Using evidence: how we know about the past
History · Key Stage 2 · The School
Primary and secondary
A PRIMARY source was made at the time by someone connected to the event: a letter, a photograph, a coin, a building, a court record. A SECONDARY source was made later by someone studying it: a textbook, a documentary, this lesson. Both are useful. Primary sources are closer; secondary sources have seen more of the picture. Neither is automatically more trustworthy.
Reliable for what?
No source is simply reliable or unreliable — ask what it is reliable FOR. A king's official portrait is poor evidence of what he looked like and excellent evidence of how he wished to be seen. A soldier's diary may be wrong about the battle's overall shape and unmatched on what that morning felt like. Work out who made it, when, for whom, and what they wanted.
Why accounts disagree
Two honest witnesses to one event will differ, because they stood in different places, knew different things, and remembered afterwards. Add purpose — someone writing to justify themselves — and the gap widens. Historians do not resolve this by picking the nicer account. They ask what all the sources agree on, where they differ, and what would explain the difference.
Question: what did people eat in a Victorian workhouse? A PRINTED DIET SHEET from the workhouse says what was supposed to be served. An INSPECTOR'S REPORT says what he found. A former inmate's MEMOIR, written forty years later, says what he remembers. ARCHAEOLOGY of the rubbish pit says what bones and shells were actually thrown away. Where they disagree is the interesting part, and each is unreliable in a different direction.