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Edexcel GCSE History Question 2b

How do I answer question 2b in Paper 1 of Edexcel history? I am so confused, what is the structure to follow?

Is this the question about the sources? Asking you what question you would ask about it, etc...? If it is, I'm your guy B)

The first part is asking for a detail in the source which you would follow up. This means that you basically just pick out something you can see - no inferences, you just need to say what it is.

The question you would ask can be to do with what you picked out, or just a general thing (I think - you might need to ask your teacher about it being too general). It could be 'what are the people in the source doing?' (if there are any...) or 'would it be usual for that amount of people to all be living in one house?' (if you're doing Whitechapel you know what I mean).

Whatever you choose to question should be something you can find out from a source - so nothing like 'what were those people thinking??!!' - because that's not something you'd ever really be able to find out without a literal time machine.

So then, you say what other sources you might use to find out the answer to your question, ideally a primary source. (A primary source is a source dating from the time period that you'e studying, by the way. I only figured that one out recently!)

Some examples of sources could be public records, police records, diary entries from people at the time, books/newspapers/magazines/posters or other media from the time - google 'examples of sources' and it will come up with loads of ideas (not in the exam, before it!), then in the exam choose the most fitting. Be careful not to answer the next one in this box accidentally, I always seem to do that ';D

The last part is just explaining why you chose that particular source - for example, you might have chosen public housing records to investigate population density, and (maybe) how that links to crime. (again, a Whitechapel example)

I'll write a short example, just to put into practise everything I've just long-winded-ly explained...

(let's pretend the source is a picture of a bunch of people standing outside a typical, run-down house in Whitechapel in the late 19th century)

One detail is that there are many people standing outside a house in Whitechapel.

Do all those people live there and, if so, would it be usual for so many people to live together in such a small place?

I could use housing records.

These would help me because they would give accurate data regarding how many people lived in Whitechapel, how many houses, and how many people per house.

I hope this helped, sorry for wasting your time if this is the wrong question...

,':^D

(fun fact - there was a population of c.30,00 people living in Whitechapel, according to a census from 1887, but only 4,000 inhabited houses - that works out to 7-8 people per house!!)