From the Victorian age to the Internet age
From the Victorian age to the Internet age
09 March 2007
The National Archives has worked with a group of young people to create an innovative web-based resource looking at crime and punishment in the Victorian era. The 26 young people, aged 11 to 19 worked with the team at The National Archives to create a play in the style of a radio documentary.
Go to the Prisoner 4099 exhibition
The result of their hard work features in a new online resource Prisoner 4099 which launches on 9 March 2007 and can be accessed through The National Archives' award-winning Learning Curve website. The play focuses on the case of William Towers, a boy from Richmond in Surrey. In 1872, at the age of only 12, William was imprisoned and sentenced to one month´s hard labour. His heinous crime was stealing two pet rabbits.
The young people gathered together original source materials from the archives consisting of newspaper articles, Government papers and letters. Once they had analysed the information, they decided to produce a radio documentary interpreting all the information gathered and using their imaginations to bring the characters to life. The documentary was then uploaded to the Learning Curve site, along with supplementary information, to provide a valuable teaching resource on crime and punishment in the Victorian era.
The children selected the Towers case because it was a subject they could relate to. It brought home the unfair and harsh treatment child prisoners were subjected to in Victorian times. The author and poet Oscar Wilde highlighted the problem as a national issue when he wrote an angry letter to the editor of The Daily Chronicle after he was released from prison in 1897. This letter also features on the site.
Sara Griffiths, Outreach and Inclusion Manager at The National Archives, said:
"This was a fantastic project to work on, bringing together a number of different organisations and truly engaging the young people by bringing history to life. The fun they had researching and recording the play made the whole project worthwhile."
The Prisoner 4099 project was previewed on Radio 4's 'In Touch' programme on 6 March 2007. It includes extracts of the play and interviews with some of the young people involved.
