The Police Gazette was first issued on July 22, 1864. This publication represented the best way to communicate important information to police officers around the state. The Gazette was initially issued on a monthly basis, in 1881 it was printed fortnightly and in 1887 it came out weekly.
The first issues of the Gazette, listed Warrants Issued; Rewards Offered; Police Appointments; Reports of Deserters and Extracts from the New South Wales Gazette. The list of what might appear in the Gazette grew as the years passed – Deaths as Reported was added in 1869 and continued to be printed in the Gazette until 1889.
The first index to the publication did not appear until 1898 and was a straight alphabetical list by surname; in 1900 the index was segmented by topic such as Apprehensions; Complainants; Deserters from H.M Service; Prisoners Discharged; Prisoners Tried and Released and Warrants Issued. In July 1924 the index returned to an alphabetical listing. Police officers were not included in the Gazette index until 1917.
The lack of proper indexing made the Gazette an imperfect tool to identify wanted criminals or missing persons. Through the 1890s senior Queensland police began inquiring into ways of improve the method of identification of criminals. From 1893 Acting Sergeant John Thompson (the first Police Photographer) was paid £10 extra to attend to photographic work. In 1897 he was instructed in the half-tone process of reproduction and subsequently Inspector Urquhart introduced a confidential illustrated supplement to the Police Gazette with photographs of criminals and persons wanted. The first Photo Supplement appeared in the September 11, 1897 edition. Later editions included separate sections for Discharged Prisoners (1909-1929).
The Police Gazette was a very useful tool for police officers and contains a wealth of information about Queenslanders from all walks of life. The Police Gazette changed in 1976 to a publication which listed only the movements of police officers by rank change and station transfer. Separate publications covered the criminal information: Photo Supplements & Weekly Wanted lists were published until 1983.
Queensland Police Gazettes are very useful historical research tools for family history. The years 1864 to 1845 have been scanned to searchable PDF. You can buy compilation CDs from www.gouldgenealogy.com.au; or you can find the CDs at the State Library of Queensland. Every other Australian Police jurisdiction has its own version of the Police Gazette.
This information has been supplied by the Queensland Police Museum from the best resources available at the time of writing.
The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane.
Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“FROM THE VAULT: The Queensland Police Gazette” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode