An indispensable duty of Government: civil registration in nineteenth-century Tasmania

Abstract

In 1838, Governor John Franklin introduced civil registration in Tasmania to replace the defective ecclesiastical registration system. Tasmania thus became the first British colony to introduce civil registration, just two years after the British Act. Kippen examines the working of the 1838 system, focusing on such issues as compliance, the statistical value of the 1838 Act, the merger with the Colonial Secretary's Office, and Governor Denison's threat to abolish the system in 1848. She briefly describes the merger with the Supreme Court in 1857 and the transfer to the Government Statistician, R.M. Johnston, in 1882. In 1895 a new Registration Act consolidated existing statutes and introduced amendments to improve the administration of civil registration. Show more