VPRS 12406 Attendance Book

Full description

This series is an attendance book, created to provide a monthly record of the daily hours worked by employees of a branch of the Department of Railways, as evidence of their attendance and in order to calculate workers entitlements. The daily hours worked by railway employees each month are recorded.

It is unknown which branch of the railways created this record. (Railway employees were not included in the Blue Books. The first list of employees of the Railways were not published until 1884. Due to the date range of this series, the exact provenance of cannot be ascertained by cross-checking names against such a list.)

Each month has entries for approximately 210 workers, which would suggest that this series was used by one branch, rather than across the whole agency. The occupations recorded are generally a variety of trades, labourers and firemen, drivers etc.

There are double page entries in this volume. At the top of the page the month is recorded. Columns are printed with the following headings: Time Book Folio/Date (year)/Name/Occupation.

Then the numbers 1-31 are printed (for each day of the relevant month), under which the number of hours worked each day by each employee is recorded.

The total time worked that month is calculated and the employees rate of pay recorded.

The last two columns have fields for amounts to be entered (which appear to be the employees total monthly wages), divided into Repairs and Construction.

It is possible that this record was created by the Ways and Works Branch.