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New online resource

I have recently written classroom lesson plans aimed at Key Stage 4 & 5 students around Criminal Petition - What do they reveal about the justice System? 

The lesson plan is available from The National Archives pages: Criminal petitions - The National Archives

In this lesson you will explore some original nineteenth century criminal petitions held by The National Archives.

Petitions are formal written requests made to an authority such as a monarch or government department. Petitioning was a long-established right to appeal to a higher authority to ask for a favour or correct an injustice.

Project:

This project focuses on the social agency of ordinary British petitioners writing at home and from territories overseas. The prospect of emigration, forced transportation, familial separation and ill health were common experiences for mariners, paupers, and convicts in the period 1789-1860. In response to these pressures, hundreds of thousands of petitions were written by men and women to the Home Office, Royal Navy and Poor Law authorities requesting clemency, relief, and protection. This project aims to contribute to the social history of these groups, using petitions to gain access to social strategies and negotiations that existed between marginalized subjects and the state.

• Domestic and Imperial British History, c18th-19th Century
• History from below
• Emigration and forced migration
• Museums, archives and collecting