Tasmanian court records

Introduction

Court records can be a valuable source of information for family historians. Early trial records can be scant but newspaper accounts often compensate. The following should prove useful for criminal and civil prosecutions.

What is online?

Lower Court records

The majority of lower court petty session records have been digitised up to 1900. Do an agency search for your district (e.g. Bothwell Lower Court) and then look for ‘petty sessions’ in the list of records. To find lower court districts, you can start by putting just “lower court” in the agency title field.

Supreme Court records

• 1874-1928 Documents in cases of bankruptcy (SC84)

Crown Law Criminal Cases

• 1853-1958 Registers of criminal cases prosecuted by the Crown (AB693). Each register contains an index. These are useful for the period after 1916 when the Crown Law case files (SGD13) change to a file number arrangement.