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Ballarat & District Genealogical Society - Home
Ballarat East Petty Sessions, Series VPRS 290/P, Part 1, 1858-1889. For two years a team of volunteers from the Ballarat & District Genealogical Society Inc has been engaged in this indexing project. Many thousands of entries from 27 of the old court registers have been transcribed into a database of approximately 55,000 names. Now a surname index is available as a set of 15 microfiche. This will prove to be a valuable resource for family historians who are tracing the people of the first and second generation in the Ballarat area. Ballarat East was located on the alluvial flats and hills lying east of the Yarrowee Creek and in the main, occupied the site of the original canvas town of the early diggings in the area where the Eureka Rebellion took place in 1854. The first case presented in the Ballarat East Court of Petty Sessions was heard on 4 July 1858. It was brought against John Hollam for ‘wilfully destroying a fence’, but the complaint was dismissed. In the first week, Maurice M Ellis was fined 1 shilling for holding a lottery at the Montezuma Theatre Ballarat, the prize for which was a nugget of gold, known as the Nil Desperandum Nugget. Two days later George Buchanan was fined the much larger amount of 5 shillings for ‘neglecting to clean his private yard’. So began the colourful collection of tales which were recorded in the court books. The Ballarat East Court of Petty Sessions was the lowest court in the land in which justice was administered. It was popularly known as the Police Court or the Town Court. The business of the Petty Sessions Court was ordinary Police Court business, the disposal of the Watch House list and Summons cases. The more serious offences were referred for trial in a higher court and occasionally this happened. As the index is arranged in two sections, i.e. ‘Complainant’ and ‘Defendant’, it would be an even bet as to which section the names of interest to you may appear. It would be quite possible for some researchers to find an ancestor among the many people who led a quiet life devoid of notoriety or fame but whose name has been recorded for posterity for ‘being the owner of an unregistered dog’ or ‘wheeling a hand-cart along a foot-path’. Upon finding the name of an ancestor in this index no assumptions should be made about guilt until the original entry has been consulted. The charge may have been dismissed or adjourned for one week, which on occasions, meant that the offender was given a chance to make good - for example, to pay his rates. The charge would then disappear from the books. There were many cases of petty theft. People were charged with stealing fowls, ducks, geese and even cabbages. The penalty in some cases could be considered quite harsh. A shoplifting case of an umbrella worth 2/6 had the penalty of one month imprisonment. I guess it was all relative - at the time an umbrella in Ballarat may have been a very valuable commodity. The mining activity in Ballarat was reflected in the number of gold mining companies which were involved in legal disputes. Only the ‘petty’ ones were dealt with in this court. There were many cases of workers seeking a court order for their wages to be paid for ‘work and labour done’. It was common practice for several of the merchants of Ballarat to regularly use the Court of Petty Session for debt collection, often for quite small amounts, for ‘goods sold and delivered’. This court dealt only with ‘small debts, not exceeding £20 (in 1875) and not owing for more than 12 months’. As well as the specific dates and details of VPRS Series 290/P Units 1-27 which were transcribed, the 15 page introduction gives general information about the spelling of surnames, abbreviations of titles, use of aliases etc. There is also a brief section on the correct terminology for Ballarat East as it changed through the years and some social history of the times which was gleaned from the court registers. Many examples, (some amusing, others plaintive) have been arranged under the headings: Children, Women, Domestic violence and desertion, The Chinese, Driving offences, Environmental offences and the ‘Demon drink’. The last session transcribed for this part of the index was held 31 December 1889. On that day there were 43 applications for foot licences and 14 for horse and cart licences under the Hawker & Peddlers Statute. This is just one example of a bygone era which was revealed to the project workers as they worked their way through the decades. The volunteers who dedicated themselves to the completion of the indexing project now have the satisfaction of knowing it was a job well done. By working together we were always able to consult one another for interpretation of the original handwriting of the Clerks of Petty Sessions. While we could sympathise with these gentlemen for being given the difficult job of recording the spoken names as they heard them, in the wonderful array of accents reflecting the cosmopolitan society of the goldfields of Ballarat, we did form a love/hate relationship with them. Some of their handwriting styles especially in the early books were difficult to decipher even though the court books are in good condition and were generally easy to read. As we progressed we all became rather expert at reading the old writing and of course this was of great personal benefit to us in interpreting the old documents we have in our own collections. Genealogists everywhere are so grateful to the people in the past who have produced indexes to save us so much time and effort. Therefore we consider it was a pleasure to be able to make such a significant contribution to the body of information about the people who were in Ballarat in the last half of the 19th Century. If anyone is contemplating becoming involved in such projects, we would say, “Please do!” Your work will serve a worthy purpose for the greater good of fellow researchers. Jennifer Burrell MICROFICHE Ballarat & District Genealogical Society Inc
Ballarat & District Genealogical Society - Home
Ballarat East Petty Sessions, Series VPRS 290/P Units 28-73, Part 2, 1890-1921. Part 1 provided an index of 55 000 names in the first 27 registers of the Ballarat East Court of Petty Sessions covering the years 1858-1889 when the goldrush immigrants settled into an organised society and built a prosperous infrastructure. Completed in October 2005 and now available from the Ballarat & District Genealogical Society on microfiche is Part 2 of the Surname Index to VPRS 290/P Units 28-73. It contains approximately 70 000 names and extends access to the interesting collection of tales of legal proceedings from 1890 to 1921 when the court was closed following the amalgamation of the Town of Ballarat East and the City of Ballarat (West). These years encompassed the financial crisis of the 1890s, Federation and the Great War. The Ballarat East Court of Petty Sessions was held daily to deal with the Watch House list, ordinary Police Court business and Summons cases. It was also known as the Magistrate’s Court or the Town Court, as opposed to the City Court. This was the lowest court in which justice was administered. Cases considered of more consequence were tried in other courts such as the Court of Mines, the Insolvency Court, the County Court or the Supreme Court. The alphabetical database of Complainants and Defendants shows surnames and given names, title of complainant, unit number, item number and date (year, month, day). This information can be used to locate the original entry in the court registers which would show additional information as to the nature of the case, the decision, fees levied and remarks. A list of the Police Magistrates, Justices and Clerks of Court who were involved in the administration of justice in the Ballarat Bailiwick is included in the preliminary information. Also included in the thirteen page introduction to the new set of microfiche are two photographs (1901 and 1920) of the grand public buildings of Ballarat East which included the Library, the Police Station and the Town Hall where the Court was held. According to architect Wendy Jacobs, the complex of buildings was a fine example of ‘Ballarat’s renowned aspiration for civic amenity, and sharply contrasted with the early chaos of the nearby diggings and commercial activity on Main Street’. This article includes some extracts from the introduction which provides general information about the subject matter of the daily court dramas and examples of the quaint wording of the nature of the Causes as they were recorded in the registers. Carriers, Collectors of Marine Stores (bottles) and Pawnbrokers sought licences through the Court of Petty Sessions. Long lists of Hawkers and Peddlers with mostly foreign names made applications annually for foot licences or for horse and cart licenses. The Ballarat East Town Council brought cases to court to uphold laws regarding dog registrations and the weights and measures used in shops as well as for the enforcement of safety regulations in factories. In 1900 a woman was convicted for taking care of ‘an infant under 2 years for more than 3 days’ which indicated that childcare was regulated by the Council at that time. The List of Ratepaying Electors was regularly reviewed and names were expunged from the roll. for a variety of reasons including ‘not naturalized‘, left the district’ and a very blunt ‘dead’. Ratepayers appealed their rate assessments through the court and in January 1897 many voiced their objections by refusing to pay the charge to remove nightsoil from their tenements. Until 1896 people were charged if they neglected ‘to bury freshly deposited nightsoil under at least 6 ins of earth’. The introduction of a paid pan service met with resistance and for a time the charges were withdrawn the but in December 1897 there were 132 Defendants who had refused to pay for the weekly sanitary service. The year-long episode in the court heralded the doom of cesspits in the backyard. Another public health concern was to control the spread of smallpox disease. Under the Health Act of 1890 charges were brought against a large number of parents for ‘neglecting to cause a child to be vaccinated within six months of birth’. For genealogists the entries are interesting because the charge included the child’s name and often the date of birth in Victoria. Thousands of names of children and their parents can also be found in relation to the payment of child support, school truancy and admissions to institutions by officers acting for the ‘Department of Neglected Children’. In the case of illegitimate children paternity had to be established to the satisfaction of court. Family historians looking for paternity clues should also search the registers in the months before the birth of the child in question because the indexing team found claims for confinement costs brought by the mother against ‘the Defendant who is the father of the child she is about to bear’. Of particular interest in the court register for 1912 were five pages with 35 names of men charged with a breach of Part XII of the Defence Act 1903-1911 for failing to render personal service without lawful excuse. Periodically there were other lists of Defendants who had failed to render army service to varying degrees. A typical decision was to be ‘ordered into the custody of a Sergeant at Orderly Rooms Ballarat East to undergo the period of drill of 28 hours not rendered’. As a result of the high casualty rate of Australian troops in 1915, Universal Military Training for young cadets was suspended and compulsory military training ended on the 31st of March 1921, just two months before the amalgamation of Ballarat East and West Councils and seven months before the Ballarat East Court of Petty Sessions closed its doors forever. Over the years the most commonplace court business was the recovery of small debts, petty theft, traffic offences involving horses, drays and bicycles, and the inevitably recurring ‘drunk and disorderly’. Abusive, insulting or obscene language in a public place could result in a fine while convictions for assault attracted a harsher penalty. A ragbag of street offences included throwing stones to the danger of persons, rolling a cask on a footpath and playing a game of quoits to the annoyance of persons. The great variety of unlawful acts included misdemeanours related to mining and liquor licensing, employing workers at below average wages, the occupation of Crown Lands, cutting firewood without a permit, ‘maliciously destroying part of a tree’ growing in a school reserve, discharging firearms, ‘being found in a common gaming house’ and even bigamy. Charges of ‘being found in a house frequented by persons with no lawful visible means of support’ were associated with prostitution and usually attracted a term of imprisonment. Cases of ‘carnal knowledge’, some of underage victims, were dealt with in this court. One long accusation was that the Defendant ‘did most violently and maliciously threaten and declare that he would rip up the Complainant with a knife, that he would burn the house down, and threatened the Complainant with a large pair of scissors and will do him grievous bodily harm. The Complainant prays that the Defendant will be bound over to keep the peace’. The clerk seemed to have had difficulty in recording all this detail grammatically but he did manage to convey a vivid impression of the incident. Collectively, the entries in Part 2 of the Ballarat East Court of Petty Sessions registers are a narrative of the life and times of the citizens of the town for a period of three decades. The establishment of Petty Sessions Courts all over the country marked the earliest attempts to bring law and order to settlements which experienced an influx of population. This was associated with the beginnings of local government which was provided with a source of revenue from the court for licence applications and fines. The lists of names in Petty Sessions Court registers are not likely to belong to the rich and famous. They invariably belong to ordinary people caught up in relatively minor court business on a certain date in a particular place. Compiling an index of names found in the registers is time consuming but this is the best way to unlock a wonderful source of information for genealogists. Fortunately we can now share this resource for the entire 64 years of the operation of the Ballarat East Petty Sessions by means of Surname Indexes to Part 1 (1858-1889) and now Part 2 (1890-1921). Jennifer Burrell MICROFICHE Ballarat & District Genealogical Society Inc |