Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

The winners of the Victorian Community History Awards 2009 were announced recently. The Overall Winner for 2009 was The Chinawoman by Ken Oldis . This is history in the form of a murder thriller set in Melbourne: In December 1856, prostitute Sophie Lewis, known as the Chinawoman was killed, the investigation into her murder was led by Charles Hope Nicolson, who was later prominent in the Kelly hunt and Fook Shin, the Chinese detective, was among those ordered to pursue Chinese suspects. The author, Ken Oldis is a Melbourne lawyer practising in the criminal jurisdiction. This book can be requested through the Moonee Valley Library Service . For more information about other finalists visit Victorian Community History Awards 2009

' Criminal Ancestors: a guide to historical criminal records in England and Wales' by David T. Hawkings is a revised and updated study that includes material held by all County and Borough Record Offices, The National Archives, police archives and other repositories. A genealogist who discovers a criminal in the family tree will find this book an invaluable guide. Convicts online - The State Library of Queensland released its British Convict Transportation Database covering the years 1787 to 1867. This details about 123,000 of the 160,000 convicts who were transported to the different Australian colonies in this period. The Tasmanian Convict database is also worth checking out. This is a comprehensive list of all convicts transported to Tasmania from 1804, and includes those who committed crimes within the colony and who were convicted locally up to 1893. The State Records of NSW continues to add to its excellent series of online indexes, although it doesn't provide di...

The State Library of Victoria has launched the historic government gazettes which provides access to over 160 years of official information published in Victoria. Dating from the earliest days of the colon. The Gazette documents the official notifications of government decisions and legal actions to other governments, government agencies and the general public. The notice of the death of The Honourable Samuel Merrifield was published in the Victorian Government Gazette in 1982.