AGY-3410 | Office of the Registrar General [I]

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The Office of the Registrar General was established on 1 January 1844 by the Deeds Registration Act of 1843 (7 Vic. Act No. 16).(1) The Act provided for the appointment of a Registrar General to replace the Registrar of the Supreme Court as the officer responsible for the registration of wills, deeds, conveyances, other assurances affecting real property, Acts of the Colonial Legislature, charters of incorporation, memorials of public companies, deeds of co-partnership, and of certain marriages, births, baptisms and burials.(2)

The first Registrar General was William Carter and his office consisted of two clerks and a messenger. The staff moved into offices in Macquarie Street which had belonged to the Surveyor-General and the close proximity to the Supreme Court eased the transfer of records from the registry there.(3)

The Registrar General was constantly justifying the existence of the Office because of constitutional brinkmanship practised by the Legislative Council and the Governor.(4) By 1849, the Council’s most acerbic orator, Robert Lowe, argued "that the Registrar General had the ‘most grossly over-extended department of any’".(5) In August 1849, Carter’s estimates for 1850 were rejected by the Legislative Council and despite his protests to the Colonial Secretary and the press, the Council did not provide funding beyond 1849.

On 31 December 1849, the office of the Registrar was abolished and its functions transferred to the Prothonotary of the Supreme Court from 1 January 1850.(6) In 1855, an Act for registering Births, Deaths and Marriages (19 Vic. No.34) revived the office of Registrar General.


ENDNOTES
1. Deeds Registration Act 1843, s.1.
2. ibid., s.1 and s.3.
3. Crundwell, Robert, Hilary Golder & Robert Wood, From Parchments to Passwords: A History of the Land Titles Office of New South Wales, Hale & Iremonger, 1995, p.18.
4. loc. cit.
5. ibid., p.20.
6. An Act to abolish the office of the Registrar-General and to make further provision for the Registration of Deeds, and other Instruments (Act 13 Vic. No. 45) s. 1,2.