Teacher Notes
KS4: History Crime and Punishment Resource
Throughout the Crime and Punishment course pupils are asked to investigate how
types of crime have changed. In these exercises pupils can use the database for
Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon to investigate a variety of issues
surrounding crime and punishment in the 19th century. They can then compare their
findings to their prior knowledge and to patterns for Britain as a whole. Whilst some
of these exercises could be used as an introduction to 19th century crime and
punishment pupils would probably benefit from at least some prior knowledge. There
is plenty of scope to use individual cases as stimulus in the course before using the
database with the pupils.
Warm up questions
When pupils first visit the database it may be worth giving them some time to browse
the database and then to pose simple warm up questions to ensure they know how to
use the database and can begin to see its uses and limitations. A series of warm up
questions have been provided (with the answers in brackets) but of course you
probably wouldn’t use all the questions and may well ask very different questions.
Types of crime
The Crime and Punishment GCSE course asks pupils to look at change and continuity in
crime and punishment over time. This set of activities helps pupils to look at whether
there was more change or continuity between the periods and why and how much
change there was throughout the period.
A teacher led introduction to the first activity would be beneficial, asking pupils to
recap on the types of crime they have come across in the different periods – the
Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, Early Modern Britain and 19th century. They can then
use the database to see whether the pattern in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and
Huntingdon matches the pattern they have seen from the textbook for the 19 th
century and whether or not there was more change or continuity from previous
periods.
Task 5 asks students to look at a national trend and investigate whether or not the
local database supports this. They then have to look at whether micro history helps or
confuses the historian. Class discussion on this issue will probably be beneficial.
Task 6 begins to get pupils to think about reasons for the crimes in a very simple way
– pupils look at food prices using Rostow’s Social Tension chart and political unrest.
You may decide to adapt the chart for political unrest and simply get pupils to find
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the dates rather than looking at reasons and methods of protest. Pupils may want to
go on from this and investigate whether other factors have an impact on the figures
for offences in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon.
The final task asks pupils to come up with their own hypotheses to test; some
students may need more guidance than others here. However getting pupils to pose
their own questions of a database is a very valuable exercise and helps them to think
about the limitations of databases for historical research.
Punishments
The tasks in this section ask pupils to look for examples of change and continuity in
punishment in the 19th century. In the first 6 tasks they are testing hypotheses from
historians about the changing nature of punishments. In task 7 they are asked to
create a podcast to help other students to revise 19th century prisons. This activity is
probably best done in moviemaker as then pupils can use pictures from the website as
well as their voices to explain the key ideas. By getting pupils to make their own
podcasts they can assess each others and then use them for their own revision. You
might set a challenge that the best ones will be put on the school website so all GCSE
pupils in the school can access them. All the information pupils need for this activity
is on the website under ‘gaols’. Some pupils may need help in selecting the most
relevant information to make a snappy but useful podcast.
Women and Crime
These tasks encourage pupils to look at whether or not women were treated in the
same way as men in the criminal justice system. Whole class discussion for the final
question will undoubtedly yield better thinking than individual work, as this is quite a
tricky question.
Young Offenders
These tasks encourage pupils to look at some of the issues surrounding child
offenders. The case study on Henry Catlin would also be a good resource to use in this
topic area. Some of the questions posed here are hard to answer – this will hopefully
lead to questions being raised by pupils about how useful the database is to historians
studying crime and young people in the 19th century. The final task allows pupils to
bring together what they have discovered about child offenders.
19th Century Justice
This task is designed to provide an overview of key issues of 19th century crime and
punishment. Pupils are required to use their own knowledge plus the website and
database to create a useful summary of the issues. As well as selecting the
information they want to put on their website they need to think about how it should
be presented. Using a quiz at the end helps to ensure students have really recalled
the key information.
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Historical Enquiry
This section is designed to get the students to analyse how useful the database is for
historians studying crime and punishment. Once they have identified issues they can
suggest ways to change or extend the database to overcome the problems. This helps
pupils to see that the database has its limitations and that any historical enquiry
needs more than one source of information. A final issue that the teacher could
address here is the use of micro history in the study of crime and punishment. Ask
pupils to identify the pros and cons of using data from one area in their historical
enquiry. Did they find anomalies with general trends? Does this mean micro history is
useful or useless? Why? Would they look to use micro history again?
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