History for Schools Workshops

Sat 11 May 2019

Cambridge Faculty of History Building

Bringing the Wild West Across the Ocean: Buffalo Bill in Queen Victoria’s London, 1887
Lewis Defrates

Before television, the ordinary person in London didn’t know much about other cultures. However, in 1887, when Buffalo Bill brought his famous Wild West show to London, millions of people in Britain had a chance to see what life was apparently like on the western frontier of the United States. Bill travelled across the Atlantic with a cast of Native American families and ‘real’ cowboys (including trick shooters Annie Oakley and Lillian Smith), as well as animals such as bison and real stagecoaches from the American West.

In this workshop, we will explore what exactly the Wild West consisted of, what it showed audiences about America (as well as what it didn’t!) and what the British thought about the show and the United States in general.
Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11)



Investigating Crimes in the Age of the Three Musketeers
Dr Tom Hamilton

How did criminal courts work in the age before organised police, fingerprints, and DNA? Join Tom Hamilton in this session to solve mysteries and enter into the criminal and legal world of the early modern period. Discover for yourself what it was like to investigate crime in the early modern period as we recreate a seventeenth century trial for theft in France brought upon an impoverished woman by nobleman, and a potentially fatal argument over bread and cakes. Come and learn about the value of these trials to historians, and the information we can unearth from the records, that would otherwise be hidden to modern historians!
Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14)

Cost: Free