Lot 3123

Description

Queensland Police, (Marven Station), Circular Memorandum and District Order Book, No 1, 2 April 1879 to 4 October 1897 (330mm x 210mm), noted District Orders relating to badges; uniforms; 1894 list of all clubs authorised to use totalisators at horse meetings; Sunday trading; licensing re Theatres, Music Halls and Travelling Dramatic Companies and no Victuallers licence permitted to married women; prisoner escort by horse not coach; treatment of lunatics; no railway passes to destitute persons; burial of paupers, seditious publications by Active Service Brigade; analytical and microscopical examination of blood, semen and hair; rules of lawfully taking life of escaping felon; request for donations of items for Police Museum opened in Brisbane; instruction for patrols of all shearing sheds by a constable and a tracker; accounting for aborigines and their gender in each district; and a significantly very important directive regarding the arrest of all half caste aboriginal children (see below). The book is well used with stained cover, missing spine and loose pages but all information, mostly hand-written in ink, is legible and neat, good condition and unique.

A very important entry in the book regarding Aboriginal children that pre-dates the 'Stolen Generation'. It refers to a Directive from Colonial Secretary's Office, Brisbane, 1881 to Branches of the Magistrates, members of the Police Force and others. In part this long entry states, 'amongst the Aboriginals in various parts of the Colony, a number of half caste children for whose education and moral training it is deemed advisable that ..... to procure the arrest of all such children ..... for detention in the Reformatory Schools at .....