VPRS 18871 Name Index Books

Full description

This series consists of a Name Index which provides access to VPRS 18872 Land Index to Memorial Books. This is the first step to accessing the Registrar General’s Office (RGO) Memorial Books VPRS 18873, which recorded evidence of land sales under the pre-Torrens General Law system.

The Name Index relates to all parties that have transacted land under the General Law system. The Books are in two sequences - 1838 to January 1859 and February 1859 to 1998 - and are arranged by surname with a section at the end of these books for companies. It is generally in strict alphabetical order, but some entries can be out of sequence. This series is the first step to accessing VPRS 18873 Memorial Books. Researchers need to use the Name Index to identify the appropriate page in VPRS 18872 Land Index, which then gives reference to a book and page number for the VPRS 18873 Memorial Books.

Each entry contains the same basic information: Book/Folio (page), surname, given names.

The Name Index is only a vendors index and does not give any indication of when a property was purchased by a particular person. This Index can also be used to identify a particular person, although for example all John Smiths that have ever transacted in the state of Victoria under this system are all on the one Land Index.

The first land tenure system to be introduced into Victoria in March 1838 was called the 'General Law' or 'Old Law System', or more commonly called today, NUA (Not Under Act). Land under the Torrens system (Real Property Act 1862) was therefore 'under Act'. This system was directly based on the principles of the English Common Law.

Under the General Law system, land ownership was based on a set of deeds, being the original deed held by the owner and a Memorial which was generally registered at the RGO. These documents helped prove ownership back to the original Crown Grant, although there was no compulsion under this system to register the Memorial with the RGO.

Title was proven by producing the collection of deeds, which was commonly called the ‘Chain of Title’ held by successive owners, as well as a search of the Memorials lodged at the RGO. A Memorial is a copy of the original deed. Every time land changed hands, the chain of deeds needed to be produced and a new deed/Memorial needed to be drawn up by lawyers. It was a cumbersome and expensive system, in which the risk of deeds being lost or destroyed was high. Land ownership in the General Law system was and is still not guaranteed by the Victorian government.

Although the expectation was that all land would be brought under the operation of the Transfer of Land Act fairly quickly, this did not prove to be the case. In the mid-1980s, after 120 years of operation of the Torrens system, large areas of land remained under the General Law system.

The registration of Memorials continued until the 31 December 1998 when the register was closed. This was an effort to help speed up the Conversion process, as all new land transactions would have to be conducted under the Transfer of Land Act following an application to convert the deed into a certificate of title.