What do these documents reveal about life for Caribbean migrants to Britain in the 1940s and 1950s? When the Second World War ended, countries needed to recover and rebuild. By 1948, the Nationality Act was passed which gave people from the Commonwealth the right to live and work in Britain if they wanted. They were citizens of the ‘United Kingdom and Colonies’. Many Caribbean men and women had served in the forces during the war, some wanted to re-enlist into the armed forces or find other employment. After the war, Britain needed people to fill jobs in the health service, transport system and postal system. Britain also used the European Voluntary Workers (E.V.W.) scheme to cope with its shortage of workers. The plan aimed to provide jobs in factories and farming to people from Europe who had been made homeless after the war. At the same time, many people also left their homes in the Caribbean to live and work in Britain. Those on the E.V.W. plan who were classed as ‘aliens’, however those from the Caribbean were ‘Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies’. Housing for the new migrants, near to their places of work was often provided by National Service Hostels Corporation. At the Causeway Green Hostel in the West Midlands in August 1949, for example, there were 235 Poles, 18 E.V.Ws, 235 Southern Irish, 50 Northern Irish, 65 Jamaicans, and 100 English, Scottish and Welsh. Finding accommodation became difficult for many commonwealth immigrants because of growing prejudice and discrimination in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1958 there were riots in the Nottingham and Notting Hill, London. These involved serious fights between ‘teddy boys’ and new arrivals. The homes of immigrants were also attacked. At this time too, Black people were frequently excluded from skilled employment, pubs, and clubs. Landlords refused to rent to Black families. Other landlords exploited these immigrants by renting them over-priced, overcrowded accommodation. Added to this racial discrimination, the shortage of affordable decent housing and the poor living conditions made matters worse. The following year, Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter from Antigua was brutally stabbed to death in West London. It was a racist murder and not, as the police later claimed, an attempted robbery. These events would lead to increased calls for immigration control, resulting in the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, many argued that the migrants were being blamed for the prejudice directed towards them. Following these events there was a strong effort to improve relations in the area from Black activist Claudia Jones and members of the Caribbean community which eventually gave rise to the Notting Hill Carnival and the start of legislation designed to prevent racial discrimination.

Why did people from the Caribbean travel to live and work in Britain? When the Second World War ended, countries needed to recover and rebuild. By 1948, the Nationality Act was passed which gave people from British colonies the right to live and work in Britain if they wanted. They were citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. Many Caribbean men and women had served in the forces during the war, some wanted to re-enlist into the armed forces or find other employment. After the war, Britain needed people to fill jobs in the health service, transport system and postal system. The arrival of the ship ‘Empire Windrush’ is often seen as the start of this migration of Caribbean migrants from countries including Jamaica; Bermuda; Trinidad and British Guiana seeking jobs and a better life in this country. Jamaica for example, had high unemployment and a recent hurricane had caused huge damage. However, it is also important to remember that there were earlier lesser-known ships that carried post-war migrants from the Caribbean. Find out these other ships in this National Archives blog. It cost £28 for travel on the troop-deck and £48 for cabin class travel on the Empire Windrush. The ship picked up passengers at Trinidad, Jamaica (Kingston), Mexico (Tampico), Cuba (Havana) and, finally Bermuda before arriving at Tilbury Docks on 22nd June in Britain. The total number of passengers was 492, of which 52 were volunteers for the armed forces, 236 who had nowhere to go and who were accommodated in London’s Clapham South tube station deep shelter and 204 who had places to go to and were dispersed direct from Tilbury. The Ministry of Labour set up a small labour exchange or job centre in the Clapham South shelter to help to place people in jobs. Fares were paid to those travelling to other parts of the country. Life was difficult for many people after the war. Rationing and shortages continued, people still queued for food. People therefore arriving from the Caribbean would have experienced this as well as leaving friends and family behind. The climate was also colder and wetter. Unfortunately, some Caribbean migrants were made to feel unwelcome and treated unfairly and differently because of racism. Finding jobs and somewhere to live was difficult due to discrimination. Many were forced to accept employment with low wages or poor housing.

This lesson can be used ofr KS1, KS2 and KS3. It looks at the story of the fire of London through evidence relating to some of the key characters - Thomas Farrinor and Charles II.

The purpose of this document collection is to make available to teachers and students a wide selection of documents relating to the suffragette movement. The sources include material from the Home Office, Metropolitan Police and prison files, the Women’s Social and Political Union office (W.S.P.U.) which were used as exhibits in the trial of Emmeline Pankhurst and other leaders, including their correspondence and the Suffragette newspaper. We hope that such a collection will offer teachers the flexibility to develop their own approaches and questions and differentiate student tasks. All documents are provided with transcripts. Please note that in many cases we have displayed the whole document and highlighted the extract we have chosen to transcribe. These records support numerous lines of enquiry on a range of significant themes. The link to the document collection can be found in the lesson PDF which also contains our Teachers Notes and an introduction from Dr Diane Atkinson.

This lesson is designed to learn about what happened at the Trimdon Grange Mining Disaster. The lesson has an inquiry led approach to consider the possible causes of deaths in Victorian Britain.

This document collection on the reign of James I (and VI) allows students and teachers to develop their own questions and lines of historical enquiry on the nature of monarchical power, challenges to the Church of England and the relationship between king and parliament. A perfect digital sourcebook for students studying the Stuarts. The collection contains thirty-nine documents and transcripts of original documents from the reign of James I, held within The National Archives of Great Britain.

This lesson has been developed in collaboration with the Young Historians Project and their project ‘A Hidden History: African women and the British health service’. Other educational resources can be accessed via their website. For an essential activity for students using this lesson consult their blog post on Princess Ademola listed in external links below. “The recruitment of African women into the National Health Service from British colonies began in the period after the Second World War. However, nurses, doctors and other medical professionals had trained in Britain before this, as the colonial power did not provide the full facilities for medical training in the colonies. Despite their long history of work within health services in Britain, the role of African women is rarely highlighted in discussions of the history of the NHS or of health work more generally. Current narratives on Black women in the British health service tend to focus on the ‘Windrush generation’ and Caribbean contributions”: Young Historians Project. Use this lesson to find original documents which explore the role of African nurses in the health services of Britain. Please note that some sources contain offensive language that was used at the time and is unacceptable today.

The early 19th Century saw many advances in science and medicine, in a time where scientific and religious ideas often clashed over what was morally correct. These ideas are explored in nineteenth century literature such as the novel Frankenstein, but the stories in the real world were often as shocking and brutal as the Gothic fantasy. This lesson explores the business of the grave robber and how they furthered the study of medicine through a grey area of the law. This lesson can be used as part of several fields of study for GCSE, including: Crime and Punishment History of Medicine/Health and the People Social Reform of the early 1800s Historical Context of ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley. The confessions of Bishop and May describe their daily lives in great detail. The full confessions are twelve pages long each, and so have been presented as extracts to provide the most relevant sections describing one particular case. The initial task can be completed as group work, in carousel, or individually as its own lesson before moving on to the rest of the sources. Care should be taken in providing the source describing the murder to students. The final source shows the on going effects of the Act over twenty-five years later, asking students to consider these sources in the context of a larger narrative.

Discover the Dissolution is a national enrichment project run by The National Archives for schools and history groups. The aim is to allow students of all ages to practice their research skills. Groups are encouraged to use the Discover the Dissolution resources to locate a local monastery or nunnery that was involved in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1530s. They can then use the internet, libraries, local archives or other resources available to them to explore the story of the site. Once the research is complete, students can present their findings to others in the school and submit their work to the Discover the Dissolution Schools Map to be published online and made available for other students to use as an educational resource. You can find the main Discover the Dissolution Resource here: http://bit.ly/32k9Mlp

This lesson provides pupils with a general introduction to Magna Carta and why it is considered of historical importance. By the end of the lesson pupils will have gathered information that can be used to write a short piece on what makes something of historical importance, and why Magna Carta is such an important document. This lesson is the first in a sequence of three designed to be used with the BETT Awards 2016 and Medea award 2016 winning Magna Carta resource website. These lessons include PowerPoint presentations, teacher’s notes and other material for use in classrooms. The lesson resource website guides students through medieval history and documents with the help of reenactors as students create their own digital chronicle of the creation of Magna Carta.

What do the sources reveal about an early Black presence in Britain? Black people have lived in Britain for over two thousand years. Some came to Britain with the Roman invasion in 43CE and they became an important part of British society throughout the medieval ages and beyond. Evidence shows that Black people joined the armed forces, married in parish churches, made significant contributions to art and writing, and resisted and challenged the repressive laws of the day. We cannot tell the history of Britain without including their stories. In the early years of the First World War, many Caribbean men bought tickets to sail to Britain to join the army. The British West Indies Regiment was created, playing an important role in the conflict. Men from Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, the Gambia and other parts of Africa, also fought for Britain. At the end of the war, many African and Caribbean soldiers decided to stay in Britain to make it their permanent home. Race riots broke out in parts of the country during the early months of 1919, as some white communities blamed black people for the shortage of work and housing caused by the war. During the Second World War, black people from across the Commonwealth fought for Britain once more. Some were soldiers, whilst others came to support work on the Homefront such as factory production and nursing. After the war, Britain needed to be re-built. By 1948, the Nationality Act was passed; allowing people from British colonies the right to live and work in Britain if they wanted. Other people from Europe were also invited to Britain. Many people from the Caribbean left their homes to begin a new life in Britain, bringing with them a wide range of skills. They filled jobs in the transport system, postal service and health service, helping Britain to re-build and recover. These people are often called the ‘Windrush Generation’, named after the ship ‘The Empire Windrush’ that docked at Tilbury in June 1948. Windrush was not the first ship to bring Caribbean migrants to Britain; the Ormonde and Almanzora had arrived in Southampton the year before. Between 1947 and 1970, nearly half a million people left their homes in the Caribbean to live in Britain.

The documents in this lesson relate to Framlingham, Portchester, Stokesay , Berwick and Alnwick castles. Some of these feature in the specification for OCR History GCSE module: Castles Form and Function c1000-1750 as specified sites in conjunction with English Heritage. Framlingham Castle is the first named site for OCR in 2018, followed by Kenilworth Castle in 2019. For AQA, GCSE History, module Historical Environment of Medieval England, Stokesay Castle is the specified site for 2018 and Pevensey Castle for 2019.

A lesson plan and resources for children to learn about the life and work of Florence Nightingale.

Victorians were worried about the rising crime rate: offences went up from about 5,000 per year in 1800 to about 20,000 per year in 1840. They were firm believers in punishment for criminals but faced a problem: what should the punishment be? There were prisons, but they were mostly small, old and badly-run. Common punishments included transportation – sending the offender to America, Australia or Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) – or execution: hundreds of offences carried the death penalty. By the 1830s people were having doubts about both these punishments. The answer was prison: lots of new prisons were built and old ones extended. The Victorians also had clear ideas about what these prisons should be like. They should be unpleasant places, to deter people from committing crimes. Once inside, prisoners had to be made to face up to their own faults, by keeping them in silence and making them do hard, boring work. Walking a treadwheel or picking oakum (separating strands of rope) were the most common forms of hard labour.

This lesson provides pupils with a glimpse of a medieval village. Pupils can identify the major buildings and make inferences about medieval village life, with reference to a range of medieval maps.

This lesson and pictures focus on what the British found when they entered Belsen concentration camp.This study of Belsen reveals how British soldiers were aghast at what they found when they liberated the camps.

This lesson and its sources can be used to look at how evidence over time can change leading to new conclusions. The lesson focuses on the sinking of the Indefatigable was one of heroic loss and then it became clear it was a mistake.

This lesson could be used for History at key stage 3, within the development of Church, state and society in Medieval Britain 1066-1509. The activities also support the key stage 3 literacy strategy for the development of writing. Students can attempt to locate the English words within the Latin original, and consider the development of the English language. The simplified transcript aims to add some clarity to the meaning of the document but does require some explanation or class discussion. Finally, the questions could also be used with key stage 2 pupils, fitting in with studies of Edward the Confessor as well as contributing to the key stage 2 numeracy strategy.

This lesson consists of a large amount of background information on the treaties and the League. The lesson helps to explain why the Second World War broke out when and how it did.

This lesson can be used as a starting point for investigating the new Poor Law in more depth and discussing attitudes to the poor in 19th century Britain.