Police Station watchhouse charge books and Court of Petty Sessions police charge bench books often provide clues to sources for further research (Court, prison and mental asylum records, criminal depositions, murder files, Police Gazettes and other police records, etc.) Although the registers vary in format, most give date, town, prisoner's name, aliases, age, occupation, religion, state or country of origin, education level, offence, and how disposed of (fine or term of imprisonment, or whether sent to a reformatory, asylum etc. or discharged, cautioned, or committed for trial at which court and when). Some show previous convictions and prisoner's signature and property, and on rare occasions a physical description. Some victims of crime are named. There are occasional references to illegitimate children (I have seen one listing names, addresses and occupations of the child's mother, maternal grandparents and putative father).

Offences include theft, drunk and disorderly, breaking and entering, child (or wife) desertion, having no visible lawful means of support, attempted suicide, being of unsound mind, inciting to riot, beating a horse, assault, murder, supplying opium to an Aboriginal, being a neglected child, and many others. Children appear in the records as both offenders and victims.

The time period covered by surviving registers varies from district to district. I hope to index pre-1900 watchhouse charge books and police charge bench books for some of the towns listed below. Twentieth century records also exist for some of these places plus other areas. If you know approximately when and where an offence occurred, searches are feasible even without an index. If you don't know the year and place, try using registers of criminal depositions (which are indexed, at least by first letter of surname), and Police Gazettes and prison records (some of which are indexed). For more details see the latest edition of the book Tips for Qld Research.

• Aramac
• Birdsville
• Charleville, 1889-1893 (+ 1901-1904)    (published, and names on-line)
• Charters Towers, 1895-1896 and 1899    (published, and names on-line)
• Cloncurry, 1874-1876 and 1887-1891    (published, and names on-line)
• Coolgarra
• Crows Nest
• Croydon (index in progress)
• Dalby
• Gympie  1884-1886 names on-line (+ advice re 1890-1931 index)
• Halifax
• Irvinebank
• Isisford
• Kamerunga
• Kilkivan
• Kuranda
• Leyburn
• Marburg
• Mareeba
• Mount Morgan
• Nebo
• Oakey
• Ravenswood (index in progress)
• Springsure
• Taroom
• Townsville

Some 1901-1904 records for Adavale, Augathella, Charleville, Cunnamulla, Eromanga, Eulo, Hungerford, Morven, Nocundra, Wooroorooka, Wyandra, Thargomindah and Upper Warrego are in a consolidated index for South-West Qld (which includes pre-1900 records for Charleville). It is published, and there is a list of names on-line.

My index only includes policemen if they were victims, which they often were. To research police officers, use police staff files at Qld State Archives.

Queensland sources list many people who had a criminal record in another State. For Victoria, the Gibson Index lists 55,000 names (offenders and victims) from 140 watchhouse charge books for the 1850s to 1899. See also Helen Harris's index to criminals (opens a new window).