The Police Gazette of Western Australia

WA Police Gazettes The Police Gazette of Western Australia (1876 onwards) is a valuable resource for researching police and criminals in Western Australia. Information can be found under various headings: apprehensions (name of person arrested, arresting constable, charge and sentence); police appointments, dismissals, discharges, promotions, resignations and transfers; tickets of leave, certificates of freedom, and conditional pardons issued to convicts; physical descriptions of prisoners (name, condition, build, age, height, hair and eye colour, visage, complexion, trade, nationality and distinguishing marks); deserters from military service; escaped prisoners; expirees leaving the colony; inquests (where held, date, before whom, name and date of death of person, verdict); licences (publican, gallon, eating, boarding and lodging houses, railway refreshment rooms, wine and beer, colonial wine, spirit merchants, club, wayside house, packet and billiard table - name of licensee, name of hotel etc and town or district given); missing friends; prisoners discharged; people tried at Quarter Sessions (name, offence, district, verdict, how disposed of); special inquiries; stealing in dwellings; and warrants issued.

With thanks to the Friends of Battye Library and the Sholl Bequest, the Police Gazettes 1876-1900 have been digitised and are fully text searchable.

Indexes

Indexes were compiled for each year of the gazette under the headings noted above. Please note the indexes for 1896, 1897 and 1898 are not available. Usually under each heading you will find the name of a person with the page number of the gazette for the year where you will find the entry.

Search Indexes Only

Search for

Search Strategies

The search engine as it currently stands, is a first iteration and the State Library will continue to refine its programming for search facilities.

The search engine allows you to undertake the following searches:

SURNAME
PLACE
CONVICT NUMBER

Undertaking any of these searches will provide you with a results page that shows those sections of the Police Gazettes where a match has been found. When the results page appears, click on those required to access the PDF, and do a PDF search to highlight your results.Searching for a full name eg John Smith, will produce many results as the search engine is currently providing results on John and Smith. State Library staff are working to resolve this. To carry out a search for a full name it is best to do a PDF search of each yearly index using the form Smith John (as the name appears in the index). This will provide you with the page numbers in the gazettes and you can then go to the relevant.