Criminal Characters

What are the records being transcribed?

These are prison records. The record-keeping formats for most states remained fairly consistent from the mid nineteenth through to the mid twentieth century.

Where do these records come from?

The original copies of these records are held by the State Archives of the respective states in Australia. The images for transcription have kindly been supplied by the Public Records Office Victoria and State Records New South Wales.

What will be done with the information being transcribed?

The information being transcribed will have two purposes. Firstly, the collected data will be made publicly available by depositing it back with the State Archives who supplied the images. This means that family and local historians will be able to use it to find out more information about their ancestors or communities, and more generally that the public will have a unique resource for learning about Australian social and criminal justice history. Secondly, I will be analysing and publishing findings from the data, both on the project's main website and in other publications that I will try to make available through open-access wherever possible.

Help! How can I read this handwriting?

Old handwriting becomes easier to read with time. Zooming in using the + button on the side of the image can also help. Ultimately, if you cannot decode what the writing is with certainty you should enter your best guess and mark with the 'Unclear' button. Fortunately, the system is designed so that multiple people will view and transcribe the same record. This will result in a final transcription based on the most general consensus as to what the writing indicates. All records will also undergo a data cleaning process and auditing by myself or a research assistant.

There are a few tricks that can be useful in decoding historical handwriting. Some letters can look alike in historical handwriting: a capital ‘F’ may sometime resemble a ‘T’ or a ‘P’; an ‘L’ may look like an ‘S’; and ‘ss’ in cursive often looks more like ‘fs’. A good trick to identifying individual letters is comparing them to other instances from the same record that you are able to make out more easily. Reading out loud to sound things out can also help you make sense of words, especially if they have been misspelt based on a phonetical interpretation of what a word sounds like.

If you are really keen, there are also a few online tools to help you improve your palaeography skills. A brief rundown of some of the common tips and tricks for deciphering old handwriting can be found in the following article on “Old Handwriting in Genealogy Research” by Sabina J Murray. The National Archives in the United Kingdom has a wonderful practical online tutorial on translating English documents written between 1500-1800. Then when you’ve finished you can test your new found expertise in the ducking stool game. If you are interested in pursuing things a bit further and practising your transcription skills on some well known verses and correspondence the Cambridge English Renaissance Electronic Service (CERES) presents a more in depth online course on English Handwriting 1500-1700.

This record contains different or additional information to that specified by your questions. What do I do?

Although most of the data in the records follows a fairly set formula, sometimes information will be put in a field to which it does not belong, or officials will have noted additional information pertinent to the prisoners. Do your best to write the information into the most relevant field provided.

Data is missing from this record. What should I do?

It's so frustrating when information is missing, right? Lazy officials! When information has not been entered for particular fields, just write 'missing' for the relevant entry. As the research progresses it may be possible to locate some of the missing information from other sources, but for now the aim is just to build a record of what is actually contained in the prison records themselves.

Should I spell out abbreviations used in the records where I know what they mean?

The Field Guide and Help buttons provide some information on what common abbreviations mean to help people understand the records they are working with. However, having transcribers enter abbreviations or notations just as they are written will help avoid errors of interpretation and maintain the information as originally entered.

How can I represent the £ sign where reference is made to historical payments or fine amounts?

In cases of minor offences, sometimes the court gave defendants the option of paying a fine or going to prison, e.g. the sentence for public drunkenness might be ‘3 months imprisonment or a £2 fine’. If your keyboard does not have a £ button, there are global keyboard shortcuts for creating a £ symbol. The keyboard shortcut for you will depend on the type of computer/OS you are using. For PC users, the shortcut is pressing the buttons ‘Alt’ and ‘L’ simultaneously. For Mac users, it is pressing the buttons ‘Option’ and ‘3’ simultaneously.

I'm having trouble making out the offence for which the prisoner was convicted. Is there a list of offences I can consult?

There were hundreds of different offences that people could be convicted of, and variations in how these offences were described or written up. Here is a list of some common offences:
List of offences commonly appearing in prison records

There is a notation in the record that a conviction listed was quashed following legal appeal. How should I record this?

In cases of quashed convictions, this should not be counted in the total conviction tally. However, the details of the conviction should still be noted in the conviction history section, along with a notation that the conviction was quashed on appeal.

There is a notation on this page that the record has been "cancelled". What do I do?

Cancelled records typically occur where the prison officials have started a record for an individual, only to realise they are already in the prison register under a different name or prison number (often the cancelled record will note the number of this other record, e.g. see no. 55778). In these instances, it is fine to simply write that the record was cancelled and add any notations about seeing an alternative prisoner number of volume/page number into