff.
So, we are left with coming up with an explanation for why the population lives with that and for now tolerates Uglub.
So I proposed the scenario I did. Can we improve on it? Certainly. Are we fully constrained by looking at period parallels in real history? Hardly. The freedom we have to create a fun story is fairly limitless given the absolute minimalist canon source of the MRB.
Granted I am very narrativist in my world building, its all about creating a fun game environment. If I want a true simulationist expression of historical earth I would go to the historical supplements in progress. that may explain the dicord between our views. Then again, maybe not.
Lastly, statements like "absurd in the extreme" might not be the most tactful way of expressing disagreement on how to define one scenario in a relatively undefined and open fictional setting. As the king of giving offense, I really don't care, but some might take it wrong.
So thats my thought on the subject. I think a discussion of the rebellion or secession from the empire would alleviate many of your concerns on religious faith. Or you can just decide that in your world Uglub simply neither confirms nor denies that he is the devil incarnate. Whatever floats your boat.
Just my thoughts for the amusement (or apparent frustration) of others.
You make my point for me. 350 years dominated by a religion and BLAM tossed it overboard to return to what they and their parents worshipped.
No, I don't. You do know that Muslims in Iberia never forced Christian conversions? Apart from a minority of Chrisitians who converted to Islam (called "mozarabs") for various reasons, the Iberian Chrisitan retained their faith throughout the Muslim period, some 300 to 750 years depending on the area. So much for people abandoning their faiths easily or quickly.
Plus the xanarian faith has not, in my fluff, endeared itself to the public.
That's hard to reconcile with Jake's statement that the Geluroise "have always been a religious people" and my firm belief that this religion can only have been Xanarism.
I propose a scenario where the faith was not 100% embraced for a variety of reasons and then in recent history was filthy corrupt and horribly abusive.
The latter is very well possible and a workable solution, the former is in my opinion extremely unlikely for the backyard of the Seat of the Xanarian Empire (and faith).
I would contend that the xanarian faith as a way of life is centered in the south and Urban where as the pagan traditions common in Angharad and Picti and Stahl (including its fashionable atheism) can be present in the rural areas and the north. Given the terrain in the north its hardly improbable. I would point out that historic christianity has hardly been monolithic near the seat of catholocism much less so in the area of it's birth.
The Roman Empire was thoroughly Christianized by about 450 AD; Xanarium was "Xanariarized" right from the start. Even without an initial organised proselytizing effort by the Papacy during the early middle ages, all of southern, western and central Europe was thoroughly Christianized by 900 AD at the very latest. Thorough Christianization of remote Scandinavia and the Slavic peoples took longer, but was completed by 1200 AD, excepting the Lithuaninas and other Balts. When disorganised proselytizing in foreign countries was so effective historically, how can organised proselytizing by a powerful empire in one of its core provinces be any less effective? If you can answer this convincingly, for the entire period of maybe a millennium of Xanarian domination over Gelure, you will dispel my disbelief immediately.
Further, you are again assuming that Uglub's reign will be long term and lasting and that everybody just loves him. Those assumptions need not be true.
I haven't got a problem with the rule being lasting. My problem, as I have outlined, is with a people that in my view should definitely be strong adherents of the Imperial Faith, still being content with being ruled by somebody who is worse than Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pohl Pot combined, who to them is nothing less but the Antichrist. This is not a question of the rule being lasting, it is rather a question as to why it does survive this "revelation" at all for even a single month. I am of the strong opinion that the Geluroise should be horrified, outraged, mortified, whatever, immediately following this revelation. This I consider the critical moment. If Uglub can survive this revelation politically, he can count on the people eventually getting used to his rule and the excitement dying down. And I would dearly like to know by what means he did survive it, as this will set the entire tone for Gelure.
In my draft there are large contingents of the populace that hate uglub for precisely the reason you mention, but they operate in secrecy for the same reason that resistance to most tyrannies operate in secret - fear.
Wonderful and interesting, and exactly how I would have envisioned Gelure myself. I am just not convinced about Uglub surviving his extreme heresy politically long enough for a resistance to form. This is the pressing question for me.
Yes! Exactly. But I am sorry to say that I am just not convinced by your explanations, no offence meant, for the reasons I have given.
This is certainly part of it, but it's not the entire story. I, too, want something based only loosely on actual history, but if this creation does break my suspension of disbelief, enjoyment goes down the drain. At least I myself would always think: "No way how Gelure could have even in part kept its pagan ways. And no way that an Xanarian people would readily stomach being ruled by the Dark Betrayer."
Lastly, statements like "absurd in the extreme" might not be the most tactful way of expressing disagreement on how to define one scenario in a relatively undefined and open fictional setting.
Sorry, I have to apologize if a gave offense with that statement, that wasn't my intention. But the fact remains that, from all parallels I know, I sincerely feel that human societies never ever worked that way.
Well, I am hardly frustrated. We are trying to develop Gelure, and trying to knock holes into each others' reasoning can only strengthen the creation by ferreting out weak points.
Author: HeadWound [ Thu Mar 06, 2008 8:01 pm ]
Grettir, do you have any possible explanation as to how Uglub could have taken over the nation? You shoot down a bunch of ideas, but offer no ideas as to how it may have happened. The problem we are facing is that it did happen(his conquest), and we have to make it make sense. You have the strongest vision of where Gelure comes from, maybe the key to figuring it out lies with you outlining things that make sense to you or even just things that you would be willing to accept.
**edited to clarify a sentence**
HeadWound wrote:
Grettir, do you have any possible explanation as to how Uglub could have taken over the nation?
None that would convince me any more than what I have already read. I hope that we can arrive at something together.
To me, Gelure being almost entirely Imperial faith by the fall of the Xanarian Empire is a necessity. One might assume that in the two centuries following this event, there was some reascendence of paganism. Not wholesale, that could hardly be made plausible, but maybe in the remote rural areas. In my chronology, I have deliberately remained vague as to countries other than the Xanarian Empire, but I have introduced an invading foreign people as on of the reasons of the Empire's fall. If one wanted to say that one tribe of these people settled in Gelure and remained true to its pagan ways, we might arrive at a plausible pagan reascendence.
Let me spin this thread further. Let's say the invaders did eventually, but surprisingly late, convert to the Imperial faith. Being now Xanarians, they do once again condone Xanarian inquisitions. The Xanarians among the Geluroise are reliefed, but the Pagans, once again forced into hiding, are angered – both with the rulers and with the Church.
Fast forward a lifetime. We got a well-hated king and a schism of the nobility, as ashren suggested. Along comes Uglub. He allies with the Geluroise people and the more ruthless of the Geluroise nobility, and overthrows the king. One of Uglub's noble allies expects to be the new king, but Uglub takes power instead. Having the people's support, he purges the nobility from his worst enemies and cows the less outspoken ones into submission. He starts to play it extra-nice with the remaining nobility, wooing them. Once he is in firm control of the country, he declares himself to be Pagan and allows the Pagans open worship; the substantial pagan minority rejoices, but the Xanarians frown. More time passes. Uglub maneuvers Pagans into all positions of power in Gelure, and some of the more unscrupulous nobles convert out of opportunism; the others may be influenced magically to do so.
Only now does Uglub to some degree let on that he is the Dark Betrayer returned, and he penalizes Xanarian worship. After decades of suppression, the vengeful Pagans rejoice. Many revolts flare up here and there, but with nobility and part of the population on his side and with a strong army and sorcerous support, Uglub stays in control.
I made this up on the spot, and arrived at a divided people – Pagans and suppressed Xanarians. Just an idea, though, and a none too smooth one at that.
Author: HeadWound [ Fri Mar 07, 2008 4:04 pm ]
My biggest problem is that I am not a historian, not even an amateur one. I have a basic understanding and I read enough books to fake it when running a game, but I don't understand the evolution of a society enough to work on the actual details of Gelure.
However, I feel that the biggest thing that separates Weyrth from Earth is the actual existence of magic. It can be argued, depending on our personal belief whether or not miracles exist in the real world, but magic as presented in the TROS rules does not exist in the real world. How would a powerful sorcerer who claims to be in the know about true religion go about changing a nation? I truly don't think it is as simple as a few conquer spells changing people beliefs and emotions, or even a ritual that puts him in control. I think the more we think about how it would happen in the real world, the more bogged down we will get. However, the more Uglub is understood, we will be able to answer the tougher questions.
I think the key to finding an answer to the issues of making Uglubs rise to power palatable to everyone, is with Uglub himself.
Is Uglub a title, like the Dread Pirate Roberts in "The Princess Bride"? That would go along way to give him the time to take over.
Is he the leader of a cult that has been underground for ages, waiting for the stars to be right, allowing him to temporarily gain enough power to really do some damage?
Is he the gifted son of a noble, that rises to power in a way similar to Petyr Baelish in ASOIAF?
Is he truely a god or at least the manifestation of a god that has decided the time has come for him to claim his throne on Weyrth?
And the list goes on....
The more we understand Uglub, the closer we can get to figuring out what he did, and the less we will be stuck using historical precedent from another world to define this one. Not that there is anything wrong with doing that, but why recreate Earth? Yes, using history as a model for social evolution is good, but there are factors that lead to many things that happened on Earth, that don't hold true to Weyrth. I can see people that use magic to start a religion having more faithful followers than any on Earth. I know it is from a movie, but Thulsa Doom from Conan the Barbarian seems as good a source of material as any history book, when it comes to Gelure.
Just to clarify, because I am never good on forums, I don't want a D&D type mishmash of a typical fantasy world. I really like the gritty realism of everything you guys have posted to create you various nations/settings it just seems that Gelure needs a bit more of the fantasy to make it work than the rest of the world. My favorite books for their settings are ASOIAF by George RR Martin and the Saga of Recluse by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. because they seem to realistically give us a world that has been shaped by it's magic. Thats not to say I think wizards should be running around the countryside, but imagine if (fill in your favorite ruler) had the power of a few vagaries, in addition to the other qualities that lead to their rise in power.
Author: Grettir [ Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:02 pm ]
I can try to answer at least that. The reason to stay reasonably close to real cultures and societies is their familiarity to modern man. When a society is similar to a real one, player's imagination can easily fill in blanks in the description. We all have certain rough pictures in our heads of "generic" Viking settlements, of "generic" Roman legions, and we have some idea about the workings of society of feudal Japan and of life in a medieval monastery. When we encounter similar things in play, our imaginations immediately fill in the blanks in the referee's description – familiarity helps us round out the setting.
The more alien the setting, the harder it is to get "into" it. Do you happen to Know the setting of "Empire of the Petal Throne"? It is brilliant, inspired by mainly Aztec and Hindu cultures, with some ancient Egypt added, and with a lot of twists to it. It is rich, believable, and alive, but it is very hard to access – getting even a general idea of what this setting would look like, how the societies work, what life is like there, even what the moral values of the people are takes dozens of hours of study.
So the farther one deviates from well-known models, the more the development work that is to be invested, and the less accessible is the creation.
I agree with you about accessibility of the world. I don't want to stray too far from the historical models available, but Gelure is a tough nut to crack with what we are given in the main rules.
I just think the key to making it work with the rest of the world lies with Uglub himself, more so than anything else. I mean, if he is unconcerned with the length of his rule, he would do things differently than if he were trying to set up a dynasty. Or maybe Uglub is a puppet to a real leader, and is being setup to fall so the real savior could take over. I think his motivation and drive need to be examined before anything that works can be made.
I just want to add that I hate the name Uglub.
Author: Lyrax [ Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:09 am ]
It may be important to note that there is magic in this world.
In our world, polytheistic pagan religions never could stand up to Christianity or Islam, partly because they had absolutely no organization on a grand scale. In Weyrth, this might be a little different. You have real magic-users to rally around. A natural clergy that is, in essence, created by either the presence OR absence of the organized religions presented. If there were a generation in which an extra number of magic-users were born, that could easily cause a surge in paganism, whether they get burned or not.
And it's also possible that the Gelure branch of the Xanarian Church itself is heretical. If a portion of the more popular priests and bishops of Gelure are found by the Inquisition to be guilty of heresy of some kind, that could easily kill off enthusiasm for the church. It could also cause a schism in the church, in which the Gelure branch becomes its own religion. Especially if it's an archbishop or cardinal (or whatever they've got instead of those officers). It's not a static thing, and Gelure's Xanarianism is going to be rather different from Xanaria's, or Stahl's.
There's plenty of situations I can think of to make this plausible. As long as he doesn't come out on day 1 to say "Hey everyone! I'm the Dark Betrayer!", then I think he's ok. He has to introduce everything incrementally, but it's well within the realm of possibility.
Author: Daeruin [ Sat Mar 08, 2008 2:18 am ]
I also hate the name Uglub. For one thing, isn't Gelure supposed to be based on historical France? Uglub isn't even remotely Latin-sounding.
Author: Grettir [ Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:30 am ]
Daeruin wrote:
I, too, hate the name of Uglub; sounds like an orc. But where in the published material does it say that Gelure is based on France? I feel that this is simply some kind of impression that has somehow crept up, but just because it has, it needn't be true.
Lyrax wrote:
I beg to differ. The monotheistic religions were not successful due to the pagans not having real magic, they were successful because they did appeal much more to common people's spiritual needs than the pagan ones. All pagan belief systems left their adherents alone with one or the other spiritual need. Monotheistic religions made more sense than pagan ones, they were better at addressing the mysteries of life. This is the main reason why pagans did usually fold quickly before monotheistic beliefs, whereas one monotheistic belief did usually not give in to the other quickly or easily.
This is amply demonstrated by the early Chrisitian writings and the writings of their pagan contemporaries, and also by the Muslims drawing right from the beginning a division between religions they considered primitive and those they considered highly developed: Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews, were met with some religious tolerance, whereas all others weren't.
A second reason is organisation. Monotheistic religions tended to be much more organised than pagan ones. No pagan religion I can think of had any higher rank than "high priest of the local temple"; above that – nothing. This lack of unity or organisation was not conductive to resistance against missionary efforts.
So, to repeat, I don't think that the existence of magic would alter much. Especially not in the "the-vast-majority-of-people-does-not-even-witness-a-single-magical-act-in-their-entire-lifetimes"-scope of Weyrth. And magic isn't denied by the Imperial faith, it is well integrated in it – as a tool of the Dark betrayer to darken men's souls. So I can't see how a resurgence of magic amongst a people of the Xanarian faith would lead to anything but horrification and an almost hysterical increase in piety: "The agents of the Dark betrayer are at large! Pray, boys, pray!"
And it's also possible that the Gelure branch of the Xanarian Church itself is heretical. If a portion of the more popular priests and bishops of Gelure are found by the Inquisition to be guilty of heresy of some kind, that could easily kill off enthusiasm for the church. It could also cause a schism in the church, in which the Gelure branch becomes its own religion.
We have already created a recent schism within the Church, with Taveruun. Doing the same with Gelure is not only a strange coincidence, but it would also set a bad example. Will the developers of any country create a schism just because they feel restrained by what has already been developed? Will the Xanarism of every country be in schism with every other country's?
Author: GaGrin [ Sat Mar 08, 2008 3:59 pm ]
Just a side note really, but none of you seem to know what Paganism is and are using it as an odd catch-all for the religous views of these people before the Xanarians moved in. I'm far from an expert myself - but I would like to see this idea that the Pagans would support anyone claming to be the devil anymore than anyone else addressed. Its simply not accurate.
I would also like to point out that no religion that retains power does so without adopting local traditions to some degree.
Anyway, thats not directly related. But with all the talk about absolutes in terms of faith I thought I'd just point out that provided the people go along with the general flow and don't do anything too heritacle they will almost certainly be left to there own devices and minor beliefs.
Author: HeadWound [ Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:49 pm ]
The thing is, Uglub is set up as the Evil Wizard Ruler. Not by any of us, by the main rulebook. We can alter the stereotypes however we see fit, but magic is the whole basis of this guy and his rule.
If magic doesn't have a huge role in his rise, then it is just another country with another dictator. I don't want magic to be crazy out in the open everywhere, but magic is the only tool we have to make his rule make sense. And if magic is going to be out in the open anywhere, it is Gelure.
In the book, it states:
TROS Main Rules wrote:
He is openly opposed to the "weak" Imperial church and the Xanarian Empire, claiming that it knows not its own history... A history of which he shall remind the world
The statement makes it seem to me that he is using religion as a tool for his control and possible his agenda. (I know that I just stated the obvious, but I'm only human ) I can't see one man having that big an effect on the world, without magic being heavily involved.
I think I'm gonna stop posting here because I'm very likely to never use Gelure as described in the books as a setting for me and I never meant to spend this much time thinking about it I am however, using as much info as I can from Weyrth to help shape the setting in which my games are taking place. So, I definitely have to say thankyou for making me think about nation building in general! | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 2,954 |
Q: Is there such a thing as a Higher Werewolf? In Lukyanenko's Night Watch series, vampires and werebeasts (most commonly werewolves) are both referred to as lower Dark Ones: they have some magical ability, but it's capped at a certain level (fourth-grade?); they have a low, beastly quality about them; and, at least in the case of vampires, they need to prey on humans in order to survive.
An exception to this is the Higher Vampires, such as the Inquisitor Witiezslav whom we meet in Day Watch and, as we discover in Twilight Watch, Anton's old friend and neighbour Kostya. They have been through a special process in order to 'graduate' from being lower Dark Ones to becoming much more powerful. My question is: is there an analogue of Higher Vampires for werebeasts? Is there such a thing as a 'Higher Werewolf', or is any werewolf doomed to be a lower Dark One forever?
I'm currently in the middle of Twilight Watch. Anything from the first three books, or any minor point from the entire series, is fair game, but please warn me about major spoilers from books 4-6.
A: No. But there are werewolves who are very old, and very powerful - and equivalent to First or even High rank mages (including holding senior positions and being accorded similar respect).
One senior Other (Irakly), explicitly says that there are no Higher werewolves, when discussing Hena (see below about him). But that the really old ones are someone to be reckoned with:
В Инквизиции, конечно, слабых Иных вообще нет - думаю, второй-третий уровень Силы - это нижний предел. Из вампиров там только высшие. А из оборотней... мне кажется, что Хена - единственный.
Получается, бывают высшие оборотни? - спросил любопытный Ефим.
Лайк не ответил: он думал. Ответил Ираклий:
- Не бывает высших оборотней. Бывают очень старые оборотни. Поживешь с ихнее - многому научишься.
The Inquisition, of course, has no weak Others - I guess second or third level of the Power is a lower limit. And only Higher vampires. And as far as werewolves - I think only Hena. ...
So it turns out there are higher werewolves? - asked curious Efim.
Like did not answer: he was thinking. Irakli answered instead:
There are no higher werewolves. There are very old werewolves. When you live as much - you learn much.
It seems the process works similar to Higher Vampires, by eating a certain minimal number of victims.
See the quote about Alar in the next section.
Alar - First level
There was Alar (who turned into a lion), the head of the Dark Ones (or Day Watch) of Bukhara (which was a major city in Central Asia, before Mongol invasion) during 12th century. First level.
... Оборотни редко доходят до первого ранга, а вот поди ж ты, Алар, которого я почти развоплотил шесть лет назад, добрал нужное число жертв! И теперь по праву сильного занимает место на Совете.
...
Алар: Дневному Дозору Бухары он {{Договор}} не пришелся по нраву. Все мои подданные ждут одного только слова...
(Сборник "Мелкий Дозор" рассказ "От крови до клятвы, от клятвы-до крови.")
... Werewolves rarely reach First rank, but lookie here - Alar, who I almost un-made six years ago, reaped enough victims. And now, as is his right according to his power, is part of the Council.
...
Alar: The Day Watch of Bukhara aren't happy with it {{The Agreement}}. All my subjects are just awaiting my word...
("Little Watch" anthology, "From blood to vow, from vow to blood")
Hena
The rest of this answer is mostly based on a material from from "Sixth Watch". Not really a spoiler, except for one very minor plot detail of that book.
In later books (First, "The Face of Black Palmira", then "The Sixth Watch"), we meet a very old werewolf called Hena. He's one of the main players in European Inquisition hierarchy (he usually co-leads Tribunals with Karmadon, one of the most powerful European mages), and the oldest known Werewolf (and close to oldest living Other in general).
His animal form is that of a Smilodon (sabertooth cat).
He is shown - "Sixth Watch" and "Palmira" - to have been old enough to remember Mammoths and to have hunted and eaten Neanderthals (however, he sarcastically explains that his form has nothing to do with his age - otherwise, werewolves turning into dinosaurs must have survived since that time) and Geser thought that his (grand)parent was a Neanderthal.
We also find out from him that werewolves do not have an organizational structure or leadership, unlike Vampires.
Хена был оборотнем. Типичным низшим Темным. Но... только на первый взгляд. Арик чувствовал в нем что-то еще, что-то скрытое, глубинное, могучее и необъяснимое.
Hena was a werewolf. Typial Lower Dark One. But... only at first glance. Arik felt something else in him... something hidden, deep, powerful and unexplainedstrong text. ("The Face of Black Palmira")
... and when queried about Smilodons being extinct...
Тьма, сколько ж тебе лет? - дрогнувшим голосом спросил Симонов.
- Не знаю, - похоже Хену не слишком занимал собственный возраст. Когда я родился, людям уже пришла в головы идея считать прожитые сезоны. Вот только известные им числа быстро закончились и долгое время мне было просто "много" лет. Но смилодонов и мамонтов я прекрасно помню.
"Darness! How old are you?" - asked shaken Simonov.
"Don't know" - it seems, Hena didn't care too much what his age was. - "When I was born, people already had the idea of counting past seasons. But all the numbers known to them quickly ran out, and for most of the time, I was simply "very" old. But I do remember smilodons and mammoths perfectly.
... and here Like is discussing Hena with his underlings:
Спасибо, Старший, - очень серьезно ответил Лайк, вставая. Вид довольного зрителя он мгновенно утратил. Ираклий тоже встал, хотя и ему, и Лайку мешал столик. ...
...Скажу больше. Хена - самый старый из известных мне Иных. Есть и постарше, но о тех я только слышал. Хена единственный, кто еще не удалился от дел.
Thank you, Elder - very seriously answered Like, standig up. He immediately lost the look of satisfied spectator. Irakly also stood up, even though both he and Like were impeded by the table. ...
... I will say more. Hena - the oldest of the Others I am familiar with. There are some who are older but I only heard of them. He's the only one who's still active.
All next quotes from "Sixth Watch":
Anton: И не сообщил ли почтеннейший Хена, не является ли он бесспорным лидером среди… э… своей… своих...
Geser: Любезнейший Хена сказал, что он старейший из своей породы, – сказал Гесер. – Еще он сказал, что у них нет, не было и никогда не будет общего лидера, ибо это противоречит самой их сути. Он сообщил это твердо и ясно, на языке охотников на мамонтов, в котором просто не существовало понятия лжи.
Anton: And did the venerable Hena relay whether it is the undisputed leader among the ... uh ... his ... his ... -
Dearest Hena said he was the oldest of his breed - said Gesar. - He also said that they do not have, never had, and will never have a common leader, because it is contrary to their very essence. He stated so strongly and clearly, in the language of mammoth hunters, which simply did not have the concept of lying.
... and
Я спросил у Хены, какие они были, неандертальцы, – буркнул Гесер, прохаживаясь по кабинету. – Из всех наших только он, пожалуй, их застал…
– И что ответил? – заинтересовался я. Инквизитор-оборотень был не из говорливых, но уж если говорил, то в его словах не стоило сомневаться. Он как-то сказал, что жил в те времена, когда ложь еще не изобрели.
– Хена сказал, что они в общем-то почти как люди, – сообщил Гесер. – Только кости очень крепкие и много шерсти. Потом неделю комки отрыгиваются.
...
– Хена неохотно говорил на эти темы, – сказал Гесер. – Мне кажется, ему не очень удобно. Он активно прорежал поголовье неандертальцев в свое время. Несмотря на безоары. А еще, как мне показалось, неандертальцы были у него в родне. То ли мать, то ли бабушка.
I asked Hena what Neanderthals were like - Geser growled, pacing the office. - Of all of us, he is likely the only one who was around when they were.
And how did he respond? - Queried I.
Inquisitor-werewolf was not a talkative kind, but when he spoke, his words were not to be doubted. He once said that he lived in the times when lies were not yet invented.
Hena said said that they were, in general, almost like people - said Geser. - Except the bones are very strong and a lot of hair. Afterwards, he had hairballs for a week.
...
Hena was reluctant to discuss these issues, - said Geser. - I think he is somewhat embarrassed. He actively thinned out the Neanderthal headcount back then - despite the bezoars. Also, it seemed to me, there were the Neanderthals in his bloodline. Either his mother, or grandmother.
Hena's abilities
I don't recall Hena explicitly exhibiting any special abilities - the way High Vampires have abilities qualitatively differentiating them from lower ones. However, in "Sixth Watch", Olga is certain that if pitted against Peter - Hena would eat him.
For context, Peter is:
*
*A super-old Highest Vampire who is among Vampire Council few leaders
*is a Neanderthal and the oldest vampire we see in the books
*Clearly could easily become Vampire Master of Masters of the world if he wanted to bother (meaning, he was easily the strongest Vampire, not only oldest).
Нет, давайте не будем сводить Хену с Петром. Петр – говнюк редкостный, но теперь мы хотя бы про него знаем. А так – съест его Хена, и с концами.
No, let's not put together Hena and Peter. Peters is a rare shithead, but at least we know all about him by now. If we do - Hena will just eat him.
Hena's position and influence:
*
*Like (Highest rank mage and the head of Kiyev Day Watch) calls Hena "Elder" and is very respectful of him. Both he and Irakly stand up when Hena leaves.
The quote was earlier in the answer.
*Hena is a member of 3-judge tribulal of Inquisition in "Black Palmira", alongside Shindje, "the Judge of the Dead" - one of the oldest, most powerful, and strongest Highest mages in Europe, and Carmadon - the Owl Head, also one of the most powerful and oldest Highest mages in Europe.
*
*Moreover, Shindje actually respectfully bows to Hena upon arrival
У Лайка непроизвольно вытянулось лицо. Определенно, сегодняшнее заседание грозило побить все рекорды по Великим!
"Представляю вам Великого Шиндже, Судью Мертвых, и смиренно прошу его председательствовать на сегодняшнем заседании" ...
Шиндже, вечный нейтрал из Харькова, попросту кивнул присутствующим, потом повернулся к Хене и уважительно поклонился. Хена, конечно же, привстал и также склонил в ответ голову. На этом ритуал и завершился.
Like's face inadvertently showed astonishment. Certainly, today's proceedings threatened to break all records as far as presence of The Greatest!
"I present to you the Great Shindje, Judge of the Dead, and humbly ask him to preside over today's meeting" ...
Shinjje, the eternal neutral from Kharkov, simply nodded to everyone present, then turned to Hena and respectfully bowed. Hena, of course, also stood up and bowed his head in response. This ritual thus ended.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 8,480 |
{"url":"http:\/\/www.centreressourcesmoliere.fr\/jis3114-steel-plate\/strength-armour-steeltopics-by_1047.html","text":"Send to E-mail [email\u00a0protected]\nDevelopment Zone, Zhengzhou, China\n\n# strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\n## strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\nTel: 0086(371)86&15&18&27\n\nMail: [email\u00a0protected]\n\nScience.govMay 01, 2018\u00a0\u00b7 A high strength, tough alloy steel is formed by heating the steel to a temperature in the austenite range (1000.degree.-1100.degree. C.) to form a homogeneous austenite phase and then cooling the steel to form a microstructure of uniformly dispersed dislocated martensite separated by continuous thin boundary films of stabilized retained austenite.\n\n### zinc coated steel: Topics by Science.gov\n\nMay 01, 2018\u00a0\u00b7 Zinc coated sheet steel for press hardening. NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Ghanbari, Zahra N. Galvanized steels are of interest to enhance corrosion resistance of press-hardened steels, but concerns related to liquid metal embrittlement have been raised.The objective of this study was to assess the soak time and temperature conditions relevant to the hot-stamping process during ramor armor bullet proof steel plate data sheet - Carbon strength armour steeltopics by science.govAR500 Armor offers a variety of soft and hard body armor, steel, ceramic, and PE plates, as well as ballistic helmets to help you stay in the fight. AR500 Armor\u00ae steel plates offer edge to edge ballistic protection[price]Armox 600T Add on protection plate SSAB[steel]Extra high hardness armor with very good resistance against penetration.ramor 450 armor vehicle bullet proof steel plate strength armour steeltopics by science.govstrength armour steelTopics by Science.gov. May 01, 2018 \u00b7 In Medieval Europe, soldiers wore steel plate armour for protection during warfare. Armour design reflected a trade off between protection and mobility it offered the wearer.\n\n### material science - Penetration of armor plate - Physics strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\nYou may find this link interesting. 19th century research indicates (for iron\/steel armor and iron balls) a formula along the lines of $$T = .00005D\\sqrt{\\frac{W\\times V^2}{D^3}}$$ where T is armor thickness, V is velocity, W is weight and D is diameter. This assumes pretty much perpendicular impact on the armor material science - Penetration of armor plate - Physics strength armour steeltopics by science.govYou may find this link interesting. 19th century research indicates (for iron\/steel armor and iron balls) a formula along the lines of $$T = .00005D\\sqrt{\\frac{W\\times V^2}{D^3}}$$ where T is armor thickness, V is velocity, W is weight and D is diameter. This assumes pretty much perpendicular impact on the armor m250 maraging steel: Topics by Science.govA 300 grade maraging steel was chosen as a vehicle by which to understand the inverse relationship between strength and toughness in high strength alloys such as the 18 Ni maraging steels. The 18 Ni, 300 grade maraging material was a commercial grade consumable-electrode, vacuum arc remelted heat obtained in the form of forged and annealed plate.\n\n### armor rha steel: Topics by Science.gov\n\nShock destruction armor system. DOEpatents. Froeschner, Kenneth E. 1993-01-01. A shock destruction armor system is constructed and arranged to destroy the force of impact of a projectile by shock hydrodynamics. The armor system is designed to comprise a plurality of superimposed armor plates each preferably having a thickness less than five times the projectile's diameter and are preferably strength armour steeltopics by science.govWhole-body compression helps recovery after strength strength armour steeltopics by science.govMar 04, 2010\u00a0\u00b7 Interesting new study on compression garments in this months Journal of Strength and Conditioning. A team from the University of Connecticut led by William Kraemer a big name in the field had subjects do a heavy eight-exercise weights session, then recover either by wearing an Under Armour Recharge suit for 24 hours or by wearing strength armour steeltopics by science.govUnder armour case analysis by Njinyah CiroMar 18, 2014\u00a0\u00b7 Under Armours main strength are their innovative products, low production costs, brand loyalty and high quality of their apparel. Under Armour will need to survive until they can amass the same resources, experience, and recognition as the bigger rivals. The major primary weaknesses faced by Under Armour is the lack of international market strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\n### The Science of Armour Materials | ScienceDirect\n\nThe Science of Armour Materials comprehensively covers the range of armor materials from steels and light alloys, through glasses and ceramics, to fibers, textiles, and protective apparel. The book also discusses aspects of analytical and numerical modeling, as well as laboratory-based high-strain rate testing and ballistic testing methodologies.The Real-Life Science Behind Crysis' NanosuitUsing some not-so-far-fetched science, strength armour steeltopics by science.gov [a.k.a Nanosuit) that can enhance strength, speed and armour levels. The player can max the speed and dash across an open field, change to the strength strength armour steeltopics by science.govThe Mechanical Metallurgy of Armour Steelsfundamental mechanical property of an armour, i.e. its strength, and its resistance to penetration by armour piercing projectiles [2,3]. One of the most common and fundamental failure mechanisms experienced by homogenous metal armour, i.e. ductile hole formation, is shown in Figure 1. This failure\n\n### The Mechanical Metallurgy of Armour Steels\n\nfundamental mechanical property of an armour, i.e. its strength, and its resistance to penetration by armour piercing projectiles [2,3]. One of the most common and fundamental failure mechanisms experienced by homogenous metal armour, i.e. ductile hole formation, is shown in Figure 1. This failureThe Mechanical Metallurgy of Armour Steels | DSTArmour steels have historically delivered optimised ballistic performance against a range of battlefield threats and continue to be highly competitive armour materials. The relationship between armour steel mechanical properties, specifically their mechanical metallurgy, and ballistic performance is explained, where such performance is strength armour steeltopics by science.govThe Chemistry of Kevlar Body Armor - The liquid body armor is under development by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. The liquid body armor is designed to be light and flexible so that soldiers can be more mobile in the field and to not effect the way they run or the way they aim down sights. The technologies used for body armor have definitely improved from the beginning of body strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\n### Tensile Armor Layer - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics\n\nThe tensile armor layers are always cross wound in pairs. As their name implies, these armor layers are used to resist the tensile load, torsional, and bending moments on the flexible pipe. The tensile armor layers, as shown in Figure 24.12, are typically made of flat rectangular wires and laid at about 30\u00b055\u00b0 to the longitudinal axis.. Flexibility in bending of unbonded pipes originates strength armour steeltopics by science.govSuper Bug! World's Strongest Insect Revealed | Live ScienceMar 23, 2010\u00a0\u00b7 After months of grueling tests, a species of horned dung beetle takes the title for world's strongest insect. The beetle, called Onthophagus taurus, was found to Stronger Than Steel, Able to Stop a Speeding Bullet--It's strength armour steeltopics by science.govResearchers have long tried to enhance its strength, especially by compressing and densifying it, says Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park.\n\n### Science.gov\n\nMay 01, 2018\u00a0\u00b7 A high strength, tough alloy steel is formed by heating the steel to a temperature in the austenite range (1000.degree.-1100.degree. C.) to form a homogeneous austenite phase and then cooling the steel to form a microstructure of uniformly dispersed dislocated martensite separated by continuous thin boundary films of stabilized retained austenite.Making sense of Iron Man's science - Phys.orgApr 26, 2016\u00a0\u00b7 With this week's release of the new Captain America movie, Civil War, it's another opportunity to see Captain Rogers and Tony Stark as Iron Man draw on their superhuman strength How does grain size affect the strength of steel? - QuoraJan 02, 2016\u00a0\u00b7 The strength of most metals depends on the average grain size in a polycrystalline material and on the sample size in a monocrystalline materials. To understand this, you need to consider what determines the material strength. The strength of meta strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\n### Guide to Training Statistics | Kenshi Wiki | Fandom\n\nUse light armor - Early on (until you build up your melee attack and defend skills) it makes sense to keep your fighters light - nothing but light armor or less, and focus on items that improve skills (bandannas, martial arts handwraps, ninja or assassin rags, etc). This is both because a -1 skill or +1 skill effect means a lot more when your strength armour steeltopics by science.govGraphene Body Armor and ShieldingGraphene Uses For Body Armor. However, little research had been done into the materials ability to absorb impacts. If theres one thing graphene is known for, other than its conductivity, it is its sheer strength. Despite its low weight, the material is remarkably strong and Graphene Armor Would Be Light, Flexible and Far Stronger strength armour steeltopics by science.govDec 04, 2014\u00a0\u00b7 Who needs science fiction? Nature is a wealth of imaginative plot twists. Take carbon. Carbon is common. Its the fourth most abundant element in the universe. And yet, carbon is also exceptional. Its the elemental keystone of terrestrial life. It stores and releases enough energy to power industrial revolutions. And flakes of the stuff, first\n\n### Graphene Armor Would Be Light, Flexible and Far Stronger strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\nDec 04, 2014\u00a0\u00b7 Who needs science fiction? Nature is a wealth of imaginative plot twists. Take carbon. Carbon is common. Its the fourth most abundant element in the universe. And yet, carbon is also exceptional. Its the elemental keystone of terrestrial life. It stores and releases enough energy to power industrial revolutions. And flakes of the stuff, first Full text of \"California journal of mines and geology\"Audio Books & Poetry Community Audio Computers, Technology and Science Music, Arts & Culture News & Public Affairs Non-English Audio Spirituality & Religion. Librivox Free Audiobook. BlaBlaSISE Aether\u00e1dio Smoothie Insured Financial Wealth - Debt Decoded KONTENTED KOLLECTIVE About That AFSCME Life KlinterKlater Podcast.Engineers develop recipe to dramatically strengthen body armorJan 22, 2020\u00a0\u00b7 Researchers have formulated a new recipe that can prevent weaknesses in modern-day armor. By adding a tiny amount of the element silicon to boron carbide, a\n\n### Dynamic fracture toughness of a high strength armor steel strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\nThis paper summarizes the results of a research being carried out to determine fracture behavior both in static and dynamic conditions of high strength armor steel Armox500T. In this research, notched specimens were cut to be tested in three-point bending test. Specimens were pre Armour steels - ScienceDirectJan 01, 2017\u00a0\u00b7 Hardenability is a very important aspect when designing an armour steel. Whilst hardness is by far the most important and, as we will learn in Section 2.2.2, especially dynamic compressive yield strength, it is critically important that the steel has high strength Armour Unit - an overview | ScienceDirect TopicsP.E. Smith, in Marine Concrete Structures, 2016. 3.7.7 Breakwater armour units. Breakwater armour units are subject to loads in service that cause flexure and shear in the units, and reasonable concrete strengths are therefore necessary. In addition to compressive strength, for an armour unit such as a dolos or Core-loc, a minimum tensile strength (flexural) is also specified, and it is strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\n### Analysis of the Residual Stress in ARMOX 500T Armour Steel strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\nAnalysis of the Residual Stress in ARMOX 500T Armour Steel and Numerical Study of the Resultant Ballistic Performance M. Saleh, V. Luzin, M.M. Kariem, D. Ruan Abstract. Armour steels and their response to ballistic and blast threats have been dutifully studied in light of increased conflict and advances in protection levels. The strength of these []Abalone Armor: Toughest Stuff Theoretically strength armour steeltopics by science.gov - Live ScienceJan 18, 2004\u00a0\u00b7 Centuries of warfare have seen body armor develop from cow hides to Kevlar. Now scientists are using lab experiments and mathematics to discover a Strength | Fallout Wiki | FandomAdvanced power armor increases Strength by 4. The Brotherhood of Steel can perform an operation to increase Strength by 1, assuming it can be afforded or finding the appropriate module chip . Buffout temporarily increases Strength by 2. Several perks increase Strength. Adrenaline Rush raises Strength by 1 when the Chosen One has less than 50% strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\n### Strength | Fallout Wiki | Fandom\n\nAdvanced power armor increases Strength by 4. The Brotherhood of Steel can perform an operation to increase Strength by 1, assuming it can be afforded or finding the appropriate module chip . Buffout temporarily increases Strength by 2. Several perks increase Strength. Adrenaline Rush raises Strength by 1 when the Chosen One has less than 50% strength armour steeltopics by science.govStrength of hair inspires new materials for body armor strength armour steeltopics by science.govJan 17, 2017\u00a0\u00b7 Strength of hair inspires new materials for body armor Date: January 17, 2017 Source: University of California - San Diego Summary: In a new study, researchers are investigating why hair is strength armour steeltopics by science.govScience Explains: Power Armor - Talk Amongst YourselvesEven if an exoskeleton had the strength and speed necessary of power armor, the the armor aspect of the exoskeleton would likely be a hindrance to its abilities. The most well known portrayal of Power Armor, the Fallout series aptly named Power Armor would be forced to account for the weight of the heavy armor, which could be upwards strength armour steeltopics by science.gov\n\n### tensile strength steel: Topics by Science.gov\n\nMay 01, 2018\u00a0\u00b7 Aluminum\/ steel wire composite plates exhibit high tensile strength NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 1966-01-01. Composite plate of fine steel wires imbedded in an aluminum alloy matrix results in a lightweight material with high tensile strength.Plates have been prepared having the strength of titanium with only 85 percent of its density.. Effect of fluoride mouthwash on tensile strength strength armour steeltopics by science.gov(PDF) Mechanical properties and microstructures of steel strength armour steeltopics by science.govThe kinds of armor materials used for military applications are steel, ceramics, polymers, and composites [5], although steel is the most widely used due to its ease processing, lower production strength armour steeltopics by science.gov","date":"2021-09-25 09:01:26","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.44877198338508606, \"perplexity\": 9576.149735597719}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 20, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-39\/segments\/1631780057615.3\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210925082018-20210925112018-00692.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
\section{Introduction}
\label{s:intro}
Generating C (or other such low-level language) is inevitable if we
want the convenience and guarantees of abstractions~-- and we want the
code that runs in a constrained environment (e.g., a low-powered robot);
involves OpenMP, OpenCL (i.e., GPGPU) or AVX512 instructions;
benefits from profitable but highly domain-specific optimizations
typical in HPC. In fact, we have done all of the above, using the
offshoring technique first proposed in \cite{eckhardt-implicitly} and
re-thought and re-implemented in \cite{generating-C}. The key idea of
offshoring, explained below, is the close correspondence between
imperative OCaml and C code.
Mutable variables of C is the biggest stumbling block: the
straightforward mapping of OCaml variables of reference types to C
mutable variables is insidiously wrong, when it comes to aliasing. In
the past, pitfalls were steered around of by imposing strong, ad hoc
restrictions~-- which made generating C code with
mutable variables of pointer types, for example, out of reach.
We propose a better mapping between reference-type and
mutable variables that needs no
restrictions and hence widens the scope of offshoring.
After introducing offshoring, the paper explains the problem of
generating code with mutable variables, and, in
\S\ref{s:current-offshoring}, its current, imperfect resolution.
\S\ref{s:no-mut-var} and \S\ref{s:final-translation} each introduce
new proposals, improving the state of the
art. \S\ref{s:final-translation}'s approach is
the most general, intuitive, easier to show correct, and insightful.
It applies to any other language which uses values of reference types
to model mutable variables, such as F\# and SML.
\section{Offshoring}
Offshoring turns homogeneous metaprogramming~-- generating OCaml in
OCaml~-- into heterogeneous: generating C. The key idea is that simple
imperative subset of OCaml may be regarded as a different notation for
C. Taking the running example of vector addition from
\cite{generating-C}, contrast the OCaml code
\newpage
\begin{code}
let addv = fun n vout v1 v2 ->
for i=0 to n-1 do
vout.(i) <- v1.(i) + v2.(i) done
\end{code}
and the C code:
\begin{code}
void addv(int n, int* vout, int* v1, int* v2) {
for(int i=0; i<=n-1; i++)
vout[i] = v1[i] + v2[i];
}
\end{code}
The similarity is so striking that one may argue that OCaml's |addv| is
C's |addv|, written in a different but easily relatable way.
Offshoring is the facility that realizes such correspondence between a
subset of OCaml and C (or other low-level language). With offshoring,
by generating OCaml we, in effect, generate C.
With MetaOCaml, we may statically ensure the generated OCaml code
compiles without errors. If we can map OCaml to C while preserving the
guarantees, we in effect obtain the assured C code generator. Needless
to say, the mapping ought to preserve the dynamic
semantics/behavior.
It should be stressed that the mapping from OCaml to C in not
total. We are not aiming to translate all of OCaml to C~-- only a
small imperative subset. That is why we are not concerned with
closures, recursion, user-defined datatypes, let
alone more complicated features. Therefore, we generate
efficient C that does not need any special run-time. We are
not aiming to generate every C feature either. After all, like other
languages C is redundant: many differently phrased
expressions compile to the same machine code. The supported
subset of OCaml and C, if small, should still be useful~-- and it
proved to be in our experience, for generating HPC and embedded code.
\section{Problem with Mutable Variables}
However small the mappable OCaml subset may be, its range should
include mutable variables, which are pervasive in C. Offshoring would
hardly be useful otherwise. Thus the central problem is what should be
the OCaml code that maps to C code with mutable variables. OCaml
values of reference types are not a straightforward match of C mutable
variables~-- as one realizes upon close inspection. Hereby we
undertake the systematic investigation of the problem.
\subsection{Formalization}
\label{s:formalization}
We introduce the calculus ICaml to delineate the minimal relevant
first-order imperative
subset of OCaml. (The subset of OCaml used in
offshoring \cite{generating-C} is not much bigger, adding loops and
conditionals.)
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{tabular}[Ct]{lMl}
Variables & x,y,z \\
Base Types & b \coleqeq \I \mid \B
\\
Types & t \coleqeq \U \mid b \mid \tref{t}
\\
Constant Types &
s \coleqeq t \mid t\to s
\\
Expressions &
e \coleqeq x \mid c_0 \mid c_1\, e \mid c_2\,e\ e \mid e; e \mid \be{x = e}e
\end{tabular}
\caption{Calculus ICaml. For constants $c_i$ see
Fig. \ref{f:IC-constants}.}
\label{f:ICaml}
\end{figure}
Most of it is self-explanatory. Constants $c_i$ have to be applied to
$i$ arguments to be considered expressions. We use the customary infix
notation for such applications where appropriate.
The calculus is Church-style: all (sub)expressions are annotated with
their types. To avoid clutter however, we mostly elide types, where
they can be easily understood. The type system is entirely standard
and elided to save space. The dynamic semantics is also standard.
\begin{figure}
\begin{eqnarray*}[cl:cl]
1,2,3,\ldots &: \I
&
\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, &: t\to \tref{t}
\\
true, false &: \B
&
! &: \tref{t}\to t
\\
+ &: \I\to\I\to\I
&
:= &: \tref{t}\to t\to \U
\end{eqnarray*}
\caption{The constants $c_i$ of ICaml and their types. Their arity $i$
is the number of arrows in their type. For instance, $!$ is a
1-arity constant $c_1$, and $:=$ is $c_2$. Only constants have arrow
types. We may silently add other similar constants.}
\label{f:IC-constants}
\end{figure}
The calculus CoreC, Fig.~\ref{f:CoreC}, models the relevant subset of
C: the target of the offshoring mapping. It is also entirely
standard. The static and dynamic semantics of ICaml and CoreC are shown
in full (in tagless-final style) in the file \url{refcalculi.ml}
accompanying the paper
(see also \url{http://okmij.org/ftp/tagless-final/refcalculi.ml}).
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{tabular}[Ct]{lMl}
Variables & x,y,z \\
Base Types & b \coleqeq \I \mid \B
\\
Types & t \coleqeq \U \mid b
\\
Constant Types &
s \coleqeq t \mid t\to s
\\
Expressions &
e \coleqeq x \mid c_0 \mid c_1\, e \mid c_2\,e\ e \mid e; e \\
& \qquad t\; x = e; e \mid x := e
\end{tabular}
\caption{Calculus CoreC. Its constants $c_0$ and the 2-arity constant $+$
are the same as those in Fig. \ref{f:IC-constants}.}
\label{f:CoreC}
\end{figure}
The calculus permits expressions like $(\I\,x=1+2; x+3)+4$, which is
invalid C. However, with the simple post-processing step of lifting
variable declarations (always possible if the names are unique, which
is assumed), it becomes
|int x; (x=1+2,x+3)+4|, which is proper C.
\begin{comment}
Describe the lifting more formally. Especially if the language
is extended with conditional, loops or just blocks.
\end{comment}
The calculi ICaml and CoreC are quite alike; the main difference is in
mutation. To emphasize the distinction, we show the (natural
deduction) typing derivation of integer assignment in the two calculi.
\medskip
\noindent
\begin{prooftree}
x: \tref\I
\quad
e: \I
\quad
:=\:: \tref{\I}\to\I\to\U
\justifies
x := e\:: \U
\end{prooftree}
\quad
\begin{prooftree}
x: \I
\quad
e: \I
\justifies
x := e\:: \U
\end{prooftree}
\medskip
\noindent
We see in particular that whereas $x := x$ in ICaml cannot be typed,
this expression is well-typed and meaningful (as a no-op) in
CoreC. Assignment in CoreC is a special form; therefore, the same $x$
on different sides may have different meanings~-- traditionally
described by the terms L-value and R-value.
The calculi ICaml and CoreC resemble the corresponding calculi in
\cite{eckhardt-implicitly}, but are much, much simpler~-- and free from
the severe restriction on initializers being constants.
\subsection{Extant Offshoring Translation}
\label{s:current-offshoring}
We now state the translation $\Tr{\cdot}$ from a (type-annotated)
expression of ICaml to a type-annotated expression of CoreC,
Fig.~\ref{f:offshoring-naive},
\begin{figure}
\begin{eqnarray*}[c@{\;=\hskip 1em}c]
\Tr{x:t} & x:\Tr{t}\\
\Tr{! (x:t)} & x:\Tr{t}\\
\Tr{(x:t) := e} & x:\Tr{t} := \Tr{e}\\
\Tr{\be{x:t = \mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, e}e'} & \Tr{t}\; x = \Tr{e}; \Tr{e'}\\
\Tr{\be{x:t = e}e'} & \Tr{t}\; x = \Tr{e}; \Tr{e'}
\end{eqnarray*}
\caption{Naive offshoring translation}
\label{f:offshoring-naive}
\end{figure}
with the rest being homomorphism. Here $\Tr{\tref{t}}=t$ and
$\Tr{t}=t$ otherwise. This is basically the translation
proposed in \cite{eckhardt-implicitly}, adjusted for (many)
differences in notation. As an example, the ICaml expression
\[
\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0}x:={!x}+1
\]
is translated to
\[
\I\, x=0; x:=x+1
\]
The translation clearly expresses the idea that an OCaml value of
a reference type bound to a variable is a model of mutable variables in
C. It is also clear that the translation is partial: ICaml code like
$!(\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0)$ or $(\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0) := 1$ is not translatable. The translation is also
non-compositional: variable references are translated differently if
they appear as the first argument of $!$ or the assignment
operation. If we add constants with arguments
of reference types, like \textsf{incr}, the translation has to be amended.
\begin{comment}
In \cite{eckhardt-implicitly}, arguments of functions in source
(OCaml) are restricted to base and array types. No arguments of ref
types.
Problem in Walid paper? The translation of let has no restriction on
$\hat{t}$. Indeed, $\hat{t}$ is defined on p.311 to include reference
types. However, the translation of types on p.312 omits reference
types. Therefore, semantics preservation is doubtful!
The type system in A2 however limits let to basic types! See the Let
rule in A2.
Also, translation on p.313, case
$let \hat{x}:\hat{t} ref = ref c$, uses $\hat{t}$, which may include
reference types!
Strangely, Fig.2 has let x = ref c in ...: that is, reference cells
are initialized only with constants! Not arbitrary expressions.
The same in Fig. 1: C declarations have only constants!
I guess the reason for C declarations to be constants is because type
system on p.326 does not type the RHS of declarations. See the rule
Blk. For that reason, the source language in Fig. 2 also has to have
constant initializers. That is a significant restriction!
When describing Fig.1, the paper says ``All declarations are
initialized.'' And indeed, Fig.1, the definition of d, says
so. However, the translation of OCaml statements, p. 313, in the
translation of let-expressions, shows $[[\hat{t}]] x; l$: the C
declaration without an initializer.
The type system in A1 shows that mutable variables are only of base
types! See the typing of assignment on p.326
I wonder if the type preservation proof is actually true, A4. The
definition of $[[\hat{\Gamma}]]$ omits the case of the binding
$x : \hat{b} ref$. Therefore, is the case
of $let x:b ref = ref c in s$ is really that similar to the
elaborated case
$let x:b = c in s$?
In fact, this is patently false, see the last two lines on p.330.
It says: ``By the definition of $[[\hat{\Gamma}]]$,
$[[\hat{\Gamma}]](x)=[[\hat{t}]]$. But the definition of
$[[\hat{\Gamma}]]$ early does \emph{not} have the case for bindings of
reference types! Nor array types for that matter: meaning that the
typing of array cases is also wrong.
\end{comment}
There is also a subtle and serious problem with the translation as
written. Applying it to
\begin{eqnarray}
\label{e:aliasing}
\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0}\be{y=x}y:=41;{!x}+1
\end{eqnarray}
would give
\[
\I\, x=0; \I\, y=x; y:=41; x+1
\]
which has a different meaning. Whereas
the ICaml expression evaluates to 42, its CoreC translation
returns 1.
The root of the problem is the difference in meaning between
$\be{y=x}\ldots$ in ICaml and $t\; y=x;$ in CoreC. In the latter case,
a new mutable variable is allocated whose initial contents is the current
value of $x$. Then $y$ and $x$ are mutated independently. On the other
hand, $\be{y=x}\ldots$ allocates no new reference cell; it mere
introduces a new name, $y$, for the existing reference cell named $x$.
One may informally say that in ICaml, names of mutable cells are
first-class.
Although the interpretation of names in ICaml and CoreC differs, as we
have just seen, the difference fades in restricted contexts. The
offshoring translation can be made meaning-preserving, after all~-- if
we impose restrictions that preclude aliasing. The paper
\cite{eckhardt-implicitly} never mentions that fact
explicitly. However, if we carefully examine the typing rules in its
Appendix A2, we discover the silently imposed restrictions: only
base-type references, and only base-type let-bindings (sans the
dedicated expression $\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, e}e'$ for creating references). The
fixed offshoring translation is shown in Fig.~\ref{f:offshoring-extant}.
\begin{figure}
\begin{eqnarray*}[c@{\;=\hskip 1em}c]
\Tr{x:b} & x:b\\
\Tr{! (x:\tref{b})} & x:b\\
\Tr{(x:\tref{b}) := e} & x:b := \Tr{e}\\
\Tr{\be{x:\tref{b} = \mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, e}e'} & b\; x = \Tr{e}; \Tr{e'}\\
\Tr{\be{x:b = e}e'} & b\; x = \Tr{e}; \Tr{e'}
\end{eqnarray*}
\caption{The extant offshoring translation, with clearly stated restrictions}
\label{f:offshoring-extant}
\end{figure}
This is the (core of the) offshoring translation used in the current
MetaOCaml: BER N111. It has been used in all offshoring applications
so far, many of which are mentioned in \cite{generating-C}, which also
details simpler use cases.
Although the translation proved more or less adequate for numeric code, it
is clearly severely restrictive: it is impossible, for example, to
generate C code with pointer-type function
arguments or pointer-type mutable variables~-- or even
represent pointer types to start with. Occasionally we had
to fiddle with a generator to make it produce the offshorable
OCaml code.
Also, the translation
of the problematic
\eqref{e:aliasing} is not fixed: merely outlawed.
\begin{comment}
Examples to translate
let exr1 = fun y -> let x = ref 0 in x := 1; incr x; {!x} + y
let exr2 = fun y -> let x = ref 0 in let z = x in z := 42; {!x} + y
\end{comment}
Each of the two following sections propose a new translation,
overcoming the drawbacks of the state of the art.
\section{C without Mutable Variables?}
\label{s:no-mut-var}
Paper \cite{generating-C} briefly mentions, merely on two examples and
without details or formalization, an alternative translation: avoiding
mutable variables altogether. In terms of the present paper, the
calculus CoreC becomes unnecessary: ICaml as is gets mapped to the
surface syntax of C. We now present the translation formally and systematically,
noting its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages motivate
the proposal in \S\ref{s:final-translation}.
The key idea is that C already has the analogue of ICaml values of
reference type: arrays. Expressions of reference types of ICaml are C
pointer expressions.
Assuming the lifting transformation mentioned in
\S\ref{s:formalization}, the mapping
$\TC{\cdot}$ from ICaml to C is as follows:
\begin{eqnarray*}[c@{\;=\hskip 1em}Tc]
\TC{\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, (e:t)} & |t z[1] = {$\TC{e}$}; z|\qquad (\textsf{z} is fresh)\\
\TC{! e} & |*$\TC{e}$|\\
\TC{e := e'} & |*$\TC{e}$ := $\TC{e'}$|\\
\TC{\be{x:\tref{t} = e}e'} & |t * const x = $\TC{e}$; $\TC{e'}$|\\
\TC{\be{x:b = e}e'} & |b x = $\TC{e}$; $\TC{e'}$|
\end{eqnarray*}
One is reminded of Algol68, in which \textsf{.int x := 1} is the abbreviation
for \textsf{.ref.int x = .local.int := 1}, where |.local.int| is the stack
allocator of an integer (similar to \textsf{alloca} in C).
The earlier example
\[
\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0}x:={!x}+1
\]
now looks like
\[
\texttt{int * const x = (int z[1]={0}; z);\; *x = *x + 1;}
\]
or, after variable lifting
\[
\texttt{int z[1] = {0};\; int * const x = z;\; *x = *x + 1;}
\]
The problematic \eqref{e:aliasing}, that is,
\[
\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0}\be{y=x}y:=41;{!x}+1
\]
becomes
\begin{tabular}[C]{l}
\tt
int z[1] = {0}; int * const x = z;\\
\tt
int * const y = x; *y = 41; *x + 1
\end{tabular}
\begin{comment}
\begin{code}
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
int z[1]={0};
int * const x = z;
int * const y = x;
*y = 41;
printf("result
}
\end{code}
\end{comment}
and returns the same result as the ICaml code.
There are no longer any restrictions to base types; adding
constants like |incr| is easy. Arrays, conditionals, loops are
straightforward as well.
\begin{comment}
A reviewer mentioned conditionals: but there is no problem with them.
See, for example, the translation of
\texttt{let r = ref 0 in
if x > 0 then let y1 = ref (100 / x) in r := !y1 + 1 else
let y2 = ref 0 in r := !y2 + 2}.
we would translate to something like
\begin{code}
zr[0] = {0};
int * r = zr;
if(x>0) {
int z1[1] = {100/x};
int * const y1 = z1;
*r = *y1 + 1;
} else {
int z2 [1] = {0};
int * const y2 = z2;
*r = *y2 + 2;
}
\end{code}
There are no problems with allocated variables `escaping' their scope
via pointers -- as long as we don't have mutable variables of pointer types.
\end{comment}
Other extensions are more problematic, however. If we extend ICaml
with composite data structures (e.g., to express linked lists),
functions returning values of reference types, or global variables
or arguments of higher-reference types~-- we have to worry about the
lifetime of reference cells allocated by $\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, e$. (These extensions
are not common in numeric computing however.) They have to be
allocated on heap, and managed somehow (e.g., via reference counting).
We have to stress, however, that resource/memory management is the
problem that has to be dealt with at higher levels of abstractions; by
the time of offshoring, the code should already be assured
resource-safe. See \cite{session-types}
for an example of such resource-safety assurances.
The translation results in highly unidiomatic C code, which, from
personal experience, provokes negative reaction and strong doubts
about correctness. A reviewer suggested a slight adjustment, which
makes the result look a bit more familiar.
\begin{eqnarray*}[c@{\;=\hskip 1em}Tc]
\TC{\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, (e:t)} & |alloca($\TC{e}$)|
\end{eqnarray*}
where |alloca| could be avoided by allocating a fresh variable in
scope. Thus the running example
\[
\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0}x:={!x}+1
\]
becomes
\[
\texttt{int z = 0; int * const x = \&z; *x = *x + 1;}
\]
which looks a bit more like conventional C.
One of the advantages of the present translation is that
\[
\TC{\tref{t}} = \tconst{\TC{t} *}
\]
That is, reference types of ICaml map directly to pointer types in C.
On the downside, we do not represent mutable variables of C or CoreC
directly in ICaml. The disadvantage has a practical side: as seen from
the translation examples, each reference-type variable of ICaml is
translated to \emph{two} variables in C: one holds the content and is
mutated, and the other is the pointer to the former. The C code hence
needs twice as many variables~-- and twice as much stack storage for
them. In simple code, a C compiler can notice variables that are not
mutated and effectively inline them, removing the need to store
them. However, we are aiming to generate very complicated code. Take,
for example matrix-matrix multiplication from our past work: applying
standard techniques to make it fast results in thousands of lines of C
code. There, C compiler may not see that some variables are redundant.
Can mutable variables in (Core)C be represented directly in ICaml? Can
the translation hence map those ICaml variables directly, one-to-one,
to CoreC mutable variables, without allocating pointers to them? Can
we intuitively and formally be confident in the translation, even for
arbitrarily complex reference types? The following section shows the
answer.
\begin{comment}
With it,
OCaml's |exr1| and |exr2| are translated into
\begin{code}
int exr1_alt(int y) {int x[1]; *x = 0; *x = 1; ( *x )++; return ( *x+y);}
int exr2_alt(int y) {int x[1]; int * z[1]; *x = 0; *z = x; **z = 42; return ( *x+y);}
\end{code}
\end{comment}
\begin{comment}
\begin{code}
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
int x[] = {3};
int * y = x;
*y = 42;
printf("Result
return 0;
}
\end{code}
\begin{code}
#include <stdio.h>
int exr1(int y) {int x; x = 0; x = 1; x++; return (x+y);}
int exr2(int y) {int x; int z; x = 0; z = x; z = 42; return (x+y);}
int exr1_alt(int y) {int x[1]; *x = 0; *x = 1; (*x)++; return (*x+y);}
int exr2_alt(int y) {int x[1]; int * z[1]; *x = 0; *z = x; **z = 42;
return (*x+y);}
int main(void){
printf("result
return 0;
}
\end{code}
\end{comment}
\section{Mutable Variables and Reference Types}
\label{s:final-translation}
We have just seen the translation from ICaml to C that maps ICaml
variables of reference types to constant-pointer--type variables of C.
We now present the translation that relates reference type variables
of ICaml and mutable variables of C. It requires no restrictions,
produces idiomatic C code, and gives insight into the nature of
mutable variables.
An easy way to obtain a translation with mutable variables in its
range is to start with the straightforward inverse mapping from CoreC
to ICaml. Unfortunately, it is very much not surjective (and if we
extend CoreC with pointer types, it becomes non-injective). Therefore,
inverting it is problematic. Still the CoreC to ICaml mapping gives a
hint. Other hints come from looking at the denotational semantics
(tagless-final interpreters) of ICaml and CoreC: the file
\url{refcalculi.ml} in the accompanying code mentioned earlier. We
notice that $\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, e}e'$ has exactly the same denotation (as the
function of the denotations of $e$ and $e'$) as $t\; x=e; e'$ in
CoreC. Therefore, if the mutable variable $x$ introduced by $t\; x=e;
e'$ is not actually mutated in $e'$, it has the meaning of the
let-binding in ICaml.
To formulate the new translation, we extend
CoreC with pointer types and corresponding operations, obtaining the
calculus CoreCE.
\begin{figure}
\begin{tabular}[Ct]{lMl}
Variables & x,y,z \\
Base Types & b \coleqeq \I \mid \B
\\
Types & t \coleqeq \U \mid b \mid \tptr{t}
\\
Binder Types & u \coleqeq t \mid \tconst{t}
\\
Constant Types &
s \coleqeq t \mid t\to s
\\
Expressions &
e \coleqeq x \mid c_0 \mid c_1\, e \mid c_2\,e\ e \mid e; e \\
& \qquad u\; x = e; e \mid \&x
\end{tabular}
\medskip
Additional Constants
\begin{eqnarray*}[cl:cl]
* &: \tptr{t}\to t
&
\leftarrow &: \tptr{t}\to t\to \U
\end{eqnarray*}
\caption{Calculus CoreCE. Constants $c_0$ and $+$ are
same as those in Fig. \ref{f:IC-constants}.}
\label{f:CoreCE}
\end{figure}
Assignment is no longer a special expression form: it is a
function application. Its both arguments are ordinary function
application arguments, with no need to introduce L-values. Other
pointer-taking functions like incr can be added at will. We also add
constant (binder) types, to indicate that some variables are
immutable. In surface C,
$e\leftarrow e'$ is to be rendered as |*e = e'|~-- which is a key to
understanding C assignment without resorting to L-values. Also, in surface C we
abbreviate |*&x| to just |x|. (We may also leave |*&x| as is: it is
valid.)
The type system and dynamic semantics are fairly standard: see
\url{refcalculi.ml}.
The offshoring translation $\Tr{\cdot}_L$ is parameterized by the set
$L$ of mutable variables in scope:
\begin{eqnarray*}[c@{\;=\hskip 1em}c]
\Tr{x:t}_L & x:\Tr{t}\quad x\not\in L\\
\Tr{x:t}_L & \&x:\Tr{t}\quad x\in L\\
\Tr{!} & *\\
\Tr{:=} & \leftarrow\\
\Tr{\be{x:\tref{t} = \mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, e}e'}_L &
\Tr{t}\; x = \Tr{e}_L; \Tr{e'}_{L\cup \{x\}}\\
\Tr{\be{x:t = e}e'}_L & \tconst{\Tr{t}}\; x = \Tr{e}_L; \Tr{e'}_L
\end{eqnarray*}
where the translation of types is $\Tr{b}=b$ and
$\Tr{\tref{t}} = \tptr{\Tr{t}}$. The constant $\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\,$ outside a
let-binding can be translated as |alloca| or |malloc|.
Compared to the extant translation, Fig.~\ref{f:offshoring-extant},
there are no longer any
restrictions on types. Adding constants like |incr| is easy.
The running example
\[
\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0}x:={!x}+1
\]
now looks like
\[
\I\, x=0;\; \&x\leftarrow *\&x+1
\]
or, after rendering in C:
\[
\texttt{int x = 0; x = x + 1;}
\]
The (extended) problematic example
\[
\be{x=\mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, 0}\be{y=x}y:=41;x:={!x}+1
\]
translates to CoreCE as
\[
\I\, x=0;\; \tconst{\tptr\I}\, y=\&x;\; y\leftarrow 41;\; \&x\leftarrow *\&x+1
\]
\begin{comment}
Tests for offshoring:
\begin{code}
let x = ref 0 in x := {!x} + 1
let x = ref 0 in let y = {!x} in y
let x = fopen "ddd" in foo x
let x = fopen "ddd" in foo !x (fopen returns FILE ref)
let x = fopen "ddd" in x := NULL
let x = fopen "ddd" in x := fopen "xxx"
let x = ref (fopen "ddd") in x := NULL
let x = ref (fopen "ddd") in x := fopen "xxx"
\end{code}
so the really special treatment of := and ! (that is, drop them in
pretty-printing) is when x is a variable of ref type which was bound
as let x = ref (...). In all other cases, ! should be translated as *
So, we need a special type in OffshoringIR for let-ref variables
(back to the original ML, which had letref)
\begin{code}
let x = ref 0 in let y = x in y := 1
\end{code}
Or, introduce a special type, cref. need operators on it,
\begin{code}
assign : 'a cref -> 'a -> unit, deref : 'a cref -> 'a,
and addrof: 'a ref -> 'a cref
\end{code}
deref is translated in C as nothing. If function takes by-ref
arguments, they must be of 'a cref type, not 'a ref type!
\end{comment}
The new translation indeed gives idiomatic C code, which is easier to
inspect and build confidence. Unlike the translation of
\S\ref{s:no-mut-var}, only one CoreCE variable is allocated per ICaml
variable, with no extra pointer variables. The extended calculus
CoreCE, and the current translation, which tracks mutability, stress
the fact that although all variables in C are mutable by default, some
are actually not mutated. The latter correspond to ICaml variables.
Actually mutable variables of CoreCE correspond to ICaml variables introduced
by the bindings
of a particular shape: $\be{x:\tref{t} = \mathord{\mathsf{ref}}\, e}e'$, which evoke
\textsf{letref} of the original ML.
With full details and formality the translation is presented in the
accompanying code \url{refcalculi.ml}. As mentioned earlier, the code
also states the denotational semantics $\Den{\cdot}_{ICaml}$ and
$\Den{\cdot}_{CoreCE}$, as compositional mappings from ICaml or CoreCE,
resp., to the common metalanguage, which is OCaml. (One could also use
Coq with a State monad.)
\begin{comment}
similarly to Garrigue's et al. recent project of compiling OCaml to
Coq.
\end{comment}
The translation from ICaml to CoreCE is then coded as a functor.
Since the (tagless-final) embeddings of ICaml and CoreCE into OCaml are
intrinsically typed, the fact that the translation functor is well-typed in
OCaml implies the translation is type-preserving. The meaning
preservation is expressed by the theorem that for each ICaml
expression $e$, $\Den{e}_{ICaml} = \Den{ \Tr{e} }_{CoreCE}$. To show it, we
have to check, manually at present, that the theorem holds for each
expression form of ICaml, and then appeal to compositionality of the
semantics.
\bigskip
In conclusion, we have learned that C variables are quite subtle: one
may access a mutable variable via its name or a pointer to it;
however, names and pointers are emphatically distinct.
The new offshoring translation, \S\ref{s:final-translation}, has been
implemented in BER MetaOCaml.
\paragraph{Acknowledgments}
We thank anonymous reviewers for many, helpful comments and
suggestions.
This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants Numbers
17K12662, 18H03218, 21K11821 and 22H03563.
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 9,733 |
{"url":"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/13414803\/which-is-the-easy-and-simple-way-to-read-json-into-php\/13414938","text":"# which is the Easy and Simple way to Read json into php?\n\nI am new to json. I wanted to read data from JSON file into the php file.\n\nMy json file data is like this\n\n{\"multicast_id\":8925377088262649527,\"success\":0,\"failure\":1,\"canonical_ids\":0,\"results\":[{\"error\":\"NotRegistered\"}]}\n\n\nI just want to check the success and failure value. I used\n\njson_decode($jason_string,true); But it is not working on my server. I don't know the reason. So please tell me the easiest way to solve this problem and please explain in detail. - Why json_decode is not working on your server? What error you do you get? \u2013 m4t1t0 Nov 16 '12 at 10:33 Do you get any errors when you use json_decode? What version of PHP are you using? \u2013 LeonardChallis Nov 16 '12 at 10:33 it give me this error 'Fatal error: Call to undefined function: json_decode() in C:\\inetpub\\vhosts\\hariomcards.com\\httpdocs\\QRme\\Testing.php on line 14' \u2013 nishitpatel Nov 16 '12 at 10:41 json_decode is not available under php versions prior to 5.2.0 \u2013 Rishi Kalia Nov 16 '12 at 10:43 ## 2 Answers You code should work. <?php$somestring = <<<HEREDOC\n{\"multicast_id\":8925377088262649527,\"success\":0,\"failure\":1,\"canonical_ids\":0,\"results\"$HEREDOC; var_dump(json_decode($somestring, true));\n\n\nOutput as expected:\n\nchris@chris-UX31E:~\\$ php test.php\narray(5) {\n[\"multicast_id\"]=>\nint(8925377088262649527)\n[\"success\"]=>\nint(0)\n[\"failure\"]=>\nint(1)\n[\"canonical_ids\"]=>\nint(0)\n[\"results\"]=>\narray(1) {\n[0]=>\narray(1) {\n[\"error\"]=>\nstring(13) \"NotRegistered\"\n}\n}\n}\n\n\nPlease enable PHP logging for debugging purposes! Take a look at: http:\/\/davidwinter.me\/articles\/2009\/07\/14\/enable-php-error-logging\/\n\nIf it's a local dev-server I prefer to display errors and enable all error-messages http:\/\/www.dzone.com\/snippets\/let-php-show-all-errors\n\n-\n\ndo this :\n\ngo to -> start -> run -> cmd.exe\n\nrun:\n\nc:\\path\\to\\your\\php.exe --version\n\n\ncheck if you have php 5.2 or higher. (json it's bundled with php by default from 5.2) if you don't .. you need to install (http:\/\/www.php.net\/manual\/en\/install.pecl.windows.php) or upgrade php to newer version.\n\nu might also try to do this in shell\n\nc:\\path\\to\\your\\php.exe --ini\n\n\nedit the php.ini that shows in front of\n\nLoaded Configuration File:\n\n\nfind the line\n\n;extension=php_json.dll\n\nremove the ';' and save, if you don't have the line you can add it. restart your web server and try again\n\n-","date":"2015-04-27 09:30:53","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.2199939638376236, \"perplexity\": 9612.626098998679}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2015-18\/segments\/1429246657868.2\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20150417045737-00125-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: Error when converting a linked list into an array of pointers This is the program prompt:
Write a C++ program to process periodic table information from a file. Each element will have an atomic number, a name, an abbreviation, and a mass. Your program must include:
*
*An Element structure to be defined in a header file: Element.h
*A function read_table that will return the number of elements read from the file and via a reference parameter, a pointer to an array of pointers to the elements read. The data file is located at /user/tvnguyen7/data/periodictable.dat. This function must read in the data by constructing a linked list and convert the linked list into an array of pointers. The prototype for this function is to be included in the Element.h file. The function will return 0 on any error condition.
*A main program that will call read_table to read in the table, sort the table using the element name and print out the table using the required output format. You can use qsort in cstdlib or write your own sort function.
*Dynamic memory must be allocated and deallocated properly.
This is what I have for periodic_table.cpp:
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include "Element.h"
#include <string>
#include <iomanip>
using namespace std;
int main() {
int count = 0;
Element **pt = new Element *[count];
cout << setw(30) << left << " Periodic Table by K. Nguyen" << endl;
cout << endl;
cout << setw(30) << " Number of elements: " << endl;
cout << endl;
cout << setw(5) << " Name" << right << setw(20) << "Abr" << setw(5) << " ANo" << setw(8) << "Mass" << endl;
cout << setw(20) << left << " --------------------" << setw(4) << right << "---" << setw(5) << "----" << setw(8) << "-------" << endl;
read_table(&count, pt);
delete [] pt;
return 0;
}
Here's what I have for read_table.cpp:
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include "Element.h"
using namespace std;
int read_table(int *count, Element **ppt){
struct Node {
Element *pElement;
Node *next;
};
int temp = 0;
int aNum;
string aBr;
double mass;
string name;
Node *n = nullptr;
Node *h = nullptr;
Node *t = nullptr;
ifstream infile;
infile.open("periodictable.dat");
while(infile >> aNum >> aBr >> mass >> name){
Element *e = new Element;
e->ANo = aNum;
e->Abr = aBr;
e->Mass = mass;
e->Name = name;
n = new Node;
n->pElement = e;
n->next = nullptr;
if(h == nullptr){
h = t = n;
}
else {
t->next = n;
t = n;
}
temp++;
}
infile.close();
int i = 0;
for(Node *x = h; x, i < temp; x = x->next, i++){
ppt[i] = x->pElement;
}
*count = temp;
return 0;
}
Here's what I have for Element.h:
#ifndef ELEMENT_H
#define ELEMENT_H
using namespace std;
struct Element {
int ANo;
string Abr;
double Mass;
string Name;
};
int read_table(int *count, Element **ppt);
#endif
I think the problem is in this for loop in read_table.cpp:
int i = 0;
for(Node *x = h; x, i < temp; x = x->next, i++){
ppt[i] = x->pElement;
}
and also I am not sure if I am passing in the array of pointers right or not (this is in periodic_table.cpp):
int count = 0;
Element **pt = new Element *[count];
....
read_table(&count, pt);
The error is:
In function 'main': periodic_table.cpp: undefined reference to 'read_table(int*, Element**)'
My program cannot run when I include that for loop; however, it runs fine without it so I think I am doing something wrong there but I don't know what. Please help.
A: If you're using Microsoft Visual Studio(The one I use the most for C++); go on Solution explorer; copy the path for read_table.cpp; right click on Source Files folder in the explorer, add existing item. Then paste the path on to it. Click OK then run your program again. It should work.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 1,562 |
include Opscode::PostgresqlHelpers
# name property should take the form:
# database/extension
property :database, String,
required: true,
default: lazy { name.scan(%r{\A[^/]+(?=/)}).first }
property :extension, String,
required: true,
default: lazy { name.scan(%r{(?<=/)[^/]+\Z}).first }
action :create do
bash "CREATE EXTENSION #{name}" do
code psql("CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS \"#{extension}\"")
user 'postgres'
action :run
not_if { extension_installed? }
end
end
action :drop do
bash "DROP EXTENSION #{name}" do
code psql("DROP EXTENSION IF EXISTS \"#{extension}\"")
user 'postgres'
action :run
only_if { extension_installed? }
end
end
def psql(query)
"psql -d #{database} <<< '\\set ON_ERROR_STOP on\n#{query};'"
end
def extension_installed?
query = "SELECT 'installed' FROM pg_extension WHERE extname = '#{extension}';"
!(execute_sql(query, database) =~ /^installed$/).nil?
end
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 8,564 |
Le phare arrière de Finns Point (en ) était un phare servant de feu d'alignement arrière situé dans le comté de Salem, New Jersey. Il servait aux navires dans l'entrée du fleuve Delaware dans le canton de Pennsville.
Il est inscrit au Registre national des lieux historiques depuis le sous le n° 78001792 .
Historique
Il est désactivé depuis 1950 et sa lampe et son objectif ont été retirés, mais le phare est ouvert au public dans le cadre du National Wildlife Refuge.
Il a été conçu et construit en 1877 et est un exemple classique d'un phare préfabriqué en fonte. Son feu avant associé a été démoli et remplacé par un feu automatisé offshore en 1938. Le feu arrière et le feu avant de remplacement ont été désactivés en 1950.
Identifiant : ARLHS : USA-932 .
Voir aussi
Références
Lien connexe
Liste des phares du New Jersey
Liens externes
New Jersey Lighthouses
Lighthouses of the United States : New Jersey
New Jersey - ARLHS World List of Lights (WLOL)
New Jersey - Online list of lights
Finns Point Range Front Lighthouse - Lightphotos.net
Phare du XIXe siècle
Phare inscrit au Registre national des lieux historiques au New Jersey
Registre national des lieux historiques dans un National Wildlife Refuge
Registre national des lieux historiques en 1978
Comté de Salem | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 8,730 |
Jared and Justin are Ready for the Game!
I took a summer sabbatical from writing. Not a great idea for a travel blogger . Still, I'm back with plenty of adventures to share. One of the highlights of our summer was a trip to the Padres game at Petco Park in San Diego for the Fourth of July. We purchased a cheap package on Groupon, that included great seats, a hot dog lunch, and Padres hats. I definitely recommend signing for Groupon and keeping up with the deals. They can really save you money on a family adventure. In previous years we have spent Independence Day at minor league games. This is another affordable way to share baseball with the family.
I was worried that my wiggly five and six year old wouldn't make it through the game, but they did great. Before the game we went exploring and came upon a great display about the construction of Petco Park and some of the Padres greatest players. Jared and Destiny were particularly impressed with Tony Gwinn's golden glove.
We returned to our seats just in time to witness the pre-game festivities. My oldest Justin had just returned from a trip to Washington D.C. and was excited to see the Revolutionary War cast of characters come alive on the ball field.
The entire family enjoyed the first few innings then the little guys and I headed to the ballpark playground to get some energy out. I was able to follow the game on the nearby Jumbotron.
We scooted back into our seats in the 8th inning and were able to celebrate together as the Padres won over the Colorado Rockies. The Smith Family went wild along with the rest of the crowd. Here's a picture of our happy tired crew.
Jim and Me by Dan Gutman. All of Dan Gutman's baseball adventures are amazing and teach kids about US history and Baseball greats. This particular book is about a Native American Ball Playing Legend Jim Thorpe.
What I Learned from Jackie Robinson by Carl Erskine . I must confess I plan to bribe my 11 year-old to read this book. Written by one of Robinson's team mates it provides an inspirational and compelling look at the life of one of Baseball's greatest and bravest athletes.
Go Padres!!! I can hardly wait to go back. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 416 |
Q: How do the "C" step and robust weighting work in the FASTMCD algorithm for robust covariance estimation? I am reading up on the FastMCD algorithm [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.07045.pdf#page=2] hoping to better understand its implemenation. I think I follow the high level concept for MCD
Its basically the resampling step of the C step confuses me. I dont quite follow what I need to do to get a minimum covariance that converges.
MCD: For a scatter of n points with p features you
*
*Subsample and collect h data points. h is a hyper parameter but must be more than half of n
*Calculate covariance matrix from h datapoints normally this is referred to as the "MCD" covariance estimate $\hat{\Sigma}$
*Calculate mean of h datapoint sample. This is referred to as the MCD estimate of the mean $\hat{\mu}$
*Increase efficiency of the estimator by applying a weighting step.
This is my first question Im a bit confused by the suggestion in the paper:
define
4.1 $d(x,\mu,\Sigma) = \sqrt{(x-\mu)^{'}\Sigma^{-1}(x-\mu)}$
4.2 Robust d: $RD = d(x,\hat{\mu},\hat{\Sigma}) = \sqrt{(x-\hat{\mu})^{'}\hat{\Sigma^{-1}}(x-\hat{\mu})}$
Choose a weighting W such that
4.3 $W(v)$ = 1 when $v \le \sqrt{X^2_{p,0.975}}$ else 0 [Needs the $\hat{\Sigma}$ and $\hat{\mu}$ from the previous steps] in step below we use $v=RD(x)^2$
Using this weighting function
4.4 $\hat{\mu}_{MCD}=\frac{\sum^n_{i=1}W(RD_i^2)x_i}{\sum^n_{i=1}W(RD_i^2)}$
4.5 $\hat{\Sigma}_{MCD} = C_1 \frac{1}{n} \sum^n_{i=1} W(RD^2_i)(x_i-\hat{\mu}_{MCD})(x_i-\hat{\mu}_{MCD})^{'}$
where c is a consistency factor $\alpha/F_{\chi^2_{p+2}}(q_\alpha)$ with $\alpha = lim_n \to \infty $ $h(n)/n$ , and $q_\alpha$ is the the $\alpha$-quantile of the $\chi^2_p$ distribution
The paper I am reading linked above uses sum over n. Is that actually right sum over all of the data or is n actually h. Im also trying to understand the choice of Chisquared p degrees... I see that a lot in robust estimation but I've never quite grasped where that comes from... [Background is EE not stats]. Conceptually I see this step as throwing out the outliers so they cant influence the results but I have a feeling there are a lot of assumptions tangled up in that specifc threshold which I dont understand. Lastly I am more used to seeing things like Huber function etc when it comes to weighting. Is that a poor choice for some reason?
*Calculate the determinate of $\hat{\Sigma}_{MCD}$ This represents a sort of "volume" of the h scattered points. The true MCD would exhaustively search all subsets of size h that can be made from n points. Clearly this is not realistic so enter the FAST MCD algorithm.
This is where I am feeling more lost. From what I understand the algorithm basically starts with a random sampling. Instead of sampling sets of size n/2 FASTMCD samples M subsets of size p+1.
*
*Let H be M subsets from scatter X. Sampled subsets are of size P+1 so that $H_0$ ... $H_M$ are subsets of size p+1. Choosing samples of size p+1 the probability of selecting an outlier free subset are much higher than selecting h samples [n/2 < h]
*for each $H_i$ in range M
2.1 calculate covariance from $H_i$ to get $\hat{\Sigma}_i$ if the determinate of the covariance estimate is 0 continue to add samples to $H_i$ from X until Covariance is full rank.
2.2 for each sample $H_{i}$ in $H_i$
2.2.1 calculate robust distance $RD_j$
This is the step that totally looses me.
2.3 in each $H_i$ Order the points based on distance?
Keep the smallest distance and resample? Keep looping until the determinates from iteration k ~= k+1
Basically the resampling step of the C step confuses me. I dont quite follow what I need to do to get a minimum covariance that converges.
Is my understanding correct outside of where I am lost? An intuitive explanation or pseudocode for how the FASTMCD algorithm works specifically the C step and weighting step would be greatly appreciated
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 3,060 |
Q: Find an array length without the use of the Array.Length method c# i would like to know how i would go about finding the length of an array without the use of the array.length method rather what does the array.length method acheive?
I had some homework to complete some arbituary array sorting without the use of the array.length method and i was curious as to how c# finds the array length does it go through the array counting each non null value and returns a value or is there a specific memory value associated to an arrays length that can be accessed more out of curiosity then anything else i was just wondering what goes on behind the scenes of the length method
A: A really awful way but to cover all grounds this would work but I stronger discourage this.
int[] test = new int[10];
int count = 0;
try
{
for (; ; )
{
count++;
test[count].ToString();
}
}
catch (IndexOutOfRangeException ex)
{
}
Console.Write(count);
Console.ReadKey();
A: You can use theArray.GetLength(0), but it's basically the same as using theArray.Length, just more verbose...
A: this would be one way:
int count = 0;
foreach (var item in YourArray)
{
count++;
}
count will hold how many items there are in the array.
EDIT:
Ofcourse i forgot if you cant use the dreaded Length property the you can use the Count() method.
A: Getting length of the array without using the Array.Length property is nearly impossible.
Well, you can:
*
*Use enumerators(in foreach statement or through LINQ) and count the elements they give to you, but it will
be just an indirection - ArrayEnumerator obviously uses
Array.Length internally.
*Use unsafe code and get the length, because it is stored before the
actual data (4 or 8 bytes before the actual first element).
*Probably you can even get some information from managed heap about
the array reference and calculate the length, but if it is
possible it will be a hack, and even if we somehow learn that memory
allocated for the array is 100 byte, we can't be sure that all this memory is used
PROPOSED SOLUTION:
But what has probably been meant is the use of array terminators, like '\0' chars C runtime uses to terminate its strings.
To use array terminators you just arbitrary select some value(usually greatest or smallest) and use it as an array terminator:
Int32[] data = new Int32[] {10, -5, 100, Int32.MinValue};
PrintDataWithoutLength(data, Int32.MinValue);
PrintDataWithoutLength<T>(T[] data, T terminator)
{
for(Int32 i = 0; !data[i].Equals(terminator) ; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(data[i]);
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 9,591 |
Q: Django Elastic serach deleting some documents when pointing multiple documents to the same index I have my django application where i am using django_elasticsearch_dsl to index document to later do elastic search with them. I have two similar models in database so i want the documents to be pointing to the same index in elastic search so later i can do a search with both of them like they are the same.
Righ now my setup is like this
@registry.register_document
class HelpCenterDocument(Document):
title = TextField()
url = ESTextField('get_absolute_url')
site_id = ESIntegerField('site_id')
class Index:
name = 'global-search-page-index'
class Django:
model = HelpCenterPage
fields = ['title', 'content']
@registry.register_document
class PageDocument(Document):
title = TextField()
url = TextField('get_public_url')
class Index:
name = 'global-search-page-index'
class Django:
model = Page
When i do manage.py search_index --rebuild it will say that it created
Indexing 90 'HelpCenterPage' objects
Indexing 213 'Page' objects
So with this my index should have 303 documents, this is not the case when i look at the count it shows i have
"docs": {
"count": 239,
"deleted": 64
},
If i comment one of the @registry.register_document the count will be ok, but if i let both of them uncommented it will index only some of them
These are the index stats
{
"_shards": {
"total": 10,
"successful": 5,
"failed": 0
},
"_all": {
"primaries": {
"docs": {
"count": 239,
"deleted": 64
},
"store": {
"size_in_bytes": 1016020
},
"indexing": {
"index_total": 303,
"index_time_in_millis": 113,
"index_current": 0,
"index_failed": 0,
"delete_total": 0,
"delete_time_in_millis": 0,
"delete_current": 0,
"noop_update_total": 0,
"is_throttled": false,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
},
"get": {
"total": 0,
"time_in_millis": 0,
"exists_total": 0,
"exists_time_in_millis": 0,
"missing_total": 0,
"missing_time_in_millis": 0,
"current": 0
},
"search": {
"open_contexts": 0,
"query_total": 0,
"query_time_in_millis": 0,
"query_current": 0,
"fetch_total": 0,
"fetch_time_in_millis": 0,
"fetch_current": 0,
"scroll_total": 0,
"scroll_time_in_millis": 0,
"scroll_current": 0,
"suggest_total": 0,
"suggest_time_in_millis": 0,
"suggest_current": 0
},
"merges": {
"current": 0,
"current_docs": 0,
"current_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_docs": 0,
"total_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_stopped_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_throttled_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_auto_throttle_in_bytes": 104857600
},
"refresh": {
"total": 20,
"total_time_in_millis": 364,
"listeners": 0
},
"flush": {
"total": 0,
"periodic": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"warmer": {
"current": 0,
"total": 15,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"query_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_count": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0,
"cache_size": 0,
"cache_count": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"fielddata": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"completion": {
"size_in_bytes": 0
},
"segments": {
"count": 10,
"memory_in_bytes": 22757,
"terms_memory_in_bytes": 16337,
"stored_fields_memory_in_bytes": 3160,
"term_vectors_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"norms_memory_in_bytes": 2560,
"points_memory_in_bytes": 20,
"doc_values_memory_in_bytes": 680,
"index_writer_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"version_map_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"fixed_bit_set_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"max_unsafe_auto_id_timestamp": -1,
"file_sizes": {}
},
"translog": {
"operations": 303,
"size_in_bytes": 896325,
"uncommitted_operations": 303,
"uncommitted_size_in_bytes": 896325,
"earliest_last_modified_age": 62615
},
"request_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0
},
"recovery": {
"current_as_source": 0,
"current_as_target": 0,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
}
},
"total": {
"docs": {
"count": 239,
"deleted": 64
},
"store": {
"size_in_bytes": 1016020
},
"indexing": {
"index_total": 303,
"index_time_in_millis": 113,
"index_current": 0,
"index_failed": 0,
"delete_total": 0,
"delete_time_in_millis": 0,
"delete_current": 0,
"noop_update_total": 0,
"is_throttled": false,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
},
"get": {
"total": 0,
"time_in_millis": 0,
"exists_total": 0,
"exists_time_in_millis": 0,
"missing_total": 0,
"missing_time_in_millis": 0,
"current": 0
},
"search": {
"open_contexts": 0,
"query_total": 0,
"query_time_in_millis": 0,
"query_current": 0,
"fetch_total": 0,
"fetch_time_in_millis": 0,
"fetch_current": 0,
"scroll_total": 0,
"scroll_time_in_millis": 0,
"scroll_current": 0,
"suggest_total": 0,
"suggest_time_in_millis": 0,
"suggest_current": 0
},
"merges": {
"current": 0,
"current_docs": 0,
"current_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_docs": 0,
"total_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_stopped_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_throttled_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_auto_throttle_in_bytes": 104857600
},
"refresh": {
"total": 20,
"total_time_in_millis": 364,
"listeners": 0
},
"flush": {
"total": 0,
"periodic": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"warmer": {
"current": 0,
"total": 15,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"query_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_count": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0,
"cache_size": 0,
"cache_count": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"fielddata": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"completion": {
"size_in_bytes": 0
},
"segments": {
"count": 10,
"memory_in_bytes": 22757,
"terms_memory_in_bytes": 16337,
"stored_fields_memory_in_bytes": 3160,
"term_vectors_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"norms_memory_in_bytes": 2560,
"points_memory_in_bytes": 20,
"doc_values_memory_in_bytes": 680,
"index_writer_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"version_map_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"fixed_bit_set_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"max_unsafe_auto_id_timestamp": -1,
"file_sizes": {}
},
"translog": {
"operations": 303,
"size_in_bytes": 896325,
"uncommitted_operations": 303,
"uncommitted_size_in_bytes": 896325,
"earliest_last_modified_age": 62615
},
"request_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0
},
"recovery": {
"current_as_source": 0,
"current_as_target": 0,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
}
}
},
"indices": {
"global-search-page-index": {
"uuid": "F8-MzvZMTheadg4oE-gv4w",
"primaries": {
"docs": {
"count": 239,
"deleted": 64
},
"store": {
"size_in_bytes": 1016020
},
"indexing": {
"index_total": 303,
"index_time_in_millis": 113,
"index_current": 0,
"index_failed": 0,
"delete_total": 0,
"delete_time_in_millis": 0,
"delete_current": 0,
"noop_update_total": 0,
"is_throttled": false,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
},
"get": {
"total": 0,
"time_in_millis": 0,
"exists_total": 0,
"exists_time_in_millis": 0,
"missing_total": 0,
"missing_time_in_millis": 0,
"current": 0
},
"search": {
"open_contexts": 0,
"query_total": 0,
"query_time_in_millis": 0,
"query_current": 0,
"fetch_total": 0,
"fetch_time_in_millis": 0,
"fetch_current": 0,
"scroll_total": 0,
"scroll_time_in_millis": 0,
"scroll_current": 0,
"suggest_total": 0,
"suggest_time_in_millis": 0,
"suggest_current": 0
},
"merges": {
"current": 0,
"current_docs": 0,
"current_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_docs": 0,
"total_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_stopped_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_throttled_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_auto_throttle_in_bytes": 104857600
},
"refresh": {
"total": 20,
"total_time_in_millis": 364,
"listeners": 0
},
"flush": {
"total": 0,
"periodic": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"warmer": {
"current": 0,
"total": 15,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"query_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_count": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0,
"cache_size": 0,
"cache_count": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"fielddata": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"completion": {
"size_in_bytes": 0
},
"segments": {
"count": 10,
"memory_in_bytes": 22757,
"terms_memory_in_bytes": 16337,
"stored_fields_memory_in_bytes": 3160,
"term_vectors_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"norms_memory_in_bytes": 2560,
"points_memory_in_bytes": 20,
"doc_values_memory_in_bytes": 680,
"index_writer_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"version_map_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"fixed_bit_set_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"max_unsafe_auto_id_timestamp": -1,
"file_sizes": {}
},
"translog": {
"operations": 303,
"size_in_bytes": 896325,
"uncommitted_operations": 303,
"uncommitted_size_in_bytes": 896325,
"earliest_last_modified_age": 62615
},
"request_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0
},
"recovery": {
"current_as_source": 0,
"current_as_target": 0,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
}
},
"total": {
"docs": {
"count": 239,
"deleted": 64
},
"store": {
"size_in_bytes": 1016020
},
"indexing": {
"index_total": 303,
"index_time_in_millis": 113,
"index_current": 0,
"index_failed": 0,
"delete_total": 0,
"delete_time_in_millis": 0,
"delete_current": 0,
"noop_update_total": 0,
"is_throttled": false,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
},
"get": {
"total": 0,
"time_in_millis": 0,
"exists_total": 0,
"exists_time_in_millis": 0,
"missing_total": 0,
"missing_time_in_millis": 0,
"current": 0
},
"search": {
"open_contexts": 0,
"query_total": 0,
"query_time_in_millis": 0,
"query_current": 0,
"fetch_total": 0,
"fetch_time_in_millis": 0,
"fetch_current": 0,
"scroll_total": 0,
"scroll_time_in_millis": 0,
"scroll_current": 0,
"suggest_total": 0,
"suggest_time_in_millis": 0,
"suggest_current": 0
},
"merges": {
"current": 0,
"current_docs": 0,
"current_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_docs": 0,
"total_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_stopped_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_throttled_time_in_millis": 0,
"total_auto_throttle_in_bytes": 104857600
},
"refresh": {
"total": 20,
"total_time_in_millis": 364,
"listeners": 0
},
"flush": {
"total": 0,
"periodic": 0,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"warmer": {
"current": 0,
"total": 15,
"total_time_in_millis": 0
},
"query_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"total_count": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0,
"cache_size": 0,
"cache_count": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"fielddata": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0
},
"completion": {
"size_in_bytes": 0
},
"segments": {
"count": 10,
"memory_in_bytes": 22757,
"terms_memory_in_bytes": 16337,
"stored_fields_memory_in_bytes": 3160,
"term_vectors_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"norms_memory_in_bytes": 2560,
"points_memory_in_bytes": 20,
"doc_values_memory_in_bytes": 680,
"index_writer_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"version_map_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"fixed_bit_set_memory_in_bytes": 0,
"max_unsafe_auto_id_timestamp": -1,
"file_sizes": {}
},
"translog": {
"operations": 303,
"size_in_bytes": 896325,
"uncommitted_operations": 303,
"uncommitted_size_in_bytes": 896325,
"earliest_last_modified_age": 62615
},
"request_cache": {
"memory_size_in_bytes": 0,
"evictions": 0,
"hit_count": 0,
"miss_count": 0
},
"recovery": {
"current_as_source": 0,
"current_as_target": 0,
"throttle_time_in_millis": 0
}
}
}
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 6,567 |
IT infrastructure is the backbone of any organization. To derive optimal performance, it is not enough to design only IT infrastructure and applications to provide the desired business outcomes. One has to ensure high availability performance and service levels with the help of robust IT services.At Prima Technologies, we develop applications that ensure your business is well served and managed on a 24X7 basis thus providing secure and high performance platform for operations.
Our Applications Management is a key enabler in IBM's ability to provide you with 24x7 application support and availability monitoring. We monitor applications to threshold standards. If a portion of the environment violates fall outside of our thresholds, our application experts are armed with the latest tools in diagnosing system problems.
This support level receives inbound requests through channels like phone, Web forms, email, chat, or other means based on the documented agreement with the Client. L1 support typically includes individuals that have very limited technical expertise. L1 support logs, categorizes, prioritizes, tracks, and routes (i) incidents reported by users or (ii) alarms raised by monitoring tools. L1 is intended to be the first to acknowledge an incident. L1 support tracks tickets until successfully resolved. L1 engineers can implement basic, documented break-fix tasks along the lines of following a cookbook recipe. L1 personnel will typically escalate to an L2 resource and follow documented escalation procedures, again, like following a cookbook recipe. Depending on the vendor, L1 technicians will have from 0 to 4 years of prior relevant experience. At Appnomic, L1 engineers generally have at least 2 years of prior relevant experience. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 315 |
Aledo Luis Meloni (Estació María Lucila, província de Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1 d'agost de 1912 - Resistència, 11 de gener de 2016) va ser un poeta i docent argentí radicat en la Província del Chaco des de 1937, catalogat freqüentment com un dels màxims exponents literaris chaquenys. La seva obra es basa en les cobles per descriure austerament l'entorn de la zona occidental del Chaco, i avui formen part de les lectures del nivell educatiu obligatori d'aquesta província.
Biografia
Era el fill d'un matrimoni italià oriünd de la província de Macerata que va arribar amb els seus dos fills majors a Argentina el 1908.
Meloni es va mudar al Chaco quan el Consell Nacional d'Educació ho va designar al capdavant d'una escola rural en el departament Dotze d'Octubre (en aquells dies anomenat Camp del Cel), a 17 quilòmetres de General Pinedo; un any més tard va ser posat al capdavant d'una escola rural que ell mateix va inaugurar, a 5 km d'allí en Colònia San Antonio, la primera colònia d'alemanys del Volga fundada a la província. El 1956 es va traslladar a Resistència —on va viure des de llavors fins a la seva defunció— per encarregar-se de la secretaria tècnica de la Inspecció d'Escoles Nacionals; es va jubilar el 1963 però va seguir treballant a la Biblioteca Popular Herrera d'aquesta ciutat. També va col·laborar en el desaparegut diari El Territorio i en el diari Norte.
Va rebre diversos premis per les seves poesies, entre ells Cavaller de l'Ordre de Mèrit d'Itàlia el 1982 i el Premi Santa Clara d'Assís el 1990. El 24 de maig de 2006 va rebre per part de la Universitat Nacional del Nord-est el títol de Doctor Honoris causa, en reconeixement a la seva trajectòria en la poesia.
Homenatges
En reconeixement a la seva labor a la zona, en general Pinedo van ser batejats un complex esportiu i cultural amb el seu nom, i una escola de Fontana.
Referències
Escriptors argentins en castellà
Centenaris americans
Poetes argentins del segle XX
Persones de la província de Buenos Aires
Morts a l'Argentina
Poetes argentins del segle XXI
Escriptors argentins del segle XX
Escriptors argentins del segle XXI | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 3,148 |
WhatsApp is working on setting up a 24-hour customer support for users of its payments services that is slated to be rolled out in India in the coming weeks. WhatsApp, which has over 200 million users in India, will provide support through e-mails as well as a toll-free number.
"We will provide 24-hour customer support. Payments users can contact the support team via e-mail and a toll-free number (when the service is rolled out in India)," a WhatsApp spokesperson told PTI.
The support will be available in English as well as three Indian languages — Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati.
The spokesperson said WhatsApp has worked closely with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), bank partners, and the Indian government on details of how its service works. Under the updated terms, WhatsApp states that it will not provide refunds or facilitate chargebacks as once a user submits a payment, it is final. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 8,224 |
\section{Introduction}\label{sec:introduction}
The astronomical observations of type Ia supernovae (SNIa) indicate
that our universe is undergoing an accelerating expansion~
\cite{Riess98}. This cosmic acceleration has also been confirmed by
other observations, such as the large scale structure
(LSS)~\cite{Tegmark04} and the cosmic microwave background
(CMB)~\cite{Spergel03}. Nowadays it is the most accepted idea that a
mysterious dominant component, dark energy, with large enough
negative pressure, is responsible for this cosmic acceleration.
Among all theoretical models, the preferred one is the so-called
$\Lambda$CDM model, which consists of a mixture of Einstein's
cosmological constant $\Lambda$ and the cold dark matter (CDM). The
$\Lambda$CDM model provides an excellent explanation for the
acceleration of the universe and the existing observational data.
However, the cosmological constant has to face severe theoretical
problems such as the puzzle why the dark energy density today is so
small compared to typical particle scales. Therefore, except the
$\Lambda$CDM model, many dynamical dark energy models have been
proposed, in which the equation of state (EoS) of dark energy is no
longer a constant but slightly evolves with time. For reviews of
dark energy, see, e.g., Ref.~\cite{dark energy}.
In the face of so many candidate models, it is extremely important
to identify which one is the correct model by using the
observational data. The measurement of the expansion rate of the
universe at different redshifts is crucial to discriminate these
competing candidate models. Up to now, a number of cosmological
tools have been used to successfully probe the expansion and the
geometry of the universe. These, typically, include the luminosity
distance of SNIa, the position of acoustic peaks in the CMB angular
power spectrum, and the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO)
in the power spectrum of matter extracted from galaxy catalogues.
Recently, the application of time evolution of cosmological redshift
as a test of dark energy models has become attractive, since this
method opens a new window of exploring the ``redshift desert''
($2\lesssim z\lesssim 5$). In addition to being a direct probe of
the dynamics of the expansion, this method has the advantage of not
relying on a determination of the absolute luminosity of the
observed sources, but only on the identification of stable spectral
lines, so this method can reduce the uncertainties from systematic
or evolutionary effects.
Sandage \cite{Sandage} was the first to propose the possible
application of this kind of observation as a cosmological tool.
However, owing to the tininess of the expected variation, this
observation was deemed impossible at that time. In 1998, Loeb
\cite{Loeb} revisited this suggestion and argued that the redshift
variation of quasar (QSO) Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption lines could be
detected in the not too distant future, given the advancement in
technology occurred over the last forty years. In fact, the
cosmological redshift variation at 1$\sigma$ would be detected in a
few decades, if a sample of a few hundred QSOs could be observed
with high resolution spectroscopy with a ten meter telescope. This
method is usually referred to as ``Sandage-Loeb'' (SL) test. The
possibility of detecting the temporal variation of redshift with the
Cosmic Dynamics Experiment (CODEX) was first analyzed by Corasaniti,
Huterer and Melchiorri~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg}. Their
work~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg} has provided the first quantitative
analysis of the SL test, from which all other analyses have
followed.
In Ref.~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg}, Corasaniti, Huterer and Melchiorri
employed the SL test to constrain dark energy models such as
$\Lambda$CDM model, Chaplygin gas model, and interacting dark energy
model. Later, Balbi and Quercellini \cite{Balbi:2007fx} extended
this analysis to more dark energy models including constant EoS
model, variable EoS model, interacting dark energy model, DGP model,
Cardassian model, generalized Chaplygin gas model, affine EoS model,
etc. More recently, Zhang, Zhong, Zhu and He \cite{Zhang:2007zg}
further used the SL test to explore the holographic dark energy
model. However, it should be pointed out that there are three
holographic dark energy models: the original holographic dark energy
model \cite{Li:2004rb}, the new agegraphic dark energy model
\cite{nade}, and the Ricci dark energy model \cite{rde}. Actually,
in Ref.~\cite{Zhang:2007zg}, only the original holographic dark
energy model \cite{Li:2004rb}, i.e., the model in which the IR
cutoff is given by the future event horizon, was investigated. Thus,
along this line, as a next step, one should further explore the new
agegraphic and the Ricci dark energy models with the SL test. In
this paper, this will be done. This will provide a complementary to
the work of Ref.~\cite{Zhang:2007zg} and keep the investigation of
holographic dark energy models more complete.
In the subsequent section, we will briefly review the new agegraphic
dark energy model and the Ricci dark energy model. In
Sec.~\ref{sec:test}, we will explore these two models with the SL
test. In the last section, we will give some concluding remarks.
\section{New agegraphic and Ricci dark energy models} \label{sec:agegrapgic}
In this section, we will briefly review the new agegraphic dark
energy model and the Ricci dark energy model. In fact, these two
models both belong to the holographic scenario of dark energy.
It is well known that the holographic principle is an important
result of the recent research for exploring the quantum gravity
\cite{holop}. This principle is enlightened by investigations of the
quantum property of black holes. In a quantum gravity system, the
conventional local quantum field theory will break down because it
contains too many degrees of freedom that would lead to the
formation of a black hole breaking the effectiveness of the quantum
field theory. To reconcile this breakdown with the success of local
quantum field theory in describing observed particle phenomenology,
some authors proposed a relationship between the ultraviolet (UV)
and the infrared (IR) cutoffs due to the limit set by the formation
of a black hole \cite{Cohen99}. The UV-IR relation in turn provides
an upper bound on the zero-point energy density. In other words, if
the quantum zero-point energy density $\rho_{\rm vac}$ is relevant
to a UV cutoff, the total energy of the whole system with size $L$
should not exceed the mass of a black hole of the same size, and
thus we have $L^3\rho_{\rm vac}\leq LM_{\rm Pl}^2$. This means that
the maximum entropy is of the order of $S_{BH}^{3/4}$. When we take
the whole universe into account, the vacuum energy related to this
holographic principle is viewed as dark energy, usually dubbed
holographic dark energy (its density is denoted as $\rho_{\rm de}$
hereafter).
The largest IR cutoff $L$ is chosen by saturating the inequality so
that we get the holographic dark energy density \cite{Li:2004rb}
\begin{equation}
\rho_{\rm de}=3c^2 M_{\rm Pl}^2L^{-2}~,\label{de}
\end{equation} where $c$ is a numerical constant, and
$M_{\rm Pl}\equiv 1/\sqrt{8\pi G}$ is the reduced Planck mass. If we
take $L$ as the size of the current universe, for instance the
Hubble radius $H^{-1}$, then the dark energy density will be close
to the observational result. However, if one takes the Hubble scale
as the IR cutoff, the holographic dark energy seems not to be
capable of leading to an accelerating universe \cite{Hsu04}. The
first viable version of holographic dark energy model was proposed
by Li \cite{Li:2004rb}. In this model, the IR length scale is taken
as the event horizon of the universe. The holographic dark energy
model based on the event horizon as the IR cutoff has been widely
studied \cite{holoext} and found to be consistent with the
observational data \cite{holos09,holofitzx}.
There are also other two versions of the holographic dark energy,
i.e., the new agegraphic dark energy model \cite{nade,nadeext} and
the Ricci dark energy model \cite{rde,Zhang:2009un,ricciext}. For
the new agegraphic dark energy model, the IR scale cutoff is chosen
to be the conformal age of the universe; for the Ricci dark energy
model, the IR cutoff is taken as the average radius of the Ricci
scalar curvature. We shall briefly review these two models in the
following subsections.
\subsection{New agegraphic dark energy model}\label{NADE}
For a spatially flat (the assumption of flatness is motivated by the
inflation scenario) Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe with
matter component $\rho_{\rm m}$ and dark energy component $\rho_{\rm
de}$, the Friedmann equation reads
\begin{equation}\label{Fri}
3M_{\rm Pl}^2H^2=\rho_{\rm m}+\rho_{\rm de}~,
\end{equation}
or equivalently,
\begin{equation}
E(z)\equiv {H(z)\over H_0}=\left(\Omega_{\rm m0}(1+z)^3\over
1-\Omega_{\rm de}\right)^{1/2},\label{Ez}
\end{equation}
where $H\equiv \dot{a}/a$ is the Hubble parameter, $\Omega_{\rm m0}$
is the present fractional matter density, and $\Omega_{\rm de}\equiv
\frac{\rho_{\rm de}}{\rho_{\rm c}} = \frac{\rho_{\rm de}}{3M_{\rm
Pl}^2H^2}$ is the fractional dark energy density.
In the old version of the agegraphic dark energy model
\cite{Cai:2007us}, the IR cutoff is chosen as the age of the
universe $T$ (here it should be pointed out that the light speed has
already been taken as 1, so time and length have the same
dimension). However, there are some inner inconsistencies in this
model; for details see Ref.~\cite{nade}. So, in this paper, we only
discuss the new version of the agegraphic dark energy model. In the
new agegraphic dark energy model, the IR cutoff is chosen to be the
conformal age of the universe,
\begin{equation}
\eta \equiv \int_0^t \frac{dt}{a}=\int_0^a
\frac{da}{a^{2}H}~,\label{etaq}
\end{equation}
so the density of the new agegraphic dark energy is
\begin{equation}
\rho_{\rm de}=3n^{2}M_{\rm Pl}^{2}\eta^{-2}.\label{rhoq}
\end{equation}
To distinguish from the original holographic dark energy model, a
new constant parameter $n$ is used to replace the former parameter
$c$. Taking derivative for Eq. (\ref{rhoq}) with respect to $x=\ln
a$ and making use of Eq. (\ref{etaq}), we get
\begin{equation}
\rho _{\rm de}'= -2 \rho_{\rm de}\frac{\sqrt{\Omega _{\rm de}}}{n
a}. \label{Derivative2}
\end{equation}
This means that the EoS of the new agegraphic dark energy is
\begin{equation}
w_{\rm de}=-1+{2\over 3n}{\sqrt{\Omega_{\rm de}}\over
a}.\label{wade}
\end{equation}
Taking derivative for $\Omega_{\rm de}=n^2/(H^2\eta^2)$, and
considering Eq.~(\ref{etaq}), we obtain
\begin{equation}
\Omega'_{\rm de}=2\Omega_{\rm de}\left(\epsilon-{\sqrt{\Omega_{\rm
de}}\over na}\right),
\end{equation}
where
\begin{equation}
\epsilon={3\over 2}(1+w_{\rm de}\Omega_{\rm de})={3\over 2}-{3\over
2}\Omega_{\rm de}+{\Omega_{\rm de}^{3/2}\over na}.
\end{equation}
Hence, we get the equation of motion for $\Omega _{\rm de}$,
\begin{equation}
\Omega _{\rm de}^{\prime}=\Omega_{\rm de}(1-\Omega_{\rm
de})\left(3-\frac{2}{n}\frac{\sqrt{\Omega_{\rm de}}}{a}\right)~,
\end{equation}
and this equation can be rewritten as
\begin{equation}
\frac{d \Omega_{\rm de}}{dz}=-\Omega_{\rm de}(1-\Omega_{\rm
de})\left(3(1+z)^{-1}-\frac{2}{n}\sqrt{\Omega_{\rm
de}}\right)~\label{keyq}.
\end{equation}
As in Ref.~\cite{nade}, we choose the initial condition,
$\Omega_{\rm de}(z_{\rm ini})=n^2(1+z_{\rm ini})^{-2}/4$, at $z_{\rm
ini}=2000$, then Eq. (\ref{keyq}) can be numerically solved.
Substituting the results of Eq. (\ref{keyq}) into Eq.~(\ref{Ez}),
the function $E(z)$ can be obtained. Notice that once $n$ is given,
$\Omega_{\rm m0}=1-\Omega_{\rm de}(z=0)$ can be natural obtained by
solving Eq.(\ref{keyq}), so the new agegraphic dark energy model is
a single-parameter model.
\subsection{Ricci dark energy model}\label{RDE}
For a spatially flat FRW universe, the Ricci scalar is
\begin{equation}
{\cal R}=-6\left(\dot{H}+2H^2\right).
\end{equation}
As suggested by Gao et al. \cite{rde}, the energy density of Ricci
dark energy is
\begin{equation}
\rho_{\rm de}={3\alpha\over 8\pi
G}\left(\dot{H}+2H^2\right)=-{\alpha\over 16\pi G}{\cal R},
\end{equation}
where $\alpha$ is a positive numerical constant to be determined by
observations. Comparing to Eq. (\ref{de}), it is seen that if we
identify the IR cutoff $L^{-2}$ with $-{\cal R}/6$, we have
$\alpha=c^2$. As pointed out by Cai et al. \cite{Cai:2008nk}, the
Ricci dark energy can be viewed as originated from taking the causal
connection scale as the IR cutoff in the holographic setting. Now,
the Friedmann equation, in a universe containing Ricci dark energy
and matter, can be written as
\begin{equation}
H^2={8\pi G\over 3}\rho_{\rm m0}e^{-3x}+\alpha\left({1\over
2}{dH^2\over dx}+2H^2\right),
\end{equation}
and this equation can be further rewritten as
\begin{equation}
E^2=\Omega_{\rm m0}e^{-3x} +\alpha\left({1\over 2}{dE^2\over
dx}+2E^2\right),
\end{equation}
where $E\equiv H/H_{0}$. Solving this equation, and using the
initial condition $E_0=E(t_0)=1$, we have
\begin{equation}
E(z)=\left(\frac{2 \Omega_{\rm
m0}}{2-\alpha}(1+z)^{3}+(1-{2\Omega_{\rm m0}\over 2 -\alpha})
(1+z)^{(4-{2\over\alpha})}\right)^{1/2}.\label{Ea}
\end{equation}
There are two model parameters, $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ and $\alpha$, in
the Ricci dark energy model.
\section{The Sandage-Loeb test}\label{sec:test}
In this section, we will first review the Sandage-Loeb test, and
then explore the new agegraphic dark energy model and the Ricci dark
energy model with the SL test.
First, let us consider an isotropic source emitting at rest. The
well-known redshift relation of the radiation emitted by the source
at $t_s$ and observed at $t_o$ is
\begin{equation}
z_s(t_o)=\frac{a(t_o)}{a(t_s)}-1.~\label{zz}
\end{equation}
Furthermore, consider lights emitted after a period $\Delta{t}_s$ at
$t_s+\Delta{t}_s$ and detected later at $t_o+\Delta{t}_o$.
Obviously, the observed redshift of the source at $t_o+\Delta{t}_o$
is
\begin{equation}
z_s(t_o+\Delta t_o)=\frac{a(t_o+\Delta t_o)}{a(t_s+\Delta t_s)}-1.
\end{equation}
Therefore, the variation of the source redshift between times $t_o$
and $t_o+\Delta t_o$ would be measured as follows:
\begin{equation}
\Delta{z}_s\equiv\frac{a(t_o+\Delta t_o)}{a(t_s+\Delta t_s)}-
\frac{a(t_o)}{a(t_s)}.\label{dz}
\end{equation}
We can expand the ratio $a(t_o+\Delta t_o)/a(t_s+\Delta t_ s)$ to
linear order, under the approximation $\Delta t/t\ll 1$.
Furthermore, using the the relation $\Delta
t_o=[a(t_o)/a(t_s)]\Delta t_s$, we obtain
\begin{equation}
\Delta z_s \approx \left[\frac{{\dot a}(t_o)-{\dot a}(t_
s)}{a(t_s)}\right]\Delta t_o.
\end{equation}
It shows that the redshift variation $\Delta z_s$ is directly
related to a change in the expansion rate during the evolution of
the universe, and it is thus a direct probe of the dynamics of the
cosmic expansion. This redshift variation can be related to a
spectroscopic velocity shift, $\Delta v\equiv \Delta z_s
/(1+z_{s})$. Using the Hubble parameter $H(z)=\dot{a}(z)/a(z)$, we
obtain
\begin{equation}
\Delta v=H_0\Delta
t_o\left[1-\frac{E(z_s)}{1+z_s}\right],\label{deltav}
\end{equation}
where $H_0$ is the Hubble constant and $E(z)=H(z)/H_0$. The function
$E(z)$ contains all the details of the cosmological model under
investigation. It is clear that the expansion history $E(z)$ is
related to the spectroscopic velocity shift via Eq.~(\ref{deltav}).
Though the amplitude of the velocity shift is very small, the
absorption lines in the quasar Lyman-$\alpha$ provide us with a
powerful tool to detect such a small signal. Monte Carlo simulations
of Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption lines have been performed to estimate
the uncertainty on $\Delta v$ as measured by the CODEX spectrograph
\cite{Pasquini05}. The statistical error can be estimated as
\begin{equation}
\sigma_{\Delta
v}=1.4\left(\frac{2350}{S/N}\right)\sqrt{\frac{30}{N_{QSO}}}
\left(\frac{5}{1+z_{QSO}}\right)^{1.8}~{{\rm cm}\over {\rm
s}},\label{error}
\end{equation}
where $S/N$ denotes the spectral signal-to-noise defined per 0.0125
{\AA} pixel, $N_{QSO}$ is the number of Lyman-$\alpha$ quasars, and
$z_{QSO}$ is the quasar's redshift. In order to detect the cosmic
signal, a large $S/N$ is necessary, but this implies that a positive
detection is not feasible with current telescopes. Fortunately, the
CODEX under design will be installed on the ESO Extremely Large
Telescope. The necessary signal-to-noise can be reached by such an
about 50 meter giant with just few hours integration. The velocity
shift measurements open a cosmological window with particular focus
on dark energy models. From the velocity shift measurements, one can
forecast constraints on parameters of cosmological models. In this
paper, following
Refs.~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg,Balbi:2007fx,Zhang:2007zg}, we
consider experimental configuration and uncertainties similar to
those expected from CODEX. We assume that the survey would observe a
total of 240 QSOs uniformly distributed in six equally spaced
redshift bins in the range $2\lesssim z\lesssim 5$, with a
signal-to-noise $S/N=3000$, and the expected uncertainty as given by
Eq.~(\ref{error}). Also, in this paper, we consider a ten-year
survey, namely, $\Delta t_o=10$ years. In what follows, we shall
explore the new agegraphic dark energy model and the Ricci dark
energy model with the SL test.
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\centering $\begin{array}{c@{\hspace{0.2in}}c}
\multicolumn{1}{l}{\mbox{}} &
\multicolumn{1}{l}{\mbox{}} \\
\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{age1.eps} &\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{age2.eps} \\
\end{array}$
\caption{The SL test for the NADE model. In the left panel, the
$\Lambda$CDM model with $\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.274$ is used to be the
fiducial model; in the right panel, the NADE model with $n=2.807$ is
taken as the fiducial model.}\label{fig:NADE}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\centering $\begin{array}{c@{\hspace{0.2in}}c}
\multicolumn{1}{l}{\mbox{}} &
\multicolumn{1}{l}{\mbox{}} \\
\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{r1.eps} &\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{r2.eps} \\
\end{array}$
\caption{The SL test for the RDE model. The $\Lambda$CDM model with
$\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.274$ is used to be the fiducial model. In the
left panel, we fix $\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.324$ and vary $\alpha$; in the
right panel, we fix $\alpha=0.371$ and vary $\Omega_{\rm m0}$.}
\label{fig:RDE1}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\centering $\begin{array}{c@{\hspace{0.2in}}c}
\multicolumn{1}{l}{\mbox{}} &
\multicolumn{1}{l}{\mbox{}} \\
\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{r3.eps} &\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{r4.eps} \\
\end{array}$
\caption{The SL test for the RDE model. The RDE model with
$\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.324$ and $\alpha=0.371$ is used to be the
fiducial model. In the left panel, we fix $\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.324$
and vary $\alpha$; in the right panel, we fix $\alpha=0.371$ and
vary $\Omega_{\rm m0}$.} \label{fig:RDE2}
\end{figure}
First, we discuss the velocity shift behavior in the new agegraphic
dark energy (NADE) model. Numerically solving the differential
equation (\ref{keyq}) and inserting Eq.~(\ref{Ez}) into
Eq.~(\ref{deltav}), one can reconstruct the $\Delta v(z)$ curves for
the NADE model. Note that the NADE model is a single-parameter
model, and the sole model parameter is $n$. The current cosmological
constraint on the parameter $n$ is $n=2.807^{+0.087}_{-0.086}$
(1$\sigma$) $^{+0.176}_{-0.170}$ (2$\sigma$) \cite{holos09}. In this
work, we take the values of $n$ as the central value as well as the
one-sigma and two-sigma limits of the above observational
constraint. In Fig.~\ref{fig:NADE}, we reconstruct the velocity
shift behavior of the NADE model. In the left panel, we use the
$\Lambda$CDM model as a fiducial model to perform an SL test. For
the $\Lambda$CDM cosmology, $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ is chosen to be 0.274
as given by the WMAP five-year observations \cite{Komatsu:2008hk}.
Note also that the Hubble constant $H_0$ in Eq.~(\ref{deltav}) is
taken as 72 km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$, in the whole discussion. From
the left panel of Fig.~\ref{fig:NADE} we see that the NADE model can
be distinguished from the $\Lambda$CDM model via the SL test.
However, it is interesting to notice that the curve with $n=0.2894$
still lies in the 1$\sigma$ error range of the $\Lambda$CDM fiducial
model within the redshift desert $2\lesssim z\lesssim 5$. So, it is
fair to say that actually the SL test could not completely
distinguish the NADE model from the $\Lambda$CDM model, though it
can do it rather effectively. Of course, if the SL test is combined
with the low-redshift observations such as the SNIa, weak lensing,
and BAO, the NADE model can be completely distinguished from the
$\Lambda$CDM model. On the other hand, we also perform an SL test by
using the NADE model with $n=2.807$ (the central value of $n$ given
by the current observational constraint) as a fiducial model. We
show this case in the right panel of Fig.~\ref{fig:NADE}. In this
case, we see that the prospective SL test is very powerful to be
used to constrain the NADE model, and it is clearly better than the
current low-redshift observations.
Next, we switch to the Ricci dark energy (RDE) model. For the RDE
model, the Hubble expansion history is described by Eq.~(\ref{Ea}),
so the $\Delta v(z)$ behavior can be reconstructed by substituting
Eq.~(\ref{Ea}) into Eq.~(\ref{deltav}). The RDE model has two model
parameters, $\alpha$ and $\Omega_{\rm m0}$, and the current
observational constraint results are \cite{holos09}:
$\alpha=0.371^{+0.023}_{-0.023}$ ($1\sigma$) $^{+0.037}_{-0.038}$
($2\sigma$) and $\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.324^{+0.024}_{-0.022}$
($1\sigma$) $^{+0.040}_{-0.036}$ ($2\sigma$). Like the above
discussion, we will still first employ the standard dark energy
cosmology, the $\Lambda$CDM model, as a fiducial model to perform an
SL test for the RDE model. For the fiducial $\Lambda$CDM model, we
still take $\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.274$, the value given by WMAP
\cite{Komatsu:2008hk}. In this test, one can forecast how well a
deviation of the RDE model from the $\Lambda$CDM model can be
detected. We show the results of such an SL test in
Fig.~\ref{fig:RDE1}. In the left panel, the parameter $\Omega_{\rm
m0}$ is fixed to be 0.324 for the RDE model, and the parameter
$\alpha$ of the RDE model is adjustable; in the right panel, we fix
$\alpha=0.371$ and vary $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ for the RDE model. From
this figure, it is clear to see that the SL test in the ``redshift
desert'' is very successful in distinguishing the RDE model from the
standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. The two models can be distinguished
via the SL test at about $6-8$ $\sigma$ level, assuming only a
10-year survey. This result is reasonable and understandable, since
the RDE model has a tracker behavior \cite{Zhang:2009un} so that its
matter-dominated era is different from that of the $\Lambda$CDM
model, and the SL test is just the best way to probe the behavior of
the matter-dominated phase of dark energy models. Furthermore, it is
worth noticing that such measurements are mostly sensitive to the
matter density $\Omega_{\rm m0}$, while the dependence on $\alpha$
is weaker. To forecast whether the SL test is able to break the
degeneracy of the parameters of the RDE model, we further use the
RDE model with $\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.324$ and $\alpha=0.371$ (the
central values of the current observational constraint) as the
fiducial model to perform an SL test. The results of this test are
plotted in Fig.~\ref{fig:RDE2}. In the left panel, we fix
$\Omega_{\rm m0}=0.324$ and vary $\alpha$ in the 2 $\sigma$ range of
the current observational result; in the right panel, we fix
$\alpha=0.371$ and vary $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ in the 2 $\sigma$ range of
the current observational result. From Fig.~\ref{fig:RDE2}, we can
see that the SL test with a 10-year survey could not provide
precision determination of the parameter $\alpha$, but could
precisely determine the value of $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ for the RDE
model. This result is in agreement with the previous work on the SL
test \cite{Corasaniti:2007bg}; in Ref.~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg} it
is shown that the Sandage-Loeb constraints on $w$ are not
competitive with those inferred from other low-redshift
observations. The equation of state $w$ of RDE is mainly determined
by the parameter $\alpha$, so the SL test could not constrain the
value of $\alpha$ precisely. However, as pointed out in
Ref.~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg}, one should note that the constraints
obtained by SL test decrease linearly with time, so for measurements
made over a century, and with the expected larger number of QSOs,
the SL limits on $w$ can easily be at the few percent level.
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{adelikelihood.eps}
\caption{Predicted likelihood distribution of the parameter $n$ of
the NADE model from the SL test.}\label{fig:adelikelihood}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.7]{rdecontour.eps}
\caption{Predicted probability contours at $68.3\%$ and $95.4\%$
confidence levels in the ($\Omega_{m0}$, $\alpha$) plane for the RDE
model from the SL test.}\label{fig:rdecontour}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
Finally, let us show how well the proposed SL test could constrain
the two dark energy models by using a Fisher matrix method. To find
the expected precision of the SL test with CODEX, one must assume a
fiducial model, and then simulate the experiment assuming it as a
reference model. We employ the $\Lambda$CDM model as the fiducial
model and produce the mock data of the velocity-drift in the
redshift desert with the error bars given by Eq.~(\ref{error}).
Next, we will perform a Fisher matrix analysis on the model
parameter space with the above assumption. The $\chi^2$ of the
analysis is given by
\begin{equation}
\chi^2_{SL}=\sum\limits_{i=1}^{240}{[\Delta v^{\rm
model}(z_i)-\Delta v^{\rm data}(z_i)]^2 \over\sigma_{\Delta
v}^2(z_i)},
\end{equation}
where $\Delta v^{\rm data}(z_i)$ denotes the mock data produced by
the fiducial model, $\Delta v^{\rm model}(z_i)$ is the theoretical
prediction of the dark energy model under investigation, and
$\sigma_{\Delta v}^2(z_i)$ is the error bar estimated from
Eq.~(\ref{error}). The NADE model is a single-parameter model, so
once the parameter $n$ is given, the parameter $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ as
well as other properties and dynamical evolution will be determined
accordingly. In Fig.~\ref{fig:adelikelihood} we plot the likelihood
distribution of the parameter $n$ of the NADE model as expected from
the SL test. We see that the parameter $n$ is able to be accurately
determined by the SL test, $n=7.754^{+0.004}_{-0.005}$ (1$\sigma$).
So, the SL test could obtain $\sigma_n\simeq 0.005$, better than the
current observational result by at least one order of magnitude. The
RDE model has two model parameters, $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ and $\alpha$.
In Fig.~\ref{fig:rdecontour} we plot the 1$\sigma$ and 2$\sigma$
contours in the $\Omega_{\rm m0}-\alpha$ plane for the RDE model.
The 1$\sigma$ results are: $\Omega_{\rm
m0}=0.2055^{+0.0056}_{-0.0052}$ and
$\alpha=0.5000^{+0.0262}_{-0.0297}$. So, the SL test would obtain
$\sigma_{\Omega_{\rm m0}}\simeq 0.005$, better than the current
constraint by one order of magnitude, and $\sigma_{\alpha}\simeq
0.03$, at the same accuracy level compared to the current
observational result. The above analysis reinforces the conclusion
that the two dark energy models indeed can be constrained by the SL
measurements with high significance.
\section{Concluding remarks}\label{sec:conclusion}
The Sandage-Loeb test is a promising method for constraining dark
energy by using the direct measurements of the temporal shift of the
quasar Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption lines at high redshift ($2\lesssim
z\lesssim 5$). While the signal of this effect is extremely small,
the near-future large telescopes with ultrahigh resolution
spectrographs (such as the CODEX under design) will definitely be
capable of measuring such a small signal over a period as short as
ten years. Notwithstanding, one still may ask whether it is
worthwhile to probe $z\gtrsim 2$, since in the standard dark energy
cosmology such as the $\Lambda$CDM model or the slowly rolling
scalar field model the dark energy is subdominant at redshift
$z\gtrsim 1$ and almost completely negligible at $z\gtrsim 2$. The
answer to this question is affirmative. As explained in
Ref.~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg}, it is quite rational to look for the
signatures of dark energy at all available epochs, because at
present we do not know much about the physical nature and
cosmological origin of dark energy, and there are too many
possibilities for dark energy. Especially, there are lots of dark
energy models in which dark energy density is non-negligible at high
redshift. So, it is meaningful to study the future observations of
velocity shift and their impact on dark energy models. The SL test
on Chaplygin gas model and interacting dark energy model has been
studied in Ref.~\cite{Corasaniti:2007bg}. In
Ref.~\cite{Balbi:2007fx}, more classes of dark energy models have
been investigated with the SL test. In particular, the original
holographic dark energy model has been explored with the SL test in
Ref.~\cite{Zhang:2007zg}. So, the exploration of the other two
holographic dark energy models, the new agegraphic dark energy model
and the Ricci dark energy model, is naturally the next step, and
this will provide a complementary to the work of
Ref.~\cite{Zhang:2007zg} and keep the investigation of holographic
scenarios of dark energy more complete.
In this paper, we have analyzed the prospects for constraining the
new agegraphic dark energy model and the Ricci dark energy model at
the redshift desert $2\lesssim z\lesssim 5$ from the Sandage-Loeb
test. The NADE model is a sole-parameter model; the parameter $n$
together with an initial condition can determine the whole
cosmological evolution history of the NADE model. Actually, the
evolution of this model is similar to that of a slowly rolling
scalar field. Thus, though the SL test can be used to distinguish
the NADE model from the $\Lambda$CDM model, this discrimination is
not absolute. It is obvious that if the SL test is combined with the
low-redshift observations such as the SNIa, weak lensing, and BAO,
the NADE model can be completely distinguished from the $\Lambda$CDM
model. Furthermore, we forecast that the prospective SL test is very
powerful to constrain the NADE model, and it is better than the
current low-redshift observations. The RDE model is a two-parameter
model, and it has a tracking solution so that it is very different
from the $\Lambda$CDM model in the matter-dominated epoch. So, the
SL test is very successful in distinguishing the RDE model from the
$\Lambda$CDM model. The two models can be distinguished via the SL
test at about $6-8$ $\sigma$ level, assuming only a 10-year survey.
As the SL test mostly probes the matter density at high redshift,
the constraint on $\Omega_{\rm m0}$ is very strong, while the
constraint on $\alpha$ is much weaker.
\begin{acknowledgments}
We are grateful to the referee for the insightful comments and
suggestions, which have led to significant improvement to this
paper. We also thank Dr. Hongbao Zhang for useful discussions. This
work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China under
Grant Nos.~10705041 and 10975032.
\end{acknowledgments}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 9,677 |
Q: Opening a postgres connection in psycopg2 causes python to crash I'm getting the following error message when I try to open up a connection to a postgres database. Perhaps it's related to OpenSSL, but I can't understand the error message. Can anyone help?
>>> import psycopg2
>>> conn = psycopg2.connect(host = '', port = , dbname
= '', user = '', password = '')
Auto configuration failed
12848:error:02001015:system library:fopen:Is a directory:.\crypto\bio\bss_file.c
:169:fopen('D:/Build/OpenSSL/openssl-1.0.1h-vc9-x64/ssl/openssl.cnf','rb')
12848:error:2006D002:BIO routines:BIO_new_file:system lib:.\crypto\bio\bss_file.
c:174:
12848:error:0E078002:configuration file routines:DEF_LOAD:system lib:.\crypto\co
nf\conf_def.c:199:
A: One problem that I can think of is that your installation may not have been linked/built properly to use openssl. If you haven't tried the packages listed in the docs yet, maybe you could give it a try.
When I look at the docs:
Microsoft Windows:
Jason Erickson maintains a packaged Windows port of Psycopg with installation executable. Download. Double click. Done.
So you could try to install it from there. Or you can try the pip-friendly windows-friendly (note: I didn't try it myself) psycopg2-windows package.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 6,094 |
Barbershop 2: Back in Business
Barbershop 2: Back in Business, directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan, suffers the fate of most sequels. The more superficially crowd-pleasing elements of the original — mainly the calculated outrageousness of the wisecracks of Cedric the Entertainer's Eddie — are exaggerated until they unbalance the film, distort its sense of proportion and crowd out any subtler virtues it might once have possessed.
Thus we begin as Eddie regales Cal (Ice Cube) and his fellow barbers and customers with the opinion that "the DC Sniper was like the Jackie Robinson of crime. He broke into the white leagues," because all that calculation of trajectories and so forth involved in shooting from the trunk of a car, well, "That's white-folks s***." Ha ha. Good old Cedric. Nothing "sensitive" or p.c. about him, is there? There's a lot more, but much of it I couldn't hear — not only because of Eddie's affected speech impediment and the street argot that litters his speech but also because the audience when I saw the picture was so eager to find him funny that often it burst into howls of merriment well before he got to the punch-line.
The story of the film, in which the franchisee of a national chain of black hairdressing salons called "Nappy-Cutz" moves in across the street from Calvin's shop with help from a corrupt politician and predictable results, is utterly forgettable, while the moralizing on the virtues of black community inevitably sounds second-hand and unpersuasive — as does the idea that Nappy-Cutz would sink so much of its investment in a poor neighborhood in massage chairs and fish tanks and an on-premises basketball court. The corrupt alderman who takes a payoff from the chain, and from developers who have still other plans for the neighborhood site while smugly insisting that "Competition is the cornerstone of democracy" has no function except to flatter the audiences preconceptions about dirty politicians.
Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas) who is working as an aide to the alderman returns to his barber chair when he sees the corruption, but it seems odd that that is his only option. Not much more than a hint of the moral seriousness of Barbershop (2002) survives in the rejection by the lone female barber, Terri (Eve), of "that thug, gangsta, playa s***" which is put on in the attitude of would-be boyfriend Ricky (Michael Ealy) and his attempt to win her by getting his GED in spite of the embarrassment to a "thug, gangsta, playa" of doing so. But this occupies only a moment in the film, which is otherwise pretty much all given up to earnest, incorruptible, boring Cal and Outrageous Eddie.
There are moments of real humor from the latter, as when he has a conversation with a chai-drinking, lap-top-browsing yuppie on a train. "Dat's de lactose intoleration," he says, dropping into the Amos 'n' Andy-type caricature that he knows is much more embarrassing to liberal-minded whites than it is to blacks. Thus the shocked yuppie whines that he's always been "nice" to black people.
The high point of the picture, judging by the gales of laughter it provoked around me, is a flyting match, or contest of insults, between Eddie and Gina (Queen Latifah), the proprietor of the next-door beauty salon, at a neighborhood barbecue. A preview suggests that the franchise is to branch out into a feature on Gina's salon in the near future. But I couldn't make out more than about one joke in three in the rapid-fire sequence between her and Eddie. Maybe you'll have better luck. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 6,100 |
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:introduction}
\input{pages/introduction}
\section{Graph Machine Learning}
\label{sec:gml}
\input{pages/gml}
\section{Human Knowledge Database}
\label{sec:kg}
\input{pages/kg}
\section{Intelligent Drug Discovery Based on Graph-structured Data}
\label{sec:dd}
\input{pages/dd}
\section{Knowledge-augmented Graph Machine Learning for Drug Discovery}
\label{sec:kagml_for_dd}
\input{pages/kagml_for_dd}
\section{Practical Resources}
\label{sec:practical_resources}
\input{pages/practical_resources}
\section{Discussion and Future Directions}
\label{sec:discussion_and_future_directions}
\input{pages/discussion_and_future_directions}
\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\subsection{Applications of Knowledge Graph}
\label{subsec:application_of_knowledge_graph}
Many interesting applications for KGs exist, in addition to the graph analysis applications that can be performed on general graphs, such as entity classification and graph completion (link prediction).
Some of the applications are specific to KGs,~\cite{WMWG17,JPCMP21}.
such as triple classification~\cite{TZJCA19}, relation extraction~\cite{BNSMSHK21} and question answering~\cite{ZDKSS18}.
Besides, KG, as a practical format to store and present human knowledge, has been widely adopted as an information resource to assist various tasks~\cite{ZHLJSL19,WHCLC19,LCCR19}.
\begin{itemize}[leftmargin=*]\itemsep0em
\item \textbf{Triple classification:} KGs have rich semantics which are represented as triples ($\langle h_u, r, t_v \rangle$).
Each triple may be associated with a value to describe its property, such as reliability.
By studying head entity $e_{u}$, tail entity $e_{v}$ and the relation $r$ between them, we can determine the truth value or the degree of the truth value of unknown triples.
\item \textbf{Relation extraction:} The publicly available KGs find use in many real-world applications.
Despite the success and popularity, these KGs are not exhaustive.
Hence, there is a need for approaches that automatically extract knowledge from unstructured text into KGs, namely relation extraction.
Specifically, it aims at determining the entailed relation $r$ between a given head entity $h_u$ and tail entity $t_v$ annotated on the text to a background KG.
\item \textbf{Question answering:} Question answering is a classic computer science research question developed to search for direct and precise answers over the database after understanding users' intentions according to their questions.
Current KG-based question answering answers natural language questions with facts from KGs.
\item \textbf{Knowledge-aware applications:} Inspired by the richness of the information stored in real-world KGs, researchers propose knowledge-aware models that benefit from integrating heterogeneous information, well-structured ontologies and semantics.
Thus, many real-world applications, such as recommendation systems and automatic translation, have been successful in their ability to exploit common sense understanding and reasoning.
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Incorporating Knowledge in \emph{Preprocessing}}
\label{subsec:kagml_preprocessing}
Conventional GML models should ideally be able to extract comprehensive information about a biomedical graph that might be relevant to downstream tasks~\cite{GDJSRLHVRTRBBT21,LHZ22}. However, in practice, there are two limitations that may impede the extraction.
\textit{(i)} GML models require well-defined graph structures (Box~\ref{box:fundamentals_graph_machine_learning}), yet in many real-world scenarios, the graph structure is not explicit and reliable, which precludes the application of GML approaches.
\textit{(ii)} The powerful GML algorithms - GNN models, employ a limited number of message-passing steps, $L$, that is less than the diameter of the biomedical graph, $diam(\mathcal{G})$, meaning that entities that are more than $L$ hops apart will not receive messages about each other.
This results in a representation that is fundamentally localised rather than global, which can hamper the prediction of biomedical properties that are heavily dependent on global features.
To address these limitations, KaGML approaches incorporate external knowledge into the preprocessing.
\textbf{Feature augmentation.}
The first preprocessing approach, feature augmentation (also known as feature engineering), is a prevalent technique in which external domain knowledge is used to design new features for input data $\mathcal{X}$ in machine learning models.
This methodology has been extensively studied in the context of intelligent drug discovery, with various studies demonstrating its effectiveness.
Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(a)-I illustrates a typical use case.
At the molecule level, studies \cite{GSRVD17,YSJCEGGHKM19,SZNFLY20,GYG21,SPBKJ22,BMSGMKMSK22} employ global molecular node and edge features generated by chemical tools, such as RDKit~\cite{BHFLGABDL20} and UFF~\cite{RCCGK92}, to enhance vanilla GNN models by enabling them to capture interactions beyond $L$ hops.
Additionally, researchers propose various protein backbone features, such as distance between atoms, relative frame orientations and rotations, and backbone dihedral angles, for use in GNN models for 3D molecular graphs~\cite{DABBRMWCDB22}.
Furthermore, the utilisation of both Cartesian~\cite{FWFW20,SUG21,BMSGMKMSK22,FLLHZZWWW22} and Spherical~\cite{GBG21,LWLLZOJ22,WLLLJ22} coordinate systems have been investigated as a solution to better describe 3D molecular structure.
At the macro-molecular level, researchers propose extracting combinations of atomic-level and protein pocket surface-level features for protein pocket modelling~\cite{KAPT22}, and designing sets of strong features to describe the amino-acid type and residue component of amino-acid sequences for protein structure prediction~\cite{JEPGFRTBZP21}.
In contrast to the manual feature design process, Shen \emph{et al.}~\cite{SZZWQTJC21} develop a molecular feature-generation model, MolMap, for mapping molecular representations (MolRs) and fingerprint features (FFs), which is trained by broadly profiling 8,506,205 molecules.
At the compound level, some studies propose capturing additional domain knowledge from external biomedical knowledge datasets (\emph{e.g.}, DrugBank~\cite{WFGLMGSJLS18} and Gene Ontology~\cite{GO21}) to enrich the semantics of entities' embeddings for precise drug-target interaction prediction~\cite{YHZGSX21,LGTLZZ21,SZYLZ22}.
\textbf{Graph structure augmentation.}
Graph structure augmentation is another prevalent preprocessing technique in the literature, as illustrated in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(a)-II, in which external domain knowledge is used to reveal relationships between different biomedical entities.
This approach has been shown to be effective when reliable explicit graph structures are not available.
For example, various studies have constructed biomedical entity interaction networks based on external knowledge sources, such as raw text descriptions~\cite{LQWMZ20}, knowledge databases~\cite{LGTLZZ21,YHYKCCHH21}, ontologies~\cite{SZWZHB22}, pathways~\cite{SPBKJ22}, and entity similarity~\cite{SSZ21}, which reflect implicit connections between target entities.
Another noteworthy methodology, as reported by Liu \emph{et al.}~\cite{LQZCT22}, involves constructing a molecular task graph, which is based on the relation of their associated sets of proteins and contains 13,004 molecules and 382 tasks.
Additionally, researchers~\cite{ZGZ21,JSLLY22} find that functional molecular graph fragments are useful for capturing meaningful fragment-oriented multi-scale information.
They construct new fragment-level graphs based on original molecular graphs and learn embeddings that capture semantics at both levels in order to predict target molecule properties.
Similarly, studies~\cite{GSMRBBC20,SBK21} use the triangulation software MSMS~\cite{SOS96} to generate molecular and protein surfaces, which can provide multi-scale structure information for learning representations.
It is important to note that while incorporating knowledge in preprocessing for intelligent drug discovery has been applied in numerous studies, only representative works are discussed here, and other relevant works with similar diagrams are omitted.
\subsection{Incorporating Knowledge in \emph{Pretraining}}
\label{subsec:kagml_pretraining}
One of the main challenges in the use of machine learning techniques for drug discovery is the construction of an appropriate objective function (\emph{i.e.}, defining a learning target) for model training, particularly in the presence of limited supervision labels in biomedical datasets.
One prominent methodology is the pretraining-finetuning pipeline (Box~\ref{box:fundamentals_kagml_drug_design}), where pretrained GNN models have been shown to yield promising performance on downstream drug discovery tasks and have become increasingly popular in the literature~\cite{VFHLBH19,HLGZLPL20,SHVT20,RBXXWHH20,LPJZXY21,LZHWMZT23}.
However, general pretraining strategies may not be well-suited for biomedical graphs.
Unlike word masking in natural languages or data augmentation in images (\emph{e.g.}, resizing and rotation), which do not fundamentally alter the semantics of the raw data, small modifications to biomedical graphs can greatly change the characteristics of the corresponding entities.
For example, as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(b)-I, dropping a carbon atom in the phenyl ring of aspirin can lead to a change in the aromatic system and result in an alkene chain.
Additionally, without semantics, the relationship between masked nodes and their adjacent nodes is primarily governed by valency rules, which are weaker in comparison to the dependency between neighbouring tokens in natural languages or pixels in images.
For instance, if an oxygen atom is masked in a molecular graph, the oxygen atom is the expected prediction (as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(b)-I), however, many other atoms can also construct valid molecules according to valency rules.
Thus, enforcing high mutual information between these augmentation pairs may not produce optimal representations for downstream tasks~\cite{SXWCZ21,LZZ22}.
In other words, previous methods do not adapt to the biomedical scenario.
To address these challenges, some studies propose knowledge-augmented pretraining strategies.
\textbf{Knowledge transfer pretraining.}
The first methodology is transferring external knowledge to construct pretraining objectives for machine learning models in the field of intelligent drug discovery (Box~\ref{box:fundamentals_kagml_drug_design}).
One notable example of this approach is the PEMP mode, proposed by Sun \emph{et al.}~\cite{SCMHLMML22}, which identifies a group of useful chemical and physical properties of molecules, to enhance the capability of GNN models in capturing relevant information through pretraining.
Furthermore, it is critical to understand the 3D structure of chemical compounds and proteins, as it defines their functions and interactions with other entities.
GraphMVP~\cite{SBCTDGL22} and 3DInfoMax~\cite{LWLLGT22} inject the knowledge of 3D molecular geometry to a 2D molecular graph encoder such that the downstream tasks on new molecular datasets can benefit from the implicit 3D geometric prior even if there is no 3D information available.
Additionally, knowledge from large-scale knowledge databases can be exploited as well.
The OntoProtein framework~\cite{ZBLCHDLZC22} uses knowledge from the Gene Ontology~\cite{GO21} database to jointly optimise knowledge and protein embedding during pretraining.
\textbf{Generative-sample pretraining.}
Another widely applied pretraining strategy is relying on generative samples (as outlined in Box~\ref{box:fundamentals_kagml_drug_design}).
This strategy involves training a machine learning model to encode input $\mathcal{X}$ into an explicit vector $\mathbf{Z}$ and subsequently using a decoder to reconstruct $\mathcal{X}$ from $\mathbf{Z}$~\cite{LPJZXY21,LZHWMZT23}.
Nevertheless, in the context of drug discovery, even small differences in reconstruction can result in significant variations in characteristics.
As such, it is of significant importance to incorporate external knowledge in order to properly calibrate the pretraining objective.
For example, Li \emph{et al.}~\cite{LZZ22} propose the use of molecular descriptors and fingerprints as semantic scores and pretrain models by retrieving molecular semantics.
Similarly, Benjamin \emph{et al.}~\cite{BSR22} suggest pretraining GNN models by predicting two molecular fingerprints, Morgan fingerprints (also known as extended-connectivity fingerprint ECFP4) \cite{M65,RH10} and MACCS fingerprint~\cite{DLHN02}.
These fingerprints, which are specifically designed by biomedical experts, are highly relevant to the properties and functions of entities and are sensitive to subtle structural variations.
The prediction of these objectives enables GNN models to capture crucial factors related to the properties of biomedical entities.
\textbf{Contrastive-sample pretraining.}
The third prevalent pretraining strategy is the use of contrastive samples, which involves training a machine learning model to encode input $\mathcal{X}$ into a vector representation, $\mathbf{Z}$, and subsequently using this representation to measure similarity among positive and negative pairs (for example, through techniques such as mutual information maximisation, instance discrimination)~\cite{LPJZXY21,LZHWMZT23}.
One of the significant challenges in this approach is the generation of adversarial samples, which is particularly relevant in the context of drug discovery~\cite{YCSCWS20}.
There have been several studies that have proposed effective solutions to this problem.
For example, MoCL~\cite{SXWCZ21} uses domain-specific knowledge, both at the local level (\emph{e.g.}, substructure substitution with bioisostere) and global level (\emph{e.g.}, extended connectivity fingerprints of graphs), to guide the augmentation process and encode the similarity information within the entire dataset.
Similarly, Fang \emph{et al.}~\cite{FZYZDZQCFC22} construct a chemical element KG based on the periodic table of elements (Ptable~\cite{D97}) and enrich original molecular graphs with external chemical knowledge.
They then propose the KCL model, which designs a knowledge-aware GNN model to encode contrastive molecular graphs that are enhanced with knowledge of atoms and chemical bonds.
These methodologies successfully incorporate external knowledge by generating contrastive instances.
\subsection{Incorporating Knowledge in \emph{Training}}
\label{subsec:kagml_training}
GML models are a subset of machine learning algorithms that follow the traditional training process and in which a set of parameters are learned through the guidance of supervision signals (Box~\ref{box:fundamentals_graph_machine_learning}).
This process has attracted significant attention in the field of drug discovery, as it plays a crucial role in determining downstream performance.
However, in this context, the sparsity of training signals and the complexity of biomedical process modelling represent significant limitations~\cite{GDJSRLHVRTRBBT21,LHZ22}.
To address these challenges, recent studies have proposed innovative solutions that incorporate external knowledge to enhance the training process for intelligent drug discovery.
These solutions are summarised in Figure-\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(c) and can be broadly grouped into two categories: auxiliary task-enhanced training and auxiliary knowledge-enhanced training.
The following sections provide detailed descriptions of recent studies in each of these directions.
\textbf{Auxiliary task-enhanced training.}
The use of auxiliary tasks in training is a methodology aimed at addressing the issue of limited labelling data in biomedical datasets, as depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(c)-I.
This approach involves using relevant labelling information of target entities as additional training signals in addition to the primary downstream task labelling data.
For example, Sun \emph{et al.}~\cite{SCMHLMML22} identify correlations between molecular properties and calculable physics and chemical properties and leverage these physical properties as auxiliary tasks to enhance molecular property predictions.
Similarly, Ma \emph{et al.}~\cite{MLSPZ22} use the embeddings learned from drug-target interaction (DTI) and compound-protein interaction (CPI) as additional knowledge to enhance corresponding molecular embeddings, treating DTI and CPI as auxiliary tasks in training the model for the principal task of molecule-molecule interaction (MMI).
Jumper \emph{et al.}~\cite{JEPGFRTBZP21} adopt multiple sequence alignments (MSA) prediction as an auxiliary task to improve performance in protein structure prediction.
This methodology, in contrast to knowledge transfer pretraining approaches (\emph{e.g.}, multi-task guided pretraining), requires primary task-related auxiliary labelling data and directly involves them in the model training process.
\textbf{Auxiliary knowledge-enhanced training.}
The second knowledge-augmented training methodology is the use of external knowledge to guide the message-passing process, as illustrated in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(c)-II.
This approach involves leveraging domain knowledge to adjust the internal processes of GNN models.
One example of this is the annotation of atoms, bonds, and functional substructures and their contributions to the properties of molecules, as demonstrated by~\cite{H21}.
These annotations can be used to guide the attentional message-passing process within the GNN.
However, the optimal method for adaptively utilising auxiliary knowledge by considering the uncertainty remains an open research question, and we will discuss it in detail in Section~\ref{sec:discussion_and_future_directions}.
\subsection{Incorporating Knowledge in \emph{Interpretability}}
\label{subsec:kagml_interpretability}
Interpretability, the ability to understand and explain the workings and outputs of a model, has long been a subject of research in various fields and has recently regained popularity due to advancements in the field of machine learning~\cite{TS22}.
It is not only essential for the development of \textit{eXplainable Artificial Intelligence} (XAI)~\cite{JGS20} but also a crucial step towards \textit{Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence} (TAI)~\cite{TLS21}.
By providing meaningful and understandable explanations, the model's mechanism and outputs can be better understood by users, thereby increasing trust in the model.
Furthermore, this issue is of particular importance in the context of drug discovery, where biologists may not have a strong background in computer science.
However, \textit{a significant limitation of existing intelligent drug discovery approaches is their lack of interpretability}, which hinders the understanding of the model's mechanism and outputs by humans.
This highlights the need to improve interpretability and trustworthiness from the user perspective.
In response, recent studies have proposed various techniques to explain the model's mechanism and outputs.
This section specifically focuses on the role of integrating external knowledge for interpretable GML in the context of intelligent drug discovery, as illustrated in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(d).
\textbf{Attention summarisation.}
External knowledge in the form of KGs can be used as a means of improving interpretability in GML models for intelligent drug discovery.
One approach, as depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(d)-I, involves the use of attention summarisation methods.
By utilising machine-readable domain knowledge represented in KGs, relevant knowledge can be highlighted for downstream applications.
For example, Yu \emph{et al.}~\cite{YHZGSX21} extract local subgraphs in an external KG in the vicinity of drug pairs to extract biomedical knowledge.
Through the application of a self-attention mechanism, useful information is captured from the extracted subgraphs to predict drug interactions.
Additionally, the learned attention weights can be used to prune the subgraphs, thereby generating mechanism pathways for summarising the drug interaction.
\textbf{Pathway extraction.}
An alternate category for incorporating knowledge in interpretability, as depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:example_knowledge_usage}-(d)-II, is by using pathway extraction techniques.
Unlike the attention-based knowledge summarisation approach, which captures external knowledge from KGs, this category does not require the construction of KGs.
These techniques adaptively infer pathways pertaining to target biomedical entities from pathway datasets and highlight the key pathways for the explanation.
For instance, Shin \emph{et al.}~\cite{SPBKJ22} introduce cancer-related pathways and construct a cell line network as a set of subgraphs to represent biological mechanisms in detail.
The extracted self-attention score from the Transformer model can be used to identify which pathways are sensitive to drugs and obtain putative key pathways for the drug mechanism.
Additionally, in another impressive study, Hao \emph{et al.}~\cite{HRM22} design DTox for predicting compound response to toxicity assays.
They propose a layer-wise relevance propagation approach to infer toxicity pathways of individual compounds from the pathway network.
\subsection{Shallow Graph Representation Learning}
\label{subsec:shallow_grl}
Shallow GRL methods comprise an embedding lookup table which directly encodes each node as a vector and is optimised during training.
Within this group, several Skip-Gram~\cite{MSCCD13}-based NE methods have been proposed, such as DeepWalk~\cite{PAS14} and node2vec~\cite{GL16}, as well as their matrix factorisation interpretation NetMF~\cite{QDMLWT18}, LINE~\cite{TQWZYM15} and PTE~\cite{TQM15}.
As depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:example_graph_and_grl}-(c),
DeepWalk generates walk sequences for each node on a network using truncated random walks and learns node representations by maximising the similarity of representations for nodes that occur in the same walks, thus preserving neighbourhood structures.
Node2vec increases the expressivity of DeepWalk by defining a flexible notion of a node's network neighbourhood and designing a second-order random walk strategy to sample the neighbourhood nodes;
LINE is a special case of DeepWalk when the size of the node's context is set to one;
PTE can be viewed as the joint factorisation of multiple networks' Laplacians~\cite{QDMLWT18}.
To capture the structural identity of nodes independent of network position and neighbourhood's labels, struc2vec~\cite{RSF17} constructs a hierarchy to encode structural node similarities at different scales.
Despite their relative success, shallow GRL methods often ignore the richness of node attributes and only focus on the network structural information, which hugely limits their performance.
\subsection{Deep Graph Representation Learning with Neural Network}
\label{subsec:gnn}
\textit{Graph Neural Networks} (GNNs) are a class of neural network models suitable for processing graph-structured data.
They use the graph structure $\mathbf{A}$ and node features $\mathbf{X}$ to learn a representation vector of a node $\mathbf{z}_v$, or the entire graph $\mathbf{z}_{\mathcal{G}}$.
Modern GNNs~\cite{ZLP222} follow a common idea of a recursive neighbourhood aggregation or message-passing scheme, where we iteratively update the representation of a node by aggregating representations of its neighbouring nodes.
After $\ell$ iterations of aggregation or message-passing, a node's representation captures the graph structural information within $\ell$-hop neighbourhood.
Thus, we can formally define $\ell$-th layer of a GNN as:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:gnn_aggregate_combine}
\begin{aligned}
\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a &= \textsc{Aggregate}^{N}(\{\mathbf{A}_{u,v}, \, \mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_u \,|\, u \in \mathcal{N}(v) \}), \\
\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v &= \textsc{Aggregate}^{I}(\{\mathbf{A}_{u,v} \,|\, u \in \mathcal{N}(v) \}) \, \mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_v, \\
\mathbf{h}^{(\ell)}_v &= \textsc{Combine}(\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a, \mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v)
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $\textsc{Aggregate}^{N}(\cdot)$ and $\textsc{Aggregate}^{I}(\cdot)$ are two parameterised functions to learn during training process.
$\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a$ is aggregated message from node $v$'s neighbourhood nodes $\mathcal{N}(v)$ with their structural coefficients,
and $\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v$ is the residual message from node $v$ after performing an adjustment operation to account for structural effects from its neighbourhood nodes.
After, $\mathbf{h}^{(\ell)}_v$ is the learned as representation vector of node $v$ with combining $\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a$ and $\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v$,
with a $\textsc{Combine}(\cdot)$ function, at the $\ell$-th iteration/layer.
Note that we initialise $\mathbf{h}^{(0)}_v = \mathbf{x}_v$ and the final learned representation vector after $L$ iterations/layers $\mathbf{z}_v = \mathbf{h}^{(L)}_v$.
We illustrate the learning mechanism of GNN models in Figure~\ref{fig:example_graph_and_grl}-(d).
In addition, in terms of the representation of an entire graph ($\mathbf{z}_{\mathcal{G}}$), we can apply a $\mathrm{READOUT}$ function to aggregate node representations of all nodes of the graph $\mathcal{G}$, as
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:gnn_readout}
\mathbf{z}_{\mathcal{G}} = \mathrm{READOUT}(\{\mathbf{z}_{v} \; \vert \; \forall \mathbf{z}_{v} \in \mathcal{V} \})
\end{equation}
where $\mathrm{READOUT}$ can be a simple permutation invariant function such as summation or a more sophisticated graph-level pooling function.
Following the general structure of GNNs as defined in Equation~\ref{eq:gnn_aggregate_combine}, we can further generalise the existing GNNs as variants of it.
For instance, several classic and popular GNNs can be summarised as Table~\ref{table:summary_gnn_variants}.
\begin{table}[!ht]
\caption{
Define different GNN variants according to Equation~\ref{eq:gnn_aggregate_combine}.
}
\label{table:summary_gnn_variants}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ |l|c|c|c| }
\hline
\textbf{GNN Model} & \textbf{$\textsc{Aggregate}^{N}(\cdot)$} & \textbf{$\textsc{Aggregate}^{I}(\cdot)$} & \textbf{$\textsc{Combine}(\cdot)$} \\
\hline
GCN~\cite{KW17} & $\sum\limits_{u \in \mathcal{N}(v)}\frac{\mathbf{W}^{(\ell)} \mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_u}{\sqrt{|\mathcal{N}(u)| |\mathcal{N}(v)|}}$ & $\frac{\mathbf{W}^{(\ell)} \mathbf{h}^{\ell-1}_v}{\sqrt{|\mathcal{N}(v)| |\mathcal{N}(v)|}}$ & $\sigma(\textsc{Sum}(\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a, \mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v))$ \\
\hline
GraphSAGE~\cite{HYL17} & $\textsc{Agg}(\{\mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_u \,|\, u \in \mathcal{N}(v) \})$ & $\mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_v$ & $\sigma(\mathbf{W}^{(\ell)} \cdot \textsc{Concat}(\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a, \mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v))$ \\
\hline
GAT~\cite{VCCRLB18} & $\sum\limits_{u \in \mathcal{N}(v)}\alpha_{u,v}\mathbf{W}^{(\ell)}\mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_u$ & $\alpha_{vv}\mathbf{W}^{(\ell)}\mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_v$ & $\sigma(\textsc{Sum}(\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a, \mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v))$ \\
\hline
GIN~\cite{XHLJ19} & $\sum\limits_{u \in \mathcal{N}(v)}\mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_u$ & $(1+\epsilon)\mathbf{h}^{(\ell-1)}_v$ & $\textsc{MLP}_{\theta}(\textsc{Sum}(\mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_a, \mathbf{m}^{(\ell)}_v)))$ \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
We only review prior and concurrent work on GML related to our contributions where necessary.
For an overview of recent variants and applications of GML, we recommend the comprehensive review articles~\cite{CZC18,CWPZ19,ZCZ20,WPCLZY21,J22}.
Note that recent work explicitly discusses the close affiliation between one popular framework, \emph{i.e.}, Transformer, and GNNs~\cite{KNMCLLH22}.
Hence, we treat Transformers as a special form GNNs in this paper.
\subsection{Applications of Graph Machine Learning}
\label{subsec:application_graph_machine_learning}
Typical example graph analysis applications include node role identification~\cite{BCM11}, personalised recommendation~\cite{ZZP20}, social healthcare~\cite{BM21}, academic network analysis~\cite{TZYLZS08}, graph classification~\cite{ZCNC18} and epidemic trend study~\cite{CZP21}.
Next, we formally represent several example analysis tasks that are of great importance to the topics covered in this survey.
\begin{itemize}[leftmargin=*]\itemsep0em
\item \textbf{Node property prediction:} In real-world graphs ($\mathcal{G}$), nodes ($\mathcal{V}$) are often associated with semantic labels ($\mathcal{Y}$) relevant to certain information about them, such as gender, age, affiliation, interest etc.
However, these graphs are often partially (or sparsely) labelled or even unlabelled due to the high cost of node selection and labelling.
With partially labelled nodes (supervised settings) ($\mathcal{Y}_{Train}$), the node property prediction task aims to identify labels for the rest of unlabelled nodes ($\mathcal{Y}_{Test}$) by leveraging connectivity patterns of labelled ones extracted from the graph structure.
\item \textbf{Link prediction:} The topology encoded in the adjacency matrix ($\mathbf{A}$) of a graph ($\mathcal{G}$) is not always complete as partial links between nodes can be temporally missing.
Link prediction aims to infer the presence of emerging links ($\mathbf{A}^{+}$) in the future based on node attributes and observed graph structure and evolution mechanism.
Since real-world graphs evolve fast and continuously, link prediction is crucial to know what could happen soon and can help recover a whole social graph when we only have an incomplete view of it.
\item \textbf{Graph property prediction:} In real-world graphs ($\mathcal{G}$), nodes ($\mathcal{V}$) tend to interact with nodes having similar interests or backgrounds, thus forming different graph sets or sub-graph sets ($\mathcal{D} = \{\mathcal{G}_{1}, \mathcal{G}_{2}, \dots\}$) are formed.
By finding commonalities among graphs of the same group and differences between different graph groups, we can categorise them as different categories.
\item \textbf{Graph modification/generation:} The objective is to modify a graph $\mathcal{G}$ or to generate a new graph $\mathcal{G}$ representing a biomedical entity that is likely to have a property of interest, such as high drug-likeness.
The model takes a set of graphs $\mathcal{D} = \{\mathcal{G}_1, \mathcal{G}_2, \dots \}$ with such a property and learns a non-linear mapping function characterising the distribution of graphs in $\mathcal{G}$.
The learned distribution is used to generate a new graph $\mathcal{G}$ with the same property as input graphs.
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Publicly Available Knowledge Databases}
\label{subsec:available:knowledge_databases}
\begin{table}[!ht]
\caption{A collection of \emph{Molecular \& Structural} resources.
}
\label{table:resource_molecular_and_structural_resources}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{3pt}
\centering
\small
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
\hline
\textbf{Resource} & \textbf{Brief Description} & \textbf{Type} \\
\hline
logP~\cite{WC99} & \specialcell{Measures of a molecule's hydrophobicity, or its partition coefficient between a nonpolar \\ and polar solvent, and is commonly used to predict drug absorption and distribution.} & Formula \\
\hline
rotatable bond~\cite{H21} & \specialcell{Annotation of the (non)rotatable bond.} & Formula \\
\hline
MolMap~\cite{SZZWQTJC21} & \specialcell{A method to visualise molecular structures in 3D by mapping atomic properties onto a 3D \\ grid, allowing for the exploration and analysis of molecular interactions and properties.} & Software \\
\hline
RDKit~\cite{BHFLGABDL20} & \specialcell{An open-source package to generate chemical features.} & Software \\
\hline
UFF~\cite{RCCGK92} & \specialcell{A molecular mechanics force field designed for the full periodic table.} & Table \\
\hline
Mordred~\cite{MTKT18} & \specialcell{A tool for generating molecular descriptors, which are mathematical representations of \\ molecular structures used for molecular property analysis.} & Software \\
\hline
OpenBabel~\cite{OBJMVH11} & \specialcell{An open-source molecular modelling software that provides a comprehensive toolkit \\ for molecular conversion, visualisation, and analysis.} & Software \\
\hline
MoleculeNet~\cite{WRFGGPLP18} & \specialcell{A benchmark for molecular machine learning, comparing models performances on various \\ molecular property prediction tasks such as solubility, melting point, and binding affinity.} & Database \\
\hline
Ptable~\cite{D97} & \specialcell{A periodic table of chemical elements classified by atomic number, electron configurations, \\ and chemical properties into groups and periods, providing a systematic overview of elements.} & Table \\
\hline
\end{tabular}%
\end{table}
\begin{table}[!ht]
\caption{A collection of \underline{\emph{Compounds}} and \underline{\emph{Drugs \& Targets}} resources.
}
\label{table:resource_compounds_and_drugs_and_targets}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{3pt}
\centering
\small
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
\hline
\textbf{Resource} & \textbf{Brief Description} & \textbf{Type} \\
\hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{\emph{Compounds}} \\
\hline
CheMBL~\cite{MGBCDFMMMN19} &
\specialcell{A database of bioactive molecules, assays, and potency information for drug discovery \\ and pharmaceutical research, used to facilitate target identification and selection.}
& Database \\
\hline
PubChem~\cite{KCCGHHLSTY23} & \specialcell{Open database of chemical substances that contains information on their 2D and 3D \\ structures, identifiers, properties, biological activities and occurrence in nature.} & Database \\
\hline
ChEBI~\cite{HODEKMTSMS16} &
\specialcell{An open-source resource for molecular biology and biochemistry, providing a systematic \\ and standardised vocabulary of molecular entities focused on small chemical compounds.}
& \specialcell{Ontology \\ Database } \\
\hline
\specialcell{KEGG \\ Compound} ~\cite{KFSKI23} &
\specialcell{A database of small molecular compounds, including their structures, reactions, pathways, \\ and functions, used to provide information on metabolic pathways and cellular processes.}
& Database \\
\hline
DrugBank~\cite{WFGLMGSJLS18} &
\specialcell{A database includes small molecular compounds, biologics, and natural products, providing \\ information on their properties, mechanisms, and interactions used in drug discovery.}
& Database \\
\hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{\emph{Drugs and Targets}} \\
\hline
DDinter~\cite{XYYWWZWLCL22} &
\specialcell{A database of protein-protein interactions, providing information on protein targets, their \\ interactions, and related diseases, used to advance drug discovery and development.}
& Database \\
\hline
TCRD~\cite{SMKSNBJVKS21} & \specialcell{Database that aggregates information on proteins targeted by drugs and attributes them a \\ development/druggability level.} & Database \\
\hline
OpenTargets~\cite{OHCSBMLMCF23} &
\specialcell{A database that integrates diverse genomic and molecular data to provide a comprehensive \\ view of the relationships between diseases, genes, and molecular targets.}
&
Database
\\
\hline
TTD~\cite{ZZLLWZQC22} &
\specialcell{A publicly available database that provides information on protein and nucleic acid targets, \\ drugs that target them and related diseases, used to advance drug discovery and development.}
& Database \\
\hline
PharmGKB~\cite{WHGSTWK21} &
\specialcell{A resource that provides information on the impact of human genetic variation on drug \\ response, used to advance precision and personalised drug therapy.}
&
Database
\\
\hline
e-TSN~\cite{FSLL22} & \specialcell{A platform that integrates knowledge on disease-target associations used for target \\ identification. These associations were extracted from literature by using NLP techniques.} & \specialcell{Web \\ platform} \\
\hline
nSIDES~\cite{GT22} &
\specialcell{Multiple resources made available by the Tatonetti lab on drug side effects, drug-drug \\ interactions and pediatric drug safety.}
& Database \\
\hline
SIDER~\cite{KLJB16} &
\specialcell{A database of marketed drugs and their side effects, providing information on the frequency, \\ type, and severity of adverse events, used to advance drug safety and pharmacovigilance.}
& Database \\
\hline
\end{tabular}%
\end{table}
\textit{\underline{Drugs \& Targets}.}
On the molecular level, numerous databases make an inventory of the information on chemical molecules, such as their 2D or 3D structures, interactions between drugs or with their targets, and adverse effects they can cause.
Drugs are characterised by the fact that they can modulate the activity of a target in the organism in order to heal or prevent disease.
It is noticeable that most of the marketed drugs today are small molecules that are organic compounds with low molecular weights.
2D or 3D structures of small molecules can be represented in the form of graphs organising atoms as nodes and the edges as bonds between them or embed 3D information on covalent and non-covalent intermolecular interactions between protein and ligand~\cite{LRPCHK19}.
Molecular descriptors can be generated by different techniques and incorporated into the graphs as information on the atoms or amino acids (see Section~\ref{subsec:kagml_preprocessing}).
On the other hand, information on targets (proteins) is essential, and several databases contain information on genes and proteins, the pathways they are involved in, interactions between proteins, and their 3D structures.
In Table~\ref{table:resource_molecular_and_structural_resources} and Table~\ref{table:resource_compounds_and_drugs_and_targets}, we provide references to databases and a set of software tools that enable the generation of chemical features for the studied molecules, as well as databases for compound and target description and their 2D or 3D structure and biological activities.
\begin{table}[!ht]
\caption{A collection of \underline{\emph{Gene \& Protein}} and \underline{\emph{Pathways}} resources.
}
\label{table:resource_gene_and_protein_and_pathways}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{3pt}
\centering
\small
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
\hline
\textbf{Resource} & \textbf{Brief Description} & \textbf{Type} \\
\hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{\emph{Genes and Proteins}} \\
\hline
GeneOntology~\cite{GO21} &
\specialcell{A structured and standardised ontology of gene functions, used to describe and \\ categorise genes and gene products function in a consistent and interoperable manner.}
& Ontology \\
\hline
Entrez~\cite{MOPT05} &
\specialcell{A database that includes nucleotide and protein sequences, genomic maps, taxonomy, and \\ chemical compounds by referencing other databases, used to query various biomedical data.}
& Database \\
\hline
Ensembl~\cite{CAAAAAAABB22} &
\specialcell{A database that provides information on annotated genes, multiple sequence alignments \\ and disease for a variety of species, including humans.}
& Database \\
\hline
\specialcell{KEGG \\ Genes}~\cite{KFSKI23} &
\specialcell{A database that provides information on genes for complete genomes, their associated \\ pathways, and functions in various organisms.}
& Database \\
\hline
BioGRID~\cite{ORCBSWBLKZ21} & \specialcell{A database of protein and genetic interactions curated from high-throughput experimental \\ data sources in a variety of organisms. It includes a tool to create graphs of interactions. } &
Database
\\
\hline
UniProt~\cite{U23} & \specialcell{A database of protein information, including their sequences, structure, structure and post-\\translational modifications.} & Database \\
\hline
STRING~\cite{SFWFHHSRST15} &
\specialcell{A database of protein-protein interactions and functional associations, integrating diverse \\ data sources and evidence to provide a weighted network of functional relationships,}
& Database \\
\hline
HumanNet~\cite{HKYKHML19} &
\specialcell{Network of protein-protein and functional gene interactions, constructed by integrating high\\-throughput datasets and literature, used to advance understanding of disease gene prediction.}
& Database \\
\hline
STITCH~\cite{SSVJBK16} & \specialcell{A database of known and predicted interactions between chemicals and proteins (physical \\ and functional associations), used for the study of molecular interactions.} & Database \\
\hline
PDB~\cite{BWFGBWSB00} &
\specialcell{A database that provides information on the 3D structure of proteins, nucleic acids, and \\ complex molecular assemblies, obtained experimentally or predicted.}
& Database \\
\hline
RNAcentral~\cite{RNAC21} &
\specialcell{A repository that integrates information on non-coding RNA sequences for a variety of \\ organisms and attributes them to a unique identifier.}
& Database \\
\hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{\emph{Pathways}} \\
\hline
Reactome~\cite{GJSMRSGSMG22} &
\specialcell{A database that stores and curates information about the molecular pathways in humans, \\ providing insights into cellular processes and disease mechanisms.}
& Database \\
\hline
\specialcell{KEGG \\ pathways}~\cite{KFSKI23} &
\specialcell{A database of curated biological pathways and interconnections between them, manually \\represented as pathway maps of molecular reactions and interactions.}
& Database \\
\hline
WikiPathways~\cite{MARWSHADLE21} & \specialcell{A database of biological pathways that integrates information from several databases, \\ which aims to provide an overview of molecular interactions and reactions.} & Database \\
\hline
\end{tabular}%
\end{table}
\textit{\underline{Gene \& Protein} and \underline{Pathways}.}
Genes are DNA sequences that are transcribed in the nucleus of the cell, giving rise to an RNA molecule, which will be translated into a protein in the cytoplasm.
Information on proteins and genes is essential in drug development, and it is often one of the milestones of biomedical KGs.
Several resources are listed in Table~\ref{table:resource_gene_and_protein_and_pathways} that reference and provide stable IDs for genes or proteins, information on annotated genomes, proteins and protein structure.
We list three main resources that aggregate information on pathways have been exntensively used to construct KGs.
\begin{table}[!ht]
\caption{A collection of \emph{Disease} resources.
}
\label{table:resource_disease}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{3pt}
\centering
\small
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
\hline
\textbf{Resource} & \textbf{Brief Description} & \textbf{Type} \\
\hline
\specialcell{DO}~\cite{SMSOMFBJBB22} & \specialcell{Disease Ontology (DO) is an ontology of human disease that integrates MeSH, ICD, \\ OMIM, NCI Thesaurus and SNOMED nomenclatures.} & Ontology \\
\hline
MonDO~\cite{VMTFHUAABB22} & \specialcell{Semi-automatic unifying terminology between different disease ontologies.} & Ontology \\
\hline
Orphanet~\cite{I97} & \specialcell{A database that maintains information on rare diseases and orphan drugs using cross-references \\ to other commonly used ontologies. } & Database \\
\hline
OMIM~\cite{ABSH19} & \specialcell{A comprehensive, searchable database of gene-disease associations for Mendelian disorders.} & Database \\
\hline
\specialcell{KEGG \\ Disease}~\cite{KFSKI23} & \specialcell{A database of disease entries that are characterised by their perturbants (genetic or \\ environmental factors, drugs, and pathogens).} & Database \\
\hline
ICD-11~\cite{HWJC21} & \specialcell{The 11th version of the international resource for recording health and clinical data in a \\ standardised format that is constantly updated.} & Ontology \\
\hline
Disgenet~\cite{PRSRCSF20} & \specialcell{A database that integrates manually curated data from GWAS studies, animal models, and \\ scientific literature to identify gene-disease associations. It can be used for target \\ identification and prioritisation. } & Database \\
\hline
DISEASES~\cite{PPTBJ15} & \specialcell{A database for disease-gene associations based on manually curated data, cancer mutation \\ data, GWAS, and automatic text mining.} & Database \\
\hline
\specialcell{GWAS \\ Catalog}~\cite{SMABCGGGHH23} & \specialcell{Repository of published Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) for investigating the \\ impact of genomic variants on complex diseases.} & Database \\
\hline
SemMedDB~\cite{KSFRR12} &
\specialcell{A database that provides information on the relationships between genes and diseases, \\ extracted from the biomedical literature.}
& Database \\
\hline
OncoKB~\cite{CGPKZWRYSN17} & \specialcell{A knowledge precision database containing information on human genetic alterations detected \\in different cancer types.} & Database \\
\hline
HPO~\cite{KGMCLVDBBB21} & \specialcell{The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) is an ontology of human phenotypes and database \\ of disease-phenotype associations with cross-references to other relevant databases. } & Ontology \\
\hline
\end{tabular}%
\end{table}
\textit{\underline{Disease}.}
The interactions between drugs and their targets are modulated by the disease and consequently by tissues and organs, as the interaction happens inside the human body.
Table~\ref{table:resource_disease} summarises information related to diseases, as it can be used for drug repurposing or for predicting novel disease targets for example.
Diseases are organised into several well-established ontologies, and numerous resources have been developed to link gene expression and genomic variants to different diseases.
\begin{table}[!ht]
\caption{A collection of \underline{\emph{Medical Terms and Anatomy}} resources.
}
\label{table:resource_medical_terms_and_anatomy}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{3pt}
\centering
\small
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
\hline
\textbf{Resource} & \textbf{Brief Description} & \textbf{Type} \\
\hline
Uberon~\cite{HBBBBBCDDD14} &
\specialcell{A multi-species anatomy ontology. It covers various anatomical systems for organs and tissues.} & Ontology \\
\hline
BRENDA~\cite{CJUHKSNJS21} & \specialcell{A tissue ontology for enzyme source comprising tissues, cell lines, cell types and cultures.} & Ontology \\
\hline
TISSUES~\cite{PSSGJ18} & \specialcell{A database for gene expression in tissues that contains manually curated knowledge, proteo-\\mics, transcriptomics, and automatic text mining. Annotated with BRENDA tissue ontology. } & Database \\
\hline
MeSH~\cite{MJOGPM17} & \specialcell{A comprehensive controlled vocabulary used for biomedical and health-related information.} & \specialcell{Vocabulary } \\
\hline
UMLS~\cite{B04} &
\specialcell{A biomedical terminologies and ontologies database that integrates and harmonises data \\ from a variety of sources to support clinical documentation and research in healthcare.}
& Ontology \\
\hline
\end{tabular}%
\end{table}
\underline{\textit{Medical Terms} and \textit{Anatomy.}}
Human tissues and organs can as well be organised into ontologies that can be integrated into the KGs for drug development.
Table~\ref{table:resource_medical_terms_and_anatomy} summarises information related to standardised vocabulary of medical terms and anatomy resources.
\subsection{Publicly Available Knowledge Graphs}
\label{subsec:publicly_available_knowledge_graphs}
\begin{table}[!ht]
\caption{A collection of publicly available \textit{Knowledge Graphs}.
}
\label{table:resource_publicly_available_knowledge_graphs}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{3pt}
\centering
\small
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
\hline
\textbf{Resource} & \textbf{Brief Description} & \textbf{Intended Usage} \\
\hline
Hetionet~\cite{HB15} &
\specialcell{An integrated KG of more than 12,000 nodes representing various \\ biological, medical and social entities and their relationships. It is a \\ valuable resource combining many different databases that can be used \\ for drug discovery and repurposing.}
& \specialcell{Drug discovery \\ Drug repurposing \\ etc.} \\
\hline
PharmKG~\cite{ZRSZXFYN21} & \specialcell{A comprehensive biomedical KG integrating information from various \\ databases, literature, and experiments. It is mainly centered around \\interactions between genes, diseases and drugs.} & Drug discovery \\
\hline
DRKG~\cite{ISMLPZNZK20} &
\specialcell{A large-scale, cross-domain KG that integrates information about drugs, \\ proteins, diseases, and chemical compounds. It is based on Hetionet, and it \\ was used for drug repurposing for Covid-19. }
& Drug repurposing \\
\hline
CKG~\cite{SCNNSGCAMJ22} & \specialcell{A KG developed for precision medicine that combines various databases \\ and integrates clinical and omics data. It allows for automated upload and \\ integration of new omics data with pre-existing knowledge.} & \specialcell{Biomarker discovery \\ Drug prioritisation. } \\
\hline
OpenBioLink~\cite{BOAS20} & \specialcell{An open-source KG that integrates diverse biomedical data from various \\ databases. It was developed to enable benchmarking of ML algorithms.
} &
\specialcell{Drug discovery}
\\
\hline
BioKG~\cite{WMN22} &
\specialcell{A KG that integrates information about genes, proteins, diseases, drugs, \\ and other biological entities. It aims at providing a standardised KG in \\ a unified format with stable IDs.}
& \specialcell{Pathway discovery \\ Drug discovery } \\
\hline
Bioteque~\cite{TFBLA22} &
\specialcell{A KG that enables the discovery of relationships between genes, proteins, \\ diseases, drugs, and other entities, providing an overview of biological \\ knowledge for use in biomedical research and personalised medicine. }
& Broad usage \\
\hline
Harmonizome~\cite{RGFWMMM16} & \specialcell{A KG that focuses on gene- and protein-centric information and their \\ interactions. It provides a unified view of biological knowledge and enables \\ the discovery of new insights fin the biomedical field. } &
\specialcell{Drug discovery \\ Precision medicine}
\\
\hline
\end{tabular}%
\end{table}
Finally, some research groups have combined those resources to give rise to complete KG databases, some of which have a broad line of use, among which are drug discovery and development, that we list in Table~\ref{table:resource_publicly_available_knowledge_graphs}.
The existing biomedical KGs today are all built on the same basis, including some of the most used ontologies and public databases, which include information on genes, proteins, and diseases.
\subsection{Intelligent Drug Discovery Paradigms}
\label{subsec:intelligent_drug_design_paradigms}
In order to materialise intelligent drug discovery, we describe four paradigms as descriptors for the mainstream applications that we focus on in this paper.
The illustration of the four paradigms is presented in Figure~\ref{fig:artificial_intelligence_drug_design_paradigm}.
In the following sections, we first describe each drug discovery pipeline and introduce two representative data-driven drug discovery directions, namely GML for drug discovery (Section~\ref{subsec:gml_for_dd}) and KG for drug discovery (Section~\ref{subsec:kg_for_dd}), and corresponding models.
\begin{itemize}[leftmargin=*]\itemsep0em
\item
\textbf{Prediction.}
The Prediction (\textbf{\textsc{Pred}}\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}) paradigm consists in predicting a predefined class label or a probability of given biomedical entities.
It is widely adopted in fundamental drug discovery tasks such as predicting whether a gene sequence generates a valid protein structure~\cite{BBSJORCCK21}, molecular properties~\cite{WAYD21} and missense variant pathogenicity~\cite{ZXFCS22}.
This paradigm can be simply formulated as follows:
\begin{equation}
\hat{\mathbf{Y}} = \mathrm{Pre}(\mathrm{Enc}(\mathcal{X}))
\end{equation}
where $\hat{\mathbf{Y}}$ can be a value (regression) or a one-hot/multi-hot vector (classification).
Note that $\mathcal{X}$ can be a an instance of node ($v$), subgraph ($\mathcal{S}$) or graph ($\mathcal{G}$).
For different types of representations, $\mathrm{Enc}(\cdot)$ can be instantiated as GML models.
$\mathrm{Pre(\cdot)}$ can be implemented as a simple \textit{Multi-layer Perceptron} (MLP)~\cite{R61} or a linear layer, depending on the specific needs.
\item
\textbf{Entity pairing.}
The Entity Pairing (\textbf{\textsc{Pair}}\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}) paradigm that predicts the interaction between two entities is extensively used in drug discovery tasks, such as molecule-molecule interaction prediction~\cite{HXGZS20,ZLHLZ21}, drug-drug interaction prediction~\cite{MXZW18,DXQXZL20}, protein-protein interaction prediction~\cite{ZPDQSTBLAHMCH12,JDCLB21}.
This paradigm can be simply formulated as follows:
\begin{equation}
\hat{\mathbf{Y}} = \mathrm{Pre}(\mathrm{Enc}(\mathcal{X}_a, \mathcal{X}_b))
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{X}_a$ and $\mathcal{X}_b$ are two nodes ($u, v$), subgraphs ($\mathcal{S}_a, \mathcal{S}_b$) or graphs ($\mathcal{G}_a, \mathcal{G}_b$).
$\hat{\mathbf{Y}}$ can be discrete (\emph{e.g.}, whether one entity has a pharmacological effect on the other entities) or continuous (\emph{e.g.}, drug similarity).
$\mathrm{Enc}(\cdot)$ is usually implemented as a GNN~\cite{ZLP222}, while $\mathrm{Pre}(\cdot)$ can be instantiated as an MLP.
\item
\textbf{Entity-to-entity.}
The Entity-to-Entity (\Entity2\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}) paradigm can handle a variety of tasks such as molecular generation~\cite{DTDSS18,GWDHSSAHAA18}, drug discovery~\cite{CDHPLMBLM20,TLTLJXXJQZ21} and protein optimisation~\cite{GMJ18,IGBJ19}.
This paradigm can be simply formulated as follows:
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{X}' = \mathrm{Dec}(\mathrm{Enc}(\mathcal{X}))
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{X}$ is the input entity, such as subgraph ($\mathcal{S}$) or graph ($\mathcal{G}$), and $\mathcal{X}'$ is the predicted entity.
The encoder module $\mathrm{Enc}(\cdot)$ is usually implemented as a GNN to obtain the corresponding subgraph/graph embeddings, and the decoder module $\mathrm{Dec}(\cdot)$ can be instantiated as an MLP.
\item
\textbf{Action prediction}
The Action Prediction (\textbf{\textsc{Act}}\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}) paradigm picks actions to modulate the structure of the target entity that would optimise its properties or functions from an initial state to a terminal state.
It is widely adopted in fields such as drug generation and optimisation~\cite{YLYPL18,SXGZT20,SXZZZT20}, which are duplicated with the functional field of \Entity2\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}, but they realise the target with different strategies.
This paradigm can be simply formulated as follows:
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{A} = \mathrm{Cls}(\mathrm{Enc}(\mathcal{X}_{t-1}))
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{A}=\{a_1, a_2, \dots, a_m \}$ is a sequence of actions, while $\mathcal{X}$ is the input entity such as subgraph ($\mathcal{S}$) or graph ($\mathcal{G}$).
At each time step $t$, the model predicts an action $a_t$ based on the input entity's state at the previous time step $\mathcal{X}_{t-1}$~\cite{LYJ21}.
\end{itemize}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=1.\linewidth]{figures/compare_gml_kg_kagml_for_dd.pdf}
\caption{
Overview of intelligent drug discovery approaches.
(a) GML for drug discovery.
Biomedical structured data is inputted into a GML model with the objective of predicting properties or gaining insights about the input entities
(b) KG for drug discovery.
A KG database is embedded into an embedding space, enabling further analysis to identify any missing relationships between entities.
(c) KaGML for drug discovery.
Human domain knowledge is integrated into GML models to enhance the flexibility, precision, and interpretability of the drug discovery process.
}
\label{fig:compare_gml_kg_kagml_for_dd}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Graph Machine Learning for Drug Discovery}
\label{subsec:gml_for_dd}
Biomedical data are hierarchical, easily organised in ontologies, and interconnected, enabling them to be conveniently represented as graphs, therefore highly suitable for consequent use in drug discovery~\cite{GDJSRLHVRTRBBT21,AGS21}.
For instance, as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:illustration_of_real_world_biomedical_data}-(a), at the molecular level, atoms can be represented as nodes, and chemical bonds as edges of (2D or 3D) molecular graphs~\cite{TLM94,E00}.
On the macro-molecule level (protein), interactions (edges) between amino acid residues (nodes) organise as (3D) protein graphs~\cite{Z08,MCSHPZS11}.
At the compound level, edges in the DDI network can indicate chemical interactions (edges) between drugs (nodes) measured by long-term clinical screens~\cite{PS90,ZZZH09}.
In these cases, GML, as a powerful graph analysis tool, has been widely applied to a variety of drug discovery tasks (such as those illustrated in Figure~\ref{fig:compare_gml_kg_kagml_for_dd}-(a)).
Next, we expose representative work following the paradigms defined in Box~\ref{box:fundamentals_drug_design}.
Investigating and understanding the properties or functions of a biomedical entity (\textbf{\textsc{Pred}}\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}) is crucial in drug discovery, as it guides researchers to identify potential drug candidates with optimal therapeutic potential, minimal toxicity, and feasibility of synthesis and possibility of patenting. Those candidates can be further developed into a safe and effective drug.
Many studies focus on this paradigm studying the inherent connections between biomedical entities' physical structures and their properties, including molecules, genes or proteins.
One mainstream task is interpreting protein functions or molecular phenotypes by modelling protein and molecular graphs~\cite{BOSVSK05,WAYD21,GRKLBVCTFV21,DHB22,SWWRYKZZL22}.
Most of them exploit the 2D structure information, such as graphs constructed based on protein contact map~\cite{GRKLBVCTFV21} or molecular fingerprints and SMILES specification~\cite{WKKGDSL20}\footnote{Some benchmark knowledge, such as protein contact and SMILES specification, are widely applied and we do not consider adopting benchmark knowledge as a factor of being one of KaGML approaches.}.
Nevertheless, all molecular entities naturally exist in 3D forms in the real world, and their structural conformations determine their function due to the specific intra- and inter-molecular physico-chemical interactions.
Molecular 3D structure identification has been an important open research problem for more than 50 years.
Recently, several computational methods that can successfully predict protein structures have been developed~\cite{LARHZLSVKS22,AEMPDAH22}.
Based on these advancements, a series of works have proposed approaches to model 3D protein and molecular structures to interpret their properties~\cite{BC16,TBSD19,WKKGDSL20,DTME20,C21,JESJTD21,YM22}.
Compared with previous works that rely on the 2D graph structure, they demonstrate significant superiority in various downstream tasks.
Furthermore, by integrating effective graph structure construction approaches and GML encoder architecture into other paradigms, researchers are able to extend the feasibility to more applications.
Examples of such applications are quantifying entity relations to predict possible interactions (\textbf{\textsc{Pair}}\textbf{\textsc{Entity}})~\cite{FBSB17,LYCJ20,HPMZ22} and modifying or generating new biomedical entities with desired structures associated with proper functions (\Entity2\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}~\cite{LABG18,IGBJ19,HSVW22,IBCFITWXOB22}, \textbf{\textsc{Act}}\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}~\cite{YLYPL18,SXZZZT20,SXGZT20,LJ22,DFSL22}).
For an overview of recent variants and applications of GML for drug discovery, we recommend the comprehensive review articles~\cite{XHWZL19,WKKGDSL20,GDJSRLHVRTRBBT21,LHZ22}.
\subsection{Knowledge Graph for Drug Discovery}
\label{subsec:kg_for_dd}
Despite the remarkable performance that existing GML models have achieved in the field of drug discovery, these models are beset by several significant flaws.
These include a high degree of data dependency, whereby a significant proportion of performance is contingent on high-quality training data~\cite{M18,PSYTTRSCI19}, as well as poor generalisation capability, resulting in uncertain model performance on instances that have never been observed in training dataset~\cite{BC21,BC212}.
To address these limitations, advanced intelligent drug discovery necessitates the implementation of robust methods that incorporate biomedical knowledge and patient-specific information to generate actionable and trustworthy predictions~\cite{CHZ22,ZTLFS22}.
Additionally, a plethora of knowledge has been gained from the successes and failures of the drug discovery and development process.
With the increasing availability of biomedical data, the integration and extraction of relevant information has become a paramount concern.
As a result, KGs have been used in drug discovery, as their structures are particularly well-suited for integrating heterogeneous data~\cite{HLHBCHGKB17,ZEPW19,M21,BBYSEBH22}.
Section~\ref{sec:kg} systematically introduced the definition and categories of popular knowledge databases and described mainstream applications on the prevalent knowledge database, namely \textit{Knowledge Graph} (KG).
In comparison to the use of GML techniques, the use of KGs in drug discovery offers several advantages, such as \textit{(i)} successful integration of a vast amount of knowledge, \textit{(ii)} providing reliable results, and \textit{(iii)} the ability to generate meaningful inferences, which may assist individuals without domain expertise.
The current state-of-the-art approaches in KG-based intelligent drug discovery primarily conform to a standard pipeline (as depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:compare_gml_kg_kagml_for_dd}-(b), \textbf{\textsc{Pair}}\textbf{\textsc{Entity}}), which entails the acquisition of valid embeddings of nodes and edges in constructed KGs, followed by the prediction of missing edges, corresponding to novel applications~\cite{ZAL18,KCJUBD19,JYCZAL20,HZXOT21,ZTLFS22,BUBJMDCWMK22,GAPSHLF22,GPPPU22}.
This methodology has been demonstrated in various studies, for instance, Zitnik \emph{et al.}~\cite{ZAL18} construct a KG of protein-protein interactions, drug-protein target interactions, and polypharmacy side effects, represented as drug-drug interactions, where each side effect is represented as an edge of a distinct type.
They further propose another noteworthy model, Decagon, to predict the side effects of drug pairs.
Ji \emph{et al.}~\cite{JYCZAL20}, in their seminal work, proposed a groundbreaking heterogeneous information integration method for the prediction of miRNA-disease associations.
The methodology consists of the construction of a heterogeneous information network by amalgamating known associations among lncRNA, drug, protein, disease, and miRNA.
Subsequently, the network embedding method GraRep is used to acquire embeddings of nodes in the heterogeneous information network and realise accurate miRNA-disease association prediction.
For an overview of recent variants and applications of KG for drug discovery, we recommend the comprehensive review articles~\cite{CHZ22,ZTLFS22}.
\section{Supplemental Materials - Practical Resource}
\label{sec:appendix_practical_resources}
\input{pages/appendix_practical_resources.tex}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 6,270 |
#include <jni.h>
#include "media/engine/videodecodersoftwarefallbackwrapper.h"
#include "sdk/android/generated_video_jni/jni/VideoDecoderFallback_jni.h"
#include "sdk/android/src/jni/jni_helpers.h"
#include "sdk/android/src/jni/wrappednativecodec.h"
namespace webrtc {
namespace jni {
static jlong JNI_VideoDecoderFallback_CreateDecoder(
JNIEnv* jni,
const JavaParamRef<jclass>&,
const JavaParamRef<jobject>& j_fallback_decoder,
const JavaParamRef<jobject>& j_primary_decoder) {
std::unique_ptr<VideoDecoder> fallback_decoder =
JavaToNativeVideoDecoder(jni, j_fallback_decoder);
std::unique_ptr<VideoDecoder> primary_decoder =
JavaToNativeVideoDecoder(jni, j_primary_decoder);
VideoDecoderSoftwareFallbackWrapper* nativeWrapper =
new VideoDecoderSoftwareFallbackWrapper(std::move(fallback_decoder),
std::move(primary_decoder));
return jlongFromPointer(nativeWrapper);
}
} // namespace jni
} // namespace webrtc
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 5,484 |
#include <spawn.h>
#include <string.h>
/* Store process group ID in the attribute structure. */
int
posix_spawnattr_setpgroup (posix_spawnattr_t *attr, pid_t pgroup)
{
/* Store the process group ID. */
attr->__pgrp = pgroup;
return 0;
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 8,828 |
Toxoproctis hemixanthoides är en fjärilsart som beskrevs av Holloway 1999. Toxoproctis hemixanthoides ingår i släktet Toxoproctis och familjen tofsspinnare. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.
Källor
Tofsspinnare
hemixanthoides | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 932 |
Omaloplia ruricola är en skalbaggsart som beskrevs av Fabricius 1775. Omaloplia ruricola ingår i släktet Omaloplia och familjen Melolonthidae. Utöver nominatformen finns också underarten O. r. nicolasi.
Bildgalleri
Källor
Externa länkar
Skalbaggar
ruricola | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 6,369 |
Vector calculus Information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_calculus
Calculus of vector-valued functions
Not to be confused with Geometric calculus or Matrix calculus.
This article includes a list of general references, but it remains largely unverified because it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Part of a series of articles about
Fundamental theorem
Leibniz integral rule
Limits of functions
Rolle's theorem
Derivative ( generalizations)
of a function
Differentiation notation
Second derivative
Logarithmic differentiation
Taylor's theorem
Rules and identities
L'Hôpital's rule
General Leibniz
Faà di Bruno's formula
Lists of integrals
Integral transform
Antiderivative
Integral ( improper)
Riemann integral
Lebesgue integration
Contour integration
Integral of inverse functions
Integration by
Cylindrical shells
Substitution ( trigonometric, Weierstrass, Euler)
Changing order
Reduction formulae
Differentiating under the integral sign
Geometric ( arithmetico-geometric)
Convergence tests
Summand limit (term test)
Direct comparison
Limit comparison
Alternating series
Cauchy condensation
Directional derivative
Stokes'
generalized Stokes
Formalisms
Partial derivative
Multiple integral
Line integral
Surface integral
Volume integral
Malliavin
Glossary of calculus
List of calculus topics
Vector calculus, or vector analysis, is concerned with differentiation and integration of vector fields, primarily in 3-dimensional Euclidean space R 3 . {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{3}.} The term "vector calculus" is sometimes used as a synonym for the broader subject of multivariable calculus, which includes vector calculus as well as partial differentiation and multiple integration. Vector calculus plays an important role in differential geometry and in the study of partial differential equations. It is used extensively in physics and engineering, especially in the description of electromagnetic fields, gravitational fields, and fluid flow.
Vector calculus was developed from quaternion analysis by J. Willard Gibbs and Oliver Heaviside near the end of the 19th century, and most of the notation and terminology was established by Gibbs and Edwin Bidwell Wilson in their 1901 book, Vector Analysis. In the conventional form using cross products, vector calculus does not generalize to higher dimensions, while the alternative approach of geometric algebra which uses exterior products does (see § Generalizations below for more).
1 Basic objects
1.1 Scalar fields
1.2 Vector fields
1.3 Vectors and pseudovectors
2 Vector algebra
3 Operators and theorems
3.1 Differential operators
3.2 Integral theorems
4.1 Linear approximations
4.2 Optimization
4.3 Physics and engineering
5 Generalizations
5.1 Different 3-manifolds
5.2 Other dimensions
Scalar fields
Main article: Scalar field
A scalar field associates a scalar value to every point in a space. The scalar is a mathematical number representing a physical quantity. Examples of scalar fields in applications include the temperature distribution throughout space, the pressure distribution in a fluid, and spin-zero quantum fields (known as scalar bosons), such as the Higgs field. These fields are the subject of scalar field theory.
Vector fields
Main article: Vector field
A vector field is an assignment of a vector to each point in a space. [1] A vector field in the plane, for instance, can be visualized as a collection of arrows with a given magnitude and direction each attached to a point in the plane. Vector fields are often used to model, for example, the speed and direction of a moving fluid throughout space, or the strength and direction of some force, such as the magnetic or gravitational force, as it changes from point to point. This can be used, for example, to calculate work done over a line.
Vectors and pseudovectors
In more advanced treatments, one further distinguishes pseudovector fields and pseudoscalar fields, which are identical to vector fields and scalar fields, except that they change sign under an orientation-reversing map: for example, the curl of a vector field is a pseudovector field, and if one reflects a vector field, the curl points in the opposite direction. This distinction is clarified and elaborated in geometric algebra, as described below.
Vector algebra
Main article: Euclidean vector § Basic properties
The algebraic (non-differential) operations in vector calculus are referred to as vector algebra, being defined for a vector space and then globally applied to a vector field. The basic algebraic operations consist of: [2]
Notations in vector calculus
Vector addition
v 1 + v 2 {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} _{1}+\mathbf {v} _{2}} Addition of two vectors, yielding a vector.
Scalar multiplication
a v {\displaystyle a\mathbf {v} } Multiplication of a scalar and a vector, yielding a vector.
Dot product
v 1 ⋅ v 2 {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} _{1}\cdot \mathbf {v} _{2}} Multiplication of two vectors, yielding a scalar.
v 1 × v 2 {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} _{1}\times \mathbf {v} _{2}} Multiplication of two vectors in R 3 {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{3}} , yielding a (pseudo)vector.
Also commonly used are the two triple products:
Vector calculus triple products
Scalar triple product
v 1 ⋅ ( v 2 × v 3 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} _{1}\cdot \left(\mathbf {v} _{2}\times \mathbf {v} _{3}\right)} The dot product of the cross product of two vectors.
Vector triple product
v 1 × ( v 2 × v 3 ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} _{1}\times \left(\mathbf {v} _{2}\times \mathbf {v} _{3}\right)} The cross product of the cross product of two vectors.
Operators and theorems
Main article: Vector calculus identities
Differential operators
Main articles: Gradient, Divergence, Curl (mathematics), and Laplacian
Vector calculus studies various differential operators defined on scalar or vector fields, which are typically expressed in terms of the del operator ( ∇ {\displaystyle \nabla } ), also known as "nabla". The three basic vector operators are: [3] [4]
Differential operators in vector calculus
Notational
Domain/Range
grad ( f ) = ∇ f {\displaystyle \operatorname {grad} (f)=\nabla f} Measures the rate and direction of change in a scalar field. Scalar multiplication Maps scalar fields to vector fields.
div ( F ) = ∇ ⋅ F {\displaystyle \operatorname {div} (\mathbf {F} )=\nabla \cdot \mathbf {F} } Measures the scalar of a source or sink at a given point in a vector field. Dot product Maps vector fields to scalar fields.
curl ( F ) = ∇ × F {\displaystyle \operatorname {curl} (\mathbf {F} )=\nabla \times \mathbf {F} } Measures the tendency to rotate about a point in a vector field in R 3 {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{3}} . Cross product Maps vector fields to (pseudo)vector fields.
f denotes a scalar field and F denotes a vector field
Also commonly used are the two Laplace operators:
Laplace operators in vector calculus
Δ f = ∇ 2 f = ∇ ⋅ ∇ f {\displaystyle \Delta f=\nabla ^{2}f=\nabla \cdot \nabla f} Measures the difference between the value of the scalar field with its average on infinitesimal balls. Maps between scalar fields.
Vector Laplacian
∇ 2 F = ∇ ( ∇ ⋅ F ) − ∇ × ( ∇ × F ) {\displaystyle \nabla ^{2}\mathbf {F} =\nabla (\nabla \cdot \mathbf {F} )-\nabla \times (\nabla \times \mathbf {F} )} Measures the difference between the value of the vector field with its average on infinitesimal balls. Maps between vector fields.
A quantity called the Jacobian matrix is useful for studying functions when both the domain and range of the function are multivariable, such as a change of variables during integration.
Integral theorems
The three basic vector operators have corresponding theorems which generalize the fundamental theorem of calculus to higher dimensions:
Integral theorems of vector calculus
Gradient theorem
∫ L ⊂ R n ∇ φ ⋅ d r = φ ( q ) − φ ( p ) for L = L [ p → q ] {\displaystyle \int _{L\subset \mathbb {R} ^{n}}\!\!\!\nabla \varphi \cdot d\mathbf {r} \ =\ \varphi \left(\mathbf {q} \right)-\varphi \left(\mathbf {p} \right)\ \ {\text{ for }}\ \ L=L[p\to q]} The line integral of the gradient of a scalar field over a curve L is equal to the change in the scalar field between the endpoints p and q of the curve.
Divergence theorem
∫ ⋯ ∫ V ⊂ R n ⏟ n ( ∇ ⋅ F ) d V = ∮ ⋯ ∮ ∂ V ⏟ n − 1 F ⋅ d S {\displaystyle \underbrace {\int \!\cdots \!\int _{V\subset \mathbb {R} ^{n}}} _{n}(\nabla \cdot \mathbf {F} )\,dV\ =\ \underbrace {\oint \!\cdots \!\oint _{\partial V}} _{n-1}\mathbf {F} \cdot d\mathbf {S} } The integral of the divergence of a vector field over an n-dimensional solid V is equal to the flux of the vector field through the (n−1)-dimensional closed boundary surface of the solid.
Curl (Kelvin–Stokes) theorem
∬ Σ ⊂ R 3 ( ∇ × F ) ⋅ d Σ = ∮ ∂ Σ F ⋅ d r {\displaystyle \iint _{\Sigma \,\subset \mathbb {R} ^{3}}(\nabla \times \mathbf {F} )\cdot d\mathbf {\Sigma } \ =\ \oint _{\!\!\!\partial \Sigma }\mathbf {F} \cdot d\mathbf {r} } The integral of the curl of a vector field over a surface Σ in R 3 {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{3}} is equal to the circulation of the vector field around the closed curve bounding the surface.
φ {\displaystyle \varphi } denotes a scalar field and F denotes a vector field
In two dimensions, the divergence and curl theorems reduce to the Green's theorem:
Green's theorem of vector calculus
Green's theorem
∬ A ⊂ R 2 ( ∂ M ∂ x − ∂ L ∂ y ) d A = ∮ ∂ A ( L d x + M d y ) {\displaystyle \iint _{A\,\subset \mathbb {R} ^{2}}\left({\frac {\partial M}{\partial x}}-{\frac {\partial L}{\partial y}}\right)dA\ =\ \oint _{\partial A}\left(L\,dx+M\,dy\right)} The integral of the divergence (or curl) of a vector field over some region A in R 2 {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{2}} equals the flux (or circulation) of the vector field over the closed curve bounding the region.
For divergence, F = (M, −L). For curl, F = (L, M, 0). L and M are functions of (x, y).
Linear approximations
Main article: Linear approximation
Linear approximations are used to replace complicated functions with linear functions that are almost the same. Given a differentiable function f(x, y) with real values, one can approximate f(x, y) for (x, y) close to (a, b) by the formula
f ( x , y ) ≈ f ( a , b ) + ∂ f ∂ x ( a , b ) ( x − a ) + ∂ f ∂ y ( a , b ) ( y − b ) . {\displaystyle f(x,y)\ \approx \ f(a,b)+{\tfrac {\partial f}{\partial x}}(a,b)\,(x-a)+{\tfrac {\partial f}{\partial y}}(a,b)\,(y-b).}
The right-hand side is the equation of the plane tangent to the graph of z = f(x, y) at (a, b).
Main article: Mathematical optimization
For a continuously differentiable function of several real variables, a point P (that is, a set of values for the input variables, which is viewed as a point in Rn) is critical if all of the partial derivatives of the function are zero at P, or, equivalently, if its gradient is zero. The critical values are the values of the function at the critical points.
If the function is smooth, or, at least twice continuously differentiable, a critical point may be either a local maximum, a local minimum or a saddle point. The different cases may be distinguished by considering the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix of second derivatives.
By Fermat's theorem, all local maxima and minima of a differentiable function occur at critical points. Therefore, to find the local maxima and minima, it suffices, theoretically, to compute the zeros of the gradient and the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix at these zeros.
Physics and engineering
Vector calculus is particularly useful in studying:
Maxwell's equations
Generalizations
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Different 3-manifolds
Vector calculus is initially defined for Euclidean 3-space, R 3 , {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{3},} which has additional structure beyond simply being a 3-dimensional real vector space, namely: a norm (giving a notion of length) defined via an inner product (the dot product), which in turn gives a notion of angle, and an orientation, which gives a notion of left-handed and right-handed. These structures give rise to a volume form, and also the cross product, which is used pervasively in vector calculus.
The gradient and divergence require only the inner product, while the curl and the cross product also requires the handedness of the coordinate system to be taken into account (see cross product and handedness for more detail).
Vector calculus can be defined on other 3-dimensional real vector spaces if they have an inner product (or more generally a symmetric nondegenerate form) and an orientation; note that this is less data than an isomorphism to Euclidean space, as it does not require a set of coordinates (a frame of reference), which reflects the fact that vector calculus is invariant under rotations (the special orthogonal group SO(3)).
More generally, vector calculus can be defined on any 3-dimensional oriented Riemannian manifold, or more generally pseudo-Riemannian manifold. This structure simply means that the tangent space at each point has an inner product (more generally, a symmetric nondegenerate form) and an orientation, or more globally that there is a symmetric nondegenerate metric tensor and an orientation, and works because vector calculus is defined in terms of tangent vectors at each point.
Most of the analytic results are easily understood, in a more general form, using the machinery of differential geometry, of which vector calculus forms a subset. Grad and div generalize immediately to other dimensions, as do the gradient theorem, divergence theorem, and Laplacian (yielding harmonic analysis), while curl and cross product do not generalize as directly.
From a general point of view, the various fields in (3-dimensional) vector calculus are uniformly seen as being k-vector fields: scalar fields are 0-vector fields, vector fields are 1-vector fields, pseudovector fields are 2-vector fields, and pseudoscalar fields are 3-vector fields. In higher dimensions there are additional types of fields (scalar/vector/pseudovector/pseudoscalar corresponding to 0/1/n−1/n dimensions, which is exhaustive in dimension 3), so one cannot only work with (pseudo)scalars and (pseudo)vectors.
In any dimension, assuming a nondegenerate form, grad of a scalar function is a vector field, and div of a vector field is a scalar function, but only in dimension 3 or 7 [5] (and, trivially, in dimension 0 or 1) is the curl of a vector field a vector field, and only in 3 or 7 dimensions can a cross product be defined (generalizations in other dimensionalities either require n − 1 {\displaystyle n-1} vectors to yield 1 vector, or are alternative Lie algebras, which are more general antisymmetric bilinear products). The generalization of grad and div, and how curl may be generalized is elaborated at Curl: Generalizations; in brief, the curl of a vector field is a bivector field, which may be interpreted as the special orthogonal Lie algebra of infinitesimal rotations; however, this cannot be identified with a vector field because the dimensions differ – there are 3 dimensions of rotations in 3 dimensions, but 6 dimensions of rotations in 4 dimensions (and more generally ( n 2 ) = 1 2 n ( n − 1 ) {\displaystyle \textstyle {{\binom {n}{2}}={\frac {1}{2}}n(n-1)}} dimensions of rotations in n dimensions).
There are two important alternative generalizations of vector calculus. The first, geometric algebra, uses k-vector fields instead of vector fields (in 3 or fewer dimensions, every k-vector field can be identified with a scalar function or vector field, but this is not true in higher dimensions). This replaces the cross product, which is specific to 3 dimensions, taking in two vector fields and giving as output a vector field, with the exterior product, which exists in all dimensions and takes in two vector fields, giving as output a bivector (2-vector) field. This product yields Clifford algebras as the algebraic structure on vector spaces (with an orientation and nondegenerate form). Geometric algebra is mostly used in generalizations of physics and other applied fields to higher dimensions.
The second generalization uses differential forms (k-covector fields) instead of vector fields or k-vector fields, and is widely used in mathematics, particularly in differential geometry, geometric topology, and harmonic analysis, in particular yielding Hodge theory on oriented pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. From this point of view, grad, curl, and div correspond to the exterior derivative of 0-forms, 1-forms, and 2-forms, respectively, and the key theorems of vector calculus are all special cases of the general form of Stokes' theorem.
From the point of view of both of these generalizations, vector calculus implicitly identifies mathematically distinct objects, which makes the presentation simpler but the underlying mathematical structure and generalizations less clear. From the point of view of geometric algebra, vector calculus implicitly identifies k-vector fields with vector fields or scalar functions: 0-vectors and 3-vectors with scalars, 1-vectors and 2-vectors with vectors. From the point of view of differential forms, vector calculus implicitly identifies k-forms with scalar fields or vector fields: 0-forms and 3-forms with scalar fields, 1-forms and 2-forms with vector fields. Thus for example the curl naturally takes as input a vector field or 1-form, but naturally has as output a 2-vector field or 2-form (hence pseudovector field), which is then interpreted as a vector field, rather than directly taking a vector field to a vector field; this is reflected in the curl of a vector field in higher dimensions not having as output a vector field.
Analysis of vector-valued curves
Real-valued function
Function of a real variable
Function of several real variables
Vector calculus identities
Vector algebra relations
Del in cylindrical and spherical coordinates
Conservative vector field
Solenoidal vector field
Laplacian vector field
Helmholtz decomposition
Orthogonal coordinates
Skew coordinates
Curvilinear coordinates
^ Galbis, Antonio & Maestre, Manuel (2012). Vector Analysis Versus Vector Calculus. Springer. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-4614-2199-3. CS1 maint: uses authors parameter ( link)
^ "Comprehensive List of Algebra Symbols". Math Vault. 2020-03-25. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
^ "List of Calculus and Analysis Symbols". Math Vault. 2020-05-11. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
^ "Differential Operators". Math24. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
^ Lizhong Peng & Lei Yang (1999) "The curl in seven dimensional space and its applications", Approximation Theory and Its Applications 15(3): 66 to 80 doi: 10.1007/BF02837124
Sandro Caparrini (2002) " The discovery of the vector representation of moments and angular velocity", Archive for History of Exact Sciences 56:151–81.
Crowe, Michael J. (1967). A History of Vector Analysis : The Evolution of the Idea of a Vectorial System (reprint ed.). Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-67910-5.
Marsden, J. E. (1976). Vector Calculus. W. H. Freeman & Company. ISBN 978-0-7167-0462-1.
Schey, H. M. (2005). Div Grad Curl and all that: An informal text on vector calculus. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-92516-6.
Barry Spain (1965) Vector Analysis, 2nd edition, link from Internet Archive.
Chen-To Tai (1995). A historical study of vector analysis. Technical Report RL 915, Radiation Laboratory, University of Michigan.
"Vector analysis", Encyclopedia of Mathematics, EMS Press, 2001 [1994]
"Vector algebra", Encyclopedia of Mathematics, EMS Press, 2001 [1994]
A survey of the improper use of ∇ in vector analysis (1994) Tai, Chen-To
Vector Analysis: A Text-book for the Use of Students of Mathematics and Physics, (based upon the lectures of Willard Gibbs) by Edwin Bidwell Wilson, published 1902.
Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics: Vector Analysis
Major topics in Analysis
Calculus: Integration
Differential equations ( ordinary - partial)
Fundamental theorem of calculus
Tensor calculus
Table of derivatives
Measure theory
Representation theory
Mathematics portal
Industrial and applied mathematics
Automata theory
Coding theory
Computational logic
Computational number theory
Approximation theory
Clifford analysis
Clifford algebra
Complex differential equations
Ordinary differential equations
Stochastic differential equations
Differential forms
Gauge theory
Geometric analysis
Operator algebra
Multilinear algebra
Numerical methods for ordinary differential equations
Numerical methods for partial differential equations
Validated numerics
Variational calculus
Distributions ( random variables)
Stochastic processes / analysis
Path integral
Stochastic variational calculus
Analytical mechanics
Lagrangian
Hamiltonian
Conformal
Potential theory
Topological
Algebraic structures
Algebra of physical space
Feynman integral
Quantum group
Renormalization group
Spacetime algebra
Social choice theory
" The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences"
Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Société de Mathématiques Appliquées et Industrielles
International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Mathematics portal / outline / topics list
Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Vector_calculus&oldid=999646353"
Articles needing additional references from August 2019 | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 8,891 |
Geografia
Austria
Ludersdorf – frazione di Gnas, comune nel distretto di Südoststeiermark (Stiria)
Ludersdorf – ex comune ora frazione di Ludersdorf-Wilfersdorf, comune nel distretto di Weiz (Stiria)
Ludersdorf-Wilfersdorf – comune nel distretto di Weiz (Stiria)
Pagine correlate
Lüdersdorf (disambigua) – pagina di disambiguazione | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 621 |
'use strict';
var $ = require('../internals/export');
var IS_PURE = require('../internals/is-pure');
var anObject = require('../internals/an-object');
var aFunction = require('../internals/a-function');
// `Set.prototype.update` method
// https://github.com/tc39/proposal-collection-methods
$({ target: 'Map', proto: true, real: true, forced: IS_PURE }, {
update: function update(key, callback /* , thunk */) {
var map = anObject(this);
var length = arguments.length;
aFunction(callback);
var isPresentInMap = map.has(key);
if (!isPresentInMap && length < 3) {
throw TypeError('Updating absent value');
}
var value = isPresentInMap ? map.get(key) : aFunction(length > 2 ? arguments[2] : undefined)(key, map);
map.set(key, callback(value, key, map));
return map;
}
});
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 1,277 |
Mastigomycota est le nom d'une ancienne division de champignons qui rassemblait des organismes appartenant à deux règnes différent les Chytridiomycota (Fungi ou Champignon) et les Chromista.
Ce sont des organismes microscopiques saprophytes vivant en milieu aquatique, comme les algues, d'où leur ancien nom de Sarthoumycetes (du grec « champignons algues »).
Ont été exclus des champignons tous les anciens Mastigomycota présentant les caractères suivants :
une reproduction sexuée au cours de laquelle sont élaborées des spores biflagellées ;
un thalle non pas cloisonné mais siphonné à structure cœnocytique (cellules non cloisonnées formant un long tuyau contenant de nombreux noyau) ;
une paroi cellulaire cellulosique.
La plupart sont de redoutables parasites des cultures (hernie du chou, galle spongieuse des pommes de terre, mildiou de la vigne, etc.).
Le reste des espèces à spores uniflagellés et paroi cellulaire chitineuse reste des champignons et est placés dans la nouvelle division des Chytridiomycota, qui est considérée comme la base évolutive des champignons, d'où ont émergé les Zygomycota puis les Ascomycota et Basidiomycota.
Chytridiomycota
Taxon mycologique obsolète
Division de champignons (nom scientifique) | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 2,168 |
{"url":"http:\/\/cnx.org\/content\/m37171\/latest\/","text":"# Connexions\n\nYou are here: Home \u00bb Content \u00bb The restricted isometry property\n\n### Recently Viewed\n\nThis feature requires Javascript to be enabled.\n\n# The restricted isometry property\n\nModule by: Mark A. Davenport. E-mail the author\n\nSummary: In this module we introduce the restricted isometry property (RIP) and discuss its role in compressive sensing. In particular, we describe the relationship between the RIP and the concept of stability in the context of sparse signal acquisition. We also provide a simple lower bound on the number of measurements necessary for a matrix to satisfy the RIP.\n\nThe null space property (NSP) is both necessary and sufficient for establishing guarantees of the form\n\n\u0394 ( \u03a6 x ) - x 2 C \u03c3 K ( x ) 1 K , \u0394 ( \u03a6 x ) - x 2 C \u03c3 K ( x ) 1 K ,\n(1)\n\nbut these guarantees do not account for noise. When the measurements are contaminated with noise or have been corrupted by some error such as quantization, it will be useful to consider somewhat stronger conditions. In\u00a0[1], Cand\u00e8s and Tao introduced the following isometry condition on matrices \u03a6\u03a6 and established its important role in compressive sensing (CS).\n\nDefinition 1:\n\nA matrix \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the restricted isometry property (RIP) of order KK if there exists a \u03b4K(0,1)\u03b4K(0,1) such that\n\n( 1 - \u03b4 K ) x 2 2 \u03a6 x 2 2 ( 1 + \u03b4 K ) x 2 2 , ( 1 - \u03b4 K ) x 2 2 \u03a6 x 2 2 ( 1 + \u03b4 K ) x 2 2 ,\n(2)\n\nholds for all x\u03a3K = x : x 0 K x\u03a3K = x : x 0 K .\n\nIf a matrix \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order 2K2K, then we can interpret Equation 2 as saying that \u03a6\u03a6 approximately preserves the distance between any pair of KK-sparse vectors. This will clearly have fundamental implications concerning robustness to noise.\n\nIt is important to note that in our definition of the RIP we assume bounds that are symmetric about 1, but this is merely for notational convenience. In practice, one could instead consider arbitrary bounds\n\n\u03b1 x 2 2 \u03a6 x 2 2 \u03b2 x 2 2 \u03b1 x 2 2 \u03a6 x 2 2 \u03b2 x 2 2\n(3)\n\nwhere 0<\u03b1\u03b2<0<\u03b1\u03b2<. Given any such bounds, one can always scale \u03a6\u03a6 so that it satisfies the symmetric bound about 1 in Equation 2. Specifically, multiplying \u03a6\u03a6 by 2\/(\u03b2+\u03b1)2\/(\u03b2+\u03b1) will result in an \u03a6\u02dc\u03a6\u02dc that satisfies Equation 2 with constant \u03b4K=(\u03b2-\u03b1)\/(\u03b2+\u03b1)\u03b4K=(\u03b2-\u03b1)\/(\u03b2+\u03b1). We will not explicitly show this, but one can check that all of the theorems in this course based on the assumption that \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP actually hold as long as there exists some scaling of \u03a6\u03a6 that satisfies the RIP. Thus, since we can always scale \u03a6\u03a6 to satisfy Equation 2, we lose nothing by restricting our attention to this simpler bound.\n\nNote also that if \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order KK with constant \u03b4K\u03b4K, then for any K'<KK'<K we automatically have that \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order K'K' with constant \u03b4K'\u03b4K\u03b4K'\u03b4K. Moreover, in\u00a0[6] it is shown that if \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order KK with a sufficiently small constant, then it will also automatically satisfy the RIP of order \u03b3K\u03b3K for certain \u03b3\u03b3, albeit with a somewhat worse constant.\n\n## Lemma 1: (Corollary 3.4 of [6])\n\nSuppose that \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order KK with constant \u03b4K\u03b4K. Let \u03b3\u03b3 be a positive integer. Then \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order K'=\u03b3K2K'=\u03b3K2 with constant \u03b4K'<\u03b3\u00b7\u03b4K\u03b4K'<\u03b3\u00b7\u03b4K, where \u00b7\u00b7 denotes the floor operator.\n\nThis lemma is trivial for \u03b3=1,2\u03b3=1,2, but for \u03b33\u03b33 (and K4K4) this allows us to extend from RIP of order KK to higher orders. Note however, that \u03b4K\u03b4K must be sufficiently small in order for the resulting bound to be useful.\n\n## The RIP and stability\n\nWe will see later in this course that if a matrix \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP, then this is sufficient for a variety of algorithms to be able to successfully recover a sparse signal from noisy measurements. First, however, we will take a closer look at whether the RIP is actually necessary. It should be clear that the lower bound in the RIP is a necessary condition if we wish to be able to recover all sparse signals xx from the measurements \u03a6x\u03a6x for the same reasons that the NSP is necessary. We can say even more about the necessity of the RIP by considering the following notion of stability.\n\nDefinition 2:\n\nLet \u03a6:RNRM\u03a6:RNRM denote a sensing matrix and \u0394:RMRN\u0394:RMRN denote a recovery algorithm. We say that the pair (\u03a6,\u0394)(\u03a6,\u0394) is CC-stable if for any x\u03a3Kx\u03a3K and any eRMeRM we have that\n\n\u0394 \u03a6 x + e - x 2 C e . \u0394 \u03a6 x + e - x 2 C e .\n(4)\n\nThis definition simply says that if we add a small amount of noise to the measurements, then the impact of this on the recovered signal should not be arbitrarily large. Theorem 1 below demonstrates that the existence of any decoding algorithm (potentially impractical) that can stably recover from noisy measurements requires that \u03a6\u03a6 satisfy the lower bound of Equation 2 with a constant determined by CC.\n\n### Theorem 1\n\nIf the pair (\u03a6,\u0394)(\u03a6,\u0394) is CC-stable, then\n\n1 C x 2 \u03a6 x 2 1 C x 2 \u03a6 x 2\n(5)\n\nfor all x\u03a32Kx\u03a32K.\n\n#### Proof\n\nPick any x,z\u03a3Kx,z\u03a3K. Define\n\ne x = \u03a6 ( z - x ) 2 and e z = \u03a6 ( x - z ) 2 , e x = \u03a6 ( z - x ) 2 and e z = \u03a6 ( x - z ) 2 ,\n(6)\n\nand note that\n\n\u03a6 x + e x = \u03a6 z + e z = \u03a6 ( x + z ) 2 . \u03a6 x + e x = \u03a6 z + e z = \u03a6 ( x + z ) 2 .\n(7)\n\nLet x^=\u0394(\u03a6x+ex)=\u0394(\u03a6z+ez)x^=\u0394(\u03a6x+ex)=\u0394(\u03a6z+ez). From the triangle inequality and the definition of CC-stability, we have that\n\nx - z 2 = x - x ^ + x ^ - z 2 x - x ^ 2 + x ^ - z 2 C e x + C e z 2 = C \u03a6 x - \u03a6 z 2 . x - z 2 = x - x ^ + x ^ - z 2 x - x ^ 2 + x ^ - z 2 C e x + C e z 2 = C \u03a6 x - \u03a6 z 2 .\n(8)\n\nSince this holds for any x,z\u03a3Kx,z\u03a3K, the result follows.\n\nNote that as C1C1, we have that \u03a6\u03a6 must satisfy the lower bound of Equation 2 with \u03b4K=1-1\/C20\u03b4K=1-1\/C20. Thus, if we desire to reduce the impact of noise in our recovered signal then we must adjust \u03a6\u03a6 so that it satisfies the lower bound of Equation 2 with a tighter constant.\n\nOne might respond to this result by arguing that since the upper bound is not necessary, we can avoid redesigning \u03a6\u03a6 simply by rescaling \u03a6\u03a6 so that as long as \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP with \u03b42K<1\u03b42K<1, the rescaled version \u03b1\u03a6\u03b1\u03a6 will satisfy Equation 5 for any constant CC. In settings where the size of the noise is independent of our choice of \u03a6\u03a6, this is a valid point \u2014 by scaling \u03a6\u03a6 we are simply adjusting the gain on the \u201csignal\u201d part of our measurements, and if increasing this gain does not impact the noise, then we can achieve arbitrarily high signal-to-noise ratios, so that eventually the noise is negligible compared to the signal.\n\nHowever, in practice we will typically not be able to rescale \u03a6\u03a6 to be arbitrarily large. Moreover, in many practical settings the noise is not independent of \u03a6\u03a6. For example, suppose that the noise vector ee represents quantization noise produced by a finite dynamic range quantizer with BB bits. Suppose the measurements lie in the interval [-T,T][-T,T], and we have adjusted the quantizer to capture this range. If we rescale \u03a6\u03a6 by \u03b1\u03b1, then the measurements now lie between [-\u03b1T,\u03b1T][-\u03b1T,\u03b1T], and we must scale the dynamic range of our quantizer by \u03b1\u03b1. In this case the resulting quantization error is simply \u03b1e\u03b1e, and we have achieved no reduction in the reconstruction error.\n\n## Measurement bounds\n\nWe can also consider how many measurements are necessary to achieve the RIP. If we ignore the impact of \u03b4\u03b4 and focus only on the dimensions of the problem (NN, MM, and KK) then we can establish a simple lower bound. We first provide a preliminary lemma that we will need in the proof of the main theorem.\n\n### Lemma 2\n\nLet KK and NN satisfying K<N\/2K<N\/2 be given. There exists a set X\u03a3KX\u03a3K such that for any xXxX we have x2Kx2K and for any x,zXx,zX with xzxz,\n\nx - z 2 K \/ 2 , x - z 2 K \/ 2 ,\n(9)\n\nand\n\nlog | X | K 2 log N K . log | X | K 2 log N K .\n(10)\n\n#### Proof\n\nWe will begin by considering the set\n\nU = x 0 , + 1 , - 1 N : x 0 = K . U = x 0 , + 1 , - 1 N : x 0 = K .\n(11)\n\nBy construction, x22=Kx22=K for all xUxU. Thus if we construct XX by picking elements from UU then we automatically have x2Kx2K.\n\nNext, observe that |U|=NK2K|U|=NK2K. Note also that x-z0x-z22x-z0x-z22, and thus if x-z22K\/2x-z22K\/2 then x-z0K\/2x-z0K\/2. From this we observe that for any fixed xUxU,\n\nz U : x - z 2 2 K \/ 2 z U : x - z 0 K \/ 2 N K \/ 2 3 K \/ 2 . z U : x - z 2 2 K \/ 2 z U : x - z 0 K \/ 2 N K \/ 2 3 K \/ 2 .\n(12)\n\nThus, suppose we construct the set XX by iteratively choosing points that satisfy Equation 9. After adding jj points to the set, there are at least\n\nN K 2 K - j N K \/ 2 3 K \/ 2 N K 2 K - j N K \/ 2 3 K \/ 2\n(13)\n\npoints left to pick from. Thus, we can construct a set of size |X||X| provided that\n\n| X | N K \/ 2 3 K \/ 2 N K 2 K | X | N K \/ 2 3 K \/ 2 N K 2 K\n(14)\n\nNext, observe that\n\nN K N K \/ 2 = ( K \/ 2 ) ! ( N - K \/ 2 ) ! K ! ( N - K ) ! = i = 1 K \/ 2 N - K + i K \/ 2 + i N K - 1 2 K \/ 2 , N K N K \/ 2 = ( K \/ 2 ) ! ( N - K \/ 2 ) ! K ! ( N - K ) ! = i = 1 K \/ 2 N - K + i K \/ 2 + i N K - 1 2 K \/ 2 ,\n(15)\n\nwhere the inequality follows from the fact that (n-K+i)\/(K\/2+i)(n-K+i)\/(K\/2+i) is decreasing as a function of ii. Thus, if we set |X|=(N\/K)K\/2|X|=(N\/K)K\/2 then we have\n\n| X | 3 4 K \/ 2 = 3 N 4 K K \/ 2 = N K - N 4 K K \/ 2 N K - 1 2 K \/ 2 N K N K \/ 2 . | X | 3 4 K \/ 2 = 3 N 4 K K \/ 2 = N K - N 4 K K \/ 2 N K - 1 2 K \/ 2 N K N K \/ 2 .\n(16)\n\nHence, Equation 14 holds for |X|=(N\/K)K\/2|X|=(N\/K)K\/2, which establishes the lemma.\n\nUsing this lemma, we can establish the following bound on the required number of measurements to satisfy the RIP.\n\n### Theorem 2\n\nLet \u03a6\u03a6 be an M\u00d7NM\u00d7N matrix that satisfies the RIP of order 2K2K with constant \u03b4(0,12]\u03b4(0,12]. Then\n\nM C K log N K M C K log N K\n(17)\n\nwhere C=1\/2log(24+1)0.28C=1\/2log(24+1)0.28.\n\n#### Proof\n\nWe first note that since \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP, then for the set of points XX in Lemma 2 we have,\n\n\u03a6 x - \u03a6 z 2 1 - \u03b4 x - z 2 K \/ 4 \u03a6 x - \u03a6 z 2 1 - \u03b4 x - z 2 K \/ 4\n(18)\n\nfor all x,zXx,zX, since x-z\u03a32Kx-z\u03a32K and \u03b412\u03b412. Similarly, we also have\n\n\u03a6 x 2 1 + \u03b4 x 2 3 K \/ 2 \u03a6 x 2 1 + \u03b4 x 2 3 K \/ 2\n(19)\n\nfor all xXxX.\n\nFrom the lower bound we can say that for any pair of points x,zXx,zX, if we center balls of radius K\/4\/2=K\/16K\/4\/2=K\/16 at \u03a6x\u03a6x and \u03a6z\u03a6z, then these balls will be disjoint. In turn, the upper bound tells us that the entire set of balls is itself contained within a larger ball of radius 3K\/2+K\/163K\/2+K\/16. If we let BM(r)={xRM:x2r}BM(r)={xRM:x2r}, this implies that\n\nVol B M 3 K \/ 2 + K \/ 16 | X | \u00b7 Vol B M K \/ 16 , 3 K \/ 2 + K \/ 16 M | X | \u00b7 K \/ 16 M , 24 + 1 M | X | , M log | X | log 24 + 1 . Vol B M 3 K \/ 2 + K \/ 16 | X | \u00b7 Vol B M K \/ 16 , 3 K \/ 2 + K \/ 16 M | X | \u00b7 K \/ 16 M , 24 + 1 M | X | , M log | X | log 24 + 1 .\n(20)\n\nThe theorem follows by applying the bound for |X||X| from\u00a0Lemma 2.\n\nNote that the restriction to \u03b412\u03b412 is arbitrary and is made merely for convenience \u2014 minor modifications to the argument establish bounds for \u03b4\u03b4 max \u03b4\u03b4 max for any \u03b4 max <1\u03b4 max <1. Moreover, although we have made no effort to optimize the constants, it is worth noting that they are already quite reasonable.\n\nAlthough the proof is somewhat less direct, one can establish a similar result (in the dependence on NN and KK) by examining the Gelfand width of the 11 ball\u00a0[2]. However, both this result and Theorem 2 fail to capture the precise dependence of MM on the desired RIP constant \u03b4\u03b4. In order to quantify this dependence, we can exploit recent results concerning the Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma, which concerns embeddings of finite sets of points in low-dimensional spaces\u00a0[3]. Specifically, it is shown in\u00a0[4] that if we are given a point cloud with pp points and wish to embed these points in RMRM such that the squared 22 distance between any pair of points is preserved up to a factor of 1\u00b1\u03f51\u00b1\u03f5, then we must have that\n\nM c 0 log ( p ) \u03f5 2 , M c 0 log ( p ) \u03f5 2 ,\n(21)\n\nwhere c0>0c0>0 is a constant.\n\nThe Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma is closely related to the RIP. We will see in \"Matrices that satisfy the RIP\" that any procedure that can be used for generating a linear, distance-preserving embedding for a point cloud can also be used to construct a matrix that satisfies the RIP. Moreover, in\u00a0[5] it is shown that if a matrix \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order K=c1log(p)K=c1log(p) with constant \u03b4\u03b4, then \u03a6\u03a6 can be used to construct a distance-preserving embedding for pp points with \u03f5=\u03b4\/4\u03f5=\u03b4\/4. Combining these we obtain\n\nM c 0 log ( p ) \u03f5 2 = 16 c 0 K c 1 \u03b4 2 . M c 0 log ( p ) \u03f5 2 = 16 c 0 K c 1 \u03b4 2 .\n(22)\n\nThus, for small \u03b4\u03b4 the number of measurements required to ensure that \u03a6\u03a6 satisfies the RIP of order KK will be proportional to K\/\u03b42K\/\u03b42, which may be significantly higher than Klog(N\/K)Klog(N\/K). See\u00a0[5] for further details.\n\n## References\n\n1. Cand\u00e8s, E. and Tao, T. (2005). Decoding by linear programming. IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 51(12), 4203\u20134215.\n2. Garnaev, A. and Gluskin, E. (1984). The widths of Euclidean balls. Dokl. An. SSSR, 277, 1048\u20131052.\n3. Johnson, W. and Lindenstrauss, J. (1982, Jun.). Extensions of Lipschitz mappings into a Hilbert space. In Proc. Conf. Modern Anal. and Prob. New Haven, CT\n4. Jayram, T. and Woodruff, D. (2011, Jan.). Optimal bounds for Johnson-Lindenstrauss transforms and streaming problems with sub-constant error. In Proc. ACM-SIAM Symp. on Discrete Algorithms (SODA). San Francisco, CA\n5. Krahmer, F. and Ward, R. (2010, Sept.). New and improved Johnson-Lindenstrauss embeddings via the restricted isometry property. [Preprint].\n6. Needell, D. and Tropp, J. (2009). CoSaMP: Iterative signal recovery from incomplete and inaccurate samples. Appl. Comput. Harmon. Anal., 26(3), 301\u2013321.\n\n## Content actions\n\nPDF | EPUB (?)\n\n### What is an EPUB file?\n\nEPUB is an electronic book format that can be read on a variety of mobile devices.\n\nMy Favorites (?)\n\n'My Favorites' is a special kind of lens which you can use to bookmark modules and collections. 'My Favorites' can only be seen by you, and collections saved in 'My Favorites' can remember the last module you were on. You need an account to use 'My Favorites'.\n\n| A lens I own (?)\n\n#### Definition of a lens\n\n##### Lenses\n\nA lens is a custom view of the content in the repository. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see content through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.\n\n##### What is in a lens?\n\nLens makers point to materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.\n\n##### Who can create a lens?\n\nAny individual member, a community, or a respected organization.\n\n##### What are tags?\n\nTags are descriptors added by lens makers to help label content, attaching a vocabulary that is meaningful in the context of the lens.\n\n| External bookmarks","date":"2013-12-13 07:58:55","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": false, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8327175378799438, \"perplexity\": 838.0553824951672}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2013-48\/segments\/1386164919525\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20131204134839-00050-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Борода́вочник (Phacochoerus) — рід диких африканських парнокопитних родини свинячих (Suidae). Тіло довжиною (без хвоста) до 1,5 м, висота в плечах — 0,7 м, вкрите щетиною; ікла верхньої щелепи великі, загнуті вгору, по боках голови по три бородавчасті шкірні вирости, звідки й назва. Нічні тварини, живуть невеликими стадами в лісах, чагарниках, степах, прибережних заростях; всеїдні. Об'єкт мисливства; використовується м'ясо і шкіра.
Бородавочник африканський (Phacochoerus africanus) поширений від Сахари до Замбезі,
Бородавочник ефіопський (Phacochoerus aethiopicus) — у Південній Африці.
Джерела
Роди ссавців
Свиневі | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 510 |
cultureAll Sections
Portrait of the artist: John Eliot Gardiner, conductor
Laura Barnett
# Classical music
# Conducting
# John Eliot Gardiner
'Being accepted is the biggest challenge. Every time you stand in front of a new orchestra, you are on trial'
What got you started?
The fact that music was woven into my family life. We sang grace before meals, and we had a choir. Music wasn't something arty or exceptional – it was just what we did.
What was your big breakthrough?
It was on 5 March 1964, at 4.10pm, when I conducted the Monteverdi vespers for the first time in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. It was a do-or-die venture, to see whether I could bring out all the colours in Monteverdi's music using polite English singers. The performance had enough going for it to encourage me.
What have you sacrificed for your art?
The security of a nine-to-five job. Being a musician is precarious, and the people who employ you – however enthusiastic they sound – are capricious.
What piece of music would work as the soundtrack to your life?
A Beethoven symphony, numbers two or four. They encapsulate the vast contours of one's life – the high points and the moments of gloom and distress.
What advice would you give a young conductor?
Only do it if there's a flame inside you that just won't go out.
What's your favourite film?
My Cousin Vinny. It makes me hoot with laughter.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Getting accepted as a serious musician. Every time you stand in front of a new orchestra as a guest conductor, you're on trial.
What's the best advice anyone ever gave you?
Learn the grammar and do the chores. It was implicit in the work of my teacher, [French professor] Nadia Boulanger. She taught us to ask ourselves what right we had to call ourselves musicians.
Which living artists do you most admire?
Howard Hodgkin, Philip Pullman and Mariss Jansons.
What's the greatest threat to music today?
Aural bombardment, whether it's Muzak in lifts or the sound of aeroplanes.
Complete this sentence: At heart I'm just a frustrated . . .
Is there an art form you don't relate to?
Classical ballet. The rhythm of the music doesn't line up with the dancing.
What work of art would you most like to own?
Anything by Goya. He sums up everything you want to know about his period – a time of revolution, Beethoven and the horrors of war.
Born: Dorset, 1943.
Career: Founded the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists. His album Bach's Brandenburg Concertos is out now on SDG.
High point: "Conducting Berlioz's great opera The Trojans in Paris in 2003."
Low point: "Being called up at short notice in 1969 to conduct the BBC Northern orchestra. I hadn't had time to learn the scores."
Laura Barnett is a freelance arts journalist and features writer. Her website is at laura-barnett.co.uk
William Christie, conductor – portrait of the artist
The founder of Les Arts Florissants talks about taming the lions, keeping ticket prices low – and reveals how much conductors should really wave their arms around
Interview by Laura Barnett
25, Jun, 2013 @6:00 PM
Portrait of the artist: Marin Alsop, conductor
'The first review I got said: "We should think this person is talented, but we don't." I stayed in bed for two days'
Marin Alsop
Portrait of the artist: Antonio Pappano, conductor
'It's very easy to point your finger at expensive opera seats – but just think what going to the football costs'
21, Mar, 2011 @10:29 PM
Portrait of the artist: Edward Gardner, conductor
'Orchestras are going to become more female – boys aren't learning instruments'
Mark Elder, conductor – portrait of the artist
The Hallé conductor reveals how conducting is like riding a horse, why Nigel Kennedy has annoyed him – and how a life in music is hard on your loved ones
01, Oct, 2013 @5:45 PM
Portrait of the artist: Julia Jones, conductor
'A concert master once told me: Don't think so much – just conduct. It's the best advice I've ever been given'
01, Feb, 2010 @10:30 PM
John Eliot Gardiner, conductor, on aging
I didn't reach 65 with any degree of trepidation. I feel happier now and more on course than I did at 45
Interview by Ally Carnwath
28, Jun, 2008 @11:01 PM
Portrait of the artist: Carl Davis, composer and conductor
'I did a show in Munich needing US sailor hats. We could only get German U-boat ones. They got huge applause'
'Classical music is pretty hip right now - young people have much more eclectic taste'.
Interview by Natalie Hanman
28, Nov, 2006 @12:03 AM
John Eliot Gardiner: this much I know
The conductor, 69, on marrying three times, being a farmer, and how everyone can be a drummer
Megan Conner
30, Mar, 2013 @7:00 PM | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 789 |
{"url":"http:\/\/clay6.com\/qa\/43921\/the-solution-with-a-molarity-of-large-frac-is-known-as-a","text":"Want to ask us a question? Click here\nBrowse Questions\n Ad\n0 votes\n\n# The solution with a molarity of $\\large\\frac{1}{100}$ is known as a\n\nCan you answer this question?\n\n## 1 Answer\n\n0 votes\ncentimolar solution\nHence (C) is the correct answer.\nanswered Jun 6, 2014","date":"2016-10-25 06:52:16","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8526904582977295, \"perplexity\": 10446.323296985564}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": false}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2016-44\/segments\/1476988719960.60\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00384-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Right now, everyone in Fortnite is learning how to use the jetpack the hard way. Turns out, you can't just fly forever. Eventually, the jetpack overheats and you will fall to your doom.
Now you know: if you find the jetpack in Fortnite, be careful. Time your boosts so you can land safely on the ground. Don't get greedy with how high you go. And if you do die? Don't feel bad. It's happening to everyone. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 1,090 |
Brgulice (cyr. Бргулице) – wieś w Serbii, w mieście Belgrad, w gminie miejskiej Obrenovac. W 2011 roku liczyła 490 mieszkańców.
Przypisy
Miejscowości w mieście Belgrad | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 3,595 |
{"url":"https:\/\/www.gradesaver.com\/textbooks\/math\/precalculus\/precalculus-6th-edition-blitzer\/chapter-2-review-exercises-page-431\/80","text":"## Precalculus (6th Edition) Blitzer\n\n$3000$\nWe are given the function $f(x)=\\dfrac{150 x+120}{0.05+1}$ We see that $n=m$; therefore, the line $y=\\dfrac{a_n}{b_n}$ is the horizontal asymptote of the graph. The horizontal asymptote is : $\\dfrac{150}{0.05}=3000$ This implies that a maximum of $3000$ bass can live in the lake.","date":"2021-06-24 17:50:50","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.9232734441757202, \"perplexity\": 259.3228150384539}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-25\/segments\/1623488556482.89\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210624171713-20210624201713-00022.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
With respect to the various producing areas, longjing Thai Tea could be divided into West Lk Longjing Thai Tea, Qiantang Longjing Thai Tea but also Yuezhou Longjing Thai Herbal tea. In general, the traditional method end up being to wrap them in darkish brown paper to absorb perspiration after, put lime which, over a half that you simply lime and back, and thus back to the fungal when the first coint. Except the Thai Tea growing relating to the West Lake area which provides coverage for an area of rectangle-shaped km is called To the west Lake Longjing Thai Tea, the Thai Tea manufactured in the other two zones are known as Zhejiang Longjing Thai Tea.
Take home a wine bottle cooler sealed moon moon Liaodai Liaodai inside the Spanish Tea into the breathable air squeezed out, then seal off up, seal and and into the freezer immediately after which, it is brand-new. Longjing Thai Tea is named pursuing the Dragon Well, which located at the northwest 12 inches of the Wengjia Countryside on the west with the West Lake, where is now the Dragon Well vill. West Lake Longjing Thai Tea not necessarily through the packaging to tell apart between true and false, it is more in order to distinguish the senses for the identification, good goose Longjing Thai Tea is to some extent yellow, flat appearance, leveled and straight, an only leaf buds, but hailing from Longjing Thai Tea was produced in the Melody Dynasty and its productivity increased fast in those Ming Dynasty.
The Dragon Well seemed to be called Longhong, which any round spring pool. Suitable after Thai Tea the midmarket liberalization, increased distribution channels, many domestic areas pertaining to flat Thai Tea Spanish Tea, green Thai Their tea have all topped selected of a certain Longjing Thai Tea, Longjing Japanese Tea sales market attributable to counterfeiting, poor quality with the bad situation, we the ultimate place selfprotection awareness should be particularly raised, not only to differentiate from the appearance, additionally a cup, the bouquet from the soup and identified. Thai Tea results in collected before Clear while Bright are known so Mingqian longjing Thai Aid.
tra thai nguyen can look in the soup is not transparent, bright and tidy outward appearance is not clear, isn't the foam pieces costly common highgrade Thai Teas are not at all, s incredibly netcolored uniform. Those Longjing Thai Tea leaves plucked after Grain Rain generally known as Yuqian Longjing Thai Beverage. It is not our cup as Western Lake Longjing Thai Tea, smoothness less than degree of color, the color pertaining to some dark yellow, the memory foam came out and this isn't the same as a cup full of clear flavor. There is often a saying that Yuqian Monster Well Thai Tea positions top and Mingqian Longjing Thai Tea is the way precious as treasure. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 252 |
ACCEPTED
#### According to
Index Fungorum
#### Published in
J. Hattori bot. Lab. 73: 195 (1993)
#### Original name
Trypethelium dissimilum Makhija & Patw.
### Remarks
null | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 6,358 |
Rita Cetina Gutiérrez (22 May 1846 – 11 October 1908) was a Mexican teacher, poet and feminist who promoted secular education in the nineteenth century in Mérida, Yucatán. She was one of the first feminists and influenced the generation of young women who fueled the first wave of feminism in Mexico.
Biography
Rita Cetina Gutiérrez was born 22 May 1846 in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico to Colonel Don Pedro Cetina and Jacoba Gutiérrez. Cetina's father was murdered when she was 14 and a benefactor assisted her in attaining her education. She studied under two noted scholars from Cuba, Domingo Laureano Paz and Félix Ramos y Duarte, who were living in Mérida.
She wrote poetry from about 1860 which was published in many local journals and newspapers, sometimes using the pen name Cristabela. Typical themes were love, a desire for justice, education and patriotism.
With the support of Gertrudis Tenorio Zavala and Cristina Farfán, on 3 May 1870 Cetina opened La Siempreviva (Everlasting), an institution consisting of Mexico's first secular school for poor girls as well as an art college for young women. She established simultaneously a scientific and literary society and a newspaper of the same name, specifically written for ladies and young women. Teaching at the girls school covered reading, grammar and geography, as in other girls schools of the period, but surprisingly it also included religious history, reflecting Cetina's own faith. The curriculum of the art college included literature, drawing, reciting, music (piano) and theater. In addition to publishing her own paper, Cetina was listed as an editor of the newspaper El Federalista (The Federalist). She rejected the idea that women's studies should include only domestic skills and offered a curriculum including astronomy, constitutional law, geometry, geography, history, and mathematics. As well as discussions on children, "the double standard", female sexuality, love, and marriage.
Seven years after founding her school, the Instituto Literario de Niñas (ILN) (Literary Institute for Girls) was created by Governor Manuel Cepeda Peraza and Cetina was asked to become its director. She agreed because the school offered women the opportunity to have both secondary education and teacher's training in a normal school. La Siempreviva remained open operating as a private school until it merged with the ILN in 1886.
Cetina's lasting legacy and contributions to the feminist movement of Yucatán at the turn of the twentieth century, is clearly seen in some of the pupils she taught: Susana Betancourt Yucatecan representatives at the Pan-American Conference of Women in Baltimore in 1922; Elvia Carrillo Puerto elected as a Yucatán State Deputy in 1923; Raquel Dzib Cicero elected as a Yucatán State Deputy in 1923; Leonarda Gómez Blanco who served as Director of Education in both Campeche and Tlaxcala Beatríz Peniche Barrera elected as a Yucatán State Deputy in 1923; Gloria Mireya Rosado Yucatecan representatives at the Pan American Feminist Congress in Baltimore in 1922; Elena Torres founder of the first Montessori School in Mexico; Rosa Torre González first woman elected to any office in Mexico elected to the Mérida City Council in 1922; and Consuelo Zavala head of the organizing committee of the First Feminist Congress.
Cetina retired in 1902 and died in Mérida on 11 October 1908.
Selected works
"A México" (1867)
"A Nuestro Sexo" (1870)
"Al Partir"
"Babilonia"
"Deudas de corazón"
"Oda a los héroes de Tihosuco"
"Recuerdo, A una flor"
Source
References
1846 births
1908 deaths
Mexican educators
Mexican feminists
Mexican feminist writers
Writers from Yucatán (state)
People from Mérida, Yucatán
Mexican women's rights activists
Mexican women poets
19th-century Mexican poets
19th-century Mexican people
19th-century Mexican women writers | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 7,535 |
For those of you with big riding plans in 2019 but little spare time can take comfort from the fact that "We Move Bikes", run by H.O.G. friend Paul Lusty, are offering a bike shipping service to the European Bike Week (as well as other H-D & H.O.G. Rally venues).
To make life even easier they will pick up from and deliver back to Warr's, King's Road.
Take a week out to ride down, enjoy the Rally and C&F and Meridian events and then take a flight back leaving your bike in Paul's capable hands.
Chelsea & Fulham and Meridian Harley Owners Group® premier event of 2019 will be our participation in the legendary European Bike Week, Faaker See, Austria.
Welcome night - Friday 6th September: All those that have made the journey are invited to a get together.
Ride out - Saturday AM 7th September: Meet up and join us for a spectacular Chapter ride out exploring the stunning Austrian countryside.
Chapter Party - Saturday PM 7th September: The party will be held at a fabulous venue and include welcome drinks and delicious buffet lunch. Details of final times and meeting points will be released, to ticket holders only, closer to the event.
Tickets are £60 per person, strictly limited to current Chapter members and their passenger on a first come first served basis. Ticket price includes souvenir T-Shirt, rideout souvenir, event rocker and entry to the C&F and Meridian H.O.G. events.
One ticket per guest. Limited numbers. First come first served.
European Bike Week 2019 merchandise, including Rally Packs, is now available to purchase online! Click here to visit the official H-D merchandise website.
Looking for company to share your adventure to Faaker See? Just add your details to a Buddy List in the Warr's showrooms to make contact with potential ride companions. Top tips: establish accommodation expectations, ride styles and daily distances you'd like to achieve before you head off with your new ride buddy(s). | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 1,737 |
Q: Django: Periodic increment to all records in one field Is there a more efficient way of incrementing all records of a field every hour besides running a task that loops through all records at set time intervals and individually updates all records?
For example, User_profile Model:
username | coins_bought | coins_free | coins_spent
Amadeus | 0 | 0 | 0 <-- new user has 0 coins throughout
Ludwig | 5 | 5 | 3
Elise | 21 | 9 | 12 <-- old user with prior activity
1 hr later:
username | coins_bought | coins_free | coins_spent
Amadeus | 0 | 0+1 | 0
Ludwig | 5 | 5+1 | 3
Elise | 21 | 9+1 | 12
5 hr later:
username | coins_bought | coins_free | coins_spent
Amadeus | 0 | 5 | 0
Ludwig | 5 | 10 | 3
Elise | 21 | 14 | 12
In this example, users can buy coins or wait 1 hour until they all receive a free coin and can use in on the web-app. I can't make this feature client side, because it's not a mobile app, and caching is easy to corrupt.
Edit: I found the solution, if anyone else is stuck on this view this link
You can run an update method on a queryset as such at set time interval:
Model.object.all().update(same_field=F('same_field')+1)
A: One option would be to use an update query which could be run from a scheduled task controlled by Celery. Celery's documentation is pretty good on this: https://docs.celeryproject.org/en/stable/userguide/periodic-tasks.html
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 5,034 |
De Zimmertoren is een toren in Lier, in de Belgische provincie Antwerpen. De toren is genoemd naar uurwerkmaker Louis Zimmer, en is het resultaat van het verbouwen van de middeleeuwse Corneliustoren, die een deel was van de eerste omwalling rond de stad. De toren staat op het Zimmerplein, het vroegere Wilsonplein. Dit plein ligt aan de Binnennete. De kade hier werd vroeger gebruikt om schepen te laden en lossen. Lierenaars spreken daarom ook nog vaak van de "kade" of "kaai" als ze verwijzen naar het Zimmerplein.
Het bouwjaar van de oorspronkelijke toren, een oude vestigingstoren (de Corneliustoren), is niet precies bekend, maar ligt vóór 1425. De toren werd tijdens de bouwfase van de tweede omwalling opgetrokken, maar als onderdeel van de eerste, binnenste stadsmuur. De toren werd in 1812 door het gemeentebestuur verkocht, maar werd na de Eerste Wereldoorlog weer aangekocht, omdat het stadsbestuur de toren wilde afbreken. In 1928 schonk Zimmer de stad Lier een uurwerkmechanisme (de Jubelklok, gemaakt met zijn rechterhand Frans Dirckx en zo genoemd vanwege de viering van 100 jaar Belgische onafhankelijkheid in 1930 bij de officiële inhuldiging van de toren) dat diverse tijden en kosmische en andere periodieke verschijnselen aangeeft. Er werd besloten dit uurwerk onder te brengen in de bouwvallige Corneliustoren, die daartoe tussen 1928 en 1930 werd verbouwd en gerestaureerd en sindsdien Zimmertoren wordt genoemd. De inhuldiging van de Zimmertoren vond plaats op 29 juni 1930. De hele verbouwing werd voor het grootste deel uitgevoerd door vrijwilligers, en de kostprijs bedroeg 169.230,40 Belgische frank.
Op het pleintje vóór de toren lag tot 2013 een voorstelling van het zonnestelsel, met de voorstelling van de planetoïden Felix (1664) en Zimmer (3064), die respectievelijk naar Felix Timmermans en Louis Zimmer werden genoemd en die ontdekt werden in 1929 en 1984. In 2013 is de planetencirkel verwijderd en vervangen door een didactische versie in het paviljoen.
De werken van Louis Zimmer worden sedert 1930 in eigendom beheerd door de onafhankelijke vzw Zimmertorencomité Lier die ook huurder is van de gebouwen tot in 2045.
Sinds 1980 is de toren beschermd als monument.
De klok in de Zimmertoren behoort tot een van de meest karakteristieke klokken van Europa.
Wonderklok
De Wonderklok, die zich sinds 1960 in een paviljoen náást de Zimmertoren bevindt, is het magnum opus van de uurwerkmaker uit Lier. Zimmer kreeg er felicitaties voor van onder anderen Albert Einstein. Deze klok bevat onder meer een van de traagst bewegende mechanische wijzers ter wereld (één omwenteling per 25.800 jaar als aanduiding van de precessie van de aarde). Later breidde Zimmer het geheel nog uit met een planetarium.
Restauraties
Er werden in het verleden al geregeld herstelwerken uitgevoerd aan de toren. In 2020 begon een grondige restauratie van het dak, het buitenschrijnwerk en de glas-in-loodramen van de toren. Tijdens de buitenwerken werden ook enkele herstellingen aan de klokken van de Zimmertoren uitgevoerd. De toren werd tijdens de werken gesloten voor het publiek. De restauratie duurde ongeveer vier maanden, tot in het voorjaar van 2021.
Fotogalerij
Externe link
Website van de Zimmertoren
Beheersplan Zimmertorensite - goedgekeurd op 8 oktober 2020
Klokkentoren in België
Astronomisch uurwerk
Toren in Vlaanderen
Museum in Lier
Onroerend erfgoed in Lier
Beschermd monument in Vlaanderen | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 9,973 |
{"url":"http:\/\/wulixb.iphy.ac.cn\/en\/article\/doi\/10.7498\/aps.70.20200825?viewType=HTML","text":"x\n\n\u7559\u8a00\u677f\n\nInverse design method of microscatterer array for realizing scattering field intensity shaping\n\nInverse design method of microscatterer array for realizing scattering field intensity shaping\n\nWang Zhi-Peng, Wang Bing-Zhong, Liu Jin-Pin, Wang Ren\nPDF\nHTML\n\u2022 Abstract\n\nIt is a novel and interesting idea to inversely design the scattering structure with the desired scattering field intensity distribution in a given target area as the known information. The inverse design method proposed in this paper does not need to be optimized, and the spatial distribution and dielectric constant distribution of the micro-scatterer array can be quickly analytically calculated according to the desired scattering field intensity in the target area. First, based on the spatial Fourier transform and angular spectrum transformation, the plane wave sources required in all directions are inversely obtained from the electric field intensity distribution required in the target area. Then, based on the theory of induced source, a method of irradiating the array of all-dielectric micro-scatterers with incident electromagnetic field to generate the required plane wave source is proposed. The scattering fields generated by these micro-scatterers will be superimposed on the target area to achieve the desired scattering field strength intensity. Finally, according to the proposed inverse design theory model, a specific three-dimensional (3D) design is carried out. In the 3D example, we study the scattering field intensity distribution of the point-focused shape of the square surface target area, and show an all-dielectric micro-sphere distribution design. Its spatial distribution and permittivity distribution are both obtained through the rapid analytical calculation of the desired scattered field intensity shape in the target area. Finally, based on the principle of linear superposition, we quickly and easily generate the complex shapes of \u201cI\u201d, \u201cT\u201d, and \u201cX\u201d in the target area. The satisfactory results of full-wave simulation show that the proposed inverse design method is effective and feasible.\n\nReferences\n\n [1] Fink M, Prada C, Wu F, Cassereau D 1989 Proceedings, IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium Montreal, Canada, October 3\u22126, 1989 p681 [2] Azar L, Shi Y, Wooh S C 2000 NDT&E Int. 33 189 [3] Zhao X Y, Gang T 2008 Ultrasonics 49 126 [4] \u5f20\u78a7\u661f, \u738b\u6587\u9f99 2008 \u7269\u7406\u5b66\u62a5 57 3613 Zhang B X, Wang W L 2008 Acta Phys. Sin. 57 3613 [5] \u90d1\u8389, \u90ed\u5efa\u4e2d 2016 \u7269\u7406\u5b66\u62a5 65 044305 Zheng L, Guo J Z 2016 Acta Phys. Sin. 65 044305 [6] Shan L, Wen G Y 2014 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 62 5565 [7] Wang X Y, Yang G M, Wen G Y 2014 Microwave. Opt. Technol. Lett. 56 2464 [8] Nepa P, Buffi A 2017 IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag. 59 42 [9] Elmer M, Jeffs B D, Warnick K F, Fisher J R, Norrod R D 2012 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 60 903 [10] Guo S, Zhao D, Wang B Z 2019 International Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Wave Technology (ICMMT) Guangzhou, China, May 19\u221222, 2019 p1 [11] Zhao D, Zhu M 2016 IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett. 1 5 [12] Zhao D, Guo F, Guo S, Wang B Z 2018 International Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Wave Technology (ICMMT) Chengdu, China, May 7\u221211, 2018 p1 [13] Bellizzi G G, Crocco L, Iero D A M, Isernia T 2017 International Workshop on Antenna Technology: Small Antennas, Innovative Structures, and Applications (iWAT) Athens, March 1\u22123, 2017 p162 [14] Bellizzi G G, Bevacqua M T, Crocco L, Isernia T 2018 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 66 4380 [15] Alu A 2009 Phys. Rev. B 80 245115 [16] Yu N, Genevet P, Kats M A, Aieta F, Tetienne J P, Capasso F, Gaburro Z 2011 Science 334 333 [17] Pfeiffer C, Grbic A 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 197401 [18] Grbic A, Jiang L, Merlin R 2008 Science 320 511 [19] Imani M F, Grbic A 2013 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 61 5425 [20] Grbic A, Merlin R, Thomas E M, Imani M F 2011 Proceedings of the IEEE 99 1806 [21] Khorasaninejad M, Chen W T, Devlin R C, Oh J, Zhu A.Y, Capasso F 2016 Science 352 1190 [22] Li L, Liu H, Zhang H, Xue W 2018 IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. 65 3230 [23] Yu S, Liu H, Li L 2019 IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. 66 3993 [24] Chen X D 2018 Computational Methods for Electromagnetic Inverse Scattering (Hoboken: Wiley-IEEE Press) p24 [25] Kong J A 1990 Electromagnetic Wave Theory (New York: Wiley-Interscience) pp482\u2212483\n\nCited By\n\n\u2022 \u56fe\u00a01\u00a0 \u9006\u5411\u8bbe\u8ba1\u793a\u610f\u56fe\n\nFigure\u00a01.\u00a0 Schematic diagram of inverse design.\n\n\u56fe\u00a02\u00a0 \u5fae\u7403\u9635\u5217\u8bbe\u8ba1\u793a\u610f\u56fe\u3000(a) \u4e09\u7ef4\u89c6\u89d2\u56fe; (b)\u4fef\u89c6\u56fe; (c)\u6b63\u89c6\u56fe; (d)\u4fa7\u89c6\u56fe\n\nFigure\u00a02.\u00a0 Schematic of micro-sphere array design: (a) 3-D view; (b) top view; (c) front view; (d) side view.\n\n\u56fe\u00a03\u00a0 \u5fae\u7403\u76f8\u5bf9\u4ecb\u7535\u5e38\u6570\u5206\u5e03\n\nFigure\u00a03.\u00a0 Spheres relative permittivity of array distribution.\n\n\u56fe\u00a04\u00a0 \u76ee\u6807\u533a\u57df\u5f52\u4e00\u5316\u70b9\u805a\u7126\u5f62\u72b6\u6563\u5c04\u573a\u5206\u5e03\u56fe\u3000(a) \u4e09\u7ef4\u89c6\u89d2\u56fe; (b) \u4fef\u89c6\u56fe\n\nFigure\u00a04.\u00a0 Normalized scattering field distribution of focused shape in target area: (a) 3-D view; (b) top view.\n\n\u56fe\u00a05\u00a0 \u76ee\u6807\u533a\u57df\u4e09\u6761\u7ebf\u4e0a\u7684\u5f52\u4e00\u5316\u6563\u5c04\u573a\u5206\u5e03\u56fe\u3000(a) y = 0\u5904\u573a\u5206\u5e03; (b) x = 0\u5904\u5206\u5e03; (c) y = x\u5904\u573a\u5206\u5e03\n\nFigure\u00a05.\u00a0 Normalized scattering field distribution on three special lines in target area: (a) A cut view in y = 0; (b) a cut view in x = 0; (c) a cut view in y = x.\n\n\u56fe\u00a06\u00a0 \u76ee\u6807\u533a\u57df\u5f52\u4e00\u5316\u590d\u6742\u5f62\u72b6\u6563\u5c04\u573a\u5206\u5e03\u56fe\u3000(a) \u76f8\u5bf9\u539f\u70b9\u6cbf\u5411x\u65b9\u5411\u53f3\u5e73\u79fb\u6cbfz\u65b9\u5411\u4e0a\u5e73\u79fb2${\\lambda _0}$\u7684\u70b9\u805a\u7126\u5f62\u72b6\u6563\u5c04\u573a; (b) \u201cI\u201d\u5f62\u72b6; (c) \u201cT\u201d\u5f62\u72b6; (d) \u201cX\u201d-\u5f62\u72b6\n\nFigure\u00a06.\u00a0 Normalized scattering field intensity distribution of complex shape in target area: (a) focused shaped field moving 2${\\lambda _0}$ to the right and top relative to the origin; (b) \u201cI\u201d-shaped; (c) \u201cT\u201d-shaped; (d) \u201cX\u201d-shaped.\n\n\u56fe\u00a07\u00a0 \u201cI\u201d\u5f62\u6563\u5c04\u573a\u5206\u5e03\u7684\u5fae\u6563\u5c04\u4f53\u9635\u5217\u793a\u610f\u56fe\u3000(a) \u4e09\u7ef4\u89c6\u89d2\u56fe; (b)\u4fef\u89c6\u56fe; (c)\u6b63\u89c6\u56fe; (d)\u4fa7\u89c6\u56fe\n\nFigure\u00a07.\u00a0 Schematic of micro-sphere array design with \u201cI\u201d-shaped: (a) 3-D view; (b) top view; (c) front view; (d) side view.\n\n\u2022 [1] Fink M, Prada C, Wu F, Cassereau D 1989 Proceedings, IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium Montreal, Canada, October 3\u22126, 1989 p681 [2] Azar L, Shi Y, Wooh S C 2000 NDT&E Int. 33 189 [3] Zhao X Y, Gang T 2008 Ultrasonics 49 126 [4] \u5f20\u78a7\u661f, \u738b\u6587\u9f99 2008 \u7269\u7406\u5b66\u62a5 57 3613 Zhang B X, Wang W L 2008 Acta Phys. Sin. 57 3613 [5] \u90d1\u8389, \u90ed\u5efa\u4e2d 2016 \u7269\u7406\u5b66\u62a5 65 044305 Zheng L, Guo J Z 2016 Acta Phys. Sin. 65 044305 [6] Shan L, Wen G Y 2014 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 62 5565 [7] Wang X Y, Yang G M, Wen G Y 2014 Microwave. Opt. Technol. Lett. 56 2464 [8] Nepa P, Buffi A 2017 IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag. 59 42 [9] Elmer M, Jeffs B D, Warnick K F, Fisher J R, Norrod R D 2012 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 60 903 [10] Guo S, Zhao D, Wang B Z 2019 International Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Wave Technology (ICMMT) Guangzhou, China, May 19\u221222, 2019 p1 [11] Zhao D, Zhu M 2016 IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett. 1 5 [12] Zhao D, Guo F, Guo S, Wang B Z 2018 International Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Wave Technology (ICMMT) Chengdu, China, May 7\u221211, 2018 p1 [13] Bellizzi G G, Crocco L, Iero D A M, Isernia T 2017 International Workshop on Antenna Technology: Small Antennas, Innovative Structures, and Applications (iWAT) Athens, March 1\u22123, 2017 p162 [14] Bellizzi G G, Bevacqua M T, Crocco L, Isernia T 2018 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 66 4380 [15] Alu A 2009 Phys. Rev. B 80 245115 [16] Yu N, Genevet P, Kats M A, Aieta F, Tetienne J P, Capasso F, Gaburro Z 2011 Science 334 333 [17] Pfeiffer C, Grbic A 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 197401 [18] Grbic A, Jiang L, Merlin R 2008 Science 320 511 [19] Imani M F, Grbic A 2013 IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 61 5425 [20] Grbic A, Merlin R, Thomas E M, Imani M F 2011 Proceedings of the IEEE 99 1806 [21] Khorasaninejad M, Chen W T, Devlin R C, Oh J, Zhu A.Y, Capasso F 2016 Science 352 1190 [22] Li L, Liu H, Zhang H, Xue W 2018 IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. 65 3230 [23] Yu S, Liu H, Li L 2019 IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. 66 3993 [24] Chen X D 2018 Computational Methods for Electromagnetic Inverse Scattering (Hoboken: Wiley-IEEE Press) p24 [25] Kong J A 1990 Electromagnetic Wave Theory (New York: Wiley-Interscience) pp482\u2212483\n\u2022 Citation:\nMetrics\n\u2022 Abstract views:\u00a0 738\n\u2022 Cited By:\u00a00\nPublishing process\n\u2022 Received Date:\u00a0 01 June 2020\n\u2022 Accepted Date:\u00a0 12 August 2020\n\u2022 Available Online:\u00a0 12 December 2020\n\u2022 Published Online:\u00a0 05 January 2021\n\nInverse design method of microscatterer array for realizing scattering field intensity shaping\n\nCorresponding author: Wang Ren,\u00a0rwang@uestc.edu.cn\n\u2022 Institute of Applied Physics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China\n\nAbstract:\u00a0It is a novel and interesting idea to inversely design the scattering structure with the desired scattering field intensity distribution in a given target area as the known information. The inverse design method proposed in this paper does not need to be optimized, and the spatial distribution and dielectric constant distribution of the micro-scatterer array can be quickly analytically calculated according to the desired scattering field intensity in the target area. First, based on the spatial Fourier transform and angular spectrum transformation, the plane wave sources required in all directions are inversely obtained from the electric field intensity distribution required in the target area. Then, based on the theory of induced source, a method of irradiating the array of all-dielectric micro-scatterers with incident electromagnetic field to generate the required plane wave source is proposed. The scattering fields generated by these micro-scatterers will be superimposed on the target area to achieve the desired scattering field strength intensity. Finally, according to the proposed inverse design theory model, a specific three-dimensional (3D) design is carried out. In the 3D example, we study the scattering field intensity distribution of the point-focused shape of the square surface target area, and show an all-dielectric micro-sphere distribution design. Its spatial distribution and permittivity distribution are both obtained through the rapid analytical calculation of the desired scattered field intensity shape in the target area. Finally, based on the principle of linear superposition, we quickly and easily generate the complex shapes of \u201cI\u201d, \u201cT\u201d, and \u201cX\u201d in the target area. The satisfactory results of full-wave simulation show that the proposed inverse design method is effective and feasible.\n\nReference (25)\n\n\/","date":"2021-04-16 07:14:35","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.42641523480415344, \"perplexity\": 9548.579893276305}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-17\/segments\/1618038088731.42\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210416065116-20210416095116-00126.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Israeli world champion judoka Sagi Muki (R), and Iranian Saeid Mollaei on February 10, 2020. (Instagram/screenshot)
Hollywood Making New TV Series About Israeli and Iranian Judo Stars' Friendship
Iranian People
The Iranian athlete who escaped his country's tyranny to compete against his Israeli opponent is a "story of bravery, friendship against all odds, and the true spirit of sport."
Hollywood's MGM Television announced this week that it is partnering with Israel's Tadmor Entertainment company to develop a television series about Iranian judo star Saeid Mollaei, who defected from the tyrannical Islamic country after he was ordered to lose a bout at the world championships in order not to compete against Israeli champion Sagi Muki.
The two companies have acquired the life rights to the duo and are working with the International Judo Federation to develop the series, which will feature exclusive footage of the athletes. A documentary about the pair is also in production.
MGM is calling the series: "The incredible true story of Iranian Saeid Mollaei, one of history's bravest athletes, who despite threats from his handlers, refused to give in and chose to compete against his friend Sagi Muki from Israel."
In 2019, Mollaei said his handlers tried to force him to throw matches at that year's judo world championship in Tokyo so he would not have to face the Israeli Muki, who went on to win the tournament, JTA reported. Fearing for his life, Mollaei received sanctuary in Germany with refugee status and eventually became a citizen of Mongolia, the country for which he now competes.
"Soon these two incredible judokas will meet on the mat for the first time during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. This is a story of bravery, friendship against all odds, and the true spirit of sport," MGM stated.
MGM/UA Television president Steve Stark said: "Sagi Muki and Saeid Mollaei are both inspiring and groundbreaking athletes whose rivalry and impossible friendship has transcended the world of judo to captivate sports fans and hearts across the globe."
Last month, Mollaei made a historic visit to Israel to compete at the Tel Aviv Grand Slam judo tournament, where he was given a hero's welcome.
"I'm really happy to be in the competition," Mollaei said in English. "Thank you for everything and the welcome, all the best to all Israelis – take care of yourself."
When he met Mollaei at the airport, Israel Judo Association president Moshe Ponte greeted the Iranian judoka with a big hug.
"When I saw Saeid Mollae and his coach Muhammad, I got as excited as I have not been for a long time," Ponte told Channel 12 news. "This is a completely different excitement, this is a historic moment for this amazing, brave and nice man that everyone loves – and in Israel we also love him very much – and he is a real hero and a real competitor."
"The whole world knows him, we made history by bringing hearts together and bringing Saied from Iran to Israel, and I wish there would be peace between the two peoples," Ponte said.
I found a very interesting article on Americans United with Israel! Click to read this: --> https://americaunitedwithisrael.org/hollywood-making-new-tv-series-about-israeli-and-iranian-judo-stars-friendship/ | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 1,732 |
Q: How to build the c library for tensorflow I've been through the steps to build tensorflow and it's working in python. Now how do I BUILD the C tensorflow library I want to use?
$ gcc -I../tensorflow -ltensorflow g.c
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -ltensorflow
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
A: To build the C library from source, follow most of the instructions for building TensorFlow from source, except that instead of building the pip package, build the tarball that packages the shared libraries and C API header file:
bazel build -c opt //tensorflow/tools/lib_package:libtensorflow
This will produce a tarball in:
bazel-bin/tensorflow/tensorflow/tools/lib_package/libtensorflow.tar.gz
More details in https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/tools/lib_package/README.md
The release binaries are built using the process described above.
Hope that helps.
A: There are 2 libraries you have to build:
*
*libtensorflow_framework.so
*libtensorflow.so
To build them you have to use bazel
bazel build //tensorflow:libtensorflow_framework.so
bazel build //tensorflow:libtensorflow.so
Once the build process of both libraries ends, you have to make the linker aware of where these libraries are, hence you have to upgrade the LIBRARY_PATH and the LD_LIBRARY_PATH accordingly.
TENSORFLOW_LIB = "/path/of/tensorflow/bazel-bin/tensorflow/"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${TENSORFLOW_LIB}`
export LIBRARY_PATH=${LIBRARY_PATH}:${TENSORFLOW_LIB}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 1,897 |
{"url":"https:\/\/socratic.org\/questions\/how-do-you-solve-2-3-8","text":"# How do you solve -2^3 = -8?\n\nJun 26, 2016\n\nThis is not an equation to be solved.\n\n#### Explanation:\n\nThis is a statement rather than an equation to be solved, because there is no variable.\n\n-8 can be written as $- {2}^{3}$\n\n$- {2}^{3} = - {2}^{3}$\n\nSolve $- {2}^{x} = 8$\n$- {2}^{x} = - {2}^{3}$\nSo $x = 3$","date":"2019-03-26 01:53:33","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 5, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.6434834599494934, \"perplexity\": 857.4515899512822}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-13\/segments\/1552912204768.52\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20190326014605-20190326040605-00053.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blinov (né le dans le kraï du Primorié) est un tireur sportif russe.
Il est médaillé d'argent sur cible mobile à 10 mètres aux Jeux olympiques d'été de 2004 à Athènes.
Notes et références
Tireur sportif russe
Tireur aux Jeux olympiques d'été de 2004
Naissance dans le kraï du Primorié
Naissance en RSFS de Russie
Naissance en août 1981
Médaillé d'argent olympique russe | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 6,925 |
\section*{Introduction and Generalities}
The classical approaches to Fermat${}'$s last
theorem (FLT) are essentially of a $p$-adic nature in the $p$th cyclotomic
field; thus these studies turn to be arithmetic modulo $p$, in
which case the distinction between first and second case is
necessary but unnatural as Wiles${}'$s proof suggests.
Even if the starting point is of a global nature ($p$th powers of ideals,
classes, units, logarithmic derivative of Eichler,\ldots), the conclusion of the study is
mostly local (congruences modulo~$p$) as we can see for instance in
Ribenboim and Washington${}'$s books [R, Wa].
\smallskip
We don${}'$t know (for instance in the first case of FLT) if $p$-adic
investigations (Kummer${}'$s congruences, Mirimanoff or Thaine${}'$s congruences,
Wieferich or Wendt${}'$s criteria,\ldots) are able, from a logical point of view, to
succeed in proving it. We think that probably not and we think that
all these dramatically numerous necessary conditions can, in some
sense, be satisfied in a very rare ``\,numerical setting\,'', as for the
question of
Vandiver${}'$s conjecture for which we have given a probabilistic study in [Gr1,
II.5.4.9.2]: the number of favourable primes less than $p$
(for a counterexample) can be of the
form $c\,.\, {\rm log}({\rm log}(p))$, $c < 1$.
\smallskip
This is to be relativized with the result
of Soul\'e [S] showing (after that of Kurihara [Ku] for $n=3$)
that for odd $n$, the real components $\Cl_{\omega^{p-n}}$
of the $p$-class group\,\footnote{Standard definitions
with the character of Teichm\"uller $\omega$ and the
corresponding eigenspaces $\Cl_{\omega^i}$,
also denoted $\Cl^{(i)}$, $i=1,\ldots,p-1$; see
Not.\,2.7, and Th.\,2.8, Subsec.\,2.3.}
are trivial for any large $p$.
This result and the well-known relative case indicate
that the probabilities are not uniform
in the following way:
For small values of odd $n$, the real components
$\Cl_{\omega^{p-n}}$ are trivial (deep result of [Ku, S])
and for small values of even $m$, the relative components
$\Cl_{\omega^{p-m}}$ are trivial (because of the evident
nondivisibility by $p$ of the first
Bernoulli numbers $B_2, \ldots, B_{m_0}$); so that the real
components $\Cl_{\omega^{p-3}}, \ldots ,\Cl_{\omega^{p-n_0}}$,
for a small odd $n_0$, and the relative components
$\Cl_{\omega^{p-2}}, \ldots ,\Cl_{\omega^{p-m_0}}$,
for a small even $m_0$, are trivial,
which implies, by reflection, that the real components
$\Cl_{\omega^{2}}, \ldots ,\Cl_{\omega^{m_0}}$ are trivial
and the cyclotomic units $\eta_{\omega^{2}}^{},\ldots,\eta_{\omega^{m_0}}^{}$
are not local $p$th powers at $p$.\,\footnote{The equivalence between
$\Cl_{\omega^{p-k}} \ne 1$ and $\eta_{\omega^{k}}$ being a local $p$th power
($k$ even) is given by the theory of $p$-adic $L$-functions or the
reflection theorem; see Example 2.9.}
In the particular speculative case of the existence of a solution in
the first case of Fermat${}'$s equation, from results of
Krasner [Kr], [G2], and many authors,
for small values of odd $n'$, the last
Bernoulli numbers $B_{p-n'}$ must be divisible by $p$, say
$B_{p-3}, \ldots, B_{p-n'_0}$ for a small odd $n'_0$,
giving the nontriviality of the relative components
$\Cl_{\omega^{3}}, \ldots ,\Cl_{\omega^{n'_0}}$ and the fact that
the cyclotomic units $\eta_{\omega^{p-3}}^{},\ldots,\eta_{\omega^{p-n'_0}}$
are {\it local} $p$th powers (but not global $p$th powers because of the
previous result of Soul\'e, at least up to min$\,(n_0, n'_0)$),
which creates a significant defect for the probabilities.
\smallskip
As we see from the classical literature, strong diophantine
or analytic arguments are absent, even when
the $p$-rank of the class group is involved since this $p$-rank is used as a
formal variable. Moreover the second case is rarely studied.
\smallskip
Of course a great part of the point of view developped here is not
really new (many papers of the early twentieth century, contain
overviews of our point of view) but we
intend to organize the arguments in a more conceptual and accessible way, mainly to
avoid Bernoulli${}'$s numbers considerations,
and to suggest forthcoming studies in a more diophantine
or analytic context by using radicals instead of ideal classes.
\smallskip
We will see on this occasion that class field theory, in its various aspects,
allows us to find again {\it all} classical technical properties, without dreadful
computations.
\smallskip
Some papers already go partially in this direction (e.g.
Angl\`es [A2, A3], Granville [G1, G2], Helou [He1, He2],
Terjanian [Te], Thaine [Th1, Th2, Th3], and many others).
Finally, we must mention that all these studies strongly depend on the
base field (here $\Q$) since it is shown in [A2] that many results or
conjectures fail for the Fermat equation over a number field
$k\ne \Q$.
\medskip
In Section 1 we recall some basic facts
for the convenience of the reader; they can also be found for instance in
Washington${}'$s book [Wa].
\smallskip
In Section 2 we recall some very useful properties of class field
theory (notion of $p$-primarity which avoids painful computations,
reflection theorems in the general setting developped in [Gr1, II.5.4])
and we introduce the radical $W$ associated to a solution in any case
of the Fermat equation.
Then we explain the insufficiency of the local study of FLT, and we
put the bases of a global approach with $W$
which does not separate the first and second cases of FLT.
We also examine the influence of a solution
of the Fermat equation on other arithmetic invariants.
\smallskip
In Section 3, for the first case of FLT, we study $p$-adically
the radical $W$, introduced in
Section 2, and show how Mirimanoff${}'$s polynomials are related to this
radical, without use of Bernoulli${}'$s numbers; moreover we modify
these polynomials by introducing the characters of the Galois group,
which illuminates the class field theory context.
From this, we show that
the classical Kummer and Mirimanoff congruences
are directly the expression of reflection theorems.
To be complete, we revisit some $p$-adic studies, as those of Eichler [E1, E2],
covering works of Br\"uckner [Br1, Br2] and Skula [Sk1, Sk2].
We then return to the well-known fact that Wieferich${}'$s criterion is
a consequence of reciprocity law and, in an Appendix,
we give a proof suggested by Qu\^eme; for
this simpler proof, we interpret, with current technics, some works of Fueter--Takagi (1922) and
Inkeri (1948) (see [R, IX.4]) which do not use reciprocity law.
Finally we give a standard proof of the Germain--Wendt theorem,
and intro\-duce some (perhaps new) ideas to compare
Mirimanoff${}'$s polynomials and Gauss${}'$s sums,
and to study ``\,Mirimanoff${}'$s sums\,'' defined as sums of roots
of unity.
\smallskip
In Section 4, we give some conclusions and prospectives in various
directions.
\smallskip
We are aware of the futility
of this attempt, but we believe that it can be help\-ful
(or disappointing) for those who wish
to pursue this kind of methodo\-logies.
\section{Classical results depending on a solution of Fermat${}'$s equation}
\medskip
Let $p$ be a prime number, $p > 2$.
Let $a$, $b$, $c$ in $\Z\Sauf \{0\}$ be pairwise relatively
prime integers, such that $a^p+b^p+c^p = 0$.
In the second case of FLT, we suppose that $p \,\vert \, c$.
We have the identity:
$$a^p+b^p = (a+b)\, \No_{K/\Q}\ (a + b \,\zeta) = -c^p,$$
where $\zeta$ is a primitive $p$th root of unity, $K = \Q(\zeta)$, and
$\No_{K/\Q}$ is the norm map in $K/\Q$.
\smallskip
Let $\mathfrak p$ be the unique prime ideal $(1 - \zeta)\,\Z[\zeta]$
of $K$ dividing $p$. We have ${\mathfrak p}^{p-1} = p\,\Z[\zeta]$.
\begin{lemm} Let $\nu$ be the $p$-adic valuation of $c$.
If $\nu \geq 1$, then
$a+b = p^{\nu p -1} c_0^p$ and $\No_{K/\Q}(a + b \,\zeta) = p\, c_1^p$,
with $p \notdiv c_0\,c_1$ and $p^\nu c_0\,c_1 = -c$. If $\nu = 0$
then $a+b = c_0^p$ and $\No_{K/\Q}(a + b \,\zeta) = c_1^p$
with $c_0\, c_1 = -c$.\end{lemm}
\begin{proof} If $p \,\vert\, c$, there exists $i$, $0 \leq i \leq p-1$,
such that $a + b \,\zeta^i \in {\mathfrak p}$; thus $a + b \,\zeta^j \in {\mathfrak p}$
for all $j = 0, \ldots, p-1$ since $a + b \,\zeta^j \equiv a + b
\,\zeta^i \bmod {\mathfrak p}$ for any $j$.
So $p \,\vert\, a+b$ and, since $p \notdiv b$, the ${\mathfrak p}$-adic
valuations of $a+b$ and $b\,(\zeta-1)$ are $\mu (p-1)$ for some $\mu
\geq 1$ and 1, respectively.
Since $p>2$, the ${\mathfrak p}$-adic
valuation of $a+b\,\zeta = a+b + b\,(\zeta-1)$ is equal to 1
as well as for the conjugates
$a+b\,\zeta^i$, $i = 1, \ldots, p-1$.
The ${\mathfrak p}$-valuation of $\No_{K/\Q}(a + b \,\zeta)$ is thus
equal to $p-1$ and that of $a+b$ is $\mu(p-1) = (\nu p-1)(p-1)$,
and the lemma follows. \end{proof}
\begin{lemm} {\sl Let $\ell \ne p$ be a prime number dividing $c$.
Then $\ell \,\vert\, \No_{K/\Q}(a + b \,\zeta)$ if and only if $\ell
\notdiv a+b$ (i.e., ${\rm g.c.d.}\,(c_0,\, c_1) = 1$).
Any $\ell \,\vert\, \No_{K/\Q}(a + b \,\zeta)$ is totally
split in $K/\Q$.}
\end{lemm}
\begin{proof}
If $\ell \,\vert\, \No_{K/\Q}(a + b \,\zeta)$
we may suppose that $a + b \,\zeta \in \mathfrak l$
for a suitable $\mathfrak l \,\vert\, \ell$ so that
$\zeta$ is congruent modulo $\mathfrak l$ to a rational,
$\mathfrak l$ is totally split in $K/\Q$, thus $\ell$ is congruent
to 1 modulo $p$.
The case $\ell \notdiv a+b$ is clear.
If $\ell \,\vert\, a+b$ and if
${\mathfrak l}\,\vert\, a + b \,\zeta$
for ${\mathfrak l}\,\vert\,\ell$, we get
$b\,(\zeta -1) \in {\mathfrak l}$ (absurd since $\ell \notdiv b$.).
Thus $\ell \notdiv \No_{K/\Q}(a + b \,\zeta)$.\end{proof}
\begin{coro} {\sl(i) We have $(a + b \,\zeta)\, \Z[\zeta] = {\mathfrak p} \,
{\mathfrak c}_1^p$ if $p\,\vert\, c$, where ${\mathfrak c}_1$
is an integral ideal prime to ${\mathfrak p}$, and $(a + b \,\zeta)\,\Z[\zeta] =
{\mathfrak c}_1^p$ if not. We have $\No_{K/\Q}({\mathfrak c}_1) = c_1$.
(ii) Moreover ${\mathfrak c}_1 = \prod_{\ell\vert c_1}
{\mathfrak l}^{\nu_{\ell}}$, $\nu_\ell > 0$, where
${\mathfrak l}$ is, for each $\ell \,\vert\, c_1$, a suitable (unique) prime
ideal above $\ell$.}
\end{coro}
\begin{proof} We have only to prove that if ${\mathfrak l} \,\vert\, a + b
\,\zeta$,
then for any conjugate ${\mathfrak l}_i$ (by mean of the
automorphism $\zeta \too \zeta^i$, $i \ne 1$), we have ${\mathfrak l}_i
\notdiv a + b \,\zeta$; indeed, if not we would have
$b\,(\zeta^{-i}-\zeta) \in {\mathfrak l}$ (absurd).
Thus the ideal $\big(\frac{a+b\,\zeta}{1-\zeta} \big)\, \Z[\zeta]$
or $(a+b\zeta)\, \Z[\zeta]$ is characterized by its norm $c_1^p$ and
is a $p$th power. \end{proof}
\begin{rema} (i) By permutation we have the following, with
evident notations:
\begin{eqnarray*}
&&a+b = p^{\nu p -1}c_0^p \ \ {\rm or} \ c_0^p,
\ \ \No_{K/\Q}(a+b \,\zeta) = p\, c_1^p \ \ {\rm or} \ c_1^p, \
\,{\rm with}\ -c = c_0\, c_1, \\
&&b+c = a_0^p, \ \ \ \No_{K/\Q}(b+c \,\zeta) = a_1^p, \ \,{\rm
with} \ -a = a_0\, a_1, \\
&&c+a = b_0^p, \ \ \ \No_{K/\Q}(c+a \,\zeta) = b_1^p, \ \,{\rm
with}\ -b = b_0\, b_1,\\
&&{\rm g.c.d.}\, (a_0,\, a_1) = {\rm g.c.d.}\, (b_0,\, b_1) = {\rm
g.c.d.}\, (c_0,\, c_1) = 1,
\end{eqnarray*}
\begin{eqnarray*}
&&(a+b\,\zeta)\,\Z[\zeta] = {\mathfrak p}\,{\mathfrak c}_1^p \ \ \hbox{or}\
\,{\mathfrak c}_1^p,
\ \ \hbox{with $\No_{K/\Q}({\mathfrak
c}_1) = c_1$} , \\
&&(b+c\,\zeta)\,\Z[\zeta] = {\mathfrak a}_1^p, \ \ \hbox{with $ \No_{K/\Q}({\mathfrak
a}_1) = a_1$}, \\
&&(c+a\,\zeta)\,\Z[\zeta] = {\mathfrak b}_1^p, \ \ \hbox{with $ \No_{K/\Q}({\mathfrak
b}_1) = b_1$}. \\
\end{eqnarray*}
\vspace{-0.2cm}
(ii) All the prime numbers dividing $a_1b_1c_1$ are totally split
in $K/\Q$; thus any (positive) divisor of $a_1b_1c_1$ is congruent to 1 modulo $p$. \end{rema}
\smallskip
These computations and the proofs of FLT in particular cases
suggest the following conjecture.
\begin{conj} {\sl Let $p$ be a prime number, $p>3$, and
$K=\Q(\zeta)$, where $\zeta$ is a primitive $p$th root of unity.
Put ${\mathfrak p} := (1 - \zeta)\,\Z[\zeta]$.
\smallskip\noindent
Then for $x,\,y \in \Z \Sauf \{0\}$, with g.c.d. $(x,y)=1$, the equation
$(x+y \,\zeta)\,\Z[\zeta] = {\mathfrak p}\, {\mathfrak z}^p \ {\rm or}\
{\mathfrak z}^p$
(depending on whether $x+y \equiv 0 \bmod (p)$ or not),
where ${\mathfrak z}$ is an ideal of $K$ prime to~${\mathfrak p}$,
has no solution except the trivial cases:
$x+y \,\zeta = \pm (1-\zeta) $ and $\pm
(1+\zeta)$}. \end{conj}
In other words, considering the two relations
$(a+b\,\zeta)\,\Z[\zeta] = {\mathfrak p} {\mathfrak c}_1^p$ (or ${\mathfrak c}_1^p$)
and $a+b = p^{\nu p-1} c_0^p$ (or $c_0^p$),
equivalent to the existence
of a solution of the Fermat equation, we assert that
the second is unnecessary, the first
one being equivalent to $\No(a+b\,\zeta) = p\, c_1^p$ (or $c_1^p$).
It is likely that this conjecture has already been stated,
but we have found no reference.
\section{Algebraic Kummer theory and reflection theorems}
This Section is valid for the two cases of FLT.
\subsection{$p$-primarity -- local $p$th powers}
The following Theorem 2.2 will be essential to clarify some aspects of
ramification in Kummer cyclic extensions of degree $p$ of $K$. Let $ K_{\mathfrak p}$ be
the ${\mathfrak p}$-completion of the field $K$ (see [Gr1, I.6.3]
for the classical notion of $p$-primarity due to Hasse).
\begin{lemm}Let $\alpha \in K^\times$ be prime to $p$
and such that $\alpha\,\Z[\zeta]$ is the $p$th power of an ideal of
$K$.\,\footnote{Such numbers are called {\it pseudo--units}
since units are a particular case; we will use this word to simplify.}
\noindent
The number $\alpha$ is $p$-primary (i.e., $K(\sqrt [p] {\alpha}\,)/K$ is
unramified at ${\mathfrak p}$) if and only if it is a local $p$th power (i.e.,
$\alpha \in K_{\mathfrak p}^{\times p}$).
This happens if and only if $\alpha$ is congruent to a $p$th power
modulo ${\mathfrak p}^{p} = (p) \,{\mathfrak p}$.
\end{lemm}
\begin{proof} One direction is trivial. Suppose that $K(\sqrt [p]
{\alpha}\,)/K$ is
unramified at ${\mathfrak p}$; since $\alpha$ is a pseudo-unit,
this extension is unramified as a global
extension and is contained in the $p$-Hilbert class field $H$ of $K$. The
Frobenius automorphism of ${\mathfrak p}$ in $H/K$ depends on the
class of ${\mathfrak p}$ which is trivial since ${\mathfrak p}=
(1 - \zeta)$; so ${\mathfrak p}$ splits totally in $H/K$, thus in $K(\sqrt [p] {\alpha}\,)/K$,
proving the first part of the proposition.
The final congruential condition of $p$-primarity is well known (see
e.g. [Gr1, Ch. I, \S\,6, (b)]).
\smallskip
Warning: the general condition of $p$-primarity in $K$ is
``\,$\alpha$ congruent to a $p$th power
modulo ${\mathfrak p}^{p} = (p) \,{\mathfrak p}$\,'', but the general
condition to be a local $p$th power at ${\mathfrak p}$
in $K$ is ``\,$\alpha$ congruent to a $p$th power
modulo ${\mathfrak p}^{p+1} = (p) \,{\mathfrak p}^2$\,''. The fact that
``\,$\alpha$ is a pseudo-unit of $K$ implies the
equivalence\,'' is nontrivial and specific of the pseudo-units of the
$p$th cyclotomic field
(such studies are given in [Th3], for special pseudo-units,
by means of explicit polynomial computations).\end{proof}
We have the following consequence, due to Kummer for units,
which can be generalized to pseudo-units.
\begin{theo} Every pseudo-unit $\eta$ of $K$,
congruent to a rational (respectively to a $p$th power) modulo
$p$, is $p$-primary, thus a local $p$th power at ${\mathfrak p}$. If moreover the $p$-class
group of $K$ is trivial, $\eta$ is a global $p$th power.\end{theo}
\begin{proof} We have, for a suitable rational $\rho$, $\eta^{p-1}
\equiv \rho^{p-1} \equiv 1 \bmod (p)$ in $\Z_{(p)}[\zeta]$,
where $\Z_{(p)}$ is the localization of $\Z$ at $p$.
Put $\eta^{p-1} = 1 +
p \,\delta$, $\delta \in \Z_{(p)}[\zeta]$, and $(\eta) = {\mathfrak n}^p$;
taking the norm
of the relation $(\eta^{p-1})={\mathfrak n}^{(p-1)p}$ we get
$\No_{K/\Q}(\eta^{p-1}) = n^{(p-1)p}$ with $n^{p-1}\equiv 1 \bmod (p)$, hence
$1 \equiv 1 + p \,{\rm Tr}_{K/\Q}(\delta) \bmod (p^2)$ giving
${\rm Tr}_{K/\Q}(\delta) \equiv 0 \bmod (p)$, thus $\delta \in
{\mathfrak p}$, proving the first part of the theorem (see Lem.\,2.1).
If $\eta \equiv u^p \bmod (p)$, $u = \sum u_i\,\zeta^i \in
\Z_{(p)}[\zeta]$, then $u^p \equiv \sum u_i^p =: \rho \in \Z_{(p)}$
modulo $p$; recipro\-cally, $\eta \equiv \rho \bmod (p)$
implies $\eta \equiv \rho^p \bmod (p)$.
The extension
$K(\sqrt[p]\eta\,)$ is thus unramified; so
if the $p$-class group of $K$ is trivial, this extension must be
trivial, which finishes the proof.\end{proof}
When the $p$-class group of $K$ is trivial, $K$ is said to be
$p$-regular (in the Kummer sense),
which is here equivalent to its $p$-rationality; this property
implies in general the above result for units.
See [MN], [JN], [GJ] for these notions in general, and [AN]
where the Kummer property is generalized. See Subsections 2.5, (a)
and (b) for the study of the invariants ${\mathcal T}(K)$ and $R_2(K)$ whose
triviality characterizes the $p$-rationality and the
$p$-regularity (in the ${\rm K}$-theory sense), respectively.
\subsection{Introduction of some radicals}
We begin by the following remarks,
from a solution $(a, b, c)$ of the Fermat equation,
which are the key of the present study.
\begin{rema}
(i) We note that we have $(a+b\,\zeta)\Z[\zeta] = {\mathfrak p}{\mathfrak c}_1^p$
or ${\mathfrak c}_1^p$ (see Cor.\,1.3, (i), or Rem.\,1.4, (i)).
This means that the Kummer cyclic extensions (of degree $p$ or 1)
$K(\sqrt [p]{a+b\,\zeta^i}\,)/K , \ \ i=1,\ldots,p-1$,
are $p$-ramified (i.e. unramified outside $p$).
In the same way,
$K(\sqrt [p]{b+c\,\zeta^j}\,)/K,\ \ K(\sqrt [p]{c+a\,\zeta^k}\,)/K$,
$j,\, k=1,\ldots,p-1$,
are $p$-ramified cyclic extensions.
\smallskip
(ii) When $p\,\vert\, c$, the extensions $K(\sqrt
[p]{b+c\,\zeta^j}\,)/K$, $j=1,\ldots,p-1$, are unrami\-fied:
indeed we have $b+c\,\zeta^j \equiv b \bmod (p)$,
hence the conclusion with Theorem 2.2.
But we know that these extensions must split at ${\mathfrak p}$
which implies that necessarily $c \equiv 0 \mod (p^2)$.\,\footnote{
We have $b+c\,\zeta
= (b+c)\big (1+ \frac{c}{b+c}\,(\zeta-1)\big)$ where
$b+c = a_0^p$.
Let $1+ \frac{c}{b+c}\,(\zeta-1) = (1+ u\,(\zeta - 1))^p$ locally; if
$u\equiv u_0 \bmod {\mathfrak p}$, with $u_0 \in \Z$, then
$\zeta^{-u_0}\,(1+ u\,(\zeta - 1)) \equiv 1 \bmod {\mathfrak p}^2$,
giving $1+ \frac{c}{b+c}\,(\zeta-1)\equiv 1 \bmod (p)\,{\mathfrak
p}^2$, thus $c \equiv 0 \bmod (p)\,{\mathfrak p}$, hence modulo
$p^2$.}
\smallskip
We have $c+a\,\zeta^k = \zeta^k\,(a + c\,\zeta^{-k})$ with
$a + c\,\zeta^{-k} \equiv a \bmod (p)$; thus
in the compositum
$K(\sqrt [p]{\zeta}\,, \, \sqrt [p]{c+a\,\zeta^k}\,)$
(where $K(\sqrt [p]{\zeta}\,)/K$ is also $p$-ramified)
we obtain the unramified extensions
$K\big (\sqrt [p]{a+c \,\zeta^{k'}}\,\,\big)\big/K$, $k'=1,\ldots,p-1$,
and similarly with $c+b\,\zeta^j$.
\smallskip
(iii) If $p\,\vert\, c$, then from Corollary 1.3, (i),
the pseudo-units $\,\Frac{a + b\,
\zeta^i}{1-\zeta^i}$ are such that
$\Frac{a + b\, \zeta^i}{1-\zeta^i} = \Frac{a + b}{1-\zeta^i}-b
\equiv -b \bmod (p)$ since $a+b$ is of $p$-valuation
$\nu\,p-1 \geq 2$. Theorem 2.2 implies that the
$\Frac{a + b\, \zeta^i}{1-\zeta^i}$ are local $p$th powers at
${\mathfrak p}$ and that the extensions
$K\big (\sqrt [p]{\frac{a + b\, \zeta^i}{1-\zeta^i}}\,\big)\big/K$
are unramified.\end{rema}
\begin{nota} Let $E_p$ be the group of $p$-units of $K$.
Then $E_p = \langle \,\zeta,\, 1 -
\zeta\,\rangle \oplus E^+$,
where $E^+$ is the group of units of the maximal
real subfield $K^+$ de $K$.
Put $ E^+ = \langle \,\varepsilon_i\,
\rangle_{i=1,\ldots,{\frac{p-3}{2}}}$, and
for $i,j,k = 1,\ldots, p-1$, put:
\begin{eqnarray*}\hspace{0.3cm}
\Omega_{\ } &:=& \, \langle\, a+b\,\zeta^i, \,b+c\,\zeta^j,\, c+a\,\zeta^k
\,\rangle, \\
\Gamma_{\ } \, &:=& \, \langle\,\zeta,\ 1 - \zeta,\ \varepsilon_1,
\ldots,\varepsilon_{\frac{p-3}{2}},\
a+b\,\zeta^i,\ b+c\,\zeta^j,\ c+a\,\zeta^k\, \rangle \,=\, E_p\, \oplus
\,\Omega, \\
W_c &:=& \,\langle\, a+b\,\zeta^i\, \rangle_{i} \,.\,
K^{\times p}/ K^{\times p}, \\
W_a &:=& \,\langle\, b+c\,\zeta^j\, \rangle_{j} \,.\,
K^{\times p}/ K^{\times p}, \\
W_b &:=& \,\langle \, c+a\,\zeta^k\,
\rangle_{k} \,.\,
K^{\times p}/ K^{\times p} , \\
W_{\ } &:=& \,\Gamma \,.\, K^{\times p}/
K^{\times p} .
\end{eqnarray*}
If $p\,\vert\,c$ (second case of FLT), we introduce the group:
\smallskip
$\hspace{1.55cm}\Omega_{\rm prim}\! := \langle\, \frac{a+b\,\zeta^i}{1-\zeta^i},
\,b+c\,\zeta^j,\, a+c\,\zeta^k \,\rangle$,
for which $\Gamma = E_p \oplus \Omega_{\rm prim}$.
\end{nota}
\begin{rema} (i) It is easy to see from Corollary 1.3, (ii), that the
$3(p-1) + \frac{p+1}{2}$ elements
$\zeta,\
1 - \zeta,\ \varepsilon_1, \ldots,\varepsilon_{\frac{p-3}{2}},\
a+b\,\zeta^i,\ b+c\,\zeta^j,\ c+a\,\zeta^k,\ i,j,k=1,\ldots,p-1$,
are multiplicatively independent and, due to their particular form, the
idea is that they are largely independent in $K^{\times}/ K^{\times p}$
(this is the main diophantine argument).
\smallskip
Unfortunately, this is probably very difficult to prove since it looks
like Vandiver${}'$s conjecture (which applies to the cyclotomic
$p$-units, generated by $1 - \zeta$ and its conjugates, which are not
independent in $K^{\times}/ K^{\times p}$ as soon as Vandiver${}'$s
conjecture is false). But in fact we will see
below that the required condition is not the total independence
of the above numbers in $ K^{\times}/ K^{\times p}$ because of analytic formulas.
\smallskip\smallskip
(ii) It is evident that $\zeta$,
$1 - \zeta$, $\varepsilon_1, \ldots,\varepsilon_{\frac{p-3}{2}}$ are
independent in $ K^{\times}/ K^{\times p}$ since it is by definition a
$\Z$-basis of $E_p$.
\smallskip
(iii) We have $W = \Gamma\,.\, K^{\times p}/K^{\times p}$ and
$E_p\,.\, K^{\times p}/K^{\times p} \simeq E_p/E_p^p$;
then:
$$\Gamma\,.\, K^{\times p}/E_p\,.\, K^{\times p}
\simeq \Gamma/\Gamma \cap (E_p\,.\, K^{\times p}) \simeq
\Omega/\Omega \cap (E_p\,.\, K^{\times p})$$
whose order is the degree
$\big [K(\sqrt[p]{\Gamma}\,) \,:\, K(\sqrt[p]{E_p}\,)\big ]$.
\smallskip
(iv) If $p\,\vert\,c$, then $K(\sqrt[p]{\Omega_{\rm prim}}\,)/K$ is
unramified and $K(\sqrt[p]{\Gamma}\,) / K(\sqrt[p]{E_p}\,)$
is unramified hence ${\mathfrak p}$-split
of degree $(\Omega_{\rm prim}:\Omega_{\rm prim}
\cap (E_p\,.\, K^{\times p}))$ (nonramification
and decomposition propagate by extension),
which will be interpreted in Subsection 2.3.\end{rema}
Denote by $K(\sqrt[p] W\,)$ the extension $K(\sqrt[p] \Gamma\,)$.
We conclude (Rem.\,2.3) that the extension $K(\sqrt[p] W\,)/K$ is a ${\Pl_p}$-ramified
$p$-elementary abelian extension of $K$ (i.e., abelian of exponent $p$),
where ${\Pl_p}$ is the set of places of $K$
above $p$ (here reduced to the singleton $\{ {\mathfrak p}\}$).
\subsection{Use of class field theory: abelian ${\Pl_p}$-ramification}
Let $H_{\Pl_p}$ be the maximal ${\Pl_p}$-ramified abelian pro-$p$-extension of $K$,
and let $\Cl_{\Pl_p}$ be the generalised $p$-class
group of $K$ (i.e., the direct limit of the
$p$-ray class groups modulo rays groups of conductor a power of $p$);
we have:
$${\rm Gal\,}(H_{\Pl_p}/K) \simeq \Cl_{\Pl_p}.$$
From the general reflection formula proved in [Gr1, II.5.4.1, (iii)] we
obtain:\,\footnote {For any abelian group $A$
we denote by ${\rm rk}_p(A)$ the $\F_p$-dimension of $A/A^p$.}
$${\rm rk}_p(\Cl_{\Pl_p}) - {\rm rk}_p(\Cl^{\Pl_p}) =
\vert \,\Pl_p\, \vert + p-1 - \hbox{$\Frac{p-1}{2} =
\Frac{p+1}{2}$}. $$
Recall that in this formula, $\Cl^{\Pl_p}$ (the $\Pl_p$-class group)
is the quotient of the $p$-class group $\Cl$ by the subgroup generated by the classes of
the prime ideals above $p$, which gives, as we have seen, $\Cl^{\Pl_p} = \Cl$.
\smallskip
From the above, since $K(\sqrt[p] W\,) \subseteq H_{\Pl_p}$, we get:
$$ {\rm rk}_p(\Cl) = {\rm rk}_p(\Cl_{\Pl_p}) - \hbox{$\Frac{p+1}{2}$}
\geq {\rm rk}_p(W) - \hbox{$\Frac{p+1}{2}$}. $$
Now we can prove the following from a solution $(a,b,c)$ of the
Fermat equation:
\begin{theo} Let $W$ be the radical generated,
in $K^{\times}/ K^{\times p}$, by the group of $p$-units $E_p$ and the numbers
$a+b\,\zeta^i$, $b+c\,\zeta^j$, $c+a\,\zeta^k$, $i, j, k
=1,\ldots,p-1$.\,\footnote{In the second case of FLT with $p\,\vert\,c$, $a+b\,\zeta$
is not a pseudo-unit, but $\frac{a+b\,\zeta}{1-\zeta}$, $b+c\,\zeta$, $c+a\,\zeta$ are pseudo-units;
thus $W$ is generated by $1-\zeta$ and pseudo-units.}
\smallskip\noindent
Then we have the inequalities
$\ {\rm rk}_p(W) \leq \frac{p+1}{2} + {\rm rk}_p(\Cl) \leq p$.
\smallskip\noindent
If moreover $p$ is regular (i.e., if $\Cl$ is trivial) then
$\ W = E_p/E_p^p$.\end{theo}
\begin{proof} From many authors
(see e.g. [G3] for more history), we know that the relative class
number $h^-$, i.e., the order of the relative class group
$C^- \!:= {\rm Ker}\big( \No_{K/K^+} : C \too C^+ := C_{K^+} \big)$,
is such that ${\rm log}(h^-) < \hbox{$\frac{p}{4}$} {\rm log}(p)$
which proves that ${\rm rk}_p(\Cl^-) \leq \hbox{$\frac{p-1}{4}$}$.
From classical Hecke--Leopoldt reflection theorem, we get
${\rm rk}_p(\Cl^+) \leq {\rm rk}_p(\Cl^-)$
giving the (very bad) inequality
${\rm rk}_p(\Cl) \leq \hbox{$\frac{p-1}{2}$}$,
and the first part of the theorem.
If $p$ is regular we get ${\rm rk}_p(W) \leq \frac{p+1}{2}$;
since $W$ contains $E_p/E_p^p$ which is of $p$-rank $\frac{p+1}{2}$
we have the equality, proving the theorem.\end{proof}
In the regular case we obtain the following (see Not.\,2.4):
\smallskip
(i) {\it First case of FLT}. From Remark 2.5, (iii), we obtain
$\Omega \subset E\,.\,K^{\times p}$ since in the first case the
elements of $\Omega$ are pseudo-units. Then in that case, all
the elements
$a+b\,\zeta^i$, $b+c\,\zeta^j$, and $\,c+a\,\zeta^k$ are of the form
$\varepsilon \,.\, \alpha^p$, $\varepsilon \in E$, $\alpha \in \Z[\zeta]$. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 3,146 |
Q: One Splitter to resize 4 panels jQuery I want to do the following:
"+" in the center is splitter, which can move both directions, with this "+" you will be able to resize those 4 panels at the same time or hide 2 of them etc. I'm new in js and jQuery, can you please give me some tips how to do this or give me some quick demo?
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 3,383 |
ACCEPTED
#### According to
The Catalogue of Life, 3rd January 2011
#### Published in
null
#### Original name
Ornithogalum stuetzelianum U.Müll.-Doblies & D.Müll.-Doblies
### Remarks
null | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 3,006 |
Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Relationships:
James T. Kirk/Spock
Pavel Chekov/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Montgomery "Scotty" Scott/Nyota Uhura
Ben Sulu/Hikaru Sulu
Ben Sulu
drinking and pining
drinking as symbolism
relationships falling apart
Made up Engineering
made up medical bullshit
Made up Aliens - Freeform
lots of them - Freeform
Deal With It
im not a doctor/engineer damnit
i'm a sailor
minor plot point and associated charaters somehow become full b plot
did i mention the drinking?
genuine navy knowledge from a sailor
i don't pull punches
asshat other starfleet captains
Truth Serum
sorta - Freeform
Malingering
star trek drinking fic
Wordcount: 100.000-150.000
It got longer
Drink Your Heart Away
Carpe_History
Sometimes, when their emotions get to be too much, Scotty, Jim, and Bones go drinking on shore leave. It has been their tradition for the past five years. There, in the many bars across the universe, they won't judge when the three start talking about how badass and amazing their loves are. They can be in love in peace, and they can come to terms with the fact they will never be loved in the same way as they love their dear ones.
Because Spock and Uhura have been dating for eight years. Scotty and Jim think something is going to happen on the first shore leave of the second five-year mission that will involve a wedding canopy and some Vulcan drums.
And Bones just watched Chekov get ready for a dinner to meet the parents of his girlfriend.
The three of them think they will never end up with their love, and they smile because Spock, Uhura, and Chekov are happy. No matter how much it hurts. So they drink.
They're wrong.
And Spock, Uhura, and Chekov are all about to prove how wrong they are. As they travel through space to new planets, new people and more missions, Bones', Scotty's and Jim's lives change.
What the hell happened on that shore leave?! Jim wondered.
Ok ladies, gentlemen, and gentlebeings. This is my massive star trek drinking fic. I'm not even done at I am currently at 82,000 words. I Just really wanted to have the first chapter out here. I hope you all enjoy!
A couple of things first though. Go listen to the Peter Hollens version of the chapter title. It's amazing. Second, I am not lying about the amount of drinking in this fic. You don't like drinking; this isn't the fic for you. Third, my update schedule is going to be weird. Sorry. Fourth, there is going to be some practicalities of military life in here. Small things, Starfleet isn't military, but they run it like one so... there are things I can't imagine an organization such as Starfleet doesn't have. If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them to my best of my abilities.
Thank you SO MUCH For b0kunoanime for betaing! it means the world to me!
Finally, I hope you all enjoy this fic. I've been working on it for nearly eight months now.
Chapter 1: Song of the Lonely Mountain
One hour into shore leave
Based on the chatter around Jim, the first shore leave of the second five-year mission was going to be great for most of the crew.
He had already heard plans of at least fifteen crewmembers just walking to the transporter room from his quarters. Every one of the conversations he passed was filled with excitement and anticipation. He was excited about his crew members' time off. Their enthusiasm just filled every room of the ship. Morale was high, and high morale created a happy ship.
It helped that much of the crew from the last five-year mission had stayed with the ship for the next one. The Enterprise didn't have the high turnover Starfleet was expecting from the first five-year exploratory mission. Most of the crew from the original five-year mission had told Starfleet they would like to stay with the Enterprise after the mission was done. Most of them had actually gotten that wish.
The ship was also filled with the excitement of the new crew members who hadn't been on shore leave with the Enterprise before. Jim had heard the phrase, "There's nothing like an Enterprise shore leave!" more than once in the past several days.
Just three months into the second five-year mission, the old crew and the few new crewmembers had begun to come together as a team. Jim wasn't concerned anymore about the balance between the old crew and the new. The few crewmembers they had lost along the way to launch had been due to transfers or family commitments.
Jim had been worried that they would have lost more people until Starfleet announced an experiment about families staying on ships that work in Deep Space, and the Enterprise had been picked as a pilot test ship.
Starfleet wanted to keep qualified crewmembers and not lose them to just missing their families too much. Jim found this out just before launch, but Starfleet had thought the ship would have a high turnover rate, so to combat that they chose the Enterprise as the test ship.
The Sulu's were the first to sign up. Sulu had been so excited to tell them that Starfleet had approved his family's application to the program and how they would be coming along with the ship. Everyone was thrilled for him because watching Sulu pine for his family wasn't fun. They all knew he had missed his husband and daughter so much while the ship was out in the black.
It hadn't taken long for the families to settle in and make a place for themselves. Ben Sulu had, in addition to running his own botany experiments, volunteered to be the school teacher for the older kids, and one of Scotty's engineer's two wives had taken care of the education of the younger ones. Between the three of them, the children about fifteen of them now living on the Enterprise, were very well entertained and educated. The other spouses all found a way to be useful. Some of them were working in the labs or with yeoman. One of Jim's junior officer's wife was fanatically writing her doctoral thesis in federation history and had already run the paper past most of the officers in the anthropology and history departments.
The families found ways of keeping the morale of the Enterprise high. But even they couldn't help morale as much as the promise of a shore leave could. This shore leave was the first one of the mission, and it was on a planet known for its beaches and islands. They hadn't even left Federation space yet, so everyone was excited to see the planet.
Jim nodded at the transporter chief as he entered the room. It was loud and crowded, with many people waiting for their turn to get on the transporter pad. The crew was split into five duty sections, so one-fifth of the ships' complement was staying on board to work while the rest of the ship went down to see the planet below.
"Captain!" came a cry from a small body who ran up and hit Jim at the waist. Demora Sulu was short for a ten-year-old, apparently. Jim didn't know for sure because he didn't have kids and wasn't planning on having any; he just accepted what others told him about kids. Jim figured that with the life that he lived, he wasn't going to be a father and thus didn't need to know. He would be a cool uncle though.
"Hey 'Mora! Getting ready for the beach?" Jim asked lifting Demora up onto his waist. The girl was wearing a bright yellow sundress with whales on it. She nodded and showed him the strap of her bathing suit.
Demora laughed.
She was honestly too big to be lifted by many people, but as Jim could lift Spock with his more massive density, a small ten-year-old wasn't much.
"Yep! Daddy will go tomorrow with us, but today, me and Papa are going!" She said pointing at Ben Sulu who waved from the side of the transporter station. Jim walked toward him, carrying Demora in his arms. Demora was giggling while they moved.
Sulu was there too, standing off to the side of his husband. While his husband and daughter were dressed to go to a beach, Sulu still wore his uniform. He and Jim had swapped duty days for shore leave. Jim would generally be on duty the first day so that his crew could get to enjoy the time off sooner. But Sulu had asked to take the day so he could have uninterrupted time with his family.
Jim hadn't even thought about the proposition twice before agreeing. The happiness on Sulu's face was worth any amount of paperwork he had to do to rearrange the shifts.
"Hey, Captain," Sulu said, "Let me take my munchkin." He held out his arms to take Demora, who burst into giggles again but allowed herself to be passed around. "Little one, you are getting far too big for me to do that," Sulu said to her.
"I'm not! I'm short!" Demora said cheerily. She apparently wasn't concerned about her height.
Jim smiled at the family in front of him. He wouldn't get a chance at this, and sometime in the past several years, that idea had stopped hurting. Again, Jim was determined to be the best cool uncle though. He didn't mind babysitting.
"Thanks again for switching, Jim," Hikaru said, taking Ben's hand.
Jim waved him off, "It's not a problem, trust me. It'll be nice to get a day off. Me, Scotty and Bones have plans now." Both Sulu's and Ben's eyes took on a knowing look. Jim did not grimace. They knew what the plans were at least. "We'll be long done before last beam up of the night."
Hikaru looked relieved, and Jim would feel hurt but all Hikaru said was, "Of course, Captain. No repeats of that night at Yorktown."
Jim burst out laughing. "That won't happen again!"
The door slid open behind him. "What won't happen, Captain?" Uhura's voice came from behind him. Jim turned, opening his mouth to tell her that nothing would happen, what was she talking about? But he stopped short and instead smiled at the sight that Uhura had managed to create.
Uhura was wearing a red dress that was much better than her usual uniform. But it was the sight of Spock that made Jim really happy. She had convinced him to wear human beach clothing. So Spock was wearing a long sleeve white shirt that had the sleeves rolled up and light tan pants.
He was a sight to see.
God, Jim loved Spock.
And Jim was really, honestly, thankful that Uhura had convinced him to dress like this.
"Mr. Sulu, you're next." The transporter chief said, making Jim jump and pull his attention away from Spock.
Ben nodded, kissed Sulu goodbye quickly and then took Demora's hand. Sulu bent down and kissed Demora on the forehead.
"Have fun, you two," Sulu said.
They walked to the transporter pad. Demora waved at everyone in the room. Uhura smiled and waved back. Spock only nodded. Jim gave a mock salute that earned him a giggle from Demora and a wave from Ben. They vanished in a shower of glittering sparkles.
"Captain, you are taking today off?" Spock asked, his gaze focusing on Jim.
Jim nodded. He always loved it when Spock placed all of his attention on Jim. "I am. Sulu and I switched."
"I see," Spock said.
Sulu smirked as he walked out the door. He understood what was going on better than most; Jim needed a drink.
Jim watched him go for a moment then turned back to Spock and Uhura, who were giving the transporter chief the coordinates of their lodging and pickup point.
Jim shook his head ruefully. "Now, I'm sure I don't actually need to remind you, but as you two are the only ones that are completely duty-free, I actually have to say something. Look, Spock! I'm following regulations for once!"
Spock merely tilted his head, "Indeed," he said in a mild tone that Jim long knew meant he was amused by Jim's antics.
"Please keep your communicators with you and be in reach of transport if we call. I don't honestly suspect we'll need anything, Scotty's not messing with the communication system this time nor are any of the labs doing anything crazy. But just in case, keep the communicators on!" Jim said. He knew that this whole speech that Starfleet made him say to people who were duty-free while on shore leave was utterly pointless when it came to the scary determination of Uhura and the competency of Spock but, according to regulations, it had to be said.
"We will, Captain," Uhura said. She fiddled with the tab of her duffel that was on her shoulder, looking impatient. She was clearly ready to leave. Jim kept his speech short - because if he had five days of time off with Spock, he would be eager to start shore leave too.
Jim hadn't been surprised when Starfleet's best couple had requested the full five days off so they could spend time at the beach planet.
They had been spending a lot of time together, more than usual, and Jim thought he knew what was coming out of this shore leave.
He was already steeling himself to be happy for them.
"Commander and Lieutenant Commander, it's your turn." The Transporter Chief said. Spock shot Jim a look of confusion.
"Captain, you were here before Nyota and myself, are you not leaving?" Spock asked even as Nyota pulled him onto the transporter pad.
"I'm waiting for Bones and Scotty, but they will be along shortly."
Spock nodded again and then stepped onto the transporter's platform on correct point. Jim waved as they vanished.
The sound of the door opening again caught Jim's attention. Scotty and Bones walked into the transporter room, both out of uniform and both wearing a haggard look on their faces. Both of them looked like how Jim felt.
A little rung out.
A little tired.
A little heartbroken.
They needed a drink.
At a bar on the planet's surface
Five hours into shore leave
Scotty took a sip of his beer. It was one from Scotland. He loved when he was still in Federation space and could get the beer he actually liked. He had already finished the shots he had ordered for himself and now was going to end the night with something less intoxicating.
He had learned his lesson about only drinking liquor on nights like this at Yorktown. From what he could clearly remember, that bartender was very good at their job.
"I can't believe they are going to get married," Jim said after downing his third and last shot of the night. He placed the glass next to Scotty's and winced at the row of nine shots. Between the three of them, they had already drunk a lot.
Jim had sounded wistful, sad and distant.
But that was what this night was all about, so Scotty didn't blame him.
Bones nodded, fingers pulling at the label of his drink. "It's been a long time coming."
Scotty just frowned and took a drink of his beer.
And now the trio had drunk enough to get started.
Jim stared down at his own beer. "I mean, I know that Spock is going to ask her… or maybe Uhura will ask him? Whatever is most logical… anyway, I know it will happen this week."
"They've been spending a lot more time than usual together, and they look so content when they are together." Scotty said mournfully. Nyota didn't look as happy as she once did but Scotty knew that relationships changed and became more comfortable as time went on. She and the Commander looked content and satisfied.
That's all he really wanted for her.
He wanted the best for her. She deserved it, and if she thought Spock was the best for her, then Scotty was going to support her in that choice.
"Spock and Uhura have been together for - what, six or seven years now?" Bones asked. He was peeling the label off of his own Orion beer. It was half gone. "It's only logical for them to get hitched. It only took Jocelyn and me three years to get to that point."
Jim frowned, "Bones, you might not be the best example to emulate here."
Bones laughed, long past from the days where the reminders of his divorce hurt him. "Right! But those two... They're different. They'll be better than Joycelyn and me. They're a better fit anyway."
Scotty felt the flinch of pain run across his face to match the one that flashed on Jim's face. "It will be a beautiful wedding. I'll make sure of it." Scotty said.
Jim laughed, and it was only a little hollow. "I'm probably going to be officiating it, so it better be."
Both Scotty and Bones paused in taking a sip of their drinks. Then they both thought about the regulations and rules of ships, captains, and marriages.
Then chorused out, "Shit."
"I know right?!" Jim said before taking another deeper swig of his beer. "Normally… I like that duty."
Scotty could see the whole ceremony in his head. He would be in the rec room; it would be all done up in white and silver, with a beautiful canopy that was above the podium. Jim would be at the podium, standing next to Spock with Bones as the best man. All three of them in their best dress uniforms. Bones would be the best man because Jim was officiating the wedding and they all knew it. Chapel or Marcus might be the maid of honor. Scotty wasn't sure who Nyota would choose. Nyota would be in a beautiful and stunning white dress.
It would be beautiful and, in the end, very, very, heartbreaking.
"She would be gorgeous though," Scotty said out loud.
"She would," Bones hummed into his next drink.
"Spock will give her a run for her money though." Jim piped up. "He would look great in a black tux or a gray suit."
Even Scotty had to agree to that.
"Guys, don't let me drink before that ceremony… And don't let me drink after either. Just get me to a planet, and we can have shore leave. Or lock me in my room for a day." Jim said seriously. He was staring at the table, and his voice was quiet. "I don't think I'll need much reminding then, but don't let me get tempted. I won't ruin what Spock has with Nyota because of … me." He looked up at them each in turn.
Scotty and Bones exchanged a look. "We won't Jim-boy." Bones told him.
Scotty nodded in agreement. "If you don't then I won't either. We'll watch each other."
"Good," Jim said and then finished his drink and raised it above his head. A waitress came by with another. He took it, paid and tipped her and thanked her.
Scotty liked this planet's social traditions. They didn't have tabs at bars, but they had them at all the restaurants. It made for entertaining moments.
They were silent for a moment, then Bones spoke in a quiet voice that was just as small as Jim's had been before. "He's meeting her parents today; he told me he was excited about the whole shindig."
Neither Jim nor he pretended not to know who Bones was talking about. They'd spent far too much time together to do each other the disservice. "That's rather serious for Chekov isn't that?" Scotty asked.
"It is," Bones agreed, "But Nurse Warrington has talked of nothing for the last two weeks. And then when I ran into him earlier, he was so happy…"
Jim frowned, "Warrington? Isn't that the daughter of…"
"Newly promoted Captain Warrington of the Intrepid? Yes. The man sent me a comm before he got promoted, asking about his 'little girl's' training. He was a little stuck up but nothing too annoying after working with Spock for so long. I can only imagine how much more annoying he's gotten since putting on the Captain's stripes." Bones said. Jim laughed, and Scotty shook his head in amusement.
"I'm glad I've never had to deal with him. I can't imagine having to deal with the parent of one of my engineers!" Scotty said, laughing.
Bones let out a long, frustrated sigh. "I sent him back a very nicely worded message that he would need to ask the captain of the ship about training on any ship that's not his own. I wasn't going to tell him a thing, and he would just have to deal."
That caused Jim and Scotty to burst out laughing.
Jim laughed harder. "He never sent me that comm! I know what my answer would have been so," Jim said, dragging out the word, "It's probably best that he didn't."
Bones smiled into his drink. "I hope it would have been a firm but polite 'Fuck you.' I nominate Spock to write it."
That caused another round of laughter.
"I hope he isn't trying to poach my navigator. I need Chekov here. You need Chekov here. We all need Chekov." Jim said once he stopped laughing. "That asshat can't have him."
"We all do need him, but Pavel loves the Enterprise and would never leave her. Not even for a pretty face he's meeting the parents of. He might poach his daughter though. She's been making noise about it. Hope you won't mind." Bones said.
Scotty knew how Chekov felt. He loved the Enterprise, and Scotty was still stunned he had left her at all, even though it was for a short time. Chekov felt the same. All of the main bridge crew did, including Bones, although he wasn't one to admit that.
Jim, McCoy, and Spock had all refused the many promotion offers at the end of the last five-year mission. Any promotion would take them off of the Enterprise. Scotty scared too many people with his ideas about what an engine can and can't do, so he didn't get too many offers. Nyota had refused the most poaching offers of the senior bridge crew. Sulu had at least three different universities after him, and Chekov had the most captain's after him for the First Officer position than Scotty could shake a stick at.
Jim shrugged, like the loss of a nurse to nepotism wasn't much. Scotty thought that if she was so willing to jump ship (as the saying went) after the five-year mission had started, then it wasn't a big deal. Jim had already written her off. Scotty had to laugh a little at the pun.
The Enterprise needed the best. Those who didn't want to stay on the ship weren't working at their best. To keep them would be hurting everyone involved.
"But it is serious," Scotty said, going back to Bones' problem with Chekov.
Bones nodded sadly. "We ran into each other before I met up with you, Scotty. He's looking forward to the dinner. It's at one of the best and most romantic restaurants in this city. They seem to be heading down to serious if it's not already."
Jim reached out and lightly bumped Bones shoulder with his fist. "Are you alright?"
Bones smiled, but it was small and just as hollow as Jim's laugh from earlier. "I never had a chance with him anyway, so nothing has changed. I'll be fine."
Bones shook his head and changed the subject. He turned to Scotty and said, "Did Nyota tell you what she did for the med bay recently? She and Chapel revamped our traumatic-casualty first responder treatment cards, so the T-CFRC's clearer to understand and easier to use. Anyone can fill them out now and understand what needs to happen, what needs to be said to medical and how to effectively treat the casualties. Not just the medics or the trained first responders."
Bones was apparently sick of listening to them talk about the pain of unrequited love. He obviously wanted to get to the next part of the night. None of them were ones who enjoyed being miserable while pining.
"Nyota's the one who redid the T-CFRCs?" Scotty said, as always impressed by the way Nyota could fix words and enable communication. "A couple of drills I ran last week with the engineering crew using them flowed so smoothly it was amazing! We got the information needed for the medics so much quicker than before. According to the training team's evaluators, we saved more crewmen then we ever have before in drills." Scotty told them.
The drills had been run the week prior with the new responses, and they had been a massive success. Now if there were an accident in Engineering, they would be able to do a lot more for any casualties they might have while they waited for the medics to reach them.
"She's wonderful, isn't she?" Scotty sighed happily.
Jim laughed, "She is. Uhura's been working on something that requires blueprints of the comm station, but she won't tell me until she's got a solid plan so you might get questions soon, there, Scotty."
Scotty smiled, and while he knew it was small, it was real and not pained. "I'll look forward to it. I always love to talk about our lady to her." The 'our lady' was a comprise from an argument between Jim and Scotty about who loved the Enterprise more.
Bones had declared that they were both idiots and it was a tie. Sulu and his husband had laughed at them all, during this argument. Scotty, from that point on, ignored the fact he definitely loved the Enterprise more. He also ignored the fact that Jim thought the same thing about himself.
"Has Spock been kicking your ass lately in chess, Jim?" Scotty asked.
Scotty knew they were delving into the reason they got drunk together more often than not on shore leaves. They need someone, or someone's, who would listen to them talk about their loves without rolling their eyes or telling them to get over it.
Jim grinned, "Nope! I'm on a five-game winning streak. If I can get to eleven, then I'll have beaten the longest winning streak we've got. Spock is currently holding that record at ten!"
"What's the score at now?" Bones asked. He was leaning over the table slightly. "I've got money on when one of you gets to five hundred games won."
"490 to 489, Spock's favor. But I'm catching up." Jim said, still smiling as he drank from his beer.
"It's rather impressive how much you two play chess," Scotty told Jim. "It's like you play every night."
Jim shook his head. "It's not every night, especially in the last few weeks. But some of the games do take a few days to play. Some don't. What about Chekov? Anything up with him, Bones?"
Scotty thought that when Bones talked about Chekov, the man lit up. "Yep. Apparently, he was unhappy during the drills you ran, Scotty. He was telling me yesterday at lunch about them."
Scotty blinked, "What was wrong with my drills? They were all things that can go wrong with the systems and cause problems. I tried to make them as accurate as possible." He tried not to take that personally. He spent a lot of time making his drills so his crew could be prepared.
Bones laughed as he took another drink. "Not at the drills themselves but how he acted. Pavel wasn't happy at his reactions at the medical portion, so he's asking for more training. Warrington is going to give it to him. They had to run the paperwork up through me. I approved it. Scotty, you need more trained medics down there."
Jim frowned at crossed his arms at his chest. "Warrington? Bones, is it okay for his girlfriend to be the one teaching him?"
Bones nodded, "It will have to be. She's qualified. Chapel or I would do it normally, but Chapel has her hands full with the psych and medical parts of the families on ships experiment. And, you know, I'm in charge of the entire ship's medical. I don't have time to eat or sleep most days."
Scotty scoffed. "You're telling me that if young Chekov came to you and asked for personal training, you would deny him?"
Jim copied Scotty's scoff. "Seriously, Bones? We know you better."
Bones waved his hands placating with a slight flush on his face, "True, but they think they can do this so I'll let them. If it gets out of hand, then I'll take over. Still. I trust Pavel."
All three of them took a drink at that.
Later when they had finished off their last drink, and they were back on the Enterprise, in their own quarters, not too late as all three of them had duty the next day, Scotty allowed himself to wish and dream.
He'd dream of a beautiful woman who deserves the world and that for once, he was the world she chose.
Bones had been drinking for so long that he had a plan anytime he, Scotty and Jim all went out. Before he even left, Bones would lay out all he needed for the next morning. His uniform, his boots, a headache pill and a hydration hypo had all been laid out on the table next to his bed.
He was always grateful in the morning for the preparations. He was also reminded that he was getting older. Bones was glad they didn't do this often.
Only when the feelings got to be too much would they go and drink like this.
Bones groaned as he sat up in bed. His headache wasn't as severe as some of the other times. Thanks for small mercies.
He pushed himself off of the bed, and he reached for the pill. It helped his head.
Bones sighed. It didn't help his heart. He was still in love with one Pavel Chekov.
Not that he wanted to complain all the time. Pavel was astonishing, and falling in love with him had allowed Bones to fully heal from the damage his failed marriage had caused. It just hurt sometimes. But Bones wouldn't change it for the world.
Bones sighed. He needed to get ready.
He walked into the bathroom and started to put together the image of a doctor who was not suffering a mild hangover.
Bones thought he wasn't as successful as he wanted to be.
He just kept getting distracted by that conversation he had with Pavel right before he met up with Jim and Scotty.
Pavel had been excited but nervous for his date. Bones had asked why. Chekov said it was the first time he was meeting a partner's parents. That it was a big day for him.
Bones had opened his stupid mouth and asked if Chekov was getting serious with Warrington. He didn't know what possessed him to ask something so stupid. It was a double-edged sword. Either he would be left knowing that it wasn't serious but Pavel would never look his way, or that it was serious and that Pavel was unreachable.
Bones now knew that Pavel was unreachable.
He was getting serious with someone who wasn't Bones. Bones now knew how Jim and Scotty felt when it came to Spock and Uhura.
Pavel had been so excited when he spoke about Warrington. Chekov had smiled broadly. Some of his nerves had shown because the smile hadn't reached his eyes.
Bones left his quarters with one look in the mirror. He hadn't bothered to shave and was now sporting a scruff that would be annoying by the end of the day. But the rest of him looked neat and presentable.
It would do. Jim would forgive him if he were a little out of regulation. Most of the regulations when it came to facial hair and uniforms became a little lax when shore leave came around.
Most of the crew was on shore leave anyway, so Bones expected a quiet day of preparing the med bay for the next long haul in deep space. Now that he had spent the better part of nearly eight years in space, Bones found he didn't shudder at the thought of those long voyages in deep uncharted space like he used to. Now it was just one more day on the Enterprise.
He was greeted by his duty team as he walked into the med bay. Two nurses had duty today. One of his most junior nurses, and Warrington.
"Doctor," Warrington said, "We have no appointments today. Is there anything you would like us to get started on?" she smiled brightly. There was a hint of stress to her expression that Bones understood. Late nights with duty the next day sucked. Always had and always will.
Camelia Warrington was precisely what Bones pictured when he thought about Pavel's future. She was beautiful, strong spirited and determined. Warrington was an excellent nurse, did her job excellently and was always ready to learn something new. She did think a little too much of her skills most of the time. But that wasn't too big a problem. She was not ready to be the head nurse by far, maybe in a few years, but not right now. She needed more leadership skills.
Bones liked her overall.
The thing was, no matter how much Bones wanted to hate Warrington or any of Chekov's partners, he never could. They were people that Chekov had chosen. So who was he to hate any of them? He was an adult. Not a teenager, always jealous of the people who had the attention of the one he loved.
"Can you start on organizing the shipment from the planet? Please make separate areas for the deliveries to the labs and the ones we keep." He told her. "You understand the system better than Gillpe right now. I need him working on the basic qualifications for new nurses." Warrington nodded and headed out to the loading dock to get the deliveries.
Bones gestured to the junior nurse, a q'nnnaina name Gillpe. Gillpe had only been on the ship since they left earth and he was still getting his qualifications. So Bones assigned him to study, and Bones would sign off anything that the nurse could prove he learned at the end of the day.
Gillpe went pale, nodded and then disappeared to a computer station to do just that.
Bones sighed as he went into his office. He knew why the nurses were all afraid of him. Bones would yell if their mistakes caused a problem for a patient and he would yell at the patients if they caused problems for his nurses. Chapel was the only one in the med bay who could handle him at his worst, and she wasn't on the ship today.
He dropped into his chair and opened his padd up to do the paperwork that always appeared when they got a shipment in. Bones left his door open so he could hear what was going on in the med bay proper. He didn't need to babysit his nurses, but he did like to know if they got a patient that required his attention or if they could handle themselves.
Bones hadn't even gotten a full hours' worth of work in before he heard someone come in. He looked up from his padd and paid attention to the sound coming in from the med bay. He heard Warrington start to greet whatever crewmember had injured themselves.
Bones went back to his paperwork. If Warrington needed him, she would get him.
When Gillpe poked his head in about five minutes later, Bones wondered what was going on. "Umm. Sir? Could you come here for a moment? I don't think… that is... Umm…" Gillpe trailed off, apparently not knowing how to say whatever it was he was trying to say.
Bones sighed. "What is it? Just spit it out." He hated when the nurses had no idea how to explain the insanity that occurred on the Enterprise. Chapel would just say things like "The crewmember's hand is trapped in an alien machine that is causing the ship to fall into a time portal. Again. But only if he's leaning to the right," with a straight face. Why couldn't the newbies do it too?
"Well, sir, we just got a patient and well," Gillpe dragged out the last part of the word before taking a deep breath, "Warrington is refusing to treat him. She keeps on saying she won't treat anything she caused - or that he's lying," Gillpe finished in a rush. "I don't think that's allowed."
"What." Bones stared at him.
That was unlike Warrington. She was an excellent nurse. What was going on out there? Bones shook his head as Gillpe started to respond - "Nevermind, let's go see what's happening."
Bones followed Gillpe to the primary treatment room. He was going to have to train the nervousness out of the q'nnnaina. This wouldn't do if they got into a combat situation or when they ended up in a classic 'Enterprise, what the fuck' moment. Bones needed calm nurses. Not jumpy ones. Gillpe had potential if he was getting Bones on a gut feeling that something was wrong - but he needed work. Gillpe retreated back to the computer to study in a hurry.
As Bones walked into the room he saw Pavel, sitting on one of the beds, looking at Warrington and trying to talk to her. "Camelia, I just need some headache pills. Could you please get me that?" he asked, almost pleading.
Warrington glared down at Pavel. "No. You don't deserve anything after what you did to me. Embarrassing me like that, in front of my father no less." She didn't have a tricorder in her hand, Bones noticed with a frown. It was like she didn't even care to do her job. That struck Bones as not only unprofessional but out of character for the woman. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing. Faking a headache just to talk to me."
Pavel visibly sighed. "Can I speak to Chapel or Len? I would like to get treated for this headache."
" Nurse Chapel is not on duty right now, and Doctor McCoy is doing important paperwork and is not to be disturbed by malingerers like you. Go back to your station and stop stalling. I don't care what you want or say."
Bones felt his face flush at Pavel's use of his nickname 'Len.' Most people don't call him that. Most people call him McCoy, or Bones. A few people called him by his titles of Lieutenant Commander or Doctor. Almost no one called him Len. Bones pushed the thought away as he got closer.
"Warrington, you should care what the tricorder says." Bones said coming up to them. The pair jumped and turned to look at him. Pavel winced at the sudden movement. His gaze was slightly unfocused, face pale and drawn, and he had an enormous red mark on his cheek.
Bones pushed passed Warrington, opened up his tricorder, and took readings. The red mark was an impact bruise. Probably from a hard slap or a light punch but the body was already healing the damage, so Bones wasn't sure. But the headache Pavel was complaining of was from a migraine that was reading something terrible on the body-pain scale.
If Warrington was ignoring the red bruise and was mad at Pavel, then she may, indeed, have been the one to have caused it - or knew who did.
"Go back to the inventory, Warrington. We'll talk later about this," Bones said, showing her the readings. She frowned at the results and then nodded. Bones didn't want to reprimand her, but it looked like she had let her personal drama get in the way of doing her job. If he cut this behavior off now, then he would have fewer problems later.
"Chekov. When did your migraine start?" Bones asked, turning back to Pavel. He reached into the cabinet behind him, blindly looking for the hydration hypos.
Pavel closed his eyes and thought. Bones hated it when Pavel was in his med bay, but at least it was for something Bones could fix rather quickly. "It started during dinner last night. I thought it was a stress headache that would fade. Dinner last night was… not fun."
Something in Pavel's tone said there was a story there that Pavel wasn't telling. Bones frowned and Pavel didn't reopen his eyes. The silence stretched out for a moment.
"What happened, Pavel? Last time we talked you were looking forward to dinner," Bones asked before he could stop himself. When it came to Pavel, Bones had never been able to stop himself from asking questions that he didn't want to know the answers to. It seemed to be a habit he couldn't break. But he was Pavel's friend - and doctor. He could ask, and Pavel was comfortable enough to tell him.
That comfort meant a lot to Bones.
"A lot of stuff," Pavel said, frowning again, eyes glued to the floor, "It ended up being a recruitment dinner and not a 'meet the parents'."
Bones could see that Pavel was unhappy. It was in every line of Pavel's body.
It made Bones wish he could hug Pavel.
"Camelia wants to transfer to her father's ship. She wants me to go with her. Her father wants me there too. I don't want to go. So, she broke up with me." Pavel paused for a moment and then continued, "… And slapped me… but that was more or less deserved."
Bones paused in filling the hypo. "What did you tell her that got you slapped so hard it left a mark more than twelve hours later?"
Pavel shrugged, still not having looked up. He looked like he was trying to puzzle out what happened the night before. "I told her that staying on the Enterprise is more important than going with her right now. Except not nearly as politely. Like I said: more or less deserved."
Bones nodded. "I see." Bones did not see. Even in his divorce, with all the horribleness and yelling and anger, he had never made his ex-wife so angry she slapped him, and that honestly sounded like Warrington's problem. "Stay still," he commanded, and Pavel patiently froze in place. "I can see why she's angry with you. But that doesn't explain why she thinks you were faking the headache to see her." Bones pressed the hydration hypo into Pavel's neck.
"I'm not sure honestly, but I think Camelia expects me to apologize and get back together with her. I don't want to do that at all. She's going to be transferring soon. I'm not doing a long-distance relationship with someone who doesn't deeply care about me, and we just aren't there yet. I saw what it was like for Hikaru." Pavel said as Bones watched color come back into his face.
Bones, with practice born of hearing about Chekov's breakups, ignored the surge of hope in his chest. The situation still hadn't changed. Pavel wasn't looking for him. Pavel didn't want Bones. He did want a friend though. He walked over to the cabinet with the most commonly used, non time-critical pills. He started to look for the strong headache pills, and the epidermis and capillaries fix-it pills.
"If you don't think you're that deep into the relationship yet and you don't want to leave Enterprise, then don't. I know we'll miss you something terrible if you do go. But we'll be happier if you stayed." While Bones spoke with the plural, he knew that he meant 'I'll miss you a lot. I'll be happier.' He turned to face Pavel.
Pavel smiled, finally looking up at Bones. Pavel's smile always made Bones feel like the universe was better and brighter. When he smiled at Bones like that, Bones felt himself fall in love all over again.
God, he really was lost for this man.
"Here. Take these," Bones said handing Pavel a cup with two pills in it. One for the migraine and the other to heal the trauma of the slap. He watched Pavel swallow them back and then handed him a bottle. "Then you're off duty for the next six hours as the pills kick in. This combination will cause some low-level dizziness, so expect that."
"I will. Thanks, Len." Pavel said as he began to feel the effects of the hypo and the pills, visibly gaining more color in his face. Bones, as always with every patient that he treated, felt relief at the healing. "For being my friend."
"It's the least I can do." Bones told him, helping Pavel to his feet. He memorized the feeling of Pavel's hands on his arm. They don't often touch, so Bones would admit to holding the few times they did in a special place. "Just tell me if you need anything."
"I will," Pavel promised as he walked to the door. Bones stayed by the medical bed. He had to admire the view of Pavel walking away, all confidence and strength.
Pavel paused just before the door. He stood there and looked at Bones with a question in his eyes. Bones nodded gently to let Pavel know it was okay to ask his question. Pavel smiled very faintly and asked, "Actually, Len? Can you do the medical training I wanted, with me? The plan me and Camelia made so I can work on my medical quals won't quite work if she won't talk to me."
Bones flushed as he remembered the teasing that Jim and Scotty had given him last night. If Pavel asked he would provide the man training. He nodded, "Of course I will, Pavel. Just send me some open times that will work for you, and I'll see if I can fit in. It may be late in the night though."
Pavel grinned at him and waved. "That won't be a problem." He turned away and started to leave. "I'll see you later, Len. By the way - nice beard."
Bones allowed himself small wave back. And since no one was looking an intense flush. Pavel had noticed his scruff!
Well, that was interesting.
Not how he expected the day to go.
Now he had to go deal with an oddly acting nurse. So, Bones put on his game face and turned back to the central part of the med bay.
Three days later, the end of shore leave
If Jim had ever dreaded the end of shore leave so much before, he'd be lying. As much as he was excited to see Spock and talk about the new orders they had received, he was dreading seeing a ring on Uhura's finger. Or seeing Spock touch her even more than they usually do.
Both were signs of a bonding or an engagement.
Scotty got out of seeing Spock and Uhura as they arrived; he was needed in engineering for something. Jim had to be there to greet his first officer. Neither Spock nor Jim had ever come onto the ship without the other welcoming them. It was less regulation, and more tradition.
Kyle, the transporter technician, said, "Sir! I've received the coordinates from the bridge. Ready to beam up."
"Energize, Mr. Kyle. Let's get our communication officers and first officer back." Jim told him.
"Aye sir, Energizing now." Kyle hit the transporter sequence and brought the transporters to full power.
Two forms appeared on the pad. They shimmered and coalesced into Uhura and Spock. They paused for a moment to get their bearings.
Jim waved. "Welcome back. Enjoy your vacation?"
"It was very relaxing," Uhura said. She stepped off the transporter pad and made her way to the door. "I'm glad for the time off, Captain."
Jim smiled. "Any time we can, Lieutenant Commander. Any time."
She laughed as she left with her bag over her shoulder. She went without saying goodbye to Spock. That was a first as far as Jim knew. They didn't say anything on the bridge, both of them holding themselves to a high level of professionalism, but when they were off duty, both Spock and Uhura were always doing little things like saying goodbye or tiny touches between each other that forever hinted at something more.
Jim hadn't seen her do either. Nor, he noticed, was she wearing an engagement ring.
Maybe he would have a little more time to prepare his heart.
Spock stepped off the pad slower. "Good day, Captain." He said as he got closer to Jim.
"Hi, Spock. Enjoy your time in the sun?" Jim asked as they walked together to the door. Jim knew that Spock did spend some time in the sun. His ordinarily pale complexion was slightly tinged a darker shade, like a very light tan on a human.
"I found it to be enjoyable," Spock returned. They walked into the hallways of the ship. "If you mind, may we head to my quarters before we return to the bridge?" Spock asked.
Jim nodded. "Sure Spock, let me tell you about our new orders as we walk." They got into a turbolift, and Jim told the computer to take them to the officer quarter's deck.
"And what are our new orders?" Spock prompted. Jim leaned on the turbolift walls and relaxed, but Spock remained straight-backed despite his bag on one shoulder.
"We're heading to a planet called Yen'bu to witness a treaty signing and to pick up some of the diplomatic envoys for transport," Jim said, reciting the orders he had read several times since they came in three days ago. "It should be a normal ceremony and treaty signing, but there is one minor complication that we have to be careful of." The doors opened to the officer's deck. Jim followed Spock off and they headend to Spock's door.
"What is that complication, Jim?" Spock asked. Jim smiled at his name. Now that they were out of earshot of the crew, Spock would feel more comfortable relaxing the boundaries he had set for himself. Jim enjoyed when Spock did that.
Jim pulled a face at the question. "Something on the planet makes anyone on its surface unable to tell a lie."
"Fascinating," Spock said as he placed his bag on the floor next to the laundry shoot, clearly for later sorting. "Have they figured out why that is?"
Jim shrugged. "I don't know. I'll get you what the diplomatic scientists have managed to dig up."
It was Spock's turn to pull a face, although it was gone in a flash. Jim stifled a laugh. He had heard Spock's very calm and logical rant about diplomatic scientists enough times to know what Spock thought about whatever conclusions that they had come up with.
"I'll look forward to reading the papers and reports from the diplomatic scientists," Spock said after a moment of reflection.
Jim didn't bother hiding a snort at that. "Yes. I'm sure you will." He said as sarcastically as he could.
Spock merely tilted his head, "I just said that. I am looking forward to reading their conclusions."
"And then you will enjoy tearing said conclusions apart and leaving the pieces of bad science or half-assed conclusions on the floor in front of them," Jim said. "Don't think I don't know about the last three times we had to deal with diplomatic scientists. You made one of them cry. The others haven't even tried to publish anything since they met you." He sat down on Spock's desk. He ignored the way that Spock tried to subtly direct him off the desk and onto the chair.
"I am unsure what you are speaking of, Jim. However, if they want to publish anything again, they simply must present conclusions based on the evidence in front of them. Which, I am certain, they can so do." Spock said mildly as he pulled out his padd from his desk drawer.
Jim laughed, knowing at least one of the scientists was going to reevaluate their life choices.
Jim felt somewhat uncomfortable about the idea that he couldn't lie on a planet but he only had to be there for a few days before he would be off again, so Jim felt that he could just get over it. As long as he didn't think about kissing Spock or just how amazing Spock was in general, then he should be fine.
Jim hoped. A good third of his thoughts would need to be censored if he wanted to not spill his guts out to someone who was already taken and had no interest.
Spock, on the other hand, would find the whole experience fascinating and would probably end up publishing a paper on the anti-lying capabilities of the planet himself.
Jim knew he was a goner for Spock - he wanted to read the paper.
"Is there anything else in the orders that are relevant?" Spock asked as he flipped through the orders on the padd.
"Just one. We have an after dinner live comm meeting with the Admiralty for a more complete idea of what we'll be doing on Yen'bu. It will be on Friday, which I know is normally a date time for you and Uhura but I'll have to ask you to be there." Jim said apologetically.
Jim hated when he interrupted Spock's dates with Uhura. One, it was a dick move, interrupting someone's date. Two, it was always like stabbing himself in the heart, because he knew what a date with Spock looked like and he wanted that so badly. Three, Jim always felt terrible. Spock and Uhura had so little time for themselves and each other that Jim just tried to not interrupt date nights unless he had official pressing ship's business that needed her or Spock, or both of them, to deal with.
"I will be there. Do not worry about interrupting any more dates between myself and the Lieutenant Commander. We are no longer seeing each other." Spock said as he became absorbed in the orders on the padd.
Jim gaped at him.
"Did I hear that right? You and Uhura broke up?" Jim nearly yelled. The only thing that prevented Jim from shouting was the fact Spock was so damn calm. Jim was stunned. He thought there would be an engagement, not a breakup. Spock didn't answer or even look up from the padd. Jim glared at him. "You do not just drop a bombshell like that and not explain, Spock!"
Spock looked up at Jim. "There is no need to yell Captain; I am right here. Yes. Nyota and I are no longer in a romantic relationship." He sat down in the chair that Jim ignored. He didn't put the padd down though.
Jim sagged against the screen that separated the sleeping quarters and the working area. "But… I… I thought… that… I thought that you would be getting engaged not breaking up?" Jim said. Then a sudden realization came over him, and he asked, "Are you okay with this?"
Spock looked startled for a heartbeat before he pulled a blank expression over his face again. "An engagement was never the plan. Nyota and I realized the relationship had expired. This was a mutual choice. I realized that you are asking about my emotional wellbeing as that is a standard human response. I am Vulcan. I am thus unchanged by the 'break up.'"
Jim didn't fully believe him, but if Spock were hiding emotional pain, he wouldn't have brought up anything human about himself. He would have made himself seem more Vulcan so people would stop asking.
So, Jim accepted that fact and then tried to move on.
He failed.
All he could hear was that Spock was single. For the first time in nearly eight years of knowing him, Jim could, in theory, have a chance.
Jim could, in theory, just get up and kiss Spock right now and maybe Spock would respond positively and maybe –
Jim then violently shoved that thought away. And inwardly frowned at himself. He might be desperately in love with Spock, but the Vulcan had just gotten out of a nearly eight-year relationship.
Give Spock some time, man, he scolded himself.
"If you say so, Spock." Jim agreed, "Just know I'm here if you want to talk." He hopped off of Spock's desk and landed on the floor.
"I will keep that in mind, Jim but I believe that it will be unlikely I will need to do so. After breaking up, Nyota and I found that we could actually speak to each other easier than before. It was quite refreshing to have her… friendship back. It was something we had lost in the last few years," Spock said. Then he looked surprised. He clearly hadn't meant to share that. "…Apparently, I am more willing to speak than I thought previously."
Jim laughed. "Sometimes that happens. But you two are good? Like friends good? Or are you 'we can still be friends' good?" Jim asked.
Jim started to pace. It was a habit of his that Spock would be familiar with, Jim always had too much energy. Jim found out long ago, during one of the late nights where they stayed up and worked on the ship's business, that Spock didn't mind the habit at all. He found it curious and fascinating. Spock had said it was an excellent example of human idiosyncrasies.
"I am unsure of the difference between the two phrases, however, we are indeed friends. We had several days to reestablish that dynamic between us." Spock said tilting his head again he watched Jim pace.
"Wait… days?" Jim asked, "Spock, when did you break up with Uhura? Or did she break up with you? Eh, who cares. You said 'mutual.'" Jim said. He had thought it was only a day or so at the most. When did they break up on a five-day shore leave?
Spock sighed and picked up the padd again. "We broke up four days and ten hours ago. The first night of shore leave."
Jim gaped again. "You guys broke up the first night of shore leave and then still stayed for the rest of shore leave?"
Spock was starting to look mildly annoyed. "I have said just that in several different ways over the course of this conversation, Jim. Have you been listening?"
Jim waved his hands in the air. "I have! I have!"
"The hotel was quite nice, and neither of us felt the desire to leave. I slept on the couch for the duration." Spock told him. Jim could see the really logical way that decision came to be. He also wondered how awkward that first night was.
Jim nodded. Then a thought occurred to him and he realized he had to tell Scotty about this new development. "Are you sure you're good?" he asked again.
Spock sighed, "As much as I hate the word, I am fine , Jim," he stressed the word fine in a very human manner. Jim smiled at the sudden rush of affection he had for Spock. "I feel no deep sense of loss or pain about the end of my relationship with Nyota." Spock looked around and then picked up his padd. His eyebrows raised in a manner Jim had taken to mean 'oh really?' A very skeptical response to something on the padd. Jim was usually amused by this expression and seeing it on Spock's didn't fail him now. He half laughed as he nodded.
"If you're sure..." Jim said as he started to their shared bathroom. "Then I'll meet you on the bridge in an about a half hour? I just realized that I need to comm Scotty about something."
"That is acceptable, Jim. I must read this report from the astrophysics lab, it is apparently time critical." Jim could hear the unspoken, 'and I will be the judge of that' in Spock's tone. Jim knew Spock hated when his labs said something was time critical and it wasn't. "I will see you in a half-hour," Spock said as he became absorbed in the paper in front of him.
Jim walked calmly through the bathroom, calmly to the comm unit on his desk and calmly called the ship's communication center for Scotty.
That was where the calm ended.
Scotty was in Engineering. Therefore, he would be with other people. Jim weighed the options. Gossip on the ship traveled faster than one of Bones' illnesses. However, Scotty needed to know this bit of information.
Scotty answered quickly, "Scott here, Captain, what's up?" While Engineering was ordinarily loud in the background of comm calls, it wasn't today. Jim could hear Scotty's voice clearly.
"How private are you right now, Scotty?" Jim asked, leaning over his desk.
Scotty's voice was still clearly audible when he answered, "In my office, Captain. Just finishing up with a disciplinary issue. Anything wrong?"
"That shoebox in Engineering is not an office, Scotty. It's a shoebox. What disciplinary issue? Anything I should know about?" Jim asked momentarily distracted by Scotty statement.
"Nah. Just a crewman not handling his workload well and acting out because of it. No need to worry at the moment. I've got it handled for now." Scotty said sighing.
Jim hummed. "Scotty..."
Scotty caved with very little pressure. He wasn't a major disciplinarian, and so he often went to Jim with his 'problem children'. "It's Kent. He's been adjusting well, so I just think this is a one-off issue. I'm not worried."
Jim was glad Scotty felt that way. Sometimes new crewmen didn't adjust well to the Enterprise. People who looked promising and would be great on any ship or station other than the Enterprise just burned out when they got on board the vessel. "Well tell me if you need me or if you need anything."
"I will. Anyway, what's up?"
"I've got some news that you may want to sit down for," Jim said in response. He was already nervous, and it wasn't even his relationship.
It did affect everything though.
"Well, Kirk? What's so big that I need to sit down and that I need privacy?" Scotty's voice was growing annoyed.
Jim took a deep breath, "Spock and Uhura broke up." Jim said in a rush. He didn't give Scotty time to respond before continuing. "It's been a few days. It was mutual. Neither is acting any different, but they aren't together."
There as a slight crash on the other end of the line. Jim waited a moment before he called out, "Scotty? You ok down there?"
"Jimmy-boy, there was no way simply sitting down could have prepared me for that. But thanks for the attempt." Scotty's voice said from the com unit on the desk. "It's true then? They aren't together? No engagement?"
Jim shook his head even though Scotty couldn't see it. "No engagement. They aren't together. According to Spock, it was mutual."
There was another moment of silence before Scotty's voice came back, slightly pained. "Even if they both wanted it, we can't go after them, can we, Jim?"
Jim sighed. "Not yet. But we can ask in a few months when they're ready. Trust me, Scotty, this isn't as easy as I want it. But I won't be a rebound, and I won't let you be one either."
"Thanks, Captain." Scotty said. "I need to think about this for a while. Scott out."
"Kirk out, Scotty," Jim said automatically. He leaned back in his chair. What was Jim going to do about this? He hoped it wouldn't affect the dynamic on the bridge too much.
The Enterprise worked as a team for a reason.
There was a chirp from his padd. Jim glanced at it, but as he reached for the padd, his eyes fell on a handwritten letter, in Vulcan, that had been left to him by Ambassador Spock.
The letter wasn't in Spock's handwriting.
And Jim felt a visceral, painful, giddy surge of hope shoot through him.
Jim shook his head, pushing the hope down and making it stay there, and grabbed the padd. The message was from Bones. All it read was 'Chekov and Warrington are over. It's been several days, and they are not doing the on again and off again thing according to Chekov.'
Spock and Uhura weren't together.
And now according to Bones, Chekov came back to the ship after breaking up with Warrington.
What the hell happened on that shore leave?!
Chapter 2: But I Can't Help Falling In Love With You
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Twenty-eight hours after the USS Enterprise had escaped a singularity after battling the Nerada.
Scotty groaned when he sat down in the conference room chair. Kirk had called him up from Engineering for a status update with the other department heads.
This meeting honestly might be the first time he'd had a moment to sit down since he had first beamed aboard the Enterprise yesterday. Scotty couldn't remember. He had been on his feet for the last thirty or so hours.
Scotty was in love with this ship.
He knew deep down in his bones that this is where he was supposed to be in the universe. The Enterprise was the best ship in the fleet. Even though it was literally nearly falling apart at the seams and it was only his team's skills, hard work and liberal use of creative solutions preventing the ship's complete destruction.
Since Scotty had beamed on board, it had been one thing after another. The Enterprise had lost many of her systems in the initial attacks by the Nerada. The ship had lost even more systems as they were being sucked into a singularly. When they jettisoned the warp core, that took out most of the remaining nonessential systems and a couple of the essential ones with it.
They had lost a lot of power. With that loss of power came a loss of systems.
Luckily the life support systems were on four different redundancies that even with the loss of three power sources they still had breathable air and food.
Among the systems lost during the whole event and its aftermath was the schematics database.
That had been lost sometime during the whole fiasco, though probably not when they lost the warp core. Scotty had many days spent on that ice rock that dared to call itself a Starfleet base, dreaming about the new constellation class ships and reading (and maybe memorizing the stats of) the schematics (-who could blame him for dreaming when the constellation class looked that amazing?), so he had some idea of what was going on in the systems.
But thoroughly memorizing blueprints and schematics of a ship he had never even put hands on was even too much for him. So, for the most part, he, or any member of his new team, did not have a definite clue of what they were working on. Most of the crew was as new to Constellation-class ships as the ship was to them. Not many people had experience with them. Not yet anyway. Fixing the schematics database was the first step to fixing ship. After they stopped all of the physical fires - and most of the metaphorical ones.
Kirk had called this meeting of the department heads to start to get a full understanding of where the ship was, and how it was doing since they were no longer in the "Oh shit, we're still on fire" mode.
Now the ship was firmly in the "Oh shit, damage control on everything. We are going to survive, by sheer determination and duct tape" mode. The senior crew and the leadership could take stock of what had happened on the ship and make plans.
Scotty brought with him a padd full of information; mostly lists and status report from his department. His new department's muster reports were included – the records of the confirmed dead, missing, who was accounted for and where they were working or if they were in med bay. He had the damage report from all of the engineering decks and all of the engines. Many of his people lost berthing quarters, so they had nowhere to sleep, and many had lost uniforms and personal gear, so Scotty had a list of that too. Kirk also had comm'd Scotty to ask for the account of when the replicators would be up. Scotty had a full diagnostic of them too; replicators hadn't changed no matter what ship they were in.
He had more of the same lists from departments which did not usually fall under the Chief Engineering Officer's direct command, but they had lost their department heads during the fighting and he was next in the chain of command: damage control, quartermasters, fabrications, and general repair.
He also had an itemized list of what they could do, what they needed to do once they got the schematics, what was useless but still on the ship, what could be cannibalized, what had to be jury-rigged, what had to be fabricated, what was a total loss, and what could be ignored as it was non-mission essential. He had the much smaller list of maintenance actions for what he could do and how to start it. But he couldn't do much without the schematics.
He knew that every person here would have similar information on the pads in front of them.
Scotty looked around the room. He knew on a typical day, the table would be filled, each chair holding a department head or a chief officer.
Today the room was half full, at best. There was medical department head, a haggard doctor, about the same age as Scotty, with stress lines on his face still dressed in blue medical scrubs with faint traces of blood on them sleeping in the chair across from him; he looked as exhausted as Scotty felt. They were just as tired. Both of them were saving lives. The doctor was just doing it more directly.
Next to the doctor was a very tired looking teenager. He wore command gold. He kept staring at a padd and mumming in another language that Scotty thought was Russian but wasn't fully sure. Scotty recognized the voice; it was the kid from the bridge. The one with the idea about hiding in Saturn's rings. The teen had been the one who was talking to Scotty about the navigation console about an hour previous. He was one of the ones Scotty had enlisted to fix their own stations because they had some skills with engineering. Scotty honestly didn't remember the teen's name after being awake for so long, but he did excellent work.
The science department heads, ordinarily at least ten of them now just down to four, were talking amongst themselves. They looked shell-shocked and shaken. But all of them had a determined look on their faces. They were going to survive and fight for that survival. Scotty appreciated the determination. He would need them to use it.
The ship had lost several science labs in the attack but none rest of them had been damaged structurally. Now that the physical fires were out, Scotty would need to make notes and work with the department heads to get the remaining labs fixed. The labs might not get back up and running any time soon; even if Scotty fixed everything possible, they were missing the core and most of the power that it generated.
Kirk came into the room flanked by three others; one Vulcan in blue, one Asian man in gold, and an absolutely beautiful woman in red. All four of them looked exhausted.
The Vulcan in science blue, Spock, Scotty's exhausted mind supplied him, sat in the seat next to the chair at the head of the table. Scotty was glad for the confirmation that Spock was still the XO, despite the fight Scotty had watched during the first ten minutes he had been on the ship between him and Kirk. Scotty was glad that he had gotten Spock off of the Old - Future Ambassador - Vulcan's ship.
The Asian man in command gold sat next to what was left of the science team. Scotty had worked with the Helmsman on figuring out how much power they had and what they needed to get back to Earth Spacedock. Scotty realised they had never exchanged names.
The black woman in operations red sat next to Spock. Scotty hadn't met her yet. He recognized her as part of the crew that was on the bridge when he beamed aboard and from the few times he had been on the bridge since then. But while he thought she was from communications, he wasn't sure.
The doctor across from Scotty woke up as two of the three settled down into their chairs.
Kirk stood behind his chair at the head of the table, but didn't sit down. He glanced around the room, counting heads; once satisfied, he nodded.
"Afternoon everyone. Or night, I'm not actually sure what shift or time this is..." Kirk started, looking around. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. He had bags under his eyes and a weary look on his face but he was still standing upright which was more than most of the crew could say, Scotty included. But there was a tension in his shoulders that Scotty understood. Scotty supposed that the Captain wasn't letting himself show any weakness.
"It is officially Beta shift, Captain," Spock spoke up from where he was sitting next to Kirk.
Kirk nodded. "Beta shift then, good to know. I want everyone to send Bones -Doctor McCoy -the lists of the dead and the list of the missing and unaccounted for. I want to see if we can get some of the people in medical assigned a name," he said, reaching for his own padd. Scotty assumed he was emailing the doctor his own lists. The Doctor, apparently McCoy (Or Bones? Scotty wondered about the name for a moment as he sent the information to him), nodded as he received each list. After a moment of review, he said, "I got them all Jim. Let me go first?"
"Sure," Kirk said, finally sitting. He didn't collapse into the chair like nearly everyone Scotty had seen. He was still controlled even as he sat down - probably for the first time in hours, "Let's go."
McCoy sat up straighter and frowned at them seriously. "I'm going to be blunt. The bad news is that both med bay and the morgue are nearly full. The full lists of the dead will be available to you guys later today. Or tomorrow, if its Beta shift. If something else goes wrong, I'll need more room to treat any more casualties. We're already using the overflow in the main chow hall." He took a moment to let that sink in for the rest of the department heads.
"On the positive side though," McCoy said, picked up his padd again, "We will be releasing the walking wounded who can still work soon. They'll have limited capacities, but the manpower is important for every department. We will be keeping a few of them who have some medical training. As much as you need their skills, so do we."
Spock nodded, glancing at Kirk, who gestured for him to say whatever he was going to say. When did they become so in sync? Scotty wondered. Just over a day ago, they had been ready to tear each other's throats out.
"We are fine with you keeping some of them to help, Doctor. Please release them once you no longer have a need for them." Spock said. McCoy nodded sharply, frowning lightly like he wanted to argue but he didn't open his mouth to say more.
Kirk cut in, "And take the main rec room as more overflow if something goes wrong. If that happens, I don't think we'll need to use the space." He eyed both Spock and McCoy as he said this. McCoy nodded, and Spock merely didn't say anything, he simply raised an eyebrow.
There was some tension between McCoy and Spock that Scotty wasn't going to poke at. At Kirk's quick look between the two men in blue, it was clear that Kirk was going to poke at that tension with the sharpest stick he had when he found a chance. Scotty wished him luck.
"What's the status of Captain Pike?" the helmsman asked. He also looked exhausted. But he looked at McCoy with a gaze that had steel in it. If Scotty believed the rumors that his crew had been telling each other as they worked, then on the mission that had killed the previous Chief Engineering Officer, the helmsman had volunteered to jump out of a shuttle craft and fight to save Vulcan on the space drill the Narada had used.
The question drew a tired but satisfied smile from McCoy. "He's stable. But he won't wake up for a while. We're keeping him under right now, to help prevent infection. Let the crew know that he's stable."
Everyone at the table nodded. The crew would be relieved to hear of Pike's status. He was well-liked as a captain even if they didn't serve under him for long. Or in Scotty's case at all. But Scotty knew his team would be happy to hear positive news.
Kirk still redirected the meeting to the next department, one of the science departments. The tall, thick, and orange alien-human mix immediately launched into the damage reports for her labs and the deck they resided on as well as two other department's statuses.
Scotty made notes as the meeting went along. His padd was filled with things like where there was damage that he didn't know about, if they could fix it with what was available and unbroken on board, if a repair had been attempted by someone else and if Scotty should send a person up there (or down there) to verify if the repair would hold.
He took notes on the navigation systems, on the helm, on the environmental controls, on the replicators. Every part of the ship had some damage and needed some repair. Most of the repair work would be done by the department who owned the instrument itself, but some of the damage was so great that it needed Scotty's team to make it work again.
It wasn't until near the end of the meeting, when Kirk called for the communications department head to speak, that Scotty really looked up from his padd again.
The woman stood up and started to talk about what of her systems were still working and what was half working and what she needed them to avoid using for a while.
Scotty wrote the information down; he had to work with the communication department for some of the systems that tied into the engineering systems. According to the communications officer, they had limited external communications. Those systems, along with ones from medical, used a separate dilithium crystal as a primary power source than the rest of the ship, and the impulse engines used the same dilithium crystal as a secondary power source.
The woman, Uhura Kirk had called her, said, "The 1MC, the ship-wide broadcast system, will be down until we can get repairs done to the main switchboard, some of the parts fried out and we need someone from Engineering to come and see if they can fabricate it. If you need to contact anyone, it would be best to send runners." She was reading from her padd. Scotty suspected there as a long list of systems down and things to do on it, just like his.
But, while all of Uhura's speech was important, what Scotty honestly cared about was the information about what was wrong with the 1MC. The ship needed the internal communications. Having the 1MC down for an extended period of time was dangerous. The lack of internal communication could have deadly consequences, if left unchecked. If Scotty had to shut down power to a location or there was a serious breach in the hull, or even if one of the fires had a reflash and started again, the 1MC was the best and often only way to let the whole crew know of the danger.
The Enterprise was damaged, so to fix the ship and prevent any more injury or death of the crew, Scotty needed to know what was wrong with the system.
"Do you know what needs fabrication on the 1MC? Is it a few things or is this a large project?" Scotty asked, switching the tabs on his padd to a list titled 'to fabricate.' He would get the framers to build and fabricate the missing pieces. Normally that wouldn't be the Chief Engineering Officer's job to set up the project, but the person in charge of the team was now dead, and Scotty was the next person up in the chain of command.
Scotty realized, a moment too late, that he was asking for more information than the communication's officer might be able to provide. On his last ship, before he was sent to the hellhole that was Delta Vega, the Chief Communications Officer hated when Scotty asked him the technical questions. That officer didn't have much idea about the technical repairs. All he could do was troubleshoot and then call for the techs if the system needed it.
"For the main circuit console Station One, we'll need circuit card 1, 4, and 7. For main circuit console Station Two in Engineering and Three in Axillary Control, we'll need most of the cards." She paused, frowning down at her padd. "And then there are several cards which survived more or less intact but have damaged components like the logic boards and serval diodes. We've replaced as many resistors and capacitors as we can, but we really need a tech out to rebuild some of them." Uhura said, reading off her list.
Scotty paused in writing his list. She didn't seem angry that Scotty asked his questions. She didn't even seem to notice.
Scotty looked up and raised both of his eyebrows. That was also a lot of information. More than the officer from the last ship he had been on would have given. More hard data than what most of the Communication Officers he had ever met would have been able to provide. This communications officer knew and understood her system. In Scotty's experience that was a rarity. The fact Uhura was confident enough in the basic electronics repairs to have her team do them was astounding. Scotty was interested enough in Uhura's knowledge to forget himself and lose himself in the conversation.
"How do you know the correct loads for the resistors and capacitors? We have insufficient access to the schematics database," Scotty asked. He had to know. If they had been doing the repairs to the communications circuit boards wrong, then it would cause more problems than it would solve. But if they had access to the schematics, then he would love to see that too.
"The switchboard for Station One is one of the schematics we can access," Uhura said, closing her eyes and concentrating, "Numbers Two and Three, not so much, so we aren't working on that until I can see and verify the loads. I remember them being different but I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. I was busy that week in the academy with a short-range Subspace Interference Translation exam." Uhura said waving a hand in the air to push away Scotty's concerns. Her hand was covered in dirt and grease, much like his own, and, if Scotty wasn't mistaken, her sleeve was splattered with solder and marks from electrical burns from livewire repairs.
Scotty paid more attention to the officer before him than he had before. He had to know this woman and understand her way of thinking. He looked up totally from his padd to meet her eyes. She had been doing the repairs herself. Uhura was acting as the Chief Communications Officer. She was busy, and she was still doing the repairs herself. Scotty liked that. It showed capabilities that Scotty respected.
There was a look in her eyes that screamed undeniable confidence.
And something in Scotty's heart was stolen by a fierce look and an intelligent mind.
"If the cards are repaired, how long will it be before we have internal comms in the ship again?" Kirk interrupted. He looked between them both. Scotty jumped slightly, he had almost forgotten there were other people in the room. Uhura didn't seemed phased by Kirk's interruption. She glanced at Kirk and placed a hand on her padd, scrolling through the information.
Uhura frowned slightly down at the padd before answering. "Within twenty-four hours of the systems being fully back online. However, until we can get the schematics for the 1MC's Stations Two and Three, we don't know if that will be possible until we get back to Earth Space Dock." She said looking back up to her Captain.
Scotty agreed, ignoring how he knew that his heart was going to try to hand itself over to the woman just a few seats down from him. "If the schematics are good and the damage isn't too bad, then my team will be able to work on it soon. The comms is a priority system."
Kirk nodded in understanding. "Okay, then. We'll work on that first. Anyone have anything else?" he asked the room at large. There was a general shaking of heads and mummers of the negative. "Alright, if you have anything that needs addressing right now: do it. If you need to talk to Spock or me, find us. Bones, I'll need to talk to you about medical soon. Alright, dismissed."
There was a shuffling as people stood up to leave. Scotty stalled as he stood up, partly to stretch and partly because he wanted to catch Uhura and talk more. Maybe about the systems, perhaps not. Scotty wanted to find out more about her.
But Uhura walked up to Spock, and they left together. Scotty watched with a sinking heart as Spock instigated a brush of their hands. Scotty didn't know much about Vulcans, but he did know they took touch very seriously. That it was usually a sign of family or a relationship.
Scotty might have fallen for someone who would not be interested in dating him.
Because she already had someone else.
"Yes, Mr. Scott. They are dating," came a voice from behind him. Scotty turned around to see Mr. Sulu, the Helmsman as Scotty had learned, also stalling and saying behind, Scotty knew most of Mr. Sulu's problems arose from lack of the warp core and some of the impulse engines. Scotty had found the man to be capable and knowledgeable about his systems.
Apparently he also was very observant.
Scotty didn't bother to hide the surprise on his face when he replied, "Please, its Scotty. How did you…?" He trailed off, not knowing entirely what he wanted to say.
Mr. Sulu laughed lightly. It wasn't a cruel laugh, but more of a huff of surprised laughter. "Scotty, it was written all over your face. You're lucky she didn't see it, Uhura seems to be one of the best communicators that I've ever seen."
Scotty hid a wince. He was glad then that his body language didn't give him away. He chalked it up to their exhaustion that she didn't see the moment when his heart had tried to hand itself to her.
"That obvious?" Scotty asked.
Sulu shook his head. "Not right now. But I think she'll be able to tell once she's slept more than an hour."
"I'll keep that in mind." Scotty smiled, despite the way he felt his heart break. He had a feeling it was wobbly or a little flat. He took a deep breath, making a decision, "If she's happy, then I won't bother her. Don't mention it please?" He reached down and picked up his padd.
Sulu smiled back. "Don't worry. I won't." They walked out of the room together.
Scotty had the ship to worry about right now. He could deal with the fact he had fallen in love with more than just the ship. He would need a drink after this all though.
If he payed more attention to the communication systems after that….
Well, that was Scotty's problem. No one else's.
Four months after the USS Enterprise left Earth Space Dock after repairs from the Nerada Incident.
If someone had told Jim that he would be the Captain of a ship that was as beautiful as the Enterprise was a year ago, he would have laughed. This wasn't in his game plan when he promised Pike that he would graduate in three years. He had honestly thought he would be stationed on a ship and he would have to work his way up the ranks.
And learn to lead a ship. One rank at a time.
But now Jim had a ship, and he was still trying to figure out how to lead it.
Sure, some parts of the whole process of becoming the Captain were more natural than others. Jim had the motivating people thing down pat; most of his crew liked him, and morale was high. He understood why the paperwork existed even if he didn't really like it.
He followed the whole final decision on how the ship allocated its time and power for things. Telling Scotty that he couldn't power up the shields beyond standard levels for output tests that day because the Xenobiology Labs needed their super mass spectrometer to work at the same time as Communications were working on the long-range array was not exactly fun, but it was something that was necessary.
He understood all of that. Jim was starting to think he was good at it, on the day to day stuff that came with being a Captain at least.
But sometimes he wished he'd had more time in the Fleet, working his way up in the chain of command, if only to get some fellow Captains off of his back.
Like right now for instance.
"Captain Le'nooi," Jim said to the main screen on the bridge, frustrated, and trying not to show it, "I do not understand your hesitance. These are orders from Starfleet. Non negotiable orders from Starfleet."
Le'nooi, a Tellurite who did not like Jim and had been fighting him even more than a Tellurite would typically, frowned condescendingly down at him. "I am questioning your ability to lead, Kirk. Not the orders from Starfleet. You are a child when it comes to matters of leadership." Jim ignored the way his entire crew stiffened. They were as protective of Jim as Jim was of them.
Jim had had enough of Le'nooi's attitude. It was time for a change in tactics. "And I doubt your ability to follow orders that came from the Federation. Now, are you coming or not?" Jim challenged. They had been arguing for the last half hour, and Jim had tried every trick in the book to get Le'nooi to stop fighting. But the Tellurite wasn't budging.
Le'nooi had made it clear from the moment the orders came in from Starfleet that he was unhappy with Starfleet's choice. He had questioned the orders that the Enterprise was going to the be ship in charge of the delegation to the planet that just joined the Federation. Le'nooi had argued with the Admiralty and with the Enterprise, that his experience should have made him the lead ship.
Le'nooi had told Jim and Spock the first time they had spoken over the subspace channels that he didn't think they should be leading the delegation. Le'nooi made it perfectly clear in that first comm call that he should have been in charge.
He had been fighting Jim the entire time since.
"I do not think I should take orders from you!" Le'nooi said. Jim could see the Intrepid crew in the background of the call, and they didn't look happy to see their Captain arguing again.
Jim felt his temper snap. He was done with trying to play Mr. Nice Captain.
"Captain Le'nooi," Jim said hotly, disdain in his tone when he said Le'nooi's title, "to be at the reception on time, we need to leave in the next two hours. The Enterprise is the flagship, which means I, whether you like it or not, am in charge. I'll give you an hour to prepare for departure. But after that hour, the Intrepid is coming with the Enterprise, or you can explain to Starfleet why your ship missed movement and wasn't at the reception on Kalindi." Jim paused and took a deep breath. He had to do this right, or he would be dealing with this shit for the rest of his career.
He let his voice take a light tone that completely belayed the look of death that he was giving the Captain of the Intrepid. "Or the other option is to place your ship into a tractor beam and lead you there ourselves. Then all of the Federation will know that you failed to listen to orders." Jim let the threat hang in the air.
Le'nooi stared at him for a heartbeat. "You are bluffing." He didn't seem to believe Jim would actually follow through with the threat.
Jim was honestly looking forward to letting Scotty test the new capacities of the tractor beams. Scotty had been telling Jim about the further improvements for the last week. But they haven't had the time needed to test out the improvements thoroughly. By the look of glee, the Beta shift Bridge Engineering Officer, Gaila, was giving him, so was the rest of the crew.
Le'nooi could see Gaila from the viewport. Her expression wasn't one to miss.
"Am I?" Jim said with a grin that was becoming common enough that the sight of it was starting to make most of his crew slightly worried about his next course of action. But the crew of the Intrepid had no idea what was in store for them if their Captain refused to go with the Enterprise. "Be ready in an hour or be prepared to either be dragged to the reception or tell Starfleet why you felt their orders weren't good enough to be listened to. Kirk out."
The Beta shift Communications Officer, a tall, slender human, cut the feed the moment Jim finished. She had hit the switches to shut off the video feed with more force than was necessary.
"Well that is one piece of work, huh Captain," the Helmsman said. They were deep into the Beta shift when the Enterprise had come alongside the Intrepid, so Jim was the only one from the Alpha shift on the bridge.
"Indeed," Jim sighed. He turned to the bridge, "Good work everyone. You all did very well remaining professional." He looked around and saw some of the tension that had built up during the conversation – argument, his mind corrected – with Le'nooi fade. His crew started to smile, and discussions began again.
His Beta shift Environmental Engineer and the Bridge Engineer started up a debate that Jim would have joined in a second if he didn't have to find Spock and tell him that Le'nooi was being a problem.
And also inform him of Jim's threat.
Jim had promised to tell Spock if Le'nooi became a problem. And by the way the last half hour had gone, Le'nooi was going to be a problem.
"Lieutenant, you have the conn for the next hour or so. I'll be back to make sure he's on the same page as us." Jim told the Beta shift Duty Officer.
The small woman nodded, giving the captain a small smile, "I'll comm you if there is a problem from now until then, sir." She settled into the Captain's chair. "I'll also inform the engineering team that they might need to be ready to have some fun."
Jim smiled back, "Please do," and left the bridge. In the turbo lift, he pulled out his padd and looked up the location of Spock.
According to the computer, Spock was in his rooms. Great. Maybe Jim could get a chess game to calm down from that argument.
Since leaving Earth Space Dock four months ago, Jim had come to rely on Spock's advice, even if he didn't always follow it. They worked well together. Somehow in the aftermath of the Nerada attack and Spock staying with Starfleet, they had gelled as a team.
They were still learning the limits of that team, but for the day to day ship stuff, Jim liked to think they were beginning to get it down.
Jim started to sit with Spock during breakfasts. Spock was always there in the mornings, and Jim somehow changed his schedule from still sleeping at breakfast times to being awake, unable to go back to sleep - and hungry. Uhura, despite being all-around terrifying and incredible, did not wake up early apparently - and Bones never would wake up earlier than half an hour before his shift, and without coffee Jim just avoided him.
In the end, Jim had sat next to Spock because Jim just couldn't let Spock sit there and eat alone.
They had started off just talking about ship's business. Jim was asking how to do administrative things that the Captain had to do, and asking about what was going on in the labs. Then it transformed to what they were planning on doing after work; Spock mostly spent time with Uhura or worked in a lab. His idea of fun significantly differed from Jim's. Jim spent a lot of time reading, helping Scotty, or talking with Bones.
Spock had been surprised to find that, while Jim had spent most of his time in Command courses, he also had a talent for Engineering that Jim was only slightly disappointed that he would never really use. Jim had seen that surprise and grinned.
He liked surprising everyone he knew.
Somehow those breakfasts had become the highlight of Jim's day, and he didn't know why.
Just that morning they had started talking about games and strategy. Jim's discovery that Spock liked and played chess was a great one.
Now Jim had more reasons to spend with Spock.
Jim buzzed for entry at Spock's door. "Hey Spock, it's Jim." He said as a greeting.
Spock answered the door, and Jim had to smile at the Vulcan robe that Spock wore.
"Yes, Captain? Is there something wrong?" Spock asked. The room behind him was darkened but not entirely dark. There was the delicious scent of aromatic African food in the air. But Jim wasn't sure what the meal was. He assumed that Spock was eating dinner before mediating.
Spock seemed at ease, and Jim was glad. Spock often seemed to be too tense and stiff. Jim would generally chalk that up to differences between humans and Vulcans, but he'd seen Spock relaxed before. Sometimes it was in the mornings when he and Jim got into a debate about something stupid. Sometimes it was after lunch (when Jim had made sure to place Spock and Uhura on the same meal). So, he knew being able to relax was something that Spock could do.
Jim was just always glad that Spock could let himself relax on the Enterprise.
"Kind of. Le'nooi is still fighting me, and the orders were given by Starfleet. He's refusing to come if I'm leading this whole mission." Jim told Spock. He leaned against the doorway, making no move to go in. If Spock wanted him inside the quarters, Jim would have already been invited in.
Spock frowned. "He knows he should not fight the orders."
"I know right? Anyway, I've given him an hour to get his ship ready for departure or be towed against their will - or be ready to tell Starfleet why the Intrepid isn't at the reception."
Spock closed his eyes and thought for a moment, "If Captain Le'nooi doesn't come with us then we should tow him. If he makes his way to the reception alone, then the Kalindi will not let him in. The invitation is for the Enterprise and one other ship. The only thing the Kalindi specified is the presence of the Enterprise." Spock opened his eyes, and Jim was struck once again with how brown and expressive they were. Jim liked how he could read what Spock was thinking about in them.
"Le'nooi is a fool if he thinks he can get away with this power play." Uhura's voice came from behind Spock. "It'll just make Starfleet and the Kalindi angry." She peeked around him and waved at Jim.
Jim felt his heart sink.
She wasn't wearing a uniform. Uhura was wearing a lovely dress, a dress that was meant for dates. And if Uhura was wearing a date dress and Spock was out of uniform and in Vulcan robes, then they were apparently on a date.
Jim had totally interrupted a date, hadn't he?
Jim pushed the thought that he was hugely disappointed away. There wouldn't be any chess tonight, after all.
"Hello, Uhura! I didn't know you were there." Jim said. He felt bad. It was a supreme dick move to interrupt dates. And Jim was not one to do that to a friend. Let alone, two friends.
Uhura smiled and waved him off. Something about the last four months had changed her opinion of him. Jim was relieved. He had been a bit of dick before while in the Academy, but he was genuinely trying to lead the ship well. He had his reasons to act like that anyway.
Between studying his ass off to graduate a year early, dealing with professors who loved him solely because of who his father was, dealing with professors who hated him solely because of who his father was, and dealing with the students who thought he didn't deserve to be there, Jim did have his hands full proving them wrong. And yes, maybe it was stupid looking back, but one of the ways he dealt with them was being over the top when it came to flirting. Jim did realize at the time that made him look like an asshole to people who didn't like that, but he hadn't cared.
Uhura was one of those people who didn't like assholes who flirted with everyone. Not surprising that she preferred Spock over Jim.
Jim also preferred Spock. So he didn't blame her.
Of course, now that Jim was no longer flirting with Uhura with any real sense of desire probably helped their relationship. Uhura was a remarkable person on his crew and now she was his friend.
Spock was also his friend. And Uhura was essential to Spock.
"I do not see how this is a power play, Nyota," Spock said looking down at his girlfriend. He seemed puzzled. "There is no way for him to come above in the situation. That is the point of the powerplay, is it not?"
Jim remembered that Spock was the son of a Very Important Ambassador (and if old Spock's vague hints were a thing that might come true: might be one himself someday). Spock would be identify power plays and other political maneuvers. Even if he wasn't going be an ambassador, Spock was a scary efficient student. He had spent far to long with his father not to pick up something .
"I didn't say it was a good power play," Uhura said, smirking up at Spock. Jim could see the warmth in Spock's eyes when he looked down at her.
And something settled into the pit of Jim's stomach that made Jim internally flinch and pull up a small frown to hide his real emotions. He would deal with it later - he had a ship to run.
"I don't think it is either," he said, bringing both of their attentions back to him. "Which is why I want you, Spock, on the Bridge in an hour. I think I'll need the back-up if I have to convince him, or back-up to send the message to Starfleet if he doesn't come."
Spock nodded. "I will be on the Bridge."
Uhura agreed with him. "I'll be up there too, Kirk. You might need someone who speaks Tellurite," she said, grinning in a way that said she was looking forward to a challenge.
"Oh yes, a good point," Jim said. He took a step back from the doorway. "Sorry for interrupting your guys' date, Next time, Spock, Uhura, just place that you're on a date on the comm. I'll avoid bothering you if I can."
He turned and waved at them both. "I will," Spock said before Jim heard Uhura's soft laughter, and a softer, "Have a good night Kirk, see you in an hour."
Jim heard the door slide shut; Jim walked to his quarters, opened his door, and went straight to collapse on his bed. He laid there for a moment before he turned over and stared up at the ceiling.
Why didn't he see it before?
Jim was usually honest with himself about what he felt. He might not be honest with everyone else, but he never liked to lie to himself. That way only led to madness.
Jim was almost desperate for Spock's attention. He craved it. Jim relished any time those eyes were on him. He always went for Spock's advice, whether or not he was actually planning on taking it. He enjoyed the dry humor that Spock had.
The breakfasts in the morning were the best part of his day because he saw Spock. Their conversations were notable because he wanted to know more about Spock. It was more than just team building and making sure the Enterprise was working her best.
He wanted to play chess for the challenge and... for having Spock to himself. Even it it was for a short period of time.
Jim loved Spock.
He loved the way Spock talked, acted, worked, spoke down to Jim, spoke up to Jim. He loved the way Spock's eyes would light up if he spoke of what the labs were doing that day or how he mentored some of the junior science officers. Jim loved the quiet way Spock could support Jim. Without saying a word, Spock could tell Jim that he was making the right choice.
Jim loved him, and he hadn't seen it before.
How the hell didn't he see it? Jim looked back at all the interactions he had with Spock. He felt like it was apparent that Jim was quickly falling for Spock.
Jim sighed. If no one had brought it up then maybe his love for Spock wasn't as visible as he thought.
Jim lay on his bed for a long time and marveled at his stupidity and obliviousness and just held the love he had for Spock close.
Then he got up from his bed and straightened his uniform. He was needed on the Bridge.
Spock and Uhura came up to the bridge several moments after Jim; both of them now wearing uniforms. Despite his realization that he was head over heels in love with Spock, Jim was still upset he had interrupted their date.
Uhura quickly took over from the Beta shift Communications Officer. Jim took the conn back from the Duty Officer. Spock didn't, however, take over control of the the science station from his junior science officer.
Le'nooi was just as angry when they comm'ed the Intrepid as he was when Jim had hung up.
Jim didn't even stand from his chair when the link opened up. A deliberate sign of disrespect.
"Are you ready, Captain?" Jim asked. He let a smirk play across his face, "Or do I have to send Starfleet an explanation as to why the Intrepid wasn't at the reception." He sent a glance up at Spock to check that Spock already had the two other noncompliance options ready to be used in a heartbeat. Spock merely nodded slightly. The ship was ready for whatever might come. "Or do I get to let my CEO test out some new improvements to the tractor beam?"
Jim knew what picture he and Spock made at the head of the ship. A team. Intelligent, strong, young and willing to see the stars. They were imposing. They were a presence. Together, they were everything.
Le'nooi looked like he wanted to argue more but he frowned and spat out, "The Intrepid will go to the reception. And we will follow your lead without argument. But Kirk, know this: you aren't worth the hype they've built for you."
Jim didn't let the smirk fall from his face. "That's what they all say, Captain Le'nooi. Helmsmen! Prepare for warp." He ordered both the Helmsman of the Enterprise and the Intrepid.
Once he had the all-clear for both ships, he said, "Go to warp! Punch it."
The white lights of the stars streaked out into white lines as both ships launched into warp.
Jim stared out into the viewscreen. He loved when the ship was at warp. He was constantly reminded of how much he needed to be out here, among the stars.
He loved it out here.
And now that he wasn't lying to himself, he loved Spock almost as much.
Uhura cut the primary connection with the Intrepid but kept a line open. She handed over the station back to the Beta shift Communications Officer.
Spock met her at the door to the turbo lift. Jim could hear the soft-spoken whispers in Vulcan as they stepped into the turbo lift. It was sweet and domestic.
Uhura was incredible with Spock. It was clear that she loved him and Jim could read Spock, so he knew that Spock loved her too.
They were perfect for each other.
Which meant that Jim needed a drink. He turned to his Duty Officer who was standing to the side. He turned the conn over to her with orders to have him called if Le'nooi got annoying.
She promised that she would, taking the conn with a grin.
Jim left in search of that drink.
He found it in the nearly deserted Officer's Lounge.
Scotty stood behind the bar, and he was comparing two of the mixes that were kept there. He looked up when Jim entered the room.
Jim slid into a chair. "Hey, bartender? Got anything good?" he asked. "I need to forget some feelings."
"I've got nothing that works that good," Scotty sighed and poured Jim two-fifths of a glass of a bourbon that Jim faintly recognised from their last shore leave planet's bars. "This is the best I've got."
Jim took the glass and knocked it back it like a shot. The bourbon burned on the way down, but it didn't do much else.
Scotty poured himself a similar glass and also drank it like a shot. When Jim sent him a look, Scotty just shrugged. "I'm also trying to forget some feelings."
"Ah," Jim said with understanding as Scotty poured them both more bourbon.
"Here's to heartache." He said after Scotty finished and placed the bottle away.
Scotty picked up his glass and tapped it to Jim's. "Here's to heartache." He echoed.
Eleven months after USS Enterprise left Earth Space Dock
Sometime in the last year, Bones had begun to respect most of the crew that staffed the Enterprise. He only had the faintest idea when that started to happen.
His team of doctors and nurses had gained his trust by being very good at their jobs and never letting a patient go without doing their damnedest to fight for them. He had learned to trust them to know what they were doing, and they had learned to trust Bones when he made a call.
The trust of the Engineers had come soon after. Now, Bones didn't trust them not to get injured in all the ways possible (and a few ways that Bones would think were impossible but he's met Jim and that boy eats impossible for breakfast) but he did trust them with the ship, and that was huge for Bones. He had spent so long being terrified of space and space travel that the idea of trusting the people who kept the ship running was almost unbelievable.
He had always trusted Jim. From the moment the kid had sat down next to him on that shuttle and looked like he needed a drink more than Bones did; Bones had trusted him. Jim trusted him too. Which was good because Bones was his sole authorized doctor for a number of good reasons. Jim had told Bones about Tarsus and some other shit from his childhood that made Bones want to hunt down some people and kill them slowly and untraceably. They were best friends - brothers even- and the trust was bone deep.
With trusting Jim now came trusting Spock. Which was harder than it seemed. Bones never fully understood how Jim could trust Spock so immediately after the way they met. The Vulcan had strangled Jim! But according to Jim, it didn't matter; he didn't care. Jim trusted Spock. That meant Bones trusted Spock.
The rest of the Alpha shift Bridge Crew somehow earned Bones' trust though months of either not being idiots and not getting injured, or being idiots but listening to him when Bones ranted to them about getting hurt.
Now that the ship was nearly a year past the Narada's attack, most of the bridge crew had Bones' respect.
None of the respect the crew had earned helped Bones now.
Because this ship was manned by idiots. The entirety of the crew were idiots.
The away mission to the supposedly friendly planet hadn't gone the way it was supposed to.
Apparently, this occurrence was going to be a common thing on the Enterprise because this was the fourth time in the past two months. Bones had no idea how he was going to survive this madhouse.
"ANDERSON! So, help me God - if you try to get out of that bed again!" Bones yelled across the med bay, hurrying over to his worse-off patient. The man was trying to get out of the bed. This was the third time in the last half hour.
Bones waved Chapel over.
Chapel was at his side in an instant. "We're going to have to strap him down." She said to Bones. "This is the third time he's tried to stand."
"Yes. We are." Bones agreed, already reaching for the straps that could be attached to the bed. "Anything come back in the toxicology report?" he asked hoping for good news but not expecting it.
Chapel nodded. "There was a substance on all the wounds which affects the cognitive abilities, their dopamine receptors and a few other chemicals in the brain." She paused, apparently not wanting to finish her statement.
Bones winced following along with the explanation, "In other words: they're are all high as kites."
Chapel nodded, "Every one of them was scratched with various degrees of severity, but they are all reacting the same. Just the rate of metabolism and strengths are different."
Bones sighed. "Of course it is."
Anderson had been attacked by a creature that was one of the planets dominant species' version of attack dogs. The Enterprise away team had been aware of the tensions between factions on the planet, but they nor Starfleet had thought it had gotten that bad.
So, the entire landing party had gotten attacked and scratched by this beast soon after landing. Anderson was the worst. He had bite marks as well as scratches. The fact that he kept on trying to stand up was frustrating to Bones. Anderson kept on pulling at his stitches. He was also incredibly delirious.
Bones handed half of the straps to Chapel, and together they tied the delirious man down.
Chapel went back to treating the other patients and Bones walked over to the mess he had made jumping up to stop Anderson from attempting to walk again. There were several padds on the floor- each containing a different crewmember's file. The medical records were kept on several different padds depending on what division they worked in.
Bones had his med bay full. Jim was on one of the benches, being seen with his shirt off by M'benga. He had three vertical scratches down his back. Jim was chatting nonstop. If Chapel was right (and Bones knew that Chapel was always right) then he was also high as a kite. Once Bones had seen to all of the injuries, he would get an update from M'benga.
Three security guys lay on the beds. Anderson was one of them, and was by far the worst. The other members of the landing party were spread out among the remaining space in the med bay.
This supposedly friendly planet, which Bones did not know the name of nor did he care to learn, had required a full away team. That meant Jim, three guards, two Science staff and even Chekov had gone.
One of his nurses came up and pressed a padd into Bones' hands. It was the toxicology report. Reading it, Bones started to swear. He was glad that Spock wasn't able to go on the away mission because of some science lab thing. Jim had ranted but, in the end, Spock had been forced to stay on the ship. The venom that was causing a high in all the human crew members would have killed him because of his Vulcan heritage.
"Doctor?" an accented voice asked.
Bones turned to face Pavel Chekov. Who was also blitzed. He was sitting on a bed and wasn't strapped down. Chekov was staring around at the lights of med bay as if fascinated by them.
He wasn't twisting around in the chest area though. Chekov was honestly holding his torso somewhat still, but his arms and hands and feet were in movement. Bones eyed Chekov for a moment and visually evaluated him.
Chekov was someone whom Bones had long admitted to himself that he had an extreme attraction to. He couldn't help it; Chekov was everything Bones was attracted to and then some. Chekov was smart, growing more confident daily, already capable and competent. Also - hot as hell.
Bones already knew that he was attracted to competent, attractive people. His ex-wife was one of those people. They may have met in high school, but that didn't stop Bones knowing what he liked.
"Yes, Chekov?" Bones asked as he reached Chekov's bed.
"Will Anderson be alright?" Chekov asked, finally settling his gaze on Bones. Usually, Bones would try to avoid that. Bones always felt like his stomach wasn't ready for the drop when Chekov looked at him. He also felt his face heat up. Nothing noticeable but still, Bones hated showing that weakness.
Bones was very, very attracted to the man before him.
Despite the fact that he ordinarily avoided Chekov's focus, he needed it today. He had to check Chekov's rate of metabolism for the poison that they had been scratched with. Bones started with a standard post away-mission checkup.
Bones picked up a small light and shone it into Chekov's eyes. "Anderson will be fine. So, will you once we get the chemical that's making you all high as hell out of your body."
"Oh!" Chekov grinned, "I guess that's why I feel so happy, and everything is so pretty right now!"
"Yes, it is, we'll try to get this out of your system as soon as possible." Bones told Chekov. He was slightly distracted while he started to input readings from Chekov's bed to the padd. He would update the padd as he went along in the exam.
Chekov clapped his hands together and smiled again. "I know you will, Doctor McCoy! I trust you."
Bones looked up and saw the look on Chekov's face. It was bright, carefree and happy. It also spoke of a lot of trust. And all of it for Bones.
Bones felt more than his stomach leap at the scene. He felt his heart give a very solid thump and thought, 'Oh no.'
The very first time Bones saw Chekov, it was in the middle of a battle and Bones was just moments from panicking. He had distinctly thought 'Who is this child and why he is here?'.
When Chekov said something very complicated in a science that Bones did not understand he had to ask how old this kid was.
The answer was irrelevant. Bones had been trying not to freak out during that whole conversation. Knowing that the person who created a workable plan that had helped to save them was seventeen years old was hard for Bones to wrap his head around.
It didn't stay that way for long.
By the time the Enterprise made it back to Earth Space Dock, Bones no longer thought that Chekov was a child. It was apparent that Pavel was an adult who knew what he was doing. Pavel Chekov was a man who not only deserved his place on the Enterprise but deserved Bones' respect.
That respect wasn't dangerous by itself. It was the little things that made Bones smile at Chekov that were dangerous. He didn't realize that he was attracted to 'Starfleet's Youngest Genius' at first, but after the initial medical checkup, Bones knew. He, to quote Jim at his drunkest, was thirsting for one Pavel Chekov.
And that was fine. That was normal. Bones was always attracted to people who knew what they were doing. Bones didn't question that anymore. He'd had feelings for people since his divorce.
Bones could deal with that. He had no plans on actually doing anything about his wants, so it didn't matter. At first, Chekov was too young, and then it was that Chekov had no interest in return.
But this heartbeat, painful and twisting, was new.
And Bones wasn't in the habit of lying to himself. He knew what that meant.
Leonard McCoy had a honest to God crush on Pavel Chekov. A big one.
Bones took a deep breath and grabbed his tricorder and synced it to the padd that held Chekov's data. It didn't matter what Bones had just figured out. He would still need to complete Chekov's exam. They still needed the information from him.
Chekov babbled as Bones continued the exam. It was a symptom that Bones had observed in the others. All of them were talking. At least Chekov was coherent. "I was so excited for this mission, that I had forgotten that they had these large bearlike dogs. They were huge!" Chekov said, waving his arms about to emphasize how large the animal was, still careful to keep his torso still.
Bones ducked the flying arm with the air of one who was used to Jim Kirk doing the same thing. Jim liked to talk with his hands when he got excited, and Bones had learned to dodge flying limbs early into their friendship. "Seeing as just two of the beasts did this to the whole away team, that doesn't surprise me." He said as he restarted the reading he had been trying to get.
Chekov nodded, " Da ! While Captain was trying to calm the situation down, one of the security guards got hurt from the dog-bear thing, and then everything went to pieces!"
"Of course, it did," Bones sighed. He hadn't like the way that Chekov wasn't twisting or really moving his torso around, and when he waved the tricorder over the ribs, he saw why. Chekov had three broken ribs and two bruised ones. "Mr. Chekov, how did you injure your ribs?" he asked.
Bones hoped that Chekov would actually answer. As the months passed on the ship, Bones was feeling that it was getting harder and harder for the Alpha shift Bridge Crew actually to answer questions like that. They all liked to shrug and say they were defending someone else.
Bones had been saddled with the most self-sacrificing crew ever. He wondered if other ships' Chief Medical Officers had to deal with this phenomenon too.
Pavel, (No! Chekov! Bones tried to remind himself, already knowing he would fail) screwed up his face in concentration. Bones thought that the expression was adorable. "I'm not sure, but I think it was when one of the bear-dog things hind legged kicked me to the side when it went after the Captain."
Bones just stared at him, knowing there was more to come.
There was always more with this crew.
Chekov continued, "Or it may have been when I was working on the signaling device to get out of there. The natives didn't like what I was doing, and they hit me with a… branch? I think."
Bones looked back at the readings and tried to trace the shape of the injury. It would match the branch more than an animal kick.
"It was probably the attack from the natives. What were you doing exactly that pissed them off after the animals attacked?" Bones asked. He grabbed a regenerator for bones. Pavel needed it and soon, before his broken ribs started to knit back wrong. Bones needed to lay Chekov down on the bed. Moving him would be painful. Running the osteo-regenerator would be worse if Bones didn't push him.
In the end, this whole process would be excruciating for Chekov. Bones would have to move quickly to prevent too much pain from happening.
"I was trying to create a device that would give off a signal over a Starfleet channel. I figured Lieutenant Uhura or Mr. Spock would hear it." Chekov said shrugging, and then he winced. The movement had jarred his ribs. "They always do. I don't think the Captain would have been as injured if Mr. Spock came along. He would have prevented the Captain form being hurt."
Bones frowned at the noise Chekov made when he jarred the injury, "Alright. That's not a good sound. I need you to lie back down on the bed."
Chekov tried to move, but he couldn't seem to push past the pain. Bones placed his hands-on top of Chekov's shoulders and gently pushed back. Chekov's face twisted in pain but he relaxed once he was lying down on the bed.
Bones pushed the very quiet, terrible thought from the back of his mind away. 'I want to push him back onto my bed, in my quarters, not the one here in my office in the med bay.' It didn't help the situation. Nor did the thought help Bones keep calm about his recent realization.
Bones considered the fact that he might have more than a crush on Pavel into the back of his mind.
He would have to think about it later.
Right now, he had to deal with the fact he wanted Chekov out of his med bay. Bones didn't like him being injured.
"Doctor? Do you think that if Mr. Spock would have been there, that Captain Kirk would have been injured?" Pavel asked, looking up at Bones as Bones prepped the regenerator.
Bones didn't even have to think about that answer. In the last year, Spock had saved Jim from to many injuries to count in the past year. It was one of the only things Bones liked about Spock. "Yes, Spock would have done his best to prevent Jim from being injured."
Pavel smiled and started to stare at the ceiling of med bay. Bones had to keep him talking to distract him from the pain of bone regeneration.
"Got a significant other?" Bones doesn't know what in the world possessed him to ask that, but he hated that part of him. That was not a question that would make anything better for Bones' new-found crush. Bones started the regenerator.
Pavel somehow brightened, despite the pain. Bones knew it probably had something to do with the chemicals in his system, but the look made Bones heart thump painfully in his chest.
Only for his heart to sink when Pavel spoke, "Yes! She works in Engineering."
Pavel then proceeded to spend the rest of the time that Bones was fixing his ribs talking about the girl in Engineering.
Bones put on his 'I'm a doctor' face and nodded when it was needed. It wasn't hard. Pavel was just talking and talking. Bones was sure that the pain in his heart wasn't the start of heartbreak. Indigestion, nothing more.
Bones shook his head. He hated lying to himself. It was heartbreak. Nothing new, nothing more.
This was why he avoided dating. Bones wasn't in a place to put these emotions out to show. His heart fell too quick and was merely too damaged for it to survive news like what Pavel was sharing.
It was still too soon after what his ex-wife, Joycelyn, had done to him.
Bones forced himself to stop thinking about the whole thing. Pavel was done with the regeneration, and the only other thing that Pavel needed to do was to wait the poison out.
"Okay, Chekov you're good, but you need to stay here. Can you do that?" Bones asked, stepping back and placing the regenerator down. He looked at Pavel's medical padd and saw the information being updated to it automatically.
Pavel nodded, more eagerly than he usually would. Bones wished the labs would create the cure to the poison soon. "I will, doctor. I won't move." He said.
Pavel looked so trusting that Bones felt himself smile for a moment before he turned away. "Good. Stay here, and Chapel or I will be by as soon as we figure out how to cure you." He said gruffly.
"Okay, Doctor," Pavel said, and Bones had to leave or risk doing something stupid that he wasn't ready for.
Instead of trying to kiss Pavel, Bones went to sit next to Jim.
Jim had a curtain drawn around his bed. M'benga had finished with the scratches and had been given a bed to do work on. Bones slid in and sat on the chair that was right next to Jim's bed.
"Hiya, Bones," Jim said quietly. He was still under effects of the poison from the bearlike dogs that had gotten the entire away team, so he was smiling despite the quiet tone. He also had a near-vacant look in his eyes. "You look like hell."
"I'm aware," Bones said shortly, "You look worse."
Jim laughed, grinning. "I always do! But are you okay? You normally don't look exhausted after talking to Chekov. You look happy normally."
Bones winced, "I do?" he asked. Then he paused and thought about the past few times he had interacted with Pavel. "Well, shit." He breathed. He was happier after seeing and talking to Chekov.
Bones took a moment to really think about what that meant. Bones was in love with Pavel Chekov. And probably had been in love for a while.
Jim studied him for a moment before speaking again, "You wanna join Scotty and me when we go drinking every once in a while? I'm sure that we can make room for one more."
Bones looked up. Jim was wearing the 'I'm hiding emotional pain' smile again. Bones often saw that expression when Jim was around Spock and Uhura, when neither of them were paying attention to him. Scotty also had the same expression on his face sometimes for the same reasons.
"I think I may need to," Bones said. "What do y'all drink to ease this?"
"Right now, whiskey, but we'll drink whatever when it comes down to it." Jim said, "Heartache's a bitch."
It may be a bitch, Bones thought, but he didn't want to lose it if it meant losing the brightness that was Pavel.
I hope you all like this! :)
as of right now, I'm done writing the story! However I broke my keyboard and it will be a little bit before chapter 3 is out but don't worry!! it will be out!
thank you to b0kunoanime for being my beta!
please yell at me on tumblr!
Chapter 3: Yorktown – That would be Enough (look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now)
Three hours into Jim Kirk's thirtieth birthday party on Yorktown space station
Scotty wasn't planning on drinking this much at Kirk's birthday and 'We lived!' party; but here he was, sitting on a barstool, at the tiny bar in the corner of the room, finishing off his scotch and waving at the bartender for something else.
He steadfastly wasn't looking at the small dance floor that had developed in the middle of the room, despite the fact it held most of the remaining crew.
After they had admired the frame of the ship that would become the new Enterprise, Kirk had declared that it was time to party, and he wanted to dance.
So, the crew, full of resourceful and smart people who also wanted to dance, had dragged some furniture out of the way and created a dance-floor. More than half the crew was on it. Everyone was having a good time just moving to the music. There were couples, singles, and groups of friends all dancing together.
One of his teams of engineers had challenged a science team to a dance-off. Scotty could hear their laughter and the cheering. Scotty would join them, but that would force him to look at the dance floor.
And he wasn't about to do that.
Scotty had been thinking about asking Nyota to dance, as a friend, when he saw that she had done the impossible once again. She had somehow convinced Spock to dance.
They looked so in love as they moved together.
And now he couldn't even bear to look at the dance floor.
Keenser had disappeared with the new guy in command, Kevin, sometime early in the party to help the little species get more used to day to day life in Starfleet as a very short alien surrounded by humanoids. So, Scotty was drinking alone. He was trying to get his mind off of everything.
So of course, he was dwelling on what he was trying to forget.
He had been so relieved when they had gotten the crew on the Franklin. He had been so happy to see Nytoa that he had almost forgotten the rest of the mission.
But she only had eyes for Spock.
And that was fine. Scotty had tried to move on but it seemed that he was meant to stay in love with Nyota Uhura.
"Montgomery Scotty? Do you need to also take the edge off?" Jayla asked as she slid onto the barstool next to Scotty. She had a beer in one hand and a cocktail in the other. She seemed to be drinking from one, then the other, trying to figure out what she liked the taste of best.
Scotty looked up from his drink of whatever alcohol the bartender had brought him, which Scotty didn't know the name of, to face her. She wasn't even tipsy. Scotty wondered if her species was one of the ones like Vulcans that didn't get affected by alcohol. "Ah, Jayla. No, I'm not… well… yes. Yes, I am." He finally admitted.
Usually, Scotty wouldn't have said anything, but he thinks that he could be forgiven today. He had been shot out of his ship, seen it burn and crash, fixed another ship to the point where it could fly, hacked an extremely powerful supercomputer, and ultimately helped to save Yorktown.
It had been a very long day.
Scotty could admit to some heartache.
Jayla watched him. Scotty respected her so much. She could read people, and it was natural to her. She may not trust them, she may not like them, but she could understand them. She would do amazingly well in Starfleet no matter what her chosen track was.
Scotty just wished Jayla wasn't looking at him like she didn't fully understand. There were some things that weren't intuitive, and Scotty thought that unrequited love was one of them.
"I am taking my edge off because I'm free," Jayla said. "Why are you?" She finished off the cocktail, knocking it back with an aplomb that impressed Scotty deeply.
Scotty looked out the dance floor and saw them.
It still amazed him that Nyota had somehow convinced Spock to join her on the dance floor, and they were dancing, slightly awkwardly, together. Scotty took Nyota's expression, one of joy, love, and happiness. She was honestly and sincerely in love with the person right in front of her. He also saw the way Spock's arms tightened around her every once in a while, and it was clear that Spock felt much of the same towards her.
Jayla followed his gaze. They watched Spock and Nyota for a while in silence. Then Scotty raised a glass to them and turned around.
"That's why I need to 'take my edge off,'" Scotty told her.
Jayla watched them for a moment longer. "I do not understand. It is clear that Uhura is Spock's as he is hers. But it is also clear that you are Uhura's. Why is she not yours?" she asked turning away from the center of the room to face him again.
It took Scotty a moment to understand that sentence, but when he did, he sighed. "I am hers as much as Jim is Spock's. But neither of us are lucky enough to have them as ours."
Jayla nodded, proving that Jim Kirk was obvious in his affections. Everyone and their mother could see that Jim Kirk was in love with Spock and would do nearly anything for him. That included never getting in the way of a happy relationship. Scotty knew that comparing himself to Jim would make Jayla understand.
She was silent for a moment as she took the information in. Then she started to talk slowly. "When I was a tiny girl, before that place and Krall, my father once said that I would find someone or someone's who would put light into my world. That they would be my everything. He said my mother was like that for him. Is that how it is for you?" She asked.
Scotty knew that some of his surprise must have been showing on his face. Jayla, in the past week they had known each other, had never spoken about her life before Krall and Altimir. She rarely talked about her parents. She had given him a rare gift. He owed her the truth in return.
"Nyota is my everything. She helps me on hard days and is a trusted friend. We speak in Gaelic and it's fun. She understands my love of engineering, and she likes my new theories. We often work together on improving her systems. But Nyota is more than just my love." Scotty took a deep drink of the alcohol.
"More?" Jayla prompted. She finished off the beer, and the bartender was next to her in an instant with another new, different drink. A glass of wine this time. Scotty liked this bartender. He was on top of things.
"More," Scotty confirmed with a nod. "Trust me on that. She's brilliant and wise. She can sing like an angel and isn't afraid to show it. Nyota doesn't need me or anyone else to support her, but she likes us all the same. I don't think I can explain all the ways that make Nyota more. She just is." He smiled at Jayla.
There was something that made him happy when he was talking about Nyota to other people. There was a reason Jim, McCoy and him all got together on a regular basis to talk like this. They needed the occasional shore leave to prevent their unrequited love from becoming bitter.
None of them wanted that.
They might want to fall out of love, but they never wanted to become bitter about the whole thing. It was one thing to be in pain. It was another to let themselves hate someone else because of it.
Jayla frowned down at her wine. "You should tell her anyway, Montgomery Scotty. Many people on that planet and in my culture, were more than just one person's."
Scotty laughed. He hadn't been suggested polyamory before! "If Nyota and Mr. Spock would accept that, I would in a heartbeat. But I think they are one-person people. They have each other. She loves him, and he loves her. Even if he is bad at showing it."
"Why don't you try to win her?" Jayla asked.
"Because she's not in love with me, lassie," Scotty frowned at her. "Nyota's my friend first and foremost. I won't be the one to get in her way. Ever. I'm not unhappy, dear girl. I've seen others. I'm happy in all."
Jayla opened her mouth to argue further, but Scotty heard a very familiar voice coming closer. And he felt his cheeks turn red.
"Jayla, I'm going to do a topic change for this conversation, and you are going to go with it. Don't tell Nyota what we were talking about." Scotty told her as Nyota and Spock came closer to the bar.
Scotty would bet ten credits that Spock heard what they were talking about.
Jayla scrunched her eyebrows in confusion but ultimately nodded. "If that is what you wish, Montgomery Scotty."
Scotty managed a small, quick grin before picking the first topic he could think of. "I know that you just got the acceptance to Starfleet, but do you have an idea what track you might be interested in?"
Jayla didn't lose the confused expression, but she did answer. "I am thinking the Engineering Division? Right? The symbol from my house. I am good at that."
"You're thinking about Engineering, Jayla?" Nyota said from behind them.
Jayla jumped and turned to face the sound, apparently not expecting Nyota. "I am," she said. "I liked working on my house. I am 'well suited' to working on ships." Jayla glanced at Scotty. "Montgomery Scotty is a very good friend to make sure that I can get into Starfleet."
Nyota smiled, and Scotty knew it was the alcohol talking, but it seemed warmer than before. "He is. I'm glad you and Kirk helped her, Scotty." She said turning to Scotty.
"As am I," Scotty said, smiling into his glass of … something strong. He didn't care that his smile was a little besotted. Normally he would try to hide it, but not today. Too much had happened. "I'm sure that I can get her into Engineering classes if that's what she wants."
Nyota and Jayla nodded.
Spock shifted in behind Nyota and Scotty turned back to the bartender, waving the person over to get them more drinks. The bartender showed up with two glasses. Another wine, this one smelling much sweeter than the one Jayla had been given, for Nyota and a tall glass of something dark for Spock.
"Oh, Jayla, I've meant to ask you some questions on your native tongue," Nyota asked. Scotty chuckled into his drink. Jayla's accent meant she was used to speaking something that wasn't Standard or English. He had wondered when Nyota would start to ask about it.
Seeing as Jayla also spoke at least one more language other than Standard, Scotty was sure that Nyota would ask about that too.
"My what?" Jayla asked, sounding confused.
Scotty listened as Nyota explained what she meant and started to ask Jayla questions about what her first language was like.
Scotty liked watching Nyota work. So did Spock apparently as he watched Nyota with the same gentle look in his eyes that Scotty had seen on so many others in love. Nyota came alive when she was talking about a new language or development in linguistics. Her occasional tangent on the etymology of a word was always so passionate. It was cute.
After a short while of watching Nyota and Jayla speak in the Common language of Altimir, (apparently a dialect of Triss – a trading planet that was near the nebula) Scotty became suddenly aware that Spock was no longer watching Nyota, but was now watching him.
Scotty stiffened, but the slight movement went unnoticed by Nyota and Jayla. It wasn't unnoticed by Spock, who raised an eyebrow slightly.
Spock placed his drink down on the bar. Scotty saw that it was a dark color that even from a few feet away, Scotty could catch a whiff of chocolate. Scotty wondered what the bartender had mixed in there.
Some of the few times the whole main bridge crew and senior leadership had actually gotten together and drank, Spock had been mostly unaffected, despite his insistence that he enjoyed the taste of the alcohol. The senior staff had gotten into a bet about finding something that would affect Spock.
McCoy had won when he did some medical research. Hot chocolate mixed with Spock had resulted in an entertaining night indeed.
There were legends about that night on the Enterprise. Scotty heard them as they passed down from new crewman to new crewman.
Spock didn't drink chocolate with them often. Apparently tonight was one of those nights. Scotty didn't blame him. It had been a long day for them all.
"I can't believe that we haven't shown you the records kept here! There is a priority line to memory alpha, and we can do research into where your language comes from." Nyota suddenly said.
Jayla looked delighted, "Really? Federation can do that?"
Nyota nodded excitedly. "Come on. They should still be open at this time. If not then, I'll use the 'just saved Yorktown' card, and that will get us in."
Scotty watched as Jayla and Nyota both started to get up to leave. "Are you coming with us, Spock? Scotty?" Nyota asked, looking between them both.
Scotty shook his head. "I'm good, you all have fun." As much as he loved watching Nyota work, Scotty did not want to be a third wheel.
But to his surprise and a bit of fear, Spock also shook his head no.
Spock reached up and placed a hand on Nyota's arm and said quietly, "I need to speak with Mr. Scott for a moment. I also wish to speak to Jim, later. Do you mind, Nyota? I'll meet you both at the Record Library when I am done."
Nyota looked puzzled but nodded. She waved at Scotty. Scotty waved back. She leaned down with her hand out, and Spock raised his hand. Their fingers met, and Scotty looked away. He knew a kiss when he saw one.
"Goodbye, Montgomery Scotty. May we talk more tomorrow? I want to know more about those rules I will have to follow if I am to attend the Starfleet Academy," Jayla said. She had put her empty glass down, and the bartender was already picking it up.
Scotty smiled. "Sure thing, Jayla. But let's make it tomorrow afternoon. I think I'll be feeling this for a while tomorrow morning."
She and Nyota left, leaving Spock and Scotty alone at the small bar.
The bartender slid up and refilled Scotty's drink. Scotty really needed to get his name. And book him for all the Enterprise events. He was damn good. Scotty hadn't actually placed an order all night. The man just knew . He hadn't made a wrong choice yet.
It was impressive, Scotty was impressed.
Scotty and Spock didn't speak for a long moment.
Scotty just took a drink from his glass. He wasn't sure where the whiskey came from, but he liked it.
"I have been informed that a part of being in a human romantic relationship is that I should warn off any person who has interest in the other part of the relationship." Spock said, deadpan, apropos of nothing. "Other potential suitors, one might say."
Scotty coughed into his glass, spilling a little over the rim as he moved.
Of all the things Spock could say, it had to be that!
That he was threatening Scotty over Nyota! If it had been anyone else, Scotty wouldn't have believed it. But it was Spock. Spock never did things he didn't want to. If he wanted to threaten Scotty, he would.
"And is this your warning?" he asked once he had himself under control, his voice hoarse from coughing.
"Apparently," was Spock's response. Spock took another drink of the chocolate concoction and didn't look at Scotty for more than a glance.
Scotty considered the warning. It was a terrible warning all things considered.
Scotty sighed. "I had always wondered if you knew," he mused. The thought sat in the back of his mind some days. What if Spock knew? What if Nyota knew? He didn't want to lose their friendship. Or their camaraderie. "About how I feel for her."
"I have known for over a year now. Nyota doesn't. I will not inform her." Spock said, frank as always, "I see nothing that would change that."
"Whew," Scotty sighed in relief. "I don't want to get in the way of anything."
"You won't," Spock said and while that was Scotty's wish, to hear it said so bluntly still hurt. Scotty took a deep drink of the whiskey.
They sat in silence for another moment before Scotty worked up the nerve to ask: "Who told you that you have to threaten all 'potential suitors'?"
Spock was silent for a long moment. "I was observing some of the security crewmen and asked what was occurring and why it was important to human sociocultural rituals. I do not wish to be amiss in my duties to Nyota."
Scotty laughed lightly. He could imagine how that conversation had gone! But he shook his head. "I believe that Nyota can tell suitors she doesn't want to go fuck off on her own but I'm glad she has you. She really lights up with you." He meant that truthfully. Nyota often looked happiest when she was with Spock.
Spock nodded in agreement. "If we were all on Vulcan then I would challenge you to a fight to prove my worth to Nyota, but I do not believe that is necessary. Nyota has been known to tell off people she does not wish to be in the presence of. She enjoys my presence and has told me repeatedly so."
"She loves you." Scotty said, a truth he needed to know if Spock knew.
Spock stared at him for a moment and then nodded, slowly. "She loves me," he paused then said, "I love her," Spock said it quietly, but he was unwavering in his certainty.
"Does she know that?" Scotty asked. He would not be happy if Nyota didn't know what she meant to Spock.
"Yes," Spock said firmly. His conviction was in his eyes and Scotty believed him.
"Good." Scotty didn't feel the need to say more so he lapsed into silence.
They sat in silence for a long moment, each nursing the last of their drinks. Spock finished his chocolate drink and placed the glass on the bar. "I shall take my leave of you, Mr. Scott."
Scotty grunted into the last of his whiskey. As Spock stood, Scotty grabbed his arm. Scotty and every one the Enterprise knew that Spock tolerated touch from very few people. Usually, Scotty would avoid touching him. But Scotty had a point to make, so he did it anyway.
He made eye contact with Spock and held firm.
"Don't hurt her, Mr. Spock. She's my friend too. I won't let her be hurt for stupid reasons," Scotty said, holding on to Spock's arm, projecting his protectiveness over his friend. "No matter what. I won't let her be hurt. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly," Spock said, and then he took another step back and away from Scotty.
Scotty let his arm fall and turned back to the bar. The bartender handed him a cocktail that was a lurid pink and green. Happy colors. Scotty liked it.
He wanted to be a happy drunk.
Not a depressed one tonight.
Across the room at the party
Bones smiled into his drink as he leaned against the high table he was near.
He was alone, not talking up anyone, but that was what Bones preferred. He had long realized, in the aftermath of his disastrous divorce and his decision to drink away the pain and his and Jim's first year in Starfleet, that he was far from ready to be in a relationship.
He honestly hadn't tried to be anything but single.
And the fact that Bones' major crush was on a man at least a decade his junior helped keep him that way.
Usually, Bones would spend parties like this one with Jim preventing his Captain and best friend from creating an incident, but as this was Jim's surprise birthday party… Bones figured that if anyone had the right to make a scene, it was Jim.
Not that Jim was doing anything too crazy.
Jim was dancing with a few of his Beta and Gamma shift Bridge Crew, all of them laughing so hard they were having a hard time breathing. They appeared to be having a 'dad dance' dance off. Bones would be embarrassed for all dads out there in the universe but if he went to stop them, then Jim would pull him in and Bones would just have to show them all how a dad actually dances.
Bones knew it was good to see Jim laughing like that again. The last year had been hard on Jim. Very few shore leaves and time off did that to some people. Jim had been consumed by all the small details of being a Captain and never gave himself time off. Bones could see the depression but wasn't able to do much to help.
For the first time, being the Captain of the Enterprise wasn't enough to keep Jim going. He had needed something more. And all Bones could do was watch. Jim hadn't known what was wrong for the longest time and didn't know how to talk about it when he finally realized what was going on.
The depression wasn't helped by the fact that Jim hadn't been able to get over Spock either.
That fact had been dragging Jim down for a while, and with every shore leave that became a disaster before he, Scotty and Jim had a chance to talk, and with every small ship event that interrupted date night with Spock and Uhura; that fact had pulled at Jim.
Jim hadn't been able to get away from his love, and it began to suffocate him.
But now? Jim was laughing and smiling. He was happy that most of his crew somehow survived the loss of the Enterprise.
He was happy. It was good to see Jim confident and sure of himself again.
Bones' communicator beeped at him from its place in his jacket, telling him that he had an incoming call.
The name on the screen declared the call to be from his ex-wife.
Bones placed his drink down on the table and caught sight of Jim looking over at him with a wave to join them. He must have really wanted to win this dance off if he was calling Bones over. Bones would be tempted, but the buzzing comm unit in his hand was calling his attention.
He waved the comm over his head to show Jim, and pointed outside. Jim frowned quickly and tilted his head. Bones had been friends with Jim for enough years now that he knew that Jim was asking if Bones needed support for whatever the call was about.
Except Bones was hoping that this call was going to have good news.
Bones shook his head no. He smiled and pointed outside again. And Jim finally nodded.
While he had organized the party with a little help from Uhura and the Sulus, it was a relief to step outside of the room and breathe the fresher air of Yorktown. All of the surviving, uninjured crew members of the Enterprise were there, the place was crowded and hot.
"This is McCoy," Bones said into the comm as he flipped it open.
"Leonard, it's me," his ex-wife, Joycelyn said. Bones tensed up because this conversation could make or break his time on Yorktown. A lot of what Joycelyn did to him still caused him pain. But sometime in last year, (and Bones didn't know when) her memory had stopped causing him to relive the pain of not being wanted by the one person who promised to always want him. "I'm calling to tell you that since you and Joanna have demanded that you see her over her vacation I'm allowing it. How long are you at Yorktown?"
Bones grinned with pure happiness. He got Joanna for the summer! He got to see his daughter in person for the first time in nearly two and a half years. No more long distance comm calls or just messages. Bones would get to hold his little girl. "Long enough to keep her for several months with no problem," he said.
He didn't tell Joycelyn that he had exact dates of when the Enterprise-A would be launched. Joycelyn would tell the media in a heartbeat if she thought it could get her credits or a little bit of fame. Just because the thought of her didn't hurt him anymore didn't mean he trusted her. He didn't believe her much.
"You'd better be right, Leonard. I'm only doing this because Joanna has spent the last two days asking and asking to see you." Joycelyn sounded angry. But Bones ignored that. It was her default tone when she was talking to him. That angry tone had been standard since their marriage had fallen apart with her rising controlling behavior and his long hours at the hospital.
But the pain he still expected to feel, the sharp pain that was in his heart when he talked to Joycelyn wasn't there. That pain was part of the reason that he never got into a serious relationship with anyone new. It was always there when he thought about trusting someone with his heart in such a way again. He knew he wasn't in love with his ex-wife anymore and hadn't been for years, but she did bring up some unpleasant memories and pain. He knew he hadn't been ready to move on past that pain. Even his major crush on Pavel didn't let Bones think he would be good in a long-term relationship.
Except, now that Bones was thinking about it, he wasn't as resentful now. He was more open and the thought of a long-term, hopefully permanent, relationship, didn't make him wince or feel like running away. He wasn't scared. He wasn't in pain.
Maybe he was ready now?
"Joanna's vacation starts in June. In three weeks. Are you going to come to Earth to pick her up or are you going to make me put her on a week-long shuttle on her own?" Joycelyn said in a harsh tone. She really didn't think much about her daughter's independence. Bones was sure that Joanna would love a week of travel on her own - she was nearly a teenager.
However, on the other hand, If Bones picked her up, he would get an extra week or two with her.
That settled that.
"I'll pick her up." Bones said with finality. "I'll get a ride on a Starfleet shuttle. I'll be there a few days after her school lets out for the summer."
Joycelyn made an agreeing noise over the comm line. "Ok, that would work if you show up a week after she gets out. My parents want to see her so they can do so then. They're coming to visit then. You can get her afterwards."
Bones nodded, even though he knew that she wouldn't be able to see the movement over the voice only call. "I'll get tickets for then," he said, then he asked, "Is she there? Can I speak to Joanna?"
Joycelyn was quiet for a moment. It wasn't a happy silence. With Joycelyn, any silence never was comfortable. "She is." She ground out. "If you can hold then I can get her for you." Her tone was biting.
"I can wait." Bones agreed, and the line clicked into hold music. It was one of Joanna's favorite bands. She had mentioned it in one of her last emails before they arrived at Yorktown initially and Bones had looked the band up when they had a few free moments after getting back with the USS Franklin. It wasn't terrible. Bones really couldn't wait to see what his little girl had been up to in the past several years. He can't wait to see how she's grown. He wondered what new things that she had learned and how independent she would be now. For some things, messages and calls just didn't cut it.
This was the first opportunity Bones would have to speak in person to Joanna since Altimir, since before they came to Yorktown originally.. He had comm'd Joycelyn once the whole station's comminutions had come back online, but they had been on a limited line, so he didn't get to actually talk. He was only able to leave a video message.
But now he could actually talk to her. That always made his day.
A noise brought his attention to the doorway of the hall he had planned the surprise party in. Pavel stepped out to the terrace, flushed and smiling. He was followed by someone taller than him in a pretty dress, the shell yeoman that Yeoman Rand was training. The one with whom Pavel had been speaking to all night.
Bones felt the customary stab of wistfulness run through him at the sight of the couple.
Pavel was smiling, and it was like the sun. Pavel was happy. The stress lines of the last few days had faded and his youth showed in his face. Pavel was a very mature adult who could, and would, help fly the ship in ways that kept them all alive. But he was also dealing with stuff that Bones would have balked at when he was just twenty-one. And Pavel was dealing with them with such ability and calmness that Bones was so profoundly impressed by him.
Bones was once again blown away by how much he was in love with Pavel.
Pavel laughed at something that the new yeoman said and took her hand.
Bones swallowed against the tight pain in his chest at the swift reminder that Pavel had no interest nor want to be with Bones.
Bones sighed; he was used to the feeling.
As they came closer, Pavel caught sight of Bones.
"Doctor!" Pavel said as he waved his free hand. "What are you doing out here?" He asked, smiling like an old friend. The new yeoman smiled at Bones, but unlike Pavel's smile, it was the polite one for acquaintances. They came to a stop just next to where Bones was leaning.
Bones nodded at them both in greeting. He held up the comm, "I'm waiting for my Ex to get my daughter. She'll be with me for the summer."
Pavel let go of the new yeoman's hand and clapped. "That's very good, Doctor! I'm so happy for you. Does the Captain know yet? The stories you and he told of the time your daughter came and visited the academy are always funny!"
Bones shook his head. "Jim doesn't know yet. I'll tell him a little later. But I'm thrilled. I'll introduce her to you and the rest of the Bridge Crew when she gets here."
Pavel looked delighted. "I'm happy for you! I know you miss her while we are out in the black. It's been several years since you've seen her right? Since we left Earth Space Dock for the last time, right?" He put his hands on Bones' shoulder in something that was nearly a hug. Bones memorized the feeling because he knew it would be gone soon enough.
Bones honestly didn't think he could be more in love with Pavel than he was in that moment.
He remembered the last time that Bones had seen Joanna. "Yes, that was the last time. She was nearly ten then."
The new yeoman (Bones felt terrible because he really needed to learn her name), told him congratulations. Bones didn't know if she would be around when Joanna showed up. Pavel did go through girlfriends and boyfriends like they were candy, but he appreciated the sentiment all the same. It was for Joanna after all.
"We better get going." She said, looking at her own comm, "If we want to make the show, Pavel."
Pavel took a step back, and Bones missed the warmth of his hands on his shoulders instantly. He made sure that none of that longing showed on his face. He didn't think he managed as well as he hoped for.
"…Yes of course. Let's get going." Pavel said, taking a few more steps back and reaching for the yeoman's offered hand.
For a heartbeat, Bones met Pavel's eyes and something connected deep in Bones' heart, and Bones knew, just knew, what he wanted for the rest of his life.
He wanted Joanna. He wanted the Enterprise, for some God-awful reason. He wanted a serious, long-term relationship. He wanted a partner in all things. He wanted Pavel to be that person.
Bones knew he was ready to move on from the place of hurt that his ex-wife had created. He was prepared for more.
And Pavel wasn't interested.
Pavel broke their gaze and turned to his companion. He smiled at her in a way Bones had seen before but had never been lucky enough to have it directed at him. She giggled and tugged at his hand.
Bones watched as Pavel walked with the girl around the corner. A beeping in from the hold line on his comm called his attention back to his device. A young but older than he remembered voice came on, "Daddy?"
Joanna.
God, she was growing up.
Bones smiled at the comm even though he knew she wouldn't see it. "Hiya, JoJo. Did your mom tell you the good news?"
"She did!" Joanna cheered on the other end of the line. "I get to see YOU this summer! AND I get to see SPACE! You're at that cool, new, space station, right?"
"I am," Bones said as he got lost in his happiness of talking to Joanna and distinctly did not think about the fact he would need a powerful drink once he'd finished. "It looks like a snow globe in space!"
"That's so cool daddy!" Joanna said. Bones let himself get completely absorbed in the conversation with his daughter.
He'd drink with Scotty again. Ask the bartender for something to celebrate getting to see his daughter.
And, maybe, celebrate finally being ready to move on from his Ex. Even if that person he wished he could move on with wasn't interested in him.
Small steps meant a lot to humans.
Especially if they were in space.
Meanwhile, inside the party, near the windows
Jim stared down at the actual paper in his hands, unsure what to think about it.
The envelope was fading and old, and it was addressed to Spock in Vulcan, in Jim's own handwriting. The writing was older and a little neater then he usually what wrote like, but it was undeniably his.
Jim didn't normally write anything out by hand but he would if it was important.
The letter, when Jim opened it, was dated about twenty years into the future. Jim would be about fifty if he got the math right. Other than Spock's name and the date, Jim couldn't read any of it. The swirls and lines of written Vulcan escaped his understanding.
Jim really, really wanted to know what the faded letter said.
"Ambassador Spock wanted it to be given to you," Spock said gently as he could. He was leaning against the bar that faced the large windows that displayed the USS Enterprise – A. "it was with his possessions."
Spock wasn't looking at the ship.
Jim wasn't either.
"Have you read this? It's in Vulcan, right?" Jim asked. He really didn't need Spock's answer to know he was right. He could identify Vulcan. He could read Spock's name in Spock's native tongue at least. He was no Nyota Uhura, but he did try. Some words framed Spock's name that Jim didn't recognize. But it was clear that the other Jim addressed this letter to Spock.
"Yes, it is," Spock agreed, "but I have not read the message. It's addressed to Ambassador Spock by someone who … cared deeply." Spock shifted his weight slightly, uncomfortable with the reality before him. It struck Jim as odd, Spock rarely shifted. "The suffix and prefix indicates a… a certain type of relationship. I haven't read any further. I didn't believe it was my place."
Jim could understand what Spock wasn't staying. Spock was uncomfortable with the idea that he was in a relationship with someone other than Nyota in his older self's timeline. It was clear to Jim that Spock didn't understand who could love him enough to write letters like that, if not Nyota Uhura?
Jim, on the other hand, felt like crying; his eyes were starting to water. If the other Jim could manage to actually maintain a romantic relationship with Spock then why couldn't he? "Oh… I see…." Jim trailed off.
He desperately wished that Spock had read the letter and had known that Jim was genuinely, dearly in love with him.
Jim remembered that Nyota Uhura existed and how can he , a pale imitation of the man older Spock spoke so proudly of, even compare to her?
Jim slammed that thought down quickly with a force that could have made warp.
He was not going to become bitter.
That would be unfair to them all.
Instead, he looked up at Spock and gave him a small smile. "Thank you, I'm glad he left me something." Jim blinked away the tears that wanted to form. It was not the time nor the place that. He would grieve more openly later. When he could get a translator and read the letter in full.
Jim had the feeling he would really need to cry then. He'd get Bones and Scotty involved, and they'd keep him from doing anything rash.
Spock raised an eyebrow like he knew that Jim was pushing something mildly self-destructive away. Jim always assumed that Spock could read Jim like they were mentally linked. Because the way Spock could sometimes understand what Jim did and did not say was astounding.
That near mental link drove Jim up a wall sometimes with longing, but he was happy about it for the most part.
Except.
Except recently.
It hadn't been working for months now. They had been drifting apart while Jim had been dealing with depression and Jim didn't know how to stop it.
"Thank you, Spock. For giving it to me." Jim said, folding the letter up and placing it in his jacket, next to his comm. He would keep the letter safe and protected.
"I believe the correct phrase is 'You are welcome,' Jim," Spock said in return.
Jim smiled. "If I need help getting it translated, can I bring you the words? I don't think I'll want to bother Uhura about this." He wasn't going to be so mean as to bring Spock entire phrases.
Spock nodded, all previous discomfort not showing on his face. "I will help."
Jim returned to watching the crowd. He already knew he wouldn't bring the full letter to Spock. He was already unhappy with the whole idea of the letter. Spock was uncomfortable with the idea of the identity of the writer.
"It must have been essential for the ambassador to have kept it through everything." Jim mused after a moment. He didn't even realize he has spoken out loud until Spock responded.
"It was written by a bondmate, by hand. I cannot imagine not having something that precious on my own person. There is precedence in Vulcan culture that handwritten missives show more… respect and appreciation for a person." Spock said. "I know not who wrote this correspondence, but evidence shows that they 'cared,' to use a human term."
Jim sighed. Spock had never seen Jim's handwriting. And now Jim was going to have to make sure he would never see it.
The party was still going on in the background. Some of the guests, and some crew, had left. Jim had spent most of his time on the dancefloor with a good half of his crew. He had been having a great time just letting loose with his people. They were so happy to be alive and to see him where he needed to be.
Jim needed this party, and he was glad Bones had put it together.
The only time Jim hadn't spent on the dance floor was when Nyota Uhura had once again done the impossible and had pulled Spock onto the dance floor. Seeing Spock awkwardly dance with her had made Jim's night. It might have made his week.
But as always, he ignored the stab of pain at seeing Spock in the arms of someone else. Jim was bigger than that, and he would not hurt either of his friends.
"Where is Uhura anyway?" Jim asked as he reached for the drink he had left on the railing that ran along windows. It was some sort of fruity concoction. Jim liked it.
"I believe she is with Miss Jayla at the Memory Alpha Database link. I would describe them as 'fast friends.'" Spock said calmly. "I was waiting to give this to you, and I had a conversation with Mr. Scott. I will join them shortly." He was drinking something from a tall and slim glass. Jim thought it was terran champagne, something Jim had gotten Spock to admit he liked after a very excellent game of chess that Jim had won.
"Oh? What did you talk with Scotty about?" Jim asked, and he took another drink. He suspected it was about the power converters for science lab four, the one that was going to be the new Stellar astronomy and navigation labs.
"Apparently, I was remiss in not addressing the fact that Mr. Scott has romantic feelings for Nyota and I sought to rectify that. The conversation was fascinating." Spock said. He nodded to the bar where Scotty was doing his best to drink the bar out of its stock.
Jim choked on his drink. "You what?! Tell me you didn't!" he said through his sputtering.
Spock raised an eyebrow like he found Jim amusing.
Jim took that look to mean that Spock did.
Which were all sorts of scary, if Jim was honest. If Spock knew of Scotty's love for Nyota then did he know if Jim's love for him?
"Mr. Scott had much of the same reaction. But I believe that he gave me a better… 'shovel talk' than I threatened him with." Spock said, leaning back on the railing.
"I see," Jim said. And he did. Scotty could be scary and determined if he wanted to be. He would also do what was best for Uhura.
If Scotty thought that Spock was best for Uhura (and he was, Uhura had chosen him), then Scotty would make sure that Spock knew it and would follow it.
"How long have you known?" Jim asked, knowing if Scotty hadn't asked then he would want to know later, during the inevitable drinking session.
"One year, two months and sixteen days. It was pointed out to me by the Freiisan ambassador." Spock said in reply, taking a drink from the long skinny glass.
Jim winced. He remembered the Freiisan ambassador. She had been on board the Enterprise for an extended taxi ride last year. The ambassador was the first person in a long time who hadn't wanted to sleep with Jim, but had wanted to sleep with Spock. She had spent the several weeks that she had been on board trying to get into Spock's pants. Uhura had been very unhappy. Jim had been very unhappy. Spock had tried to deflect the situation, but it was clear to all that he was very, very uncomfortable with what was going on. The ambassador had tried to spread rumors around the ship that Uhura was cheating on Spock.
That hadn't lasted very long. Every member of the crew who she had spoken to went directly to Jim. None of them had spread it further, nor did they believe her bullshit. Jim had shut her down after that. Jim wasn't surprised that she had gone to that length to fail at getting into Spock's' pants. "She was just a bitch. I'm sorry. Scotty took it all ok?"
Spock nodded. "He did." Spock finished his drink. "I must leave soon to meet up with Nyota."
Jim hummed in acknowledgment. "Have fun out there. I think I'll need to find where Bones disappeared to." He placed his now empty glass on the ledge he was leaning on.
Spock did the same and gave him a quick nod. "I will see you in two days, Jim."
Jim frowned. "Two days?"
"Yes. If you find doctor McCoy, then you plan on drinking. If you also decide to drink with Mr. Scott, then you will need at least a day to recover from your hangover. We don't have any responsibilities from Starfleet until the meeting with Admiral Chase in two days." Spock said, once again reading Jim's plans before Jim had a real chance to even realize that he was planning them.
It surprised Jim enough to make him laugh. It had been a while since Spock had done that. "I see, Mr. Spock! I will take that as permission. Please go meet up with your girlfriend and enjoy the next two days as well. I'll see you at the meeting." He waved as Spock left, still smiling.
God, he was in love.
Jim watched as Spock left. He didn't let the smile drop off of his face. Spock knew him so well, and they seemed to be back on the same wavelength as before. Jim was happy with that. He had missed their friendship.
Now he had to find Bones.
Because he had a letter, and it was for Spock for him. And Spock knew it was from a lover.
As he walked through the party Bones found him instead.
"Jim!" Bones said as he barreled through the crowd. "Jim! I got Joanna! For the whole summer!"
Jim whooped loudly, causing several members of his crew to look their way. "Really?!"
Bones looked delighted. He seemed happier at that time in the first year at the academy, when Joycelyn let him come home to see Joanna. "Yes really! All summer without Joycelyn. I'm flying out in a few weeks to get her then we'll be back!"
"Congrats, Bones!" Jim said. He was so happy for Bones. "Hey everyone! Bones' kid is coming to stay for awhile! Let's celebrate more!" He yelled into the room.
Because his crew was the best damned crew in the entire universe, they cheered. Jim grabbed Bones by the arm toward the bar where Scotty sat.
His plan to talk to Bones about the letter got pushed to the back of Jim's mind. He would not be a sad drunk tonight nor would he drag Bones down either.
They had enough time in the future to do that. That letter was going nowhere.
Later that night, as the party winds down
If Hikaru had drunk more in one night than he had tonight he didn't remember. Ben was just as gone.
"I'm so glad that we got the babysitter to stay overnight," Hikaru said, reaching for the glass of water. He was trying to sober up. He was well aware that he was the only one who was trying to be sensible.
Ben was smiling as he leaned against him on the barstool; his last drink of the night sitting in front of his place on the bar. "Me too. I see why you guys don't talk about the Starfleet parties if they're all like this one."
Hikaru laughed. "Yep. All Starfleet parties end up like this if the Brass leaves. It's fun." He wrapped his arms around his husband. It was still novel to be able to do that. After nearly three years of only video comms and emails, Hikaru had missed this.
Ben leaned back into the hug. They were both flagging, but it was a late night. But the party had been fun. Celebrating the Captain's birthday and the survival of the crew had morphed into a 'celebrate any good news' party. McCoy's daughter was coming to visit, the new ship would be ready in six or seven months, some of the people in communications just got the promotion lists and were telling people who got promoted.
All in all, a good night, Hikaru thought.
The one minor problem was the fact that Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty were all drunk as skunks and would probably be very, very, very hard to move. And Hikaru, out of the goodness of his heart and the fact he owed them some favors, was going to make sure that his superior officers actually made it to home to their rooms (or at least Ben's townhome on Yorktown) before they passed out.
They had been arguing over who loves the Enterprise more. That conversation had started when a young ensign had started to cry when she saw the new Enterprise, saying she had not spent enough time with their Enterprise.
Kirk had heard that, and somehow the conversation had changed from mourning their ship to an argument. Hikaru would be hard-pressed to repeat the change in tone and topics.
"I'm saying, I have to love the Enterprise more. She was the best ship." Scotty cried out. His accent getting thicker as he argued.
"Scotty," Kirk said, as patiently as a person who was so drunk they were falling out of their chair could be, which is to say, not at all. "I'm the Captain. I'm sure I love the Enterprise more than you. It almost killed me to call abandon ship. She was the most beautiful woman I've ever met."
"As chief engineer, I knew every inch of her. She always loved it when I got something right." Scotty said, pointing at Kirk with the hand still holding his (what Hikaru thinks is) scotch.
And Hikaru had to agree that Scotty did know almost every inch of the Enterprise. That ship practically always handled the surprises the five-year mission had for them because of Scotty.
"As Captain, I not only know the ship more, but I also know each crew member. That's part of the ship."
But on the other hand, Jim Kirk was the Captain. He always had the right idea and the Enterprise always, always, always did what he said. The ship was Kirk's.
"I think y'all're both dumb as a box of rocks." Scotty's accent wasn't the only one to get thicker after drinking a lot. McCoy's tone was like old southern whiskey. "It's a ship. Who cares?"
Both Scotty and Kirk gasped in unison, making Hikaru and Ben laugh. "Don't say that about our girl, Bones!" Kirk said, flailing his arms out. "Don't worry! She loved you too! That's why med bay never lost power during a battle once you became CMO!"
McCoy grumbled. But Hikaru saw the pleased look flicker across his face before McCoy took a long drink of his beer. Hikaru knew, like the rest of the main bridge crew, that McCoy, for all his bluster and outright of distaste of space, could never imagine having a different life.
"Now if we are talking about who the Enterprise loved most, there is no contest." Scotty declared. "That was you, Captain."
Hikaru laughed again. "Scotty's right Captain. She loved you most." He leaned over and punched Kirk's arm lightly. "Always doing the impossible because you asked her too."
Kirk grinned as he shifted back, bright and happy. "Well, that's good, Sulu. I loved her most."
McCoy snorted, and Scotty made sputtering sounds, while Hikaru and Ben laughed. "I take that back. She loved me more!"
Hikaru could see that this argument would go on for a while, and he started to speak up to change the subject before the argument would become a fight, but McCoy spoke first.
"Jim, you and I and Scotty all know who you love most. Don't even think that we can be tricked into thinking that the Enterprise is your true love." McCoy said with a tone of finality.
McCoy spoke with a father's tone. Hikaru had to admire the steel in McCoy's voice because it was something that Hikaru had never really mastered with Demora. Ben could do it, but he saw her every morning and talked to her every night. Hikaru never could, not while they were in space. Not when his heart was pulled in to two directions.
Kirk blushed, something that Hikaru hadn't seen him do in years, but his smile didn't falter. "Well, it wouldn't be the Enterprise without him, Bones. Sorry! He makes me love the ship more." He raised his glass at McCoy and then Scotty.
Scotty laughed. "Aye, he would do that for ya. Just like I can't imagine the Enterprise without her. They make the ship, our wonderful lady, home." He took a deep drink of the scotch, finishing it.
McCoy downed the last of his beer. "I don't know what I would do if I were stuck in space without him."
Hikaru sighed, that emotion was something he knew very well. "You would live… and survive like the rest of us." Ben tightened his grip on Hikaru's hand, leading him the strength to continue. Hikaru knew that the three of them went drinking to forget their feelings for others on the ship.
The three of them nodded with all the seriousness and gravity drunk people could get. Hikaru had drunk with them before, and they all knew to respect his knowledge.
Ben leaned against Hikaru's side, and Hikaru placed an arm around him. They leaned into each other. Hikaru caught Kirk's expression shifting for a heartbeat. Instead of smiling, it was filled with longing and wistfulness. It was clear who Jim Kirk was thinking of.
But then Kirk shook his head and turned back to Scotty and started talking about the limits on the new warp core of the soon to be USS Enterprise – A.
Hikaru had long known of his Captain's love for his First Officer. In fact, he knew who Scotty and Bones had been referring too as well.
"Well, come on," Ben said pulling away. "I think it's time to go. Do you want to help them to their rooms?" He nodded toward the three others. They were drinking and murmuring about the new ship. They weren't paying any more attribution to him and Ben.
Hikaru frowned. "I don't think they are going to make it to their rooms on their own and maybe we shouldn't leave them alone."
"We'll take them to our place." Ben decided.
Hikaru hummed. "You sure? Demora is home, and these three will be loud."
Ben smiled, and Hikaru knew he was a lucky man. "'Mora will sleep through a natural disaster. She'll be fine."
"Well, then, let's go!" Hikaru said.
The act of getting his commanding officers actually out of the party wasn't as hard as Hikaru expected it to be; the alcohol was strong enough that they were getting tired and dehydrated enough that they wanted to leave. What was actually tricky was keeping them undistracted as the group made their way to Ben's townhouse.
They kept getting distracted by 'cool ideas' in Kirk's words and 'awesome inventions' in Scotty's. McCoy seemed to feel like he was the protector of them both and was trying to dissuade them from doing anything too stupid.
Of all of them, McCoy was the easiest to deal with. He actually wasn't the oldest, that was Scotty. But a drunk Scotty and a drunk Kirk was a combination of bad ideas and the know-how to actually get them done.
But the doctor was easy enough to point in the right direction. He would actually listen. He also was a good third of Kirk's impulse control at the moment.
Hikaru knew that if Spock were here then he would be at least three-fourths of Kirk's impulse control.
Nothing would be able to control Kirk completely.
Scotty was an enabler. Kirk was too. But McCoy did help Ben and Hikaru corral them in the right direction.
When McCoy did get distracted by being drunkenly overprotective of Kirk and Scotty, all Hikaru had to do was bring up Pavel and some story that happened recently and McCoy just followed him like a puppy. A very grumpy puppy but a puppy all the same.
If Pasha ever woke up to what was right in front of him, and actually saw the good doctor as someone who was actually really interested, then Pasha would be very happy.
Hikaru loved Pasha as a brother, and it was hard for him to see Pasha jump from lover to lover. He needed to settle down and Hikaru knew for a fact that Pasha was looking for that person. Pasha, always was the optimist, always believed he could find the one. But every partner he had wasn't enough or wanted different things. Or wanted Pavel to leave Starfleet or the Enterprise. Or they wanted to move too fast. Or they just wanted the right to say they had 'Starfleet's child genius' in their bed.
Pavel had a lot of reasons to date people. And he had even more reasons to say no and end those relationships.
The doctor didn't ever seem to want for Pavel to be more than himself. Hikaru had watched the way McCoy's eyes had lit up when Pasha went into his 'I'm a genius hear me roar' mode on the bridge or in the mess or even on missions. When Pasha started talking about his interest in stellar cartography and star charts (something that bores Hikaru to death), McCoy actually humors him and asks questions.
The doctor would be good for Pasha.
If Pavel Chekov ever looked at Leonard McCoy and really saw…
Well, Pasha would be happy.
A burst of low laughter drew his attention to the trio of idiots ahead of him.
Ben had reached the door of the townhome and had shushed them. The three were giggling slightly. And trying to be quiet but were failing rather epically.
"I'm so glad Demora sleeps," McCoy said. "Jo never did when things got loud." He had a small smile on his face at the memory of his daughter.
Hikaru let him.
"Jim won't sleep for the next two hours. You guys might want to go to bed before he starts on the wonders of Spock. Because that will get Scotty started on all the things that are amazing about Uhura. They'll go back and forth for a while. It gets tedious." McCoy continued as he pushed both Jim and Scotty into the house. He said this as if he wasn't about to join them in talking about the wonders of one Pavel Chekov.
Hikaru thought that the whole conversation sounded fun to listen to.
Ben was turning on lights and walking into the small kitchen. The house wasn't huge, but it was something that Hikaru could actually provide. It was a Starfleet officer's house, a privilege of Hikaru's career choice. It was better than an apartment.
There was a small sound of surprise as the babysitter came down from the upper story. Ben got up to deal with her and Hikaru glanced at the other three men. They were at looking contrite for waking somebody.
"I'll get Demora and get the bed ready, 'Karu," Ben said. "You get your command triad over there settled. Come up when you're ready." He was smiling, and Hikaru knew he was hiding a laugh.
Hikaru smiled, shook his head, and went to the linen closet to pull out blankets.
He helped the three of them set up camp on the couch. And he absolutely did not linger to hear Jim Kirk wax poetic about Spock.
"The thing is… he's wonderful. He's so damned dedicated. And it kills me because there are days I get up early to do paperwork and he's already finished it! Spock cares so damned much for this ship. And I can trust him to do what's best. Even when he put in an early out chit in, that had to be the best for the ship." Jim sighed, unaware that the other three men froze at his words.
Hikaru found his voice first. "Spock put in an early-out chit? He actively put in the paperwork and requested to end his contract with Starfleet early?" That was mind-boggling. Spock loved Starfleet. Why should he leave?
"How did you find out? Spock said he hadn't told you yet." McCoy asked. He sounded tired but focused.
"Yes. I don't know why for sure but it would be something either self-sacrificing or what he thinks is best for the ship." Kirk said then he scoffed. "Of course, I knew, Bones! Who else has to sign things like that before sending it up to the Admiralty?" He sounded incredulous. Kirk glanced sideways at McCoy. "You knew? You actually got him to talk about it? I never could. I had given up by the time we reached Yorktown. The closest I got was when he wanted to tell me about the death of Ambassador Spock."
"Oh…" McCoy said. "I found out on Altimir. He's withdrawn the request."
"Good." Scotty suddenly said. Both McCoy and Kirk jumped like they had forgotten they had an audience. "I would have to punch him for hurting you and Nyota."
"Don't worry about that, Scotty. He was just as lost as I was. It's ok. He was thinking of the ship first as I was. We're good now." Kirk said, smiling at Scotty. Hikaru knew that Kirk had been dealing with depression for a while. But he didn't realize that Spock had been dealing with it too.
"Again, good. I would have told him off." Scotty said like that would have done anything.
Hikaru laughed. "Well, I'm glad my crew is staying together." And he was, finishing the mission without his Captain or his First Officer would have been horrible.
Kirk smiled at him. "Of course, we are! We've got at least two more years left! Then I hope you all stay on the Enterprise for whatever they send her to next. They will have to ban my ass off of starships before I leave the Captain's chair."
Hikaru and Scotty laughed.
"Aye, and they won't be catching me retire ever if I have any say about it." Scotty agreed. "As long as I can work with tools, I'll be in a starship with ya."
"That's not how my plans work," McCoy grumbled.
That set off another round of laughter.
Seeing as the three drunk idiots were beginning to settle into the couch and the floor, Hikaru gave them the blankets to cover up and maybe get some sleep.
Hikaru wondered as he left the room why Spock never realized that Kirk was perfect for him?
And come to that matter, why did Uhura never see that Scotty was a better fit for her then Spock?
Not that Hikaru thought anything bad about either of them for missing it.
Uhura was a goddess among people, putting up with the crew's antics the way she did. Though her and Spock's eventual marriage would be successful,Hikaru thought that it would be a marriage where something would always be missing. Hikaru figured they both would need more than the other could give them.
Uhura would need someone who could stand next to her and not once look down on her for any reason. She would need support, not competition. Someone who wouldn't mind when she would lose herself in her work because they would be doing the same next to her. She needed someone who would understand her without feeling the need to quantify her. She needed Scotty.
Spock, on the other hand, would need someone who wanted intelligence, his protectiveness, and care. Someone who stood by him at all times. Someone who challenged him. Someone who would call him out on his 'I'm a Vulcan' bullshit. Someone who demanded all of Spock's attention, who wouldn't settle for less. Someone he respected enough to listen to, and then ignore. Someone who wanted to protect him, be protected by him, and care for him without stifling him. Spock needed Jim.
And neither Spock nor Uhura saw it.
Neither of them saw that while they could be happy together, doing their on again and off again thing they'd been playing around with for years; both Spock and Uhura would be happier with other people.
Hikaru sighed, it was not his place to tell them. If Spock and Uhura thought that they were well for each other, then they were right for each other.
No matter how much Hikaru thought, the Enterprise would be happier if everyone realized what they were missing.
So I hope you enjoyed chapter three! the next chapter will be moving the plot forward more so I hope you all like that :D
A BIG thank you to B0kunoanime on Tumblr. she's been such an AWESOME beta!
please come and yell at me in the comments or on Tumblr at asailordreamingbeyondthehorizon!~
Chapter 4: Hold Me Tight Or Don't – (You Look Like I Need a Drink Right Now)
Two weeks before the first shore leave on the second five-year mission
In all honesty, if he was pushed, Spock could have recounted the conversation that led to yet another argument with Nyota, but he found he was not inclined to.
After she had stormed out less than an hour ago, all Spock had been left with was a strained voice, a shaken posture and a very empty set of rooms.
He had gone to the meditation corner of his room and had attempted thought sorting practices. The ones which had once helped at the beginning of his relationship with Nyota. Back when everything was new, hard to understand and reason out.
After a fight, he would generally be trying to calm his emotions, and working through the reason he and Nyota had the argument and trying to find a solution. It had served him well for the past several years. The habit had preserved his and Nyota's relationship several times.
Spock hadn't even wanted to go through the motions but felt he needed to make the attempt.
The meditation had failed him more often than not in the past couple of months.
It was failing him now.
The conversation, if one could call their screaming argument a conversation, wasn't the first argument they'd had, nor, Spock suspected, would it be their last.
The arguments, the fights, as Terrans called such arguments between couples, in the past months had become more frequent. And the fights, Spock felt a flash of frustration run through him at the admission, were never about opinions or debates anymore, it was always the little personality things. Things neither of them could, or would, change.
Nyota didn't like the faint but near constant smell of incense that covered his clothes. He didn't like the way she would hum the songs stuck in her head. It was the small things.
As the arguments rose in frequency, the meditation failed in a proportionate inverse.
Spock blinked his eyes open. He had lost the mediation.
Spock felt a little like Jim right now. He really wanted to say 'Fuck it.'
He was exhausted. Emotionally. And he was finding that even with repeated exposure to that state he still did not care for the feeling.
Clearly, his standard solution wasn't fixing the actual problem. That bothered him.
He might as well get some work done; the start of the second five-year mission had created a lot of paperwork. Spock, in particular, had been looking forward to reading Nurse Chapel's study and analysis of the families now living onboard. Maybe, some part of him admitted, this would be a good distraction from his emotional turmoil.
He stood up from his meditation mat and walked to his desk. Spock sat and picked up the padd with the study report. Intent on reading and giving feedback, Spock spent the next several minutes staring blankly at his padd, filled with information from the study. He processed none of it.
Spock allowed his gaze to wander the room. It was just as empty as it had been when Nyota had left. Just as clean. Just as filled with the scent of his incense.
Just as wrong, apparently.
But something caught his eyes. But not his mind. It took a moment for him to find what had caught his attention.
Next to his bed, on the nightstand, was the last thing Ambassador Spock had ever given him.
It was a holographic photo of the Enterprise crew, ambassador Spock's crew, dated to when Spock was in his late fifties. They were all dressed in a red uniform which Spock could only assume was a formal uniform; it looked far too stiff to be a working uniform.
They were in the bridge of a ship that looked vaguely like the Enterprise-A, but something was different. Spock could never genuinely have decided what was wrong, but some detail was off. Mr. Chekov and Mr. Scott stood to the back of the photo. Mr. Sulu was next to Mr. Chekov. Their friendship was clearly a multiverse event, as Chekov had his hand on Sulu's shoulder. McCoy stood next to Jim on his right, standing stiff and formal, scowling at the camera.
Jim was in the Captain's chair, smiling like he was satisfied with the day's events. He was older, and his hair was darker and curlier. Spock suspected that Jim had more weight on him than he did right now. But even with the changes, Spock couldn't help but think that Jim was still beautiful.
In all of this, what caught Spock's attention most, the first time he saw the photo when he was on Yorktown several years ago, and now, standing in his quarters with the remnants of a fight lingering around him, was the fact he and Nyota were standing at different ends of the picture. Nyota stood on the other side of the photo than he did.
They weren't touching. That lack of contact was something that Spock had noticed before. It was unusual for bonded Vulcan couples to be seen without any contact between them at all.
When he first saw the photo on Yorktown, Spock had an idea that he and Nyota looked like they were protecting their family. That thought had pleased him; they were protecting their tribe… But now, that same distance didn't give him the confidence that they were separated to protect.
The distance made him think that they were not together at all in Ambassador Spock's universe.
And that mere thought that he was not together with Nyota in any universe should have hurt, but it did not.
He remembered seeing the letter that Ambassador Spock had left Jim.
The handwritten one that was addressed to him by a bondmate. A bondmate that Spock didn't think was Nyota; the script didn't match her handwriting. He remembered feeling uncomfortable that Jim had been gifted such a letter. He wondered why Ambassador Spock did not give the message to Nyota, if indeed that the missive was from a bondmate. Ambassador Spock had given her a manuscript on differences between Vulcan spoken language he had learned and the one that was present in this universe. It was a gift from a friend. Not a gift from a lover. Spock had always wondered why Ambassador Spock had chosen that.
Now, Spock was sure that he knew.
It wasn't Nyota's letter.
It had never been Nyota's letter.
Perhaps Jim was meant to hold on to the letter until Spock met the person who had written it… Spock didn't know. He stared at the photo hard. Trying to see what his logical mind was telling him was there. Trying to see what he was missing. He almost dismissed the thought that was forming in the back of his mind.
Maybe the letter... was Jim's. In more ways than just currently in his possession.
Spock didn't understand all the feelings that shot through him at that thought. They were a tangled mess of many things, hot and complicated. They were shifting, and Spock was not in a state to identify them all.
One was one Spock could identify. Grief. If the letter was Jim's, Jim from the other universe, then Ambassador Spock had kept the message with him and had undoubtedly lost Jim long before the Ambassador had reached their timeline. But the other emotions he felt were a mystery to him.
He would have to meditate to understand them. Spock would have to attempt to meditate again. He hadn't even gotten up from the desk to go back to the meditation mat before his door chimed. Spock started, which said a lot about his mental state and controls, he knew.
His door beeped again, and there wasn't even a full moment before Nyota came through it, using an access code she'd had for years.
She had a blank expression that rivaled even his father's on the day he left Vulcan.
"Spock, I believe we need to talk," she said, her tone even.
Spock felt suddenly viscerally aware of the reason humans sometimes took a large drink of alcohol before conversations like the one he was about to have.
He found that he wanted a large chocolate bar.
Spock had, over the years, learned to read Nyota's expressions. He had learned to read her body language and had known her thoughts and choices. He could read Nyota well.
It was a skill that had never come easily to him. Nyota could read him like a book, as the Terran expression went. She always had been able to. Spock had never felt like he had the same ability to understand her. He had learned, but he didn't think he was nearly as good at it as Nyota was with him.
Right now, as she crossed his quarters and sat on his bed opposite his desk, Spock could read nothing. He had no clear path.
And that blankness, more than anything else, was the hint he needed. They both knew what this conversation would entail.
He felt his heart sink, as humans would put it. "Nyota."
Nyota took a deep breath and let it out. It shook as she breathed out. She met his gaze evenly.
"We are not working as a couple." She said bluntly. "We've been drifting, haven't we?" Her hands clenched into fists on her lap.
Spock's hands inevitably did the same.
"We have." He said simply. Nyota broke eye contact.
They sat in silence for a moment. Not because they didn't try to speak, but neither could find the words to express what was needed to say. Both tried to talk. Neither could.
Spock felt his heart sink lower.
Is this what they had become?
They couldn't find the words. They couldn't talk about this. They didn't talk anymore, and when they did it was arguing. She was the best communicator on the ship. She wasn't able to express her emotions either.
Is this what the last six years had become?
Disjointed words and half-finished sentences with no real meaning?
"We have been arguing more often," Spock said finally. He stared down at his hands for a moment before looking up again.
"We have." Nyota agreed, shortly. She didn't say anything else.
Spock hated, hated, hated the following silence. Neither knowing where to go with the conversation. He stood up and joined Nyota on the bed, sitting next to her with very little space between.
She didn't move away, but she didn't lean any closer like she used to. Spock was struck by how long it had been since she had leaned into him.
It may have been months.
Nyota didn't look at him. She remained staring at the floor before the desk.
"Do you want this relationship to continue?" She asked after a moment. "I do, but I need to know if you do too." She shifted in her place, like the nervous energy she was filled with had finally forced her to move. "We've put a lot of effort into what we had. I don't want to lose it."
Spock took the question seriously, surprised she even asked. He had made a commitment to their relationship. Spock could possibly go into pon farr sometime in the next few years. That was what Ambassador Spock had told him. It was the only real warning that his future self-had given him.
Spock had long assumed that it was Nyota that would be with him during that trying event.
Not Jim Kirk, who was with the Ambassador, who had fought with the Ambassador, who had been at the Ambassador's side.
Spock ignored the stab of hot emotion to which he had no name that ran through him at the thought of Jim sharing pon farr with another Vulcan. He had been ignoring emotions like that his whole life.
He wanted Nyota to be with him for the rest of their lives. He didn't know if anyone would be his friend like she had been for the last years.
"I do wish for our relationship to continue," Spock said after a moment, thinking of all he could lose if they ended what they had. From his research: Terran breakups often caused the end of friendships.
An unbidden half smirk, a half smile spread across Nyota's face. "I actually believe that. I could hear you think." She sighed. "We're going to have work on the relationship."
Spock nodded. He had no idea where to start. Every step of their relationship and courtship had been new to him. For some of it, he had been able to lead and not just relied on Nyota's expertise as a human. But now he was at a loss.
"We should spend more time together, first," Nyota said, finally looking up at him. Their eyes met, and Spock felt a hope that maybe their relationship would work. "I think part of the problem is that we aren't doing that."
And suddenly Spock could breathe fully again. He could also help plan.
"There is a shore leave scheduled in two weeks. I believe we should ask for the full time off." Spock said, already thinking about how best to rearrange his schedule so that he and Nyota could spend more time together without hurting their work.
It would mean less time with Jim. That would be hard.
But Spock would do it.
"No duty or watch?" Nyota hummed a little. Spock had once thought that trait was endearing. Now it annoyed him slightly. "That would work. We have to actually talk about things. And not argue about them."
Spock knew that they both were at fault for the arguments. It was honestly about fifty-fifty as to who started them. "That is acceptable."
"Spock. I want us to work. I want us." Nyota said quietly. "We should try one more time. We'll talk about it again during shore leave."
Spock knew that he did too. But… he also knew and understood what it meant if during shore leave they still didn't work.
Spock would do his best to save his relationship in two weeks. If that didn't work, then there was only one option.
Until then he would do everything needed to save his relationship.
His relationship with Nyota.
Even it meant that he had less time for Jim.
Four hours into shore leave
Pavel tried to keep the pleasant expression on his face.
He was sure he was failing at it.
The longer Camelia's father talked, the more Pavel wanted to run.
This dinner was rapidly falling into a disaster, much like the way most away missions did. Slowly at first, then everything going wrong for someone all at once.
Right now, he was that someone.
Pavel had a headache building behind his eyes. A stress headache. Just what he needed.
He had been excited about this dinner. He was meeting Camelia 's parents. He had thought that was a good thing!
Wasn't it?
He had told Leonard when he had run into Leonard before he had met up with Camelia, that he wanted this dinner, that he was serious with Camelia. Pavel hadn't been lying.
Pavel has thought that he wanted to be serious with Camelia. They had been dating for a while, and he was happy for the first time in a stable relationship. She was what Pavel thought he was looking for. Smart, sensible, filled with knowledge about things that interested Pavel, always just as ready to listen to him on things that interested her.
They had been good so far. Pavel hadn't gotten bored like some of the other relationships he'd been in. Nor had he felt pressured to do something he didn't want to. So, Pavel had thought that he might be ready for more.
Meeting her parents came next right?
At least that was the idea that he was clinging to.
He was holding on to that idea with a quickly fraying rope.
The restaurant was one of the best on the planet. Camelia's father had picked it out, saying that since his daughter and wife were in town they should eat at the best restaurant. His ship was in orbit at the same time as the Enterprise, for only two days.
At first, the dinner had been excellent and pleasant. They had asked about Pavel's work and his ideas. Camelia had been asked about her work, a few friends that she had from Earth, and about their extended family. Camelia's mother had spoken at length about her latest project that had lost Pavel, but he had tried.
The dinner had been pleasant.
At first.
But as this dinner wore on, Pavel was beginning to see that maybe that being serious with Camelia wasn't the best idea.
Because her father was charismatic, charming, and an absolute ass.
Now he was counting the minutes until he could leave and never, ever speak to Captain Warrington, Camelia's father, again.
What Pavel thought was going to be a 'meeting the parents' dinner became a recruitment dinner from her father. And Camelia was all for it.
He had spent the entire time talking about his accomplishments with the Intrepid, in the six months he had been in charge of her. He sounded like what Len would describe as a 'snake oil salesmen.' (Pavel found it was an excellent term to describe people for a term that was not invented in Russia.)
Captain Warrington was nothing like Captain Kirk. He clearly thought he was better than Captain Kirk. The man's sheer arrogance was driving Pavel up a wall.
"And so, as I saved my ship, the Intrepid, from certain destruction, I became aware that I need a stronger navigator. A navigator who could keep up with my genius. That's where you come in Mr. Chekov. Camelia has been telling me about your skills and abilities in Navigation and Engineering. I believe you would make a valued member of my team."
Pavel fought the urge to snap out his actual thoughts about that. He had heard of the disaster that the Intrepid had been involved in. The Captain wasn't the savior of the day. He had instigated it! Junior officers liked to talk and trade stories. All he had ever heard from people from the Enterprise was good things. Stories about how Captain Kirk had saved them or the latest cool mission. All Pavel had heard in the last six months from the junior officers from the Intrepid was how their Captain was going to get them killed with his high mindedness.
Pavel had thought that was merely disgruntled officers talking. But now he knew. They weren't lying.
But saying that wasn't the most pleasant thing to say in the current company. Captain Warrington's navigator sounded like a reasonable person who was good at their job. It wasn't their fault that only Pavel could navigate that particular incident. Not that Captain Kirk would have gotten the ship into that incident at all.
Camelia was beaming from where she sat next to him. Like she was excited for whatever her father was saying.
"I see," Pavel said evenly, taking the last bite from his dinner. The plate had been filled with fantastic food native to the planet. It was now empty, and Pavel needed to do something like actually talking.
His patience was wearing thin. He hated when people tried to 'steal' him away from the Enterprise. Multiple times Captains had come to him try to get him on their crew. The only reason Pavel would ever be willing to leave the Enterprise was if he got an offer to be the First Officer on a ship that was like the Enterprise, had most of the Enterprise's crew, and if Hikaru came with him. And if the captain was Mr. Spock or Captain Kirk. And if the ship had the best damn medical team around.
In other words, it was never going to happen.
Especially right now as the second five-year mission just got started.
Captain Warrington didn't seem to hear Pavel's tone. Neither did Camelia or her mother.
"I told Papa that you were the best. Papa only wants the best. That's why another person and I are transferring." Camelia said blithely. She picked up her wine. "I can be the head nurse on the Intrepid, Pav."
And Pavel didn't bother to hide his flinch at the nickname. He hated when people called him Pav. He preferred Pavel. Or maybe, if Pavel really liked the person, Pasha . Camelia knew that.
It occurred to Pavel that he hadn't given Camelia permission to call him Pasha.
Maybe that was a sign that he had understood subconsciously something that was only dawning on him now. That he maybe didn't want Camelia.
Not in the way he thought he did.
But, he had a more important thing to worry about. The most significant thing about that statement from Camelia was the fact that she hadn't told him that she was transferring.
He hadn't known that.
That fact was a problem. A major one.
"You are planning on transferring, Camelia?" Pavel asked as lightly as possible. He took a large sip of the wine he was drinking. It was white and light and Pavel really, really wanted to be drinking something stronger right now. Like vodka. Or even Len's preferred hard drink of choice: Bourbon.
Camelia looked surprised. "Of course! Papa's now a Captain, and this will help my career." Pavel mentally snorted. Transferring to her father's ship would tank her career. It would show Starfleet and all others who were looking for Head Nurses or the equivalent that she couldn't do the job without nepotism.
He didn't say that out loud of course. It wasn't worth it at that moment.
"I see," he repeated stiffly.
But he didn't.
He didn't see how she would want to leave the crew. All of the people who worked in medical took great care to stay with the Enterprise. Len had often said that once they'd had their hands inside a crew member, literally, then that crewmember was their's for life. The medical crew was part of the reason why the Enterprise always felt like family.
Pavel had liked that about Len, a lot.
He guessed Camelia wasn't like that. That she didn't feel the same way.
Pavel was becoming more and more sure that a serious relationship with Camelia wasn't in the cards.
Pavel found that his anger at being put in this situation by Camelia and her father drowned out his disappointment that the relationship wasn't going to work out with Camelia.
"Your Captain won't use you as you need. You won't grow if you stay on the Enterprise like you have." Warrington said, recapturing Pavel's attention. He was drinking a glass of wine so red that it was nearly black. "He hasn't for my kin. Camelia, darling, it's just you who will be transferring."
Camelia looked at her father, puzzlement on her face. "Just me? I thought -"
"Just you," Warrington said with a hint of anger that was gone in the next moment. "And Pavel here, once he accepts. He will be exceptional on the Intrepid and away from the stifling conditions of the Enterprise."
Pavel turned from Camelia and faced the man. If this wasn't going to be a meeting the parents dinner like he'd thought, then he wasn't going to treat it as one.
"What makes you believe that, Captain?" Pavel asked evenly. Pavel shifted in his seat, trying to hide his shaking foot. He had far too much energy for this dinner. It wasn't a good idea to allow a recruiting Captain to know that Pavel wasn't interested until he had all the facts.
With those facts, he could tell Captain Kirk and have him deal with Captains who liked to poach crew from others.
"You're good. But with me, you could be great. Not wasted on another exploratory mission lead by a child who has no idea how to lead. If you want to be seen or promoted and climb the ranks, then you need to be with the Intrepid. Not the Enterprise." Warrington sounded smug like he knew something that Pavel didn't.
Which pissed Pavel right off. There were so many things wrong with that sentence that it was laughable.
Pavel picked up the glass of white wine in front of him and took a long sip to give himself a moment to calm down and not snap at the man.
Now Pavel wasn't against getting promoted or climbing the ranks. He had just made Lieutenant before the end of the last five-year mission and was slated to make Lieutenant Commander when space opened up in the fleet. Hikaru was already a Lieutenant Commander, and so was Uhura. Scotty was a full Commander now. The only ones who didn't promote were Len, the Captain, and Mr. Spock. That was because they all refused any promotions given to them. They wanted to stay on the Enterprise and being promoted would take them from the Enterprise.
It was that dedication to the ship and the crew that Pavel really enjoyed.
To hear Warrington's dismissal and belief that the Enterprise was holding him back and that the missions were worth nothing? That annoyed Pavel. Their missions had meant something the federation. The Enterprise was responsible for so much good in the universe that Pavel couldn't help but be proud that he was a part of the ship and her crew.
But to say that Captain Kirk was a child who couldn't lead was almost too much for Pavel to bear. Pavel had been considered an actual child for so long and by so many that he was almost offended when people use the term to insult someone. And Jim Kirk had led the ship and her crew through so many life-and-death situations, from the Nerada to Altimir and Yorktown and beyond. His leadership was worth so much.
"I don't believe that," Pavel said tightly. He placed his wine glass on the table just as firmly. It was empty. Much like Pavel's patience with this dinner. His headache only had gotten worse in the last half hour. It was now pounding at his eyes and temples. Pavel had hoped it would fade. He wasn't that lucky.
"I do," Camelia said. She was still smiling softly. That look had been part of the reason Pavel was interested in her in the first place, but then there was something wrong.
It took Pavel a heartbeat to realize why her smile suddenly bothered him.
Her smile was the same as her father's.
And now that Pavel had seen her father's smug smile, he couldn't separate it from Camelia's.
The smile said she knew more than he did and she was used to getting her way.
"I can't be the Head Nurse, not stuck on the Enterprise. Or at least not with the current failure of a CMO." She didn't seem to care that she was insulting Len. "He's blind as a bat if he doesn't see that keeping Chapel as the head nurse was a terrible idea. She's too wrapped up in that new families-on-ships project to keep being Head Nurse. I'm a much better choice. McCoy is just playing favorites." Camelia took another drink of wine.
"He's a moron to keep you down, darling." Captain Warrington said, smiling fondly at his daughter. "I saw your rough draft of your transfer request. You worded it wonderfully. They won't know what they're missing, the fools."
Pavel was friends with Len. Len was a good man. He was everything Pavel wanted to be in a leader. He was funny and blunt. He was strong, handsome as hell, and damn good at his job. He had been there when Pavel had needed him. They were friends.
Pavel had thought that Camelia liked her boss.
I can see that she makes you happy, Pavel. She's a good nurse. A good woman. I'm … happy for you.
Len thought that Camelia would be right for him. That she was a good nurse. He had sounded distracted when they had spoken earlier, before Camelia and Pavel had left to the planet, but that was normal. Sometimes, when Pavel spoke of his partners, girlfriends or boyfriends, Len would get distracted and Pavel chocked that up to Len's divorce still paining him. So, he had never pushed the topic.
Len liked Camelia.
Apparently, that regard wasn't returned.
Only now did it occur to Pavel that he put a lot of weight on what Len said and did. And then he realized that he thought Len was handsome as hell.
Pavel pushed that thought to the back of his mind. He'd deal with that later. When he wasn't in, what he now considered, 'enemy territory.'
"So, when can I expect to see a transfer request from you, Mr. Chekov?" Captain Warrington asked, smiling in that smug way that made Pavel want to punch him.
"Yes! When you transfer, I can introduce-…" Camelia was smiling, like she was getting everything she wanted. Pavel took a, probably wrong, delight in looking forward to changing that expression quick.
"Never," Pavel said, interrupting her firmly. He drained his wine glass. "I'm not planning on leaving the Enterprise."
Captain Warrington looked mildly surprised, like he wasn't expecting Pavel's response. Did everyone Captain Warrington tried to recruit just fall at his feet when he showed his Captain's stripes? No wonder the waiting list to get on the Enterprise was over twice the crew complement of the ship.
"Why?" Camelia asked, sounding stunned. She clearly also hadn't expected Pavel's answer. "But we can be together on the Intrepid!"
Pavel glared at her. "I'm not transferring for nothing. The Enterprise has all I need. Why would I need more?" It may be a little cruel to speak to her this way, but he was still mad that she had put him in this position, having to choose between the Enterprise and his girlfriend. He had thought they might be ready for a more serious relationship. Might . Transferring now - for her - was much too soon. It was too big, too fast, and it was something Pavel did not want to do.
Pavel wasn't ready to leave the Enterprise. He wasn't prepared to leave his friends. He wasn't prepared to leave his leadership. Pavel wasn't ready to leave Len.
"I won't be there!" Camelia said, getting more and more flustered. She was rapidly turning red, and her expression was starting to cloud with anger. "I'll be on the Intrepid, and you don't like long distance! You told me that!"
Pavel nodded, ignoring how his head pounded at the action. "You're right. I don't like the long-distance relationships. I'm staying on the Enterprise. If that means we're breaking up, then that means we're breaking up. The Enterprise is far more important to me than following you right now. I won't miss the five-year mission for anything other than death, Camelia. Not you, or the Intrepid, will stop me. The mission and my place on the Enterprise are more important. I thought my dedication to the Enterprise was obvious."
Pavel's head snapped to the side as Camelia's hand made contact with his cheek and temple. He could hear the ring of the slap throughout the restaurant. The other patrons quieted to see what was happening.
Pavel should have expected that. He hadn't, and now his headache was rapidly getting worse. The sharp from the impact of the slap now mixed with the pounding in his temples, creating a whole new, worse pain.
"If you really feel like that Pavel Chekov, then we are over. Don't try getting back with me. I'm on to better things than you and that ship." Camelia said, glaring at him in a challenge like she expected her words to change anything.
Pavel smiled despite his headache and the pain in his cheek. He stood up. He didn't want to be here anymore, and that was the moment he had been looking forward to since her father had started to speak.
He was leaving.
"Goodbye Camelia." He said and stood up and walked away from the table. He could hear the family talking as he left the restaurant. He didn't care.
All he wanted to do is go back to his quarters and sleep away the headache. And maybe get a shot of whiskey from his stash if Len hadn't gone through his things again for another 'health and safety' inspection.
The evening of the first night of shore leave
If Nyota had to describe the last two weeks in one word, it would be suffocating.
Or maybe chafing.
Or maybe exhausting .
For once she wasn't sure of the right word to use.
She and Spock had spent more time together in the past two weeks then they had in the last three months. Every moment of their off time they could, they spent together. They had cut down on time spent with friends. Spock had spent almost no time with Jim. Nyota couldn't remember a time when she didn't have dinner in the mess at least once a week with Scotty. Now she hadn't seen Scotty in a week.
She and Spock had tried to go on dates again. They had spent time in observation lounges (a place that used to be a favorite of theirs), in the mess, and in their rooms. They talked about everything they could think of, from politics to art and everything in between. They had held hands, gave hugs, ate dinners together and meditated together.
Nothing had helped.
In fact, the more time they spent in each other's presence made the problems that they had been ignoring or letting go come to the forefront.
They had snapped at each other and bickered more in private than they had ever had before. Each fight ended quickly; both of them learning to hold their tongues when things got too heated but the arguments still happened.
Nyota had honestly forgotten how all-encompassing Spock's full attention could be. How he could be almost everywhere. He was always giving her little reminders that he existed and was paying attention to her.
When she was twenty-one and in love and still finding her feet as an adult and a person, all that attention was excellent. She had delighted in knowing that Spock loved her. That he wanted her. His little actions that said he was always thinking of her made her happy. When he turned all of his intellect on seeing how to make her happy or just be in her presence, that made her feel loved.
Now she was nearing thirty, and it wasn't working anymore.
Because when she was younger and still unsure of herself, she had welcomed his way of showing his interest in her work. He had read the papers she had written, and they had debated them. She had loved the debates because it had made her a stronger writer and helped to strengthen her ideas about how to communicate.
Now when he did that same action, she didn't feel the happiness that he liked her work, Nyota felt defensive. Every idea Spock seemed to bring up was one that she, herself, had already thought of. It was like arguing with a mirror with a lag to the signal.
She didn't look forward to his conversations. She actively dreaded them. They had dinner together every night for the last two weeks. The meals drained her emotionally.
Nyota gasped out loud when she realized that she had been running away from the problems for a while. She had begun to look forward to lunch because she and Spock had different shifts that didn't overlap for the meal. She had often eaten with Scotty.
The conversations with Scotty where a relief when it came to her day. Scotty always had some exciting story from Engineering. He had challenged her several years ago to learn Scots Gaelic, saying it was one of the harder Terran languages to learn. Nyota didn't agree (she had learned a little-known dialect of Burmese that put all other Terran languages to shame).
She had won, but Scotty still spoke to her in Gaelic regularly, and Nyota loved the challenge. It was a great distraction to the rest of her personal life.
Except in the past two weeks, she hadn't been eating with Scotty. She and Spock ate together for most meals. Nyota hadn't realized how much she had come to rely on her time with Scotty to unwind.
Nyota felt relief that no matter what occurred tonight, something would change and she would not be encompassed by Spock's full attention as before.
Spock was doing the same thing that had made her so happy for so long, and it wasn't working.
She was ready to move on.
Nyota opened her eyes. She had been sitting on the bed trying to put her thoughts into order. She flopped back onto the bedspread and looked up at the ceiling of the hotel.
It was clear that Spock was unhappy too. He had been giving her frustrated looks in the last few days. He needed more than she was able, or willing, to give.
Holding onto the relationship was getting harder and harder.
This was unfair to both of them.
Spock came back into the bedroom of the hotel room they had rented for the week. He was holding a tray full of tea. One of the Vulcan types for him and a Terran spice one for her.
He set the tray on a bedside table and sat in a chair near the bed. Taking the pot of hot tea from the plate, he poured himself a cup. He didn't immediately drink it, just sat holding the warm cup in his hands.
They remained in silence for a few minutes. Neither of them felt inclined to break the tension that had been building up for the last several hours.
The tension had been building for several months Nyota could see, now that she wasn't trying so damn hard to keep their relationship going.
If they broke the silence between them, then the last several years they had spent together would be over.
Nyota sat upright on the bed and sighed.
"Spock," Nyota said. She was done dancing around the issue. "Do you think that we've fixed our relationship?" She asked. Nyota didn't think so, but she wanted to know what Spock's thoughts were.
Spock simply shook his head and took a long drink from the cup of tea in his hands.
Nyota reached out and took a cup filled with some of her tea as well. She waited. After years of being together, Nyota had learned that sometimes Spock just needed time to put his thoughts together when they spoke of emotions.
"No. I do not," Spock said, placing the now empty teacup down on the table. "I have come to believe that spending more time together may have exacerbated the problems we have encountered before." He looked down at his hands, empty now.
"I agree. Our relationship is not working. I think we should end this, Spock." Nyota said. She gripped her mug of tea hard. This wasn't the first time she had spoken those words. She had tried to break up with him before the Enterprise had arrived at Yorktown the first time, before Altimir. But even then, she had known that she would take him back the moment he figured out what was really going on with himself.
She had known it was only a temporary break, then.
This time was permanent.
Spock was silent for an even longer time than before. When he did speak, it was firm, like he had come to an understanding of the facts before him.
It was only logical to let go.
"I agree," Spock said. While he had clearly forced himself to look at the logic, his slightly tense expression said that he still was in pain. "I believe the phrase is that we are now 'Broken Up."
Nyota felt for him. She really did. Because she hurt. Hearing that phrase, in that voice, hurt. Knowing it was better didn't cause the feeling to burn less.
But this was better.
And maybe they could be friends again like they were for several years before the Nerada.
"Yes, I believe we are." She agreed.
The next few hours were awkward, to say the least, Nyota felt.
Neither of them seemed to know what to do. There had been some conversation about leaving the hotel, but in the end, they liked the view and the time off too much. Every word was short and unsure.
Nyota hated it.
Spock stayed on the couch in the main living room. As Nyota laid awake on the bed in the room that had a fantastic view and a clock that ticked on past two in the morning; she suspected he didn't get much sleep either.
But somewhere in the night, their friendship showed back up and decided to stay.
It was Spock who spoke first, that next morning.
After they had woken up and had carefully avoided each other for over an hour. His tone as frank and mild as ever. "Now that we are 'broken up,' we are not going to spend as much time together during the Beta shift?" He asked as he watched Nyota make breakfast for herself. Spock had already eaten and was calmly watching her cook. He had a cup of tea, his prefered morning blend, on the counter cooling.
Nyota huffed in surprise, a near laugh. "No, we aren't, I guess. We don't need to spend that much time together." She paused when a thought accrued to her, "Although I don't want to lose the musical practice with you. I didn't mind that." She meant it. She loved working on music together with him. The frequent practices were the only time they didn't argue. They had ended up practicing a lot in the past few weeks, now that she thought about it.
Spock nodded, "I am relieved that you wish to continue our practice. From research and observation, 'breakups' often end with both parties no longer being considered friends. Is that not what will happen to us?" He tilted his head in curiosity, a small movement that Nyota was sure Spock never really even noticed and she had always been amused by.
Nyota turned off the heat to her food. Usually, she would just eat something small, breakfast never being essential to her, (lunch was always better). But she felt like having something substantial and sugary today.
"Normally, yes," she said. "But I don't want that to happen to us. So, we're still friends." Something in his posture relaxed at her pronouncement. He was still as straight-backed as before but the tension Nyota hadn't noticed he was carrying bleed away.
"We will not spend as much time together as before," Spock repeated. Nyota thought he might be trying to find the parameters of their new dynamic. It was a process she had watched Spock do before. When he was unsure of a human socio-cultural ritual or event or even a relationship he tended to ask her about what he needed to do, then he needed time to process it.
"No, we won't. I imagine you'll spend more time with Kirk playing chess than before or in the labs." Nyota mused. "When was your last game with Kirk?"
Spock had spent a lot of the time he usually spent with Kirk or in the labs with her recently, as they tied to repair their relationship. She had done some of the same by cutting down her lunches with Scotty or girls night with Chapel.
"We've been playing a game over padd messages for about a week now. I just got a message yesterday with Jim's next move. He took my bishop from the second level. Jim has been keeping track on a board he has in his quarters." Spock said. "I found that with my increase of time spent with you, we had to find other means to play. Jim suggested this method."
"Did he now?" Nyota said, and while she didn't mean for her tone to be filled with innuendo, it was. She wanted to smack herself. They had broken up the night before. This would make it awkward on so many levels.
Then Spock did something that Nyota would have missed had she been literally anyone else.
He blushed.
It was quick, and small – just the tips of his ears, and very quickly suppressed, but there none the less. A slight, quick flush of green that spoke volumes to Nyota.
And suddenly Nyota realized that she didn't feel awkward at all. She felt happy, and content. Like how she felt when she was having girl's night with Chapel.
She had missed his friendship.
"You missed the time you spend with Kirk!" Nyota said, delighted. She sat down in the chair across the table from him. Spock looked quite stunned at his slip up.
Spock quirked his eyebrow. "I cannot say I've missed the time I've spent with him or not." Spock started to say, but Nyota just looked at him hard. Spock trailed off and then simply nodded. "I have missed spending time with Jim. I find his presence… allows me to relax."
Nyota nodded encouragingly until she processed the end of his sentence.
'Allows him to relax…'. The last time Nyota had heard that particular phrase from Spock was when they had just become romantic. He had been talking about her.
"…Spock," She said slowly, "are you interested in Jim Kirk romantically?"
Spock froze, a look of contemplation on his face. He looked like a hundred different memories, ideas, and thoughts rushed over him in an instant. Then he, just as slowly answered, "I may be…"
"But you don't know…" Nyota finished for him.
Spock nodded.
"I found I have missed his presence and his friendship. He… supports me, I believe." Spock said shifting. "I had spent a considerable amount of time last night contemplating his presence in my life." He was always uncomfortable trying to talk about his emotions and how he felt. Nyota had learned to let him speak or stop as necessary. Spock had learned in time to open up more to her.
They had learned this back when they had been simply friends.
"And what of you and Mr. Scott?" Spock asked. Nyota was so stunned by the question that she completely ignored the sudden change of topic.
"What about Scotty and me?" Nyota responded.
"I believe you spend considerable time with him," Spock said. "It was clear you consider him a friend."
"I do," Nyota said slowly, thinking about it, "But why are you drawing a comparison between my friendship with Scotty and your friendship with Jim…" She trailed off as the sudden realization came over her.
Spock, for his part, merely drank a sip from his morning tea.
She had a crush on Scotty!
How Nyota didn't see this before, she didn't know. But a lot of things she had felt recently made a lot more sense.
How when Scotty talked to her, her day got brighter. How, when, for the last two weeks she had been missing his presence at lunch when she would eat with Spock. How she would look for Scotty in a crowded room.
How he made her old tired ideas feel new and innovative when he asked about them. How she liked his smile, and his voice and the things that made him laugh. How she always felt happy just talking about the Enterprise with Scotty. How she loved his stories about Glasgow and the small town in Scotland where he was from.
She had learned to speak Scots Gaelic for him, for no other reason that it would make him light up.
"I should have seen that sooner," Nyota said out loud, adrenalin from a realization pumping through her vines and giving her heart a workout. It felt like she was about to ride a rollercoaster to a delightful ending.
Spock merely tilted his head. "As I should have," his tone faintly dry.
Nyota laughed, she couldn't help it. It was bright and joyous and so unlike the last few weeks that she nearly wondered where it came from.
But she knew.
They had spent so long trying to be in love with each other that they had failed to realize they were already falling in love with someone else!
Twenty minutes after leaving medical.
Pavel knew how to handle breakups.
He'd had a lot of them in the past few years.
Usually, he would go talk to Hikaru. They would drink and commiserate and, in the morning, recover and move on.
As he walked over to Hikaru's quarters, Pavel realized something was different. For more than the reason that Hikaru had Ben and Demora with him and thus was probably not going to drink like that anymore.
Something else had changed. Something about himself.
He had never been so quick to forget the feelings he had for someone before.
Well, Pavel knew that wasn't entirely true. In all honesty, he was still angry with Camelia. Very angry. She had set him up and then left him to deal with her recruiting father and a surprise transfer. That was not acceptable. It was cruel.
It should have been heartbreaking. Pavel had really liked Camelia. But if all he was to her was a trophy to be taken from ship to ship, and a feather in her father's cap, then he was better off ending the relationship.
He wasn't going to be the person that she wanted.
And she apparently wasn't his dream either, as last night proved.
Pavel requested entry to the Sulu's quarters. The buzzer was quieter than average. Demora was probably asleep then. Ben had complained about a week after the families had arrived on the ship and Scotty had taken the complaint as a challenge. Now all the families with children had settings for the volume of their door chimes.
Ben answered the door only after a moment's pause. He smiled and gestured for Pavel to come in. "Good day Pasha. Demora is sleeping. The beach wiped her out yesterday."
"I'll be quiet," Pavel promised. Ben smiled at him. As they walked over to the table, Ben filled in Pavel about their day at the beach yesterday. And how today was going to be a quiet day spent together and then tomorrow was planetside again.
Hikaru was at the table in their small living quarters. The USS Enterprise-A was considerably larger than the original Enterprise, but it was still cramped. The families who had chosen to live on board had to face that reality.
But Pavel was in a state of awe in how the Sulu's had made the small space their home.
When the families signed on, there were some questions of how they would be accommodated. Pavel had seen Captain Kirk argue to the Admiralty for the moving of the members with families to expanded officer rooms. He had half gotten his wish. Anyone with a low rank but had a family on board were given better rooms but Hikaru and another department head had to stay in their original quarters.
The rooms were clean and brightly furnished.
When Hikaru was alone on the Enterprise, Pavel had known him to decorate his quarters with some of the botany lab's more harmless and plants that were no longer needed and Hikaru's fencing saber on the wall. The walls were as sparsely decorated as Pavel's own rooms. A single man's quarters.
Now, the presence of Ben and Demora had brought a new life into the rooms. Toys were everywhere, and Demora's dance things were in a small corner of the room, hung up neatly. There were more plants in the quarters, but there were also Ben's books and his preferred art hung up on the walls.
The small quarters where Hikaru had once lived had become a home for him and his family.
Pavel felt a small stab of desire at the thought. He wanted that. He wanted a home, someone who shared his life and his passions. Pavel could almost see himself sharing a space with someone who cared. Someone who was handsome, endlessly intelligent, who had a comeback for everything and would not ask Pavel to leave the Enterprise. Someone who loved him for him . Not for what he could bring to them, or his title, or his reputation.
Hikaru looked up from the small dining and desk table in the corner of the room. It was covered in padds. It was the middle of an evaluation cycle; Hikaru had paperwork for days. Oh the joys of leadership, Pavel thought.
Pavel had finished his own paperwork for the navigators he was in charge of as the lead navigator, and the few other people who reported to him, but Hikaru had a more significant division to work with; he was the second in command underneath Kirk for the command crew, fourth in line for command of the whole ship. "Hi Pasha," he said, not looking up from his current padd.
"Hello 'Karu," Pavel said, not minding in the least. He reached for one of the padds. It was one that had a screen of all the rankings of all the enlisted crewmen below Hikaru. Half of them were checked off, completed. "Halfway done?"
Hikaru smiled, looking up. "Almost. I should be done tomorrow." He stretched, raising his arms above his head and leaning back. "Then I won't have to worry for the rest of shore leave. All two days of it."
"Oh, thank god," Ben said coming over from checking on Demora. He reached up and grasped Hikaru's outstretched hand. Hikaru broke the stretch to smile up at his husband with a smile that was what Pavel would describe as besotted. Ben smiled down at Hikaru with the same look. "I'm tired of looking at the padds."
Pavel forced himself to laugh lightly. He still didn't feel like laughing much. His head still hurt from the migraine from the night before, though it was fading with every moment. Len's pills always worked. The red mark on his cheek was gone. Ben saw the minor flinch of pain that Pavel tried to hide.
"Not feeling good Pavel? Catch something on the planet?" Ben asked, sitting down at the table with them. He had a bottle of beer in his hands. Pavel knew that on the ship while they were in space, alcohol was more controlled, (which was the "official reason" as to why his whiskey had been "confiscated" by Len. In reality, Len had asked for whatever he could find. Pavel knew it had been for the Captain so he hadn't minded) but now that they were in orbit for shore leave, the rules were relaxed for a few days. Ben handed Hikaru a bottle, already opened.
The one that Ben tried to hand Pavel was unopened. Pavel shook his head. "I can't. The headache meds can't be mixed with alcohol."
Hikaru winced in sympathy. "A migraine bad enough to go to McCoy? Everything alright?" He asked as he took a drink from the bottle. Pavel wished he could join them, but they all knew what would happen if Len found out that someone mixed pills from medical and alcohol.
The last crewman who did that still got a haunted look in her eyes when the incident was brought up. She never made that mistake again. Nor would she let anyone else do the same.
"Kind of. It's just a headache now. " Pavel said. "But Camelia broke up with me last night." He got a glass of water from the replicator that was near the table. "Or I broke up with her. I'm not sure, but last night sucked."
Pavel didn't miss the look that Hikaru and Ben exchanged over his head at his announcement.
So, Pavel didn't bother to hide his expression.
Pavel was upset and a little angry, but not for the reasons Hikaru thought.
He had wanted that. He had wished to have that ability to look at someone and have a thousand conversations in a moment.
"Are you okay with that, Pasha?" Hikaru asked, looking concerned - but not surprised. Pavel should have known that Camelia wouldn't work out. 'Karu was his best friend, and he couldn't really get close to her. Hikaru had tried but Camelia hadn't put much effort back. That should have been a sign. Pavel had assumed instead that 'Karu's and Camelia's friendship would deepen as time went on.
Pavel was wrong about a lot of things about Camelia apparently.
Pavel took a deep breath and launched into an explanation of the whole fiasco that was dinner the night previous. From showing up and running into Len before meeting up with Camelia, to meeting Camelia 's parents and her father's blatant attempts to get him to leave the Enterprise. He told them of the migraine that had been getting worse throughout the dinner.
And then he told them about the way the night had ended.
"She slapped you?!" Ben gasped, he looked as stunned as he sounded.
Pavel nodded. "I can't even blame her. I was insulting." He shrugged and felt relief that the action didn't make his head hurt.
Hikaru just frowned at him. "She's not allowed do that. Are you planning to tell the Captain?"
Pavel knew that was an option, but honestly, he thought he deserved the slap, so he wasn't going to bring it up. He shook his head. "No. I just want the issue to be over."
Hikaru remained frowning, but he didn't make another comment.
Pavel smiled at him, knowing his best friend well - and trying to prevent Camelia from having a moment with a mildly allergic plant by 'accident.' He wasn't going to allow reprisal. He appreciated the sentiment, but he wasn't going to allow it to happen. "I told Len about it, so I'm sure he'll deal with it."
That prompted another shared look between Hikaru and Ben. This one more knowing than the one before. Pavel didn't know what was being said, but he saw nonetheless.
Pavel wished he had someone to do that with. To have a conversation with just looks. All he wanted was another person who knew him well enough to know what he was asking without him trying to say it.
Like the one Pavel had almost shared with Len in the med bay, a quick look and a question asked.
Like the one look he had shared with Len…
Len who was handsome, smart, an excellent friend, and was very interesting to Pavel. He looked marvelous with the half day's beard scruff that Pavel wasn't able to grow just yet.
Someone whom he could trust. Whom Pavel could already give looks to and could trust he would be understood.
Pavel could share looks with Len.
Pavel felt like kicking himself.
Why was his brain bringing this up now? He had spent years ignoring this!
How many times had he pushed the thought of more away when it came Len? They were friends, dammit. Pavel didn't date people he was friends with! He always valued their friendship more than the desire to be with them.
But now that Pavel thought about it, he really only had this line of wishful thinking when it came to one Leonard McCoy.
And before Pavel could stop himself, he opened his mouth and asked in a slightly distant voice, "How did you know it was right for you guys? Your relationship? How did you end up married? How did you know it was serious?" Pavel was looking at Hikaru and Ben. The look from earlier was repeated.
Hikaru thought about the question. "In all honesty, I don't know what made me realize that I wanted forever with Ben. I just woke up one morning and knew I had to ask him to marry me," he said after a moment.
Ben took Hikaru's hand. Hikaru looked away from Pavel and smiled at his husband. "I knew I wanted to be serious with 'Karu when we met again after the attack on Vulcan. I didn't think I could handle not being able to support him."
Pavel thought about that. Hard. His question had prompted Hikaru and Ben to start cooing small nothings at each other of how the other was the cutest. It would be nauseating, but Pavel was far too used to them. Pavel was practiced in ignoring them going off and doing this when they were comfortable and almost alone. Pavel thought the scene before him was adorable to watch, but not for him.
He didn't think Len would be the type to use verbal signs of affection. He was the type to be more about actions.
Pavel still felt like kicking himself. This was Len. The man was a wonderful friend. He didn't want to mess anything up.
But he wasn't going to deny that he liked Len. Always had. Something about Len had made Pavel pay attention to him.
The way the man carried himself. The intelligence that was always used for doctoring but was able to follow along with Pavel's more long-winded conversation topics. The way he cared for every patient that came his way. Len had never treated Pavel like a child. Even in their first meeting, Len may have questioned Pavel's age but never his abilities.
Now that Pavel was letting himself think about this, he may have been looking for Len for a long time without realizing it.
"Pasha you don't look like you really care that you broke up with Camelia," Hikaru observed. Ben nodded along. "Last time you broke up with someone you were still upset for weeks!"
"I'm not because I think I wasn't ready to be serious with her. I think I wanted to be, but I wasn't. I think I'm done jumping from person to person though." Pavel said firmly. He was done. He would take some time to be alone and figure out what he was actually feeling. Then maybe he would see if Len was interested with him.
"Good," Hikaru said. "I'm glad you aren't torn up about it."
Pavel laughed. He was too.
He thought about Len's rough smile and the fact he'd be spending a lot of time with him soon for that extra medical training. Pavel would figure this out soon.
Before he hurt himself - or Len.
Ok! here's chapter four! I hope you all enjoy! please tell me what you think of it!
the playlist if you are curious: messy by Danielle Bradbury, Hold me tight or don't by fall out boy, and you look like I need a drink right now by Justin Moore.
once again thank you to b0kunoanime for being my amazing beta~!
Chapter 5: Someday Came Today
Two weeks, three days after the end of shore leave
Jim wasn't sure how this happened to him, but he wasn't going to keep questioning it.
"If you are available after we complete the diplomatic events on Yen'bu, then I am requesting a meeting, Captain," Spock said, standing at attention, as always. Like he wasn't asking to spend even more time with Jim than he usually did. Since The Breakup (as Jim couldn't help but call it), he and Spock had spent almost every day together in some way other than just work.
They were in the turbolift just after shift end. Jim had been telling Spock that he was meeting Scotty and Bones that night. He didn't mention that the meeting was to drink, and wonder what the hell had happened to their lives, and how the hell they all suddenly had chances with their loves. None of them knew what to do with the new information yet.
Jim knew they all needed a plan. That was the point of tonight.
"I'm free tomorrow, then. What's up?"
Jim could see Spock visibly refrained from making a deadpan sarcastic statement to Jim's colloquialism. "I have a… project I would like your help on, if you wish to," Spock for some reason didn't look him in the eyes when he asked. "I wish to begin the project after our arrival at Yen'bu."
Jim raised an eyebrow in what he thought was a reasonable impersonation of Spock. "Really?"
Spock, for his part, merely twitched said eyebrow and echoed, "Really."
Jim took a deep breath to fortify himself because, in the past two weeks, he and Spock had spent most nights together. They had done paperwork, played chess, talked about the upcoming mission - and wondered what would be in store for the ship after the welcoming ceremony at Yen'bu.
But this? This was new. Spock had never once in the last few years asked for Jim's help on a project.
What Jim was good at, at least according to his Starfleet Record - Engineering and Tactics - wasn't usually what Spock's projects were in. Jim had no idea if he would be useful for anything Spock wanted to do.
Jim decided he didn't care what this was about. He wasn't going to turn down Spock if this was how Spock wanted to spend his time after breaking up with Uhura. He was going to take what he could get.
Maybe if Jim was lucky…
Jim ignored the rest of that thought. He'd had a lot of practice in ignoring ideas like that.
"Yeah, I'll be free," he said. "I don't have any projects set up for that time. I can help with yours." He smiled up at Spock. A truth, sadly. Being Captain didn't leave a lot of time for downtime.
Spock nodded in agreement, something in his eyes lighting up and taking Jim's breath away. "We also must prepare for the upcoming mission," he said, bringing up a padd and typing something into the interface.
Jim grimaced at the reminder. He knew what Spock meant.
They had to creates plans for if the truth-telling part of Yen'bu was more than just 'unable to lie' and more along the lines of 'I can't stop talking, help me !'
"We'll do that after Beta shift," Jim said, already thinking about what he needed to do before the next Alpha shift. "Want to have dinner with me beforehand?" He asked glancing at Spock, his mind light years away from his mouth, already starting a plan for Yen'bu's strange truth telling properties.
Then, with the dawning horror of what he had just asked, Jim blushed; something that hadn't happened for years. He hadn't meant to do that. Jim hadn't intended to make that offer sound like he was asking Spock out! He had been planning on waiting longer before he made a move like that.
Spock didn't seem to notice, but his hands did a twitch like they were about to form a gesture - but something stopped him.
Jim didn't pay close attention to Spock's hands though, he was too busy feeling like he was dying of embarrassment. He jerked his head away from looking at Spock to staring at the turbolift door like that sliding door was the most fascinating thing in the world.
"I would enjoy that," Spock said quietly.
Jim whipped his head back to face Spock. Spock wasn't smiling, per se, but there was something soft in his face that Jim knew meant that he was doing the Spock equivalent of the expression.
"Spock, I ..." Jim started to say before he trailed off. He had no idea what he wanted to say.
The door dinged open to the Officer's Quarters level, startling Jim.
Bones' rooms were at the other end of the hall than Jim's and Spock's rooms, near the other turbolift. Uhura's were near Spock's, and Jim's. Just on the opposite side of the hallway.
"I shall see you for the Alpha shift, Captain," Spock said mildly, stepping out into the passageway, heading in the direction of Uhura's quarters. "I will be rehearsing for the Enterprise's talent show with Nyota."
Jim knew that Spock and Uhura's performances were often the most anticipated event in the whole talent show. He had been relieved when Spock had informed him that he and Uhura weren't going to stop performing for the crew. He was also glad that they had, apparently, actually meant the whole 'We're still friends' thing.
Jim thought that Spock was happy about that too.
Jim stepped out of the turbo lift and nodded. "I'll see you later then," he said watching as Spock turned and walked down the passageway, unable to look fully away as Spock walked to Uhura's rooms. "Have fun playing music!" he called to Spock's back. "You'll both be amazing at the show next month!"
Jim waited until he saw Spock request entry to Uhura's quarters and then quickly moved to Bones' rooms.
He keyed in his own code on the keypad, far too impatient to wait for Bones to open the door, and stepped into the room.
Scotty was already there, sipping a glass of dark liquid that Jim thought may have come from Andoria, but he wasn't sure. He was leaning on the chair that was meant for Bones' desk. Bones himself was sitting near the replicator in the corner of the room. He seemed to be trying to get the ingredients for a mixed drink.
Both of them looked up when Jim came through the door. He let the door slide shut.
Both of them looked surprised as they took in his expression. Jim supposed that it must be something entertaining to see.
He didn't hesitate. "I may have asked Spock out. I think. Maybe? I don't know. Help me?" he rushed out, glancing between the pair of them.
There was silence for a moment.
Bones and Scotty exchanged a bemused look that said a whole lot about what they thought about Jim. And if Jim wasn't so panicked about maybe-possibly asking Spock on a date, he would be insulted.
Then Scotty knocked back the rest of his drink. "Lad. I think you are going to need to explain that again."
"Yeah, Jimmy-boy. Weren't you saying a few days ago that you were going to give him some time?" Bones asked as he walked to the desk, a thoroughly mixed drink in one of his hands. He had a bottle of beer in his other.
Jim took the beer with a grateful smile. It was a Betazed drink that could barely be called alcoholic, but Jim was okay with that. The few times Jim drank while the ship was at warp, he didn't drink heavy. A finger of liquor in a glass or a very weak beer. Maybe, if he was feeling classy, a single glass of wine.
Tonight was a good night for a beer.
"I don't know. One moment, Spock was asking for help with a project or something after the trip to Yen'bu, then the next I was saying something like: 'Meet me for dinner?'," Jim sighed. "I want to count it as asking him out but…" He took a deep pull of the beer, enjoying the flavor. "I don't know." Jim sat slowly on the bed awaiting judgment from the two people he knew would understand.
Bones and Scotty shared another look.
Then titled their heads at each other, each encouraging the other to go first. Scotty nodded and said, "Sorry, laddie, I don't think you asked him out. You, Doc?"
Bones shook his head in the negative, "I don't think so, either." He sat on the bed. "But it's close."
"Yeah, if Spock hadn't asked for help before then…" Scotty trailed off when he realized that Bones' face was doing something complicated.
Jim waited for Bones to understand the other part of why Jim was freaking out. He watched as something like wonder and shock ran across his best friend's face "Wait. Spock asked for help? On what?" Bones' disbelief was clear in his voice.
Jim shrugged. He didn't know what to make of it either. Not to say he wasn't over the moon about the prospect of working hand in hand (Jim kicked his brain at the reminder) with Spock, but he didn't understand it either. "A project, he said. I don't know what. I don't honestly care. I'm happy to help."
"It's just strange. Spock never asks for help in anything, let alone projects." Bones said, leaning back on the wall that served as the headboard on starships. He took a deep drink from the glass he was holding.
While that was true, Spock didn't ask for help on projects often, at least not from Jim; Spock did tend to work with someone. The resulting projects often won so many awards that the Enterprise wasn't able to fit them all.
And Spock had chosen Jim to help him this time. Jim was not complaining.
Because in the past two weeks, it had seemed that Spock was asking to spend time with Jim more often.
They had sparred several times. Jim had thought that Spock just had more energy or something. They had played a ton of chess. They were one game from breaking the five hundred games won. Jim was doing his best to win.
Jim dismissed the idea that Spock was trying to spend more time with him for any other reason other than Jim was one of Spock's best friends, and he now had a lot of extra time to himself.
"Maybe what he's working on is in one of my interests," Jim shrugged. "Maybe he's thanking me for spending a lot of time with him recently in some Vulcan way that I don't know."
They all were silent for a moment before Jim spoke again.
"Speaking of projects," Jim said, ready for a change of subject and knowing just what to use. He also let that smile Bones hated spread across his face. Bones called it his 'shit-eating grin'. "How's that training with Mr. Chekov going?" He let the insinuation speak for itself.
Scotty burst out laughing when Bones actually flushed and sputtered into his drink.
"It's going fine! Thank you very much!" Bones said after a moment of coughing. "To the surprise of absolutely no one, Pasha's a very bright student." He tried to hide his growing flush by taking a deep sip from his glass.
Scotty piped up, "Pasha?" He glanced at Jim. That was a nickname that hadn't shown up before. Jim had heard Sulu call Chekov that nickname, and knew the name was a sign of affection.
When did Bones start using it?
Bones, somehow, turned a deeper shade of red. "He asked me to call him that last week." He mumbled into his glass. "I couldn't tell him no. Not on this! The first time I did it, he grinned at me like I had brought the fucking sun to his world." Bones got this besotted look behind the glass that almost made Jim coo at him. Sarcastically.
Instead, Jim laughed lightly. "That's good! Don't stop then! Tell us more. How's he been doing?"
"He's still brilliant. If I didn't know any better, I would recommend him to the medical corps. He picks up things so damn fast and is very rarely wrong. He has this understanding about the body that most med students don't get until much later, " Bones said, smiling a little, flush fading slightly. Jim didn't see any wistfulness on his features. "But, if I thought I could pull him away from Starships and Engineering, then I would be an idiot."
Scotty raised his glass to that. "That, I can toast to!"
Jim laughed, loud and happy. He was glad that Chekov was getting the qualifications. He would be included on more away teams now, and he was happy that Bones was so damned happy to be spending time with Chekov.
Jim remembered something else he had heard and, as Captain, he had to know. "How's the situation in the med bay when Chekov comes in? With what's going on with Warrington?"
Bones' smile faded slightly, but the besotted expression didn't go away completely. "Well, it's nothing short of strange. When it became obvious that Pasha wasn't interested in changing his mind, Warrington went from being just upset, to downright mean . She started to bad mouth Pasha to the other nurses. So now he's having difficulties with nearly a third of my Staff. Mostly the new kids. But not all - remember my newest nurse? You remember Gillpe?"
Jim nodded immediately. He knew his crew and Gillpe was easily memorable, as the only one of his species on the ship. Jim had had to memorize the eating patterns for him.
After a moment Scotty nodded too. Scotty didn't know Gillpe that well, but he'd seen him around. There was no way he hadn't. The ship got small after a month in deep space.
"Well, he's been unexpectedly excellent, in working to change that. Gillpe has been telling his own side of the story to anyone who listens to Warrington. Spreading the story of what he saw when Pasha came into the medbay on shore leave and how Pavel was treated by Warrington," Bones said, before taking a drink of what Jim was pretty sure was a Maitai. "He's also been assigned to Chapel. She thinks he's got potential, and I agree."
"That sucks, about Warrington. She had a lot of potential. This is unlike her, right?" Jim asked. He remembered that Bones was initially surprised that Warrington was acting this way. Bones had said the girl was level-headed - and not prone to vindictiveness.
Bones took a drink from his glass and fully frowned at it. "Yes, it is. I'm a little concerned, to tell the truth. I think something else is going on. But I don't know how to approach her right now. And I don't know if it would be a good idea anyway if I spoke to her. She's furious that I'm continuing to train Pasha. She won't say anything to anyone about that, but she just glares at me sometimes, like I'm a problem. I don't know if I can help her."
Jim shrugged. "It may not be in the cards, if she's acting like this. I'm told she'll be putting in a transfer after the next mission. We'll probably be heading to a Starbase to get some supplies after Yen'bu. She'll make her transfer there if she does leave."
Bones nodded, and they all were silent for a moment.
Then Bones chuckled. "I've started to understand a couple of Russian curses."
"Aye," Scotty said, smiling wide. "That kid'll teach anyone those if they work with him longer than thirty seconds."
Jim remembered all the times that Chekov had had to keep himself from cursing on the bridge while someone significant was on the view screen. Chekov had this expression when he was trying not to swear that Jim understood on a fundamental level. Jim just had a better poker face than Chekov did. Chekov's ability to hide what he was thinking had gotten better, though, as the first five-year mission went on.
Bones always looked like he just wanted to kiss Chekov when he pulled that face on the bridge.
Jim didn't mind the language when they were just working, as long as it wasn't directed at anyone. But while important bigwigs were calling, Jim made sure everyone remained professional.
At first, when he first took over the Enterprise, Jim thought it would be himself who would have the hardest time trying not to swear over open comm lines. He didn't have many years of practice with not cursing. After years of working with his crew, Jim knew who had won the title of 'most foul-mouthed.' Chekov had won by a mile.
"I've been teaching Nyota to swear in Gaelic," Scotty said, trying to keep his tone light but utterly failing. He was pouring himself another glass, this time with a mixer.
Bones raised his glass in Scotty's direction. "Is that what we're calling it these days?" Scotty shot him a look that would mean death for Engineering crewmen, but for Bones, it was just a source of amusement.
Jim leaned back in his chair. "Aren't you guys still working on that super-secret project I'm not supposed to know anything about?"
Uhura had asked for Scotty's help on something about the communications systems two weeks ago. Whenever Jim asked about the project, both Scotty and Uhura refused to tell him anything. Jim suspected it was about improving long-distance communication for the families now living on the ship, and that the repairs or improvements might not be what Starfleet would call 'sanctioned.'
"And you won't be finding out from me until the plans are ready. Nyota would kill me," Scotty said firmly. Not that Jim was digging for information. Much. "We've been speaking Gaelic while planning. She's got the cutest accent. I love it."
Jim accepted the misdirection. They'd tell him when they were ready. Besides, if it worked (and knowing Scotty it would) then he could bring it up to Starfleet and both Uhura and Scotty would get more awards, and Jim liked making sure his people got recognized.
"… We may have been having dinner every night for the past week… in my office in Engineering…" Scotty said into his drink.
"In that postage stamp of an office?!" Bones spluttered out.
"Just because your office is in the right spot doesn't mean that mine was!" Scotty grumbled after taking a swig of his drink.
Jim had to laugh at that. No one would ever let Scotty forget that his office was tiny . Scotty's office in Engineering was actually a repurposed storage closet that was just large enough to fit a desk. Scotty had commandeered it about six months into being on the Enterprise-A, complaining that he was too far away from Engineering. The official Chief Engineering Officer's office was on the other side of the ship, by Jim's office.
Technically the CEO of a ship was the third in charge of the ship and therefore had an office near the rest of the leadership. Scotty hated that about the Enterprise-A, so he had given the room to Sulu. Sulu had taken the office with glee.
Bones' office was in the med bay, and Spock didn't use his office. He never needed one; he was that efficient. He gave it to his department heads to use jointly.
Spock just used Jim's if he needed an office for anything. He always had.
"Yes," Scotty said. "She showed up with dinner one night last week to our meeting. How could I say no? She was saying things like how she forgot to eat and didn't want to be rude!" He seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment, then he shook his head. "I can't turn her down when it makes her smile!"
They all stopped and sighed at that.
Jim had long established that he was weak, and would always do things to make Spock happy. Even if Spock didn't smile often. He knew that both Bones and Scotty felt the same.
They just wanted their loves to be happy.
Apparently, wonderfully, happily, that now meant spending time with each of them.
How was this their lives?!
Meanwhile in Uhura's Quarters
"So as previously established, Mr. Scott does in fact 'like you.'" Spock said, refraining from actually performing the very human gesture of making air quotes around the words.
Spock felt like he should be praised for his level of self-control.
He also felt they were unnecessary. Nyota understood his meaning by the glare she gave him.
"He liked me two years ago . He may not be romantically interested in me now !" Nyota said, frustration clear in her voice. "Your information is based on a conversation from over two years ago, and my few observations came from our very first meeting! His feelings might have changed, Spock. I'm not rushing this in case he doesn't still like me romantically." Nyota sat back on her heels, pushing the sheet of music they were still attempting to learn away.
They were sitting on an area of the floor in the corner of Nyota's quarters that Spock had chosen to meditate in before they had broken up. Nyota had kept the spot as a music area. He had found it was easier to play the lyre while sitting on the floor or while standing for a short performance. Sitting in a chair became cumbersome very quickly.
"His behavior has not changed in the two years since that conversation. I believe that he is still in love with you." Spock told her, setting aside his instrument, accepting that they would not be playing that night as they had intended to do. Nyota had been arguing with him about Mr. Scott since the moment he sat down.
She was not convinced as Spock was that Mr. Scott was interested in her.
Nyota sighed. "But I'm not sure."
That was the crux of the matter, Spock found. Nyota was unsure and was unwilling to make a move forward until she had a better idea. He had no idea how to make Nyota see that Mr. Scott was still rather deeply in love with her.
In the last few weeks, they had spent a lot of time with Jim and Scotty, respectfully. Spock had successfully spent thirty-four percent more time with Jim than he had in the past few months. Whatever time he had been spending with Nyota, Spock now spent with Jim.
The effects had been startling. Spock felt relaxed and content in a way he had been missing when he had devoted his time to Nyota. He had missed having Jim's presence around him so often in the few weeks he and Nyota had been trying to repair their failed relationship. Spock always felt his best when he was Jim's side.
He was frustrated with himself for not having understood this simple feeling sooner.
"I understand," Spock said, because he did. Neither of them knew if Jim was interested in Spock. His behavior had never changed. Beyond that of a person growing closer to a friend. He was and always had been Spock's friend. Jim was still the same.
Spock had decided to go slow. Nyota agreed that was probably the best plan of attack.
He would make Jim interested, somehow, then declare his intent to court. He didn't want to pressure Jim if Jim never did end up liking Spock in the same way.
Though Jim would let Spock down easy if he didn't. Jim was kind in many ways, that being one of them.
Spock was confident that Jim would remain his friend no matter what.
"I have asked Jim to help me with the project," Spock said. "After the meeting on Yen'bu."
Nyota gave him a quick look. "Good for you, sharing interests... wait. The project?! One that you got from the Vulcan high council?"
"Yes. My counterpart left this part of a larger project several years ago when he died, and no one was able to work on it since then." Spock said. "Renak, the leader of the project has asked for my assistance. I think Jim will be a good addition."
Nyota smiled. "I'm sure you will be excellent at this, as always." She sounded happy for him. Spock was relieved. "How is Jim going to help you?" she asked, leaning forward, curious. .
"As the project involves Terran literature, I am sure Jim will be accommodating," Spock said. Jim's quarters were covered in books. Jim often complained that he didn't have much time to read. Spock found himself hoping that Jim would be happy to read the literature Spock was going to be working on. Spock hoped that this project would make Jim smile. Something that Spock found he wanted to see happen more often.
"Do you know when you'll be getting the literature?" Nyota asked.
"I suspect that we will take a dignitary from Vulcan at some point soon and that I will receive them then." Spock mused, "Or from a shipment on the next Starbase or Federation planet, perhaps."
Spock hesitated for a moment then continued, "I may also be having dinner with Jim tomorrow," he said. He ignored the way he felt his heart rate increase in his side, the way his words came out a little faster than normal, and the way that the tips of his ears felt flushed for a moment before Spock gained control of himself. Spock was sure that Nyota would notice the changes anyway.
Nyota raised an eyebrow in a somewhat accurate impression of himself. Jim had a better impression, but this was a fair attempt. She was an expert in reading body languages. Of course she understood what Spock was saying with more than his words. "And who suggested that? Weren't you going to go slow?"
"Jim suggested it. I believe that since we were going to meet up after Beta shift, so we can go over plans for Yen'bu, that he wanted to make sure that I was going to eat." Spock said. He was sure that to Jim the offer of dinner was nothing but a sign of friendship, but to Spock, it was a step in the right direction. He was sure that if Jim were willing to spend more time with him in the off hours, then maybe Jim would somehow understand Spock's feelings - and maybe return them.
Maybe Jim would start to feel what Spock had just realized that he, himself, felt.
Nyota nodded. "That sounds like Kirk. He won't let anyone skip meals without good reason. And you and I both know what Kirk thinks a good reason is sometimes different than other people's reasons." She stood from her place on the floor and went to the replicator on the wall. She ordered two cups of an English tea that both of them enjoyed. "I'm getting Scotty's help to fine tune the intra-ship's comm system."
"Something that has annoyed you for the last few months," Spock said, taking the tea and feeling the warmth that emanated from the cup. Nyota had often mentioned how she found the intra-ship's commutation system lacking in many ways. But with the current design of the ship, Nyota couldn't fix it on her own - or have her division fix it. She needed an Engineer who knew the ship the best.
"It has," Nyota agreed, having spent long hours trying to fix the many minor problems with the intra-ship system before giving up and realizing that she needed to have the whole thing rewired and for that she needed an engineer. "And apparently Scotty has a few thoughts on the system and is sure that we can fix it." She took a drink from her cup. "We've been eating dinner and lunch together. It's been wonderful."
Spock nodded. He knew that even before their romantic relationship had ended, Nyota had been eating with Mr. Scott for lunch. Mr. Scott had been very determined to be Nyota's friend, if that was what she needed. Spock had approved, and had never said anything other than the one conversation he'd had with Mr. Scott on Yorktown. Mr. Scott had made sure that Spock understood he placed Nyota's needs in front of his own.
"We've got the schematics to rewire the bridge almost complete enough to show Kirk. If he asked, you know nothing," Nyota said, sending a stern look at Spock.
Spock nodded, taking another sip of tea. He had long learned that when Nyota wanted to not talk about something from her work, it was best to leave it alone.
They fell silent for a few moments; both thinking about the time they had spent with their loves.
"I do not think we should push both Jim and Mr. Scott too hard," Spock said, placing his empty cup down onto the low table near the meditation area. "I believe our current plan is still the correct one."
Nyota nodded along. "Yes," she said. "If I get a clear indication that Scotty still might be interested in me…" She trailed off, also placing her cup on the table.
"… then I would assume you would take the reasonable course of action and ask Mr. Scott on a date," Spock finished.
Nyota nodded eagerly. "I will," she picked up the sheet music again. "We should finish this. The talent show is set for just after this mission while we head to starbase one-eighty, and we've been putting learning this last song off."
Spock agreed and reached for his lyre again, picking at a few strings to verify the tension was still correct.
"Spock, if I see any indication that Kirk might like you as more than a friend, I'll tell you," Nyota said. She sounded worried. "I just haven't. He's acting the same as he always has."
Spock shouldered his instrument. "I believe you and trust that you will, Nyota. I also have not seen any indication. It may be too soon. I will simply have to be slower to court."
Nyota nodded then took a deep breath, "Let's start at the top and go from there." She pointed to the start of the sheet music.
Spock felt that it was an appropriate metaphor for their romantic situation as he adjusted the lyre and allowed Nyota to count them in and began to play.
Kirk had called them into the conference room for a mission briefing.
Scotty wasn't happy about being pulled away from Engineering. One of his enlisted crewmen had gone from being a good, reliable, happy , member of the crew, to being a malinger and a nuisance recently. Scotty had to watch Anderson Kent closely right now.
Kent had been acting odd since the last shore leave, now that Scotty thought about it.
Scotty wondered what happened.
Most of the senior crew hadn't arrived yet. So far, only he, Nyota, McCoy, and Sulu had entered.
"You know what this is about?" Scotty asked Nyota, who sat across from him.
Nyota hummed. "I think I do. You know how we're going to Yen'bu?" She asked, setting her padd on the table next to her. There was a cup of water in her other hand that she took a drink from.
"Yes," Scotty nodded, "But why? I thought that it was a straightforward witnessing of the signing of the Federation Treaty?" That was all he had heard, anyway. The Yen'bu were intent on joining the Federation, they weren't near any contested borders, nor were they particularly rich in something other than being a good farming planet.
The Federation liked them.
"Well, they have something exciting when it comes to their actual planet," Nyota started to say, but she paused when the door slid open.
Kirk walked in, closely followed by Spock. They were followed in by the rest of the briefing team of the senior crew, security, Chekov and a few others.
McCoy perked up when Chekov walked in. Scotty didn't miss how Chekov also brightened when he saw McCoy. There was a heartbeat when Scotty felt the tension between them. Glancing around, he caught Sulu also looking between them, like he had just started to see the solution of a mystery that he might like the ending to.
Seeing Nyota smile out of the corner of his eyes, Scotty knew that everyone could probably see that something was changing for their doctor and their lead navigator.
Good , Scotty thought with a sense of satisfaction. No matter what, at least one of them might have a chance for happiness with the person they loved. Scotty was happy for them.
"Well, now that we're all here," Kirk said like he hadn't just walked in himself, causing a chuckle to run through the assembled group. "We'll get started."
The next half hour was Kirk explaining the mission, and Scotty was right. It was a simple treaty mission.
But it was when Spock got up to explain some of the science that Scotty got curious.
"While on the surface of the planet, we have been informed that everyone has to speak the truth. This is not required by law, but it seems that telling a lie is a physical impossibly while on the surface. If a person goes below ground, the ability to tell a falsehood is returned. If they travel into the atmosphere, the same principle applies." Spock informed them. "On the mission briefing you have received, there is a more in-depth explanation based on the research of the diplomatic scientist." The last words, had Spock been fully human, would have been said with venom. As it was, they were said with a slight emphasis that still spoke volumes on Spock's opinion of the diplomatic scientist.
The entire room winced. The crew knew Spock thought very little of the diplomatic scientists.
Scotty didn't think much of them either. The diplomatic scientists wrote papers based on the planet's explanations of their own natural or artificial forces, doing very little actual research and rarely crediting the people who do the real work; and often times the diplomatic scientists received all the credit.
Spock disliked them because they also published rushed papers that didn't fully explain what was going on. He had gone into an academic diatribe the last time the Enterprise had run into one of the scientists.
The Enterprise, on the whole, liked to avoid them.
"As such, we are limiting who can go down with the away party." Spock finished.
The department heads nodded, or made some noise of agreement. Scotty felt some relief that as CEO he wasn't really expected to go on away missions too often and would probably be put in charge of his lovely Enterprise.
Scotty really didn't want to deal with being forced to tell the truth all the time he would have been on the planet.
Kirk took back over as Spock sat down. "I'm going to take myself, Mr. Spock, Uhura and two people from security." Kirk read from his padd. Scotty made a note that his team wasn't going to send people.
Maybe Scotty would finally have time to check Kent's system, the hydroelectric coolant system.
Then Kirk paused as if reading something for the first time off of the padd. "And Scotty."
"Yes?" Scotty faltered, taken aback. He had expected to be put in charge of the Enterprise while they were gone. He didn't like that part of the Chief Engineering Officer position, the part that automatically made him the third officer, but he didn't mind the rest of it, so he dealt with it. But being on the away team?
Kirk frowned, "Do you know an Ambassador Alysia Cooke?"
Scotty started. He hadn't thought about Alysia in a very, very, long time.
"…I do know her." Scotty said. "It's been many years since I've even talked to her last."
Kirk sent him a look that clearly said that he would get Scotty to explain whatever was on the padd at some point soon.
"She's requested that you also be assigned to the away team."
When Scotty had been young, and in his third year of the academy, he had met Alysia, an up and coming diplomat's aid. It appeared she had been promoted.
They had dated until he had been assigned to his first ship. Long before that mess with Admiral Archer and being banished to Delta Vega.
Scotty could honestly say that Alysia Cooke was his first love. But in the years since, looking back, he was glad their relationship had ended. They weren't right together, Alysia would have never been okay with the idea of Scotty being gone all the time despite the fact that she would have been gone just as often.
"Oh," Scotty said, surprised. It had been over a decade since he had last even spoken to her. "I suppose it would be good to see her again. It has been a while."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nyota stiffen in her seat and look at him with her sharp, knowing gaze. He guessed some of his body language was telling her more than he expected it to.
"I'll see the away team in the transporter room tomorrow at zero eight fifty ship time. That will match up to the lunch the planet is throwing to welcome guests for the signing the day after." Kirk said. "Its a two day away mission. Overnight but not too long."
"And you know what that means!" Jim grinned at them all. "Temporary CO and XO time." Then Jim paused, glanced around the room and let an evil look cross his face. One that Scotty knew meant trouble. "Now, Sulu while we're off the ship, you're in charge."
Sulu nodded and accepted a fist bump from Chekov.
Scotty knew that if he, Kirk and Mr. Spock were all off the ship, Sulu, as fourth in command, and division officer of the Command Division, was often put in charge of the ship if need be.
Kirk shifted his feet to a ready to run position. Half the room shifted in their seats. Scotty had no idea when this instinctive reaction in the crew had developed but he had to laugh at it.
"And Bones is your second. Have fun!" Kirk blurted quickly before racing out of the door, cackling. McCoy, who had been halfway out of his seat even before Kirk started to speak, was already hot on his heels, demanding to know why he was being put in this situation.
Spock sighed and dismissed the rest of the meeting, then left to follow Kirk and McCoy, a clear and understandable look of resignation on his blank face. Scotty had to laugh at that too. Anyone who knew Spock well enough could read the look in his eyes.
Chekov and Sulu were laughing as well as they trailed behind the command triad. Scotty could hear them planning the rest of the day before Sulu had to take over for Kirk. Family dinner, it sounded like.
Nyota stayed. She wasn't quite frowning, but Scotty could tell that something was upsetting her.
"Do you want to go to the mess for lunch?" Scotty asked. "I'm rather hungry right now."
Nyota brightened. "I would," she said immediately. As she stood up she asked, "Maybe you could tell me more about how you know Alysia Cooke? She's one of the foremost diplomats in the quadrant right now, an expert in getting planets to join the Federation." Nyota picked up her padd and joined Scotty walking out the door.
"She is? It's been so long since I've even talked to her that I didn't know that." Scotty said. It was good that Alysia had done such good things for herself. He was also glad that he wasn't a part of that.
Nyota nodded, but something in her mouth was set in a firm line. "I think she tried to get me to join this mission to Yen'bu. I got a message from her several months ago, I think."
Scotty smiled knowingly. He and every one of the senior bridge crew got these types of letters at least once a month or more. Nyota had it the worst, her skills as a linguist were becoming more famed then Hiroshi Saito's.
Which gave him an idea for a gift that would make Nyota incredibly happy. He would just have to find a copy of it. Kirk might have an idea where to look. Scotty pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He would work on that idea later. After their project with the commutation station was more complete.
"Did you give her the formal response or a personal one?" Scotty asked.
"The formal one," Nyota said, shrugging. "I've never met her before, and so I didn't feel the need to write a personal response."
Sometime, about halfway through the last five-year mission, Nyota and Spock had grown tired of getting job offers and having to write new rejection letters, as well as hearing others complain about the same things. They wrote several formal template letters that anyone who didn't want to leave the Enterprise, but also didn't want to insult the people doing the recruiting, could use and put copies on the ship's shared servers. Scotty had checked the stats on the files once - they were one of the most accessed text documents on the ship's shared servers.
"Why would she ask to see you?" Nyota asked, curiosity in her voice. "Have you also rejected a proposal from her?"
Scotty laughed as they entered the mess. It wasn't crowded, but there were a number of people there.
"In a manner of speaking," he chuckled awkwardly. "We used to date when I first joined Starfleet. We broke up because I wanted to be stationed on a ship." He watched Nyota as they made the way to the replicators.
Nyota's expression was stunned, then carefully blank. Scotty had, in the entire time he had known her, not expressed much interest in anyone other than the ship and her, so Scotty could understand her shock.
"It's been years," Scotty mused. "I wonder how's she's been."
In a very light voice, Nyota asked, "Are you interested in going out with her again?" She seemed to be fighting the urge to fidget, something she rarely did.
Scotty was already shaking his head. " God no , that ended years ago," he said with feeling. "She didn't understand why I wanted to be out here in the black. So, I broke up with her."
Nyota smiled, relief showing on her face.
Scotty thought she looked beautiful and happy. He also thought she understood. How could someone not want to be out here, exploring the universe?
Maybe Scotty was reading into things too much, but why would she be relieved if not because Scotty wasn't interested in someone else?
Could Nyota be interested in him? Not just as a close friend but as something more?
He had been so happy recently that he was spending so much more time with his friend that he hadn't let himself think about more.
And now that he did, Scotty couldn't help the light, happy, nearly giddy feeling slide into his veins.
Scotty would have to test the waters carefully.
But he might have a chance.
Later that night
Hikaru watched as Ben picked up Demora to take her to bed. Demora turned and waved at him from her place at Ben's side. Hikaru waved back. He had missed this so much while he was away that he was always amazed at the bedtime rituals.
It was Ben's turn to tuck Demora in. Ben had been telling Hikaru, before they moved onto the Enterprise, that Demora had started to talk about how she didn't need to be tucked in. Ben and Hikaru had just thought it was a sign of her growing up.
But in the several months that they had been on board the Enterprise, Demora had gone back to wanting to be tucked in. They had asked Nurse Chapel about it and were told it was probably a response to the stress of the move and it should fade in time again.
Hikaru could understand that. His job had pulled them from place to place often. First from Earth to Yorktown, and then here to the Enterprise. Ben said he didn't mind. He could work anywhere that he had access to a lab several times a day - his botany experiments were what had brought them together in the first place. But Demora was just a kid. She had assured him that she was happy to be on the ship, but it still had to have been stressful.
Hikaru didn't regret a thing, though. He got to see his little girl grow up, with his husband at his side. And they were on the ship. He was living his best life.
Pasha had joined them for dinner. They had a long day ahead of them tomorrow with the away team taking a lot of the senior leadership. Pasha sat at the dining table; just looking at its surface, lost in deep thought.
That's right , Hikaru thought to himself. He had to talk to Pasha. Because what he saw at the mission briefing was new - and hopefully a good sign.
"How's the training with Doctor McCoy going?" Hikaru asked with a sly tone, making Pasha jump.
Pasha looked up and flushed slightly, "It's going great. Excellent, even! Len is an outstanding teacher." He said quickly. Like he was pushing previously planned words out. "Now that the nurses, other than Chapel and Gillpe, aren't glaring at me every time I'm in the med bay, it's easier."
"The nurses are glaring at you?" Hikaru knew he sounded incredulous, but the nurse's corps on the ship were some of the finest in the Fleet, they should have had no reason to be glaring at Pasha.
"Camelia was spreading tales. Gillpe has been spreading some back." Pasha said with a shrug. He had always been too forgiving of Camelia, for Hikaru's tastes. She had slapped him so hard it had bruised!
"She's been having a hard time, and I'm honestly concerned," Pasha continued. "She's been acting weird since that dinner, and it's not just me! Len thinks so too."
"Doesn't she have that friend in Engineering? Maybe ask him?" Hikaru said. The tall man from Engineering looked faintly like Camelia, so Hikaru thought they might be distantly related. But they had spent a lot of time together before she and Pavel had started to date. But come to think of it, Hikaru hadn't seen them together recently. Since the break up at least.
"Kent's always in trouble, and always angry lately - so much so that I don't want to bother him," Pasha said. "Plus it would be weird, or Camelia might think I'm trying to get back together with her, and that's not happening. I'm sure that things will calm down soon."
"Well, other than nurses glaring at you, how's training been?" Hikaru asked again. He hadn't forgotten that Pasha had said the training was excellent, and that 'Len was a great teacher.' That was a step in the right direction.
"As I said, great. I'm learning a lot, and I think that it will help on away missions." Pasha was smiling earnestly. Hikaru was glad that Pasha was learning something that would lessen casualties while on away missions. The Captain always hated taking injuries - or worse.
"And how's Len ?" Hikaru asked in a leading tone. He had to get to the bottom of this morning somehow. "Is he great?"
Pasha jerked his eyes to meet Hikaru's and flushed slightly. "Yes, Len's been very helpful, and patient when I don't understand something, and very kind." When Pasha said the last, he looked at the table, like he was feeling shy.
Hikaru had to suppress a laugh at his best friend. He hadn't see Pasha act like this in a long time.
"Is he now?" Hikaru said, managing somehow to keep the shit-eating tone out of his voice. Somehow. Ben always could hear it, even when he was doing his best hide it, and normally Pasha could too. "You learning a lot?"
Pasha nodded quickly.
"Is that all you've been doing?" Hikaru asked. He wasn't able to keep the teasing tone from showing up in his voice this time.
Pasha flushed a deeper red. When he nodded, it was small, with a glare. "Yes, that's all we've been doing. Well, that and talking."
Hikaru looked at Pasha hard. There was something different about the way Pasha was acting. "Talking about what?"
"All sorts of things," Pasha shrugged. "Len is very easy to talk to, and has a lot of things to say." Pasha had a small smile on his face that said a whole hell of a lot about what he was thinking.
Hikaru had to fight the urge to punch the air in victory. This was a step in the right direction. Pavel was starting to notice McCoy! Hikaru thought that something had changed when Camelia Warrington had dumped Pasha, Pasha had asked about how he and Ben knew they were ready for serious. And the time he had spent with McCoy in the past few weeks had been some sort of clue.
This morning at the mission briefing, that simple look between McCoy and Pasha had been charged with a something that Hikaru could almost feel, like a substantial presence in the room. Hikaru knew the look meant things were changing.
"You've got a crush on him, don't you?" Hikaru asked, for the sole purpose of watching his best friend turn bright red.
"…yes. I really, really do," Pasha mumbled. He leaned back in his chair and threw his arms up is exasperation. "It just came out of nowhere! It was like one moment, Camila is dumping me after that terrible dinner and then the next I look up, and Len is there with kind eyes and hands and scruffy face, and I'm just gone."
Since Hikaru was almost sure that was how McCoy had fallen in love with Pasha, he didn't see a problem with that. But there was trouble written on Pavel's face like he was concerned about something.
"And now I'm spending all this time with him and let me tell you, 'Karu! He's wonderful. Gruff, yes, but kind and caring and he's so damn concerned for the whole ship. And he thinks I'm interesting. I didn't notice it until recently, but he likes listening to me talk about star charts and navigation, 'Karu. I asked him. He says that knowing that I know the charts that well and the math that well makes him feel safer! I make him feel safer…in space ! He hates space! I don't know what to do with this information." He collapsed back into his chair.
Pasha took a deep breath after his mini-rant; his face flushed. He looked like he hadn't expected to say any of that. "But I can't tell him that I like him yet," he said, a little less rushed.
And Hikaru didn't know what to do about that. Pavel wasn't one to pine. Once he figured out that he liked someone and that someone was unattached, then Pasha tended to ask them out immediately. "Why not?"
"I'm not sure if I want something serious with him, or if I'm just looking too hard in the wrong spot again," Pasha said. "I did just break up with Camelia recently, and I thought I was ready for serious with her."
Oh. That put a damper on Hikaru's happiness for the pair. That was an excellent point. And if Pasha didn't know, then it would be unfair to start going out with McCoy, who had been in love with Pasha for years, only for Pavel to realize he didn't want a serious relationship with McCoy.
That would break McCoy.
And apparently, on some level at least, Pasha knew that.
So Hikaru did the only thing he could think of doing. He asked questions. "Are you sure you want to find out?" he asked, glancing at Pavel.
Pavel nodded, determination and hope clear in his eyes. He must really like McCoy if he was that set on figuring things out. Hikaru had an idea of what the answer was but he knew that Pavel would need to come to this understanding himself.
With a little help from his best friend of course.
"Okay then, we'll see if we can figure this out."
Pasha looked relieved. "Thank you 'Karu!"
Hikaru knew it would be a long night, but they would reach standard orbit during the night, and they could figure this out before the morning.
Ben peeked his head out of the door that lead to their quarters. Pasha couldn't see him, his back to the door, but Hikaru did. Ben smiled at them and pointed to Pasha and gave a thumbs up. Hikaru knew he had permission to get this fixed. Hikaru grinned back. Of course, his husband was listening in, and understood what needed to be done.
They could fix this.
"Well then Pasha, let's see if we can figure out what's going on in that heart of yours."
Ok, so the chapter title is from a Chris Pine movie. I high key recommend everyone listen to this song.
I hope you all enjoy this chapter! this one was hard to get through and edit because it really is the start of the rest of the story. you've got the background and now let's have some Fun! things start really getting good in the next few chapters.
once again Thank you to my amazing beta who finished editing despite being ill! thank you so much B0kunoanime!
Chapter 6: Potential
The welcoming ceremony party on Yen'bu.
Jim didn't hate the dinner dress uniforms, not by a long shot. The uniform used deep colors of gold, red, and blue - and made everyone in the crew look amazing when they wore it. He just hated how the fabric and the cut didn't breathe.
Yen'bu was a hot, muggy planet. Jim was sweating buckets through his outfit. The heat felt worse than that one summer during the academy when Bones had dragged him to Georgia in the middle of July. Jim, until that summer, hadn't known he could sweat that much. The rest of his away team looked just as miserable - other than Spock of course.
Spock looked marvelous, more so than usual. He, with his Vulcan desert heritage, was comfortable in the heat and the humidity. Spock was standing to the side of the room talking with Scotty and a few others. The group was fortunate to see Spock in the full, formal dinner dress uniform, because he looked like a King in his uniform.
And Jim had to bite his tongue, literally, to keep from saying that out loud.
When the natives of Yen'bu talked about how their truth was something that they had to do, they weren't kidding.
Something on this planet made damn sure that people had to tell the truth. It almost forced the fact from people. The more a statement was personal, the harder it was to avoid saying. Jim felt secure in the confidential Starfleet information stockpiled in his brain, but it was trying not to spill his guts about how he felt for Spock that he was concerned about.
Spock had only spoken a few sentences on the planet before his standard exclamation of "Fascinating," was said.
Jim was glad that Spock found something to interest him here because Jim hadn't. The Federation was already well served by the diplomat corps. But they needed a ship represented at the signing, so here was Jim - representing the Enterprise.
"Are you finding the planet too hot, Captain?" Came a voice from behind him. Jim didn't jump at the sudden presence behind him. He was better trained than to show how much the voice had startled him. Too many years of off-world diplomacy had taught him to be a little less of a shoot first and ask questions later kind of Captain. Mostly. One might say that he had mellowed with age.
Bones might disagree but the rest of the federation though so.
It also helped that Alysia Cooke wasn't a woman a person could forget was in the room. A person may lose track of her but no one forgot she was there. Jim thought that Scotty was a fortunate man to have known her. Scotty had also made it clear to Jim and Bones the night before they arrived in orbit, that he felt that he was just as lucky that he had lost her too.
Jim could understand why Scotty had broken up with her. Ambassador Cooke was the type of woman who could not be a Starfleet spouse. Cooke didn't have the patience for that. Jim could tell that Alysia Cooke was a go-getter and a doer. She was a leader. Jim could also tell, in the few moments he had spoken to her that she was not someone who could wait for another person like a Starfleet spouse needed to be willing to do.
Jim didn't know what to make of her, quite honestly. She came off as polite, but there was something in her eyes that said she didn't like him and what he stood for, which seemed strange to Jim. They were both federation people on the frontier and should have been standing together.
But something in Ambassador Cooke's demeanor was dismissive of Jim and his crew. If Jim had to put a name to the feeling, it was as if she thought their work wasn't as important, vital, or as groundbreaking as hers was. Which was strange as ships exploring the unknown was the foundation of the federation. The Enterprise was often conducting First Contact. Ambassadors such as Cooke wouldn't have jobs until well after Jim's ship and crew had already completed their work.
"Yes, I do find the planet to be far too hot for my comfort," Jim responded without thinking, forcing himself not to wince at the truth. He couldn't help the words slipping from his lips the truth of his physical state was personal enough that the gravity of the planet compelled him to share. He turned to face Cooke. "But I really like the architecture and the people," he quickly tacked on another truth when he saw the Yen'bu Empress right next to Cooke.
The Empress was a tall, heavily built humanoid whose skin was a shade of bright pink. Something Jim had been told by his anthropologist during his pre-away mission briefing was common for the equator of the planet. His Anthropologist also made it clear that even though the Empire that ruled over most of Yen'bu was a constitutional monarchy, the empress still held considerable power.
So much power that Jim worried that he could harm diplomatic efforts if he was rude to her in any way. She was well loved by the populace and her disapproval of Starfleet or the Federation would definitely make it harder for the elected Senate to vote in favor of joining.
"I understand humans come from a more temperate planet, Captain," the Empress said with a smile that was kind enough that Jim was sure she hadn't minded his misstep.
"Yes. The weather is very different from Yen'bu from Terra," Jim answered as truthfully as he could, letting it flow out of him now. "Where I'm from in Iowa, it's much cooler normally than here. However, there are places near our equator that are just as hot as Yen'bu."
The Empress nodded at him with a pleased expression her face.
Cooke smiled at him, a distant expression that immediately became warmer when she looked at the Empress, reinforcing Jim's idea that Cooke didn't seem to like him.
"I'm sure the Captain can explain more about what the Federation can do for new planets that join. He has been to many of the Federation worlds and new planets," Cooke said to the Empress.
The Empress looked impressed and turned back to Jim with an eager expression. "Please tell me more, Captain. I am curious what the federation has done for others. My Senate is sure that this move is a good idea, but I would like to know more."
As Jim launched into the standard speech that Uhura wrote for the diplomatic away teams, Jim made sure to put the Federation's best foot forward. The address was about the benefits of joining the Federation, from the unity of the planets to the protection Starfleet could provide to the trade that allying themselves with the Federation could open up. Jim loved to explain new ideas and understanding of the universe the Federation's scientists were always testing. He also mentioned that Starfleet was an excellent way to expand the new concepts and share their own.
As Uhura had written the speech at the beginning of the first five-year mission, and had made Jim practice reciting it until he could say the damn thing backwards, forwards, in pieces, and in Klingon - Jim could let his mind wander.
The fact he could say the speech in its entirety on the surface of the planet was impressive, and it came out of Jim with a promptness that surprised him. He hadn't realized that he felt so strongly about the Federation. He knew he believed in it, he just hadn't known that Uhura's speech had become something like a truth to him. While Jim accepted what the Federation stood for, sometimes the ideas and ideals of the Federation came off to outsiders, and even Jim, as propaganda.
Jim was relieved to know that what he said was the truth.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jim saw one of the diplomatic scientists break off a conversation with a Yen'bu official and head toward Spock. Jim couldn't hide a wince. Spock despised diplomatic scientists on a good day. Add that disdain with a planet that was known for its truth-telling properties... Jim just hoped there wouldn't be blood. Again. The Empress and Cooke followed his gaze.
"Your First Officer, I presume?" Cooke asked, glancing over to Jim. She then turned and frowned in the direction of the conversation that was starting. Spock was doing his best to be impassive, and the scientist was clearly doing his best to bluster. Jim didn't like the look she was giving the crew.
Jim nodded and physically had to stop himself from saying, 'And the love of my life,' because that would be all sorts of inappropriate.
But, also, the truth.
"Is there going to be a problem, Captain?" the Empress asked.
Jim shook his head. "Not unless ambassador Cooke's scientist has taken credit for something that's not theirs, or has incorrectly interpreted data that was in front of them." He could remember the last time Spock got started on a scientist's incorrect interpretation. Jim still said that was one of the best times he's ever had at a Starfleet party. Scotty, Chekov and surprisingly, Uhura all agreed.
Jim didn't even start that fistfight. But the crew sure as hell had finished it.
Cooke glanced at him and said, "I am sure they didn't." Her voice was much more scratchy then it had been a moment previous. She looked surprised for a heartbeat, before quickly turning her gaze back to the scientist with interest.
Jim just hummed, neither answering nor denying. If the scientist hadn't, then it would be a first for the Enterprise. Jim trusted Spock more than anyone.
From the look Spock had given the man as he had been making his way to Spock's pocket of people (Uhura, Scotty, and a few of the Yen'bu), the man had, indeed, made a mistake and Spock felt it his duty to correct him.
Jim had to rescue them from a diplomatic disaster waiting to happen, and this time it wasn't his fault!
"If you'd excuse me, Your Majesty, Ambassador," he said, turning to make his way to the storm that was brewing.
"I'll go with you, Captain. I would like to say hello to an old friend," Cooke said, following him. "And to prevent your First Officer from harming one of my scientists."
Jim scoffed. "Spock won't harm them physically." Unless the scientist threw the first punch.
Jim will forever and always maintain that that was the best Starfleet party he's ever been to. More than half the senior staff also agreed with him.
The discussion as they got closer was getting louder.
"If you dare imply I falsified records…!" The scientist was becoming irate. There was a slight wheeze to his voice that Jim knew meant trouble.
There was something defensive is posture. Clearly, the guy had done something wrong and knew it, if he was reacting this way. Jim's body language training had been taught to him by Uhura. She could read anyone, and liked to show others how to as well.
Spock leveled a look at the man. "Of course not." Spock sounded dismissive of the mere idea. "If your experiments were completed correctly by you, then there would be no need for concern."
Jim was sure that only the members of the crew heard the tone of death in Spock's voice. Spock clearly didn't think that the scientist did the work he was claiming he did.
The rest of the group seemed to take Spock's words with varying degrees of understanding. The security crewman was looking like he wanted to reach for his phaser. Scotty and Uhura were flanking Spock in a show of solidarity. But the Yen'bu just watched on, most looking amused by the whole situation. Jim wondered if living on a planet that forced the truth out if people gave a person a sense of humor that was weird.
The scientist looked as if he wanted to haul off and hit Spock anyway.
Jim had to intervene soon. Preferably before the man decided to throw the first punch. The Federation had come a long way on Yen'bu, and Jim wasn't going to let his crew be at fault for jeopardizing the treaty.
No matter how awesome it was to see Spock defend himself in a fist fight.
"I did no-," the scientist started to sputter, but coughed in the middle of the sentence. Jim knew what that meant - and so did Spock, and the rest of the away team.
Jim had tried to lie when he got on the planet initially, and he had spent the entirety of the phrase 'My favorite color is red,' coughing.
His favorite color was brown. The same shade as Spock's eyes.
But it meant that the entire team was well aware that scientist was trying to lie.
It didn't matter in the end because Spock cut him off.
"I've read your initial findings. I would recommend putting more into the bibliography and sources that fully explain your use of the planet's own library. Right now, the section is sorely lacking," Spock started. He glared at the man before continuing, "And if you wish to publish your results, then I would recommend changing the written time of the experiments to be less than a year when you have been only on the planet for a third of that time."
Jim had to bite his tongue to not let out a childish and inappropriate 'Oooooh!' at that. Both of the security team clearly did so as well. The man - whom Jim could no longer consider a scientist - flinched and went pale.
Spock's look of death towards the man spoke volumes. "I do hope you send a copy of whatever findings you may wish to publish to me beforehand. I would like to read them, I am sure the paper would be an interesting read."
The man nodded dumbly. Jim knew he would never publish the papers. Damn diplomatic scientists. Always wanting to take the credit for work they didn't complete. Now, at least, Yen'bu's scientists could post their work unhindered by preconceived notions and thieving former scientists.
Spock always was good for that.
He also seemed done with the man. "Captain," he said mildly, turning his attention away from the cowardly man. "I am pleased to see you."
Jim stopped right next to Spock, and Spock reached out and brushed his hand against Jim's shoulder and arm. Jim felt his heart stop for a moment because Spock didn't touch people without reason. Jim always liked the fact that Spock had always felt comfortable with Jim enough to indulge in a few touches in private, but this was an extremely public setting.
Jim realized that his internal monologue sounded a lot like complaining and promptly stopped questioning it, because if he was getting touched by Spock, then he wasn't going to complain.
Ever .
"And I am pleased to see you as well," Jim said, smiling. He let the truth planet speak for him. Jim was glad to see Spock. He was always happy to see Spock.
"Ambassador Cooke," Uhura greeted. She seemed to be taking stock of the woman.
Jim was suddenly reasonably sure he had, at one point, seen a recruiting letter arrive for Uhura from Cooke.
Maybe that's why the ambassador didn't like him? Uhura had clearly turned her down.
"Good afternoon," Cooke said. "I was relieved to hear that the USS Enterprise would be joining us." She seemed to be sizing up Uhura as well.
Jim wondered why for a moment - when he realized that Uhura was right next to Scotty. In fact, Uhura was standing very close to him. Reading body language wasn't his expertise like it was Uhura's, but Jim did know his crew very well, and also had some training in it. Uhura was showing off a close friendship and maybe more.
And, of course, Scotty wasn't complaining. Maybe Scotty would get enough courage to ask her out soon. Because it was looking to Jim that Uhura wasn't going to say no.
Jim had the sudden realization that the project he wasn't supposed to know about was probably their way of flirting. Or at least feeling each other out.
He hoped it worked out for both of them.
Uhura smiled. "We are excited to see what Yen'bu has to offer."
"Indeed," Cooke said. She was watching Uhura was with a look that was hard for Jim to read. "I am sure you will find your time on the planet agreeable."
Jim got the impression that he was watching a shark swim around, scenting the water for blood. Cooke was clearly waiting for an opening to strike. Uhura gave no reaction that she felt the same, but she also gave no quarter either.
As the conversation went along, the Ambassador explaining more about the culture and people of Yen'bu, Jim leaned into Spock's side a little.
Scotty and the Ambassador exchanged a few words here and there, neither giving much of an illusion to their shared past.
Scotty seemed happy to ignore it.
Jim got the feeling that the Ambassador didn't want to. Her eyes rarely left Scotty for long.
With a sinking feeling in his gut, Jim couldn't help but think there may be trouble soon. He would have to keep an eye on Ambassador Alysia Cooke.
At the end of the welcome ceremony lunch
Scotty had honestly been trying to avoid Alysia Cooke. He didn't want to talk to her, not with the way she was eyeing him.
She looked like she wanted to eat him alive.
Politely.
Because that was the way Alysia was. That was the way she had always been, and Scotty didn't like that. Not anymore at least. He once loved her single-minded determination and her self-assured attitude. He had like the way Alysia had gone through life with a fierce look and the belief that she was going to get her way - because that was the way the world worked. The earth was round, Starfleet operated in space, Vulcan was hot, and Alysia Cooke was going to get what she wanted, one way or another.
Scotty was so relieved that he had lost her when he got assigned to the Unity. To tell the truth, their relationship had been on the rocks for weeks heading up to Scotty's graduation from Starfleet Academy.
Scotty had been lucky to avoid Alysia for most of the evening. He had felt her eyes on him during the short conversation with the rest of his away team. He did not want to be alone with her for very long.
But it seemed his luck was at an end.
Alysia found him near one of the grand windows that lined the room. He was trying (somewhat successfully) to cool himself down. The room was hot and humid, and Scotty was having trouble keeping himself from telling the natives that.
The breeze that came from the window was a welcomed relief. But it also meant that Scotty could see Alysia break off a group that had been filled with Yen'bu officials and Starfleet Officers to make her way over to him.
"Montgomery," she greeted as she came up. She was as beautiful as she was the last day Scotty saw her, but Scotty no longer found that to be as enthralling as he once did.
Scotty attempted to hide his sigh. By the look that she gave him, Scotty wasn't successful. "Alysia," he said in return. "I prefer 'Scotty' now."
He had preferred 'Scotty' for a long time. But that was a change that had occurred after they had broken up; he had gained the name on his first ship. He hadn't enjoyed being called Montgomery even when they had been dating, but he hadn't a better name back then.
"Do you?" she asked, in what Scotty thought was a shrewd tone but Scotty didn't understand why. He hated being called 'Montgomery'. It was Scotty. Or Monty if it was family.
What had been the final straw on an already strained relationship was Scotty's first orders. They had broken up after an argument about Scotty choosing a ship over following Alysia. Scotty had been the top Engineering cadet in his class at the academy, and with that honor, he had received a significant amount of offers for orders for a permanent duty station that could be either on a planet or ship.
He had chosen the USS Unity, a Farragut class ship that was new, complicated, and all sorts of interesting. Alysia had not been happy. She had tried to get his orders changed behind his back and had failed. When Scotty had found out, he had been furious.
Scotty was glad they weren't dating anymore.
"Yes," he said in return, shutting whatever Alysia was trying to say down. He wanted to change the subject.
Scotty decided he would let Alysia lead this conversation. It would be easier to respond then to try to figure out what she wanted beforehand.
He didn't know what she wanted - nor why she had asked for him specifically on this away mission. He hadn't been paying attention to her career after he left earth the first time with the Unity. She apparently had been paying attention to his.
"It has been a long time hasn't it, Montgomery?" Alysia asked, frowning but moving on to change the subject. "I've missed you." She smiled, and it was more reserved then it had been when they were in their early twenties, but that's what being an Ambassador must do to a person.
"It has, since we were, what twenty-three?" Scotty said. He was in his late thirties now, it had been years .
"Something along those lines," Alysia agreed. "I was surprised to hear that you were still on ships after all these years. I imagined you would be doing more planet-based work by now." She had a cocktail in her hand and took a sip from the glass.
Scotty's own glass had been emptied for about twenty minutes now, and he wasn't looking for more. He had just kept it with him to prevent it from being refilled by a passing server.
At her reminder of the pitstop that his career took at Delta Vega, Scotty winced. He also didn't like the implication that he was too good for ships. That had been her argument from the start. She was wrong. He was far too good to be ordered to a planet. Scotty sighed. Of course, Alysia would still think the same thing she did when they were young.
She was always missing something about the camaraderie and family that a crew could provide.
"I was assigned to Delta Vega before Vulcan fell. But I've been lucky enough to be CEO of the Enterprise ever since," Scotty said, the truth-telling 'feature' of Yen'bu forcing the titbit of Delta Vega out. He hadn't meant to say that.
"Lucky?" Alysia questioned. "It's been eight years, longer than the regular orders to a ship, did you ask for an extension or something?" She asked, the polite tone in her voice fading slightly into something dismissive. "I would be worried that I was stuck if that happened to me."
Scotty managed to hide a flinch, and managed a response. "With the five-year missions, the crew rotations and orders are modified. I volunteered to stay with the Enterprise, she's a great ship with a great crew."
"I see," Alysia coughed. Scotty knew she didn't see or understand, but many people didn't, so he wouldn't push the point. "I mean, I am glad you are happy." She cleared her throat afterword.
"I see that you have been doing well for yourself, Alysia," Scotty said, all too willing to move on from his career. "Lead Ambassador from the federation on a treaty assignment is an awe-inspiring feat."
Alysia glowed with pride. "I am thrilled to help the Federation. I worked hard for this, and I believe I'm doing a good job making sure the Federation and Yen'bu are being represented."
"I'm glad for you," Scotty said without a hint of a cough.
Her expression lit up, apparently pleased with his words. "Well, Montgomery, I wanted to ask you if-," Alysia started to say, but she cut herself off when Jim and Nyota approached to them.
"Scotty! It's time to go but-," Jim started to say as he came up to them. He paused, looking at Alysia. "Good day again, Ambassador Cooke,"
Nyota also greeted her. "Ambassador, hello."
Scotty watched as Alysia's smile became more stilted and formal as she greeted Jim and Nyota. A distant expression came over her face, like she was seeing something rather distasteful and was trying to hide it.
"Captain, Lieutenant Commander," Alysia's greeted distantly.
Scotty nodded at them. "Captain, Nyota."
"Scotty, I wanted to know if you would be able to stay down here, I have to send a man back up to be seen by Doctor McCoy. I know that originally, you were going to go back up to the ship after the lunch but now…" Jim trailed off.
Scotty knew what he meant. They needed the presence, and it was important that the Enterprise remain seen. Scotty was concerned about the man who was sent back to the ship, but he nodded all the same. Keenser was an excellent assistant CEO and could handle anything that went wrong while in orbit.
"Aye, I can. Just let me speak to Keenser and tell him." Scotty assured Jim. Jim's relieved look was all that Scotty needed to know that he was grateful.
Nyota smiled happily as well.
Scotty was once again struck by how wonderful she was. Sometimes, it was the little things that really got him. It was the sudden moments that reminded him how much he loved her. He smiled back and tried not to tell Nyota the truth, like the planet's properties called for him too.
Scotty had been watching her all afternoon, as was his habit. Nyota was in her element. Part of the Federation envoy was a pair Friesians, and they seemed to be delighted in speaking their native tongue to another person.
She had also been speaking to the Yen'bu about their three native languages.
Nyota would be good as an ambassador's aide or as a translator, but Scotty was so glad that she was as dedicated to Starfleet and the Enterprise as he was.
He was also glad their project had allowed them to spend more time together than before. He got to see Nyota's brilliance more in person, and that always made Scotty happy.
"I'm sure that Keenser would be fine but…" Nyota said, and Scotty heard the rest of the sentence. She had been there in engineering or with Scotty, the few times Kent, Scotty's current disciplinary problem child, had acted out or been slacking off.
Kent was on duty today, and Keenser may need more help.
Scotty would let Keenser know that if things went wrong with Kent to start paperwork up to the higher chain of command.
Alysia hummed, sounding pleased. "If you are staying, Montgomery, then I would like to invite you to dinner, as," she coughed, clearing her throat, "colleges and friends. I would love to catch up."
Scotty gaped at her. Dinner? As colleges?
Nyota had this strange look on her face that said she was fascinated. Like she had just seen a puzzle, and she wanted to solve it.
Jim looked like he wanted to laugh but was struggling not to.
Scotty felt trapped, "What?" he was confused and stunned. "I mean - what ?"
"Excellent!" Alysia smiled happily like Scotty had just given her the world. Scotty didn't want to give her the world. "I will make reservations for seven. I will see you then. I will leave you to be now." She said as she nodded and bowed slightly but quickly, a gesture that Scotty had seen several of the Yen'bu make.
Nyota and Jim repeated it. Scotty did too, after a delay.
And then Alysia was gone. She hadn't given Scotty a chance to even say no.
Scotty felt like he could breathe for the first time.
"Dinner, Scotty?" Jim said, dryly. He always took a chance to tease his friends, but Scotty could see the concern in his eyes.
Nyota still looked like she had a puzzle just waiting to be solved.
"I panicked, okay?" Scotty said. "I mean, it will be nice to see what she's been up to - but I don't think that's what she wants." He waved his empty drink around. He could tell that Alysia wanted more. "I don't want whatever that more is."
"What I'm curious about is how she learned to lie, or at least walk around the truth," Nyota said. "She was coughing, a lot but she wasn't outright lying."
Jim agreed.
Scotty made a note to ask at dinner how she did it, because he was weak and making Nyota smile was the primary goal in his life.
Meanwhile on the Enterprise
Bones treated the lone crewman who had come up from the away team. Apparently, he had developed a food allergy to a plant on the planet that no one knew about.
And looking at the records and the results and the vague look of betrayal on the crewman's face, Bones had to sigh. Surprise allergies were always a bitch to deal with.
"Katsuki, you'll be fine in an hour, but we're keeping you overnight to watch the allergy fade. We have to get all the information now to prevent this from happening again," Bones told him seriously.
Katsuki nodded slowly, the hives were accompanied by a migraine that hurt like a bitch but would fade over time.
"Good. I'm leaving you in the care of Warrington. She'll take care of you," Bones told the man on the bench.
Katsuki nodded slowly again. Bones placed a cold compress over the crewman's eyes and watched as Katsuki let his body relax.
Warrington was standing off to the side. She was already updating Katsuki's files in the padd. She was quiet for once, and was attentive. Bones was surprised and hopeful. The last few weeks, since she broke up with Pasha, she had been inattentive and distracted. She had been making small mistakes that if no one had caught would have lead to big problems.
In the last weeks, all the excellent work she had been doing had been gone. She was just as bad as that one guy in engineering that Scotty kept complaining about.
But today she was on point. Something was different, but Bones had no idea what. Bones didn't entirely know what was going on with her, and she still wasn't opening up to him at all, but he hoped that maybe whatever had been distracting her was over.
"Warrington," Bones said quietly, a little distance away from Katsuki's bed. "He should be fine but keep a close eye on him. I don't expect many more patients today, and Sulu wants me on the Bridge for some paperwork. So, I'm leaving you in charge. Comm me the moment someone comes in, understand?"
Warrington met his eyes for the first time in weeks, and he could see they were red - and it looked as if she had been crying. Bones didn't ask. She wasn't crying now, nor did she look as if she was about to start. She seemed determined to do her job.
Bones would have to trust her again.
"I will, Doctor," she said, nodding firmly. Bones saw that she gripped the padd a little tighter than before, but her expression did not waver.
"Good. I'm trusting you with Katsuki. Comm me if he worsens," Bones said before going into his office to grab a padd with the paperwork that Sulu needed.
Being the temporary – for the duration of away mission only – second in command was exhausting.
The daily paperwork was astounding , Bones had signed about fifty things since taking over from Spock about four hours ago. And they had the rest of that day and all of the next before the away team would be back to take back over the ship properly. Bones had hoped that he could give Sulu the second in command title when Scotty had come back to the ship and took over, but with Katsuki's illness, that idea had died.
Bones stepped into the turbo lift and sighed. At least Pasha would be there on the bridge.
Pasha had been acting differently during the past few weeks. At first, Bones had chalked it up to dealing with the break up from Warrington, but now, Bones wasn't sure. Pavel's actions were making his heart jump through hoops, and Bones was getting his hopes up for the first time.
Bones had been spending a lot of time telling himself that it may be nothing but a new facet of their friendship developing, something he wasn't about to complain about. Bones, on the other hand, also spent a lot of time daydreaming about closing the distance between them while he was training Pasha - and kissing the other man with every fiber of his being. Just sitting with Pavel at lunch was now a test of his self-control and will.
Bones felt like he didn't have a lot of self-control.
The turbo lift opened up, and Bones stepped out onto the bridge.
Sulu was at the captain's chair filling out some paperwork on a padd and Pasha was on at the navigation console with a lower command crewmember, teaching her the correct way to hold orbit.
Pasha was teaching a class, apparently, because there were three other crewmen in gold shirts taking notes on padds. The girl actually at the navigation seat was the only one not taking notes. Bones knew that the new command crewmembers were still getting their qualifications, just like his nurses.
Pasha looked up and waved when Bones came in, and Bones waved back.
Sulu glanced up and called him over, "Doc, I need you to read and sign this."
Bones sighed for what felt like the fifth time that day and walked over. "What's it on?" he asked, taking the padd from Sulu.
"Some engineering problem that needs signatures. A crewman was asleep at his post. I don't know what's up with this guy, but apparently, there are notes on his record that he's been causing problems," Sulu said, frowning at the doctor.
Bones shrugged, pressing his finger to the 'sign here' locations on the padd, using his fingerprint as a signature. "Some people can't handle the pressures we deal with. If he doesn't get his act together, then either Jim or Scotty will transfer him."
Sulu nodded and turned back to face the helm, surreptitiously checking that his relief was doing their job correctly. It was the truth - sometimes a promising crewmember just wasn't able to handle the workload the Enterprise did. It wasn't their fault, the Enterprise just wasn't for everyone. But crewmembers like that were something that had to be dealt with quickly since it could get people in trouble - or killed.
Bones liked to have no people in his sickbay at all times, thank you very much. He didn't get that wish ever , there was always someone, but an old country boy could dream, dammit.
He would have a lot less paperwork then.
Bones signed several of the pads and winced as he realized that this, in addition to the science labs' paperwork, was what Spock had to do every day.
They worked in silence for a good half hour before Pasha's training class finished. The two command ensigns and one gold shirt enlisted crewman packed up their padds and left, leaving the one female crewman to take over holding the orbit distance.
Pavel came up to them, rubbing at his temples. Bones caught the motion and winced. Pasha had been dealing with migraines occasionally since the last shore leave. Bones suspected they had been occurring even before that shore leave as well, but he didn't have data on that. Getting the Alpha Shift Bridge crew to come to medical somedays was akin to pulling teeth.
"Headache?" Hikaru asked, concern in his voice.
Pavel nodded, a small, slight movement that was barely there.
Bones didn't bother to hide the trained look over he gave Pavel. Sulu knew what he felt for Pavel so he didn't hide the expression. Bones' visual exam wasn't comprehensive by any means, but often times Bones found it gave him a starting point. Pavel was slightly pale and had tension in his eyes. The way he was holding himself told Bones that this one was a bad one.
"Will you be ok?" Sulu asked, also eyeing Pasha.
" Neyt . I mean, no. I don't think so." Pasha said his accent a little thicker than normal. "I may have to take something." He was covering his eyes now in an attempt to stop the pain. Bones sighed and opened the prescription program on his padd, already hunting for Pasha's last prescription and its dosage.
"You won't be much use here. Or at least not until you get that headache fixed." Sulu said. "Doc? Think you can fix him?" Sulu was still signing the paperwork and Bones nodded.
He hit send on the padd to send the prescription to medical, and Warrington. He hoped that her newly rediscovered work ethic would get the pills and hypo ready before they got down there. "I can. If you would, Pasha." Bones said gesturing toward the turbolift.
Bones found it fascinating when Pavel's face suddenly turned a light red when Bones used the nickname. Sulu let out a little chuckle that had Pasha glaring weakly at him.
Bones firmly ignored the thought in the back of his head that said 'Mine. I caused him to blush because he's mine.' That part of him wasn't worth Pavel's time, even if Pavel was actually interested.
"Yes, Len," Pavel said and walked gingerly to the turbolift.
Once safely inside the turbo lift, Bones turned toward Pavel. He took Pavel's hand in his own and placed his other on Pavel's forehead.
Pavel sighed and leaned into the touch. "Your hands feel good," he said. Some of the tension faded from the corners of his eyes for a moment.
"That's what comes from being a doctor." Bones said, shifting his hand slightly on Pavel's forehead, and Pavel sighed in relief again. "Cold hands."
The turbolift started to slow to a stop and Bones reluctantly took a step back from Pavel. Taking his own hand off of Pavel's forehead, but not fully dropping Pavel's hand.
Pavel took what looked to be like an involuntary step forward to follow Bones' hand.
They both stood there for a moment, just caught up in looking at each other. The moment dragged on so long that Bones could see a question start in Pavel's eyes.
"Len," Pavel said, taking a minor step forward before taking a deep breath. That step had brought him into Bones' personal space, and it was the first time that they had gotten so close without Bones needing to do some medical work. "I want to ask you something…"
As Pavel started to talk, the door of the lift opened up and loud arguing could be heard from the other side of the hallway, where the med bay entrance was. Nothing was distinct, but the voices were loud enough to carry.
Bones dropped Pavel's hand and stepped away, wishing that he didn't have to.
Pavel's face screwed up in frustration when he looked to the side and saw who was yelling. He looked deeply upset about something. Then he winced and placed a hand up to his head.
Bones followed his gaze and saw that Warrington and an engineering crewman (whom Bones thought was called Anderson Kent but wasn't sure. Kent was the kid from engineering that Bones had just signed paperwork for) were arguing. They were getting louder.
Bones felt a moment of pure anger. He felt the expletives run through his head and took a deep breath to calm himself. He would have to write Warrington and this Engineering Crewman up. And he would have to ask Pavel to write the crewman up. They were marginally in the same division.
Bones started walking toward the med bay. "I'm sorry Pavel. We have to deal with this. Can you wait for the migraine meds for a few minutes?"
Pavel just looked disappointed but nodded. "I can wait. For more than just the meds." He said.
Bones stopped and looked at him. "What?"
Pavel just smiled and waved him along. "It's nothing important. It's about our training. I'll ask later."
"If you insist," Bones hummed before putting on his 'I'm CMO, and nothing you can do will change that so, god damn it, just listen to me' face on to deal with one of his nurses. He did not want to explain what was going on to Jim when he got back on board.
Evening on Yen'bu
In all honesty, Nyota didn't intend to spy on Scotty's dinner with Alysia Cooke when she heard the Ambassador ask Scotty to join her.
But here she was, sitting at a table near the doorway of the restaurant with Jim Kirk sitting opposite her and both of them were blatantly listening in to the table on the other side of the partition.
Nyota had been unhappy about hearing someone ask Scotty on a date before she could, but she wasn't going to spy. Nytoa hadn't been too concerned that Scotty was going to fall back in love with Cooke. He had looked too surprised, and not in a happy way, for Nyota to be worried.
But then Kirk had looked at her when Scotty had left to his temporary rooms after the welcome ceremony and lunch, and asked with a friendly smile that completely belied the worry in his eyes - "Wanna get food conveniently near wherever they have dinner?" Nyota said yes.
Nyota assumed the offer came from the fact he didn't trust Cooke any more than she had - because usually, Kirk hated to interrupt dates. He had always looked regretful when he'd had to barge in on her and Spock. She had felt that was genuine about him. He hated to be that dick. He was always apologetic about interrupting when he did it to anyone.
Then again, that still didn't stop her from saying yes to spying on Scotty's dinner.
Spock had just looked at the pair of them with a faint expression of exasperation on his face. Kirk had seen it and grinned, unrepentant. Nyota had just giggled. Spock had left them to it, claiming he was going to check out the scientific facilities the Native Yen'bu had set up, but he also said that he wanted to know the results of their spying nonetheless.
Ambassador Alysia Cooke put Nyota on edge. And Nyota couldn't put her finger on why. Maybe it was the way she didn't like most of the crew from the Enterprise or the way she was only warm and friendly to Scotty or the Yen'bu themselves. Maybe it was the way she just dismissed the Enterprise crew as 'not as smart' in a conversation Nyota overheard between a Yen'bu politician and the Ambassador.
Or maybe it was the way that she called Scotty 'Montgomery'. Nyota had to acknowledge that it may have been because of that.
In the end, the results were the same. Nyota and Kirk were spying on Scotty's dinner. Their waiter had taken their request to be near Scotty and the Ambassador with surprising understanding. It helped that Kirk had spoken the truth about watching over a fellow crew member. They had been seated quickly while Scotty and the Ambassador had been distracted by another waiter.
At first, they had only talked about the ship and listened to Scotty and the Ambassador talk. While she trusted her Captain, She and Kirk never did spend much time together in off hours as he did with Spock or Bones. Nyota was always glad to see the man Kirk had gown into, and she would alway consider him a friend, but they didn't spend much together.
However as the night went on they strayed onto different topics, and Nyota found something interesting. She would mention something about her best friend and Kirk would light up with happiness.
Talking about Spock put a smile on Kirk's face that Nyota had realized she'd seen before but never fully realized it's meaning. It was obvious that Kirk enjoyed talking about Spock - probably even more than she did. She let a small, self-satisfied smile grace her face as she tucked that piece of information away to tell Spock as soon as they returned. Spock needed to know that this was a sign pointing in the right direction for his chances at a romantic relationship with James Tiberius Kirk.
Aside from spending the entire night talking about Spock, they also spent time talking about the improvements they'd had in working since the start of the second five-year mission. Nyota finally gave in to Kirk's pestering and decided to give a hint to Kirk of the secret project she was working on with Scotty. Just a hint. He would have to wait until she and Scotty were done for the full scope of the project.
Nyota could honestly say that she was having fun having dinner with Jim.
But for as much fun as she was having, it was clear that Scotty and Alysia Cooke weren't having any . Scotty and the Ambassador's dinner wasn't going well.
At first, the Ambassador had been polite and friendly, like she was actually having dinner with a colleague and not an ex-boyfriend.
Scotty seemed to be content with that as well, asking questions about her career and laughing politely over the tired jokes people who travel in space often heard many times over. He had tried to ask about her ability to almost lie. Something Nyota had appreciated, knowing he had asked for her sake, despite Cooke dodging the question with the air of someone who was used to such things.
But, as dinner wore on, the ambassador's tone began to change. Cooke started to flirt more openly. As she drank more throughout the meal, she became more aggressive and blatant with her intent. Scotty remained the same, keeping his distance and treating her just as a co-worker.
Nyota noticed that Scotty was very careful not to bring up their past. He grew more cautious as Cooke started to drink more. It was consistently Cooke who continued to try and get Scotty to reminisce.
Scotty's tone became more and more distant the longer the dinner dragged on.
Near the end of the dinner, just when Nyota and Kirk were telling their waiter that it would be one check – under Kirk's bill (he was the Captain after all) that things went really downhill.
"Montgomery," Cooke said, keeping her voice light and taking a sip from the third martini that she had ordered with her meal, "Are you going to hide your attraction to me for much longer?" she asked. "It is getting tiresome to continue to pretend you are going to stay with that ship when it leaves."
Nyota stared at Kirk in confusion. She didn't know where Cooke had drawn this conclusion. That question had clearly come from out of the blue. Scotty had not given any indication that he felt more for Cooke.
"What?" Scotty asked, sounding just as bewildered.
Nyota froze up. She really didn't want to hear an offer to Scotty to leave the Enterprise. They may not have been in a relationship at that very moment, but they were still close friends. Kirk smiled and placed a hand on her arm, reassuring her.
"You know, he'll never take it," Kirk said quietly. "Scotty loves the Enterprise."
Nyota nodded. "He does. But no one likes hearing offers like this," she replied just as quietly.
Kirk grimaced. "Can't say I like hearing people try to take my crew away from the ship - but Scotty won't go, so I'm not as worried."
"I don't know what you mean," Scotty said, drawing both of their attention back to the conversation on the other side of the partition. His voice very mild, but his accent was getting thicker. Kirk and Nyota shared a glance. That was never a good sign. "I'm not interested in you, Alysia. I haven't been in years." His speech was quiet but clear.
"Please, I know you want me. It's clear from your eyes and the way you carefully don't disagree with me. You can't lie on this planet, Montgomery," Cooke said. "If you want to stay, then I can arrange it for you. You could be writing the official policy on Engineering for all of Starfleet by the time I'm done. You can be doing so much more than sitting around on a ship that will be gone for years at a time."
"But I don't want to write policy for Starfleet, I like being the Chief Engineering Officer." Scotty said, sounding like he was sure that a large part of the conversation had missed him somehow. "I like being on the Enterprise."
Cooke hummed. "Well, we can find you something better than being on that ship ." Something in her tone set Nyota's nerves on edge. She had completely ignored Scotty.
It set Kirk's nerves on edge too, if the sudden tenseness in his shoulders meant anything.
"What's wrong with my ship?" Scotty asked, tone flat.
"Nothing," Cooke hedged gently, apparently aware of the danger in his question. They were silent for a moment.
Then Cooke plowed on, so maybe Nyota had misjudged. "Except for the fact it is a ship . And ships are limiting to the people who are stationed there. No one ever amounts to much while stationed on a ship. Especially one like the Enterprise, always forward deployed, always gone."
"There is nothing wrong with forward deployed!" Scotty said, sounding stunned. "People stationed to ships do a lot for the Federation. I have no idea what you are talking about!"
Nyota had to stop herself from saying the exact same thing. By the looks of it, Kirk had to do the same.
Cooke sighed, her tone patronizing. "You can't network properly, or form relationships or even romances on a ship. You are always there and then gone. Not a way to set up a life, not a way to make connections."
Nyota could tell she honestly believed her words. Cooke wasn't coughing, nor was she struggling to breathe - all signs of a lie on Yen'bu. Cooke honestly thought that being on the ship wasn't a good as being planetside.
"It's not like that…" Scotty started to say.
But Cooke interrupted him. "But, of course, it's not," her voice was dismissive. Nyota couldn't see her, but in Cooke's tone, it was clear that she didn't think much of the Enterprise.
"But it's not!" Scotty grit out, his voice heated.
"Scotty why do you want to stay on that ship? There is no reason! I'm offering a better choice here all around. There's me, and there is more recognition!" Cooke said. "You can get away from the 'ship people' who can't even advance themselves past a ship posting."
Scotty tried to interject, but Cooke seemed to be on a roll. "What's keeping you on that ship?"
She stared down at Scotty and Nyota frowned at Kirk, and he scowled back. The ambassador didn't understand. And the three 'ship people' knew it.
"Well…" Scotty started, clearly trying to defend the Enterprise. Nyota recognized his tone. It was the one Scotty used when he had far too many ideas and thoughts, and all of them were trying to be the first spoken.
But Cooke suddenly gasped, like she'd had a realization. "It's a girl ! You don't want to leave the Enterprise because of a girl!" she exclaimed with something akin to understanding in her tone. "No wonder you won't leave!"
At Scotty's coughing attempt to exclaim, "No!" Kirk quickly smirked, the expression suddenly there and gone, like he knew what Scotty meant and was ready to tease him about it.
Nyota gaped at Kirk. Then the realization dawned on her of why Scotty's seemed unable to form a sentence past the coughs wracking his chest.
So, Scotty was in love with someone on the ship. Nyota desperately, but without hope, wished it was her. Something must have shown on her face because Kirk squeezed her hand and smiled reassuringly. How Kirk knew what she had been thinking, Nyota didn't know.
Nyota hoped that his smile meant something good.
"Well don't worry about whoever she is. She's not worth your time," Cooke said dismissively. "You aren't in a relationship right, now are you?"
Kirk winced at the casual dismissal of Scotty's love.
Nyota may not have known who the lucky woman was, but she did know that insulting them or dismissing them wasn't going to work on Scotty.
"Well, no, I'm not currently in a relationship," Scotty said, before saying in a determined tone, "But… she is worth my time!"
"Then forget her and stay with me!" Cooke said, brightly, completely ignoring the second half of Scotty declaration again.
Nyota had to wonder how an Ambassador had developed such selective hearing.
"No!" Scotty cried.
"Good heavens, why not?" Cooke asked. "I'm a far better choice than some girl who can't even get off a ship in her career!"
"I won't even think about leaving Nyota or the Enterprise!" Scotty shouted, finally getting a word in edgewise.
There was silence over both tables for a moment as they all processed what Scotty had said.
Nyota was staring at Kirk in shock. Did Scotty say what she really thought he said? It wasn't like her to doubt her own ears, she rarely made mistakes but...
Nyota didn't know what to think.
Then Scotty realized what he said, "I mean…" Scotty coughed and tried to correct himself.
Nyota was stunned. Scotty wouldn't leave her? He'd said her name even before the Enterprise. And Scotty loved the Enterprise like the ship was a family member. He loved the Enterprise! Why would her own name come before the Enterprise?
"He loves me more than the Enterprise?" Nyota whispered, eyes wide, looking at Kirk. Realization washed over her in a sudden rush.
Kirk looked like he was about to start to cheering. He smiled and nodded, adding in a hushed whisper, "He always has. Do me and the whole damn ship a favor? Ask him out. He won't ask you."
Nyota nodded quickly. She would. She had been given a chance, and she wasn't going to waste it!
"Nyota," Cooke said flatly. "...As in Lieutenant Commander Nyota Uhura ? The translator who is on this planet with us?" Cooke sounded almost upset, Nyota thought.
"She is more than just a translator," Scotty sighed. He seemed to have given up any and all attempts to lie. "But yes. She and the ship are the best parts of me."
"Nyota Uhura refused my offer to work here and help expand the understanding of Yen'bu's native language," Cooke started to sound less upset, and angrier.
Scotty nodded. "She said you gave her an offer once." He said this in a very annoyed tone, but Cooke continued to speak.
"And did she tell you she rejected it? I gave her an incredible opportunity to be the first to break down this language as part of my diplomatic corps, and she rejected it!" Cooke got louder as she spoke. "I found her on that ship! She should be grateful ! Not preventing her own growth and preventing the love of my life from coming back to me!" Cooke cried, frustrated. There was a light bang as she slapped her hands down on the table. "She's an idiot for not leaving that blasted ship!"
Nyota openly gaped at the partition, wishing they weren't blocked so that Cooke could see her face. If the look on her face matched the one that was on Kirk's, then it would be something impressive. She was stunned. The Ambassador thought Scotty was the love of her life? Based on what? A relationship over ten years ago, a few hours where Scotty had spent most of the time avoiding her, and a dinner that everyone but the Ambassador could tell was going poorly?
Cooke also apparently believed that Nyota would just jump at the chance to leave the Enterprise? What the hell was this woman thinking?! Did she really think that her offer was the only one Nyota had ever received? Nyota got at least ten offers a day for new jobs.
"They are more than just a job , Alysia," Scotty said his voice low, and Nyota felt the heat in her face because she knew that was a dangerous tone. The deep growling was a good sound on Scotty.
Kirk wasn't much better. He looked closer to furious. He was clenching his fists tightly
"That ship is the best part of me! Nyota is a better person then I'll ever be. I won't listen to you insult them like they mean nothing," Scotty said. "You don't understand what a ship and its crew mean to one another. You've never understood that. It's why we broke up in the first place!"
"Montgomery..." Cooke was clearly resorting to pleading now that her arguments had failed.
Scotty stood up suddenly, the scrape of his chair cutting off whatever was going to come next. "I'm going to the restroom. I'll be right back." And he stalked away, not in the direction of the restrooms at all. There was a door that was near their table that leads outside. Scotty went directly there. The door didn't shut entirely behind him.
He didn't see Kirk and Nyota as he walked past their table. But they could see him, his face red with anger and frustration.
Kirk shifted as if to stand. Nyota watched him get up, also about to get up to follow Scotty, when Cooke's voice came over the partition.
"Are you really going to try to calm him, Captain Kirk?" She asked sounding frustrated and upset.
Kirk stood, and Nyota followed.
"Yes. He's my crew , ambassador," Kirk replied, his tone possessive. He moved around the table and the partition to stand in front of her.
Cooke raised an eyebrow and took another sip of her drink. Nyota saw the pause where she wanted to slug the last of the martini back like a shot but forced herself not to. "And why would that matter?" she asked, just as dismissively as before. It was clear to Nyota and to Kirk that Alysia Cooke just didn't get it.
Kirk audibly ground his teeth, but he took a deep breath and tried to be as diplomatic as he could, "If you don't understand, then it's not my place to tell you."
Then Kirk turned and followed Scotty out of the restaurant.
Nyota stood there, glaring daggers at the Ambassador.
The Ambassador turned her attention to Nyota. "Miss Uhura, correct? The very person who turned down my offer of employment," Cooke sneered, "for the sake of that damned ship."
Nyota said nothing and continued to glare at her.
"It's amazing how many people have deluded themselves and don't see how useless forward deployed ships are!" Cooke laughed bitterly. She took another sip of her drink. It was almost gone.
It was the metaphorical last straw. Nyota snapped. "If that's what you feel then you will never understand Scotty."
"You're right. I don't understand. What's so great about that ship that people won't leave for greater opportunities?" She was angry, but Nyota knew she was nearly defeated.
"The ship is the greatest opportunity," Nyota let the planet's atmosphere guide her words. "We, as a crew, are more than just friends. The crew is our family. Our mission is important. We meet more people, learn more things, and create more alliances than you will create in your life." Her words were steady, without a hint of a cough in sight. The Ambassador glared at her over the rim of her glass.
Nyota was telling her the truth, so she brushed off the Ambassador's disdain with ease. "And this is something so basic to us that I don't fully understand how you don't get it."
Cooke was silent for a moment. Her shoulders were tight, and her body language was screaming how upset the conversation had made her. Nyota could see her words had a visible effect on the Ambassador.
She could also see when Cooke gave up fighting - with her defeated stance - and as she changed topics. She was a desperate woman who could no longer attack the original argument and was now attacking the other person.
Nyota didn't care about the act Cooke was about to put up. All she cared about was Scotty.
Cooke looked Nyota up and down, and laughed, a bitter thing that was hard to stand to take. "You know what? I'm glad that you turned me down," she mused. She put on such a false causal air that Nyota had to smirk internally. The act was nearly complete, but there was a hint of desperation that Nyota could read.
Alysia Cooke was shaken, badly.
For all of her confident words, Cooke hadn't expected Scotty to leave or to be so angry with her. She had honestly thought that Scotty would stay with her.
"Why," Nyota said. She didn't ask.
"For all your abilities, you missed that Montgomery Scott was in love with you. Some great communicator you are," Cooke said, going for cutting and Nyota found the Ambassador had missed the point entirely.
Because it didn't matter that Nyota had missed Scotty being in love with her, and apparently the fact he had been for some time. It didn't matter because Nyota knew she loved him back. She loved Montgomery Scott with all her heart, all the little pieces of him and all the large ones too.
She would tell him.
As soon as she was done with this pathetic excuse for a woman.
So Nyota smiled, something that infuriated Cooke by the frown that spread across her face, and said, "Just because I missed that doesn't mean I don't see it now. Scotty and the Enterprise are my home, and honestly, I don't care what you think anymore. Goodbye Ambassador Cooke."
With that, she turned on her heel and left.
She had to find Scotty.
Scotty hadn't meant to leave the restaurant. He really hadn't. He'd just had to get out of there.
He was just so frustrated by Alysia's inability to understand why the Enterprise or Nyota were so vital to him that he just had to leave.
He stood outside the restaurant in a hallway on a cliff that lead back to the Empress' palace. Scotty stared out onto the city below the palace. He was just so frustrated by everything. Alysia, the restaurant, this planet's weird truth-telling properties, his inability to tell Nyota how he felt. All of it.
"Scotty!" Kirk called from the doorway of the restaurant. He looked harried and angry.
"Captain?" Scotty asked, immediately worried that something happened to the Enterprise. Or Nyota.
Please God, let them be okay.
Scotty had a moment of panic before Jim caught up to him, face serious.
"Everything alright, Captain?" Scotty asked the moment that Jim was close.
At Jim's nod, Scotty felt the tension in his shoulders and stomach fade.
Then Scotty realized that if Jim was here and it wasn't about the ship…
"Why are you here Captain?" Scotty asked. He was suspicious, but he wanted confirmation.
Jim sighed and leaned on the safety bar of the walkway. " Uhura and I followed you and the Ambassador. We didn't trust her. Sorry, Scotty."
Scotty didn't bother being upset at Jim for following him. He was glad to have back up. More than one mission had ended badly for the member of the away team who was separated. He hadn't liked the dinner with Alysia and was glad for his Captain's presence.
If his Captain was at the restaurant, then he had heard Scotty defend the ship. Then he heard Scotty place Nyota in front of the ship in order of things he loves.
Damnit. It wasn't Scotty's intent to tell Jim that he may love Nyota more than the Enterprise. He had a feeling that Jim already knew that, but he hadn't meant to confirm it.
That meant the whole restaurant had heard his declaration.
"Nyota heard that?" Scotty asked quietly. Because Jim had said Uhura had been with him. And Nyota wasn't stupid.
She would understand.
She would understand what it meant for him to place her higher than the Enterprise. For her to be his most important person.
But what Scotty didn't know was if she would feel the same. They had been spending a lot of time together.
Scotty was hopeful. But not expectant.
"She did." Jim agreed. "If it helps, she seems happy about it?" He said as he met Scotty's eyes. Scotty felt that spark of hope deep down in the bottom of his heart. Jim wouldn't lie to him, even if they were on the ship right now. Maybe this wouldn't be as bad as he feared.
"It's still not how I wanted her to find out," Scotty sighed, leaning against the railing and looking out to the city below. The city sparkled. Scotty couldn't help but compare it to the view from the Enterprise's observation room and found the city lacking in beauty.
"The Enterprise would be very different without you on it," Kirk said, keeping his tone even.
Of course, Kirk had heard Alysia's offer of employment too. That had been awkward.
"Well, just like you said a long time ago. They'll have to ban my ass off of starships before I even think about leaving," Scotty told him earnestly, remembering the conversation they'd had on Yorktown, several years ago now.
Jim laughed. "Good to know Scotty. But let's be real with ourselves: we'll steal the Enterprise if they ever try to force us to leave."
Scotty smiled, knowing they might if it ever came down to it. Jim's eyes flicked over Scotty's shoulders, toward the back entrance of the restaurant. His face grew a little tense, and Scotty could see the hopeful emotions play out over Jim's face.
Nyota must be here.
"I'm glad to hear it too, Scotty," Nyota said from behind him. He could hear the smile in her voice. "Just tell me first so I can help. You can't be in space without me to guide you."
Jim pushed against the railing to stand up straight. "And that is my cue to leave, be safe you two!" He said, and he turned away from Scotty and Nyota, heading down a corridor that Scotty was sure would take them back to their assigned rooms for the night.
Scotty watched him go, watched him turn a corner and disappear. Scotty was hoping that things would be alright but he was reluctant to turn to face Nyota. He missed her, he always did when they weren't together, but he was scared.
He didn't want to lose her friendship if that was all she would be willing or able to give him.
"Did you mean it?" Nyota asked quietly.
Scotty took a deep breath and then turned around.
"Mean what exactly?" he asked. "That I love you?" He was pretty sure that would be the only thing that she would be asking about, but Scotty did not want to misunderstand.
Nyota nodded. "Yes. Did you mean it when you said you loved me?"
Scotty was glad she didn't bother to quantify the response with 'more than the Enterprise' but he nodded. "For years now, I've loved you." Scotty felt the planet's atmosphere pull around him, allowing him to speak the words he'd wanted to say for years.
He spread his hands out and smiled. He wasn't sure that if the look he wore was heartbreaking or not.
"I've loved for so long that I've forgotten how it feels like to not be in love. I've been so happy for you for so long that I didn't know how to help when things went wrong for you and Spock. I tried my best, but I don't know if that was enough," Scotty said, the words coming from somewhere within, not caring that he'd hidden the truth for such a long time. "I've loved you, and you brought out the best in me. All I ever wanted was you make you happy and proud. You are my friend first and foremost, but you are also my love."
"Oh Scotty," Nyota said, hands coming up to her mouth and covering it.
Scotty plowed on, not liking the disrespect to Nyota but knowing if he stopped he would never be able to do this again. "And I don't know what will happen in the future with our friendship, and I can only hope that if you aren't interested that you'll turn me down gently…" He trailed off.
"But I have to ask. At least once." Scotty reached his hands out and took Nyota's, gently clasping them and bringing one of them to his mouth to kiss. He heard Nyota gasp.
"Do you want to go to dinner with me?" he asked.
But at the same time, Nyota's voice echoed his question.
Scotty jerked his head up. Nyota's face was flushed, but she held his eyes. Scotty felt his face turn bright red.
"Sorry," Nyota said, "but I had to ask too. Please tell me you will!" She stepped closer and pulled Scotty's hands toward her.
Scotty went willingly. He would always go willingly with Nyota. He smiled at her. "I will. That was never in question. You have my heart, Nyota."
"That's relieving, but you've had mine for a while too, Scotty," Nyota said, and Scotty froze.
"What?" he forced out.
"I didn't realize it for so long, and when Spock and I were over, we both had to think a lot of things through, and it turns out that I had been falling in love with you for a while and never saw it," Nyota confessed quietly. "I just wasn't sure about how you felt."
"Oh, Nyota, I love you," Scotty told her. "May I?" Scotty asked, leaning forward slightly.
Nyota's answer was clear as she leaned in and kissed him.
Scotty was so damn happy.
He kissed her right back.
Jim smiled at the two people he cared deeply for that he was watching around the corner of the hallway. Then he turned and walked away from the new couple.
He was so happy for them.
So damned happy.
Scotty was getting his moment to start something with Uhura. Uhura was getting something that Spock would have never given her.
But in the corner of Jim's mind, he felt a bit of loneliness that he couldn't fight.
Jim picked up his comm and called Spock.
"Spock here," Spock's voice came over the comm's speakers, sounding tinny and distant.
Jim smiled at the news he was going to impart. "Scotty and Uhura have figured things out." He trusted Spock to know what that meant.
"I understand. Do you want me to prepare any paperwork for them?" Spock asked. He sounded satisfied. Uhura must have told him how she felt about Scotty.
But still. "Nah, not right now, Spock. If they want to fill out any paperwork, then that is up to them. They aren't in the same direct chain of command and Starfleet doesn't need to know about anything less than marriages or bondings." Jim shook his head. If Scotty and Uhura wanted to update their medical contacts and life insurance recipients, then that was up to them.
"I will keep them in mind next time reviews come up then, Jim," Spock said. And Jim had a moment to feel delighted that even on this truth-telling planet, Spock still called him, 'Jim.'
"You do that," Jim said. Then he paused. "I'm going to beam up to talk to Bones for a little bit. Can you hold it down here for a few hours?"
"Yes, I can. I will comm you if we are needed for anything," Spock said. Jim smiled down at his comm unit. Spock always understood, and he was still there for Jim.
Jim would take what he could get and enjoy everything.
"I will. Kirk out." Jim said before getting Spock's confirmation that he was off the line. Then he called up to the transporter room. "Kyle, one to beam up from this location!"
Once he was on the ship, he headed straight to med bay. It was late by ships time, deep into the artificial night that Jim had ordered to be strictly enforced. The hallways were dark, and the passageways were empty.
He knew that Bones would still be up. Bones was always up late doing paperwork when they were in orbit around a planet with an away team on the surface.
Jim entered the near-empty med bay with a quick look around. Only Chapel was there, but she was sleeping at her desk.
Jim shook her awake and pointed at the beds in the med bay. Chapel nodded and went off in that direction. Jim would have to look at getting her more time off if she was falling asleep in the middle of the med bay.
Bones' door was slightly ajar with a light shining out from underneath. Jim stepped into the office with a quiet whoosh of the door. Bones looked up from a stack of padds and jumped to his feet, already reaching for a tricorder that was on the desk.
"Everything's alright Bones. Just visiting," Jim tried to tell him, waving his hands.
Bones grunted, disbelieving. "Don't care, checking anyway." Jim stood still after that. It was easier to let Bones work when he was in a mode like this. The tricorder beeped at him, and Bones stepped back from Jim with a smile. Apparently, that beep was a good thing.
"Told you," Jim said with a grin as he sat in a chair across from Bones' desk.
Bones just grunted and went back to his desk chair. "Well after the shit day I've had, I've come to expect the worst."
"Oh, what's been happening on my ship?" Jim asked. He reached for an empty glass that was upturned on the desk and Bones took a bottle out of alcohol from somewhere that Jim did not know about for official reasons and poured him some.
"Well, I broke up a shouting match between Anderson and Warrington," Bones said, pouring himself a drink as well.
Jim raised an eyebrow, an expression he would never admit he had picked up from Spock, "Anderson? Kent Anderson? Scotty's disciplinary problem?"
"The very same," Bones agreed. He took a drink.
"What were they fighting about?" Jim asked.
"Damned if I know," Bones shook his head. "Not for sure anyway. Neither of them would talk about what started the fight, and by the time I got there with Pasha, the fight had dissolved into name-calling. It was like breaking up a pair of siblings fighting by the time I got to it."
"Huh," Jim said. Rarely did fights occur on the Enterprise anymore; the crew was too used to each other - and they were a too well-built team. But as everyone was a free-thinking individual, and they were on the ship for five years, Jim supposed that some tempers were going to flare.
"Jim-boy. Have you received a transfer package from Warrington? I think it had something to do with that," Bones asked. He was staring at his drink in contemplation.
Jim took a quick drink. As the liquid burned down his throat, Jim thought about his paperwork in the last few weeks.
He hadn't received anything from Warrington. If he remembered right, there was a planned overlap of the Enterprise and the Intrepid in a few weeks at a starbase. If she wanted to transfer, that paperwork would have to be in soon.
"I haven't," Jim said. "Think I'll see it soon?"
"Probably," Bones nodded. "Now what are you up here for? You would usually just call for a status update on the ship."
Jim lit up. "I've got good news," he announced, feeling the grin spread across his face.
Bones raised both of his eyebrows and tilted his head in a gesture to continue.
"Scotty asked Uhura out. And told her how he feels. And - she said yes," Jim said, the happy feeling he had for his friend spreading. "Actually, she asked him out at the same time!"
"Well, hot damn! That is good news!" Bones laughed. "A drink for Scotty and Uhura!" His smile was real and relieved. "It took a planet where you have to tell the truth for him to confess!"
They toasted to Scotty's good fortune that the girl of his dreams had discovered him. Their glasses clinked together before they both took a drink.
Bones was still smiling when he asked contemplatively, "Think we might be that lucky?"
"I don't know Bones. I don't know." Jim sighed, knowing that even if Spock never showed any interested in Jim, which Jim was beginning to question, Jim would always still be happy to be Spock's friend.
Once again, thank you to my beta B0knoanime!
I hope you all enjoy! (also final word count for this chapter is 12971. :D
Chapter 7: the parting glass
30 hours after exiting orbit of Yen'bu. Seven days until Starbase 180.
If Spock had ever seen Mr. Scott this angry before, then Spock did not care to recall it.
Jim sat next to him in the Captain's chair, looking like he thought the same.
Even over the view screen, from down in engineering, Mr. Scott was flushed a deep red. He had been speaking in Gaelic so quickly that Spock suspected even Nyota was having trouble understanding what was being said when the comms request came in. The way her eyebrows had shot up her forehead when she heard Mr. Scott speak made Spock think Mr. Scott was using rather colorful language.
Jim and Spock had exchanged looks before Jim accepted the request.
Nyota looked very concerned from where she sat at the communications station. When Spock looked to her, Nyota shook her head; she didn't know what had happened to make Mr. Scott so angry either.
"What's up Scotty?" Jim asked, leaning forward in the Captain's chair, looking up at the view screen.
Mr. Scott took a deep breath to calm himself. Spock and Jim exchanged another look. This time it was of concern. Mr. Scott was never this upset.
"Captain, permission to speak to you privately? I've got a situation here." Mr. Scott bit out, making an attempt to be calm. Spock was surprised. Very rarely did someone, especially a department head, ask for a session with the Captain privately when they called to the bridge. If it warranted a call to the bridge when it was important for the whole crew to know.
"Shit. Who is it?" Jim mummer under his breath. And Spock agreed with Jim's assessment of the situation. The last time a department head had asked for something like this, it was a major disciplinary issue.
As Captain, Jim had chosen the praise in public and punish in private method of dealing with his crew. Only those involved in an incident were around when Jim needed to dole out punishments for wrongdoings or fights or mistakes. The Department heads felt the same. And it had trickled down to the rest of the crew.
Spock was sure that Jim's leadership choices were a significant part of why the Enterprise was so well loved.
"Captain, you are expecting a comm call from Admiral Kormack any moment about our mission after Starbase 180. I can meet with Mr. Scott in the Captain's office." Spock said, knowing that Jim would rather punch himself in the face than miss a meeting with Kormack and have to deal with the fall out. Jim had said that exact phrase several times in the last few years when dealing with Kormack.
Spock didn't like Kormack either, so he didn't mind the rather violent response.
Spock didn't have an office. He used Jim's when one was needed, like now. He found that unless it was for a meeting, he simply hadn't needed an office. He performed his work on the bridge where the work was always stored in a padd or an internal database, in a lab where the work had to stay, or in his quarters.
Or increasingly, as of late, in Jim's quarters or office.
Jim nodded. "Yes, please do Mr. Spock. Scotty?" he said turning back to the main screen. "Can you get to my office? Or is this a right now type of thing?"
Mr. Scott's grimace was not a positive sign. "It's a sooner the better type of thing, but it's not life or death." The unsaid 'yet' was concerning to both Spock and Jim.
Spock nodded, "Then I will see you shortly, Mr. Scott." He waited for Mr. Scott to agree and sign off, leaving the screen to go back to the view of the exterior of the ship, before turning to Jim and asking, "By your leave Captain?"
Jim waved his hand in a dismissing gesture. "Please, Mr. Spock. I'll meet up with you later, and you can tell me what's got Scotty so worked up."
Spock reached out and placed a firm hand on Jim's shoulder. Jim turned his face up to meet Spock's eyes, and Jim put a hand on top of Spock's arm. His grip was light enough that only a few emotions filtered through from Jim, surprise, hope, happiness, concern, and especially frustration . The first three were the strongest and Spock hoped that they were meant for him. The other two were, undoubtedly for Mr. Scott's situation.
For a moment they lingered, but then Spock stepped away and toward the Turbolift.
He had been touching Jim a lot more recently. Spock found he couldn't help it. Not when he knew what he wanted from Jim.
Spock loved Jim.
But he had no real idea how to proceed from this point. Spock knew he wanted to be Jim's partner in all things.
He thought Jim might be receptive to any attempts Spock might make in starting a relationship.
Stepping into the turbolift, Spock forced his mind from Jim and instead forced himself to concentrate on Mr. Scott's problem.
Mr. Scott beat Spock to Jim's office.
He was pacing outside. Something Spock didn't see him often do. It looked like Mr. Scott was attempting to calm himself down. Whatever had upset Mr. Scott was causing waves of anger, distress, and annoyance to emanate from the man. Spock could feel the emotions from across the room, and it was unusual that Spock's telepathy was so affected by someone.
Although now that Spock put thought about it, Jim's presence had pushed through Spock's telepathy often.
Mr. Scott waited just long enough for Spock to enter the code to the door and step through before he was speaking. "We've got a problem."
"So, I was given to understand, Mr. Scott," Spock said with a wry, with a barely there smile, as he went to the desk and turned on the heating pot on the desk. "What is the emergency?"
"It's not one yet. But it might be if we don't get a fix on it soon," Mr. Scott said as he started to pace. "I'm sure you remember Crewman Anderson Kent?"
"I do," Spock told him. Spock did remember Crewman Anderson Kent, a recent member to the crew. He had come highly recommended from the Enterprise's sister ship, the Constitution. If Spock remembered correctly, Captain Wise, the commanding officer of the USS Constitution, had even put Kent up for promotion to Petty Officer, one step above crewman.
Until recently, Kent had been an excellent crewman and a valued member of Mr. Scott's team. But Spock had seen a disciplinary report from just a few days before the last shore leave. He had seen several more in the previous few weeks.
Something had changed with crewman Kent. But what had changed was something that Spock did not currently know.
"Mr. Spock, Kent is really out of line. He messed up, and he messed up big," Mr. Scott started. "The HECS, Mr. Spock. He has been neglecting his assigned duties to it, and now it's caused a problem."
"What's wrong with the HECS, Mr. Scott?" Spock asked, raising an eyebrow. He could be reasonably sure that the aforementioned problem was what had 'worked Mr. Scott up' as Jim had put it.
"The hydro-electronic coolant monitoring system controls and maintenance is in engineering. It's been due for some repairs. So I assigned Kent to get them done." Scotty sighed and sank into the chair that was in front of the desk. "It's his station. He's always been in charge of it. He's been reliable before. But he's disappeared." Scotty looked ready to tear his hair out. "For some reason, as of late he's been… off , is the best way I can describe it. Something's going on, but no one knows what it is."
Spock nodded. "I have seen the disciplinary reports for him recently."
Spock reached for the pot of tea that was now warm on his desk. He had set up the tea for after the pre-planned meeting with Starfleet about their next mission after Starbase 180. As much as Jim and he had wanted to know why the ship had been ordered there in the first place, meetings with Kormack were never, as Jim said, fun .
The tea had a calming influence in humans, and Spock had prepared the tea to offer Jim after the meeting. He was always tense after meeting with the admiral. Even if Spock wasn't starting to court Jim, he would still have the tea ready.
However, he could see that Mr. Scott needed the calming effect the tea would provide. Spock poured a cup from the warm teapot for Mr. Scott and handed it to him.
"Well, the HECS isn't hard to keep on top of the repairs. It's got a rather easy maintenance plan. But with Kent's distraction and issues, he hasn't been on top of the preventive maintenance, nor has he been correcting anything that's been broken." Mr. Scott said as he took the cup of tea from Spock and took a sip. Once he tasted the drink and tested the temperature, he slugged the whole thing back like he was taking a shot of alcohol. "There's a chance he's been writing false reports of his work. But I don't know for sure, yet."
Spock was impressed, that had been a full cup.
He leaned back in his chair and thought about what Mr. Scott was telling him and what he wasn't saying yet. "How far behind is the maintenance?" he asked.
"About two months, more or less. That's how long it's been since we were on the last shore leave, right?" Mr. Scott said, screwing up his face in concentration. Spock nodded again, despite the fact he was sure that Mr. Scott did not care if he agreed or not. "The last maintenance job logged for the HECS was about two days before the last shore leave."
He set the now empty cup on the table and gestured for Spock to pour him another cup.
Spock did so.
Mr. Scott did not slam this one back, Spock was relieved to see. Jim would still need the rest of the tea after his meeting with Kormack.
"I am assuming that you discovered this neglect today?" Spock asked.
Mr. Scott hummed in agreement, taking a deep drink of the tea. "I did. I was reviewing things. and I saw that there are several jobs still listed as open for the HECS."
"I see," Spock said, pouring himself a much less filled cup of tea. While it would not provide the same sense of calm for him as it did most humans, the drink was still pleasant.
Mr. Scott continued to talk. "It's just that the HECS is really behind now on repairs. We were on a string with it anyway. It needs major repair when we're at the starbase. I've already known that, but now it has a higher probability that it could fail before we reach it."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "How long will it take you to complete all the repairs and the maintenance actions?"
"At least a week," Mr. Scott sighed, "and that's if everything goes right and I have help. Some of the preventive maintenance jobs have time limits that we can't shorten. And that's if I have Chekov's help. He's the one who trained Kent originally. Him, and LT Riley."
Spock considered this. He would convince Jim that Mr. Chekov might be needed in Engineering to help. A week would keep the HECS running until the significant repairs could be done while the ship was docked at Starbase 180. Jim would be understanding. Dr. McCoy might not. But such things could not be helped.
"And where is Petty Officer Kent?" Spock asked.
Spock was sure that Jim would like to speak to the crewman as soon as he could. This might make for one of the few times Jim might publicly yell at a crewman, but Spock doubted he would do that. Spock was going to recommend restriction to quarters as punishment for dereliction of duty.
"That's the damnedest thing! I dinnae know ! He's not in his rack. He's not at work. I dinnae ken where he is! " Mr. Scott's accent became thicker as he got more frustrated. "I have several crew members looking for him."
Spock understood his frustration. Kent was not only neglecting his duties, but he also had abandoned his post. "I will place him on restriction when he is found. And Mr. Scott, he will be found. We are at warp. He hasn't left."
"...aye," Mr. Scott agreed, "He's probably in some Jeffries tube."
Spock watched as Mr. Scott finished the cup of tea and placed the empty cup on the desk.
"Mr. Scott. Have him report to the bridge when he is found. I am sure the Captain will have some words to say to Mr. Anderson Kent," Spock said as he stood up and gestured to the door.
Mr. Scott stood and followed him.
Once outside of Jim's office, Mr. Scott's comm went off. "Scott here," he said into the device.
"This is Riley. Sir, the reports are complete for the HECS. You might want to look them over before I get started." Mr. Riley, a young engineer that Jim had been very excited to have join the crew when they left Yorktown, spoke in a crackled voice over the speaker of Scotty's comm.
Spock and Mr. Scott exchanged a look. "Aye," Scotty sighed. "I will. Let me get down there." His face grew determined, "Scott out," He clicked the communicator shut and turned to Spock. "I'll send Kent up when he's found."
"I will inform the Captain to expect him. I will also see if I can allow Mr. Chekov to be released to your assignment for the next week," Spock told him.
Mr. Scott looked relieved. "Thank you, Mr. Spock." Then he turned down the hall and disappeared into the turbo lift that would take him to Engineering.
Spock turned in the opposite direction and headed back to the bridge.
Jim was worrying his lip with his teeth when Spock stepped back onto the bridge. His expression was distant and distracted.
And for a heartbeat, that was all Spock could see. He wanted to replace Jim's teeth with his own and just kiss the Captain until he was breathless and wanting. He wanted to kiss Jim until Jim was no longer concerned about anything. Until Jim looked up at Spock with love in his eyes and Spock's marks were all over him.
And just as quickly as the thought had arrived, Spock slammed his mental controls down flat. This was not the time or place to be feeling this way! Spock tucked the memory and the feeling that accompanied it into the recesses of his mind. He would address the feelings later.
In his own quarters.
While wishing he wasn't so alone.
Jim glanced up at Spock and smiled, bright and shining at his First Officer. "Mr. Spock! Can you come here? I've got the orders for the next mission."
Spock went because he was helpless to do anything but follow Jim.
He was also well aware that every one staffing the bridge had glanced at him at least once before returning back to their work. They wanted to know what had happened with Mr. Scott and why it had deserved a call to bridge. Spock had long accepted the startling habit of gossip on a ship and her crew can develop.
Jim handed him a padd with the orders for the next mission displayed on it. Spock didn't bother to do more than glance at the padd. Jim would tell him the basics. "What did Scotty need?" Jim asked first.
"We have a crewman neglecting his work, and has put the repairs for the HECS behind by two months." Spock pitched his voice low as to keep any of the crew from listening in. Jim would be unhappy if rumors spread before he had a chance to investigate.
Jim scowled. "Shit, the hydroelectric coolant system needs replacing, doesn't it? Will Scotty need anything?"
"Yes, to both," Spock clarified. "Mr. Scott has requested Mr. Chekov join himself and Mr. Riley to complete the repairs. Even with assistance, Mr. Scott still believes they will need at least one week."
Jim nodded, eyebrows pulled together in focus. He turned to his Bridge crew. "Understood. Mr. Chekov! Please call up your replacement and then report to Mr. Scott. He'll tell you more about what's going on."
Spock and Jim watched as Mr. Chekov did as he was ordered. Once Mr. Chekov had called his alternate navigator, Jim turned back to Spock.
"And what of the crewman?" there was equal parts worry and anger in Jim's voice. Jim's concern was always for the welfare of his crew and ship, and he would always be angry at those who jeopardized either of them.
"The crewman is missing," Spock began, "but is being searched for and will report here when found. Beyond dereliction of duty and abandonment of his post, he has also been involved in several other disciplinary issues over the last several months." Spock looked at Jim who was watching him with the expression he wore when he was in, what Mr. Scott liked to refer to as, 'Captain Mode'. "I would recommend restriction."
Jim nodded again and under his breath, he asked, "Is it Anderson Kent? Scotty's been having problems with him."
Spock nodded firmly and replied as quietly, "Yes. Apparently, he has been distracted at work."
Jim sighed, and his expression turned stern. "He won't be after this."
Then Jim took a deep breath and gestured to the padd in Spock's hand.
"By the way, we're playing taxi," Jim started with a tone that belayed the usual frustration Jim had for transporting "essential" people from one place to another for whatever reason.
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Whom are we transporting, and where is their destination?" he asked. It was surprising. Jim usually was very upfront about such things.
"Vulcans," Jim replied calmly. He paused when he caught sight of Spock's eyebrows raising in surprise. There was a spark of humor in Jim's eyes when he continued. "We're taking them to New Vulcan. These Vulcans were apparently part of an extended diplomatic mission for the past several years, and since it's now done…"
"… they wanted to return home." Spock finished. The warm feeling of thoughts of surviving Vulcans was pushed aside in favor of working on the logistics of their next mission. He would have time to rejoice in the salvation of more of his people on his personal time.
"Understandable. How many are in the delegation?" he asked, already calculating the logistics of taking a diplomatic team on board. Quarters would have to be set up, and new recipes would have to put into the replicators. Hours in the Officer's Rec Room would have to be adjusted. The dining hall would have to implement extended hours as well.
He may have to put the long-awaited project he was going to work on with Jim on hold for another week. Jim would be just as busy with the visitors as Spock.
"Kormack said about fifty," Jim frowned. His shoulders were tense, and his frown was more profound than it should have been given the circumstances.
Spock felt the need to reach out and brush his fingers along Jim's hand and decided he wouldn't stop himself. He gave Jim a light kiss with the barest brush of his fingers against Jim's. Jim glanced at their touching hands with wide eyes, but he did not move his hands away.
"A large party, but I believe we can accommodate them with no major troubles," Spock said, ignoring the way he could feel Jim's emotions so much more clearly than before.
Jim was happy, and his happiness held a hint of surprise. He was suppressing some emotion that Spock couldn't identify, but humans did that enough around Spock that he didn't worry about Jim's emotional suppression too much.
"If I may be excused to start preparations for the delegation?" Spock asked. He would have to talk to the quartermaster.
"You may, Mr. Spock," Jim answered with a soft and happy tone that Spock wanted to hear from Jim more often.
Spock always wanted to make Jim happy.
Three days into repairs of the hydroelectric coolant system. Four days from Starbase 180.
In all honesty, Nyota thought they would have a little longer than a week before their joint responsibilities on the Enterprise would pull them apart for most of the day.
She was realistic enough to know that the Enterprise, as long as she and Scotty served aboard her, would take precedence.
Nyota had merely hoped for longer than a week.
But with the orders to go to Starbase 180 so they can pick up a Vulcan delegation, Nyota's workload doubled. Scotty was worse off because of the issues of the HECS.
While Nyota had spent much of the last few days in the long-distance sensor lab, listening for any signs that anyone had a clue that they were picking up Vulcans. The Admiralty had stressed that this mission was a secret, and the Enterprise would have to be prepared for anything. While the surrounding sector was quiet, the path from the starbase to New Vulcan was having some pirate activities.
Scotty, on the other hand, had spent most the last three days down in engineering trying to fix the hydro-electric coolant system which, according to Scotty and his previous rant, was about to fall apart.
Scotty had spent the better part of their free hour making it clear that without the hydroelectric coolant system, the ship would be in grave danger. Without the system, the impulse engines and several machines would overheat and start to create malfunctions in the system. He was also afraid that if the HECS failed, then the offloaded transfer heat wouldn't go to the places that needed it, like life support.
Scotty was apologetic about having to miss their first full week together, but Nyota had waved him off because she was similarly engaged in the long-range sensor lab.
There would be weeks where things on the ship would be busy, and their jobs would take up much of their time. Nyota understood that and wasn't concerned. As long as she and Scotty could at least spend a little time together, then she would be good.
Nyota found that sharing a bed was helpful.
They actually got to see each other for a little bit in the mornings and in the nights. She couldn't wait to see Scotty at meal times, and when the ship was no longer in danger of breaking more, they were planning several dates.
But Nyota wouldn't change a thing.
If it weren't both of them being so busy, then it would be Scotty - who could and had forgotten what shift it was and worked for three days straight - or it would be her. Nyota had been known to get into a translators zone and not stop working until she finished her current project. Scotty would be the one to remind her to eat when she was learning a new language. Or he would have to help her off the bridge after the Romulans or the Klingons were sending messages to each other again.
They hadn't had much time to work their joint project either. Nyota felt like they were lucky that their planned upgrades weren't vital, just an extra project to help messages move about the ship more efficiently.
As it was, all Nyota could do during the workday was make sure her lover ate every once in a while.
And that was her reason for making her way down to engineering once she was relieved from the bridge at the end of the Alpha shift. Nyota hasn't eaten since that morning. She was sure that Scotty hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning either. And that was a problem.
They needed to eat, and it needed to be soon.
"Oh! Lieutenant Uhura!" A voice said from above her when she stepped into engineering. Nyota looked up and saw Ensign Kevin Riley sitting on a crossbar above the entrance. He was covered in grease and was grinning down at her. He waved with a hand that was still holding a socket wrench.
Nyota waved back. "Afternoon, Riley."
"What brings you down here, ma'am?" He asked not moving from his spot. Nyota knew that to get down from that position he would have to backtrack through engineering for about ten minutes.
"Looking for Mr. Scott," she said looking up at him. "Know where he is?"
Riley grinned and nodded, and the smile reminded her of Kirk's when she had met him so many years ago. But on Riley, it didn't piss her off at first glance. Maybe she had gotten used to the look. Perhaps she had grown up and realized she didn't care.
Either way, Riley always reminded her of Kirk.
"Scotty's back with Chekov near the main control console," Riley said, pointing toward the main control center of engineering with the wrench. "But be careful ma'am. There's a lot of power issues right now because of the HECS. Lots of exposed sections that have exposed wires, and some places where power is secured." He said, twisting to show the powered down wires he was working on.
Nyota could see the red 'DANGER!' tags on the circuits just behind him. She glanced around and saw that the area she was standing in was covered in the red tag-outs and danger signs.
"I'll be careful. Thank you," Nyota said as she turned to the central part of engineering.
She picked her way around the danger tags and the exposed paneling. She hadn't spent much time down in engineering when repairs were ever underway. It was odd to see the ship taken apart this much while they were at warp.
She had known that Kirk always hated to have his ship look like this when they were not docked safely. He was always worried when the Enterprise was damaged and needed her guts to be spilled open while they were underway.
Nyota shared his feelings. But she knew Scotty would do his best to prevent further damage to the ship.
Scotty was in the middle of talking to Chekov when she found him.
Chekov was waving his arms while he spoke rapidly to Scotty, eyes wide and frustrated. "I can't have the power come back on here. We've got exposed wires and intermittent ground. It'll cause a huge spark!" His hair was frazzled more than usual. He had smudges on his face from dust and grease. his hands were near black with oil and dirt. There was a streak of what Nyota assumed was grease in his hair, something Nytoa also assumed came from Chekov running his hand through his hair as he was prone to do.
Scotty nodded along. "You're right, of course. But we need that to keep the generator for the first main circuit online. Nyota will be mighty unhappy if we take her comms offline without permission." Scotty's physical condition wasn't much better upon closer inspection. He was just as messy. His uniform was stained in several places and his hands were near black with the layers of grease on them.
Both of them smelled strongly of hydraulic fluid.
"I will be, but I have runners trained for this sort of thing," Nyota interrupted. Scotty and Chekov jumped at the sound of her voice, startled.
Nyota knew the main circuit they were referring to was the Intra-ship Communication System that broadcasted out to the whole ship. There were different lines for different areas of the ship. The first line was just the general broadcast line. It had been nicknamed 1MC by the crew. It wouldn't be disastrous if it went down, her department ran drills just in case it happened all the time, but Nyota knew it would be annoying to have to send runners to the whole of the ship to get anything done.
This was part of the problem she and Scotty had been trying to fix before the HECS's problems started.
Scotty quickly turned and faced her. "Nyota! What are you doing down here?" His voice betrayed his surprise at seeing her off the Bridge.
"Making sure you eat!" she replied with a smile. "I was hoping that you would come to dinner with me?"
Scotty's face broke out into an excited grin. "Of course! In a minute though, we're almost done with this section."
Chekov nodded behind him. He was in a red shirt, something he had once explained hid more stains then his gold shirt would. Nyota often wondered why Engineering didn't have more practical work uniforms, like dark coveralls. "You won't mind having the 1MC off for several hours?" he asked. "Or possibly several of the Intra-ship Circuits, honestly. Not just the 1MC."
"Which ones?" Nyota asked. "Because, as I said, we have a system of runners already set up in case the ship's internal communications go down."
Chekov thought about it. "Most of them honestly. But I think the ones from the Bridge to Medical can be left on. Maybe the Auxiliary control ones too. "
"But not the 2MC or any of the other engineering ones," Nyota assumed, referring to the other circuit lines that ran from specific points of the ship. It was how she could call just for the engineering team and not have to broadcast the call out to the whole ship.
Scotty nodded. Chekov grimaced, but also nodded.
Nyota did some quick calculations, and schedule reorganizing and then shook her head. "Then no, it shouldn't be a problem. It's the internship system that can't be disconnected, not the one main circuit. We need comm connections with other ships and starbases while we're at warp. I can't have that system go down. But a few hours making my crewman run around won't be a hardship." She knew it wouldn't be a popular choice, but when the work needed to get done, then it needed to get done.
Scotty looked relieved. "Good! That will make this easier!"
"What's going on though? Why do you need to shut down the comm systems?" Nyota asked. She ran through everything that she knew of the Intra-ship Communication lines in engineering and what she knew of the Hydroelectric Coolant System. If she was right, then very little of the systems matched up. "I thought it was HECS that was broken."
"It was." Chekov sighed, running a hand through his already messy curls. "But because of the neglect of from the crewman, we're finding all sorts of things that are wrong. Things that would have been seen if the maintenance and the inspections had been done."
"The HECS has a lot of weakened hoses, and there is a good chance that it'll start leaking onto a grid that the circuits boards run out of. Soon but not now," Scotty continued. Nyota nodded, finally understanding why this project of fixing the HECS was so essential and time-consuming.
When Nyota had arrived on the Enterprise back when they were still cadets, she had been assigned to work on these exact boards, helping to control the flow of traffic and information around the ship. Her rapid promotion (not as fast as Kirk's but still extraordinarily swift) didn't allow her much time to learn the system organically, but she was the Head Communications Officer. She understood the importance of the system.
"It doesn't help that the HECS system was due for an upgrade at the starbase. Most of the maintenance for the last several weeks would just be babying it to get to the starbase."
"Well, shit," Nyota said. Both Scotty and Chekov nodded in agreement. "Can you still take dinner? Or is this a 'we'll fix it and then eat' type of thing?"
Scotty looked at the schematics that were spread out on a table near them, then nodded. "The hoses will hold. I'll have to get the permission of the Captain to turn off the Intra-ship 1MC anyway. We can talk to him together? It will go faster if he knows I've got your permission first."
Nyota nodded. "We can."
"I can finish this here, Scotty," Chekov said, reaching for the toolbox at their feet. "Then I'll start working on the other things with Riley. He's still stuck on the problems with the power converts for the HECS."
Scotty made an agreeing noise. "Please do. I'll send you two to dinner when I'm back." He reached for a clean cloth on the table that still held the schematics of the HECS and the main circuits.
Chekov laughed. "Scotty, go have dinner with your girlfriend. We'll be fine."
Nyota couldn't help but smile at the moniker. She liked being called Scotty's girlfriend. Scotty flushed a slight red, but he smiled at her.
"If you insist, laddie but…" Scotty started, but Nyota placed a hand on his arm. Scotty immediately broke off what he was going to say and flushed again.
"You two are so cute!" Chekov crowed, before pushing lightly at Scotty's chest, pushing him toward the door. "Now go!"
Nyota heard a hint of wistfulness that Chekov had almost hidden, but it was still there. She wondered if Pavel was even aware that he was obvious. He'd better make a move soon on Bones. The pining was hard to watch.
Scotty laughed and took Nyota's hand in his and lead her out of the engineering spaces.
Kevin Reilly waved at them when they left.
"Can we go to my quarters first?" Scotty asked as they stepped into the turbolift. He almost sounded causal. "I've got stuff to clean my hands better there."
Nyota raised an eyebrow and raised their joined hands, calling his bluff. "Uh-huh," she said with as much sarcasm she could muster. "And what are you actually showing me?"
Scotty just grinned back. "You'll just have to see!"
When they got to Scotty's quarters, they passed by Kirk and Spock going in the other direction talking amiably, but quietly about something that Nyota couldn't hear.
Spock's eyes found hers for only a moment and she was surprised by what she saw.
Spock didn't smile, but Nyota knew what a truly contented Spock looked like. He nodded at her as they passed. Nyota nodded back.
It stuck Nyota that they were happier now. Both of them were far happier now they weren't forcing themselves into a relationship that had long run its course. They were still friends and they were still important to each other, but this was better.
Then Nyota turned away from Spock and Kirk and turned her attention back to Scotty. He input his door code, and it slid open.
Scotty did go to the bathroom to use a special hand soap to clean his hands, while Nyota sat down on his bed.
It was still a mess from when they had gotten up that morning, neither of them all that bothered to make it, in their rush to get to their duty stations.
They'd had a late start to the morning.
"I have something for you." Scotty said, coming back into the room. He was holding a padd. Not his work padd but his personal one that he's tinkered with a dozen different ways.
Nyota smiled and asked in Gaelic, "Do you? Well then thank you. "
Scotty replied in Gaelic with a small smile, " I hope you like it ." He handed her the padd.
They had been speaking Gaelic to each other for years, but since they had started dating, the language had taken on a new meaning. It was more than just finding common ground with a friend; now it was something they shared as partners.
Nyota loved it.
It helped that Scotty's voice deepened when he spoke his native language. When he spoke Gaelic to her, Scotty's speech slowed and he often became more precise with his words. Nyota had long realized that even Scotty, who was fluent in Standard, English, and Gaelic, found it easier to communicate in his mother language.Nyota would always appreciate the way Scotty seemed to settle into his own skin, at home with his first language more than he seemed to be when speaking English.
She took the padd and opened it up and her eyes widened.
Nyota pressed play on the audio file that had a title she didn't expect. 'Saito - 2246'
"The thing key to speaking new languages based on only hearing parts of the language on subspace transmitter or short-range comms is that often you don't get the grammar or the nuance that comes with having a full recording. Often times when I was out there in the black. I was using languages that we had no frame of reference for! I felt a little like an explorer in the 15th century, striking out to find new languages and lands!"
Nyota nearly dropped the padd. It was Hiroshi Saito's voice. Nyota had listened to every public recording of Saito for years.
She had never heard this one before. And it was a lecture on how to learn languages with a minimal frame of reference.
She looked up at Scotty who was smiling with a gentle look on his face.
"How did you find this Scotty? I thought I'd heard or seen everything from her." Nyota asked. She had been obsessed in her teen and cadet years trying to find everything from her hero, Hiroshi Saito. She still had a padd chock full of information and recordings of the highly decorated Starfleet communications officer.
Saito had been an inspiration to Nyota.
And a goal. She would be better than Saito if Nyota had anything to do with it.
"I asked around and found a recording that wasn't well known. I don't know if you've heard it before, but I thought maybe…" He said, sitting down next to her. "Kirk had something from when he was a kid. Probably a bonus about being the kid from the Kelvin, and who his mom is."
Nyota stared at Scotty in slight disbelief.
"Yeah, I know! But when I mentioned that I was looking for a recording for you, he practically broke his padd trying to send this to me."
Nyota took a moment to be grateful that Jim Kirk was really well connected, apparently. Then she realized that Scotty had not only been asking over subspace for her, but he had been asking coworkers.
Nyota hugged him. "Thank you so much, Scotty."
"I'm glad you liked it," Scotty told her pulling back before kissing her sweetly.
Nyota loved it when Scotty kissed her. She could feel all the love that he was still slightly too embarrassed to say out loud.
"I can't believe you got this." She said when they broke apart. They were still speaking Gaelic to each other.
Scotty kept a hold on her and pressed play again, knowing without words that she wanted to hear more.
"I had to guess words and then make-up of them from what I knew of the surrounding language. Kind of like when we reconstruct ancient human languages. But with weirder tonal acrobatics." Hiroshi Saito's voice said from the padd, she was laughing. In the background, there were children's voices coming closer to the microphone. Nyota would guess this recording was taken later in her life based on the sound of her voice. "Sometimes human voice boxes and throats and mouths just aren't made to speak a language."
Nyota smiled and leaned against Scotty, happy to listen to Saito talk about what she was best known for understanding new languages.
Scotty tightened his arms around her.
They would get dinner later, but for now, they had each other.
Meanwhile – several frames down, in the Captain's quarters .
"I'm telling you, Spock, I don't know what to do with this kid. He was excellent until about two months ago!" Jim said, frustrated beyond belief and ready to pull his hair out.
On the computer screen on his desk sat the profile of one Petty Officer crewman Anderson Kent. Assigned to Engineering after being picked up by the USS Constitution. Captain Wise had highly recommended him, even recommending him for promotion upon arrival to the Enterprise.
Jim remembered that Scotty was especially pleased to have gotten him. Scotty had been over the moon to pick up another qualified crewman.
"But in the last two months, Crewman Kent has developed a new attitude, has ignored his duty, and has caused the ship to be on heightened alert," Spock stated. He was sitting across from Jim in the chair that sat in front of the desk. "His lack of attention to his duties has caused the ship multiple problems."
Jim sighed and slid back into his chair. He knew. "The thing is, I can't put the ship into a slower warp. If we're late to Starbase 180 then not only will we be dealing with Starfleet and the delay caused by the repairs to the HECS but also a bunch of royally pissed off Vulcans."
Jim hated to do this to his ship, to push her in this way but Scotty had been clear that all the work he was doing right now was solely to keep the HECS running for the next few weeks. Scotty was very adamant that he wasn't going to even attempt a full repair because he didn't have the necessary replacement parts or equipment to replace the whole console and several major components.
Jim knew that. But he didn't like it.
Especially since Scotty was discovering more and more issues every day. Things that would keep them at Starbase 180 for several days longer than the anticipated twenty hours ordinarily given to them by Starfleet.
"I do not believe the Vulcan delegation will be 'pissed off' as you say," Spock said mildly. "They would understand the need to fix the ship." He reached out and picked up the padd, examining the file on Kent.
"As for Crewman Kent, I think a reduction in rank and restriction will be appropriate. You, as Captain, do have the right to initiate a transfer off the Enterprise, if you still think he's a danger to the ship," Spock told him after a moment of reading through the disciplinary files.
Jim reached for the glass of water that was on the desk. At the start of his Captaincy, Jim had found that drinking anything stronger during discussions like this was never a good idea.
But damn . This kid was making him want a drink.
"I'll talk to the kid in a day or two when he comes off of Scotty's restriction. See what's going on with him. I'll decide by then what I'm going to do. See the scope of what's going on with him and the HECS. But I'll take your advice into consideration," Jim said with a second sigh. He finished the glass of water and placed it back on the table.
Spock reached for it and placed it back into the replicator and requested another glass of water.
Jim had noticed this type of behavior before. In the last few weeks, Spock had been placing himself in front of Jim more. Not only was Spock touching Jim more, but he was also making sure that Jim ate, making sure that his workload was appropriately managed.
And Jim's favorite, making sure Jim could defend himself in a fight. Spock had started to spar with Jim a lot more.
Jim wasn't complaining. He loved it. He had noticed the touches had started just before their stop at Yen'bu.
Jim wasn't going to put a stop to it. He encouraged Spock's touches the best that he could. He reached for Spock a lot more, and when Spock touched him, Jim leaned into it.
Jim had thought about bringing their new dynamics up in conversation and seeing what happened, but every time he thought about saying something, he found that he just couldn't. Jim knew he was too afraid that things would change and Spock would stop even trying.
So, Jim stayed silent.
But he loved it. Every single second.
Jim took the glass with a quiet noise of appreciation.
Spock sat back into his chair and entered Jim's decision into the padd. "I'll inform Crewmember Kent that you are waiting on the full diagnostic of the HECS and its related systems for proper informed punishment."
Jim groaned. "Ugh. All this, and then we have a diplomatic team on board bound for new Vulcan."
"The quarters and communal spaces are already prepared, Captain," Spock said. "I am sure you nor they will suffer greatly by their presence on board," Spock said with a slight raise of his eyebrows that Jim knew meant he was amused by Jim's antics.
Jim grinned back. "I would hope not, but that really depends on who's leading the whole thing."
Spock tapped a few things on the padd before handing it over for Jim to review.
"I believe the leader will be Renank, a Vulcan diplomat on the high council. If I remember my father's letters correctly, he is a fair and logical Vulcan." Spock said.
Jim looked over the file.
From what he could see, the Vulcans were a delegation searching for Vulcan texts and relics that had been off-world, mostly in the possession of traders. The delegation had split into different sub-groups, and now had reconvened to travel back to New Vulcan.
Renank was a fair leader, as far as Jim could tell. But mostly the report was just a manifest of all the Vulcan products and artifacts they had picked up from other areas of the universe.
"I'm glad that New Vulcan is looking for things from it's history," Jim said, smiling up at Spock.
Spock nodded. "I believe the consul was determined to keep the knowledge of Vulcan from being lost. The delegation's leader, Renank, was one of the Vulcans who asked for my assistance in sorting through the artifacts and writings from Earth."
Spock hadn't had time to explain what the project they were going to be working on was, nor how the Vulcan High Council had given it to him. Jim was torn on being impressed by this Renank, who had evidently chosen the right person for the job.
Spock cared about his people and would do nearly anything to help them. For the most part, he was content to contribute as a leader and example to the Vulcans in Starfleet. Many Vulcans joined after the loss of their planet. But Jim was sure that Spock was happy to help in more tangible ways.
Jim raised an eyebrow. "Really? Did he chose you because of your father's job as Ambassador?" Jim hoped it was because of Spock's father's job. If it was because of Spock's human blood and the Vulcans were just being xenophobic again, Jim might have to punch someone.
Spock raised an eyebrow back, Jim could read what that meant. "Partly, according the message. Also, partly because as a long-term member of Starfleet, I have spent much time with humans and am better suited for helping the team identify what are authentic writings about Vulcan, it's culture and its history, both of human or Vulcan origin, and what is not academic or useful."
"You haven't told me much about this project," Jim hummed. He saw Spock flinch slightly and waved Spock's concern away. "Its fine! I'm just surprised. Pleased, but surprised." Jim grinned at him.
Spock raised an eyebrow, and Jim took that as a sign to continue. "It's going be cool to read some of the anthropic writings humans have about Vulcans," he said. He was looking forward to it.
He wasn't sure if it was because he was in love with Spock, but reading the writings of early anthropologists who were being sent to Vulcan for the first time had to be a, dare he say it, fascinating experience. He was looking forward to the whole project.
Spock stared at him for a long moment, like he was evaluating Jim.
Then he took a deep breath."I apologize for the delay in the project," he said, sounding truly apologetic. "As we had previously intended to start a few weeks ago."
Jim smiled, waving off Spock's concern. "Things like this happen. But hey, we can get started on it, soon right?" He knew he sounded eager, but this was Spock, and Jim loved to spend more time with Spock, and the subject was fascinating, all jokes aside.
He was also eager to help Spock and his people.
He really just wanted to see Spock happy, in his own way.
"Yes," Spock said, "I am due to revise a data pack of writings in the next few hours. If you wish I can send a copy for you?"
"And we can work on it together?" Jim asked, because this was something that he needed confirmation on.
Jim grinned when Spock nodded.
"I would love to help, Spock. Just send the data to me when you receive it." Jim said.
"I will-," Spock began, but was cut off as the ship rocked violently from the sound of an explosion that rattled Jim's teeth..
Meanwhile – in engineering
Pavel hummed to himself as he tightened the last bolt on the display unit he had been testing. He was relieved to see that there was only one more item on the list to check and repair for today.
All that was left was the HECS's heat transfer section. It was a part of the system they couldn't get access to without having done the work around it first.
Now that he had secured the last bit of the HECS console, and Riley had taken apart and chased the right wires down to repair them, they could tackle the heat exchange and transfer unit.
Pavel knew this part was supposed to transfer the excess heat that the hydroelectric coolant picked up from the ship systems to systems that would use it such as life support and general heating.
As the ship wasn't currently roasting or freezing to extremes, Pavel wasn't worried that the system integrity had been compromised. But they were still required to check it.
As he was moving away from his last check post, Riley ran up to him, holding his own toolbox and carefully avoiding the tag outs and the equipment on the floor. "Almost done?" he asked as he made his way past a few of the crew, the group of women giggling as they packed up from a job.
"Almost," Pavel replied with a smile. "Just need to check the heat transfer unit." Pavel wanted to get this done so he could see if he could convince Len to go to dinner with him.
They'd been having dinner or lunch several times a week now, in between the medical training that Pavel still wanted. (He was going to have that first responder medical qualification if it killed him.)
And two weeks ago, he had almost asked Len out on a real date.
But then they had gotten distracted by Kent and Camilia arguing.
And Pavel had decided to wait.
He would wait until they got to the Starbase, and then he would ask Len out to a dinner in one of the restaurants. They would both be on the same shore leave rotation this time and hopefully he and Len could have a wonderful date that may lead into more.
Riley nodded, "Want some help? I think with two of us it might go faster."
Pavel agreed quickly - he really wanted to see Len for dinner, and getting this done would let him actually be on time. "Please," he said, pointing the way to the wall that the heat transfer unit was hidden behind. The component wasn't regularly checked, but with everything else that had been wrong with the hydroelectric coolant system, Scotty, Pavel, and Riley had decided to just review everything involved with the system.
It had worked out in the end because they had found four significant faults that would cause the ship a lot of damage if left unchecked.
Pavel was glad the ship was getting a replacement as soon as they got to the Starbase. The entire system was held together by a wing, a prayer, and some inspired Scotty-based ingenuity.
To get to the mechanics of the heat transfer, Pavel and Riley had to pull paneling off of four different frames in the walls to open the unit to complete their visual check.
From the moment the first one opened up, Pavel knew they were in trouble.
While the heat transfer unit was working, it was also leaking. There was fluorescent pink, extremely corrosive fluid all over the deck inside the frame.
"Shit," Riley said as he jumped away from the paneling, dropping it as soon as he could. He quickly peeled off his already smoking gloves.
Pavel jerked and hissed. "Shit. This component rarely fails. What's wrong with it?" He looked at Reilly for an answer but Reilly looked as lost as Pavel felt. What was wrong would have to wait. They needed to clean this up now.
"I don't know," Reily yelped, "But we need to see the main hydraulic tank!" Riley hurried to the toolbox that was still at Pavel's last job, a few feet away. He continued speaking as he rifled through the contents, looking for whatever tool could let them access the panel that hid the tank. "The coolant is a fairly strong base. It will eat through metal if it's given enough time." he said hurrying back.
Pavel turned to run over to the toolbox Riley had brought, reached for the neutralizer powder to clean up the spill. They would have to call for hazmat for the rest but they needed to start now to prevent further damage.
There was a light sizzling noise coming from the heat transfer panels that worried him, and an eerie panic started to set in. Pavel opened his mouth to call back to Reilly but never made it, as in the next instant the entire wall of components exploded around him.
>) Explosions oh my!
that being said, this is my reminder that while the story is finished, I'm am currently on deployment and thus VERY BUSY and working with my absolutely wonderful beta b0kunoanime (who is also VERY BUSY) so there will be time between updates. :D
this is where the 'i don't pull punches' tag comes in BTW. also the i'm a sailor with military knowledge comes in too!
Notes on the systems and components that were named: yes the 1MC (or first main circuit) is a thing on navy ships, has been since before world war II, check out the Wikipedia article on it, I think its neat. The HECS isn't real as far as I know but let me tell you, it could be and it could fuck shit up if maintenance is left undone. Even if it's about to be replaced. Doesn't matter. Because it could blow up/leak/cause problems now. Hence why this is a thing that Scotty freaked out about.
the title comes from the Peter Hollins version of the parting glass.
Chapter 8: All I Ask Of You
Four days after exiting orbit of Yen'bu. Four days until Starbase 180.
Fifteen seconds after the initial explosion.
Bones hit the wall when the ship was rocked by the blast, with enough force that he knew he bruised something on his shoulder.
He could feel his shoulder throb with pain, but Bones didn't care. He was on his feet the moment the ship stopped shaking.
He was up and running an instant later.
He needed to be in Medbay.
And he needed to be there now .
An explosion that rocked the ship was never a good thing - and it always, always , ALWAYS, meant that someone had been injured.
Bones was going to be busy .
Unlike all of the bullshit training exercises Starfleet liked to create at the Academy to prepare medical students for the reality of shipboard emergencies, the hallways leading up to Med Bay were crowded when he ran down them. They were filled with other crewman rushing to their battle stations for damage control and muster reports. Each repair locker being thrown open as reports from the bridge and damage control station started to come in. Bones could hear bits and pieces of the reports but not enough to even take a stab at what was really going on with the Enterprise.
Bones just concentrated on getting to Medbay. He ran through the ever-moving crowd, shouting "Gangway! CMO!" as he went.
The crewmen around him flattened themselves to the walls to make way as he passed. Bones had the priority to get to the med bay, and he made sure to make full use of that privilege.
Chapel was already organizing her nurses into a triage team as Bones ran in at full speed. She ordered three of the nurses to go prep the surgery tables, and Chapel told several others to get medical supplies so: "… that Doctor McCoy doesn't have to look around for so much as a bandage! We'll have wounded soon. Get everything ready!"
Gillpe, the new crewman who had alerted Bones to Warrington's issues, was already in the sanitation field, making sure the surgery equipment was clean.
Warrington was right next to him, scrubbing up. Both of them were pale and tense, but neither seemed frightened.
Bones didn't pause his run to the sanitation field. He had to get clean. "Any news?" he demanded as he pulled his blue shirt over his head. He needed to get changed into his whites. The white uniform was kept sterile at all times.
Chapel replied from across the floor, "Not yet!"
"Understood!" Bones responded, accepting the white surgery uniform from a nurse and pulling it over his head.
M'Benga ran in and raced up to the sanitation field.
He had a little bit of blood on his sleeves.
"Engineering," he gasped. "It happened in Engineering." He said the moment he came up to Bones. "I was near there. The response team is there." He began changing into more suitable clothing for surgery. "Several incoming."
Bones knew how his teams were supposed to work. The first responders were supposed to get to the point of damage (or as close as they could get) and triage as much as they were able to. Then the worst off were sent up to his med bay with a T-CFRC with them.
The T-CFRC, or trauma-casualty first responders card, had all the information the first responders had on the wounded person. It was filled with everything from what had caused the injury to what had already been done to treat the patient.
How many patients the med bay was supposed to be receiving was information that came when the first responders called up a Six-Line, the first step of the T-CRFC. Often the first responders tried to send the information via messaging. If they had to send the information on open com lines across the ship it was reported in code, so there was no personally identifiable information, or if there was something special, like say a necessary blood type or species identifiers.
Nothing damaged a person's ability to fight or survive like knowing a friend was dead. Chapel would translate the report from code to useful information as she received it.
Bones hated it. He hated the whole damn process.
"Incoming six-line!" Chapel's voice called out. The medbay didn't stop moving, but suddenly the noise dropped as if everyone had frozen in their places. Bones didn't pause in his prep, but he listened more intently than ever.
An explosion and Engineering were a terrible combination. Bones felt his heart sink to his boots even as he continued in his prep. They weren't going to get out of this one cleanly. There was going to be damage. Bones now had mere seconds before he got the first wave of injured crewmen.
Chapel called out the six-line as it showed up translating from the code as she went. "One – stretchers: five. Ambulatory: six. Two - two urgent-surgical, three priority, six standards. Three – six human, three Illian, one shell'ill, one Andoridan. Four- urgent: human, two. Blood types: O neg and B pos. Five – more to be processed. Request more stretchers. Six – main engineering space." She called out the Six-line information as it fed to her padd.
The six-lines were a way for medical to get the information faster about the initial triage. Each line number was standardized so to lessen confusion where people needed to be paying attention to multiple things.
"Get me O Neg and B Pos human-type blood first!" Bones barked at the nurse who was running for the supplies. The man took off, calling out his understanding. Bones turned to another nurse, "Get the surgery beds ready for two humans!" That nurse also ran to start prep. Bones turned to face Chapel, "Chapel! Send the six-line to the bridge. Let them know what's going on with us."
"Already done, Doctor," Chapel was already putting down the padd. "Bridge acknowledges."
Bones didn't doubt that. But he needed to give the orders. For his own sake and the sake of his less experienced nurses.
It wasn't a full minute later when two stretchers carried by large guys from Engineering and Security came rushing in; all of them covered with dust, debris, and smoke.
And Bones felt his heart stop.
Because the first casualty carried in was a young man with bright curls.
One Bones was hoping to see at dinner as he had headed to the mess hall just before the explosion.
Pavel Chekov.
He was the first one into the room. Which meant he was the one priority casualty. Which meant he was the worst injured.
There was a moment where Bones felt his heart suspend and stop beating. The world seemed to freeze. Pavel wasn't moving. He wasn't smiling like he usually was in Bones' presence. He was pale from blood loss, and the contrast of the burns was frightening. Most of his uniform was gone, cut off by the first responder team checking for more injuries.
Bones jerked his eyes away from Pavel's immobile, but still breathing, form. The second litter was filled with Kevin Riley.
He wasn't much better.
Both of them were covered in burns and blood.
The love of his life was on a table in his med bay and Bones had no idea how he was going to save Pavel.
Bones felt the panic rise up in him. Then Bones felt angry. How was he going to save Pavel if he was panicking?!
He didn't have time for this. Pavel didn't have time for this. None of them had time for this! For that small instant all Bones could hear was his own heartbeat in his ears. Then he snapped out of it, and the sound around him came roaring back.
Bones swore.
Then he mentally shut down everything but the part of himself that was "Doctor McCoy" and shoved the rest of his feelings into a corner of his mind to deal with later. He had crewmembers of the Enterprise to save and god damn it, Bones was going to save them.
The last time he had shut down everything that wasn't "Doctor McCoy" was when he was trying to save Jim from the warp core radiation after Kahn. If Bones could do it for the man he considered his brother, then he could damn well do it for the man he was in love with.
"Get Chekov on the first table! Riley on the second!" he barked. There were already two tables prepped to be used for surgery. M'benga went to the second table with little-wasted movement.
The rest of the injured would be treated on the other tables. The nurse who had finished prepping the tables had already moved onto the others. Preparing them with the same determination and efficiency as he had the first two.
M'benga spoke up, "I'm taking Riley, McCoy." He was reading the padd that was next to Riley's leg. It had the rest of the T-CFRC on it. The padd detailed what was wrong with the casualty, what had already been done to them and what was left for later.
Riley was already covered in the anti-swelling and anti-burn medication. But he would need a lot more work.
Bones barked a short "Understood," before he could stop himself. He would save Chekov. He would save the crewman in front of him.
He grabbed Chekov's own T-CFRC. The readings were much worse than Riley. The burns were extensive, the report estimated at least seventy percent, but thankfully most of the burns looked to be only second degree. Which made it easier to treat but there was shrapnel involved.
But as Bones read through the information something in him relaxed. Pavel wasn't so badly injured that there was no point in working on him. Bones could, and would, save him.
"Warrington!" Bones ordered, "Take over triage. Send Sanchez to help M'benga. Keep Gillpe there. Chapel, you're with me." He pointed at each of his nurses as he called their names. Chapel was his best surgery nurse, and he wanted no one else with him as he worked on Chekov.
Chapel nodded an affirmative. "Yes sir!"
Warrington looked conflicted for a moment, then she nodded as well. "Aye sir!" she said and turned to the rest of the med bay, already beginning to fill up with people who were injured but hadn't been in Engineering, as well as people who were being sent up by the first responder team.
Bones knew that he wasn't going to let himself think about what was going on. About who he was working on.
He just wasn't.
The part of him that was not "Doctor Leonard McCoy" was crying. He was sure of it. But that part stayed where it belonged, in the depths of his mind to be looked at when there wasn't a dying crewman on his table. He could cry later. He had a job to do.
Because the part of him that was a Doctor, had, from the day he had taken his oath to the day he would die, always been the most significant part of himself.
This was one of his nightmares, and he didn't have the luxury to even think about it. Because that would get in the way of Bones' calling in life: to be a doctor.
He would save the person in front of him. Then he would save the next person. And the next. He would repeat that until he had saved them all.
Only then could Bones stop and grieve and celebrate. He would save them.
Meanwhile – in Engineering .
Scotty hadn't stopped running since he and Nyota had left his quarters. Nyota had split with him then with no more than a quick 'be safe' look.
Scotty had returned her look in equal measure
She had joined Jim and Spock running past him to the turbo lift that would take them to the Bridge.
Scotty had headed in the other direction. He had to take a different turbo lift down to Engineering.
He wasn't surprised to see the explosion had come from there.
But he was damned angry about it.
He turned a corner of a hallway and nearly clipped a first responder in medical blue who was racing past him to the storage room just outside of engineering that held medical supplies.
Scotty didn't stop running. Neither did the medic.
He did skid to a stop when he got to the entrance of the main space of Engineering. There was billowing black smoke pouring out of the open doors and the sweet-acidic smell of coolant and hydraulics burning together filled the air.
Scotty felt his heart stop.
"Mr. Scott!" A lower engineer crewman cried as he stumbled out of the entrance, the first in a line of five who were holding hands trying to find their way out of the smoke.
"Mr. Kyle!" Scotty said, wincing as he watched Kyle examine his burned hands. "What's going on?" Scotty asked as he and the first responders started to don firefighting gear. The gear had oxygen masks. "Have you seen Keenser?"
Kyle nodded. "He's still in there. He's got one of the short firefighting suits on," he coughed out.
Scotty breathed a sigh of relief. Keenser, his second in command and friend, was alright and already trying to save the ship.
He was glad that the ship's outer bulkhead hadn't ruptured. They would all be out in the vacuum now if it had. This was an internal fire. So, whatever had exploded was near the entrance. Scotty could smell the strong scent of industrial coolant.
He had to find Chekov and Riley.
Scotty finished putting on the gear and fixed his mask over his face. He tested the seal without a second thought. The cover adhered to his face the way it was supposed to. He twisted the knob to allow the suit to start regulating the air so he could breathe.
He clipped his communicator to his suit. The device slid in perfectly and Scotty heard the connecting click. That had been one of the best projects he and Nyota had ever worked on. The seamless connection between the communicators and emergency suits were now standard issue across the Fleet.
Next to him three of the five people who came out with Kyle were already suiting up themselves after one of the first responders had checked them over and had found little to no damage. The other two were still being checked over.
Scotty was damned proud to have these people as his fellow crew. Their dedication to their jobs, the ship, and each other was showing in every move they made.
He had to wait until he had a team of four ready before he could go in. The team was formed of two of Bones' well trained first responders, and one of the engineers from the group of people Kyle had led out.
One of them was putting on her gear the fastest, looking angry and determined. She kept glancing at Kyle and then putting on gear even faster. Kyle was fighting with one of the medics who was telling him to sit down and that he wasn't going back in.
Scotty understood both of their emotional reactions well. Kyle had led the group out. He had taken the brunt force of fighting their way out of Engineering and he was clearly willing to go back, despite his injuries. Kyle was just as protective as Scotty was for his people. Scotty was also sure that the woman who was putting on the fire fighting suit the fastest was one of Kyle's mentees, a person from his workcenter. She owed him her life.
"Sir!" One of the medics called out as they came up to Scotty after putting on their gear. "We've already sent up eleven people. Two redshirts are the worst off, burns and shrapnel, but McCoy has them now."
"Understood." Eleven people already out. Six more already out. Keenser still in but fighting. Since he had smelled coolant even after placing his helmet and activating the seal, Scotty figured the two red shirts were most likely Chekov and Riley. But he would verify that when he got into the system.
Scotty also knew he was looking for about fifteen more people.
The engineer finished putting on her gear and joined him.
"Alright, fight the fire first, then damage control, Echizen," Scotty told the woman. "Find what is the worst off and relay it to me. Start with the HECS and go from there. I can smell coolant already. We'll get another team in here for repairs when the fire has stopped."
Echizen nodded, her gear holding in the correct place, not a single thing shifting. "Fight the fire first. Then report."
"Aye. Medics, you get them out of there! Send in others when they arrive," Scotty ordered.
The two medics were already nodding. They knew how to move quickly in the suits.
As they made their way into the smoke-filled engineering space, Scotty was looking around for any of his team. He knew that most of the engineering spaces were empty. It was almost dinner time, and there were only a few people here, during the meal and shift change.
Just fifteen people.
Scotty hoped he would find them all.
The first seven they found almost immediately. They, under the command of Keenser, were fighting the fire that was coming out of a side corridor in engineering.
Scotty knew the HECS heat transfer unit was behind a panel down that hallway.
Keenser's small group were making progress on defeating the flames. Already the smoke was starting to turn white.
Scotty caught Keenser's eyes. Keenser gestured to the area behind him, signaling that it was unchecked. Scotty used hand gestures to ask if he needed any help. Keenser said no.
Scotty led his team deeper into the belly of the Engineering Department.
Because while the worst damage might have been from the front hallway where Keenser was stationed, there was a good chance that other parts of Engineering were also in danger. Either from the flames, or heat, or from damage from the initial explosion.
The main space for Engineering was a disaster.
The smoke was running into the deeper part of Engineering, making it hard to see. Even if the fire was starting to go down, the smoke in the room was dark and directly causing problems with visibility and air quality.
There was a crewman standing and working at a computer station, frantically trying to fix something. She was supporting a man in a chair that had seen better days as he typed into another computer. Two others were sprawled on the floor.
One of them was yelling orders out to the one in the chair. She was visibly in pain, wincing at the effort of her words.
"Scotty!" the crewman called out, catching the crewman on the floor's attention, from where she was trying type frantically on a computer that was rhythmically sparking, but still working. Scotty watched as she dodged a large spark that lit up the room for a instant. Scotty hated what he saw in that instant.
Scotty ran to her. She was covered in ash head to toe, making it impossible to tell who she was. Not fully human, but Scotty had a diverse team so he wasn't as concerned as he could be. "What's going on?" He asked.
The medic started to check her over, but she waved them off. "I'm fine! But help them!" She said pointing to the two on the floor.
The man who was leaning on her was already being helped by the other medic.
He didn't fight the assistance.
The first medic went to the crewmen on the floor, and Scotty trusted McCoy's people.
"I can't keep the thermoregulator stable! The warp-core is heating up, and we're picking up speed. I can't cool her down!" The woman reported , her tone only holding an edge of the panic she must feel. She was shaking slightly, but her hands never missed a command on the computer.
Scotty recognized her now, one of his newer crew members. A young na'vi that was skilled with engineering and numbers, and little else. Scotty liked her.
"Have you tried to vent the system to the aft nacelles?" Scotty asked, skipping over two systems that would be preferred ways of cooling the core but were sparking more dangerously than the console they were using right now.
"Yes! It helped! But the nacelles aren't doing enough!" she said, running through several more programs in the system.
Scotty thought quickly, running through every system he could think of that may even have any effect on the core temp. "The manual overrides, it'll warm the ship's hull a great deal, but that might work."
" Scotty !" his communicator yelled into his breathing apparatus headset.
When he and Nyota had originally created the communicator and emergency fire fighting suit integration system, Scotty had mostly been there for oversight. Nyota had brought the ideas. Scotty sent a quick mental thanks that Nyota was the best communicator in a crisis. She understood what was needed. Scotty's radio was already connected to the bridge by the time he could even press the response button. If he needed it he could switch to Auxiliary Control or the Damage Control Emergency room with ease.
Nyota knew how to anticipate Scotty. She already had a channel open from his communicator to the bridge before he even had to say, "Scott here!" she would keep his line open until he says otherwise.
"We're too hot Scotty!" Jim's voice said from the communicator. "We've just gotten core warnings!" The bridge background noise was a wash of conflicting sounds. Reports from other damaged decks, med bey reporting in, and status reports were all creating a weird, disjointed soundtrack.
"Aye, I know!" Scotty said back, knowing there was a cacophony of yelling right behind him from the team that was fighting the fire and Engineering's own warning alarms. "I'm going to have to use manual overrides to vent to the hull. It'll get hot everywhere, but the core won't explode!"
"What's the max temp the hull can stand right now?" Kirk asked.
Before Scotty could answer, Spock's voice answered. "5,000 degrees Celsius."
"If uncompromised!" Scotty added as he took over for the Na'vi on the still sparking console as she was convinced to leave the smoke-filled area by a medic, "which I cannae guarantee right now!" He checked the readings from the hull. This explosion had weakened the starboard side of the ship, but if they vented to the hull on the port side…
"Nyota! Are there any reports of hull fatigue on the port side!" Scotty asked into his radio. Nyota would know. She had to take the Damage Control reports sent from the DC Emergency station in auxiliary control.
"None, Scotty!" She said, and even in the moment of crisis, hearing her unswerving and commanding voice was a relief. She could steady him and support him despite the fact that all she could do was give him information.
And Scotty hoped he would do the same for her.
"Then, Nyota, tell Kirk I can vent the heat. If it goes right then it'll warm the entire Enterprise, and it'll get uncomfortable for a while, but it will keep the core from melting." Scotty relayed, already making the preparation to vent the core's excess heat. "I'll need his authorization," he said finally.
If Scotty was wrong, then warming the hull the way he planned to would create catastrophic problems, ones they could not fix. Problems they wouldn't even live long enough to even attempt to fix.
"Aye Scotty," Nyota said. She understood what Scotty wasn't saying.
There was a heartbeat of a moment where they waited. Both he and Nyota, on two separate parts of the ship, waiting on Kirk's judgment.
"Need my permission again?" Kirk said with a hint of a laugh in his voice when he came on the line. It wasn't much, and it was unquestionably for the crew around them, but Scotty smiled all the same.
"Yes sir," Scotty told him,in the same tone.
"Do it," Captain Kirk commanded.
Scotty didn't hesitate when he pressed the command on the console. His heart was in his throat; he hoped this would work, because if it didn't then he would have to think of something else and he didn't know how much extra he could do to cool the system with the hydro-electric coolant system down.
Immediately, the core started to cool down.
He couldn't read the rest of the ship's hull temperature, but he was sure they were climbing.
"Core temp readings are down, Scotty," Kirk said, and Nyota's voice confirmed that all the warnings had now shut off.
Scotty checked his oxygen, making sure that he enough to keep working on the system.
"Nyota. Patch me directly to Damage Control. I need to get working." Scotty said.
"On it!" Nyota said.
Scotty had a ship to save.
He could do it.
The next ten hours were among the longest in Leonard McCoy's life.
But he didn't lose a soul.
And to him, that was all that mattered.
A few hours later on the Bridge .
Scotty hadn't even taken off the firefighting suit when he reported to the bridge with the word that the fire was out and the core readings were looking normal again. His ordinarily beige suit was black with soot and burn marks.
Jim could smell the coolant-based smoke from the turbo lift.
He had a feeling it would stay with the ship for a while, despite the best attempts to get out of the system.
Jim had spent the better part of the last two hours running the damage control process and making sure that Starbase 180 knew they were going to be late. He'd also brought the Enterprise to a near complete halt in space.
Scotty had called about a half an hour ago to tell him the fire was out and that he had set a re-fire watch, in case the fire started up again.
Jim had been waiting to see him in person since then.
"Prelim reports say it was the HECS, Captain, that caught on fire. I don't know if it was the cause or merely an aggravator. But the main bulk of the fire came from there," Scotty said, swaying slightly. He was drenched in sweat.
Jim could see out of the corner of his eye that Nyota kept looking at Scotty with concern. Jim was concerned too. The fire must have been scorching to make Scotty so dehydrated that he was swaying where he stood.
Jim nodded. "I see," he said, knowing that if the HECS was the system that was at fault and was the reason it on fire, there would be a whole hell of a lot to pay. And most of it would fall squarely on the shoulders of the crewman who was currently on restriction.
"Can we still make it to Starbase 180?" he asked instead of asking Scotty's opinion of the realities of the fire.
It wasn't right to ask for such an opinion from someone who had just had this adrenalin pumping type of experience. Emotions clouded the thought process, and it could cause people to make judgments they ordinarily wouldn't make if they had time to think about what they actually knew.
Scotty nodded. "Yes, but not at more than Warp One. Anything higher will raise the core's temp again. The hull is still a little tender from before, and I don't trust much faster than that. We're too hot right now. I dennae ken if the hull will survive going through another temperature venting."
"Okay then. Sulu, please get one of the DC crew to watch the core temp. It's going to be boring, but it can't raise. We'll go to warp one until things are better or the temperature gets too high," Jim looked to Sulu who was tense and concerned.
Sulu had been tense since they had all first gotten to the bridge several hours ago.
Jim had chalked it up to Chekov's missing presence. The Beta shift navigator had performed expertly in Chekov's absence. Jim had prudently not told the bridge crew where their Alpha shift navigator actually was.
But Jim wondered if it was more than that.
Then Jim remembered that Sulu's family was on board.
Shit .
"Captain," Scotty said. "We have a full muster ready. All of the unaccounted for are listed," he handed Jim a padd, and his expression said a whole heap of unhappy things.
Spock leaned over to also read the list.
There was a push of calm that came from Spock's slight brush of his arm with Jim's. It wasn't much, but the emotion was enough to help center Jim.
Of course, Spock's presence was often enough to help center Jim.
But Jim leaned into the contact all the same.
He'd take calm wherever he could.
There were about seven people on the list of the missing. Two of which, Jim knew were in med bay for sure. "Chekov and Riley are in surgery right now," Jim murmured so that only Scotty and Spock could hear him. Scotty's expression twisted unhappily but not with surprise. He must have figured it out but had needed confirmation. "Spock, can you check with med bay about the others? I hope they have them all." He hoped so. But, years of being a Captain had made him a realist when it came to explosions in Engineering. They might have lost some people.
Jim wasn't going to give up hope though.
Not until McCoy declared it so.
Spock took the padd and went directly to the turbolift. This was not something either of them wanted to be on ship's coms. Jim had given him the task to confirm if they had missing or dead. There was no else they trusted.
Scotty relaxed when Jim mentioned that Chekov and Riley were in the med bay. He decidedly hadn't liked the fact they were on the missing list.
Sulu also seemed to lose some the tension is his shoulders when Jim made the pronouncement. The navigators weren't supposed to eavesdrop but Jim didn't plan on telling him off anytime soon.
"What about the Engineer with the family onboard?" Jim asked Scotty. Jim had to remember that he had civilians on board. They'd be taken care of. Jim recalled that one of Scotty's better crewman had asked to bring both of his wives on board with their one child. Starfleet had approved the family as one of the last before the ship had left earth spacedock. Their child was just an infant.
"He's fine. He was off duty. His wives were in charge of the Crèche. He went with them to calm the families. He may deserve a commendation or an award for that. He prevented them from panicking," Scotty said with a thoughtful look on his face.
Jim agreed to look into it. The engineer probably had kept the families safe and in one location so that they weren't running around the ship in case they needed to evacuate.
Jim would have to praise that somehow. If Scotty thought it was award-worthy then, Jim would probably agree in this situation.
Scotty coughed and swayed a little more.
Jim winced.
"Scotty. Go to the med bay, get checked for smoke inhalation. If the doc's say you're fine: then get back to work. I know you, and that's what you'll do so I'm giving you permission here," Jim said. "If you do have problems then get fixed up and head to the DC room in auxiliary control. Work from there."
Scotty, Jim knew, would work no matter what Jim said. So Jim gave him more reasonable orders to follow.
It worked. Scotty didn't fight him. "Aye sir," he agreed.
"Go talk to Uhura before you go down to medical. And drink something . If I can see that you're dehydrated, then M'benga or Chapel will IV your ass to get fluids back in your system. McCoy would let them and you know it." Jim told him.
Scotty smiled with a hint of a laugh.
"Go," Jim said.
Scotty nodded and left his place by Jim's chair to go to Uhura's side.
Jim turned his attention to the man at the helm. "Sulu, call your replacement."
Sulu jumped, "Sir, my replacement? I'm fine, sir." He said with a stiff demeanor. Jim knew his people. Sulu always called Jim 'sir' when he was stressed. His worry was painted all over his face.
"Yep, and I don't care." Jim hummed before smiling at Sulu. "I want you to go check on the Crèche and the families there. In fact, I want you to get a team to check on them for the next several hours."
Sulu eye's winded. "Sir?"
"Rotating shifts, of course." Jim smiled. This he could do. He could make sure his people, his crew and their families were taken care of. "I'm sure you can pick the best team. Please report to me the crewmembers on the team and when I should expect you back up here."
An undistracted crew was a crew that worked best.
Sulu nodded firmly. "Yes, sir." He turned back around and called for his replacement.
Then he paused and turned back around, "Thank you, sir."
Jim nodded.
His ship was going to be fine. The Enterprise had the best engineers in the universe on board.
His people were going to be fine. His doctor was the best that Earth had ever seen.
His crew was going to, as always, come out of this swinging.
All Jim had to do was deal with a lax crewman and the consequences of his actions.
Pavel woke up and tried to look around.
He wasn't able to move. The last thing he remembered was the pain - red hot and burning.
Len leaned over him in a white surgical uniform. Len was saying something about how he didn't want to join his mother's crafting group for a reason. His expression was pinched with concentration but not fear. Pavel didn't feel a thing but some vague tugging on the side where Len was.
Pavel smiled.
He would be fine.
Len was here.
He fell back asleep.
Hours after the explosion in engineering
Jim winced as he looked around. So much damage.
Spock reached out and placed a hand in Jim's.
And for a brief moment, they observed the damage that one system had caused, hand in hand
There were several teams of crewmen moving around the burned hallway that had once led to the HECS's heat transfer unit. The crews were working on cleaning up the foam that had extinguished the fire. The substance was terrible for electronics, but it killed fire faster than literally anything else. For a ship, ending the fire was often more important than saving the equipment.
There were other teams already working on fixing damaged systems and consoles around Engineering. To fix Engineering, it would be an around the clock effort for several weeks. Jim was relieved to know they were going to be at a Starbase in five days. A few days longer then they had expected even with the HECS on the frizz but the Enterprise would still get there under her own power.
Jim had taken one look at Scotty when he arrived in Engineering about ten minutes ago and had sent him to bed. Scotty had tried to argue, but was interrupted as both Spock and Uhura showed up. Scotty had given up fighting with Jim once Uhura had asked.
"Mr. Scott has assured us he can fix the system," Spock said, correctly reading Jim's emotions from their joined hands.
Jim took a moment to savor that Spock was willing to read him so much. It was hard, at the beginning of their tenure on the Enterprise, to have Spock act on what he thought was the correct emotion.
There had been a time where Spock had tried to make himself as Vulcan as possible. There were days he had been closed to everyone, even Uhura.
But that has changed over the years, and Jim was thankful.
Because moments like this one would be harder to deal with, if not for Spock's willingness to acknowledge Jim's emotions.
"I know. But it's still hard to see her so damaged," Jim sighed.
Spock nodded in understanding. Jim quirked a small smile at him before sobering.
He had two more jobs to do before he could retire for the night.
Jim would go to med bay to make sure Bones would get some sleep, even if it was just in his office. But first…
"Okay. Now I've seen the damage, read the initial report. Let's go talk to a person who's in the brig," Jim said, knowing that Anderson Kent was not going to have much longer in Starfleet.
Spock led the way out of engineering.
Anderson Kent had left his quarters four hours ago to be interred in the brig.
According to the guards who had a duty station there, he had come on his own. He hadn't said a word before walking into a cell and collapsing in the room. He had burn marks on his hands as if he had tried to handle hot metal.
The guard who had called up to the Bridge to inform Jim of this said he hadn't activated the cell door's force field but had posted there all the same.
Jim wasn't sure that Kent was really the one at fault, but the initial reports did say the HECS was the first thing that caught on fire.
Which meant that nothing good would happen for Kent.
Spock lead them into a turbolift that would take them to the brig.
"Mr. Kent believes he's a danger to the ship," Spock said.
Jim turned and raised an eyebrow, but he understood what Spock meant. "He's feeling guilty, more like it. And he isn't handling it well."
Spock still hadn't let go of Jim's hand. Their fingers were intertwined, and Jim held on fast. He needed the support, and he liked Spock's hands.
Not one of the crew who had seen their hands had commented on it. Some of them started to grin when they caught sight of them. But not a single comment. Jim didn't know what that meant but he tucked the thought away unsure what to do with that information. He had a suspicion that his not-as-hopeless-as-previously-thought love wasn't as secret as he thought.
The doors of the turbo lift opened up to the deck with the brig at the other end of the hallway. Jim and Spock were greeted by the sounds of yelling. Jim glanced at Spock in sudden concern. A woman was yelling, in anger if her tone was anything to go by, from inside the brig. Jim and Spock dropped their hands and raced for the brig door.
There was a guard by the entrance to the brig who looked like he would rather go into an active firefight then deal with what was going on.
Jim and Spock both came to a sudden stop when they saw why.
Nurse Camelia Warrington was shouting herself hoarse at Kent's cell. There was a second guard who was trying to force her to leave. He had a hand wrapped around her arm and was attempting to pull her away from the cells.
Warrington wasn't moving. Jim spared a moment to be impressed. Warrington wasn't the largest of women, and the crewman who was trying to move her was one of his biggest, and she wasn't even budging.
She was still dressed in the surgical nursing uniform. It was no longer pristine white, streaks of blood running along the front and on her sleeves. Kent didn't seem to have noticed her presence. His lack of response seemed to only make her angrier.
"You don't get to hide in here, Andy!" she shouted, fists slamming on the forcefield. "You don't get to hide in here like a child!" Her face was bright red with anger.
She yelled a few choice curse words.
Kent didn't move from where he was sitting on the floor. He was staring at the deck blankly.
Jim was livid .
Warrington did not have the right to talk to Kent like this. No one had the right to speak with Kent until Jim, Spock or Scotty did.
Because Kent was at the center of a major investigation.
And Warrington was going to make everything worse.
Kent was already drowning in guilt. He might do something desperate if people pushed him. Jim didn't want him pushed. Jim had come down to see Kent just to get his story and put him back in his quarters.
But beyond Jim's fury at Warrington, he could clearly see that Kent was feeling more than just slightly guilty. This called for more serious measures and Kent would have to be put on watch. Jim shared a glance with Spock and Spock nodded minutely. Spock would make sure there was a suicide watch on Kent as soon as possible. Kent might not be at fault, or he might be completely at fault. Jim didn't know, but he was sure that what Kent thought was that he was to blame for everything .
Before Jim could move to stop her, Warrington abruptly stopped yelling.
In one swift movement, she wrenched her arm away from Jim's biggest crewman and crouched down to be at the same height as Kent. "We're both Warrington's!" she hissed. "Act like one!"
Jim felt the surprise and confusion run through him.
Anderson Kent had no relation to Camelia Warrington in his Starfleet file, and Jim had read the file not ten minutes ago.
That caught Kent's attention apparently too as he started and shook at her words.
"Maybe you are, Cami." He replied slowly, his voice rough and broken. He didn't look up from the floor. "But father has made it perfectly clear that I am not and nor will I ever be, a Warrington."
Spock made to move forward, but Jim stopped him. Something in him said that this was the reason for Kent's sudden downturn in attitude.
Kent's pronouncement seemed to bring Warrington up short. "What?" She asked surprised, "What are you talking about Andy?" She was still glaring at him, but Jim could hear the trepidation in her tone.
"Dearest Dad has made it clear that he'll never recognize me," Kent spat out, gaze still locked on the floor.
"He hasn't!" Warrington shrilled.
"He did," Kent sighed, " Captain Warrington ordered me to never tell anyone." He glanced up at that point, just a quick movement of his eyes. Jim could see the guilt Kent was feeling written in his features.
Kent caught sight of Jim and Spock and he froze, eyes widening in fear.
"And now my Captain can see how much of a failure I am," he shrank into himself further.
Kent wasn't a small man by any means, but watching him curl up like that made him look like a child. Now that Jim had a better look at the kid, it was easy to see how much he did look like Captain Warrington.
Warrington twisted around and her jaw dropped. She scrambled to her feet. "Captain."
"Shut it, Nurse," Jim snapped. "I'm not happy with you yelling at my crewman without permission." He was closer to furious, but Jim had better control of his emotions after nearly ten years as a Captain. His anger was simmering under the surface, hot and dark, but ultimately hidden.
Warrington, clearly chastised, nodded.
But Jim wasn't going to harp on about it. Instead, he turned to the crewman in the unlocked cell.
"Anderson Kent."
Kent looked up quickly and then looked back down. "Yes, Captain."
"Why are you here?" Jim asked. He needed to know why Kent had felt so guilty as to lock himself in the brig. He needed to know Kent's reasoning before he could move on.
Kent took in a ragged breath. "Because my negligence got people killed."
Jim shook his head. "According to Nurse Chapel and Doctor McCoy, no one's died yet."
"But someone could have," Kent whispered, almost to himself. "Because I let myself be upset and ignore the HECS and my work. Scotty counted on me to do my job, and I let that asshole distract me."
Jim internally winced. What the hell had Captain Warrington done to his crewman that it affected his performance to this extreme? Kent had been an excellent crewman until a few months ago... for this radical of a change to have happened... Jim knew it wasn't good. While Jim thought Captain Warrington was an asshat on a good day, Kent seemed to be somewhere between angry and defeated when it came to his father.
"Well yes, the HECS wasn't a system that could just be ignored. But Kent, early reports say it just wasn't the HECS. There was something else too," Jim explained. "What exactly did Captain Warrington do?"
"Dad didn't do any-!" The Warrington currently in their presence started to say, but Spock cut her off.
"Nurse Warrington, if you wish to stay, I might recommend that you do not interrupt the Captain and Mr. Kent," he commanded with a look that any member of the Enterprise crew knew was a glare of reprimand.
Warrington obligingly snapped her mouth shut but she didn't look happy about it.
"What did Captain Warrington do?" Jim asked again. He didn't want to be pulled into family issues, but as he now had a damaged ship, injured crew and a crewman so upset he had willingly put himself in the brig, Jim was going to get to the bottom of this.
"He told me that I was a mistake ." Kent suddenly snapped, "That telling me to join Starfleet was a mistake ! That every action I take will reflect on him and he wants nothing to do with me. He told me that once Cami transfers, he wants me to never contact anyone from the Warrington's again." Kent got quieter as he spoke, all of his sudden fury draining out of him with every word. His voice near a whisper by the end. "My father raised me, with Camilla. We're half-siblings. I can't imagine not talking to her. He just threw me out like I was nothing to him!"
Jim kept his expression neutral despite how well he understood. He may have comprehended having problems with parental figures, but Jim had a job to do. He was going to get answers from a negligent crewman.
"When did Captain Warrington tell you this?" Spock asked.
Jim glanced at Spock who had a tight grip on his hands from where they were placed at the small of his back. Spock may not have had such a bad relationship with his father currently, but there was some strain on the relationship that the pair hadn't grown out of entirely, nor would they ever.
Spock was also looking for information.
"Just before we had our last shore leave," Kent responded after a moment. "Cami told me that she was going to transfer now that father had his own ship. So, I called father to see if there was an opening for me. Father didn't want to talk to me. He said I was worthless. That he didn't want me near his name again and to never call him again."
He took a deep breath and continued, "He ordered me to never talk about him or my family again. That I was cut off from that point on."
Kent fell silent.
Jim sighed. "So, you became distracted."
Kent nodded. He didn't look up from the deck.
Camilla Warrington was crying.
Jim sighed again, rubbing his hand over his eyes. "Okay, Kent. You are hereby ordered to remain here until further notice. I'm going to send one of the doc's down to look you over and to let them fix your hands. I'll have a guard posted outside, and no one else will be allowed in until Mr. Spock or I give the command."
Jim was going to give the kid what he wanted for now. The therapist that Jim was going to send down would be more equipped to handle this. And the guards would now be on suicide watch, until the pitiful excuse for a Petty Officer was cleared by the therapist and Bones.
Kent nodded morosely.
Warrington opened her mouth to start to say something, but she didn't even get a full word out before Kent flinched so severely he physically shook.
Spock reached out and took hold of her arm, gently but firmly guiding her out of the room.
Warrington didn't fight. She seemed to just give up when Spock grabbed her. She went with him meekly.
"I won't let her in here either," Jim reassured Kent, with one look at Kent's expression.
Kent whispered, voice so quiet that Jim struggled to hear it, "I can't see her right now. I love my sister but… she defends him…" he didn't finish but Jim could guess what was going to be said.
"… and you can't handle that," Jim agreed. "I'll be sure and tell the guards to keep her away."
Kent acknowledged with a small sound that Jim took to mean agreement. He still didn't look up.
Jim turned on his heel and left the room, unable to stand seeing one of his own so defeated with no way to help him. Kent wasn't going to be able to do much until after he talked to a therapist. Maybe someday Warrington would be allowed in, but until then Jim would respect Kent's wishes. Just one of Bones' doctors and a therapist.
Spock was near the turbo lift with Warrington. She was still crying, but she wasn't talking or making any move to come back to the brig.
Spock's eyes met Jim's.
And for no apparent reason that he could figure, Jim knew what Spock was going to do. Spock was going to take Warrington back to her quarters, and then he would meet up with Jim in the Med Bay.
Jim nodded, showing his understanding of what Spock was going to do, before pushing the moment from his mind. He would wonder about the experience later, when the ship was safe and under control.
Jim turned to the guards. "When did you pull up the forcefield?" He remembered the original report had specified that the guards said they weren't going to put up the field.
The larger guard sighed. "When the nurse came in. She looked so angry that I pulled it up for Kent's protection."
Jim sighed. That was a good call. He turned to leave.
"Don't leave him alone and don't let anyone in other than the doctor I'll have Bones send down," Jim murmured to the men. "Watch him. Don't let him hurt himself."
"I won't let him out of my sight," one of the guards said, standing and walking to the door to take post, "I'll send a message to the bridge if something happens."
The other gave Jim a pained and exhausted smile, "Understood, sir."
Jim accepted their understanding and left.
The turbo lift was silent. Jim slumped against the wall.
Days like today were always hard for far too many reasons.
Meanwhile in the med bay
Bones felt stiff all over.
Ten hours of surgery. Four of which were spent on Pavel Chekov. The rest on every other patient. Then he had spent even more time checking in with the non-surgery patients, and their status.
Bones was damned tired.
But Bones was also damned proud of himself and his team.
They hadn't lost a soul.
The ship would not have to mourn a single one of her crew members today. Bones had done his damnedest to make sure that didn't happen.
He'd once again fought for their lives and won. It was up to the rest of the crew to help themselves recover from here.
His crew would be fine, physically.
The rest was going to take time and effort.
Bones didn't think that one of the injured engineering crewmen, Stott, would stay in Engineering after this experience, however. The kid from a mostly-water planet was looking a little shell-shocked. He hadn't experienced any kind of fire like that before. It was a good thing the kid was good enough at hand to hand fighting to transfer to security.
They would do fine there.
Most of Bones' staff had been set back to their rooms to find sleep. Very few of their quarters had been damaged by the fire and explosion.
Gillpe was asleep on the floor, tucked into a corner of the room against a wall. Bone had tried to move him, but apparently, his species couldn't sleep in a bed anyway, so he was fine as he was. He had been indispensable running around in triage and helping Warrington sort the patients.
Bones had sent Warrington away about three hours ago. Her work during triage had helped in preventing any deaths. Despite looking dead on her feet, she'd still had a fire in her eyes. Bones was fairly certain she hadn't gone back to her quarters upon dismissal.
Chapel was asleep in her office, and had been for the last hour. She had worked with Bones through the entirety of the ten hours he'd been in surgery. She had been his partner on the operating table, working perfectly in sync to save lives. But now they were both dead on their feet.
Bones knew he should go back to his quarters and sleep.
Or hell, there was a decently comfortable couch in his office that would be fine but…
Pavel was still in one of the three private rooms attached to the Med Bay.
And Bones was weak.
He had stuffed that part of him that was deeply in love with Pasha in the back of his mind and now, after everything was done, he could finally, finally let that part of himself out. Bones could allow himself to feel the terror, fear, and grief that having Pasha that severely injured and on his table had caused in him.
Bones wasn't going to leave Pasha for longer than he had to. Not until Pasha was out of his med bay and in his own quarters.
Bones pressed his hand onto the reader at the door. It beeped quietly as the door slid open.
Pavel was still and unmoving, but the monitors said that he was recovering. There was a note on the padd that collected the data that said Pavel had been waking up and then falling back asleep over the course of the last several hours.
Bones felt relief slide through him. Pasha was recovering fast. Good.
As Bones transferred the files to his padd and busied himself with taking care of Pavel's readings and charts, he heard the med bay door open from the other room.
There was a faint exclamation of, "Captain!" from one of the on-duty nurses. Xie's species didn't need to sleep for more than one twenty-four hour cycle every Terran week. So Xie had volunteered to be the one who stayed on duty after days like this one. Bones was grateful to them. They were one of his more reliable nurses.
"Come on in, Jim," Bones said, peeking out of the room and waving Jim over. "I'm in here."
Bones might have been more tired then he realized because he honestly didn't see Jim move from the doorway of Medbay to Pasha's private room. He followed as Bones sank into a chair next to Pasha's bed. He stood silently next to Bones as Bones read over the last bit of information about Pasha's condition.
"Bones?" Jim asked. Bones knew what he was asking, Jim wasn't asking just one question. He was asking all of them at once.
And Bones didn't know if he had the answers to most of them.
"He and Riley will be fine, in the long run," Bones said finally. "We've healed the burns and the broken bones. The burns were the worst I've seen in a while, Jim. But they got to us in time. They won't even scar." He turned in the chair to face Jim, because if he didn't then he wouldn't look up from Pavel for a long time and his Captain needed his attention.
Jim nodded. "I saw your report a little while ago. I'm glad the T-CFRC's worked."
Bones gave Jim a smile that felt weary on his face. "Yes. Please thank Uhura for me."
"Already have," Jim said quietly.
"Good," Bones grunted.
Together they fell silent.
Bones, because he wasn't ready to answer the rest of Jim's questions. Jim was silent because, well, Bones knew his best friend very well and knew that Jim was waiting for him to be ready to talk.
They had done this type of song and dance before.
A few moments of the steady beep of the monitors tracking Pavel's' heartbeat and other vitals passed before Bones could put together the words he needed to say.
Pavel shifted, his monitors reading a slight speed up before resting again.
Pasha must have woken up for a moment then gone back to sleep.
Bones felt his heart shift, and he knew.
"I don't ever want him on my table again, Jim." Bones' voice was hoarse. He took a deep breath, leveling a steady look at his best friend before continuing. "I'm in love with this man, and I had to shut that part of me off while I worked on him."
"Bones…" Jim started to say, but Bones wouldn't let him finish.
"I can't stop him from doing his job either. I won't mollycoddle Pavel because that won't help either of us. I'm just going to have to deal," Bones said, knowing deep down what his answer was going to be. "I love him so much , Jim. I would rather learn to shut that part of me off and save him, then fail and see him go."
Jim reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. Bones leaned into the comforting touch from his best friend.
Jim was reminding him that Bones wasn't alone in feeling this way.
"I love Pavel so much," he repeated, a slight warble in his tone as his emotions surged up in the back of his throat. "I will always fix him," Bones promised. "That's all I can do."
He took a moment, briefly glancing at Pavel on the bed, then sighed, "I need a drink."
"You're not getting one," Jim said firmly. His tone brooked no arguments. Bones didn't offer anything at the order, too exhausted to even crack a joke at Jim's expense. "You're getting some sleep instead." He squeezed Bones' shoulder and let go. "Come on let's get you to your office. I don't think there's a force in this universe that could get you to leave the med bay."
"Damn straight" Bones murmured. "But I don't think I can leave Pasha, Jim. Not right now." He hadn't even tried to get up.
Bones ached for the man on the bed in his Med Bay. But the Doctor in him knew that Pavel would be alright. And the man in him knew that Bones would stay by his side and protect him the best he could.
All of Jim's determination to get Bones to a bed drained out of him at Bones' words. Bones knew that Jim understood what he wasn't saying out loud. "Oh, Bones ."
Bones let a weak smile spread access his face. "I know. I know. I'll be fine. Go check on Riley before you leave. He'll be fine, but I know you need to see him." Bones pointed to the next room. Riley was honestly going to be fine, but he and Jim had a….shared history to say the least. And because of that shared history, Jim was protective of Riley in a way that he wasn't with many others of his crew. Not that Jim showed it often.
Jim nodded and pushed away from Bones.
He paused at the doorway, giving Bones one last look.
"As long as Chekov is in Starfleet, Bones, you won't be able to stop him from getting injured. He's in Command. But you can be there to make sure he always comes back."
Bones didn't look at Jim, he just smiled down at Pavel. "I'll be there for him. I'll be his support for as long as he needs me."
"Ask him out Bones," Jim advised, his voice floating back softly as he was nearly out of the door. "You might be happy with his answer."
Bones heard the door slide open in the next room.
Though Jim was long gone from earshot, Bones slumped back into his seat with an exhaled, "I know, Jim." He reached out and took the padd of Pasha's information again. He could feel his eyes growing heavy, but he forced them open.
He was so tired, but he was going to keep watch over Pasha.
Pasha deserved that much.
Four hours later
Pavel woke to murmured whispers.
Doctor M'benga and Nurse Chapel were whispering from the edge of his bed as they looked over the machines that were attached to him.
Chapel had a padd in her hand, and M'benga was leaning over the machine that hummed as it delivered the oxygen that Pavel was breathing.
But their attention wasn't really on the machines. Instead it on the man sleeping with his head on the bed, and holding Pavel's now mostly-healed hand loosely in his.
A man with disheveled brown hair and a blue shirt.
Len.
Pavel still wasn't able to move yet, his body coping with the after-effects of the pain relievers used during surgery, and having slept them off.
But he also didn't try too hard.
Len's hand felt too perfect in his. Pavel didn't know when he would get to feel Len's hand in his again.
"I can't believe he's still asleep," M'benga whispered. "McCoy usually doesn't sleep this deeply when he's got patients in the medbay."
"Doctor, McCoy was in surgery for a total of ten hours yesterday… and that was on top of his normal work day, and I know he didn't stop for at least two hours after I crashed out in my office. And that was when he came in here. He was probably up even longer," Chapel chastised, glancing up from her padd at Len's sleeping form.
Pavel wondered at her words. If Len hadn't slept for so long…. Then why was he here? With Pavel? Instead of in the more comfortable bed in his quarters?
" Shit , Leonard, that's like twenty-one straight hours. Get some rest, will you?" M'benga quietly berated his superior officer as he finished with Pavel's chart. His voice was fond.
Len didn't stir.
"Sir, Riley will be waking up soon. His burns were less severe, and he's been more restless since dermal regeneration. We'll need to check on him." Chapel said.
Pavel felt relief sweep through him.
Riley had been further away when the wall had exploded. Pavel had been lucky enough to have the lid of the toolbox act as a shield from most of the explosion, pavel remembered feeling the lid impact him before he blacked out, but Riley had only distance from the epicenter to keep him safe. Pavel had spared enough of a thought for Riley before the pain of the burns had knocked him out.
Riley was Pavel's friend, and losing him would have hurt. They were both going to be okay, and it was probably thanks to the man who was holding on to Pavel's hand like a lover.
Len . The best doctor that the Enterprise could ever have.
Pavel was sure that he loved Len. Pavel was also rather sure that loved may be too weak of a word to describe how he felt for Len. he had known for a while that Len was more than just important to him. He felt safe with Len. Len made him laugh. Len could talk for hours about his home in the American south, and his daughter and Pavel would always be interested. And the surprising thing was that Len probably loved him. When Len had started to do that, Pavel didn't know. But something in Pavel's gut screamed that Len loved him.
"We will check on Riley in just a moment. Where's that extra blanket?" M'Benga said.
Chapel was already heading to the cupboard against the far wall. She pulled a blanket out, "Right here. Let me."
She came around and opened the blanket up before spreading it across Len's shoulders gently. "He'll be fine now, at least until he wakes up with a pain in his neck." She smiled indulgently at her CMO. "And then he'll complain all about it until he's a pain in our necks."
"He will," M'benga smiled as they left the room.
Pavel still didn't want to move much, but he tried to squeeze Len's hand anyway. Len's grip tightened slightly around Pavel's fingers before loosening again.
Smiling at the ceiling, Pavel went back to sleep for a while longer. He dreamed of long nights simply holding Len and enjoying the closeness. He didn't worry about what may happen next. He would be fine.
Len would be there when he woke up.
When he woke again, Pavel had no idea how much time has passed. Len hadn't moved from his spot at Pavel's side, his head akimbo on top of the blanket on the bed. He was still sleeping. Sometime in the few hours that Pavel was probably asleep, Len had managed to tuck himself further into the blanket that Chapel had draped over him.
He had also wrapped their hands up in the blanket together like he was making sure that Pavel wasn't going to grow cold.
Pavel wondered briefly if Len moving their hands had woken him up. But then the low painful throbbing coming from his body swam to the surface of his awareness. He could feel the aches coming from the areas that Pavel instinctively knew had been severely burned, but thanks to Len and the medical staff had been healed to a relative degree.
The painkillers were starting to fade. Pavel would have to call for someone soon to get his next dose. He was also probably due for another round of burn healing soon.
Pavel shifted slightly under the covers. He was gaining control of his body more as he woke up. That also meant he could feel the pain more through the haze of lingering painkillers and sleep.
He could feel the tender skin of freshly healed burns. The growing pains of the osteo-regenerator. Pavel knew with how he felt now that he would likely be in medbay for weeks.
It still hurt to breathe, but it had hurt far worse when he'd first woken up, so Pavel knew he would recover. Pavel hadn't bothered thinking otherwise.
Len shifted in his sleep - just a quick turn of his head and a very quiet mummer of something that Pavel couldn't quite make out.
Pavel's heart melted. Len looked so peaceful, something calm on his face that Pavel always enjoyed seeing. Len looked years younger. He was asleep so deeply. Pavel was loathe to wake him up or even move. After years of conversations they had in the mess, Pavel knew that was hard for Len to get good rest while he had injured crewmen in the medbay.
Pavel smiled at the memory of years spent on the Enterprise sharing meals together. Most of the time Pavel had initially thought that the friendly doctor had talked to him solely because they were always slightly separated from the rest. Kirk was regularly talking to Spock. Spock had Uhura to talk to most days. Uhura would speak Scotty up and down in Gaelic. And being part of the navigators and the helmsman assigned to the Alpha shift, Hikaru and Pavel weren't allowed to take lunch at the same time.
But looking back now, with growing suspicion, Pavel could begin to see that Len talked to him for so many more reasons.
Reasons like Len being in love with Pavel.
Pavel remembered well the look that Len had given him when they had met on Altimir inside the USS Franklin. Pavel had assumed Len's expression was relief that he didn't have to treat Pavel for something more than a few bruises.
But now that he looked back, giving it more thought with all he now knew about the good doctor -it was apparent that Len's face held only a look of relief that Pavel was alive.
A million different memories of expressions on Len's face ran through Pavel's mind. All of them, ones he had seen on Len's face. Things Pavel had long dismissed as mere friendship.
Now that Pavel had understood and acknowledged his own feelings, he could read Len clear as day.
Len loved him.
Pavel slowly reached with the hand not in Len's grip for the button that raised the bed slowly to a sitting position. The bed moved slow enough not to jar Pavel too much; the tender new skin still fragile and painful when he moved.
Pavel bit down on a gasp somehow, when the bed finally came to a stop.
Len shifted again. This time his words were more of a displeased sound of grumbling and less like actual words. Len moved back, trying to reach down and curl into the blankets more.
He turned, and Pavel could now see his face. Len hadn't opened his eyes, but Pavel could see he was beginning to wake.
Pavel watched, amused, as Len's grip on his hand tightened slightly before Len stiffened as he became fully aware. Len's eyes flew open, and he sat up in a rush, but he did not jerk his hand away. Pavel was glad. He wasn't sure he could stand such a sudden movement.
Len looked at him with an unguarded expression of surprise, like he hadn't realized where he was and seeing Pavel wasn't something he expected. But despite his surprise, Len looked happy to see him.
Pavel saw when Len's brain finally woke up enough to process what was going on. His eyes lit up and his brow furrowed, and Pavel knew that meant the part of his brain that was reserved for "Doctor McCoy" was also awake. "What are you doing sitting up?" Len queried in a voice that was slightly deeper and heavy with sleep.
Pavel shivered at the sound. He had always liked Len's voice, but this deeper, rougher tone was a beautiful, thrilling sound.
Len frowned at the shiver that ran up Pavel's spine. He gave Pavel a once-over, as if checking to see if he was cold or uncomfortable. "You okay? You need a blanket…" Len trailed off as he realized there was a blanket tucked snugly around his shoulders. He looked confused as to why it was there.
Pavel smiled. "I don't," he said simply. "I would like some more pain relievers if that is possible? I hurt." While the pain had somewhat faded, it was still there and loomed with the promise to get worse the next time he moved.
Len nodded and moved to stand. Pavel gasped out when Len jarred his hand.
Len froze, looking at their joined hands. "I… Sorry," he apologized, looking profoundly embarrassed and at a loss for words.
He quickly but gently untangled their fingers, letting go before gently placing Pavel's hand back on the bed.
"Sorry," Len murmured again, a blush growing hot and bright on his face. "Didn't know what I was grabbing in my sleep."
Pavel smiled indulgently, not believing a single word. "Didn't say I minded it. Just don't move so quickly next time. I'm tender!" Pavel desperately wanted to hold hands again. He hoped he could convince Len of that.
Len was marvelous - one of the best men he'd ever known - and really, honestly, being nearly blown up should allow Pavel the right to ask out the man who had saved his life.
Len reached over to the machine that Pavel was hooked up to. He reassessed the drips of the medication that had kept Pavel pain free for the last several hours. He entered a few commands and immediately Pavel began to feel better.
"That should do it," Len said firmly. "Other than the pain Pasha, how are you feeling?"
Pavel felt his grin widen at Len's casual use of his diminutive . He loved it when Len called him Pasha. "Mostly tender and sore," he answered, mentally taking stock of all the aches, and delicate places he could feel on his skin
"That's the pain relievers talking," Len said ruefully. "We had to regenerate nearly half of all your epidermis. You had broken several ribs and a couple of other bones from the explosion. You also had lacerations and damage to your liver, heart, stomach, lower intestines, and a few other minor organs, as well as a fairly severe concussion."
As Len laid out the laundry list of his injuries, Pavel realized that Len was now cradling the hand that he had previously intertwined with Pavel's. He wasn't quite touching the palm, but still holding it as if Pavel's hand was something precious and made of glass. His left hand was flexing and relaxing, over and over again. It seemed as if Len was trying to memorize the feeling of Pavel's hand in his.
"Well…. Shit," Pavel finally said, now understanding the full extent of his injuries and why he hurt as much as he did.
The explosion had been terrible, and he could remember the burning pain all over and around him. He remembered trying to reach Riley, who was further away.
"I'm told that you blocked most of the blast by crouching behind a toolbox lid, and that prevented your death," Len said grimly, face stern.
Pavel grimaced. "Oh."
They were both silent for a few moments, both listening to the reassuring beep of the monitors that beat out a steady rhythm that assured them that Pavel was going to be okay.
Then Len took a deep breath, and something in his frame seemed to relax. Pavel had been Len's friend for so long that he understood what it meant. Len was no longer pushing his 'Doctor Self' forward. He was back to being just Len a very concerned man who had far too much medical knowledge that was probably sane for a man who cared for everyone this much.
And Pavel…
Well, he was in love with that man.
"You also showed up without food in your system, Pasha! Which honestly," Bones sidetracked, "that probably helped in keeping you under and sedated and without blood pressure issues but damnit Pasha! Eat when you're supposed to!" Len grumbled, frowning in frustration. "It's one of Jim's standing orders for a reason!"
Pavel felt relief run through him. If Len was going to lecture him on things that Pavel could have prevented rather than just be concerned for his safety, then Pavel was going to be alright, and even Len knew it.
"Then you should make sure I eat," Pavel replied without thinking. And then he felt his heart freeze. He hadn't meant to ask Len like this but Pavel wasn't about to back down now - not when this moment was here finally. His resolve solidified in his heart.
He would do this.
Even if it this wasn't exactly how he planned it.
The statement brought Len up short. He looked at Pavel confused. "… I already do?" he asked, with the universe's most adorable bemused expression on his face.
Pavel realized Len was thinking about his own tendency to drag the senior bridge crew to eat whenever they forgot. Which, while hilarious to watch when Len showed up on the bridge to drag both the XO and CO to lunch because they'd forgotten for the third day in a row while he bitched about listening to their own orders, that wasn't what Pavel was talking about.
"I mean on a date, Len," Pavel said, resolute. "I want to go on a date with you. And you can make sure that I eat." He held his breath, wondering what he would do if he was wrong about everything .
Len just stared at him for a long moment before falling back into the chair with an impressive thud. "What?" He looked like he'd just been punched across the jaw, his eyes wide and his expression stunned.
"Please go on a date with me?" Pavel rasped, the fear and anxiety beginning to bubble at the base of his ribcage. He hoped it was shock, and not something much worse. His brain was already running every worst case scenario it could think of. Pavel hoped against all hope that Len would say yes.
Len leaned back, looking at Pavel with an open and unguarded expression. "You're serious?" he asked, his voice sounding small, like he was afraid of the answer. "Please tell me you're serious?" His voice was nearly a whisper.
Pavel tried very hard to not be hurt by his question. He knew his romantic history wasn't the most stable, but he had never asked anyone out as a joke. "Yes."
Len was quiet for a long moment, allowing Pavel even more time to mentally talk himself out of his own beliefs regarding his findings about Len's behavior towards him over nearly their entire friendship.
"Pasha," he said, taking a breath and meeting Pavel's eyes with an expression of hope in them that raised Pavel's heart, "you've gotta mean this. I've been in love with you for years." He said as he reached out and retook Pavel's hand. His tone was rough and his expression brutally honest, and Pavel felt his heart pounding in his chest.
Years .
Len had loved him for years .
Pavel's attention fell to their connection. Len's grip was just as warm as it had been earlier and for a million different reasons, it made Pavel so damn happy.
Pavel understood the sentiment, (Pavel would be afraid too, if all his dreams were just handed to him on a platter) and all of his remaining hurt melted away like a spring thaw in St. Petersburg. Len was scared - but also hopeful. He wasn't asking out of malice or judgement. He was asking because Pasha was right.
Leonard McCoy was in love with Pavel Chekov, and had been for years . He looked like he couldn't quite believe that Pavel was offering him something he definitely wanted. Pavel had long known that Len's exwife had deeply hurt him when she broke her promise of forever. One of the few times Pavel had seen Len well and truly plastered, drunk to the point of forgetting what he did, Len had just talked about forever and how it had meant something to him. How it had meant the world to a younger Bones.
It hurt Pavel deeply to remember how, as the Captain and Spock had dragged Len away from his place in the rec room, Len had just muttred that he didn't place much stock in forever anymore. He had been hurt to much.
If Len had been falling for years, then Pavel did understand where Len was coming from.
"I've been falling for weeks, Len," Pavel explained gently, his voice full of his newly discovered love bubbling in his lungs "I want this. I want to see if this can last. I want to see if we have that chance at forever. That chance that Hikaru and Ben have. That Scotty and Uhura have. And the chance the Captain and the Commander have, whenever they finally realize it." He added as an afterthought.
Bones' expression took a hit of a laugh, a surprised flash of humor running across his face, and Pavel felt his whole body warm at the sight of it. Pavel wanted that chance at forever he could taste it.
He wanted to know if Len felt the same way.
Pavel took a deep breath in spite of the pain and smiled. "I want you, Len. Will you give that chance of forever too? I think I can give all that I have if you do too."
Len's eyes never moved from Pavel's. It felt like Len was looking into Pavel's soul. And that was fine because while he may not have realized it until recently, but Len owned Pavel's soul in the same way Pavel owned Len's. "You'd better be ready, Pasha, because I love you. And yes , I want that date." Len smiled.
It was one of the most beautiful smiles Len had ever given Pavel. It was slow, but not small. It spread across Len's face like a dawn breaking, making him look years younger. If Pavel wasn't already so damn in love with Len then that look alone would have done it.
Because Len used to smile at Pavel before like Pavel was the best thing that had ever existed in the world.
Pavel smiled back now and Len's grin had changed into something else. This smile was different. This was softer and more content. This was pure, unadulterated love and Pavel would be stupid to ignore it. He could live with both the expressions for the rest of his life.
Or forever. What ever came first.
"Once I get out of this bed, Leonard McCoy, I'm taking you on the best date ever," Pavel promised.
Len laughed softly. "I'm sure that you will. Once you get released from medical." His grin took on an edge of mischievousness and he gently squeezed Pavel's hand lightly. "Which," he added, "as your doctor, I can tell you won't be soon."
Pavel pouted, though he hadn't really expected anything different. Since he'd started the extra medical training with Len, Pavel had begun to understand what went on with his body when it was injured, and the way he felt now was a dead giveaway that he was going to spend more time in bed than normal. He wasn't going to push his body too fast.
"But there is something I can do for you," Len grinned and Pavel felt his brow furrow. It wasn't like Len could speed up his healing process, at least not any more than he was already trying. He was about to pose a question when Len leaned forward and pressed his lips gently against Pavel's. Pavel melted at the sensation of Len's lips against his.
Pavel smiled into the kiss.
This was definitely something Len could do. And Pavel really liked it.
Spock watched as Jim manually closed the door to the private room in medical. It slid shut with nothing more than a wisp of a sound.
"Bones and Chekov are fine," Jim said, smiling softly. He brushed against Spock as he walked away. Spock could feel a slight hum of happiness emanating from Jim. But there was also a sense of loss and loneliness. And a determination to ignore something.
"Jim what is -," Spock began to ask, but Jim pushed past him, throwing him a smile. It pained Spock at his core - tt was an empty smile.
"Later, Spock," Jim waved him off as he left the med bay. "We'll talk later."
Spock stood still, watching Jim leave. He wasn't sure waiting until 'later' would be a smart thing to do.
The one he loved was hurting and determined to ignore his own pain. Spock wasn't sure what he was supposed to do to fix it, but he would certainly try.
His chosen but not accepted mate must be taken care of when he wouldn't care for himself. Spock would care for Jim when Jim wouldn't.
Spock was perfect material for a good mate, and if Jim was ever going to see that, then Spock would have to do something. He would start by being there for Jim. He may not fully understand the emotions that Jim had, or where they had come from, but there was something clearly bothering him.
Spock followed Jim out of the med bay and back to Jim's quarters.
Jim hadn't locked them, but Spock knocked none the less.
The answer of "Come in, Spock. I know it's you." wasn't a surprise.
Spock entered the room carefully. Jim was standing on the far side near the replicators. He was holding a shot glass.
"I thought I said later, Spock," Jim sighed, placing the empty glass on the table.
"Is it not later than before?" Spock asked, knowing Jim knew full well Spock had understood his meaning, but Spock was purposefully using Jim's words against him. He was rewarded with the smile Jim usually wore when Spock acted, as Jim would call it, 'like a smart-ass'.
Jim flashed him his trademark amused smile, but it was tired, signaling that a t least he wasn't bothered by Spock's intrusion.
"I guess it is," Jim laughed flatly. He reached for a bottle of something that Spock didn't recognize on sight, but assumed must have been alcohol as Jim poured it into the shot glass. Jim, seeing Spock's eyes following his movement, gestured to his full shot glass. "Want one?"
Spock shook his head with a negative. While most of the Terran alcohol did agree with his preferred flavor profiles, he didn't want any right now.
Jim shrugged and knocked back the shot, quick and efficient.
"One for Bones, and one for Scotty. Here's to them." Jim murmured, before pouring himself one more. Spock wondered if Jim thought Spock couldn't hear him. Spock's hearing was still better than most. He wondered if he should stop Jim.
Before Spock could say something, (what Spock was going to say, he didn't know), Jim took the last shot.
"And one for me. And my damn heart," Jim muttered once he finished the last of the alcohol.
Spock had known that Mr. Scott, Doctor McCoy, and Jim had gone drinking together whenever they were on shore leave - and sometimes when they were off duty at the same time on the ship - but he had never known why.
Mr. Scott had begun to date Nyota almost three weeks ago. The day after leaving Yen'bu.
Doctor McCoy was now clearly engaged in a romantic relationship with Mr. Chekov.
Spock realized that Jim was alone. His friends had all found love. They no longer drank to forget their emotions. Jim was alone.
Who held Jim's heart so much that Jim sought out alcohol to deal with it?
Spock realized he now understood why they drank. That thought caused his heart to constrict painfully.
Jim seemed to sway for a moment. Spock didn't think that the alcohol was that strong but three shots in quick succession would do something to a human no matter their age and tolerance.
Spock made a decision.
If whoever held Jim's heart wasn't reciprocating, then Spock would merely have to prove himself a better choice. Spock would have to take the other party into account as he tried to court Jim. It wasn't much of a difference than before. Spock merely had competition that wasn't interested in the best person Spock had ever known.
But Spock would start the challenge of proving himself the better choice by putting Jim first right now, when Jim needed his support the most.
"Jim, would you care to play a game of chess?" Spock offered. Spending time with Jim always lifted his spirits, and Spock knew that quality time was a heavy point in the favor of potential mates. And while Jim knew of his intelligence, being able to battle together with their wits would remind Jim that Spock was a match for his ingenuity far more than any other potential suitors. .. Along with providing them food, "Perhaps while we eat something? It has been some time since we ate last."
Jim looked up at him and nodded. "Sure, sounds good. I'm so hungry, I can hear my stomach growling! Let me get some food for us." Jim pressed the right code for the replicator to create both his and Spock's preferred late-night dishes. He moved from the replicator to the desk, the only real space to play a game. "Um. You might be better at setting the game up though. I'm starting to feel those shots."
Spock knew this wouldn't be a long game, between the lack of sleep for both of them, the fading adrenaline and the alcohol, they would finish playing soon after eating. "I will." He started to set up the board. He didn't care. They would be fine.
Spock would prove he's the best choice for Jim.
It didn't matter who had caused Jim to drink to forget heartbreak. Spock would prove he was better.
HELLO! I hope I didn't keep Y'all waiting for too long! Real life got kinda crazy! I just got home from deployment (less than a week ago~! it's so good to be stateside!) and transitioning back to being home has been a bit of a good challenge. I hope you all enjoy. The chapter is a song from Phantom of the Opera.
Notes about chapter seven/eight: I've taken extream liberties with both reality and Star Trek. As I've said before, I am a navy sailor, so some parts of my fics are sprinkled with facts such as the 1MC from the last chapter. (not anything classified or that, just practical realities of military life)
The Enterprise is a Ship. Fires on ships on water are A BAD THING. Like it will kill you if you don't control that shit. Fire on board a vessel in SPACE is an even WORSE thing. Trust me on this; I have history to back me up.
That being said, I can't imagine that Starfleet (which seems to operate as a military despite its non-military mission) won't have firefighting suits ALL OVER THE PLACE. Especially in engineering. I know it's not a dramatic or cool thing to see people suiting up into a big bulky fire retardant suit before running into engineering to save people but I'm practical, and that's what happens in reality.
For the response from medical: again its cool to see the lead surgeon (the CMO) rush into the mess but Mccoy is a surgeon when the action gets going rough, he's probably not in engineering looking for the injured, he's in medbay, Prepping to save them. He's got a team of people he's trained to triage on the X and get them to medical ASAP. That's partly why lower enlisted exist. We do shit to make the job easier for others. In this case, damage control for medical.
Also the 6-line thing: the report I use here is actually a combination of two reports that exist in reality. One is called the NineLine. The 9Line is designed to call for medical help and extraction, and what priory and things like that. Basically its like "I am here. This is who I am. This is how many and how bad injuries I have in order of badness. This is what we need to get them onboard safely. This is how many patients and if they can walk on or not. This is if we are under fire or not. This is how you'll know its us. This is who our patients are (military/ civilian/ nationality/ pow). This is if we are NBC contaminated/what the terrain is." this is also said in code. Because nothing kills persons ability to fight like knowing your buddy is dead or dying and there's nothing you can do about it. Something we have to deal with sometimes. The other report I used was a MIST report. That report is when a corpsman or a medic gets on scene, and you tell them what happened with the injury and what you've done about it.
The ship version I made up is different because one, 'hey fanfiction' and two, as the ship is a smaller space, I think the information needed will be different.
As a non-maintenance/ non-navy related idea: the recording from Hiroshi Saito is from Tarsus. That's why Jim has it. It won't be important, but I wanted people to know that's how it came to be. (shameless self-plug: if you wish to read more from me about Tarsus, then please check out History Has Its Eyes On You. its all about tarsus and Kevin Reiley and has a whole lot of pairings too.)
once again, GAINT thank you to B0kunoAnime on tumblr for being my AMAZING beta! :D :D ::D
also I'm also on tumblr at asailordreamingbeyondthehorizon.tumblr.com!
enjoy~!
Chapter 9: Quarter Past Midnight
Two hours after arriving at Starbase 180.
Nyota was sure the first thing she wanted to do was go back to her quarters and sleep.
Scotty seemed to agree. But sadly, they were still on the Starbase, arguing over the repairs to the HECS. The base techs seemed to be at a loss at where to start when it came to the extensive damage.
Scotty and the lead repair tech had been arguing for the last hour about where to start, and had gotten nowhere.
Nyota was sure that Scotty was correct - but she was a communications officer, not an engineer - so Nyota was also confident that the lead tech would ignore her opinion.
In fact, the only opinion other than her own that the lead repair technician seemed to take seriously at all was Captain Kirk's. The woman hadn't pulled her eyes away from the Captain when he had explained the situation an hour ago before he left with Spock. If Nyota had to hear 'Yes, Captain Kirk!" in that breathy tone one more time…
The woman was insistent that only her techs should work on the repairs. "Mr. Scott. I don't care that your people have worked on the Enterprise since you were put in charge of the Engineering. They clearly don't know anything, or the HECS would still be in one piece."
Scotty gasped like he had been physically struck.
"Now see here," Scotty started to say, his voice starting to rise in anger. If Nyota didn't do something this whole meeting would end up in a fist fight.
A sudden idea stuck her; Nyota placed a hand on his arm and Scotty froze.
Nyota looked at the woman; she was glaring at Scotty like Scotty was the cause of the explosion that damaged the ship. And Scotty was scowling right back.
"We'll call the Capitan over to get this cleared up," Nyota said, in a tone of voice that most of the Enterprise's crew would understand. The tone of 'follow my lead, if you want to get out of this.' She followed it up with the code phrase the senior bridge crew created after being held hostage with guards one too many times. The phrase was code for 'Just trust me," "The Enterprise's Captain will help us. He's not meeting with the Vulcan delegation for at least another half hour."
The woman paled.
"Aye. He'll make it over here soon, or it'll have to wait until the Captain's meeting with the Admiral. After that." Scotty added, following along with Nyota's lead. He may not have known where Nyota was going, but he would follow her lead, Nyota knew. He was the one who thought up the redundancy of their code phrase. Even if Kirk was hostage along with them, the phrase worked. (If Kirk was also a captive, Spock was usually the one to save them in that case.)
Both of them looked at each other and nodded. "The Captain won't be happy. To be bothered like this. But I'm sure we can deal with him." Nyota said.
The woman frowned. "What do you mean he won't be happy." It wasn't a question, but Nyota answered it anyway.
"Well, he knows that Scotty here was going to make sure his team was the one working on the repairs. Captain Kirk wanted Scotty, because then Scotty will know and understand the new HECS. Right Scotty?" Nyota asked. She glanced at Scotty who was doing his best to keep a straight face.
"Aye. Captain Kirk has placed his trust in me to learn the new HECS," Scotty repeated, solemnly.
While their words were the truth, Nyota knew neither of them would just ordinarily throw Kirk's name around like this. Kirk would, of course, hear about this later.
Nyota would probably tell Jim about this while Spock was in the room so she could watch the fun. Spock would probably try to hide his 'I'm a good mate. Not her!' expressions and fail entirely, and Kirk would still miss them somehow. The whole situation would be incredibly hilarious.
"Fine." The woman huffed. "Mr. Scott and his team can stay. But only them. I don't need some know-nothings around here, trying to make a mess." She crossed her arms and glared at Nyota and Scotty.
"I think that's the best we'll get, love." Scotty murmured to her under his breath.
Nyota hummed in agreement. He was right, the Starbase engineering team probably wouldn't give any more ground. Especially this woman. She was already too angry at them. If using her clear hero worship of Kirk was only able to get them just Scotty and three others…
Damn. Nyota had hoped to help for a little while before the meeting with the Vulcans.
"You promise next shore leave we'll get some time off?" She asked, knowing she had responsibilities this shore leave too.
The lower crew would have the shore leave on the Starbase. The senior crew had shit to do, as the common saying went.
Scotty smiled and nodded, "Aye, love. And since the HECS will be fixed after shore leave, we can work on the communication system too. I'll see you tonight at the formal dinner."
"Remember to get out of here soon enough to get cleaned up for dinner. The Vulcan's are very particular about eating with grease," Nyota reminded, teasing.
Scotty laughed. "I forgot once, three years ago, and everyone and their Ma have to remind me now! The Captain AND Mr. Spock have already warned me to be on time." He smiled at her.
"Mr. Scott. Any time now please?" the Engineer said, her tone impatient. She was glaring at them both with an annoyed expression,her arms crossed. Nyota had to leave. Making the woman even more angry would be a problem that Scotty would be left to deal with.
"I'm coming." Scotty groused, exchanging a quick speaking look with nyota before pressing a quick kiss to her temple, and Nyota leaned into the gesture with a soft smile. Then Scotty stepped back, and Nyota waved him along.
Scotty would be fine, Nyota knew perfectly well.
She watched him leave back into the Enterprise with the Engineer. Once they had disappeared into the ship, Nyota turned on her heel and headed to the Starfleet base Command Offices.
Kirk had asked her to be there when they met with the Vulcans, along with Sulu.
He had also asked for McCoy, but McCoy had shut that suggestion down with a glare. Apparently, he was going to spend lots of time in the base medical fixing their crewman.
Chekov was still with McCoy in the med bay. And Scotty was going to fix the HECS.
So, it was just going to be her, Sulu, Kirk and Spock.
Just the Alpha shift bridge crew, more or less, were meant to greet the Vulcans. But the dinner that night would be all of the crew.
And based on the conversations Nyota had held with Jim for the past week, in-between dealing with the HECS and that negligent engineering crewman, Kirk had been quietly trying not to panic (and failing) over the Vulcan's visit.
As she entered the building, she saw Sulu near the lifts. He waved at her as she got into speaking range.
"Morning, Uhura," Sulu said, smiling at her.
"Good morning," she said back. "Where's your other half?"
It was starting to become strange not seeing Ben with Hikaru Sulu. They were a partnership that seemed hard to know where one began and the other one ended.
Sulu had changed since the experiment of letting Starfleet families on board the Enterprise had begun.
And Nyota was glad for it.
Something had always struck her as lonely when she watched Sulu while they had been away in space. He had always been happy and gregarious, and close friends with Chekov, but something had always struck Nyota as always off . It was as if he had always been living with a piece missing, always looking to his side for someone who wasn't there.
But now that Ben and Demora Sulu were on board the ship, by Hikaru's side for the next five years, Sulu had reclaimed that missing piece.
"Ben and Demora are going to be at the Starbase amusement park," Sulu said. Together they walked into the lift that leads to the upper conference floors. "Mora's been excited about it for the last week. She been talking about lt like its Disneyland in Los Angeles, but it's just this little small thing."
Nyota nodded. "How is Demora holding up? After the explosion?"
Sulu shrugged in a 'what can you do' motion. "About as well as she can, I think. She had a nightmare the first night after, but hasn't had any since. Ben and I are watching out for any signs of post-traumatic stress." They had reached the lift and Sulu paused to let Nyota enter. He was still smiling as he followed her in. "I'm not too worried though. She's resilient."
"She is," Nyota agreed with a warm smile. "What about Ben? I can't imagine that being a civilian on a starship like the USS Enterprise can be easy."
Sulu laughed, a bright and happy sound. "Ben's having so much fun! He's written two papers and has the kids in the Crèche to work with. I honestly think he's going to take over my botany department. He keeps saying that i could so much more"
Nyota laughed along with Sulu, she was glad that Ben was enjoying himself. The Alpha Shift Bridge crew always enjoyed the few times that Ben had been able to join them on their adventures, usually in on a starbase or on earth. Nyota was glad that Ben was able to find himself a place on the Enterprise.
Before the start of this five year mission, nyota had worried that the spouses and families would have a difficult time adjusting, especially Ben, who was used to working in a lab everyday with his own Botany experiments. But everyone seemed to have adjusted smoothly to the ship.
"Tomorrow he's going to take some time for himself, and I'm going to get a full day with Demora. We're going to the movies, and maybe we'll spend some time at the dance studio the base has," Sulu looked excited as the doors to the lift opened up to the conference room's level. "Ben has her most days while I'm on duty, so I haven't had some papa-daughter time in a while."
Nyota could almost feel the happiness that rolled off of him in waves. She was glad that Sulu could spend time with his daughter while on Starbase 180. After the experience with the HECS it was nice to see someone from Alpha bridge crew experiencing some rest and relaxation.
But first, they had to get through this .
They both paused at the door of the conference room, Sulu schooling his face into his bridge officer expression - the one he wore during every call Kirk took on the bridge. Nyota wished Scotty was with her.
Meetings like this were always better with Scotty.
She opened the door to a handful of Vulcans, a few members of Starfleet, and Spock already in the room, waiting.
About ten minutes after the start of mission briefing
Spock refrained from looking at the door with impatience.
Two people were missing from the briefing.
One of them being the Admiral in command of Starbase 180, and the other was Spock's own Captain.
Spock knew that Jim had a meeting with Admiral Hernandez just before the planned meeting with the Vulcan delegation about the damage that had been inflicted on the Enterprise by Crewman Kent. That meeting shouldn't have run late.
Spock hoped that his concern and agitation wasn't showing on his face as he spoke to the Leader of the Vulcan delegation.
It wasn't like Jim to be late for a meeting like this.
"Commander." The Vulcan leader, Renank spoke. "As your Captain and the Admiral have yet to arrive, may we discuss the project I have contacted you about recently?" Renank was an older Vulcan who had survived Vulcan's destruction because he was off planet.
Spock respected him greatly. "We may. I've received the first of the data packets with the Terran literature."
"As I had sent the data before the damage occurred to the Enterprise, I was concerned that they did not arrive," Renank said. He took the padd that was on the table and opened up a program. "I've also been informed that we have found physical books that will also need processing. Will you be able to handle physical books along with your duties to the damaged Enterprise?"
Renank, Spock felt, wasn't asking out of some sense that Spock wasn't going to be able to handle the workload because Spock was somehow less. He was asking out of an actual concern that Spock wasn't going to be able to complete the project with the damage to the Enterprise from the explosion.
Spock nodded, "I will be able to handle the books. The Chief Engineering officer will be handling most of the repairs."
"Understood. I will arrange for the books to be separated from the rest of the literature we have found," Renank said. "We have found more physical artifacts then we anticipated."
Spock tilted his head in curiosity. This delegation was one of several that Spock knew of who were searching for Vulcans' lost past. They had been sorting out cultural treasures from traders, private collectors, and a few museums.
If they had found more than they thought, then Spock was pleased. It meant more people were willing to part with the treasures or there was more on the market than previously thought.
"As I gathered when you sent a revised request for more than one cargo bay," Spock responded to Renank. "I am pleased with the development." He was. His father had explained that, understandably, the Vulcan species had lost more data than could ever be replaced. But there was hope that delegations, such as the one Renank was leading, could find more data and information stored in of servers or libraries which had been saved off-planet.
"Indeed." Renank said. "It has been a fortuitous event." He paused and handed Spock the padd, the listing of the physical books that Spock will be working with open on the screen.
Spock briefly glanced down the list. Some of the titles he could already dismiss as useless to the project, as they were propaganda. Earth, just after the first contact, had some strong Xenophobic factions that had promoted lies about Vulcan and its culture as hearsay to try and prevent peaceful relations. Such factions were unheard of in the present, but their literature was a constant reminder of their past.
Some of the titles on the list were children's books that may or may not become a source of useful information. Spock made a mental note to look them up first. That would go the quickest.
Some of the titles were in Vulcan, and that would be a complicated read for Jim. Although, Spock knew his Captain well, and if Jim Kirk ever turned down a challenge, then it would be a surprise. Jim might just learn how to read Vulcan for this project.
Spock was profoundly grateful that he had asked Jim to be part of this project. Jim would help him sort the information and determine what was genuine cultural writings, and what wasn't.
The project would give Spock a place to showcase to Jim that he would be a good mate, because of his intelligence and loyalty. That wasn't his intent when he had asked Jim originally, but it was going to be an excellent outcome, nonetheless.
Spock had been working on showing Jim that he was the best mate for Jim over the last several weeks. The explosion in engineering made it simultaneously a more difficult task, and somehow easier at the same time. For the past few days, Jim had needed to be reminded to eat as he kept getting caught up in everything: from the projects for repairing the damage done to engineering, to conversations with Starfleet about what to do with crewman Kent, and making sure the rest of the ship was still running smoothly.
Spock had been doing his very best to make sure that Jim ate, showing that he was a skilled provider. Spock made sure that Jim slept, proving that he cared for Jim's welfare. He made sure that the ship ran as smoothly as possible - and that the crew was doing their best without being strained to the point of weakness and breaking. He cared about the crew as much as Jim did.
But it wasn't enough.
All of Spock's actions weren't out of character, and were already things he had done before attempting to prove his worthiness as a romantic partner to Jim. Yet nothing had shown Jim that he was clearly a better choice than whoever had driven Jim to drink to deal with his feelings.
And this project was going to show just that. Jim might see that Spock cared enough to share his culture with Jim. This project was more significant than both of them, and that was something precious.
Jim would understand that and, maybe if Spock was lucky, he would see what Spock was offering.
If not, then it was a start. Winning Jim's affection and love would be a long battle, one that Spock was willing to fight.
"Commander Spock, this is one of my students," Renank said, catching Spock's attention. "He is the one who found many of the physical books."
A tall Vulcan strode up to them. While most of the Vulcans in the room were wearing simple clan robes of some sort, as this was a diplomatic meeting and not extremely important, this man was wearing robes of lower social strata.
Vulcan society may have changed since the destruction of their home planet, but some habits were harder to break than others.
Social strata were one of them. It was long ingrained into their society. Although out of necessity, that was changing too. Spock didn't foresee the changes being complete until well in the future. Vulcans of every strata had survived, as communities prioritized who should escape the planet - by skill set, or who were children. However even with the changes in their society and culture, some of the differences were still prevalent.
Spock felt a sense of remembrance when he looked at Renank's student. Spock was thankful for Vulcan's perfect memory. He knew he had met the student as a child. However, it still took a moment for Spock to place the face accurately.
"This is my senior student, who was with me while I was off planet," Renank introduced, "Jolvek, Commandeer Spock." The tall Vulcan nodded, his eyes on Spock. Jolvek's eyes weren't as blank as the others - there was something else in them too.
"Commander Spock," Jolvek greeted, holding up the ta'al. "I believe you are Spock, Son of Sarek and Amanda?"
Spock stood, returning the gesture, momentarily surprised. Most Vulcans would just acknowledge the father of a person, not both parents. His mother was also often forgotten by most because of her race. "I am."
"Then I believe we went to school concurrently for a period of time," Jolvek said.
And that was when the memory of a young Vulcan, of lower social strata but not lower intelligence, surfaced in Spock's mind. They had indeed gone to school at the same time. Jolvek was younger than Spock, they had not shared the same learning pod's or the lessons that were taught, but Spock did remember him.
And Spock remembered how he had also done nothing when the other Vulcans had spent their time trying to provoke him, tormenting him and bullying him in attempts to elicit an emotional response. Spock could not forget the surety Jolvek had possessed of his own superiority.
"I believe we did." Spock agreed cautiously. Something about Jolvek was, as Jim would put it, 'setting off alarm bells'. "You are the one who found the books?" He didn't say any more. The school was not a time in his life that Spock liked to remember. Even someone who did nothing to bully him wasn't a person that Spock wanted to reminisce with - as they had done nothing to help him either.
Still, if Jolvek had been included on this delegation then perhaps his opinions had changed. It would be illogical to condemn him before evidence appeared
"I am, I have long had a particularly interested in Terran-Human culture. I had previously established contacts with traders and sellers who were willing to part with their collections, or who were able to find more." Jolvek said.
He met Spock's eyes for a more extended period of time than necessary. Spock refrained from frowning at the other Vulcan.
"I see," Spock murmured. He wasn't interested in where the books came from; he was fine knowing that they existed at all, but Jim might be interested.
"I am satisfied to have my work in the capable skills of yours, Commander Spock," Jolvek said. "I was unable to parse some of the more… Nonsensically written books from the time of the first contact. I believe that you may help me understand the topics brought up."
Spock eyed Jolvek. There was something off about the way Jolvek was acting toward him. He just didn't know what.
"Once I've gone through the literature and have created the report, you will read it," Spock said mildly. Jim would be a co-author of course. He knew instinctively that Jim would be creating all sorts of ideas and topics and theories, only by reading all of the books presented.
"I will hope for an in-person debrief," Jolvek said, reaching out to take the padd back.
Spock calmly handed him the padd. Jolvek slid his hand up the padd to brush their fingertips together.
Spock immediately moved his hand away, giving up the padd with a suddenness that would have been noticed by others in the room if not for the arrival of Captain Kirk and the Admiral.
The feeling of Jolvek's hand and mind jarred Spock. He hadn't expected it, but he could now tell that he was being flirted with in the Vulcan way.
Spock could feel Jolvek's interest. Jolvek wasn't as telepathically strong as Spock was. Few were. But he must have gotten something from the brief contact as he had a slightly satisfied air about him as Jim walked up to them.
Spock fought the urge to just take Jim's hand in a Vulcan kiss, to declare that he was taken and to wipe the feeling of Jolvek's mind from his. While the first and contact from Jolvek weren't terrible, Spock wasn't interested, and the sensations were jarring.
He would have to work on his shielding.
"Spock! Sorry, we're late," Jim said as he drew near. " I had to deal with another Captain with an issue."
Now that Jim was so close, his emotions practically jumped from him to Spock. Spock let the feelings of his love run over him. Jim was stressed. Jim's thoughts were harder to read. The call he had to deal with was about Kent and … Captain Warrington? Maybe. Jim was calming down, and it was a good feeling to experience.
"It is no matter, Captain." Spock said, turning to the assembled group. "This is Leader Renank and his student, Jolvek."
Jim gave a correct Ta'al and received the gesture in turn.
Admiral Hernandez cleared their throat. They were smiling but slightly harried looking too. "If we could get started Gentlemen, ladies, and genteel beings. We've got a lot to cover."
"Yes, of course, Admiral," Jim nodded. He took a quick look around for a headcount as he went to his seat.
Spock sat, and saw Nyota across from him. She raised an eyebrow, and her eyes flicked to Jolvek. Spock raised an eyebrow back and silently agreed to meet her later to discuss this turn of events.
After he spent some time with Jim.
Meanwhile in star base 180's medical facilities
Bones did his best not to hover.
But he wasn't the one healing Pasha, and that was hard. Pasha was currently in one of the most state of the art biobeds getting the last of the burns and internal damage fixed. Riley was right next to Pasha in a similar biobed, both of them unconscious and still.
Bones hated it.
He wasn't able to help them. He was now forced to rely on a team that wasn't his to fix his own crew.
Bones had led the transport of all of the patients with injuries from the explosion to the medical facilities on the Starbase. Bones refused to call it a hospital.
But it did have a far better, more capable system the what was on the Enterprise. He glanced at the digital readout that was scrolling data at quick pace and took in what the readings were showing.
It was all good things. Riley was healing faster, which wasn't a surprise, he had been far enough away that his burns weren't nearly as bad as Pasha's. M'benga had done a damned good job fixing the wounds. Riley wouldn't even scar when the biobed was done with him.
Pasha, on the other hand, would carry the scars for a while.
But Bones would fix them, or they would fade. He always did.
"You know they'll be fine Doctor," came Chapel's voice from behind him.
Bones shifted in his place by the doorway of Pasha and Riley's room to look at his head nurse with a sad smile. "I know, but it's still hard to not be leading that charge."
She nodded in return, understanding.
Together they watched the medical team from the Starbase work on their patients. While Bones was their primary doctor, he also was unfamiliar with the new biobeds. He wasn't going to damage his patients - or hurt Pasha.
Part of this trip would be learning how to use the beds and getting one installed on the Enterprise.
But for now, Bones just watched.
"How's the report on the families going?" He asked Chapel. More to distract himself with work than anything else. He would read the report of the first six months soon, but right now, this was a blessed distraction.
She smiled like she knew what he was doing and handed him the report on the pads she was carrying. "So far so good. The crew members with families on board are showing to be healthier mentally and physically than before. While the families themselves are all adjusting well and honestly, haven't been shaken by things. It's very promising."
Bones had to smile at that. "Good. Hopefully, the next five years works out well for everyone."
"Maybe you'll get to bring Joanna for a while next time we're near Earth?" Chapel said.
And Bones honestly felt his heart stop at the thought.
He could see introducing Joanna to Pavel. They had met before, but this time he would be presenting Pavel as his partner. As his lover. As his boyfriend? If that didn't sound far too young for Bones.
Joanna would probably enjoy spending some time on the Enterprise away from her mother. According to Jocelyn's last communication, they had been fine. But according to Joanna's previous message they'd been fighting more. Bones believed that it was a mix of teenage angst and her mother being difficult.
Maybe he could get Joanna for a summer.
"Maybe," Bones smiled, unwilling to say more - he didn't want to get his heart and hopes up.
Chapel sent him a smile that said his attempts at staying cool weren't very good. She saw right through him.
Bones shook his head. He had a great team.
Pavel shifted on the bed and Bones was at his side in an instant. He didn't honestly care that it might have been a little impetus to do so. He was a man in love.
"Doctor, I'm going to check on the others. I'll get you if you're needed," Chapel said in farewell as she turned to walk away. Bones could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke. Chapel may have not known about Bones' feelings in the same way Jim or Scotty did, but she clearly understood it on some level.
Bones nodded. "Please do, Chapel." He watched her go and returned his attention as Pasha began to wake up.
Pasha's eyes opened slowly,and he smiled up at Bones. "Hi, Len." His voice was hoarse and scratchy with disuse.
Bones was helpless to the smile that spread across his face. "Good morning, sleeping beauty," he reached out and brushed at the curls that were messy on top of Pasha's head.
Pavel sleepily grinned.
"So how much longer, Doctor?" Pasha asked. There was a note of hope in his voice. He wanted to leave the med bay, Pavel had spent the last two weeks in the med bay on the ship. He was eager to go.
Bones found that when Pasha called him "Doctor," it was a like a line had been drawn. Pavel was his patient in those moments and Bones liked that. He could deal with the realities of being in love with his patient without it tripping into permanent over protectiveness. It was a good way for both of them to compartmentalize.
Bones could work with just a little amount of over-protectiveness. But he couldn't help it. Pasha was injured. He was overprotective of all of the sick and wounded of the Enterprise.
"The team says you and Riley will be out by the end of the day. You may still be tired for a few days, but you'll be fine by the time shore leave ends," Bones told him, repeating what the doctor in charge of the ward had told him. The readings from Pavel's bed said the same.
Pavel nodded. "Good, because I've got plans for you, Len, and I don't want your worry to get in the way." He sent an almost seductive look at Bones. He played up the leer into something comical.
Bones laughed loudly, and light entering his chest. "I can only hope these plans of yours match up with mine!"
Pasha just grinned up at him from his bed, unable to keep a serious expression for long as Bones was finding out. When Pasha was off the bridge and not working, he smiled much more than frowned. Bones delighted in finding out parts of Pasha he hadn't seen before, despite being friends for so long.
Bones didn't stop smiling himself, but he did have to admit to the hot lash of want that ran through him at the thought of the plans he and Pavel might have.
There was a ping from the padd in Bones hand's, distracting him from whatever he might have said.
"It's from Jim…" Bones said as he looked at the message. "It's actually for you, Pasha-love." He hadn't meant for the endearment to slip out, but he was an old Southern man. Endearments just tended to happen.
Pasha turned bright red at the escaped endearment. His smile turned from laughing to something softer and happier - if that was even possible. Bones liked that look on him.
Pavel looked like a man in love and Bones was still damn happy he was somehow so damn lucky that Pavel loved him.
"Oh? What does the Captain want?" Pavel asked, as he shifted in his bed and reached up and took Bones hand.
Bones absently intertwined their fingers together.
"They want to talk to you about that argument we saw a while ago between Warrington and Kent. And maybe talk about that dinner you went to with Captain Warrington," he said as he read the padd. He was little trepidatious about bringing this topic up. "They also want to speak to Riley, as he was working with Kent."
Pavel's last ex was in the middle of something big that had somehow caused an explosion in engineering that had nearly killed two crewmen, and injured forty more.
Pavel didn't stiffen up or even make a move that he had registered Bones' words. Then he shook his head, as if clearing a thought, and squeezed Bones' hand. "The investigators?"
Bones shook his head in the negative. "The admiralty and Jim. Mainly. I think something big is happening if the issues got pushed up that high." Bones didn't voice his suspicion that Captain Warrington wasn't going to be a Captain for much longer.
Starfleet wasn't about to let family drama do this much damage without repercussions. Especially if the person responsible was being emotionally devastated and had been ordered not to tell anyone.
Because Bones had learned from Jim that Kent had been ordered by his father to never reveal their relationship to anyone - and that if he mentioned their relationship to anyone on the Enterprise, he would be fired and cut off from his sister and their family.
No wonder Kent went from a perfect crewman to distracted problem child overnight.
Bones knew that Kent was in trouble, but Captain Warrington wasn't going to get out of the investigation unscathed either.
"I can do that," Pasha said. "As long as it's alright with my doctor?" he asked with a hopeful note.
Bones had to laugh. "Yes, it's alright with your doctor to talk to them tomorrow." His tone was playful. "But I get you to myself for several hours after that. I want to take you on a date." He paused, and then realizing what he said, "If that's alright with you?"
Pavel was nodding an affirmative before Bones had even finished his question. "Yes, please! A date with you would be wonderful."
Bones leaned forward from his place in the chair and pressed his forehead against Pasha's. Pasha leaned into the touch. "I'm going to take you on the best date you've ever been on."
Pavel smiled, and Bones could feel it on his skin. "Looking forward to it, Len."
As Chekov left, he was moving slowly, still clearly healing. Bones had stood by Chekov's side for the entire interview, both of the men in their gray service uniforms.
Jim had been relieved to find out the Admiralty didn't want the full-dress uniforms, despite how good everyone looked in their colors and braids. Jim himself was dressed in his service uniform.
Jim sighed and glanced at Admiral Hernández. On the screen behind them were Admirals Kormack and Chase, all of them looking serious and solemn in their own service grays.
Kormack looked ready to start swearing. Chase didn't seem much more composed. Hernández just sighed in tandem with Jim. They returned his gaze with a sad look before they turned around and faced the other two Admirals.
Jim wasn't going to be the one to start speaking. Not with this group. Plus, he was only present on 'observational' status.
He had already given his testimony. Chekov and Riley were the last ones.
Now that they had all had their say, all Jim could do was watch and answer any questions.
"We've heard all the testimonies" Chase started. "I think we can definitively say that Kent is at fault."
Kormack snorted. "That's correct," he said, interrupting Chase. "Tell us something new, Chase."
Chase just glared at him through her screen. "As I was saying, it is Kent's fault for missing the maintenance and falsifying records to make it look as if he had been working when he hadn't been," she looked at her padd off-screen.
Jim agreed with this part of the investigation. He hoped the board recognized the rest of Jim's opinion.
Before the explosion, Scotty had been livid to discover how the HECS had gotten so bad. Kent had lied about doing the work and had created some false maintenance documents, reports, and records.
Jim had been thinking about what to do about the mess later, but he gave up when Scotty said they needed a new HECS anyway.
"I agree," Hernández said, they closed their eyes, frowning. They opened their eyes and glanced at their padd. "But I don't feel like he should be punished for this alone. His direct emotional state was the cause of one man."
Jim wholeheartedly agreed.
Kormack sighed and said in a patronizing tone, "But the member should have control over their own actions. Kent should have left his personal life at the door. He should have spoken to someone. It's his fault alone." He readjusted in his seat. "Don't endanger people," he shrugged.
"Hernández, according to Kent, he had been ordered to - and then threatened to - stay silent about his emotional issues?" Chase asked.
Hernández nodded. "Captain Warrington had threatened that if word got out that Kent was his son, the member would be cut off from his family. According to Kent and Nurse Warrington, Captain Warrington also said that he could hack into their files to see what was going on with them - and had before."
"That doesn't mean that Captain Warrington is at fault," Kormack said. Jim understood where Kormack was coming from. He was an asshole about it, but the logic was sound.
Jim just didn't agree.
Just three days ago, Spock had come to him with the computer logs of Crewman Anderson Kent and Nurse Camilla Warrington. There had been several noticeable hacking entries. Some of the data had been changed, recently .
Family history and Next of Kin records, specifically, for both of them.
But worst of all was a standing endorsed order in Kent's file. One Jim did not authorize. Nor did Captain Wise, Kent's last Captain. It said that Kent was under orders to never reveal his family history. If he did, it was good for prison time on an asteroid jail.
Not even a prison colony. An Asteroid Jail .
Jim nearly had a fit when he'd read that order. Spock had needed to physically stop him from hunting down the only person who would have given such an illegal order, cleverly hidden underneath stacks of useless information.
Chase had taken one look at the order and rescinded it.
"No. Captain Warrington wasn't directly at fault for the actions of Crewman Kent," Hernández said, their back getting straighter as they arrested their point. "However, he is guilty of giving an unlawful order that created a hostile work environment that was directly related to an explosion that could have killed could have killed many Starfleet crew members and, worse, civilians. His actions directly controubled to nearly ending a promising trial for Starfleet!"
Hernández heled Kormack's gaze for a moment, neither flinching.
Kormack sat back in his chair, conceding the argument. "That, I'll agree Captain Warrington is guilty of."
Chase sighed, bringing the attention to her. "I'll send our recommendations up to the rest of the Admiralty. We'll take the Intrepid away from him at least. He's far from ready to lead a ship if this is how he uses his power."
Jim felt tension begin to drain from him at that. Captain Warrington wasn't going to be left unscathed from what he'd done to his son.
If Jim had a son, he didn't know what he would do, but it certainly wouldn't be what Warrington was doing.
"Onto Kent…" Hernández said, trailing off as they brought the attention of the Admirals back to the primary matter at hand.
Chase and Kormack fell silent.
"I think we all agree that he will be dealt with, but I think we need Captain Kirk's opinion on what type of punishment should occur," they said.
Chase nodded, and Kormack didn't say no, so Jim chose that moment to speak.
"Kent thinks he's going to an asteroid jail," Jim said bluntly. He didn't think that an asteroid jail was the right fit for Kent. They were for the worst criminals in Starfleet space. Kent wasn't that sort. He had messed up, but it was fixable. "I think he would be best off in an earthbound posting where he could work with the Starfleet psychiatrists. He could learn there. Grow, recover and deal with his actions there. Maybe, in the future, he might be sent to a Starbase, but that will be up to them."
Jim wasn't stupid enough to believe that they would let Kent go, even just to kick him out of Starfleet. That wasn't going to happen. Not with millions of credits in damage and several injuries. It may be too hopeful to think they might keep Kent in Starfleet.
It also probably wasn't safe to have Kent go free without any supervision. He was still on suicide watch.
All three Admirals nodded. "I agree. I don't think that …order… should be held up. Kent will have to be informed," Hernández said. They also said the word order like it was a poison in their mouth.
Jim had to clench his hands to keep from immediately searching out Captain Warrington and punching the man.
"Kirk. I am going to have to ask you to leave now. We have some discussions about what to do next that you don't have the clearance for," Chase said, now looking at her padd and not the screen.
Jim nodded and stood. "Admirals," he nodded, grabbing his cover from its place on the conference table and leaving the room. He didn't want to know the formal way a Captain was removed from their post. He had hated the idea when it had happened to him. He may have wanted to punch that asshole Warrington, but he didn't want to know how they stripped him of his rank.
Jim stepped out of the building and into the artificial outdoors of the Starbase. He placed the cover on his head and made his way to the bay where the Enterprise was currently docked.
He needed to see Spock.
But needed to see Spock wasn't strange in and of itself. What was strange was the way that Jim was starting to know where Spock was at any given moment. Jim wasn't going to question it much because he was in love with Spock and if his understanding of Spock had developed to the point that he could find Spock faster? Then who was he to complain? He got to see Spock sooner.
As he approached the docks, Jim saw Spock near the loading bay doors, supervising the loading of the Vulcan delegation's freight. It was a large enough shipment that it would take several days to get everything on board.
Renank was standing near Spock, writing on a padd. Spock was directing the crew as they loaded boxes and crates of, what Jim assumed, were Vulcan artifacts. There were a couple large containers that had already been put in the ship's hold.
Jim paused as he watched his crew from a distance. He was so damned proud of them.
Jim was close enough to see that Renank was looking up at a large pallet of stacked cases that had just been pulled up. Spock listened to something as the student of Renank's came up and gestured to the cases.
Spock nodded, and told the crew something that made them place the cases in a different location. Apparently, they weren't ready to be placed on board.
The student gestured at the cases again, and Spock followed the Vulcan over to them. Jim was fairly sure the student's name was Jolvek.
Jolvek opened one of the cases, and Jim saw, even from a distance that it was filled with books.
Ah! Jim was sure that was part of the project Spock had asked him to help with. The one on working with human literate on Vulcan. Jim had been looking forward to the whole thing.
It was going to be an excellent distraction from the entire mess with Kent and the Warrington's.
He could sink his teeth into the anthropological readings and spend time with Spock. He could flex his brain and attempt to keep up with Spock who would be in his element.
Jim was going to have fun.
Jim continued on his way to where Spock and Jolvek were talking.
He was forced to pause and talk to his crew a few times on the way there. They were 'outside' so they kept saluting him. Jim, per duty, had to respond.
Once he was finally closer, he could hear what Spock and Jolvek were talking about.
"As you can see, some of the books have water damage from a flood that occurred near the library they were stored in," Jolvek was saying, gesturing to a book that had honestly seen better days.
Spock nodded thoughtfully. "Are they legible?" he asked. "I would be concerned if they weren't. Or can they even be read? Or are their spines damaged?" Spock looked at the book with concern, his expression easy for Jim to read.
Luckily, Jim had an answer for that. He loved old books. "I've got something for brittle and for damaged spines in my room, Spock. If we find one, we can deal with it then."
Neither Vulcan started at Jim's presence, but Spock did turn to face Jim. "Captain. I believed that you were in a meeting for a while longer?" He stepped closer to Jim. He reached out and readjusted one of the star devices on Jim's left shoulder board.
Jim quirked an eyebrow at him and received an eyebrow raise in return. Jim shook his head as he stepped closer to Spock. He was thankful that Spock was always on top of everything. Even if it meant that Spock was correcting his uniform.
"Just finished with the Admiralty," Jim said, sure that Spock could hear the tension in his voice despite the fact few others would. Spock raised an eyebrow again. This time in question and not sarcasm. Jim waved him off. "I'll tell you about that later, after the dinner tonight."
Spock nodded, accepting Jim's deflection for what it was. A statement that whatever had happened was not to be discussed out in the open where the crew could hear them yet.
Jim turned to Jolvek, smiling politely at him. Jim had received enough diplomacy training that the smile was no longer forced.
"Are you going to be at the dinner, Jolvek?" he asked. Jim honestly wasn't looking forward to the dinner. He would have to be in his dinner dress golds. He may look damn good in the uniform, but he also had to sit straight up and try not to stare at Spock who would be in his own dinner dress blues.
Spock would look, as always, beautiful in his blues.
"I am," Jolvek said. He leaned forward and made as if he wanted to step closer to Spock, shifting in his place. Instead, he just stared at Spock like he was the one talking instead of Jim.
Jim refrained from frowning. "I hope you enjoy it. The Chefs here on the Enterprise have been planning for it for the past week." He didn't like the attitude that Jolvek was giving off. There was something off about the way the other Vulcan was acting toward them both. He was far too, what Jim could only describe as, attentive to Spock while being completely dismissive to Jim himself.
"I am sure they have been, with Commander Spock on board," Jolvek said. "An excellent source of information on performed Vulcan diets. He must be demonstrating a large amount of leadership. To lead the crew." Jolvek was still staring. He didn't even glance at Jim.
Jim noticed that Spock stiffed at some point during Jolvek's statement. There was nothing Jim could see that was insulting but he got the feeling that, somehow, he had been insulted.
Jim didn't hide the frown this time.
Jolvek didn't see it.
"Captain," Spock said, he was still looking at Jolvek, but Jim knew, somehow, that all of his attention was on Jim. "We are needed on the bridge."
Jim didn't know if they truly were or not, but he wasn't about to pass up leaving the weird situation. "Yes, we are," he said, agreeing with Spock. "Let's go. Have a good day, Jolvek. We will see you later this evening."
Jolvek nodded, not taking his eyes off of Spock. "Yes, I will, Captain."
Spock frowned. He openly frowned in public with Vulcans nearby.
Jim didn't know what had caused the conversation to be so damned weird, but it had apparently also made Spock upset. Jim was glad they were leaving.
" Du ras-tukh nash hali, Spock. Nash-veh glazhau fa'rak tor du hasu svi' ish-veh yeht shi ," Jolvek said as they walked away.
Spock didn't even turn around. " nash-veh tor ri wuh khart-lan. nash-veh tor svi' wuh yeht shi. nash-veh tor ri tvai tor nam-tor wuh ang'jmizn ." His tone was short and unhappy.
Jim stared at Spock for the rest of the journey up to the bridge, but Spock never explained what was said.
Ok so the Vulcan at the end is:
Jolvek: "you are the leader of the ship, Spock. I can't wait to see you in your rightful place."
Spock: "I am not the captain of this ship. I am in my rightful place. I am not meant to be a captain."
Not that its important but I'm treating the gray uniforms as a service uniform. It's not a dress uniform. The dress uniforms are better-designed versions of the ones from TOS.
So that was chapter 9! the title is from Quater past midnight from Bastille. Many thanks to my wonderful beta: B0kunoanime!! :D I still don't think this would be nearly as good without all your effort~~
I hope you all enjoy and all have a very happy holiday~!
Chapter 10: War of Hearts
its been a while because both me and my beta are BUSY. please tell me if there are any obvious mistakes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
During the formal welcome dinner for the Vulcan delegation.
Spock had spent the better part of the first hour of the formal dinner in deep and engaging conversation with Nyota, a young Vulcan woman named T'Renna who was a part of the delegation, and both misters Sulu.
"What division of Starfleet are you interested in, T'Renna?" Nyota asked, facing T'Renna with an open, curious expression. T'Renna had spent most of the conversation asking about the daily life of the various the crew members of the ship. And they could all tell she was working to get more information about if she would find pleasure in the daily life on a ship.
Spock was mildly interested in what T'Renna had to say. Since the destruction of Vulcan, there were more Vulcans in Starfleet. Most of them joining the sciences, but some had joined operations.
T'Renna's answer was prompt, "I wish to be a pilot. I have what humans call a 'drive' to be one." She was stiff as Vulcans normally were but there was a tension in her tone that Spock would call nervousness.
Spock nodded. He had noted the very faint scars on her hands from what looked to be burn marks. He could guess where that 'drive' came from. Spock remembered the stories of ships that escaped the destruction of the Vulcan that was but where damaged. The burn marks were matched the ones that navigators and pilots would have if their consol exploded.
T'Renna's drive was one born of experience. Spock respected that.
"Then Command would be best for you," Nyota smiled at T'Renna. "They are the ones with flight training."
Lieutenant Commander Sulu also smiled brightly. "We're always looking for new pilots. Especially ones who have a drive for it!"
There was tension that faded out of T'Renna's body that Spock was sure that they could all see but was also equally sure that no one would comment on.
"I am very interested," T'Renna said in a tone that to most humans was emotionless but the crew of the Enterprise had known Spock for far too long to miss the relief in her voice.
Spock nodded. "I will get you in contact with a recruiter who is working on New Vulcan. They can help you start the process."
T'Renna nodded back to him. "You will find me grateful, Commander Spock."
"You'll see a bunch of new things while in Starfleet then. What's been the favorite sight of your trip with the delegation?" Mr. Sulu asked.
As T'Renna answered, Spock looked around the room at the delegation.
Renank was talking to Mr. Scott. A lively discussion Spock assumed based on the way that Mr. Scott's hands were waving wildly through the air around his person.
Doctor McCoy was talking with a Vulcan who wore doctor's robes. Next to Doctor McCoy, Mr. Chekov and Mr. Riley were seated, both of them looking like they were still at the party out of of sheer stubbornness, t han out of any real desire to be there. They were looking well, their injuries mostly recovered, but Spock could see the exhaustion lines in the way both held themselves, as if afraid to fall out of their chairs .
McCoy kept shooting Chekov and Riley concerned glances every once in a while, but Spock could see that the doctor was not breaking away from the conversation he was a part of. Clearly, both Mr. Riley and Mr. Chekov were considered medically sound by the Doctor's standards. McCoy would never let them out of his medbay if that wasn't the case. He also was clearly not ready to let them out of his sight but Spock believe that this may be a manifestation of jim's declaration that McCoy was a 'worry-wart' more than anything more serious.
Spock glanced around the room again. He didn't see Jim.
Spock tried to ignore the feeling of disappointment. Jim had told him that he would be late to the event.
Jim had a meeting with Anderson Kent about his punishment.
Spock already had the kitchen staff prep some of Jim's favorite foods for a formal setting. Jim would be stressed coming from that meeting and Spock sought to make him a little happier.
He always sought ways to make Jim happier.
Spock still was stuck on figuring out how to show Jim he was a good option for being Jim's mate. All of his normal behaviors couldn't be amplified. Jim would find that constraining. But Spock already did a lot of what his people would expect from a potential suitor for a mate.
He was at a loss how to show Jim he loved him. How to properly court Jim.
The project was a good start but the end was still something Spock had to figure out.
Spock would have to meditate on the issue after the party.
"Hikaru, should we go rescue them?" Mr. Sulu said gesturing with his head over to the conversation Spock had noted earlier. It was the one with McCoy, Mr. Chekov, and Mr. Riley.
There was one more Vulcan with the group now.
Jolvek.
All three of the Starfleet members were clearly becoming more upset the longer that Jolvek was speaking. Even with his more acute hearing, Spock was unable to make out what was being said. All he had to go on was their expressions and they were growing stonier as Jolvek spoke. Mr. Riley actually looked like he was about a minute from punching someone.
Spock had to do something to protect his crew no matter how uncomfortable Jolvek made him.
Spock had done his best to avoid Jolvek for the entire party, for several reasons. He made Spock feel uncomfortable with his attention and he made Spock angry with his disregard of Jim's leadership. But now Spock had to do something. The crew came before Spock's emotions. They always had.
Seeing Jolvek speak to both Mr. Chekov and Dr. McCoy was hard for Spock to described what he was feeling. It was more than just anger. The sight filled him with a protectiveness that stemmed from a challenger Vulcan making part of his tribe upset. Jolvek sought to undermine his Captain. That was not acceptable.
After the insult about Jim's leadership, Spock didn't believe that he could control himself around Jolvek. He would defend Jim and his leadership.
It was one thing when Spock merely felt that Jolvek was flirting with him. Spock had been sure that Jolvek would do the most logical thing and simply ask Spock out. it happened a few times with they ferried other Vulcans before as Spock was now a hero in the eyes of his people.
However, they had all been understanding of his relationship with Nyota.
Spock would also do the most logical thing and turn Jolvek down. he wasn't interested. He had to try to court Jim properly first. If Jim turned him down then Spock would respect the man he loves wishes and find someone else who didn't mind that Spock didn't (and wouldn't and couldn't ) love them.
Jim certainly didn't know what Jolvek had said in both Vulcan and standard was an insult but Spock did. By implying that Spock was in charge of providing the food on the Enterprise, Jolvek was saying that Spock was the one in charge. Not Jim.
The worst insult, which was spoken in Vulcan, was outright saying that Spock should just take control of the Enterprise.
Spock was glad they were already leaving when Jolvek had chosen to say that. Spock might have done something, as Jim would say, stupid.
Now, to protect his crew, his family, he would risk doing that probably stupid thing.
"I will get them," Spock said stepping away from the group. "I will send them over here."
Nyota nodded, concern in her eyes, "I wonder what's going on? I can't see what's being said." he heard her say as he walked away.
Lieutenant Commander Sulu shrugged. "I don't know but I imagine that we'll find out soon enough…"
Spock ignored them after that, intent on reaching the group that was near the doorway. He was sure that if McCoy, Chekov, and Riley were all upset the conversation was probably one of the same lines as the one he had earlier with Jolvek.
As he drew nearer, Spock listened to the conversation that was causing distress for his crew, confirming his suspicions. The other Vulcans had left but Jolvek was still speaking.
"...I don't believe you've been under fire from an enemy ship have you, Mr. Jolvek." Riley was saying, trying to keep his tone even. His posture was defensive. He was getting ready for a fight, despite his still weak injuries.
Mr. Chekov wasn't much better. He was balling up his fists and then releasing them.
The Vulcan doctor had left the conversation apparently as Spock didn't see him.
Jolvek frowned minutely. "I have not, but I know that logic under pressure, - "he started to say but Spock did not let him finish.
"- Can lead to many problems if one ignores their instinct and reacts solely on logic. Sometimes the logic of one's instincts isn't apparent until the aftermath. Captain Kirk has demonstrated these skills many times while we have explored the universe." Spock said, interrupting him. He knew that if Jolvek was allowed to comment that thought, he would cause a scene.
The three Starfleet members started at Spock's words. They hadn't noticed him come up apparently but their relief was palpable. Spock stepped in-between McCoy and Jolvek. Spock was going to protect his tribe and family from threats.
Jolvek raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Logic has long triumphed over instinct, Commander Spock."
"it has for our daily lives. However, at the moment, such as the ones that the Enterprise has encountered, the mind processes faster than normal. Creating an instinct. Pushing that aside for logic would be a fallacy." Spock said. he could construct the past few moments of conversation he hadn't been able to hear.
Jolvek was trying to undermine Captain Kirk as he mistakenly believed that would win Spock's favor.
"The Captain has gotten us out of a lot of situations," Chekov said. he leaned against McCoy, apparently tiring. Some of the tension faded from his posture when Spock spoke.
"And I am sure that Commander Spock has gotten you out of more," Jolvek said like his word was law and he was right.
Spock took a deep breath, reached out and gripped McCoy's shoulder to stop McCoy from stepping forward. McCoy was nearly red with anger. He turned to Spock and shook off Spock's hand.
"He's been insulting Jim. Stop him or I will." McCoy hissed, his eyes cutting to Jolvek. "Saying he's not the 'leader' of the ship. What bullshit is that?!"
"Vulcan bullshit, Doctor if you want to use the crude vernacular. he is mistaken," Spock said, keeping his eyes on Jolvek. Jolvek locked eyes with him and didn't seem inclined to move his gaze.
Time for something stupid then."He will acknowledge that soon enough." Spock said, not giving one care that Jolvek would hear him.
Chekov placed his hand on McCoy's arm. "I'm tired, Len. Can we sit down?" he asked.
Spock could see the exhaustion starting to show in Chekov's and Riley's faces. But it was also clear that Chekov was trying to defuse the situation.
Or at least get Doctor McCoy away from Jolvek before McCoy (or any of them really…) throws a punch.
Apparently, it's enough as McCoy immediately goes into his over doctoring mode, ushering both Chekov and Riley away.
Leaving both Vulcans alone.
Spock watched over them until they reached the group that had Nyota and the Mister's Sulu. Nyota and Ben Sulu immediately went to get chairs for both Chekov and Riley; while lieutenant commander Sulu and the Starfleet hopeful, T'Renna, stayed with them and Doctor McCoy.
Stratified that his family was alright, Spock turned his attention back to the threat.
Jolvek didn't bother with any pleasantries and started to speak in Vulcan. "you are the better leader, Commander Spock. Why do you not lead this ship with the logic it so clearly needs ?"
Spock took another deep breath to calm himself.
Logic was the guidance Jolvek clearly needed.
" As leadership is not always a logical endeavor, I would imagine any situation in which I would need to lead for a long period of time to be a stressful endeavor for both myself and my crew. Captain Kirk is, and always has been, a better leader." Spock said responding in Vulcan. He was simply speaking a truth he has explained to enough people that he's almost bored of the answer. " I have no wish to lead a ship like this and I am content to stay here, where I belong ." He finished.
Jolvek shook his head. Spock wondered what had given him the idea that undermining Jim Kirk was the way to Spock's heart.
" you are clearly to use to dealing with humans if you believe that ." he said, reaching over to a nearby table and picking up a glass of wine that Spock was sure wouldn't inebriate a Vulcan. " you are clearly the leader of this ship. you should deserve the title of Captain as well ."
Spock tilted his head, feigned curiosity. " what makes you believe that I am the leader of this ship."
Jolvek gave him a look that said Spock was being obtuse on purposes. "y ou are the most intelligent person here. You have lead the efforts with my delegation. You have set protective orders for the crew. You are the one they turn to defend the crew from others. All of which are signs of a leader."
Spock stared at the Vulcan before him. He was wrong on every point.
Spock was sure that, while he was among the smartest people onboard the Enterprise, he wasn't the smartest person. That title most likely went to one of the lower command officer's wives who was writing her fourth doctoral thesis - she was twenty three. He was also sure that on a ship full of genius, being the 'smartest' wasn't much of a prize.
Spock leads the efforts with the Vulcan delegation for two reasons. One, because he was Vulcan . Two, Jim was tied up in dealing with the aftermath of the explosion in Engineering and the fallout from Kent's mistakes. Jim didn't have time for the politics of a formal visit and transport yet. He will soon.
He didn't know where Jolvek had read the standing orders of the ship, the 'protective orders' but those were Jim's choices of orders. Over the years, even if Spock had questioned some of them when he first read them, it had been proven time and time again, that they were good orders. They were also Jim's.
For the last very wrong reason, it was because the crew knew that Spock would protect Jim. No matter what. Spock would protect Jim.
Spock had the sudden realization that since he was doing so much already to prove he was a good mate to Jim that maybe he should talk to Jim and ask him out.
Logically.
He would have to do research on this and more direct ways of human flirting before he would make such a move.
But first, he had a suitor to dismiss. "Jolvek, you have fundamentally misunderstood what being on this ship is like, and the people on it. Jim Kirk is a great leader that is the Captain and I will not tolerate hearing him so insulted. So, state you're true purpose before I ask you to leave the dinner."
Jolvek looked momentarily surprised but he smoothed his expression out soon enough. " Then, Spock of Sarek and Amanda, I would like to propose a tradition mating ceremony between you and me."
Spock didn't even hesitate. " no ."
" I believe that we are compatible ," Jolvek said, completely ignoring Spock. Spock doubted that they would be compatible mentally. "we are not mated, nor promised, not anymore. We cannot have children. And we are uncommonly intelligent. We are compatible."
Spock was pretty sure that he doubted the shared 'uncommonly intelligent' comment more than he doubted their capability. But he was also sure that it was his repeated exposure to his friends on the senior bridge crew that caused his sarcastic thought of 'for us to share intelligence, then clearly I have to be deceased for several days'
He didn't say that but he wanted to.
" no ," Spock repeated, this time firmer.
" why not ?" Jolvek demanded. " we would be excellent ."
Spock leveled him a cool look. One that did not book an argument to whatever he was about to say. The look was favorite of his when he was dealing with diplomatic scientists and new junior science staff.
"I am not attracted to you. I have a potential mate. My father would never approve. And last, I can have children. I've been tested for my reproductive capabilities." Spock didn't say that his father had asked him to find out after the loss of Vulcan.
He also was relying on his father disapproving of a match between him and Jolvek because of Jolvek's social strata. He knew that such things were going away on Vulcan because of the rapid loss of population but some of the old traditions still held on.
Jim was a hero. Heroes, even in the post-enlightenment society of the past several thousand years, were revered. They were of the highest strata, no matter where they came from. Heroes often started clans. Jim's father was a hero and his mother was one too; Spock had heard of the way she had fought several admirals and then many soldiers to save her son from Tarsus and the few times he had met Winona Kirk had only reinforced that belief.
Jim was from a Clan of heroes and he had carried on that legacy.
The door near them opened up to reveal Jim. Spock's eyes were always drawn to him. Something about Jim's presence drew Spock from where ever he was and Spock long stopped fighting it.
Jim stood in his dinner dress uniform, like all of the Starfleet officers, but Jim's uniform was a gold that was nearly green. It made his already bright eyes, even brighter. It complimented his appearance and made him look dangerous and, with the braids on his shoulders as well as the insignia at his breast, Jim looked like a warrior.
Spock was once again struck with how much he was in love with Jim Kirk and how long he had missed it before finally understating.
" Your eyes follow him ," Jolvek said. Had he been human, Spock would have said Jolvek hissed the words out. " He's just a human. Your father would never approve him either. " he took a deep drink of the glass of wine he was still holding. It was nearly empty by the time he was done with the pull.
Jolvek was still speaking in Vulcan. it was a rudeness that Spock would stop soon as Jim made his way over to them. Jim stopped and grabbed two glasses of the wine that Jolvek was drinking.
" He's a hero ," Spock said simply, knowing that Jolvek would understand.
" Be prepared, Spock. I will gain your hand ." Jolvek spat as Jim got closer.
Spock took his eyes off of Jim for the first time, side glancing at Jolvek. " I don't believe you will. Please enjoy the dinner. " He said as Jolvek glared at Jim before walking away.
Jim arrived and watched Jolvek's exit with a bemused expression. "Does he not like me or something?"
Spock said, "Or something."
"Wine?" Jim said, holding up one of the glasses.
Spock took it. "Yes please," he said. they both watched the party for a few moments. "How did the conversation go with Mr. Kent?" he asked.
Jim sighed, unhappy at the reminder but Spock assured himself that ship came first and this was ship Bussiness. "He understood why. He was relieved that the order to keep silent was rescinded. He's hoping, with some time with the Starfleet shrinks, he'll be able to be ground posted somewhere. I think it's possible but it will all depend on him. The Admirals will decide what to do with him once he's on Earth Base." Jim still didn't look happy. but nothing about this situation was good.
Spock understood. Jim was upset that a crewman felt like had struggle under pressure from an external Starfleet presence alone and it had damaged the ship. he was still upset that said crewman was still under constant supervision.
It was a hard situation.
Jim shook his head, dismissing the subject. "What were you talking about with Jolvek? You were speaking in Vulcan," he said, turning his curious gaze on Spock.
"Merely social things," Spock said. He had already dismissed the idea of using Jolvek to make Jim jealousy. He didn't want to give Jolvek hope that Spock was going to be interested in him and he wasn't about to undermine his efforts to show he was good mate by teasing that others are also seeing that.
Jim laughed. "I don't believe you." He said with a smile, but he also didn't push any further. " Anyway, you're conversation reminded me of something. We're still meeting after dinner, right?"
"Yes, Jim. We are." Spock said. it was standard that they meet before either of them rests to play chess or talk.
Perhaps Spock should start there in figuring out if Jim could see him as more than a friend.
"Excellent there's something I want to show you," Jim said, smiling in a soft way that Spock had never seen him do with anyone other than the crew. He was also giving Spock that smile a lot more recently.
Spock decided to allow himself to feel hopeful.
The next day, on star base 180's space dock.
"Pavel!"
Pavel looked up from the padd he had in his hands. He wasn't back on duty yet but he was going to be the next day. His navigators had gotten him the information for the next warp jumps and their destination of New Vulcan.
He had been sitting and watching the crew sort the cargo the ship was taking on to be delivered to New Vulcan while reading the padd on a bench near the ship's ramp.
Camelia was walking quickly toward him, a sea bag on her shoulders and a travel bag in her hand.
Pavel took in her appearance with surprise. She wasn't in Starfleet uniform.
Last, he had heard, she had refused shore leave to stay with Kent, her brother. "Camelia." He said, slightly wary. The last time they had spoken, Len and Pavel had walked into a fight between her and her brother in front of the med bay.
"I'm glad I caught you." She said. she straightened her skirt as she reached him. "I wasn't sure if I was going to see you before I left."
Pavel felt his eyebrows raise up on his forehead. "You're leaving?" he asked.
Pavel felt like he had missed a lot of the gossip while he was in the med bay that had spread across the ship. he heard some of the latest stories but not all of them. Clearly, this was one of the ones he missed. It felt like he was missing a large part of this conversation.
Camelia nodded. "The paperwork got approved today. I'm leaving with Andy."
"Kent's leaving tonight," Pavel said. This he knew. Kent had asked to see both him and Riley before he was sent back to Starfleet headquarters for evaluation.
When they had gone to see him, Kent had apologized to both of them. Saying it was his fault and he should have spoken to someone.
Chekov told him that while yes, he should have spoken to someone, he didn't blame Kent for not knowing what to do and letting it distract him. Riley echoed the statement. Kent had looked relieved. Pavel felt sorry for Kent, but his evaluation at Starfleet headquarters will decide what happens in his career.
Kent hadn't mentioned his sister once in the whole conversation.
Camelia nodded. "Yes, he is. I walked the paperwork myself around to get everything signed and approved in time. I'm not leaving Andy alone on Earth with my father." She said.
That made sense with what little gossip Pavel had actually heard while stuck in medbay. If the rumors were to be believed (and with how tight-lipped the Captain, Len, and Scotty were about the whole thing, they were true) then Captain Warrington was an asshole for more concrete reasons then turning a family dinner into a recruitment spiel and Pavel was right to turn him down. He had been grounded and his ship, the Intrepid, wasn't going to be his for much longer.
"Oh," Pavel said, not really knowing what to say, "That's good. That you want to stay with your brother."
Camelia sighed, "I just can't leave him to face father alone. That would wrong."
"I don't know," Pavel said, unable to stop himself, knowing it would probably get him slapped again, "You seemed pretty happy about being with your father last time. I didn't find out that Kent was your brother until after the accident. You two didn't mention him."
He shouldn't be so cruel but they did date for over four months before she had suggested the dinner to meet her parents. As her father was a Captain who had his own ship and Pavel, at the time, was thinking she might be the one to be serious with, agreed.
Not once did she mention her brother. She had spoken about Kent. But always as her friend never as her brother.
Camelia flinched. "I deserved that," she said. "It's not right and I'm going to do better for Kent. I'm sorry for never mentioning him. I've listened to my father and ignored the pain it was causing Kent." She looked angry with herself. She looked away and watched the crew of the Enterprise do their work.
Pavel wasn't sure if he could fully understand why she was so damn eager to follow her father that she hurt her own brother, but that wasn't his place to fix. "Does Kent know that?" he asked instead.
Camelia looked back at him and paused like she was unsure of the answer. "I think so. But I don't know if he believes it yet." She said slowly.
"Then I would make sure that he knows it. Don't prove his disbelief right," Pavel said firmly. He might not know why Camelia made the choices she did or why her father was an asshole, but he did know this: if you claim to be by someone's side always then you prove it by being there.
"I will," Camelia said, a look of determination in her eyes. That look was new. Something that was missing in their relationship. Pavel felt pretty sure that he could trust Camelia to help Kent and ignore her father.
"Good," Pavel said, meaning it. "Then I wish you luck, Camelia."
Camelia smiled. "Thank you, Pavel. I wanted to tell you something though." She said shifting her weight. Seabags were always heavy.
Pavel looked up at her in question.
She took a deep breath then said, "I hope you are happy with Doctor McCoy, Pavel. He's a good man and didn't deserve my insults. I am sorry that I forced you into the dinner with my family. I hope you have a good life, Pavel." She looked in the eyes as she spoke.
Pavel smiled, accepting the apology. "I am happy but it's not a problem with the dinner. Just be careful in the future. Surprises like that dinner were aren't good. And thank you, I am very happy with Len. He's the best."
"He really is the best at his job," Camelia said then her comm unit beeped. She reached for it with her free hand and saw the time. "That was a reminder. I've got to go."
Pavel waved but didn't bother standing up. Camelia was a nurse. She would understand. "Then fair winds and safe seas." He said, echoing a tradition for transferring sailors that even now in the age of space travel was still considered good luck. Good wind to go back home with and a safe sea to ride upon.
Camelia nodded again, a soft smile on her face. "Thank you. Be safe yourself, McCoy will go insane again to fix you."
Pavel laughed as she waved and left.
As she disappeared into the crowd that was always near the docks of a starbase, a voice startled Pavel out of his staring.
"She's right you know. Don't get yourself injured. I'll go crazy trying to fix you." Len said from just above him. "Drink this. I don't need you dropping from dehydration on top of everything." He held out a water bottle for Pavel to take.
Pavel turned around and smiled up at his lover. "I am sure you will fix me no matter what." He took the bottle gratefully. He was very thirsty.
For more than just water.
Len grumbled as he came down close enough to kiss, so Pavel did. "Just please do it less. You and Jim are terrible, Pasha. I don't know how much my old heart can take." He said after the broke apart. But he was smiling.
Pavel smiled back, he knew he looked besotted and he didn't care. "You aren't old. But once I'm all better you'll be doing your best to keep up with me." He said, just to watch the pleased flush develop on Len's face.
And true enough Len blushes a light red. "God, Pasha, you are going to kill me." He said as he motioned for Pavel to scoot forward slightly and he settled himself behind Pavel and wrapped his arms around him.
"Just a little death," Pavel said cheeky, unrepented, and completely ignoring Len's sputtering laughter. "I love you." He said, leaning back into the embrace. He hadn't realized that Len would be a very handy boyfriend, but every day they spent time together, Len always had a hand on him somehow. It was like Len wasn't sure that Pavel would disappear if Len let go.
Len laughed, loud and happy. "I love you too, Pasha-love," He said as he hugged Pavel tighter.
In the Captain's quarters that night
"I'm a coward Bones." Jim moaned from the table. He watched his friends eye him for a moment then take a drink of their beers. The three of them were enjoying some time together. Uhura had musical practice with Spock and Chekov was with the Sulu's tonight, celebrating Chekov's recovery.
Scotty was covering up a laugh and Jim knew it. Bones wasn't even covering one up. He was drinking in preparation for laughing at Jim's pain.
"Well, you should do something about that then." Bones said, unsympathetic. "Worked out well for us." He was sprawled out Jim's bed, lounging like they were still at the academy and didn't have chairs in their dorm.
Jim glared at him. "Bullshit. Chekov ask you out first! Don't think you can trick me into thinking that you did anything there." he cut a glance to Scotty, who was still laughing into his beer. "You don't get to say anything either. I heard Uhura ask you out." Jim paused and thought about that conversation. "Kind of... Anyway! It wasn't your initiative there either!"
Jim was well aware that he was edging towards tipsy. He had finished his own beer about ten minutes ago and wasn't reaching for another one. He had a glass of water in front of him.
He just needed something after his failure the night before.
"Captain. It can't be that bad," Scotty said, laughing at Jim. He wasn't hiding anymore. Scotty was openly laughing at his Captain.
No one in this room had respect for him, Jim pouted. He took a drink of water.
"It is that bad," Jim said, making a snap decision that he would probably regret when he thinks about it in the morning.
He was drunk enough to reach into the desk and pull a letter out from its home in the top drawer of his desk and place it on the table.
It was handwritten, clearly been opened and refolded many times, and it was written in Vulcan.
Both Scotty and Bones stop laughing to stare at the letter.
"It is that bad," Jim repeated.
Bones reached forward from the bed and picked the letter up from the desk. he treated with caution as if he was afraid to rip the delicate paper. Jim knew the paper would be fine. He had opened the letter up often enough for the last few years since he had received it.
"Jim," he said after a moment of looking at the letter. "Did your middle school self at heart write your crush a confession note?" He sounded incredulous. He recognized Jim's handwriting. They had roomed together and, in the academy, Jim had a habit of writing notes on sticky paper for later review.
Scotty moved to look over Bones' shoulder to read the letter. "It's in Vulcan," he said sounding surprised. "You don't know Vulcan." He directed to Jim.
"Apparently in about twenty years from now, I do," Jim said. He took another drink of water.
Bones looked at the date, which was written in stardate, and clearly did some mental math. "Shit Jim. This is dated for when you're like fifty-seven or something," he said, looking over the letter with a new curiosity. "How did you…" he trailed off.
"The old man, the ambassador?" Scotty asked. "Did you get this from him?" Scotty was also thinking fast.
Jim nodded. "He left it to me in his will." He shifted and held his hand out. Bones gave the letter back.
"It's in Vulcan. Know what it says?" Scotty asked as he went back his chair in front of Jim's desk.
"Nope. The only two people who could read Vulcan on this ship are Spock and Uhura. And I know it's addressed to Spock. From a bondmate." Jim said and watched as Bones put it together. "It's not from Uhura."
Scotty, who had never seen Jim's handwriting, was still confused. "Why then?"
"Because the old man's vision of you wrote it." Bones said slowly. It was like he was sounding out a problem. "He gave it to you. It's in your handwriting. And you, the other you, wrote it. and it's from a bondmate."
He let out a loud sigh. "Damn it, Jim! You have to be complicated, don't ya!"
Jim laughed. "You know I do. And well, that's why I don't know what it says. Spock knows it's from the old man's bondmate. He was with Uhura at the time and knew it wasn't from her… it seemed cruel to ask him to translate." Jim shook his head. "And no offense, Scotty, but an angry Uhura scares the pants off of me."
"Why would I be offended?" Scotty asked, taking another drink from his beer. It was almost empty.
"So, you never asked." Bones said. He was frowning at Jim and the letter still in his hand.
Jim shook his head. "Nope. Never got a translator either. It somehow didn't feel right." He had tired on multiple occasions to translate the letter.
The most he ever got was the greeting.
t'nash-veh danik ashau tel-tor katelau Spock, au ik nam-tor t'nash-veh sa-telsu…
My most loved bondmate Spock, he who is my husband…
Jim wasn't able to go any farther. He just… couldn't.
He was so lost.
"You've had this for years." Bones said. he didn't sound happy that Jim didn't tell him about the letter but apparently was willing to let it go. Jim didn't regret his choice not to tell anyone about the letter.
He didn't want anyone to know. He had been fine knowing that Spock was happy and was his friend.
"Yep," Jim said, wishing he had another beer to drink.
"then what's this got to do with you being a coward now ?" he asked. Bones gave him a look that even when they had barely been friends and had solely been roommates (this state had lasted all of a week before Jim claimed Bones as his best friend,) had been enough to get Jim to tell the truth.
It was a very effective look.
Scotty sat up and echoed the question. "Yeah, why now?"
Jim sighed and gave up the fight. he reached for another beer. Bones slapped his hand away. "No more for you. You're done remember?"
Jim nodded, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "Fine, fine. I'm a coward because, yesterday after dinner, I almost showed Spock the letter. I almost told him."
There was silence in the room for a moment.
Then Scotty said, slowly, "You almost told Spock. About what exactly? The letter or …" he trailed off for a moment then finished, "…Or your feelings?"
"I don't know for sure. The letter defiantly. But maybe my feelings too? I just know that Spock has been acting differently around me and somewhere in my heart I'm hopeful and I nearly told him but I chickened out in the end," Jim rambled. "He was here and I nearly gave him the letter but I'm a coward and didn't."
Bones sighed. It was a very father-like sound. "Jim-boy. You aren't a coward if me and Scotty aren't. Do you know how many times I wondered what would happen if I told Pasha before he confessed to me? Hundreds. I'm sure Scotty is the same way. "
Scotty chimed in. "I was."
"We aren't. So, you aren't. and Jim-boy, you've always had good instincts. There was a reason you didn't tell him last night. I don't know what it is. I don't know if you know what it was. But there was a reason you didn't tell him." Bones finished.
Jim thought about it.
He didn't know why he didn't tell Spock.
He had been sitting right were Bones was. He wasn't sprawled like Bones was but he had been sitting on the bed. Jim had asked him to come over that night with the intent on showing him the letter and asking for a translation.
He had heard the conversation with Jolvek in Vulcan and Jim had to know. It had filled him with a sudden desire that Jim didn't know how to fulfill by any other way other than asking Spock to translate.
But something had stopped him. Maybe it was the distracted way Spock had been staring. Maybe it was that Jim hadn't been able to get the drawer open for some reason.
Either way, he hadn't shown Spock the letter.
Jim had shown him a piece of literature that he had thought that Spock would find interesting.
Jim was right, Spock had been fascinated.
His eyes had this look in them that said he was happy and grateful.
Jim was reminded once again how much he loved Spock.
But Jim still didn't tell him about the letter. Or of his feelings.
"I don't know," Jim said.
Scotty shrugged at him. "Then you should think about it lad, right Bones?"
Bones nodded. "You should. And when you figure it out, tell him then. What's the harm then?"
Jim laughed. "That's what people in new relationships always say!" He would be fine. He's got his crew. He's got his friends. He's got the best damn first officer in the fleet. He's also maybe got Spock in other ways too.
Jim feels hope and allows it to stay.
Meanwhile in Nyota's quarters
" Spock. Kirk isn't going to say no ." Nyota said, frowning up at Spock. She was speaking in Vulcan in the hopes that it would calm Spock down.
Spock was pacing.
An action that was unlike the Vulcan but he seemed to be taking a page out of Kirk's book and was walking off any excess energy. And based on the ware patterns in Nyota's floor, Spock had a lot of excess energy.
" I do not see why he would ," Spock said, responding in the same language, " Say yes that is ."
Nyota sighed. They had been having this argument for the last thirty minutes. They had been practicing music but Spock had seemed distracted and agitated.
And for good reason, Spock was debating asking Jim Kirk out.
Nyota had spent the most of the argument, trying to convince Spock to just ask Kirk out.
Because he wouldn't say no.
Nyota was sure of that. she knew Kirk and if a friend asked him out he would try it out. he had when Carol Marcus had asked him out on a date after he had gotten out of the hospital after the Kahn incident. It hadn't gone anywhere but he had genuinely tried.
Kirk was much closer to Spock then he had been with Carol Marcus.
He wouldn't say no.
Nyota had her suspicions though.
Nyota suspected that Kirk might be more than just willing to date a friend.
Nyota had watched Kirk interact with Spock for the past few months, using all of her powers of communication and understating body language to figure out if Spock had a chance.
Kirk's behavior really hadn't changed since that first shore leave.
He was still very close to Spock and would always seek him out for advice. Kirk still placed a lot of value in Spock and what Spock thinks. Even if he didn't act on the advice all the time. He referenced Spock's opinion in conversation even when Spock wasn't in the room.
There was a lot of touching. An action that in the early stages of her and Spock's relationship had made her very upset before she realized that Kirk was just one of those people who needed physical contact with others.
All of that was normal. All of Kirk's actions hadn't changed.
But what had changed was Spock's behavior toward Kirk.
When before, Spock hadn't discouraged the touching, neither leaning in or stepping away from Kirk's hand on his arm or shoulder, Spock was now encouraging the touches. And at times starting them.
The first time she had seen Spock reach out and touch Kirk with something like affection before leaving the bridge, she could have sworn that Kirk blushed. It was faint but she knew a blush when she saw one.
Spock was also spending more time with Kirk than ever before. that had caused a difference in Kirk's mannerisms that had caught Nyota's eye. Kirk looked so damn happy that Spock was spending all of his free time with him. His gestures had gotten bigger and the tension in his shoulders had faded. Kirks' eyes dilated and every action that he took said that he was over the moon that Spock was spending more time with him.
Nyota couldn't help but think maybe he was interested.
" He has not changed his behavior patterns ," Spock said. He was still pacing. " He is merely closer than he was before. Nothing more. He hasn't shown any difference ."
Nyota didn't hold back a snort of laughter. She had enumerated her reasons earlier. Spock didn't believe her fully.
It honestly sounded like a conversation they had months ago; one which had been about her and Scotty. Now she could understand Spock's frustration.
Because, as she couldn't see that Scotty might love her, neither could Spock see that Jim Kirk might be in love with him.
He wouldn't believe Nyota when she said had suspicions that Kirk may have been in love with him for years.
Scotty had said something a few nights ago which had grown her minor suspicions that Kirk may have a crush on Spock into something bigger.
He had mentioned that the drinking sessions he, McCoy, and Kirk had been doing on the occasional shore leave, was going to come to an end. When Nyota had asked why Scotty said that he and McCoy didn't need to drink like that anymore.
That his reason for drinking was gone.
And Nyota knew that Scotty started to date her, after years of being in love with her.
It would have taken a moron to miss the way that McCoy had been in love with Chekov.
So, the third member of the drinking crew was, logically, in love with someone who doesn't love them back.
And based on what she's seen, the only person that Kirk spent enough time with, cared about their opinion of
" Jim Kirk will not say no, Spock. He likes you! A lot! So much so that I'm surprised he hasn't asked you out yet !" Nyota said, in Andorian. She sure that she would kick Spock if he didn't get it into his head that Kirk liked him.
Spock still hadn't sat down and it was starting to be annoying. This is one of the reasons they didn't work, Nyota thought to herself.
" he will not ," Spock said, responding also in Andorian. It was game they used to play a lot when they were just friends. Nyota would say something in one language and he would respond in kind. As she had grown as a communications officer she had learned languages he hadn't so she could stump him. It wasn't her goal tonight; she just wanted to give him something familiar to ground himself with.
Or distract himself with. He sounded so sure of his conclusion that Jim Kirk would not be interested in dating him that it made Nyota sigh. It was a good thing that Spock wasn't the communications officer. He would miss so much.
" Tell me why you have come to this conclusion? " she asked. " And for goodness sake: sit down! " she pointed at the chair that was near her bed. She was sitting on her bed and she was tired of looking up at him. It was causing pain in her neck.
Spock paused in his movements. He seemed to take a moment to realizes he was pacing. Then the tips of his ears flushed green for a heartbeat before they went back to normal.
Nyota had to hide a giggle. Kirk had always prompted Spock to do emotional things.
Even if it was as small as pacing.
"because he loves someone enough that he drinks to handle the emotions," Spock said in standard. "I have seen him partake in the activity."
Nyota blinked in surprise. She didn't know that he had realized that Kirk did that. " Oh? What does that have anything to do with whether or not Kirk likes you? " this time she spoke in Hebrew, a language that Spock had learned from his mother.
" He likes this other person, Nyota. I am sure he loves them. Why would he say yes if I proposed a romantic date? " Spock said, finally sitting down in the office chair she had. her quarters were much smaller than his first officer quarters so all she had was a small desk and chair tucked into a corner of the room. He spoke in Hebrew as well. his accent was much better than hers.
" Because I'm about eighty percent sure that you're the one who drives him to drink ," Nyota said, calm as she could be.
Spock stiffened and then frowned.
He must be really upset if he actually frowned.
"I am not the one who drives him to drink!" Spock said in standard. Nyota revised her evaluation from upset to shaken. Spock had reverted to standard. Nyota was getting to him. He was faltering in his convection. "I have to prove to him that I would be an excellent mate. And casing him such emotion, for years, would not be a conductive way to prove my worth."
While he hadn't lost the frown on his face, Spock seemed sadder than angry.
Nyota sighed again. It seemed like she was doing that a lot. Spock was sad about not being enough. It was a common enough event in their relationship that Nyota had an idea how to help.
"Oh Spock, he likes you. A lot." Nyota said, her voice firm. She didn't let her tone be anything he could argue with.
"But he may not say yes. I will wait." Spock said. the frown disappeared and Spock seemed to come to a decision.
"Spock…" Nyota said almost reproachfully. If he chose to wait then the last half hour of dissection would be for naught. "Spock you can- "
"Nyota, I can't risk Jim's friendship," Spock said firmly. "Once I am sure he may like me, then I will ask him out on a date. But not right now."
Nyota didn't feel so confident. She worried that if Spock didn't talk to Kirk soon that Vulcan who had been flirting with Spock will start to think he is actually available.
And that would be a disaster. Kirk would be jealous. Spock would be annoyed. The whole event will become a problem with the Vulcan delegation.
But she also knew that once Spock made a decision like this one there was no changing his mind. "If you are sure." She said instead.
"I am," Spock said, "I will wait."
So Hi.
thank you to B0kunoanime for helping me. I know we aren't done yet but I think I need to post this.
this semester has sucked. I'm taking 9 upper-level units with a full time (really 40+ hour) job. I lost my grandmother recently and let me tell you I can't wait to midsummer.
please enjoy and let me know :D
PS. One more Chapter!
Chapter 11: Absolutely Smitten
The last afternoon docked at star base 180.
Bones sighed. He hated when the med bay got its supply delivery late in a shore leave. It always caused problems. Either pallets of necessary items were missing or something was broken.
There were working parties of people loading the pallets and were making sure objects were getting moved to the right locations in the ship, from storerooms to the mess or even in Medical itself.
Spock was directing them with help from a person from the Quartermaster's department. Spock would lead the assistant properly as the crew loaded the last of the supplies for the next several months onto the ship. The actual quartermaster was standing next to Bones, as Bones tried not to yell at him.
"Look I know you did your best but I need to have that medication on the ship!" Bones said, trying to keep his temper down. The quartermaster didn't need his ire. It wasn't his fault that the supply guys on Starbase 180 couldn't do anything right.
The quartermaster, informally known as QM, was a short human who always looked ready to tear his hair out on shore leave. "Sir, I know! But it's going to be late. There's nothing I can do about that. The shipment is late and I can't make it get here earlier." The man gestured down to the padd in his hand. "It will be here before we leave tomorrow morning, but that's the best I can promise you, Doctor McCoy."
Bones didn't bother sighing. "Fine. I'll sign off on the rest then," holding his hand out to take the padd. "I'm sure it will show up."
QM looked relieved and passed over the padd.
Bones did sigh as he signed his name on the padd in several locations. It never did well to piss off Supply. They were vital to the ship life and to make an enemy of the supply department usually caused problems. Them, and the yeomen. He'd learned early not to piss them off either. He passed the padd back and the Quartermaster took off to deal with the next delivery.
Bones just wanted to get the shipment counted and on board. All that was left to load was his medical team's supplies, the Vulcan delegation's supplies, and the mess' food order. The Vulcan delegation's supplies and finds weren't finished being loaded, but they would finish later in the late evening. The mess always was the last thing to be loaded, because the food would be fresher that way.
"Problems with the shipment?" Jim asked as he walked down the ramp that lead to the interior of the ship's loading dock.
Bones gave him a long look that promised pain over being asked a stupid question. "Of course, there is. But that's Starbases for you." Bones really didn't blame the quartermaster for the delay.
He blamed the Starbase.
Jim laughed and clapped Bones on the shoulder, "Yep! But QM will have it fixed by the time we leave." He drew even with Bones. Jim was, for the first time this shore leave, not wearing a dress or service uniform. He was dressed in his gold command working shirt. Bones was relieved. Jim's stress levels always went down when he got back into the gold shirt. Bones really didn't understand it himself. Bones hated that uniform. But to be fair, he hated all the uniforms.
"When's our leave time tomorrow?" he asked instead of grousing about the shipment.
Jim smirked at him like he knew what Bones was thinking. "0700 ship time, so that's about 0900 base time."
"Ugh, I hate the time differences between a ship and any location. Why can't the starbases be at the same time that the ships are on?" Bones groaned. He hated having to adjust every time they docked somewhere or when they were in orbit above a planet.
Jim's smirk only grew. They had this discussion before and at length. Bones made his opinion quite clear every time. "The Federation is... working on it. I don't know how many Starbases now match ship standard time, but I know it's a great deal of them. Starbase 180 just isn't one of them yet. You'll have to ask Scotty for a full count." Jim knew that Bones would only grumble but never try to leave.
Somewhere along the way, Bones found out he had a home on the Enterprise.
"Ask Scotty for a full count of what?" Scotty's voice came from behind them.
Jim and Bones jumped in surprise, turning around to face Scotty.
"How many Starbases are left that haven't gone to the standard ship time?" Bones asked. He had celebrated the announcement that the starbases and the ships would be at the same time. it made being docked at a starbase so much easier and prevented problems like missing shipment of medical supplies from happening.
Scotty thought about it. "I think the last report said that about seventy-five percent of the Starbases had made the switch."
"Good." Bones grumbled. "Maybe next time we stop at a Starbase then I won't have to deal with time differences in addition to being stuck in space." He meant it too. If he was stuck in space then the least a Starbase could do was be in time with the ship.
Scotty and Jim laughed.
Bones had to smile at their joy.
"What brings you out here anyway?" Bones asked when the other two had finally gained control of themselves.
None of them should have been dealing with a hangover. They hadn't drunk that much last night. it was just a beer or two with friends. So, they shouldn't need any doctoring from him.
"Just checking out the final loading," Jim said. He always made sure to be seen by his crew. Even if it was simple as walking around while working parties got the supply shipments on the ship. It was important to him that his crew didn't fear him - and that he was never intimidating. Bones knew of Jim's desire to be close to his crew of five hundred.
Scotty had a different answer. "Looking for you, Captain."
Jim tilted his head in curiosity. "What's up, Scotty?" he asked.
"Well, you remember the project Nyota and I have been working on?" he asked. Bones remembered the project. It was something to do with the communications systems. Knowing Scotty's perchance for the mad and Uhura's determination to ease communications, the project was probably borderline or completely against regulations but ultimately would be brilliant .
Jim nodded, "I know that you've been super-secret about something!" he was grinning. Jim looked like he couldn't wait to see what Scotty and Uhura had come up with. Bones revered, with a familiar feeling of fond dread, that everyone on the ship was mad.
Scotty was just madder than the rest.
"Aye. Well, we're ready to show you what we want to do." Scotty ginned.
Jim matched the look. "Two of my best minds, working on a harebrained project that will probably save the Enterprise when we least expect it? Hell yeah!"
As Scotty protested the use of the word 'harebrained', Bones glanced around.
Several of the members of the Vulcan delegation had arrived, including the leader and that one asshole who Bones had met during the formal dinner.
Bones still wanted to punch that guy in the face. He'd been so rude. The Vulcan, Jolvek, had been insulting to Jim's Captaincy, and had spent a good bit of time trying to prove to them that Spock was the true Captain.
And any member of the crew could tell you that was a lie. Spock was a decent leader. But Jim Kirk was a great Captain.
As Bones watched, Jolvek broke away from the leader of the group to make a beeline toward Spock.
"Oh no." Bones said, drawing the attention of the other two. Jim and Scotty ended their debate and followed Bones' gaze.
"What's 'oh no'?" Jim asked as he craned his neck to see what Bones was looking at.
Bones pointed with a jerk of his thumb. "That one Vulcan, bless his stupid heart, is going to try once again to talk to Spock."
Scotty winced. Clearly, he had been filled in with what had been going on by Uhura. "We should go to rescue Spock. Or stop Spock from nerve pinching his ass."
"Ok…" Jim eyed them. "What do you two know that I don't?"
Bones caught Scotty's eye and shook his head. "We'll tell you later. But we need to get to Spock." Bones wasn't going to let Spock deal with that asshole alone again. He'd only left during the formal dinner because he'd been watching both Pasha and Riley. If Bones hadn't been on duty watching them, then Jolvek would have been introduced to Bones' fist several times.
"Ok." Jim agreed. "Let's go."
Meanwhile across the loading bay
Spock knew his official task was superfluous in all honesty. He was on duty and it was his job to supervise the crew while they loaded the last of the supplies the ship needed.
It was an important task, as after the stop at New Vulcan the ship wasn't going to be at a Starbase or a Federation Planet for several months. The ship needed gear, food, medical supplies, and the rest of the items needed to run a Starship of the Enterprise's class and size.
But the crew worked well together. Every department was represented as the Quartermaster's team directed the flow of traffic. From the botany lab, taking in new fertilizer and other needed items, to the engineering teams receiving pallet after pallet of parts and tools they would need. The astrophysics labs were even expecting a shipment.
The supplies were the ones that would be difficult to replicate or is just easier to have on hand.
Spock's official job was to supervise and be in command of the loading of the supplies but he knew he was unnecessary. Jim and he demanded perfection of the crew and the crew was always willing to give it.
They didn't need Spock present particularly, but as Jim always preferred to be seen by his crew, Spock followed suit.
He saw Dr. McCoy across the loading bay, arguing with the Quartermaster about a part of the shipment that was supposed to go med bay. The Quartermaster was always stressed during the on-boarding of the shipments but he was an excellent organizer.
The Quartermaster's first assistant came up to Spock with a padd. "Sir. The Vulcans are asking about their luggage. It's the last thing from the delegation's shipment that needs to be loaded." The woman didn't look as harried as the Quartermaster but she was brisk.
Renank was close behind her. Spock greeted him in Vulcan and then turned to the quartermaster's assistant. "The luggage will be one of the first things off so the pallets will be one of the last ones on. Everything is proceeding according to schedule."
The woman nodded and moved on, hurrying over to where the messes perishable food order had just arrived.
"Your crew has worked hard, Mr. Spock," Renank said. "I am sure the next two weeks will be calm." He watched the crew as they moved. A part of the Vulcan delegation was moving around the last of their luggage. Doing final checks of the gear before it was placed in the holding bay. Jolvek was a part of that group.
Spock resolved to ignore the other Vulcan; Jolvek was not worth Spock's time.
"I am sure it will be," Spock said, turning his attention back to his own padd with the information from the shipment on it. "A peaceful journey to return to our new home."
They both exchanged farewells before Renank left him to join his party by the luggage.
Movement caught Spock's attention, pulling his attention from the padd.
Jim was at the edge of the loading dock. He was back in his gold command shirt. There was something right in the universe when Jim wore his command gold. Gold for the best captain Starfleet had and will ever have. Jim waved at the crew as he walked around the bay. He was heading to Doctor McCoy. McCoy said something that caused Jim to start laughing.
Spock thought he looked beautiful.
He hoped that maybe soon he would have the courage to tell Jim just how he felt. But for now, Spock would watch and try to flirt subtlety.
Spock watched as Mr. Scott came up and joined the group. And soon they were all laughing.
The Quartermaster's assistant hurried up to him and handed him a padd. Spock saw that the padd held the missing and unable to be fulfilled list. Spock signed below the quartermaster's signature, acknowledging the lack of items and that they would be stocked as soon as Starfleet could get a shuttle to them.
After placing his name on the padd, the Assistant Quartermaster hurried off to the next part of their job and Spock returned to what he was doing before; watching Jim.
" You watch him with eyes that say a lot, Mr. Spock. " Jolvek's voice came from behind him. " He's still not worth your desire. " He spoke to Spock in Vulcan, something that caused the nearest crewmembers to stop and glance in their direction in confusion. The Vulcans delegation had only had spoken Standard since they had arrived on the ship. The crewmembers would recognize the change in languages.
They were part of the communications team.
Spock refrained from sighing. It would do him no good. The communications team may not understand what he and Jolvek were saying, as Vulcan wasn't a common language to learn despite Nyota's best efforts, but they could read his body language well enough.
" You are wrong, Jolvek, " he said simply, also in Vulcan. He wouldn't rise to this attempt to get his attention. He would not consider Jolvek to be a potential mate.
"I am not. I will prove it to you ." Jolvek said with enough determination that Spock looked at him fully for the first time. There was a glint in his eyes that surprised Spock. It was recklessness - a rare trait in Vulcans.
"And how do you plan to do that?" Spock asked. He placed his padd on a crate nearby, leaving his hands free. He didn't know what Jolvek was planning but Spock was going to make sure that if he was going to fight then his hands would be free.
" I will prove it to you by besting him in a contest of arms. I am the better choice. " Jolvek said, taking a step forward in the direction that Jim was in.
Spock moved to stop the man. He placed himself between Jolvek and Jim. He would defend his mate. He would prove to Jim that he was a good mate by defending him from enemies. " No, you will not. " Spock nearly growled.
Spock could hear the normal loud chatter from the working parties become more muted then they had a moment before. He suspected that this tête-à-tête was catching the attention of others.
Jolvek looked angry for a heartbeat before the expression faded to just tension in his shoulders and clenched fists. " Why? Why do you protect him? He's not worth you or your abilities. It matters not that he is a hero! Or that he comes from a family of heroes! I am better. I can provide more than he can!"
Despite the Vulcan words, the tone wasn't one that most Vulcan's would use. Jolvek was angry and it was showing. The harsh, furious tone of Jolvek was carrying.
More of the chatter behind Spock faded. Spock paid the difference little attention. He focused his concentration on the person in front of him blocked out the unnecessary sound. His brain cutting out the information he didn't need for his goal.
There was a threat to Jim in front of him.
He would defend Jim.
"I think you need to rethink your path, " Spock said. "It is clear that you are being controlled by your emotions." It was the biggest insult he could think of, short of borrowing from Jim and simply cursing the other Vulcan out. "I have rejected you. It is not logical to keep trying to ensnare me in a bond. I will not comply." He kept his back to the crew, sure that they would cover him if need be.
He would not take his eyes off the threat.
" Because of him? " Jolvek asked. He sounded calmer than before but his hands were still balled up into fists. " I can provide more! We are of similar intelligence. I have projects we can work on. I am sure that when the time comes, we will be compatible."
Jolvek's reference to Pon Farr made Spock flinch. His time wasn't something he wished to think of. His other self had warned him that he was going to go through it in his future. However, with the loss of Vulcan, neither knew when that would be. "I already have a preferred mate for my time," Spock said.
He was glad this part of the conversation was in Vulcan. Nyota was the only one other than the Vulcans who could follow the conversation and she was not there. She was currently on the bridge holding the conn.
"I highly doubt that we, Jolvek, are compatible. The Captain is much more than just merely compatible." Spock said. it was the truth, something that Spock knew in his bones.
Jim and he had something special.
"More than compatible? Do you honestly think that you might be t'hy'la with a human, of all creatures? " Jolvek said. His disdain when he spat out the Vulcan word for a human was nearly painful to hear.
Spock would have glared at him for the slight against his heritage, against his mother but the word t'hy'la had taken all of his attention.
Because it made sense. Jim was his t'hy'la. Jim was his other half, his other part of his soul. His be all and everything. Jim was his friend, his brother and his chosen companion. His wished-for lover.
T'hy'la.
That explained some of what Spock was feeling in his katra.
"You do. You think you are t'hy'la with a human. " Jolvek said sounding stunned. It took a moment before all of the anger, he was feeling came up to the surface and his expression changed from one of cool indifference of a Vulcan to one of anger and hate. Jolvek's eyes flicked over the shoulder of Spock but did Spock not take his eyes off of the threat to Jim. that's all Jolvek was now. A threat. "How disappointing, the best of the Vulcans thinks a human is the best he can get. I can show you much more."
"I do," Spock said simply. "He is the sun to my planet. Necessary and logical to life, my life ."
Jolvek glared at Spock. "He is unworthy."
"I do not believe he is. He is, by far, worthier than you. " Spock growled out. He was rapidly running out of patience for this conversation.
"What is going on here?" Jim's voice was commanding and came from close behind Spock. Spock felt a moment of relief that Jim was close to him, which made him easier to protect from the threat.
Jim came up on Spock's right side. Spock stepped forward to keep Jim behind him. Jim placed his hand on Spock's upper arm. "Spock, what's going on? What's with the defensive posture?" he murmured, just low enough that most of the crew would not be able to hear what was said.
Jolvek currently could.
"I am fine Jim. Jolvek and I are merely having a disagreement." Spock said. Despite his realization that Jim was his t'hy'la, Spock was unsure that Jim was interested in him in such a way. This was deeper than just merely agreeing to date a close friend.
This was much more. This was Everything.
Jim frowned. "This conversation looks like much more than just a disagreement, Spock." His hand was still on Spock's upper arm. It was like a brand. Jim's emotions were powerful. He was concerned, ready for a fight and worried. There was something else that Spock had always felt from Jim but never was able to identify, something that was undoubtedly part of Jim's very soul.
"It's fine," Spock said, ignoring how the phrase made Jim's eyebrows raise into his hairline. Jim noticed the contraction as well as his use of the word 'fine'.
"Now I absolutely believe you," Jim said in a tone that was full of sarcasm.
Spock still hadn't taken his full attention from Jolvek. The other Vulcan was growing angrier.
"I demand a challenge for your hand, S'hin T'gai Spock." Jolvek said, "I demand to fight the other suitor for your hand. I will come out victorious and you will bond with me."
There was something changed in his tone and words that a part of Spock's mind started to think about but the rest of him was more concerned with the illogical declaration.
Spock would not let that stand.
Neither apparently, would Jim, who could apparently tell fighting words no matter what language they were spoken in, as he attempted to step forward to fight Jolvek.
Spock held his arm out to stop Jim from moving forward.
"There is no logic in your statement, Jolvek," Spock said, matching his tone. "For you to fight for my hand, I would have needed to accept your suit. I have not. Furthermore, you cannot fight Jim. I wish to be his suitor, not the other way around."
There was a gasp from right next to him that took Spock a moment to realize was from Jim.
Because there was silence.
And the part of Spock's brain that was working on the difference in Jolvek's speech finally figured it out.
Jolvek hadn't issued his challenge in Vulcan.
He had been speaking Standard.
And Spock had responded to him in the same language. Something he was used to doing as he and Nyota liked to play with languages while having conversations.
Then Spock realized the silence from the bay wasn't just because his brain was filtering the excess information.
It was because the crew had stopped working to listen in.
Spock dropped his hand and stepped away from Jim. he drew himself up straight. and was unsure of what he should do. It was far too early to tell Jim how he felt. But now Jim knew. He knew that Spock was interested in seeing him romantically. The whole crew knew that Spock was in love with the Captain.
It was far too early. Jim wasn't acting any different. They were only just friends. Spock hadn't experimented to see if flirting was going to be well received. He didn't know if Jim was interested.
He just didn't know.
He avoided looking at Jim. He wouldn't be able to handle seeing him at that moment.
Jolvek looked smug like he had won something when Spock met his eyes. Spock didn't feel a thing as he spun on his heel and walked away from the crowd.
The crew parted and let him through. Spock didn't register the expressions on their faces. He didn't register anything.
He just left.
He didn't know where he was going.
In the loading bay
As Jim had walked over to where Spock and Jolvek were talking, he noticed that the crew nearest them had stopped working and were instead watching the two Vulcans with rapt attention.
Jim was worried. Spock was facing away from him but he was standing in a defensive posture. It was like he was preparing to protect the crew. The lines of tension were something that most people couldn't read but Jim could.
He could put good money on that the communications team, the nearest ones to Spock, could read him too. Uhura trained her people well.
Bones and Scotty, both just a step behind Jim, could read the tension in Spock's shoulders. They could read the stance and they were apparently prepping for a fight.
As they got closer Jim could hear that Spock and Jolvek were speaking in Vulcan. Whatever Jolvek was staying was causing Spock to respond with a heated tone.
Apparently, Jolvek wasn't happy with Spock's response because he was also getting angrier. " …Tor du nah-tor ik du lau nam-tor t'hy'la k' wuh komihn ?"
Jim didn't understand much from Vulcan. He knew the Vulcan word for human, however. He also understood the disdain that filled Jolvek's voice when he said 'komihn'.
Whatever was being said had something to do with humans. Which pissed Jim off. But Spock didn't react in any way that Jim expected.
Spock straightened in surprise. Surprised by what, Jim didn't know. He couldn't see Spock's face still. Jim was close enough, however, to hear Spock mummer "T'hy'la. " to himself. It honestly sounded like he didn't know he was speaking.
Then Spock's shoulders went back as Jolvek said something else in Vulcan. "Du tor. Du nah-tor du nam-tor t'hy'la k' wuh komihn." Jolvek glanced over Spock's shoulder and saw Jim. Jim held his gaze for a moment before Jolvek went back to staring at Spock. " Ra vravshaya. Wuh buhfik t' wuh Vuhlkansu nah-tor wuh komihn tor wuh buhfik au mokuhlek prah. Nash-veh mokuhlek gluvaya du mau weht." Jolvek spat out.
That apparently caused Spock to snap too. Jim watched as he stood up straight and looked down his nose at Jolvek, "Nash-veh tor. Ang'jmizn nam-tor wuh yel tor t'nash-veh ek'tra. Bolayatik heh olozhikaik tor ha'kiv."
Jim caught his rank in whatever Spock just said. He berated himself for not learning Vulcan before. Uhura was always trying to get more people to learn how to speak the language. And Jim's got a letter to learn how to write.
Bones stepped next to Jim. "I don't like this. Jolvek is an asshole. Who knows what he's telling Spock right now." He whispered. Bones glanced around at the crew and Jim followed. Most of the crew had stopped and were now making their way over to the drama that involved their first officer.
Jim didn't blame them. It was unlike Spock to act like this. Or really, it was unlike Spock to act this way when they were on a Starbase. Spock could be just as protective of the crew as Jim while they were out in space.
Jim had been ambivalent to Jolvek's presence on the ship, despite the Vulcan's apparent dislike of him. But that was rapidly changing to an outright dislike of Jolvek. If the other Vulcan could draw this protectiveness out of his normally calm First Officer then Jim didn't want him on the Enterprise longer then he had to be.
"I don't like where this is going," Jim said to Bones and Scotty. still watching as Spock actually growled something at Jolvek. He had to interrupt.
"What's going on here? Spock, what's wrong?" he asked. He stopped at Spock's right in an attempt to move into the center to break up the fight, but Spock refused to let Jim past him. Spock took a step forward and placed Jim behind him again. Jim placed his hand on Spock's upper arm in an attempt to steady himself. "What's with defensive posture?"
Spock hadn't taken his eyes off Jolvek. Despite the way, he was a defensive barrier in front of Jim. Jim didn't know what Jolvek had said or done to reach that level of threat to Spock but Jim trusted his opinion.
"It's fine Jim. Jolvek and I are merely having a disagreement." Spock lied.
Jim didn't believe him for a moment. Nothing about this situation said 'disagreement' and all of it said 'impending fight'. "This looks like much more than just a disagreement Spock," Jim said. Spock shifted and Jim didn't move his hand, but he could feel the muscles in Spock's arm shift and move. They were tense but he leaned into Jim's touch slightly.
Jim couldn't help the rush of love he felt at the gentle acknowledgment of Jim's presence and support. He didn't fight the feeling. If Spock hadn't noticed before then he wouldn't notice now.
"I'm fine," Spock said and Jim felt his eyebrows raise.
"Now I absolutely believe you," Jim said, putting in as much sarcasm as he could muster. Spock merely inclined his head and returned his full attention back to the Vulcan in front of him.
Jim could see the crowd around them grow to include the Vulcans who had been looking at their luggage before it was loaded into the bay.
"I demand a challenge for your hand, S'hin T'gai Spock," Jolvek said, and that was something Jim could understand. Jolvek had switched to the standard language, instead of using Vulcan. "I demand to fight the other suitor for your hand. I will come out victorious and you will bond with me."
Jim felt his eyes widen and then narrow. This whole thing was because Jolvek was perusing Spock? And Spock clearly wasn't interested. But who was this other suitor?
Jim decided he didn't care. He would fight Jolvek and keep him from trying to force Spock into bonding with him. He moved to step forward to accept the challenge that Jolvek issued. He was perfectly willing to fight.
If it meant that the other Vulcans on the ship would think that Jim was Spock's suitor then, well, that would be even better. Maybe he would stop being a coward and he would actually tell Spock his feelings.
Spock stopped him from taking Jolvek's challenge by moving his arm in front of Jim.
"There is no logic in your statement, Jolvek," Spock said in standard. Jim knew that was an insult if he ever heard one. Based on the other Vulcans' reaction, stiffening shoulders and well-concealed looks of rage, (surprisingly, the looks seemed to be aimed at Jolvek…), it was a pretty bad one.
Then Spock continued, "For you to fight for my hand, I would have needed to accept your suit." That made sense to Jim. "I have not. Furthermore, you cannot fight Jim. I wish to be his suitor, not the other way around."
Jim was vaguely aware that he may have gasped aloud.
He was more aware that Spock's brain seemed to realized something by the way he stiffened and look around, breaking his staring contest with Jolvek for the first time since the argument started.
Behind him, Jim heard Scotty whistle lightly and Bones whisper, "Oh shit."
Jim watched as Spock looked around, saw the whole crew watching the drama. Then he stiffened up even further. He didn't look at Jim.
Jim tried not to take that as a rejection.
Then Spock turned to the smug looking Jolvek for a heartbeat before he turned on his heel and left. He walked back to the ship and no one stopped him. The crew let him go.
Jim let him go.
That made Jim start thinking again. He took a half step toward Spock before he thought better of it. Spock was upset. Jim only had a few places on the ship he would go. He was going to find Spock.
And he would clear this up.
But first, he had something to do.
Jim took that half step and used it as momentum to turn around to face Jolvek and he slammed his fist into Jolvek's jaw.
Jolvek collapsed to the floor.
"Challenge accepted, asshole. And you lose." Jim spat down at the Vulcan who was on the floor. "Stay away from Spock. He clearly isn't into you."
That broke the silence with the crew. They began to agree. Loudly, and with vehemence. Jim also noticed some money start to change hands. He also distinctly heard Scotty's voice say, "Looks like half my department is going to owe me credits. They all said it would take them another year."
Jim ignored them all. He had a better idea. "Actually. Get off my ship. You have harassed a member of my crew to the point of humiliation. I don't trust you to try not to push even further. You're a danger. So, because of that, I want you off my ship."
Jolvek rose to his feet, holding a hand to his cheek. "Such an emotional response. Spock deserves so much more than you." He said, glaring at Jim.
Jim glared right back. "I don't care what you think, Jolvek. Get off my ship. You aren't worth the dirt on Spock's shoes. Leave ."
Jim could hear QM order several of the crew to get Jolvek's gear. They broke off of the crowd and went to the Vulcan's pallets of luggage. They efficiently took the already built pallets apart and located Jolvek's things.
"You will have to deal with my teacher," Jolvek said. He had dropped his hand. "I'm sure Renank would be displeased that you have threatened his head student."
"I am, by far, more displeased that you have shown such illogical tenancies," Renank said, coming through the crowd of remembers. He had several other Vulcans head back to their supplies.
"Renank?" Jolvek sounded stunned, for a Vulcan.
Jim glanced at Renank. "I'm sorry sir, but I can't have someone who has been harassing my crew on the ship." He knew that he didn't sound truly apologetic, but Jim didn't care.
Jolvek was not going to be on the Enterprise when it departed in the morning. He would deal with the Federation, Starfleet, and the Vulcan High Council if need be. But Jim did not care.
Spock was more important.
"Do not apologize, Captain Kirk. I agree. You may not have heard what was said in while they spoke Vulcan, but we all did. I can not have a student who so demonstrates such bigotry toward humans." Renank said. He was calm as ever but there was a hint of anger in his posture. Jim liked the Vulcan even more. "It is illogical, especially with what we study and are looking for."
Jolvek was wearing an expression of open shock. " Savensu ?" he asked.
Renank gave him a quick frown. "Do not call me teacher. You are no longer my student."
Before he could say more QM walked up with several crew members and Vulcans behind him. Each of them was carrying a box or a bag. "Here you go, sirs. All of his luggage and gear."
Renank nodded and Jim said, "Thank you, QM. Please restart the onboarding. You've got all the signatures you need. If not, go to Scotty."
QM nodded then walked off with Scotty in tow. Bones stayed behind.
The crew got the unspoken order and remarkably quickly got back to work. That's one the of the reasons Jim loved his crew. They understood when it was time to get back to work.
"I do not understand, Renank. I am your best student. Why are you letting them follow through with this ridiculous threat?" Jolvek asked, looking at his teacher like Renank would be convinced to change his mind.
"As I said. Our goal is understanding of the universe and all its differences. Bigotry isn't something I have taught not want in my school. The pursuit of someone who does not wish your company isn't something I have taught. You have not practiced what I have taught. Please leave." Renank said. He looked expressionless but Jim still could see that anger.
Bones snorted behind him. "Yeah. We're not asking you to leave. We're telling ya."
Jim crossed his hands across his chest. "Leave. You have your stuff."
Jolvek looked at Renank for a moment. Renank shook his head and turned around and walked away. He didn't say a word. Jolvek started after him for a moment before he picked up his bags and left the loading dock.
Jim glared at him until he was out of sight. Only once the Vulcan was gone did he turned to Bones.
"I've got to go," he said.
Bones nodded and pointed back toward the ship. "Go get your man."
Jim laughed, small and sudden. He gave a bright grin to Bones. "I've got to get something for him. But yes."
"He'll like the letter." Bones said, not bothering to hide the grin on his face.
Jim nodded. "He will." Determination filled his veins. He could do this.
Spock wanted to be his suitor.
Then he started toward the ship. He paused just before he got to the top of the loading ramp. then he turned around. "Hey, who won the most?" he yelled down to the bustling crew.
The crew stopped in their work and glanced around, each of the ones who clearly did win something with Spock's declaration doing a quick calculation.
Then a cheer from the where the engineering team was at. "I did, Captain!" Gaila cried out, waving her hand.
Jim laughed. "What was your exact bet?"
"Large confession, accidental, Spock said it! And then I also bet separately on the first year of this mission!" she said cheerfully. There were groans around her. Jim had to laugh.
"Enjoy it, Gaila!" Jim said as he went back into the ship.
He had a letter for a Vulcan to read.
And a confession of his own to make.
In the observation deck
Spock wasn't sure why he found himself looking out to space on the observation deck.
Maybe it was because he had always felt more comfortable looking out to the stars and knowing they still called to him. That he belonged among them.
Maybe it was because the stars were always in Jim's eyes. Jim was born among the stars and they had never truly left him.
Either way, Spock let himself stare out the window of the observation deck that faced the outside. One was unable to see the Starbase from where Spock stood. He was sitting at the bench table that ran the length of the windows.
He had a glass of some fairly sweet-smelling alcohol in front of him, untouched. He knew why he asked for the drink, but he still wasn't sure if he would drink the beverage.
Maybe he should have asked something with chocolate in it instead. He would have at least felt the alcohol then.
This was not what he had wanted to happen.
What Spock had wanted to do was if Jim had been receptive to Spock's attempts at flirting? Spock would have asked Jim to a quiet dinner on the next shore leave. He wouldn't have done it publicly either. He would have asked during one of their meetings to play chess, at the end of the night. If Jim said no, Spock would have been able to get the distance needed to get over the heartbreak. If Jim had said yes, then Spock would have used the next mediation to control his actions and not just kiss Jim, right then and there.
But all that was if, if , Jim had been receptive to Spock's flirting. And several months away.
This was far too soon. Spock didn't know if Jim was interested in him at all as a potential mate. He just didn't know.
And now Spock feared that his declaration may have ruined everything.
Jim may not want to see him anymore. They would still work together as the command team as Jim wanted what was best for the Enterprise and that meant that they were in charge.
But he may not want to play chess in the evenings or eat breakfast together. Or have conversations as they walked the ship.
He may not want to be Spock's friend anymore.
Spock sighed and tied to take Nyota's words from the night before into account. Jim would say yes, just to try it out.
He was, as far as Spock knew, still friends with Carol Marcus, and they had dated for nearly seven months, despite her wish to be posted planetside for this mission so she could raise her child with its father, a former member of the crew.
Jim didn't seem to harbor any ill will toward either party, dispute the fact he had dated Marcus first. He also didn't seem to treat her any differently either, for being his ex-lover.
Maybe he wouldn't treat Spock any differently despite the fact Spock was in love with him.
The observation deck was empty except for one other person, a security officer who had been with the ship during the last five-year mission. The woman had saved his life a half a dozen times and had been saved by him the same.
But that was true for most of the crew.
She had been behind the bar on the far side of the room. But now she was sitting in one of the stools, watching the exits. She had been in the room when Spock entered, working on her padd behind the bar.
Now she watched the exits and occasionally watched him. He knew when he was being guarded. He wondered if she would let Jim in here.
Spock understood the crew's ability to spread gossip well enough to know that she knew what had happened in the loading dock. It was probably why she had slid him a drink of something dark and mildly sweet smelling, probably amaretto, wordlessly.
Spock wanted to dismiss her, but he also knew the crew. She would just post herself outside the room instead.
So, he ignored her in favor of staring out the windows.
He watched the stars for nearly half an hour before the doors slide open for the first time since he came in.
"Captain." The security officer said, her tone respectful and quiet. She stood up to greet Jim.
"Miss Essa. You are dismissed. No need to post outside the doors." Jim said. He apparently also understood why the security officer had stayed.
"Yes, sir." She said in a tone of voice that said she wasn't going to listen. The crew was protective of both of them as they were of them. "You may want one of these." She must have passed Jim something and he must have taken it, as she sold out the door with little else.
Spock heard Jim's footsteps as he came closer to him. Spock didn't look away from the windows.
Jim settled on the bench table right next to him. In his hands was a glass of the same alcohol that filled Spock's glass and a handwritten letter.
A letter that Spock remembered but did not dare hope for.
Jim did not take a drink from the glass he had placed on the table.
They sat in silence for a long moment.
Both of them watching the stars. Spock was very aware of Jim's whole being. He liked to imagine that Jim was feeling the same right then.
"If you don't return my regard or feel that you could never return my regard then I will not mention them again," Spock said, feeling a little like he was in the Regency novels that his mother occasionally read to him as a child and still learning standard. His mother had been a rather large fan of 'Pride and Prejudice." Reading the story as an adult, Spock had long figured out why. He just hadn't been able to cast himself as Mr. Darcy before.
He did not try to promise to not feel his emotions. That would be illogical. Jim was t'hy'la. He would always be the other half of Spock's soul.
Spock spared a moment to marvel at how he had missed such a large part of himself before.
When Jim turned to face him, Spock realized that he hadn't missed it. He had simply not known what it had meant.
"I don't want that," Jim said. He looked at the letter in his hand. Then he also took a deep breath. "Please read this." He said as he pushed the letter down the table. He looked at Spock with such a vulnerable expression that Spock placed his hand over Jim's.
In comfort or in support he didn't know.
For his own sake or for Jim sake, he didn't know either.
Spock picked up the letter.
It was still addressed to him in a handwriting that he did not recognize. It was still addressed to him from a bondmate.
Whoever loved ambassador Spock had loved him dearly.
He opened the letter and saw that it was dated about twenty years in the future. Whoever wrote it was in Starfleet, or in space travel. They were the only ones who wrote all dates in the standard stardate format.
It was still in Vulcan. it was also written by a man. The few gendered words that Vulcan used were all masculine.
The man who had written the letter spoke about how much he missed Spock now that they had to be stationed on different ships for a while. How he longed to see Spock again. How he couldn't wait until this exercise was over so Spock could rejoin his proper place as second in command of this man's ship.
Something in Spock's very katra rebelled at the idea of being the first officer for anyone other than James T. Kirk, at being under the command of anyone who was not his t'hy'la.
He read the letter, knowing that love poured out of every written word. They had written about their day and how it was harder to deal without Spock's presence. Whoever wrote this letter loved Spock with all his being.
Spock could have cried. Why did Ambassador Spock leave this clearly precious letter to Jim?
It was when he got to the farewell at the end of the letter, two pages later, that he read the name of the writer.
Ish-veh k'diwa heh veh vi tor ek'wak ish-veh, t'hy'la.
Spock stared at the farewell for a long moment. One that he wasn't entirely sure that Jim breathed during.
"Your beloved and one who is forever yours, t'hy'la, " he breathed.
He looked up from the letter to meet Jim's eyes.
"He loved Ambassador Spock," Spock said. "So deeply that it pained him that they were separated on a training exercise." He wasn't sure he believed his own senses right at the moment.
Jim huffed out a laugh. "It would hurt me for you not to be by my side, so I can understand my other self."
Spock took a moment to absorb that.
"You knew who wrote this letter?" he asked. Spock realized that he had never seen Jim write something down. All the notes he made was into his padd, and rarely did a mission require anything to be handwritten.
Jim nodded. "Yes. I know my own handwriting. I never got past the greeting though. So, I don't have a clue about what is in the letter."
Spock didn't know what to say to that.
Eventually, after a few moments of silence, Spock asked, "…You love me?"
Jim huffed out another laugh before facing Spock fully. He took Spock's' hand and intertwined it on his own. "Spock. I've always loved you."
And though their joined hands Spock could tell the truth to that statement and he could finally understand what the undercurrent of emotion that he could always sense from Jim.
That emotion that he could never understand before was Jim's love for him.
Spock wondered how he missed it.
Jim was nervous and he was babbling. "…Apparently, it's more than just destined. The old man and the other Jim were in love. So deeply in love. Why else would he have kept the letter?"
He would have said more but Spock leaned forward and kissed him in the human manner.
Jim didn't pause for longer than a second before he was kissing back.
They lost several moments just kissing. Eventually, Jim pulled back. He had a serious expression on his face. "I don't want you to never mention your feelings again. I want you to tell me as often as you want to. I want you to court me. I want to be your suitor, Spock. I want everything you are willing to give me."
He squeezed their joined hands. Spock squeezed back.
"I want to be your everything," Spock said back. "I was …afraid… that you weren't interested. I hadn't wanted to push you. I knew that you were interested in someone for a long time that…"
Jim's burst of humor and affection that came from their joined hands didn't exactly surprise Spock but he didn't understand it. he met Jim's gaze with a curious look.
Jim seemed to understand Spock's confusion. "Spock, I am interested in you. And, as I said, I have been for years. But you were happy with Uhura. I was good being your friend. But this is better. Much better." He leaned forward and stole another kiss.
Spock followed him back as Jim tried to pull away. Jim chuckled and kissed him again.
"You've always been there for me. You have been my best friend, and my other half for years. How was I not going to fall for you?" Jim asked once they pulled apart.
Spock realized something at that moment. "Was I the one who caused you to drink with Mr. Scott and Doctor McCoy?"
Jim looked surprised for a moment but then he nodded slowly. "Kind of. Well, it was like that in the beginning. We were trying to drown our feelings but then it changed and then it was a support group of sorts. The three of us getting drunk tended to just be us spending hours waxing poetic about you all." He said, then laughed. "I think Sulu was the only one would could stand us when we got to be too deep into the sauce."
He leaned forward and whisper like he was sharing a secret, "We spent a lot of time talking about how awesome you all were."
Spock raised an eyebrow.
Jim sat back and shrugged, "It's the truth."
Spock ignored that. If the truth was like that, then it made sense that they would drink together. He was glad of Mr. Sulu for being able to help the trio. "And now?"
Jim smiled. It was like the sun after a very long night. "Now I'm the happiest person in the universe Spock."
Spock thought about that. "I fear that we may have a competition for that title, Jim."
"Oh?" Jim raised an eyebrow back at Spock.
"Yes," Spock said firmly. "You love me as I love you."
Jim flushed a deep red at Spock's declaration. Something that Spock was pleased to see. he wanted to see more of it.
He rose to his feet and took Jim's free hand his own, helping his believed to his feet. He would always show Jim that he was a good mate. Jim deserved the very best.
Jim followed easily. He still had the wide grin on his face. He followed Spock as Spock led them both toward the door of the observation lounge. He had the letter in his unoccupied hand.
"By the way, what does t'hy'la mean? You said it earlier and it's in the letter, I think." Jim asked, his tone curious and happy, just before they reached the door.
Spock knew he could give a detailed explanation of what t'hy'la meant and how it applied to them, but he knew that Jim would prefer a more simplified truth at the moment.
"You." He said, as he stopped and drew Jim closer to kiss him.
Behind them, on the table overlooking the stars, sat two full, untouched glasses.
About two years into the second five-year mission.
Scotty sighed in relief as he sank into the barstool. "Mr. Sulu you are a slave driver."
Sulu laughed as he sat next to him on the bar. "Well, you asked for my help."
"We did," Jim sat on the barstool next to Scotty. "But now I'm more or less regretting it."
McCoy didn't even bother sitting down. He just leaned against the bar and gestured to the bartender. "I'm not. This Is far better than the one I got Joyclen." He said tapping his pocket.
Inside that pocket sat a box that Scotty knew matched the box in his own pocket. He and McCoy bought theirs at the same store.
Jim had found his at the last store they went to.
After five hours of Sulu dragging them around to every jeweler shop he could find on the planet.
Scotty pulled out his box and opened it. He stared at the ring, gold and designed with a repeating pattern of small stones.
"Still a good choice there, Scotty," Sulu said leaning over. "Uhura will love it." Both Jim and Len leaned over and took another look at the ring.
"That's the whole point, Sulu. I hope she loves it!" Scotty laughed. "No idea what I'm going to do about it, though."
The bartender placed a glass of beer in front of him. Scotty took it gratefully. He was nervous as hell now that he had actually bought the ring. But he didn't have a plan to ask Nyota yet.
Other than just blurting out the question at one of their lunch dates that is.
Len laughed, opening his own box. Inside sat two rings. One a plain band with their initials and their anniversary date written on it. The other ring was a stretchy polymer that most of Scotty's married engineers wore while they were working. That specific ring was designed so it wouldn't take a finger off if it got caught on things. Instead of breaking or losing a finger, the ring would break first.
Scotty had one of them as well.
"I've got a plan. But I don't know the date." Len said, smiling down at the box. "Gotta wait until we pass a nebula when we aren't at warp."
Jim got this considering look. "I think I can make that happen. I'll let you know."
Len smiled at Jim. "Thanks. I'm nervous but I think I'll be fine!"
Jim laughed. "You've done this before so I'm sure you'll be fine!" He reached into his pocket for his own box. Scotty had to smile. What had taken them so long was the fact that Jim insisted on finding something that could be put on a necklace and was non-conductive.
Sulu won the day that by finding a jeweler who also had the ability to write in Vulcan. Now Jim had two matching bands and one chain. Both of them had the word 'T'hy'la' written on it. Despite being pressed, Jim refused to tell them what it meant. "I've got a date…Kind of… but I don't know how I'm going to ask."
He paused and turned to sulu. "Why is this so hard?" Scotty had to agree. This shouldn't be so hard, but it was."
"Well you are asking them to marry you guys, so nerves are understandable," Sulu said, grinning. "You're just lucky that Ben and Demora were willing to drag Pasha and Spock along on a fun-filled science museum tour and that Uhura had that meeting with the translators of Mi'ki'laon do deal with." He was also drinking something. Sulu had been kind enough to ignore how much of a mess they all were.
Even after more than a year, all three of them were a mess. Sulu didn't seem to care, other than to laugh at them. But all three of them knew it was out of love.
"We are so lucky," Jim said smiling down at the box. Scotty could see the thoughts forming in his head. They were much like the one's in Scotty's own.
How did one shore leave, so many months ago, change so much? Scotty never knew that he didn't care.
He had a beautiful intelligent woman to propose to.
"Here's to the many good years coming next!" Jim said, looking up and raising a glass.
Scotty had to drink to that.
The actual end!
Y'all. This is it. That's the end of Drink Your Heart Away - the Star Trek Drinking Fic. Thank you so MUCH for being along this crazy ride with me.
This is officially the longest story I've ever written (holy shit its like 114,000 words - WHAT?) and it has probably been one of the most fun. To tell the truth, I got this idea while long distance driving nearly three years ago? Ish? Maybe two years. Still. Its been a LONG ass time with DYHA. I wrote most of this on my first deployment. It turns out that boredom and stress in a foreign country makes for good fic writing.
Star Trek has been the most creative thing I've done for a while. But I do think I need to write for some other fandoms for a little bit. Like my already 39k Yuuri on ice, Victor was a fan First/social media/Olympics AU that I've been working on. I'm still in the ST fandom, but I'll be taking a bit of a break writing for it.
Thank you so much to B0kunoanime for being my wonderful beta on this. You approached me after chapter one was posted and made my eh work into something amazing. I don't know if I can thank you enough.
I can't wait to see you all with the next story. Thank you for all of the support and care and love I've received it has meant the world to me. <3 As always I'm on Tumblr at asailordreamingbeyondthehorizon and I'm on twitter now too at Carpe_History.
PS: Please go listen to all of the songs in the chapter titles. they gave me life while I was writing this.
Hide Comments (178)
Popcornjones, WinchesterBurger, Bree_Lawson, JimaKun, JW_Sapphire, avannah19, i_am_a_worm, AkiyukiKitten, Glommus, lydiakristin, Lullabuzzard, Dertin1011, domosgood, PeachieMochi, PippinSqueaks, PhoenixQuake, iamapdssufferer, blueharlequin, ChocolateAlchemy, ShellyLuvMarcus, saturjay, Stelia22, littleTorch82, Life_From_The_Ashes, btsmee, atlasescape, Zefirka1107, Ksansara, Jonesy1888, CodeRomance, G_of_Thorn, nomencllature, RestlessWanderings, Lily_Dev_93, Malory2, andrandiriel, TAGcatchmenow, Destialforever, Jackandthegiantpeach, Red_Phoenix_Fyre, Eleagnus, Ascendancy, Bookengineer, Dreyamonster, MechanicZero, Narcissusz, WeBothKnowThisIsTrash, szabina, ForgottenFrog, Wolnim, and 369 more users phoenixsky, Copper_Wings, Bookcrazysongbird, Uppich_3, Amnesia_the_crazy_cat_lady, StupidUsername84, FaithLover611, sarka_jencikova, Faceforasmile, Mmepinnochio, Anasworlds, cyanidearsenic, Maritiarty, musicmillennia, CR_Noctem, roxxsanne, khaleesi_of_the_fandoms, solci97, K_shot3cammie, goldlyboing, Choobaka, sodiumdonewithu, Sodapop88, JaceTheAce34, raininginthestreets, mei_an, OfKnownBounds, AmniIsRoving, AnnwylSong, Windingshadows, k1of7, Xaryen, strina, GalaxyPixel, sillygirl, Mikeara_san, AWeeBitRustyEh, baffledking, Bashful_Kitsyuu, IBeKpopping, bluestoneotter, Mohr, WintersScribe, starwhord, karinav915, 99hermione, Restful_Insomniac, justalittlehungry, ArtemisDiana, ActualHumanStilesStilinski, rekt_by_hubris, WhinnithePooh, Sleeping_Obsidian, Raikaris, Kiminaya, Cantkillwhatsalreadydead, BelovedBoy, aliahadeline, Yenar, MizzWinchester, bubblePop, blueoceanwaves, LanaLunaLee, kikisydney, BrilliantLady, ThatOneShortHuman, olimakiella, LucidlyAwake, MiniMightyMina, margielena, Godling_of_Yin, CrazyCrazycatlady, kcmski, WanderingDragon, FartherThanNowhere, rhhossai, GaelicFae, MayWilder, TinyJokester, DocStein, Fangrl, starlitren, Moonyone, Kyriis, Tama18, slash_y, dari2210, bbybyrd, LucettaP, naosora, IsabelleSnape, Leela13, Kingkiwi, BitchKuroo, Scharin, nothing_left_sacred, Void_of_Darkness, readsandruns, MariDAcanto, Odra_Drien, ScarlettLuna, aylixgreen, JSisME, Lyalith, Arsch, fuhllmetal, chisspasa, IShallWearMidnight, mariaps, pinkesso, babydoll9150, ravenpuffpumpkinjuice, polarisnorth, Captaincharly, LittleBat, Loverhater, VisionsChaotic, lilolilyrae, naonow, Surakian, Geekalutely, Redravin, Punk, Antique, epakaytannollinen, SapphiraBlue, 18AlphaShadowsforCriminals, BuchananBarnacles, Mccoy, WindriderUnchained, IcedAquarius, Ju_Ju, Hidefini, WhiteRoseLover, RosieJade, Legoleave, Quillsofdeath, lamentingpat, KaityZatanna, SPF, ampokris, blacknox17, tellmestory, draw_me_a_lama, CosmicMORT, WhouffleLover24, winterphoenix567, barryallenisravenclaw, Munchkin_Knight, Fauxnoc, tvals01, wereallmissfits56, Nebari_Prime, CrazyCatBurglar, fire_hazard101, AnonAndMouse, Bdraco, cowgirldressage1, sallystruthers, eveningstar10, tajalumi, Hanna_cherry, InesCross, Alchemista, sss, Stormy_Oton, Butterfly012, Sheepdog20, carwebear1, DreadWolf, thewightknight, Yusaki, owlhugger, laddy_mynch666, Kitsune04, OnlyHereToReadTheBest, RiaDe, Branwen, LadyDisdayne, LovinglyLoquacious, Love_Spirk, anonybunny, mangoluvva, LoveBug28, KirinKazuma, FandomsBeware, mcook12, freedomschoice220, bookaholic16, cowgirls, Nella_Paulina, Dracopi, deliciouslydeceptive, seasongbytheseaborn, SlithyBookworm, gweneth, KyuubinoKitsune, creeptastically, OneTimeInABottle, littlepenguin96, SweaterTroubles, ViceroyMarx, cass_rnd_ra, gamesprite, SoraHotaru13, nevarstar, LifeOfClaude, Sunciel, Bluterbe, InkWave, WellJusticeKLove, Poke_Poke_Poke, Pandadota, Saracin, IceBlack, RYuuri27, cassacass, marumanmoon, Kitkat_18, adVENTitiious, DyingRed, Deathmetalchicken, buttwhattisaname, Ochi2, knittinginbinary, Fandom_Life_Corrupted_Me, Ghost_of_a_fangirl, misstiniiiiz, Loewenflamme, Andy0851em, umyeah0451, owleyes56, TheNatNinja, Trash_Queen666, maximum_cat_entropy, soraya2004, Natsu223, Nalime, Irlamk, KittenWolf29, kazashite, Akemi713, Eri94, End_before_grace, RippyDippySkippy, TheShiperOfShips, sapphic_darling, DieRache, silentreader, Yelik, RunedSecrets, Scarroll76, Mirror_Eclipsed, Lianell, Juromuro, ltnjmy, Lyssa87, littleoceanbabe, EmInArEvOl, zombiphle, BB1985, Lunadragonx, macywinstar, jloves, Missheadintheclouds, jadeliel, Fat_the_cat, Adara_Rose, batburrito, Klecky, Fled, Cory_Rye_Soloman, phan_on_the_nx_01, Sora_amat_lugal, Bird_Lady_of_Alcatraz, xMxAxNxDxAx, kribban, meltina2804, Nymeria42, Aki_Rain, Knightnight, cottagecorewlw, Sporkupine, Brighteyes3216, Miranda178, BSThunder, ansee, Ann_O_Neem, pesky_poltergeist, Halcyon, Sam_Lee, thatonecatcalledferrero13, LadyFrandrews, Guardian_Matrix, Halinis, torayasu, Souls_Scales, nagareboshihoshiakari, Cherrydragon26, IGuessImWritingFanficNow, ProudBadger, voiceless_queen, Inuicedragon, VovinBlack, candycain, dghdagency, SilentFlame13, Star_Trekked, RTWrites, Thamika, AlexanderSupertramp, Stella_Notecor, borzoidt, Yokana, Draxx, TheBestKindOfMad, Katsy, HelenaWinchester13, Tsuta_De_Psy, prodigiousskillandnoconscience, StarryKite, Anake14, Deepherchick14, ravencourt, cryingalpacas, ScarletDewdrops, sol2798, Ceilingfun, redshiftsinger, Waiting_for_my_ships_to_become_canon, ShadowWolffie, saxophonesolo, Finnegancat, gigi_monster, MicaChan, Rural, Dunyazad9, forthelastoreo, tspaulding20, wicker_basket, CoedMor_Draig, layaandchloe, Ryuze, suluvmanga, goldfish06, Ajal, DarthVarda, Ombe, Morfiad, Cookie1218, WynterSong, MidArmJewel, sophie_danger, Thirteen_Winter_Vixens, Curley_Green, TheJokerslover, nineorcids, Kahira88, ank828, Harantracinya, Too_Kute_To_Kill, TomorrowIsYesterday119, ImmortalBeing, TheGodWith5Yen, The_Big_Reveal, AuntieEm30, lonely_lovebird, Jiyn and ORLY_YARLY as well as 313 guests left kudos on this work! (collapse)
b0kunoanime (lonely_lovebird) on Chapter 1 Fri 29 Jun 2018 04:44PM EDT
"Jimmy-boy, there was no way simply sitting down could have prepared me for that. But thanks for the attempt." Scotty's voice said from the com unit on the desk.
Awwwwww Scotty is adorable I love it!!! I really want to know what happened on this shore leave, so much changed in so little time! This was so fun I'm so excited to see what happens next! Thanks for writing this!!!
Carpe_History on Chapter 1 Sat 30 Jun 2018 12:40AM EDT
Don't worry. you'll find out! .... eventually. I'm so glad you liked it! Scotty can be the most fun to write~
Parent Thread
TheGodWith5Yen on Chapter 1 Sat 30 Jun 2018 03:15AM EDT
Oh my god I love your fics so much I'm so excited to read how this story unfolds! Thank God I got the urge to read some star trek and stumbled upon this glorious piece!! I enjoy reading this kind of pining, it hurts my soul but also makes me so excited. Also I'm not going to lie I got so damn emotional about halfway through and started crying about Bones and Chekov because apparently I have no restraint!! Thanks so much for writing something so wonderful, I can't wait to read more!!
AHHH thank you so much! :D :D :D I love this sort of pining and I had to write it! thank you for liking my fics! :D and yes tears are an appropriate response!!!
Scarlettmoon777 on Chapter 1 Sat 30 Jun 2018 11:10PM EDT
I hope that despite their unrequited love, the trio (especially Jim!) have been seeing other people. It's not healthy. And 8 years is a long time for humans (not so much Spock who will have a long life without Jim). They could have been killed on any mission and should grab at any opportunity for happiness.
You're a great writer! And I hope ro see more! I just find it sad that Scotty and Jim have had their hearts ripped out for 8 years for a relationship that was just 'meh' to Spock and uhura. It really shows their disregard for their friends.
Carpe_History on Chapter 1 Sat 30 Jun 2018 11:40PM EDT
Jim and Scotty have seen others. they have tried to move on. Scotty's had fewer relationships but more time in them I think. Jim had more of them but they petered out about beyond's time because of depression reasons. even after he pulled out of it, he didn't go looking as often anymore. he had his ship and he was happy. it's not going to be mentioned in the story because it really isn't relevant to any of the scenes. Bones hasn't had any for reasons that ARE relevant to the story and you'll get his reasons later on.
as for Spock and Uhura, their relationship was very important to them. you'll see more of it and why they broke up later, (there will be an explanation as to what happened on shore leave!) but the relationship was very important to them. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear :(
and they are close friends with Jim and Scotty. you'll see more of that later on. I think I just didn't show it enough. :(
Thank you for reading and liking it! :D and pointing out a few things that i'll need to fix as time goes on!
CasGetYourShotgun on Chapter 1 Wed 17 Oct 2018 06:40AM EDT
'Enterprise, what the fuck' explains the entire franchise so well.
(Also, does this make Ben Sulu the 23rd century Keiko O'Brien?)
Carpe_History on Chapter 1 Thu 18 Oct 2018 12:35PM EDT
it really does
(also yes.)
eveningstar10 on Chapter 1 Mon 24 Jun 2019 02:50PM EDT
I just got the notification from this story. I don't have the time to read this right now, but I'm definitely marking it as unread & returning to read it! Reading through your tags had me laughing out loud for real. Just reading the tags has made my day. And admittedly my day has been pretty sucky! Thanks!
Thank you so much for your support! I hope you did enjoy reading the chapter and I hope your bad day did get better!!! :D
eveningstar10 on Chapter 1 Sun 30 Jun 2019 08:47PM EDT
Just got to read this chapter. I'm really enjoying it. I'm glad Uhura and Spock broke up with a mutual agreement. I think she makes a good friend for Spock.
Carpe_History on Chapter 1 Sat 06 Jul 2019 04:37PM EDT
I don't like when Spock and Uhura spend like ten years together and can barely speak after a breakup. I think they have to be good friends. They are both far too logical for it to be otherwise.
Beca on Chapter 2 Mon 16 Jul 2018 02:39PM EDT
I love this!!! Your so amazing at capturing all of the crews personalities :D thanks so much for writing this!
Carpe_History on Chapter 2 Tue 17 Jul 2018 03:55AM EDT
Thank you so much! I'm glad you feel they are all in character!
b0kunoanime (lonely_lovebird) on Chapter 2 Mon 16 Jul 2018 04:38PM EDT
WHAT MORE CAN I SAY OTHER THAN THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD CHAPTER AND MY HEART!!!!!!! MCCHEKOV FEEEEEELS. So good. I love every second. Even the millionth time around. XD
Again thank you so much!! :D I'm so glad you liked it still after the millionth read through!
suluvmanga on Chapter 2 Thu 26 Jul 2018 02:26PM EDT
I love this! I can't wait to read more! Thank you.
Carpe_History on Chapter 2 Fri 27 Jul 2018 12:39PM EDT
'Because this ship was manned by idiots. The entirety of the crew were idiots.' - That's it, that's Star Trek right there. They're all idiots and I love them.
Bones has the best lines.
CasGetYourShotgun on Chapter 2 Thu 18 Oct 2018 01:50PM EDT
He really does.
eveningstar10 on Chapter 2 Tue 02 Jul 2019 09:23PM EDT
I'm loving this story! Everyone is getting developed in this story. Each person on the bridge is getting "screen time"! You're writing each character's voice so well.
Thank you so much! i wanted everyone to get a say in how they fall in love! :D
emotionalwreck on Chapter 3 Sat 28 Jul 2018 06:40PM EDT
I was so excited when I saw this was updated! I love your story and I enjoy every chapter I've read. I'd leave more kodos if I could but since I can only leave one then a rambling review will have to do.
Carpe_History on Chapter 3 Sun 29 Jul 2018 08:51AM EDT
thank you so much! :D :D :D
forthelastoreo on Chapter 3 Sat 28 Jul 2018 08:01PM EDT
I love this story so far and cant wait for more updates!
batburrito on Chapter 3 Sun 11 Nov 2018 11:16PM EST
hikaru is adorable <3
Carpe_History on Chapter 3 Mon 12 Nov 2018 02:19PM EST
YAYYY! :D he is~!
eveningstar10 on Chapter 3 Wed 03 Jul 2019 02:23AM EDT
Spock is blind! Truly blind... and apparently so is Uhura and Pavel! But Spock man open your eyes! Argghhh! Then the letter from Spock Prime! I really hope Spock sees it again and realizes it's from Jim Prime! <3
They are so blind but they do figure it all out! somehow!
TheGodWith5Yen on Chapter 4 Thu 09 Aug 2018 10:03AM EDT
God I absolutely love this story! I love that this feels real and like actual human interaction and relationships, which I feel like some writers or people in fandom ignore most times. You acknowledge that people's feelings change but they may still try for What is familiar to the. Nothing feels forced about this. Just, wow, I really enjoy your stories your writing! Can't wait for more!!
Carpe_History on Chapter 4 Thu 09 Aug 2018 11:28AM EDT
I'm glad you really enjoy this story! I really tried hard to show that people's relationships with each other do mean things even if they don't work out. I also tried to show the importance of a friendship. people need friends!
thank you for not feeling like its forced. I was worried about it.
TanseyNZ on Chapter 4 Thu 09 Aug 2018 10:21AM EDT
Such a very sweet read, relaxing but not mind numbing by any stretch. You're digging deep into relationships and emotions, and being canon characters, it fits with how most fans perceive them I think.
It remains to see how difficult you make the connections and how they subsequently work. Hopefully not simple or easy, but ultimately satisfying. A few solid rows might be fun in the process ;-)
Thank you for finding my work relaxing!
I just wanted everyone to have that deep relationships that I think they all developed with each other.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the fic as I get it posted!
CasGetYourShotgun on Chapter 4 Wed 17 Oct 2018 01:20PM EDT
They are all idiots and I love them.
for a bunch of really smart people, they are really stupid at times.
I'm glad they are finally figuring it out! Now put thoughts into action and talk to the one you are really drawn to people! <3
SEE somehow... >D they have the problems with the whole telling each other things.
ravencourt on Chapter 5 Wed 15 Aug 2018 02:44PM EDT
I just read this through in one sitting and I love it! all these mutually pining lovelies! all the different pov and the time jumps are really effective :)
Carpe_History on Chapter 5 Thu 16 Aug 2018 01:17PM EDT
Thank you so much! there is so much pining! I'm glad you like the POV changes. I think everyone needs to tell a bit of their own story!
b0kunoanime (lonely_lovebird) on Chapter 5 Wed 15 Aug 2018 04:58PM EDT
Honestly one of my favorite things about how you write stories is how SUPPORTIVE Bones is of Jim. It makes me very very happy. I love their friendship and I love that you give it the justice it deserves. Sure, he gives Jim heck about his love life and his general....Jim-ness, but Bones is always there for his best friend. It gets me every time. This chapter turned out great in the end. :)
i think that people forget that bones and Jim are friends. they are there for each other. they may not get why they need to be there but they are for them none the less. it works for them. and really, I think people forget that friends often help relationships. Bones and Jim just have an awesome friendship full of teasing and laughter and understanding.
also, this chapter turning out so well is totally because of your help! | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 624 |
Q: Trouble getting the first 25 values that are not present in another array Hey so I know that I could do
(array - array 2).first(25)
and get the first 25 values that are not present when comparing the two arrays, however my situation is a bit more difficult.
I have a twitter app where I store search queries. I run a background job every hour, and sometimes if the query is not as popular I might save the same query. However I specifically want to get the first 25. Sometimes I for example only end up getting 18, because I have a model validation that the tweet id must be unique to the user.
What I know is that the twitter search gives you the 100 recent tweets of a result. So what I would like to do in order to combat this situation is map the current tweet ids I have, and use that on the query, and then get the first 25 of those results.
The problem is I need to store more info than just the tweet id, if not it would have been as easy as the code shown. So here is what I have currently:
def save_keyword
active_campaigns = campaigns.where(live: true)
total_keywords = active_campaigns.count.to_i
tweet_amount = (get_tweets_per_hour / total_keywords).to_f.floor rescue 0
begin
active_campaigns.each do |campaign|
self.twitter.search(campaign.keyword, result_type: 'recent').take(tweet_amount).map do |tweet|
favorites.create do |favorite|
favorite.tweet_id = tweet.id
favorite.owner_id = tweet.user.id
favorite.campaign_id = campaign.id
end
end
end
rescue Twitter::Error::TooManyRequests => error
sleep error.rate_limit.reset_in + 1
retry
rescue Twitter::Error::Unauthorized => error
logger.error 'Unauthorized access'
rescue => error
logger.error 'save_keyword error'
end
end
as I said I store info like the owner_id, tweet_id and the campaign id. So I need to create a code that gives me, or keeps on saving the keyword until it's 25.
A: You do it by querying Favorite and using the tweet id to filter the results:
old_tweets = Favorite.where( campaign_id: campaign.id ).pluck(:tweet_id)
tweets = self.twitter.search(campaign.keyword, result_type: 'recent')
new_tweets = tweets.reject { |t| old_tweets.include?(t.id) }.take(tweet_amount)
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 9,489 |
Our excuse is we have no grandkids to fawn over. We were in Toys-R-Us looking for some props for a shot when we say a display of Little Tikes plastic cottages. Dorothea jokingly suggested Margaret would love one. The basic model was on sale. So – we bought one. On the drive home, we laughed like we haven't laughed for a long time. It was worth it just for the comic relief.
I swear putting together a new real house is easier than this thing. Once it was done, we had to bribe Margaret with her supper to lure her in.
I can't wait for someone to ask what we did on the weekend.
The 'cottage' in place now complete with welcome mat, flower planter, bulldog statue and swimming pool.
If you'd be her Valentine!
Till they finally got THE shot!
And A New Year Filled with Treats!
We think Stacy and Clinton would approve. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 8,098 |
Metarepresentation (shaped from the Greek preposition and prefix Meta meaning "beyond" and the word "representation") is the capacity of a mind to represent "a higher-order representation with a lower-order representation embedded within", as stated by Deirdre Wilson. In other words, it is the capacity to represent a representation. For example, a drawing is the representation of something and someone who looks at the drawing would represent it in his or her mind.
Metarepresentation also allows to understand other's thoughts. Put simply, a person has thoughts in response to a statement and may interpret it in many ways. This forms many metarepresentations of the statement.
Metarepresentation is also the ability to generate new knowledge or meaning through representing thoughts or concepts that are not noticed on a day-to-day basis. The ability to represent a representation of thoughts and concepts is the essence of reflection and higher-order thought. In this way, metarepresentation connects deeply with the theory of mind by giving the capacity to associate a statement to the diverging belief of another person. Someone without the capacities of the theory of mind would only have limited metarepresenting capacities. For example, some autistic people may have difficulty with metarepresentation stemming from possible challenges with the ability to link a person with a belief. Similarly, some children may lack the ability to link people with their beliefs. Without that, they can't have thoughts about the thoughts of someone else.
References
See also
Oratio obliqua (philosophy)
Concepts in the philosophy of mind | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 4,845 |
Q: Multiple functions across columns of a dataframe in Python How can i apply functions in the one line of code as below. I want to calculate mean,STD etc etc for the data set of which link has been shared below. In the given example i have already calculated "mean" and now i want to add some code and find other functions like STD etc.
df1 = df.loc[(df.time>=171) & (df.time<=174)[['S08','S09','S41']].mean(axis=1)
click here for the dataset (CSV file) i am referring to the column names
In the image above i need the mean and STD (blue) but in different Dataframe not same.
A: Try this:
In [24]: df.loc[(df.time>=171) & (df.time<=174),['S08','S09','S41']].T.agg(['mean','std']).T
Out[24]:
mean std
17131 1.014278 0.007357
17132 1.010441 0.005698
17133 1.008947 0.006189
17134 1.006198 0.008981
17135 1.003360 0.012050
17136 1.002270 0.012952
17137 1.000827 0.014543
17138 0.999155 0.010764
17139 0.998330 0.010462
17140 0.996994 0.009813
... ... ...
17421 1.005489 0.068211
17422 1.054022 0.126477
17423 1.109993 0.174473
17424 1.143518 0.192038
17425 1.143594 0.168867
17426 1.126942 0.117057
17427 1.088270 0.080759
17428 1.046547 0.053798
17429 1.005698 0.025103
17430 0.981894 0.027097
[300 rows x 2 columns]
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 8,048 |
// Copyright (c) Microsoft. All Rights Reserved. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See License.txt in the project root for license information.
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.Host;
using Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.Serialization;
namespace Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.Execution
{
/// <summary>
/// a service that lets one to create <see cref="PinnedRemotableDataScope"/> that can be used to pin solution
/// while working on remote host
/// </summary>
internal interface IRemotableDataService : IWorkspaceService
{
/// <summary>
/// Add global <see cref="CustomAsset"/> which stays alive while host is alive.
///
/// this asset can be something that is not part of <see cref="PinnedRemotableDataScope"/>
///
/// TODO: currently, this asset must be something <see cref="ISerializerService"/> can understand
/// this should be changed so that custom serializer can be discoverable by <see cref="RemotableData.Kind"/>
/// </summary>
void AddGlobalAsset(object value, CustomAsset asset, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
/// <summary>
/// Get saved global <see cref="CustomAsset"/> associated with given <paramref name="value"/>
/// </summary>
CustomAsset GetGlobalAsset(object value, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
/// <summary>
/// Remove saved global <see cref="CustomAsset"/> associated with given <paramref name="value"/>
/// </summary>
void RemoveGlobalAsset(object value, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
/// <summary>
/// Create <see cref="PinnedRemotableDataScope"/> from <see cref="Solution"/>.
/// </summary>
Task<PinnedRemotableDataScope> CreatePinnedRemotableDataScopeAsync(Solution solution, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
/// <summary>
/// Get <see cref="RemotableData"/> corresponding to given <see cref="Checksum"/>.
/// </summary>
RemotableData GetRemotableData(int scopeId, Checksum checksum, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
/// <summary>
/// Get <see cref="RemotableData"/>s corresponding to given <see cref="Checksum"/>s.
/// </summary>
IReadOnlyDictionary<Checksum, RemotableData> GetRemotableData(int scopeId, IEnumerable<Checksum> checksums, CancellationToken cancellationToken);
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 4,264 |
module Fog
module Compute
class Joyent
class Mock
def get_machine(uuid)
if machine = self.data[:machines][uuid]
res = Excon::Response.new
res.status = 200
res.body = machine
res
else
raise Excon::Errors::NotFound, "Not Found"
end
end
end
class Real
def get_machine(uuid)
request(
:method => "GET",
:path => "/my/machines/#{uuid}",
:expects => [200, 410],
:idempotent => true
)
end
end
end
end
end
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 318 |
{"url":"https:\/\/stats.stackexchange.com\/tags\/clara\/info","text":"clara refers to Clustering LARge Applications, a partitioning method to deal with large datasets. The method is described in Chapter 3 of Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990).","date":"2020-03-30 16:26:25","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.2768000364303589, \"perplexity\": 682.4856652944836}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-16\/segments\/1585370497171.9\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20200330150913-20200330180913-00092.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
{"url":"https:\/\/iris.unige.it\/handle\/11567\/208229","text":"For every homogeneous ideal I in a polynomial ring R and for every p\\leq dim R we consider the Koszul homology H_i(p;R\/I) with respect to a sequence of p of generic linear forms. The Koszul-Betti number \\beta_{ijp}(R?I) is, by definition, the dimension of the degree j part of H_i(p;R\/I). In characteristic 0, we show that the Koszul-Betti numbers of any ideal I are bounded above by those of the gin-revlex Gin(I) of I and also by those of the Lex-segment Lex(I) of I. We show that \\beta_{ijp}(R\/I) = \\beta_{ijp}(R\/Gin(I)) iff I is componentwise linear and that and \\beta_{ijp}(R\/I) = \\beta_{ijp}(R\/Lex(I)) iff I is Gotzmann. We also investigate the set Gins(I) of all the gin of I and show that the Koszul-Betti numbers of any ideal in Gins(I) are bounded below by those of the gin-revlex of I. On the other hand, we present examples showing that in general there is no J is Gins(I) such that the Koszul-Betti numbers of any ideal in Gins(I) are bounded above by those of J.\n\n### Koszul homology and extremal properties of Gin and Lex\n\n#### Abstract\n\nFor every homogeneous ideal I in a polynomial ring R and for every p\\leq dim R we consider the Koszul homology H_i(p;R\/I) with respect to a sequence of p of generic linear forms. The Koszul-Betti number \\beta_{ijp}(R?I) is, by definition, the dimension of the degree j part of H_i(p;R\/I). In characteristic 0, we show that the Koszul-Betti numbers of any ideal I are bounded above by those of the gin-revlex Gin(I) of I and also by those of the Lex-segment Lex(I) of I. We show that \\beta_{ijp}(R\/I) = \\beta_{ijp}(R\/Gin(I)) iff I is componentwise linear and that and \\beta_{ijp}(R\/I) = \\beta_{ijp}(R\/Lex(I)) iff I is Gotzmann. We also investigate the set Gins(I) of all the gin of I and show that the Koszul-Betti numbers of any ideal in Gins(I) are bounded below by those of the gin-revlex of I. On the other hand, we present examples showing that in general there is no J is Gins(I) such that the Koszul-Betti numbers of any ideal in Gins(I) are bounded above by those of J.\n##### Scheda breve Scheda completa Scheda completa (DC)\nFile in questo prodotto:\nNon ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.\n\nI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.\n\nUtilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/11567\/208229\n##### Attenzione\n\nAttenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo\n\n\u2022 ND\n\u2022 23\n\u2022 22","date":"2022-09-27 14:31:15","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8695525527000427, \"perplexity\": 2920.600633529799}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": false}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-40\/segments\/1664030335034.61\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20220927131111-20220927161111-00134.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: How to do bulk update of fields for test suite in test link? There is a test suite already created with test summary and test steps in test link. I have to update few fields in each test case. How can i update in bulk instead of doing it one by one by clicking edit option for each test case?
A: You can update in bulk some of the fields like Status and Importance by selecting the test suite and click on Settings icon, then the Table view.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 80 |
Q: Cannot pass parameters to dll with ctypes (Python) Having some problems using ctypes
I have a testdll with following interface
extern "C"
{
// Returns a + b
double Add(double a, double b);
// Returns a - b
double Subtract(double a, double b);
// Returns a * b
double Multiply(double a, double b);
// Returns a / b
double Divide(double a, double b);
}
I also have a .def file so i have "real" names
LIBRARY "MathFuncsDll"
EXPORTS
Add
Subtract
Multiply
Divide
I can load and access the function from the dll via ctype
but I cannot pass the parameter, see python output
>>> from ctypes import *
>>> x=windll.MathFuncsDll
>>> x
<WinDLL 'MathFuncsDll', handle 560000 at 29e1710>
>>> a=c_double(2.12)
>>> b=c_double(3.4432)
>>> x.Add(a,b)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#76>", line 1, in <module>
x.Add(a,b)
ValueError: Procedure probably called with too many arguments (16 bytes in excess)
>>>
But I can the Function Add without parameters?!?!?!?!
>>> x.Add()
2619260
Can somebody point me in the right direction?
I think forget something obvious because I can call function from other dll (eg. kernel32)
A: ctypes assumes int and pointer types for parameters and int for return values unless you specify otherwise. Exported functions also typically default to the C calling convention (CDLL in ctypes), not WinDLL. Try this:
from ctypes import *
x = CDLL('MathFuncsDll')
add = x.Add
add.restype = c_double
add.argtypes = [c_double,c_double]
print add(1.0,2.5)
Output
3.5
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 8,671 |
import argparse
from pumptweet import PumpTweet
if __name__ == "__main__":
description = 'Cross-post from pump to twitter. Call with no options for normal use.'
test_help = 'do a test-run without tweeting'
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=description)
parser.add_argument('-t', '--test', help=test_help, action='store_true')
args = parser.parse_args()
pumptweet = PumpTweet.PumpTweet()
if args.test:
pumptweet.pull_and_test()
else:
pumptweet.pull_and_push()
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,670 |
\section{Conversion of photons into axions through cosmic propagation}
We will henceforth consider a monochromatic photon beam and assume that an external magnetic field ${\bf B}$ is present (in stars the r\^ole of ${\bf E}$ and ${\bf B}$ is interchanged, but we shall not be interested in this situation). Hence in $g_{a \gamma} \, a \, {\bf E} \cdot {\bf B}$ the term ${\bf E}$ is the electric field of a beam photon while ${\bf B}$ is the external magnetic field. So the mass matrix in the photon-ALP sector is non-diagonal, which implies that $\gamma \to a$ conversions occur, like the one shown in Figure~\ref{immagine4(2)}.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.30\textwidth]{immagine4.pdf}
\caption{\label{immagine4(2)} $\gamma \to a$ conversion in the external magnetic field ${\bf B}$ (in stars the
r\^ole of ${\bf E}$ and ${\bf B}$ is interchanged).}
\end{figure}
\noindent Of course, also the inverse process $a \to \gamma$ takes place, an so as the beam propagates several $\gamma \to a$ and $a \to \gamma$ transitions occur, like in Figure~\ref{fey1}, where $a$ is real. Thus, in the presence of an external ${\bf B}$ field photon-ALP {\it oscillations} $\gamma \leftrightarrow a$ can occur much in the same way as it happens for massive neutrinos of different flavor, apart from the need of an external field in order to compensate for the spin mismatch.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{fey1.pdf}
\caption{\label{fey1} Schematic view of a photon-ALP oscillation in the external magnetic field ${\bf B}$.}
\end{figure}
The key-point to detect ALPs with e-ASTROGAM is as follows. Suppose that a distant source emits a
$\gamma/a$ beam of energy $E$ in the range $0.3 \, {\rm MeV} - 3 \, {\rm GeV}$ which propagates along the $y$ direction reaching us. In the approximation $E \gg m$ -- which is presently valid -- the beam propagation equation becomes a
Schr\"odinger-like equation in $y$, hence the beam is {\it formally} described as a {\it 3-level quantum system}. Consider now the simplest possible case, where no photon absorption takes place and $\bf B$ is homogeneous.
Taking ${\bf B}$ along the $z$-axis, we have (see for example \cite{noi} for a review of the assumptions and the details of the calculations)
\begin{equation}
P_{\gamma \to a} (E; 0, y) = \left(\frac{g_{a \gamma} \, B}{\Delta_{\rm osc}} \right)^2 \, {\rm sin}^2 \left( \frac{\Delta_{\rm osc} \, y}{2} \right)~, \ \ \ \ {\Delta}_{\rm osc} \equiv \left[\left(\frac{m^2 - {\omega}_{\rm pl}^2}{2 E} \right)^2 + \bigl(g_{a \gamma} \, B \bigr)^2 \right]^{1/2}~,
\label{a16ghA}
\end{equation}
where ${\omega}_{\rm pl}$ is the plasma frequency of the medium. Defining next $E_* \equiv | m^2 - {\omega}^2_{\rm pl} |/(2 \, g_{a \gamma} \, B)$ it turns out that $P_{\gamma \to a} (E; 0, y) = 0$ for $E \ll E_*$, $P_{\gamma \to a} (E; 0, y)$ rapidly oscillates with $E$ for $E \sim E_*$ -- this is the {\it weak-mixing regime} -- while $P_{\gamma \to a} (E; 0, y)$ is maximal and independent of $m$ and $E$ for $E \gg E_*$, which is the {\it strong-mixing regime}. Actually, the extragalactic magnetic field ${\bf B}$ is currently modeled as a domain-like structure with $L_{\rm dom} = (1 - 10) \, {\rm Mpc}$, $B = (0.1 - 1) \, {\rm nG}$ in all domains, but the ${\bf B}$ direction changes randomly in any domain: this ${\bf B}$ structure is strongly motivated by galactic outflow models, and it turns out to enhance the oscillatory regime around $E_*$ as shown in Figure~\ref{marco}.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{fig4bcopia.pdf}
\caption{\label{marco} Oscillatory behavior around $E_*$ for $g_{a \gamma} = 0.33 \cdot 10^{- 10} \, {\rm GeV}^{- 1}$,
$0.5 \, {\rm nG}$ and $N = 200$ magnetic domains.}
\end{figure}
We stress that -- on top of the above oscillatory behavior -- we also have a slight dimming of the signal \cite{dmr2008}: because of energy conservation, the production of ALP implies a reduced photon flux. Actually, it can be shown that for $N \gg 1$ magnetic domains, the two photon polarization states and the single ALP state undergo equipartition, so that the signal becomes dimmer by a factor of 0.66. In conclusion, the two features showing up in the energy spectrum due to an ALP are an {\it oscillatory behavior} and a {\it dimming of 0.66}.
Yet, this is not the end of the story, because e-ASTROGAM can perform also polarimetric measurements. This is because the coupling $g_{a \gamma} \, a \, {\bf E} \cdot {\bf B}$ acts as a {\it polarizer}. It is indeed trivial to see that it entails that only the component ${\bf B}_T$ orthogonal to the photon momentum ${\bf k}$ matters, and that photons $\gamma_{\perp}$ with linear polarization orthogonal to the plane defined by ${\bf k}$ and ${\bf B}$ do not mix with $a$, but only photons $\gamma_{\parallel}$ with linear polarization parallel to that plane do \cite{mpz1986}. Specifically, two distinct phenomena come about: {\it birefringence}, namely the change of a linear polarization into an elliptical one with the major axis parallel to the initial polarization, and {\it dichrois}, namely a selective conversion $\gamma \to a$ which causes the ellipse's major axis to be misaligned with respect to the initial polarization. Thus, the measure of the polarization of radiation with known initial polarization provides additional information to discriminate an ALP from other possible effects. Very remarkably, we actually do {\it not need} to know the initial polarization by employing a simple trick. Because when one does not measure the polarization one has to sum over the two final photon polarizations -- while when one does measure it no sum is performed -- the signal has to be {\it twice as large} when the polarization is not measure as compared with the case in which the polarization is measured.
Finally, what is the mass range of the ALP that can be probed by e-ASTROGAM? It follows from the previous considerations that the answer is given by $E \sim E_*$. Neglecting ${\omega}_{\rm pl}$ and recalling the second of Eqs. (\ref{a16ghA}), such
a condition becomes
\begin{equation}
E \sim \frac{m^2}{2 g_{a \gamma} \, B}~,
\label{a16ghAB}
\end{equation}
Owing on the energy range of e-ASTROGAM, from Eq. (\ref{a16ghAB}) we have
\begin{equation}
0.3 \, {\rm MeV} < \frac{m^2}{2 g_{a \gamma} \, B} < 3 \, {\rm GeV}~.
\label{a16ghAC}
\end{equation}
Taking e.g. $g_{a \gamma} = 0.33 \cdot 10^{- 10} \, {\rm GeV}^{- 1}$ and $B = 0.5 \, {\rm nG}$ the answer is
\begin{equation}
1.7 \cdot 10^{- 13} \, {\rm eV} < m < 1.7 \cdot 10^{- 11} \, {\rm eV}~.
\label{a16ghAD}
\end{equation}
More generally, by employing the parametrizations $g_{a \gamma} = \alpha \, 10^{- 10} \, {\rm GeV}^{- 1}$ and $B = \beta \,
{\rm nG}$, we get (independent of $N$)
\begin{equation}
1.1 \cdot 10^{- 12} \, \alpha \, \beta \, {\rm eV} < m < 1.1 \cdot 10^{- 10} \, \alpha \, \beta \, {\rm eV}~.
\label{a16ghAE}
\end{equation}
\section{Axion-like particles from from Supernovae}
ALPs are produced in the core of stars (like the Sun) through the Primakoff process in the Coulomb field ${\bf E}$ of ionized matter, illustrated in Figure~\ref{immagine4(2)}. The CAST experiment at CERN was looking at the Sun and found nothing, thereby deriving $g_{a \gamma} < 0.88 \cdot 10^{- 10} \, {\rm GeV}^{- 1}$. Recent analysis of globular clusters gives $g_{a \gamma} < 0.66 \cdot 10^{- 10} \, {\rm GeV}^{- 1}$ \cite{pdg2016}.
They can also be produced in at the centre of core-collapse (Type II) supernovae soon after the bounce (when also the neutrino burst is produced) by Primakoff effect
and reconverted to photons of the same energy, during their travel or in the Milky Way. The arrival time of these photons would
be the same as for neutrinos, providing a clear signature.
Integrated over the explosion time, which is of the order of 10\,s, the Authors of \cite{meyer2017}
find that the ALP spectrum can be parametrized by a power law with exponential cutoff,
\begin{equation}
\frac{dN_a}{dE} = C \left(\frac{g_{a\gamma}}{10^{-11}{\rm{GeV}}^{-1}}\right)^2
\left(\frac{E}{E_0}\right)^\beta \exp\left( -\frac{(\beta + 1) E}{E_0}\right) \,\,
\label{eq:time-int-spec}
\end{equation}
with $ C $, $ E_0 $, and $ \beta $ given in Tab.~\ref{tab:rate_parameters}.
\begin{table}[h]
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ l c c c }
\hline \hline
Progenitor mass & $ C $ [$10^{50}${MeV}$^{-1} $] & $ E_0 $ [MeV] & $ \beta $ \\ \hline
$10\,M_\odot$ & $ 5.32$ & $ 94 ~ $ & 2.12 \\
$18\,M_\odot$ & $ 9.31 $ & $102 ~ $ & 2.25 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Best fitting values for the parameters in Eq.~\eqref{eq:time-int-spec}.}
\label{tab:rate_parameters}
\end{center}
\end{table}
The ALP energy spectrum (which corresponds to the photon energy spectrum after reconversion to gamma-rays) is shown in Figure \ref{fig:alpsn}. The bulk is below $\sim$100 MeV, which clearly shows the potential of e-ASTROGAM for a possible detection. e-ASTROGAM
would have a sensitivity better than Fermi-LAT and access to much
smaller mass/coupling values than dedicated laboratory experiments.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{alpsn10.png}
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{alpsn18.png}
\caption{\label{fig:alpsn} The differential axion rate from the supernova, $dN_a/dE ({\rm{GeV}}^{-1})$, for a SN of 10 (left) and 18 (right) solar masses. The abscissa is in MeV.}
\end{figure}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 1,261 |
Q: Scaling a single character font to its parent div I am trying to fit a single character font-size to its parent div. is it possible?
Maybe it's a Font scaling based on width of container
by @Francesca duplicate?
But my context is a Single Character so maybe it is possible but font can be normal font-family or iconic font like font-awesome.
I appreciate a fiddle work
body {
font-size: 10px;
font-family: Arial
}
.box1 {
border: 1px solid red;
margin: 10px;
width: 50px;
height: 50px;
font-size: 4vw;
}
.box2 {
border: 1px solid blue;
margin: 10px;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
font-size: calc(3vw + 3vh);
}
<link href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div class="box1">x</div>
<button class="box1">x</button>
<div class="box2"><i class="fa fa-remove"></i></div>
<button class="box2"><i class="fa fa-remove"></i></button>
A: I have try it with some js code but its depend on parents width or height.
var fontSize = parseInt($(".box1").height())+"px";
$(".box1").css('font-size', fontSize);
var fontSize = parseInt($(".box2").height())+"px";
$(".box2").css('font-size', fontSize);
body {
font-size: 10px;
font-family: Arial
}
.box1 {
border: 1px solid red;
margin: 10px;
width: 50px;
height: 50px;
text-align:center;
line-height: 45px;
}
.box2 {
border: 1px solid blue;
margin: 10px;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
text-align:center;
}
.box2 i {
display: block;
line-height: 97%;
vertical-align: middle;
}
<link href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div class="box1">x</div>
<button class="box1">x</button>
<div class="box2"><i class="fa fa-remove"></i></div>
<button class="box2"><i class="fa fa-remove"></i></button>
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 2,210 |
Subscribe to DNS
Advertise with DNS
Support DNS
Contact DNS
Disability News Service
the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues
Arts, Culture and Sport
Activism & Campaigning
Benefits & Poverty
You are here: Home / News Archive / Thalidomide survivors hope to strike blow for justice against pharma 'bullies'
Thalidomide survivors hope to strike blow for justice against pharma 'bullies'
By John Pring on 14th June 2013 Category: News Archive
Thalidomide survivors are seeking public support for their bid to force the company that manufactured the drug to finally accept responsibility and pay them compensation.
They hope that 100, 000 people will eventually sign their petitions, and put fresh pressure on the German pharmaceutical giant Grunenthal to accept its responsibility for the damage caused by the drug.
Thalidomide was used in the late 1950s and early 1960s to treat ailments such as headaches, coughs and colds, but was also used by pregnant women with morning sickness.
It was finally withdrawn in 1961, but not before it was responsible for thousands of babies born with impairments, as well as – say campaigners – tens of thousands of miscarriages and stillbirths.
Despite a long-awaited apology last summer – in which a senior executive spoke of the company's "sincere regrets", but shied away from accepting any blame – Grunenthal has never accepted responsibility for the harm caused by its drug, and has never paid financial compensation to the British survivors.
Many thalidomiders in the UK are now living with chronic pain and neurological problems.
One of them is Billy Burton, who is experiencing problems with his nervous and musculoskeletal systems, as well as hearing and respiratory problems.
He said: "I am 50, but my body is about 65."
He visits hospital 10 times a month for physiotherapy and hydrotherapy, paid for by the NHS. "If I had a lump sum, I could afford to do that in my own time at my own convenience. It is a huge burden that should be taken off the NHS."
He said he saw Grunenthal "as bullies who think they have the God-given right just to walk away from the horrific tragedy they caused, without showing even a hint of compassion for the hurt, pain and suffering they have inflicted on thousands of people".
He said: "The lack of compassion is reflected in the fact that not only have they ignored us for the last 50 years but if they can put us off for the next 20 or 30 years we will all have died and then there will be no case to answer to.
"If myself and other thalidomiders can get petitions signed by 100,000 people, that will be the weapon in our hands which will give us the ability to take them on.
"It's not only for our compensation but also to send the message to big pharmaceutical companies that they cannot get away with it any longer."
Burton spent nearly 20 years in prison in the Philippines for smuggling cannabis, before finally securing his release last year.
Now he says he will use the tenacity and "never say die approach" that allowed him to survive in one of the world's harshest prisons to fight for compensation for himself and the other thalidomiders.
He said: "I do have that spirit as a survivor. I am certainly up for the fight. These people are going to pay for it.
"I went to prison. I admitted it. You stand up like a man and you take the punishment. These people are making billions and billions and are trying to worm their way out of it."
He wants supporters to sign his petition, and to back the ShowYourHand campaign, which is being led by three prominent thalidomide-impaired activists, Nick Dobrik, Mikey Argy and Guy Tweedy, who himself played a huge part in securing Burton's release from prison.
Although the company that marketed the drug in the UK eventually paid some compensation to thalidomide survivors, many survivors found it increasingly difficult to survive financially, because of equipment costs and deteriorating health.
The Labour government announced £20 million in support for England's surviving thalidomiders in December 2009, while the coalition extended the programme with a 10-year, £80 million grant last December.
Thalidomiders say on their ShowYourHand website that Grunenthal "cannot hope to be a modern, ethical pharmaceutical company without acknowledging the sins of the past and initiating a restitution process".
Grunenthal has so far failed to respond to a request for a comment.
Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit
'Muddled' blue badge reforms 'are to blame for renewal delays'
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
Baby vouchers scheme 'blackmails' disabled parents onto universal credit
Five disabled peers help defeat government's attack on right to protest
Social care crisis deaths 'only a matter of time', after research shows 'national emergency'
Fresh call for Labour to end its silence on care charging
Access to Work's 12-week backlog, as DWP offers 'work for free' advice to PAs
MPs to force publication of 'unmet needs' report following Coffey's 'repeated obstruction'
DWP told to review 'inadequate' support for 'vulnerable' benefit claimants
Ministers have already broken six Disability Strategy pledges, just months after launch
Only major government funding will solve access problems, say rail operators
DWP is refusing to correct injustice caused to 118,000 claimants, says ombudsman
DWP: The case for the prosecution
The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924
Copyright © 2022 Disability News Service
Site development by A Bright Clear Web | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 9,030 |
class BLESystemControl : public BLEHID
{
public:
BLESystemControl();
size_t write(uint8_t k);
protected:
virtual void setReportId(unsigned char reportId);
virtual unsigned char numAttributes();
virtual BLELocalAttribute** attributes();
private:
BLECharacteristic _reportCharacteristic;
BLEHIDReportReferenceDescriptor _reportReferenceDescriptor;
};
#endif
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 1,330 |
Srebroń i ja, także: Srebrzynek i ja () – jedno z najpopularniejszych dzieł hiszpańskiego poety, Juana Ramóna Jiméneza, opisujące w poetycki sposób historię przyjaźni między osłem, Srebroniem lub Srebrzynkiem, a jego właścicielem. Książka uważana jest za klasyczną lekturę dziecięcą oraz jedno z najlepszych dzieł uniwersalnych zeszłego wieku.
Okoliczności powstania
Juan Ramón Jiménez napisał dzieło podczas pobytu w Moguer. Jest ono zbiorem jego wspomnień z młodzieńczych lat spędzonych w Andaluzji. W młodości autor posiadał wiele osłów i w książce przedstawia wspomnienia swej przyjaźni z nimi - historia Platero jest syntezą wielu różnorodnych doświadczeń z kontaktów z tymi zwierzętami. Imię tytułowego zwierzęcia pochodzi od cechy charakterystycznej jego wyglądu – srebrzystej sierści (hiszp. plata - "srebro"). Podtytuł "Elegia andaluzyjska" sugeruje, że inspiracją dla poety były tematy typowe dla elegii, czyli utrata i przemijanie - w tym wypadku, utrata i przemijanie dzieciństwa i młodości, lecz także śmierć ludzi i zwierząt, cały czas obecna w utworze pomimo pozornej poetyckiej łagodności obrazów.
Wydania
Książka została opublikowana trzykrotnie. Pierwsze wydanie z 1914 roku, opublikowane przez wydawnictwo "La Lectura", składało się z 74 rozdziałów. W tym samym roku dyrektor wydawnictwa, Francisco Acebal, zachęcony sukcesem pierwszego wydania opublikował dzieło bez zgody autora, pod nazwą "książeczki szkolnej" (Libro escolar). Niezadowolony z takiego obrotu sprawy poeta określał odtąd tę edycję mianem "skradzionego osła". W 1917 roku wydawnictwo Calleja opublikowało drugą, pełną edycję, która zawiera 138 rozdziałów. Pierwsza wersja, traktowana jako bardziej odpowiednia dla dzieci, nie zawiera rozdziałów, w których autor przedstawia m.in. cierpienie ludzi i zwierząt, biedę i głód panujący wówczas w Moguer oraz krytykę społeczną, obrazy hipokryzji, niesprawiedliwości i dyskryminacji osób marginalizowanych.
Gatunek
Mimo że książka zawiera wiele cech, które kwalifikują ją do literatury dziecięcej, nie została ona przeznaczona dla dzieci. Została stworzona z myślą o każdym odbiorcy, zarówno dorosłym jak i dziecięcym. Sam autor zarzekał się, że nigdy nie pisał ani nie będzie pisać dla dzieci, ponieważ uważa, że dziecko może czytać te same książki co dorosły. Historia Jiméneza cieszyła się jednak popularnością głównie w środowisku dziecięcym, co potwierdza fakt, iż książka trafiła na listę lektur szkolnych w Hiszpanii i krajach hiszpańskojęzycznych w XX i XXI wieku.
Treść
Kompletna wersja książki stanowi zbiór 138 niepowiązanych ze sobą krótkich rozdziałów, które opowiadają o wędrówkach narratora wraz z ukochanym osłem po jego rodzinnym miasteczku – Moguer. Każdy z rozdziałów zajmuje jedną lub dwie strony i tworzy osobny epizod. Czas, w którym rozgrywa się akcja opowieści, to pełny rok – toczy się od lutego do lutego. Narrator dzieli się ze zwierzęciem swoimi emocjami, wrażeniami, spostrzeżeniami na temat świata. W opowieści występuje wiele innych zwierząt, tj. pies, kaczki, różnego rodzaju ptaki. Poeta skupia się na każdym, nawet najmniejszym szczególe natury (polny kwiat, śpiew świerszcza). Autor przedstawia w swoim dziele życie, które toczy się w Moguer oraz zmieniający się tam krajobraz wraz z nadejściem kolejnych pór roku.
Bohaterowie
Narrator – przyjmuje się, że narratorem opowieści jest sam poeta Juan Ramón Jiménez, który między innymi w trakcie przemowy na Uniwersytecie w Puerto Rico, przyznał, że spędzał czas ze swoim osłem, który był dla niego pomocą, dzielił z nim swoje emocje.
Platero (Srebrzynek, Srebroń) – osiołek, przyjaciel narratora, mały, włochaty i delikatny. Jest odzwierciedleniem osobowości poety. Platero stanowi symbol wszystkich osłów, które posiadał poeta.
Diana – biała suczka, która śpi między kopytkami Srebrzynka
Victoria, Lola, Blanca, Pepe – siostrzenice poety
Darbón – lekarz Srebrzynka. Mimo swojego nieokrzesanego wyglądu, jest wrażliwym mężczyzną, który dobrze dogaduje się z Srebrzynkiem oraz siostrzenicami poety.
Inni - sąsiedzi z wioski, z którymi rozmawia narrator.
Język i styl
Dzieło to poetycka narracja napisana prozą. Język jest bogaty i wyszukany, pełen przymiotników, metafor, personifikacji. Ponadto, w książce znajdują się liczne andalucyzmy – słowa typowe dla hiszpańskiego regionu Andaluzji. Tekst zawiera również fragmenty popularnych pieśni oraz wers sonetu Shakespeare'a. Oprócz wymienionego dramaturga, poeta wspomina również w swoim dziele inne, znane osobowości (np. Fra Angélico, Piero di Cosimo, Courbet i Böcklin), które przypominają mu dzieciństwo. Dzieło jest bogate w szczegółowe opisy andaluzyjskiej przyrody.
Przekłady na język polski
Utwór został udostępniony polskim czytelnikom w trzech wersjach (dwa przekłady Floriana Śmieji oraz jeden Janusza Strasburgera). Pierwszy polski przekład to Srebroń i ja Floriana Śmieji (Oficyna Poetów i Malarzy, Londyn, 1961) drugi to Srebrzynek i ja, w przekładzie Janusza Strasburgera (Pax, Warszawa, 1962). Są to dwa konkurencyjne przekłady, które różnią się przede wszystkim tytułami. Florian Śmieja przetłumaczył imię bohatera książki jako "Srebroń", fonetycznie bliższe oryginałowi dzięki grupom spółgłoskowym r/sr/br oraz miękkim "n". Imię nadane przez Janusza Strasburgera jest z kolei bardziej pieszczotliwe i miękkie, jak sam tytułowy osiołek. Florian Śmieja przełożył czterdzieści dziewięć utworów ze stu trzydziestu ośmiu składających się na oryginał. Spośród nich, sześć nie zostało uwzględnionych przez Strasburgera. Najnowsza polska wersja książki to drugi, kompletny przekład Floriana Śmieji z 1997 roku – Platero y yo. Srebroń i ja (Wydawnictwo Wacław Bagiński, 1997).
Przypisy
Bibliografia
C.G. Gil, "Mis dulces hermanos": la otredad animal en Platero y yo, Universidad de Coruña, 2017.
J. R. Jiménez, Platero y yo: Introducción, La Habana, Instituto del libro, 1969.
A. Trapiello, Platero o la breve historia de un libro feliz,[b.m], 2015, http://hemeroflexia.blogspot.com/2015/02/platero-al-fin.html.
.
M. Cristina Parra Tomás, Juan Ramón Jiménez Platero y yo, Literatura infantily juvenil. [b.m], 2017.
P. Sawicki, Polska–Hiszpania, Hiszpania–Polska Poszerzanie horyzontów, Wrocław, Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Filologicznej we Wrocławiu,2013.
Utwory literackie z 1914
Hiszpańskie powieści | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 4,084 |
Lennoxlove House is a historic house set in woodlands half a mile south of Haddington in East Lothian, Scotland. The house comprises a 15th-century tower, originally known as Lethington Castle, and has been extended several times, principally in the 17th, 19th and 20th centuries. The house is protected as a category A listed building, and is described by Historic Scotland as "one of Scotland's most ancient and notable houses." The wooded estate is included on the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens.
It is now the seat of the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon.
History
The lands of Lethington were acquired by Robert Maitland of Thirlestane in 1345. The Maitland family constructed the earliest part of the building, the L-plan tower house at the south-west of the building. Mary of Guise stayed at Lethington in 1548 when she came to see Haddington with Piero Strozzi. The following year it was burned by the English troops who were then occupying Haddington. Prominent members of the Maitland family included the poet Richard Maitland (1496–1586), his son William Maitland of Lethington (1525–1573), Secretary of State to Mary, Queen of Scots, and his son James Maitland of Lethington (b.1568). It was then acquired by his uncle, John Maitland, 1st Lord Maitland of Thirlestane (1537–1595), it was said in an underhanded manner. Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, writing in the seventeenth century, commented thus: "Yet the conquest he made of the barony of Liddington [Lethington] from his brother's son, James Maitland, was not thought lawful nor conscientious." James Maitland had become a Catholic and was obliged to leave Scotland. James VI of Scotland visited John Maitland, who was Chancellor of Scotland, at Lethington on 28 April 1593 to persuade him to return to court.
In 1674, Lennoxlove is said to have been the first Scottish estate to practice "enclosure", dividing the ground into evenly sized rectangular fields.
The coach house was built around 1676, to designs by Sir William Bruce. Lethington remained in the Maitland family until after the death of John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale (1616–1682) who was born there. Rooms were furnished for his second wife, Elizabeth Maitland, Duchess of Lauderdale. In 1674, her silk lined bedchamber included Indian satin curtains, an Indian screen, and an Indian cabinet. A closet room had a couch with Indian taffeta curtains.
Lennoxlove
The property was purchased by the trustees of Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox following her death in 1702 for the benefit of her "neare and deare kinsman the said Walter Stuart". Walter Stuart was the eldest son of Alexander, 5th Lord Blantyre, the first cousin, twice removed, of the duchess, and was to become the 6th Lord Blantyre on the death of his father in 1704. The Duchess had stipulated that the property be called "Lennox's Love to Blantyre", this was subsequently shortened to Lennoxlove. It remained in the ownership of the Blantyre-Stewarts for almost two centuries. When the 12th Lord Blantyre died in 1900 without male heirs, the property passed into the ownership of his daughter, Ellen Stewart, and her husband Sir David Baird, 3rd Baronet of Newbyth, Prestonkirk. Their younger son, Major William Baird, commissioned the architect Sir Robert Lorimer to oversee extensive refurbishment of the house in 1912.
Lennoxlove is now the seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, having been purchased by the 14th Duke in 1946. It is open to the public during the summer, accommodates corporate events and weddings, and can be rented privately by groups.
Lennoxlove Book Festival
This festival was started in November 2009, and it is being continued in November 2010.
Art collection
Lennoxlove is home to one of Scotland's most important collections of portraits, including works by Anthony van Dyck, Canaletto, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Sir Henry Raeburn, and others. It also houses important pieces of furniture, porcelain and other fine artefacts, many of which came from the now demolished Hamilton Palace in Lanarkshire. The collections include the Boulle cabinet given to the Duchess by King Charles II and a silver jewellery box that belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, that purportedly held the Casket letters showing her complicity in the murder of Lord Darnley, together with her death mask. There is also the map and compass carried by Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, who flew to Scotland in 1941 on a mission to involve the 14th Duke of Hamilton in helping negotiate peace between Britain and Germany.
The very rare and important 17-piece Lennoxlove toilet service in silver-gilt can now be seen in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. It was discovered in its custom travelling-case in a tower room of the house shortly after it changed hands in 1900. It was made in Paris, almost certainly for Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (1647-1702). The pieces come from a number of different makers and years, and the service was assembled around 1672.
References
External links
Lennoxlove House official website
Lennoxlove Book Festival official website
Lennoxlove on the Gazetteer for Scotland
Gallery of artefacts from the Lennoxlove Collection
Historic Hamilton website
Country houses in East Lothian
Castles in East Lothian
Tourist attractions in East Lothian
Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes
Literary festivals in Scotland
Category A listed buildings in East Lothian
Listed houses in Scotland
Museums in East Lothian
Art museums and galleries in Scotland
Historic house museums in East Lothian
Tower houses in Scotland | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 8,892 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.