Subject Index
How to use the Subject Index
By using the Subject Index, you can discover your own stories about Melbourne in 1925.
Each letter that arrived in the Town Clerk's office was stamped with a consecutive number. The number and a brief summary of the letter were recorded in two locations:
- in a Register Book, organised by the name of the sender, which linked any previous correspondence numbers;
- in the Subject Index, organised alphabetically by subject.
The letter was then physically attached to any previous correspondence on the same subject – a practice known as "top numbering".
So, to use our interactive version of the Subject Index to find correspondence on a topic you're interested in:
- Use the search function to find where topics of interest have been mentioned (try "complaint" or "permit"), or flip through the pages to an alphabetical heading.
- Next to each subject, you'll see a row of numbers. The letters are most likely to have been filed under the latest number.
- Head to the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) catalogue to search for the letter. If there's no two-digit year, you'll need to add it at the start, and use a four-digit sequence number. So, to find file number 901 from 1925, search for 25/0901.
Often, numbers in the Subject Index cannot be found. Out of about 6000 letters received in 1925, PROV only holds around 300 correspondence files. There two main reasons you may not be able to immediately find a letter:
- The letter may have been "top-numbered" into a different subject heading.
- The letter may have been sent to another Council office, or discarded.
To trace a letter, you will need to refer to the Register Book for 1925. Start with the page index to find your letter number, then turn to the page where the details of the letter are recorded. If there is another number under "Other Papers: Subsequent", it means the letter was later filed under a new top number.
Repeat this process until there is no subsequent letter to be found, then try searching for the file again. This can be laborious! If it still cannot be found, it is – unfortunately – most likely that the file has been discarded. In this case, there will often be a red mark in the "Referred" column as confirmation. You will have to try another file!
For a more detailed guide to using the Town Clerk's files, visit the PROV series description.
Explore the Subject Index
Acknowledgements
- Annotations and interactive index: Mitchell Harrop
- Transcriptions: Barbara Minchinton, Patrick Gigacz, Andrew J. May, Roland Wettenhall, Sue Silberberg
Special thanks to Daniel Wilksch of Public Record Office Victoria for assisting with digitisation.