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 complete lesson plan with image based resources can be used to explore how the language of these government posters is used to persuade and inform.

Use the British government sources in this lesson to explore the complicated reasons behind the Chinese Civil War and its outcome, including party ideology, propaganda, fighting tactics, and power struggles. In 1940s China, two parties were fighting for power. On one side was the ruling nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party, led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. On the other was the opposing Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong. During the Second World War, both parties banded together to fight off Japanese occupation. However, after the war, peace talks between the two quickly broke down. The fighting between the two parties became ongoing before escalating into civil war. The civil war was eventually won by the CCP in 1949. Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949. Chiang Kai-shek, meanwhile, fled to the island of Taiwan, where he continued to rule.

Experience all the fun and excitement of a day out at the seaside in Victorian times without leaving your classroom. We’ve selected some of our favourite Victorian photos, posters and prints from The National Archives’ huge collection of images. You’ll find below lots of suggestions for sensory activities that you can easily do in your classroom. They’ll help you use our images as a starting point to bring all the sights, sounds, smells and experiences of the Victorian seaside to life. We recommend you follow the six sections below in order, but you don’t need to use every image or do every suggested activity. Just choose or adapt the ones that are most suitable for your students. There are sensory activities, signed videos, sound files and ideas for further discussion – hopefully something for everybody. You may even come up with some ideas of your own for activities based on our images. If you do, we’d love to hear about them! This resource is suitable for students working from P1 to KS2. P Scale links: English (Speaking and listening) Geography History Music

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.

A lesson to teach about the 1833 factory out where children can investigate how the far the act had solved the problems of child labour.

This lesson could be used as part of a teaching programme for any of the thematic studies for the GCSE history courses relating to the study of Warfare and British society or Power and Authority. It explores the stories of some of those women whose lives were changed by the English Civil Wars. The documents reveal that they played a variety of roles, a few of which may surprise us. Throughout history, wartime has impacted on all different types of people. The lives and experiences of women are sometimes harder to gauge, particularly further back in time. However, it is possible to discover more about the important roles that women had in these wars and in others. It is also important to include different types of people: men and women, young and old, rich and poor, when we study history. The lives and experiences of ordinary people help us to understand what it might have been like to live through war then as well as now.

This lesson explores the worsening relations between Christians and Jews in the latter half of the thirteenth century. Use the sources to investigate the religious, economic, and social factors that led to the Jews being expelled from England in c. 1290. Could this extreme royal tactic have been avoided? Following almost two centuries of Christians and Jews living alongside each other, King Edward I expelled England’s entire Jewish population in the autumn of 1290. As the previous two lessons have shown, Jews had once been prominent in national finance and local trade at key regional centres like York, Lincoln and London, yet by the end of the thirteenth century, Jewish individuals were no longer able to reside ‘freely and honourably’ in England nor enjoy the same ‘liberties and customs’ as their predecessors. They were expelled from the realm as perfidious (faithless) men. The reign of King Edward I (1272-1307) witnessed a heightening of tensions between the Christian and Jewish populations in England. Before relations between the two faiths had been occasionally difficult, subject to prejudice around crusading propaganda and the varying levels of debt owed to Jewish moneylenders but horrific outbursts, such as the attack on York’s Jewish population in March 1190, were few and far between. Edward, however, placed new emphasis on the status of Jews in England. The Statute of Jewry c. 1275 outlined that Jews had to live in specific areas of the king’s towns; those aged over seven had to wear a badge that visually identified them as being Jewish; all aged over twelve years were to pay a tax of 3 pence each Easter; and Jews could only sell property or negotiate debts with the king’s permission. New rules paired with heavy taxation and growing suspicions surrounding the coin-clipping events in the late 1270s led to mounting pressure on Christian-Jewish relations. By the late 1280s, Edward could only secure parliament’s grant of further taxation to aid his war with France by making sacrifices. The expulsion of the Jews was the price he agreed to pay.

Resistance to British rule in Ireland had existed for hundreds of years. Irish nationalists, the majority of them Catholic, resisted this rule in a number of peaceful or violent ways up until the start of the First World War. Irish nationalists wanted Ireland to be independent from British control. At the start of the twentieth century, Irish ‘Home Rule’, the name given to the process of transferring rule from British to Irish hands seemed likely and, as a result the Unionist minority, a largely Protestant population, loyal to Britain and British rule, began to more actively resist the idea. Eventually, Irish Home Rule was granted, but it excluded the six mainly Protestant counties of the province of Ulster (one of the four provinces of Ireland) in the north-east corner of the island. This established Northern Ireland in 1920, which continued to be part of the United Kingdom, while the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, established the Irish Free State as a Dominion of the British Empire. This meant that the Irish Free State was a self-governing nation of the Commonwealth of Nations,  which recognised the British monarch as head of state. Use the original sources in this lesson to find out how Ireland was partitioned.

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.

This lesson could be used in the context of the history of Crime and Punishment, or as an illustration of one aspect of life in Victorian Britain.

Illuminated manuscripts are luxury items, displaying the wealth and often piety of their owners through golden details on religious or secular imagery. It is unusual, however, to see such religious iconography in the pages of Domesday. The importance of Domesday Book meant that several copies were needed, with three being made in the 13th Century. This copy, the Abbreviato, was made for the Exchequer and presents a shorter (abbreviated) version of the original book. The copy begins with the story of Edward the Confessor, showing scenes from his life to show his religious piety.

It has previously been assumed that paupers themselves had little knowledge nor understanding of the legislation governed their position, yet letters sent to the poor law commission from across England and Wales challenge this notion. In fact there is evidence that paupers were frequently writing to contest the way that they were being treated, complain about actions of their Guardians and in some instances even quoted specific parts of legislation in an attempt to change their lives. The legal terminology contained in the letters written by the poor, and the inferences that historians can make from this is a fascinating challenge to students of both History and Law related subjects. This resource aims to demonstrate, through a selection of letters and accompanying tasks, how paupers were active in exercising what they believe to be their ‘right to relief’ and were in fact agents who held the Poor Law to account. This lesson was created as part of the Teaching the Voices of the Victorian Poor Teacher Scholar Programme.

A lesson plan with resources to study The Gunpowder Plot.

Learning about the story of the Empire Windrush The National Archives has created some resources for you to use in your classroom with our video to remember the story of the Windrush generation. In the video, pupils take a historical journey from early times to the 1960s. They start with evidence of a Black presence in Britain from earlier migrations and explore the story of the Empire Windrush with other documents from The National Archives. Why did people leave their homes in the Caribbean to come to Britain? What was it like when they arrived? How were they treated then and in the years that followed? Historical sources also include music and some original footage from the period. We hope that the commentary and documents will encourage your pupils to explore the past and ask questions about how this Caribbean immigration changed life in Britain. Before watching the video, we advise teachers discuss the meaning of such terms as: blitz, immigrant, commonwealth, British Empire, colony, colour prejudice, inequality, discrimination, and colour bar. Please note that some of the language and terms used in the documents in video are not appropriate or acceptable today. The documents cover sensitive subjects. We suggest that teachers look at the material carefully before introducing to pupils. In April 2017 the British Government apologised for its treatment of the Windrush generation. Some people were told that they lived here illegally and faced deportation from the country. There was widespread shock at the impact on the lives of many Black Britons, and this became known as the Windrush Scandal. Approach of Video In such a short video it is not possible to present a detailed account of the Windrush story and its impact. Therefore, we highlight the story through four key documents, these include extracts from a government information pamphlet about Britain created for a Caribbean audience, a telegram about the passengers on the ‘Empire Windrush’, extracts from a housing report in the 1960s and a photograph of the Notting Hill Carnival. We hope teachers will explore the topic further using our lessons with original documents and activities to deepen understanding of events raise questions for discussion and consider the nature of evidence. Resources: All resources include teacher’s notes, background information, document captions, transcripts, and some have simplified transcripts. There are four connected lessons to this video which can be found in our shop.

What do the sources reveal about the significance of the Notting Hill Carnival and why it began? Late 1950s Britain had a growing number of towns and cities that were racially diverse. Notting Hill had become home to lots of people from the Caribbean who had arrived on Windrush and the accompanying ships. One of these people was Sam Beaver King. He had served for the RAF during the Second World War and after arriving in Britain on the Empire Windrush, he went on to work for the Post Office for over 30 years. He also supported the first Caribbean carnival set up by Claudia Jones in 1959 and went on to become the first black Mayor of Southwark, London in 1983. Sam King co-founded The Windrush Foundation and was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1998, the year of the 50th anniversary of Windrush. Yet this multiculturalism was also accompanied by racial tension and the unfair treatment of black people. For example, some white people refused to rent properties to non-white tenants and black people were also sometimes refused service in restaurants and shops. In Notting Hill and the East End of London, there were groups of people who supported far-right policies such as Oswald Moseley’s Union Party, and who attacked and harassed their black neighbours. In 1958 both the Nottingham Race Riots and the Notting Hill riots took place, as violent fights broke out between white and black people. Amid this hostile atmosphere, Trinidadian human rights activist Claudia Jones organised an indoor Caribbean carnival in Notting Hill on 30th January 1959. She wanted to hold an event that brought people together and celebrated Caribbean culture. This is seen as the start of the Notting Hill Carnival. Claudia Jones was also the founder and editor of ‘The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Caribbean News. This was viewed as Britain’s first major Black newspaper. Around the same time, political movements, such as the Coloured Peoples Progressive Association and the Association of Advancement of Coloured People, were also established. In Notting Hill the following year, Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter who had emigrated to Britain from Antigua, was murdered. He had been attacked by a group of white men in Notting Hill, whilst walking home just after midnight. This was a racist murder and not an attempted robbery as claimed by the Police at the time. His death heightened the growing racial tensions that existed. In 1976 riots occurred at the Notting Hill Carnival when Police and carnival goers clashed. This was against a backdrop of anger surrounding police use of the SUS law. There has been much distrust by carnival goers over time, about the Police’s role and presence at the carnival.

The National Archives has created some resources for you to use in your classroom with our video to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. The film tells the story of Elizabeth II’s 70 years as Queen using genuine historical sources from The National Archives and The Royal Collections. It includes music and some original footage from the period. Pupils take a historical journey through the decades, from the 1950s to 2020s. We hope that the commentary and documents will encourage your pupils to explore the past and ask questions about how the Queen’s role has changed and life in Britain altered over time.

To mark the 100-year commemorations of the Representation of the People Act, the Education Service worked with professional film-maker, Nigel Kellaway, to engage young people (aged 16-19) with suffrage records held at The National Archives. ‘Suffrage Tales’ is the outcome of this project; a short stop-motion animation film, researched, created and filmed during Sunday 30 July – Friday 4 August 2017. As the power of the vote comes under scrutiny and provokes highly contentious debate, this film throws light upon the historical context of the franchise in a uniquely refreshing way. The young people involved drew upon a wide range of documents from our collection, to produce a film about their interpretations of the fight for women’s suffrage. The film is now presented here as an educational resource, teaching tales of Suffrage with accompanying questions for use in the classroom.

This collection of documents introduces students and teachers to the English Reformation through the original State Papers held at The National Archives. They have been selected and introduced by historian of the period, Dr Natalie Mears of Durham University. Students and teachers can use the documents to develop their own questions and explore their own lines of historical enquiry on different aspects of the Reformation in England across the whole Tudor period, from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. The document includes a fully linked index to all 40 documents within the collection, as well as the introduction and teachers notes.

An introduction, zip files and link to The National Archive's 45 document collection on Protest and Democracy in 1818-1820. (N.B. total ZIP file size: 195MB - individual sources can be viewed and saved via the link provided) The documents included primarily cover events at Peterloo, Manchester and during the Cato Street conspiracy in London. Some of the documents relate to: Henry Hunt female reformers yeomanry at Peterloo responses to Peterloo reading societies Cato Street plotters Cato Street preparations seditious songs These documents can be used to support any of the exam board specifications covering the political, social and cultural aspects of 20th century British history, for example: AQA History A level Breadth study: The impact of Industrialisation: Government and a changing society, 1812-1832 Edexcel History A level Paper 1: Breadth study with interpretations 1D: Britain c1785-c1870 democracy, protest and reform Paper 3: Aspects in depth: Protest, agitation and parliamentary reform in Britain, c1780-1928: unit: Radical reformers c1790-1819 Mass protest and Agitation OCR History A level Unit Y110: From Pitt to Peel 1783-1853 British Period Study: British Government in the Age of Revolution 1783-1832