GCSE History: Crime and Punishment c1700–c1900

This material covers the third period of the thematic study of crime and punishment in Britain, as taught in the GCSE History option 'Crime and punishment in Britain, c1000–present' (for example Pearson Edexcel, Paper 1). It follows the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the law became both harsher and then more humane, and when professional policing and the modern prison were created.

You revise the crimes of the period and the reasons they rose and fell: highway robbery on lonely roads and its decline as banking, enclosure, busier roads and mounted patrols made it less rewarding and more dangerous; poaching and the Black Act of 1723; smuggling and its decline once import duties were cut and coastal patrols improved; and the case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs of 1834, transported for swearing a secret oath while forming a trade union and pardoned after public protest.

On punishment, you study why the 'Bloody Code' grew to more than 200 capital offences, why it failed in practice as juries and judges avoided the death penalty, and how Robert Peel and others reformed it in the 1820s and 1830s. You look at transportation to Australia from 1787 to 1868 and why it ended, the work of John Howard and Elizabeth Fry, Pentonville prison (1842) and the separate system, and the end of public executions in 1868.

On law enforcement, you trace the path from parish constables and watchmen to the Fielding brothers' Bow Street Runners (1749), the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 and the County and Borough Police Act of 1856, which made forces compulsory everywhere. Throughout, the role of factors – government, attitudes in society, Enlightenment ideas and individuals such as Peel and Fry – is highlighted, because thematic-study questions often ask how far one factor explains change.

The quiz checks dates, key terms and reasons; the flashcards drill the vocabulary and landmark laws; the written work asks for explanations and judgements on change and continuity; and in the oral exam an examiner asks one question at a time and gives brief feedback at the end.

The material is revision practice written by Zestly and is not produced or reviewed by any exam board; check the details of your own specification with your teacher.

• Explain the rise and decline of highway robbery and smuggling, and why poaching was a social crime
• Explain why the Bloody Code existed and why it was reformed in the 1820s and 1830s
• Describe transportation to Australia and explain why it ended in 1868
• Describe the work of John Howard and Elizabeth Fry and the separate system at Pentonville
• Explain the development of policing from the Bow Street Runners to the 1829 and 1856 Acts
• Use the Tolpuddle Martyrs case to explain how the authorities used the law against protest

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE GCSE history subject content (thematic study) and the period c1700–c1900 of the thematic option 'Crime and punishment in Britain, c1000–present' (for example Pearson Edexcel GCSE History 1HI0).