Inveraray Jail Investigations
Once children have had time to browse the spreadsheet and are familiar
with the data it contains they will be able to begin asking and answering
questions using the data.
The nature of the enquiries that individual children will be able to tackle will be dependent on both
their ability and their experience of using and interrogating a spreadsheet. These examples provide a
range of worked sample investigations from simple searches to ones that require further investigation
and some research. You might want to work through these examples with the whole class using an
interactive whiteboard.
Straightforward enquiries
(Based on Microsoft Excel 2007 – other versions may need adaptation)
‘Most people admitted to the jail were found guilty as charged.’
Look at the headings in the first row of the spreadsheet: one is called ‘verdict’. This column reports
whether a person was fugitated (a fugitive or runaway), guilty, insane, not guilty, not proven, not tried.
Some records do not show what the verdict was – these have been left blank.
For the purposes of this enquiry you are only interested in the total number of records shown and of
those the ones who were found guilty.
The children could look at each record in turn and count the number found guilty but that would be a
huge waste of time and they would probably all end up with different answers. It would be much
simpler and more accurate to use the functions of the spreadsheet to arrive at the answer.
First of all highlight the verdict column (column N) by moving the mouse to
the top of the column and clicking on the ‘N’. This will highlight the whole
column and indicate that this is the column you want to investigate further.
Next, make sure you are on the ‘Home’ tab menu and click on
the ‘Sort and filter’ button at the top right-hand side of the
screen.
Scroll down the options in the drop down menu and select
‘Filter’. A downward pointing arrow will appear in the ‘Verdict’
cell in column N.
Click on this arrow and all the boxes in the drop down menu will be ticked.
Click on the ‘Select All’ box to clear all the ticks. Remember you are only
interested in those records showing a ‘Guilty’ verdict so click that box to put
a tick in it. Now click the ‘OK’ button.
If you scroll down the records you will notice
only those with a verdict of ‘Guilty’ are shown. If you look down at the
bottom left-hand corner of the screen there will be a statement telling
you how many records have been found out of the total number of
records in the spreadsheet. In this instance 3348 people were found guilty out of 4187 listed so the
original statement that ‘Most people admitted to the jail were found guilty as charged’ is correct.
Other straightforward enquiries might include:
‘Most people admitted to Inveraray Jail were aged 20 – 35.’
’10 times as many men as women were admitted to Inveraray Jail.’
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Slightly more complex enquiries
‘More people were admitted to Inveraray Jail in summer than winter.’
Firstly the children will have to determine which months make up the summer and which make up the
winter. (In the UK summer months are June, July and August and the winter months are December,
January and February.)
To find whether this statement is true or false you will need to look at all the records. Hold
down the ‘Shift’ key and at the same time press the ‘A’ key to select all the data in the
spreadsheet. Now look at the top right-hand side of the Home tab menu and click on
‘Sort and Filter’. Scroll down and choose ‘Custom Sort…’ When the ‘Sort’ window opens
click on the down arrow next to the ‘Sort by:’ box. Scroll down and choose ‘Day of
admission’ and click ‘OK’.
If a ‘Sort Warning’ window appears click on the button that
says ‘Sort anything that looks like a number, as a number’
and click ‘OK’.
The records will now be displayed in date order.
Now look at the column headings and find the
one that says ‘Day of Admission’ (Column L).
Scroll down this column until you find the first
cell that has 1 June displayed. Click on this
cell. Next, scroll down this column until you
reach the last cell with 31 August displayed in
it. Hold down the ‘Shift’ key and click on this
cell to highlight all the cells between these two dates.
Look at the bottom right-hand side of the screen and you will see a message that
tells you how many records have been counted between those two cells (in this
case 1051). Make a note of this number as it tells you how many people were
admitted in the summer months.
Counting the number of admissions for the winter months is slightly more complex as you will need to
highlight and count the cells from 1 January to 28 February (as described above) and make a note of
the number of records counted (583). Next you will need to highlight and count the cells from 1
December to 31 December (341). To find the total number of people admitted in the winter months
add the two numbers together (583 + 341 = 942). If you compare the two numbers, 1051 and 942,
you will see that it is true that ‘More people were admitted to Inveraray Jail in summer than winter’.
Other slightly more complex enquiries might include:
‘On average children under the age of 16 spent less than five weeks in jail.’
‘On average, Women spent longer in jail sentences than men.’
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Enquiries requiring further research or deduction
Enquiry 1: ‘Inveraray is a Scottish jail for Scottish prisoners.’ – Is this true? What evidence can you
find in the records and elsewhere to support your answer?
At first glance this may seem like a straightforward enquiry. By sorting or
filtering the data based on ‘Country of birth’ it very quickly becomes
apparent that prisoners came from at least 15 different countries. But the
task requires the children to investigate further – not only the records in
the spreadsheet but elsewhere. You should encourage them to identify
and locate the various countries from which the prisoners came. They
should also pinpoint the location of Inveraray Jail (Google Maps would
be a good starting point for doing this) and try and come up with
explanations of
how and why these
prisoners might
have ended up in
Inveraray.
By looking in
greater detail at the
individual records, the occupations of the
prisoners, the crimes of which they are accused
and any further information should help them
begin to form opinions to support their answers.
Enquiry 2: Two visitors to Inveraray Jail were overheard having this conversation:
Visitor 1: Prisoners were admitted to Inveraray Jail on every day of the year.
Visitor 2: Yes even on Christmas Day.
Is this the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
This enquiry also seems straightforward at first sight.
Select all the data by holding down the ‘Shift’ key and
pressing the ‘A’ key. Next click on the ‘Sort and Filter’
button at the top right-hand side of the screen. When the
‘Sort’ screen appears click on the down arrow by ‘Sort by:’
and select ‘Day of admission’ from the drop down list.
If you get a ‘Sort Warning’ window appear, click on ‘Sort
anything that looks like a number, as a number’ and click
‘OK’.
The data will now be displayed in date order. By scrolling
down the ‘Day of Admission’ column you will indeed find
entries for each day of the year – including Christmas Day
(25 December). If you did no more you would think that
both visitors were right in what they said, but you wouldn’t
be seeing the whole truth.
It is very important that the children learn not to accept things at face value but should look at the
records (evidence) as a whole. Ask them to look more closely at the column to the right of the one
they have just been studying – column M, ‘Year of admission’. What do they notice? They should be
able to tell you that although many have the same ‘Day of admission’ they are showing different
years. So the statements are only true if they are viewed across all the years covered by the records.
The children could be asked to investigate further by using the filter tool to see whether any individual
year had sufficient number of prisoners admitted to the jail for the statement to possibly be true (i.e.
more than 365 and on different dates). Using the filter button on the ‘Year of admission’ column
children should also notice that there are no entries at all for the years 1822, 1825, 1842 and 1881.
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Ask the children to investigate further to see if they can find reasons why this is the case. They might
find some answers at the Inveraray Jail website: http://www.inverarayjail.co.uk/the-jails-story.aspx
Incidentally, two prisoners were admitted to jail on 29 February. Challenge the children to use the
‘Find’ function to track down who they were. (Hint: They will need to look in ‘Comments’.)
Other activities you might like to try
Encourage the children to become super detectives by providing them with clues to help them search
for and identify individual prisoners. For example:
WANTED 1
Sex: Male
Age: 40
Place of birth: Scotland
Marital status: Married
Occupation: Fisherman
Crime: Assault
Verdict: Guilty
Sentence: 30 days in prison
Days in jail: 39
Who am I? ________________________________
When was I admitted to jail? __________________
WANTED 2
Sex: Female
Age: 22
Place of birth: Scotland
Marital status: Single
Crime: Deserting infant child
Verdict: Guilty
Sentence: 3 months
Days in jail: 135
Who am I? ________________________________
When was I admitted to jail? __________________
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