A GROUP of students from Worcester's RNIB New College have helped produce a new website looking at crime and punishment in the Victorian era.

The National Archives worked with 26 young people from the Whittington Road college as well as Look - the National Federation Of Families With Visually-Impaired Children - to create a play in the style of a radio documentary.

The new online resource, Prisoner 4099, can be found on www.learningcurve.gov.uk/ prisoner and will launch on Friday, March 9.

It focuses on the case of William Towers, a boy from Richmond, Surrey. In 1872, aged 12, young Bill was imprisoned and sentenced to one month's hard labour. His heinous crime was stealing two pet rabbits.

The children gathered together original source materials from the archives consisting of court transcripts, newspaper articles, Government papers and letters.

Once they had analysed the information they decided to produce a radio documentary interpreting all the information gathered, bringing the case to life.

The documentary was then uploaded to the Learning Curve site, along with extra information, to provide a teaching resource on crime and punishment in the Victorian era. The children chose the Towers case because it was a subject they could relate to, and an array of supporting documents within the National Archives allowing them to look through in detail.

Sara Griffiths, outreach and inclusion manager from the National Archives, said: "This was a fantastic project to work on, bringing together a number of different organisations and truly engaging the young people.

"The fun they had recording the documentary made the whole project worthwhile."