VPRS 1875 Court of Petty Sessions/Magistrates' Court Register

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The Jurisdiction of Courts of Petty Sessions and Magistrates' Courts

Courts of Petty Sessions, or Magistrates' Courts as were called from 1971, dealt with a very large range of "minor" court matters. Apart from a large number of tribunals, they provided the lowest level of redress in civil and criminal matters, with the County Court, the Supreme Court and various Commonwealth courts hearing and determining more serious criminal cases and larger civil disputes.

The jurisdiction of Courts of Petty Sessions / Magistrates' Courts changed, and on the whole increased over time, but usually included the following types of cases:

The criminal jurisdiction including all offences under Summary Offences legislation including traffic offences, minor assault and drug offences, obscene language, trespass. A number of more serious offences known as indictable offences could be tried in either the Petty Sessions/Magistrates' Court or a higher court. These included theft up to a certain value, burglary, indecent assault, offences against prostitution regulation legislation, criminal damage to property, occupational health and safety offences. Committal proceedings were also conducted in Courts of Petty Sessions/Magistrates' Courts in order to determine whether a case involving a more serious offence should proceed to a higher court.

The civil jurisdiction included claims for debts arising out of contractual disputes, claims for losses arising out of a breach of duty such as negligence, claims for damages arising out of motor vehicle accidents or assaults and claims for taxes due.

The licensing jurisdiction diminished in the twentieth century. At different times it included the issue of licences for gold buyers, auctioneers, carriers, pawnbrokers, estate agents, commercial agents and sub agents, inquiry agents, hawkers and pedlars. By 1991 the only licences still issued by Magistrates' Courts were for commercial agents and sub-agents and hawkers and pedlars.

The family law jurisdiction included matters relating to child support assessment, maintenance, custody, guardianship, access, change of name, marriage of under age persons, property interests of de facto partners and, from 1987, family violence intervention orders. From 1928 until 1958 Courts of Petty Sessions were also responsible for granting adoptions.

Court Registers

Successive Justices' Acts and, later, Magistrates' Court Acts required the clerk or registrar of the court to make and keep a register of all convictions, orders and other proceedings of the court. This register wss the authoritative record of the court.

Until about 1888 this record was usually called a Cause List Book and had a slightly different format, since then the term Register has been used.

Initially most clerks maintained a single sequence of registers for all or most of the court's business. However in the twentieth century some courts maintained several sequences of registers according to different types of matters dealt with by the court. Typically criminal matters were been registered separately from civil matters, matters relating to traffic offences, licensing applications and various types of civil cases were all been registered separately. Some courts dealing with a large number of criminal cases maintained separate registers for matters brought to court by summons and by arrest, and some used separate volumes for each courtroom.

In addition, from about 1915 courts maintained a separate register for matters under Commonwealth legislation, and when the Children's Court was established in 1906, matters relating to children ceased to be recorded in the main sequences of registers and were entered in Children's Court Registers.

Where courts have subdivided the registration of cases into several sequences, each has been allocated a different Victorian Public Record Series number and the specific type of register has been included in the series title. The inventory of series for this court lists other types of registers used.

Content

Registers were generally in a common format, giving details of the case number, the name of the prosecutor or informant (in a criminal matter), complainant (in a civil matter) or applicant (in a licensing matter), the name of the accused or defendant, how the case came to the court (arrest, warrant, summons etc) the fees or court costs accrued, a description of the charge, cause or proceeding, the decision or order and any remarks. The column for remarks was often used to record the payment of fines and fees.