It’s been too long since I did a “Discovering Links” post. These posts consist of a collection of links that I have discovered, or found useful, and want to share with others. But rather than simply giving you a whole batch of random links each time, I am grouping them by Australian state, country or topic. You can see my previous Discovering Links posts here.

For this one I’ve decided to share my English links, afterall it’s been aaaaaages since I did one that covered England. You can find my earlier post with 25 links here. These aren’t intended to be an exhaustive collection of links (not by a long shot), but they are simply ones that many will find useful, and it may include some that you may not have known about.

And while many people think that genealogy costs a lot of money, let me tell you that all of the links below are free. Personally I find that it’s often a matter of knowing where to look beyond the big-name websites, and hopefully this will help with that.

=== ENGLAND GENERAL ===

UK WILL TRANSCRIPTIONS
At present this site contains over 7100 transcripts, but anyone who has transcribed a pre-1900 UK will is invited to contribute to this site which is searchable by Testator, Executor or Administrator, or Witness. It is hoped that ultimately there will be a large number of transcripts which may assist family historians in their research and also those who are interested in local history and the families who lived in a particular locality.

THE WORKHOUSE
Created by Peter Higginbotham, an expert in the field of UK Workhouses, he says ‘this site is dedicated to the workhouse – its buildings, inmates, staff and administrators, even its poets’. There are sections on poor laws, workhouse locations, workhouse life, the rules, the inspections, records, Workhouse museums, educationm emigration and a whole heap more.

WORKHOUSE NETWORK
Since we’re on the topic of workhouses, the Workhouse Network is another site dedicated to the topic of workhouses in the UK. This site brings together museums, heritage organisations, archives and universities interested in welfare history.

HISTORIC ENGLAND
The Historic England website is a place that details ‘the most importnat historic places in England’. It includes building, battlefields, monuments, parks, gardens, shipwrecks, and more. They hold major collections of national importance, covering archaeology, architecture, social and local history. Their collections include photographs, drawings, plans and documents. And to make the collection accesible, they have over one million images searchable on their website.

HOSPITAL RECORDS DATABASE
This database provides information on the existence and location of the records of UK hospitals. There are details of over 2800 hospital listed, these have been compiled by the Wellcome Library, and can be found by searching the database. The data includes: the administrative details of the hospitals, and their status or type; the location and covering dates of administrative and clinical records; the existence of lists, catalogues or other finding aids.

CREW LISTS OF THE BRITISH SOUTHERN WHALE FISHERY (BSWF)
The British Southern Whale Fishery voyage database includes information about all known British southern whaling voyages from 1775 to 1859. The Crew database contains nearly 14,000 entries for men who served in the British Southern Whale Fishery between 1775 and 1859.

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND
The Railway Work, Life and Death project is committed to revealing the working lives and accidents of British & Irish railway staff, from the 1880s through to 1939. What was it like to work on Britain and Ireland’s railways from the 1880s to 1939? How were tens of thousands of employees injured or killed? Who were these people? The ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project has been delving into these questions, creating an important new resource for anyone researching railway history, family history, labour history
and many other topics.

OUR CRIMINAL ANCESTORS
Oriminal Ancestors is a project led by the University of Hull in collaboration with Leeds Beckett University, that encourages people to collaborate with details of the criminal past of their own families, communities, towns and region. Please join in with your stories between roughly 1700 and 1939, and tell the criminal history from your family or area of research. They’re interested in both the big and small stories.

BLACK SHEEP SEARCH
This website is dedicated to the history of the 1830 Swing Riots, Convict Prison Hulks, Juvenile Convicts and the Bermuda Convict Establishment. Created by Jill CHambers, she has been researching this tpic for over 40 years, and while she does sell publiations, there’s plenty of useful information on her website for free.

HISTORICAL DIRECTORIES OF ENGLAND AND WALES
The collection contains 689 trade and local directories from England and Wales from the 1760s to the 19a0s, with at least one directory for every English and Welsh county for the 1850s, 1890s and 1910s. Searchable by name, place and occupation this is an essential tool for local, urban and family history. You can find Kelly’s and Pigot’s directories here, as well as those by regional publishers.

DIGITAL PANOPTICON: LONDON CONVICTS IN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALIA 1780-1925
This website allows you to search millions of convict records from both Britain and Australia, from around fifty datasets, relating to the lives of 90,000 convicts from the Old Bailey. Use this site to search individual convict life archives, explore and visualise data, and learn more about crime and criminal justice in the past. A MUST for anyone with convict interests, particularly those who were at the Old Bailey.

PHOTOGRAPHERS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 1840 to 1940
Was your ancestor a photographer? If so, find out more. Want to date your old family photographs? Try the DIY unique Photo Dating Wizard. Get information from the world’s largest collection of British and Irish carte de visite photographs and related data.

CREW LIST INDEX PROJECT (CLIP)
CLIP is a volunteer project, sall about the records of British merchant seafarers of the late 19th and early 20th century. The site provides information about the records of British seafarers and ships, and access to the CLIP maritime database. The original CLIP database reached over 260,000 entries from crew lists. The data was transcribed from records held at local Record Offices and covers only a small percentage of their holdings, but it’s the largest database of records from local record offices. This information is now of Findmypast, but there is still plenty of useful information on the CLIP website itself, which is still free.

FINDMYPAST
Findmypast if one of the big names in the genie field, and currently they have over 14 billion records online, and yes, it is a pay site. But did you know that over 800 million of them are FREE to look at? Yes, they are. You will need to create an account (name and email) to access them, but you don’t need a paid subscription at all. Highlights of their free records include:

• 1881 England, Wales & Scotland Census (transcripts are free)
• British Newspaper (over 2 million pages are free to view)
• All Irish censuses 1821-1911
• Irish Roman Catholic Parish Registers
• Britain, Campaign, Gallantry & Long Service Medals & Awards (transcripts are free)
• All BillionGraves cemetery records
• All Canadian censuses 1851-1911
• Many other smaller record sets are also free.

THE FRANCIS FRITH COLLECTION
Francis Frith (1822-1898) was an English photographer, and in 1859 he opened the firm of Francis Frith & Co. in Surrey, as the world’s first specialist photographic publisher. In 1860 he embarked upon a project to photograph every town and village in the UK, this resulted in his creating F. Frith & Co., a publishing company to print his photographs as postcards, and that became one of the largest photographic studios in the world. After the family old the business in 1971, it was relaunched in 1975 at The Francis Frith Collection. The site now holds over 330,000 high resolution digital images, from around 7000 cities, towns an villages of his postcard photos. You can search and browse all images for free, but they offer ability to purchase a copy of an image if you wish.

=== CHESHIRE ===

CHESHIRE IMAGE BANK
The Cheshire Image Bank is a collection of digital images created from original material: photographs, postcards, prints slides and negatives. These are held at the Cheshire Archives & Local Studies, the Chester History & Heritage and in Cheshire Libraries. There’s currently over 30,000 images which can be viewed online, but more are added regularly.

=== CORNWALL ===

CORNWALL’S WAR HISTORY
This site has been created by the Cornwall Family History Society as a “tribute to the brave people form Cornwall who served or said down their lives in borh World Wars and subsequent conflicts”. This site grew out of the Society’s Monumentual Inscriptions project, as during the photographing of headstones they noted many war casualties remembered on family graves, some without names. This led to the further research of their names and a subsequent need to record them. The Society felt that details of those who had served and died for their country and had a connection with Cornwall should be collated in one dedicated website and be accompanied by photographs of the individuals and the grave sites … hence Cornwall’s War History. They also have recorded those who lie in graves in Cornwall but who originated elsewhere. To date the site has details of over 6100 individuals.

=== DEVON ===

DEVON REMEMBERS: HONOURING THE 1914 GENERATION
The Devon Remembers website is a permanent digital memorial to those people from the Clinton Devon Estates towns and villages, who served their country in the Great War of 1914-1918. It is also intended as a resource for local historians, schools and anyone researching this era and the impact of war on the communities of East Devon and North Devon. It is hoped that over time that details from other Devon regions will be added.

=== DURHAM ===

DURHAM RECORDS ONLINE
The Durham Records Online is a collaborative effort between a group of dedicated genealogists and historians.They currently have over 4 million records online, all of which are free to search and relate to County Durham and Northumberland (England). These include parish and census record. Note, there is small fee to view record transcriptions.

=== HERTFORDSHIRE ===

HERTFORDSHIRE NAME INDEX
This is a part of the Herfordshire County Council website, and it allows you to type in a name, and it searches through all their indexed records including: Apprentices, Crime & Punishment, Fatalities, Marriage & Marriage Licences, Miscellaneous Names, Newspapers & Periodicals, Newspaper Pictures, Nonconformist Registers, The Poor, Tithe & Inland Revenue, and Wills. Searching is free, and the results do give a reasonable amount of info, but if you want copies of the originals you will need to contact the County Council.

=== ISLE OF MAN ===

MANX NOTE BOOK
If you have an interest in the history of the people and area of the Isle of Man, here’s a site you’ll want to bookmark. It’s basically a collection of records that relate to the Isle of Man. As the creator of the site says “These web pages reflect my various interests, mainly archival, in things Manx.”

=== LANCASHIRE ===

RED ROSE COLLECTIONS
The Red Rose Collections gives you online access to and image archive with over 30,000 historic photographs digitised from the collections in Lancashire Libraries, as well as indexes to other resources, held at Lancashire Archives and libraries, such as old local newspapers, local books, Preston Guild Rolls and the Lancashire Police index.

=== LONDON ===

LONDON PICTURE ARCHIVE
The London Picture Archive contains over 250,000 photographs, prints and drawings as well as over 1000 maps from the collections at London Metropolitain Archives are available to view online. The images provide an extraordinary record of London and its people from the 15th century to the present day. The whole of Greater London is covered, as are the adjoining counties.

=== SOMERSET ===

BATH BURIAL INDEX
The Bath Burial Index contains over 240,000 entries from 86 burial grounds, with monuments dating from 1660 through to recent times.

=== STAFFORDSHIRE ===

STAFFORDSHIRE ASYLUMS 1818-1960
The Stafforshire Asylums site, is a collaboration between the Staffordshire Archives and Heritage and the Wellcome Trust who aim to shed light on the history of Staffordshire’s three County Asylums; Stafford (opened in 1818), Burntwood (1864) and Cheddleton (1899). The project will cover the period 1818-1960. Their site has sections listing doctors, patients and staff as well as more information on each of the asylums themselves.

Happy researching 😉

Here’s another post in my “Discovering Links” series. These consist of a collection of links that I have discovered, or found useful, and simply want to share with others. But rather than just giving you a whole batch of random links each time, I am grouping them by Australian state, country, county, or topic. You can see my previous Discovering Links posts here.

So Queensland is the topic for this one. It’s not intended to be an exhaustive collection of links, but simply ones that many will find useful, and it may include some that you may not have known about.

And while many people think that genealogy costs a lot of money, let me tell you that all of the links below are free. Personally I find that it’s often a matter of knowing where to look beyond the big-name websites, and hopefully this will help with that.

=== QUEENSLAND ===

Renamed Places in Queensland
While I’ve seen ‘renamed towns’ lists for other places, I’ve never seen one as extensive as this Queensland one. Going way beyond just listing towns and suburbs that have been renamed, this one even includes street, cemeteries and buildings. Grouped into: Shires & Local Government; Electorates; Towns, suburbs & localities; Post offices; Railway Stations; Schools; Streets; Churches; Cemeteries;
Buildings: Houses, Hotels, Theatres, Properties & Other Man-Made Things; Geographical Features: Mountains, Rivers etc.; Shire & Local and more!

Queensland Family Trees
This website contains names of over 42,000 individuals, and over 2000 photos and other media, which are linked to the relevant individuals that have a connection to Queensland. Easy to use it has a simple search box on the home page.

Queensland Residents Pre-1859
Griffith University is documenting the lives and experiences of “people, groups and organisations that have not been the subject of historical investigation” by collating information relating to the early colonial period. Use the simply A-Z list, or enter a surname, and you’ll find those that have all ready been documented. Alternatively you’re also welcome to submit your own ancestral biographies

Queensland Timeline pre-1600s to 1859
What happened when in Queensland? This comprehensive timeline will tell you.

Queensland War Memorials Register
War memorials remain as places for honouring the fallen and those who have served our nation. They remind us that in the despair of war, the ANZACs showed courage, ingenuity, good natured irreverent humour and a commitment to their mates. The Queensland War Memorial Register records the sites that are sacred to the memory of those that served. It is designed to provide information for historians and to assist present and future generations understand how the dedication and courage of Australia’s youth created a spirit and national identity for our country. At the time of writing this the site lists 1399 war memorials.

Brisbane Images 1850s to Present
The Brisbane City Archives holds an amazing digital collection of images, maps, plans and documents that document Brisbane’s History from the 1850s through to now. Find your house, find your street or see the tram routes of Brisbane in the 1940s. You can search and view these collections here. Simply enter your search term above or click on an image below to start exploring Brisbane – past and present.

Brisbane City Council Cemeteries
The Brisbane City Council manages 12 cemeteries and three crematoriums: Bald Hills Cemetery; Balmoral Cemetery; Brookfield Cemetery; Cedar Creek Cemetery; Hemmant Cemetery; Hemmant Crematorium; Lutwyche Cemetery; Moggil Cemetery; Mount Gravatt Cemetery; Mount Gravatt Crematorium; Nundah Cemetery; Pinnaroo Crematorium; Pinnaroo Lawn Cemetery; South Brisbane Cemetery; and Toowong Cemetery. Unfortunately, not all records are complete because the Brisbane Council only gained full control of Brisbane’s public cemeteries in July 1930. Before that time, a number of trusts established under Queensland law managed these cemeteries.

Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages
Search the Queensland historical births, deaths and marriages indexes for free. Covering births between 1829 and 1919, marriages between 1829 and 1944, and deaths between 1829 and 1989, to obtain a copy of the certificate there is a fee, and you can choose to have it as a digital image and emailed to you or a paper copy posted out to you.

Maryborough Public Records 1847-1989
This collecion of miscellaneous records for Maryborough, Queensland, includes burial registers, a hospital death register, list of residents, and a list of war memorials and honor rolls giving soldiers’ names. Original records are located in Maryborough City Hall, Queensland, Australia. The collection contains over 17,000 entries, on 1844 original images.

Convict Transportation Registers Database 1787-1867
The State Library of Queensland have compiled a listing on over 123,000 convicts that arrived on the following ships: Asia, Surrey, Mangles, Norfolk, Elizabeth, Layton, Lord Lyndoch, Marquis of Huntley, Guildford, Prince Regent, Georgiana, Blenheim, Adelaide, Strathfieldsaye, St Vincent, Argyle, Circassian, and Stately.

Queensland Cemetery Inscriptions 1802-1990
An index of over 1.1 million entries which combines several indexes, cemetery transcriptions, burial and other records from cemeteries in mostly in Queensland. Although there a few entries that relate to New South Wales, Norfolk Island, Tasmania, and Western Australia.

Queensland Soldier WWI Portaits
The State Library of Queensland has digitised almost 30,000 soldier portraits that appeared in ‘The Queenslander’ periodical from 1914 through to 1917.

Queensland Mining Accidents 1882-1945
Queensland mining accidents were listed annually in the Queensland Legislative Assembly Votes & Proceedings. This index contains 8904 entries of mining deaths in Queensland that were mentioned. The accidents occured in the following regions: Ipwsich region, Charters Towers, Mount Morgan region, Gympie region, Mount Isa region, Chillagoe region, Bowen, Rockhampton region, Maryborough, Darling Downs, Cloncurry region, Mount Coolan, Clermont region, Cracow, Brisbane region, Irvinebank, Townsville region.

Text Queensland
This website is a one everyone researching Queensland history should bookmark. All free, it contains books, journals, theses and newspapers as well as government sources including the Queensland Government Gazette 1859-1900, as well as Pugh’s Almanacs,  The Queenslander (newspaper) 1866-1939, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 1914-1994 and much more. and more … all searchable.
The Queenslander (newspaper) 1866-1939, as well as the Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 1914-1994 and much more.

Queensland School, Hospital and Orphanage Records
The Queensland State Archives has an enormous collection of records from the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century on Queensland government schools, hospitals, asylums, medical staff, orphanages and children’s homes to name a few. The link above takes you to a listing of what they have available.

Queensland Genealogy and Archives Research Tips
Well-known genealogy researcher, Judy Webster knows everything there is to know about Queensland genealogy research, and her site is an enormouse collection of information for those with Queensland connections. She has a Tips section for those researching Queensland genealogy, which is totally worth a read.

Queensland Genealogy Facebook Group
Got a query to do with Queensland genealogy research? Are you on Facebook? If yes, why not join the Queensland Genealogy Facebook Group, and pop your question there. There’s several thousand member, and members are happy to help each other out.

———————————-

Happy researching 🙂

It’s been a while since I last did a “Discovering Links” post, so it’s way past time for one.

These posts are lists of links that I’ve discovered. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it is simply ones, (and generally the not-so-commonly-known ones) that I’ve come across in my research, from magazines, or from seeing mentioned on social media.

No matter where I discovered them, I noted them, have been to them, and have found them interesting – so thought I’d share them with you. For this post I have a a bunch relating to Victoria  in Australia.

=== VICTORIAN LINKS ===

Ballarat Revealed
Learn more about Ballarat’s historic stories, secrets and spaces via your smartphone, tablet or computer with their walking tours. Along the way you’ll learn about the history and ghost stories of the area.

Boyle’s Football Photos
This website is the work of two independent researchers whose objective is to share their “passion for history and provide a friendly resource for family historians, football buffs and others who have an interest in the Charles Boyles photos and more generally in football photography from the 1920’s to 1960’s”. This site has since grown to cover more than just football photos. There’s articles, as well as pages on players, grounds, teams and more. I’ve categorised this link as Victoria – though it could easily be Australia as a whole – but as it started off with Victorian clubs and players there is a dominance of those records listed.

Cemeteries of South West Victoria
This is an impressive collection of cemetery records from Victoria’s South West region – almost 150 of them. So if you’re looking for people from this area, check this website to see which cemetery they’re buried at.

The Darragh Index (Germans in Melbourne 1861-1924)
The Darragh index is an invaluable resource to help you locate Germans living in Melbourne between 1861 and 1924. Listing over 1200 names, with a further 640 names of wives, children and parents appearing within most entries, the index was compiled using the Melbourne German Sick and Relief Society’s archival records held at State Library Victoria. This collection consists of minute books, membership records, financial records, published histories of the Society, photographs and various documents concerning friendly societies.

Eurekapedia
As the name suggests, this is pretty much the site to go to for anything and everything about Eureka Rebellion.

Geelong and District Family History Group
I don’t expect to generally list genealogy groups and societies, but this one is worth mentioning. The volunteers at the Geelong and District Family History Group are to be commended for their indexing efforts. So far their database has over 1.7 million entries. So for anyone with connections to this region of Victoria, their site is a must.

Historical Maps of Victoria
The University of Melbourne holds about 15,000 maps. Of these they have around 500 that are digitised and are online. The greater proportion of these are Melbourne and Victoria related, although there are some covering other regions.

Index to Victorian Probate Registers, 1841-1989
FamilySearch has images of the probate record indexes from Victoria, Australia online, and free. Listing over 1 million names this is a valuable resource as even though it’s an index, it contains the following information: Name of deceased, Late of [address], Occupation, Date of death, Nature of grant, Date of grant, and To whom committed.

Letterheads from Melbourne Businesses
If your ancestor had a business in Melbourne, they may well have had letterheads. While the various Victorian archives have over 10,000 letterheads in their collections, 250 of these were chosen to display on the emelbourne website.

Melbourne Directories 1857-1880
The University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library holds copies of Melbourne directories published first as Sands & Kenny’s directory (1857-59), then Sands, Kenny & Co.’s directory (1860-61) and finally as the Sands & McDougall’s directory. Those covering 1857-1880 have now been digitised and are online on the emelbourne website.

Melbourne Publicans Index c1841-1949 (Cole-Tetlow Index)
Compiled by Eric Tetlow, this index contains over 21,000 names of hotel licencees taken from the Melbourne city and metropolitan volumes of the Robert K. Cole collection of hotel records held at State Library Victoria. The index entries contain the name of the licencee or owner, location of the hotel, dates when the licence was held, and volume and page numbers, which can be used to locate an entry in the Robert K Cole Collection of hotel records, and covers the years c1841 to 1949.

My Marvellous Melbourne Podcast
If you’re interested in stories of Victoria’s history, take a listen to the My Marvellous Melbourne podcast. A production of the Melbourne History Workshop, their segments combine stories, interviews, personal reflections and memories that interest and inspire them about the social history of the city and suburbs.

Outward Passenger Lists from Victoria 1852-1924
Listing over 1.6 million entries, this collection consists of outward passenger lists of those leaving Victoria, Australia, 1852 to 1924. The original records are located in the Public Record Office of Victoria., but this index is online (and free) on FamilySearch. The entries include people not only going overseas from Victoria, but also those to different Australian states.

Picture Victoria
Similar to what PictureAustralia was, PictureVictoria is a portal site for libraries in Victoria to upload photos to, so they can be all searched from a single site. While the Trove photograph collection is good, if you have Victorian interests, you may wish to check this out as well just in case they have something different.

Public Record Office Victoria (PROV)
The PROV is Victoria’s major archive, and holds over 100km of government records related to all facets of Victorian Government activity from the 1830s onward. Some of the popular records, including photos, maps, and documents relating to family history, have been digitised and are available to view online.

Royal Women’s Hospital Staff Biographies and Book of Remembrance
In 1953, Dr Colin Macdonald, the hospital’s Clinical Radiologist and Honorary Historian set about researching the lives of the medical staff who had served the hospital in its first 100 years. Volume 1 featured biographies of honorary medical and surgical staff who had died prior to 1956. After Dr Macdonald’s death, several colleagues continued to record biographies in a second volume. None have been added since 1975. The two volumes were manually typed, with photographs of most subjects having a photograph together with their biography.

Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages 1853-1988
The Victorian Registrar of BDMs has a index of the Births up to 1917, Marriages up to 1957, Deaths up to 1988, Church baptisms, marriages and burials in Victoria from 1836 to 1853, and BDM at sea on ships that were bound for Victoria from 1853-1920. Note: the index is free to sear, but if you want an actual certificate, there is a cost for that.

Victorian Collections
Think of the Victorian Collections as an online museum that you can wander and browse through. Currently they have over 128,000 items in their “digital museum” which continues to grow. It is a free, web-based collections management system, which hundreds of groups have already contributed to, and then creates a central portal to Victoria’s rich cultural heritage and diverse history.

Victorian Government Gazettes 1836-1997
The State Library of Victoria have digitised the Victorian (and very early New South Wales) Government Gazettes, and have made over 160 years of them available online. Free. You can view images of individual gazette pages by browsing through, or you can search the index.

Victorian Heritage Database
For all who are researching family or places in Victoria, this is one for you to bookmark.  The Victorian Heritage Database is a “fully searchable online database containing information about Victorian Heritage Places and Precincts, including statements of significance, physical descriptions, historical information, builder, architectural style, photographs and heritage overlay number”. Type in a place, and everything with that name in it, streets, rives, anything in that suburb will come up.

Victorian Historical Journal (1911-2012)
The Journal is the official publication of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. It provides articles related to Victoria’s history, spanning Aboriginal heritage to European settlement as well as research articles, book reviews, obituaries and reminiscences.

Victorian Law Reports 1874-1976
The Victorian Law Resources website isn’t one I’d particularly think of visiting for research, but it sure has a heap of useful stuff for the genealogist. They have digitised old (1874-1976) law reports, so you can see them online.

Victorian Places
Victorian Places is essentially an online gazetteer listing over 1600 destinations throughout Victoria (Australia). Search or browse for places, and you’ll discover the history of every town, city, suburb, village and settlement in Victoria that had a population of over 200 people.

Victoria’s Anzac Centenary 1914-1918
The Victorian Government have created this site to commemorate the Victorians who took part in the First World War. Useful for students, community groups, historical societies, cultural institutions, ex-service organisations and family historians – this site helps delve deep into Victoria’s history to learn more about our WWI service men and women. You can search or browse all the stories online (click here), but not only that, if you have ancestors who took part, you can add details online too.

Western District Families
Merron grew up in Victoria’s districts and has a passion for sharing it’s history. Her site it subtitled “Stories of Pioneering Families From the Western District of Victoria” With many obituaries, military heroes from the region, and even more general history, Western District Families is a definitely a place to visit if you have any connection to the region at all … or if you simply love learning about Victoria’s history.

WikiNorthia
WikiNorthia is a wiki that is “all about documenting life in Melbourne’s north”. This project began as a collaboration between Darebin Libraries, the Yarra Plenty Regional Library and the Moreland City Libraries. These three libraries cover five council areas, and have a goal to create an online encyclopedia of the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

WWI Soldier Settlement in Victoria
On this site you can access the individual records of thousands of  World War One returned soldiers who leased farming land across Victoria between 1919 and 1935.

Here’s another of my “Discovering Links” post. These posts consist of a collection of links that I have discovered, or found useful, and simply want to share with others. But rather than just giving you a whole batch of random links each time, I am grouping them by Australian state, country, county or topic. And you can see my previous Discovering Links posts here.

For this one I’ve decided to share my London links. As will all my Discovering Links posts, it is not intended to be an exhaustive collection of links, but they are simply ones that many will find useful, and it may include some that you hadn’t previously known about.

And while many people think that genealogy costs a lot of money, let me tell you that all of the links below are free. Personally I find that it’s often a matter of knowing where to look beyond the big-name websites, and hopefully this will help with that.

Now an important tip to remember when researching London, is to remember that there are three London’s: London city, London county as well as Greater London – with each covers different areas, as well as different areas over time as boundaries changed. When documents just say ‘London’ it does make it hard to know which, but you do need to keep that in mind – particularly as Greater London incorporates areas from neighbouring counties.

=== LONDON ===

AIM25
Archives in London and the M25 Area “is a major project to provide electronic access to collection level descriptions of the archives of over fifty higher education institutions and learned societies within the greater London area.” A work in progress, AIM25 provides online access to collection level descriptions from the archives of over one hundred and archives and organisations within the region, for the purposes of research, teaching and public enjoyment. While not giving “actual records” they doe highlight places to go to for specific collections, many of which are quite unique.

CHARLES BOOTH POVERTY MAPS
Compare the streets of London then and now. Charles Booth’s Inquiry into the “Life and Labour of the People in London” comprises over 450 volumes of interviews, questionnaires, observations and statistical information documents the poverty of London, highlighting all of its contrasts during the 1886-1903 period. Thanks to the London School of Economics (LSE) now you can search for present-day locations, including streets and postcodes, as well as 19th-century parishes and landmarks, and you can compare Booth’s map with a present-day map of London using a slider and you can display also notebook entries for individual locations on the map as well.

DICTIONARY OF VICTORIAN LONDON
The Dictionary of Victorian London includes extracts from Victorian newspapers, diaries, journalism, memoirs, maps, advertisements and and the full text of several dozen books.

GENUKI – LONDON
The GENUKI site (Genealogy UK & Ireland) is one that all UK researchers should bookmark. As it has a wealth of information on London (not to mention every other county), it’s worth listing here. For details on the types of records, the archives, the geography and a whole lot more, be sure to check out GENUKI.

HISTORIC HOSPITAL ADMISSION RECORDS PROJECT (HHARP)
The HHARP website is the home of 19th century children’s hospital records, and now lists over 140,000 admission records to four children’s hospitals: three in London, the Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Evelina and the Alexandra Hip Hospital for Children, and one from the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow. Between them the databases cover a period from 1852 to 1921. Medical historians and demographers will find HHARP an invaluable tool in the study of the early development of paediatric medicine. Family historians and local historians will find a treasure trove of information on Victorian families and healthcare in Victorian and Edwardian London and Glasgow.

HISTORICAL DIRECTORIES OF LONDON
The University of Leicester has literally hundred of historical directories scanned, and as such the Historical Directories website is one that would be familiar to most English researchers. But on checking the site, I see there’s links 91 different London Directories, so it is worthy of a mention here, and certainly worth checking out if you haven’t before.

LOCATING LONDON’S PAST
This website allows you to search a wide body of digital resources relating to early modern and eighteenth-century London, and to map the results on to a fully GIS (geographic information systems) compliant version of John Rocque’s 1746 map.

LONDON BURIAL REGISTERS 1856-1955
The City of London Cemetery and Crematorium opened in 1856 and since then over 150 years of London burials have been recorded in the Cemetery Burial and Cremation Registers. There are 88 Registers, each weighing around 25kg each, with over 300 pages of recorded interments or cremations per register. Approximately 600,000 people have been interred in this cemetery, with the remains of over 30 other London churchyards also placed on the site, so the figure is approaching 1 million. Searchable by year, you can then view the original images. Please note, the site if free, but there is a fee if you request that the Cemetery does a search for you, and you can find those charges here.

LONDON GAZETTES (and Edinburgh and Belfast)
The Gazette has been at the heart of British public life for almost 350 years. As the first official journal of record and the newspaper of the Crown, The Gazette became an authoritative and reliable source of news, and conveyed important news to those overseas.

LONDON LIVES 1690-1800
What was it like to live in the first million person city in modern Western Europe? Crime, poverty, and illness; apprenticeship, work, politics and money; how people voted, lived and died; all this and more can be found in these documents on London Lives.  This website is a fully searchable edition of over 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.

LONDON PICTURE ARCHIVE
The London Picture Archive is a collection of over 250,000 images of London from the collections at the London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Art Gallery,  which together possess the largest collection of London images in the world.

LONDON PICTURE MAP
An added feature of the London Picture Archive is the London Picture Map, which shows a map of London, together with dots with numbers in, meaning how many old photos they have for that area. The London Picture Map allows you to browse the City of London collections geographically and it’s a great way to discover images of a particular street or building. Many of the images that have been placed on the map are of buildings that no longer exist, giving you an intriguing view of ‘Lost London’.

LORD MAYORS OF LONDON 1189-2016
If you are interested in the Lord Mayors of London, the London Wiki site is the place the look. Complete with links to further biographical details for almost all Lord Mayors listed from 1189, it is a great resource.

LONDON PUBOLOGY
A work in progress the London Pubology site aims to “one day to be a database of all London pubs past and present”. It began as a way to catalogue the photos that the website owner was taking, but now has a goal to “have photos of all London pub buildings that are still standing”. Currently it’s organised by postcode area, and the pubs are plotted on a map.

MAP OF EARLY MODERN LONDON
The Map of Early Modern London is comprised of four distinct projects: a digital edition of the 1561 Agas woodcut map of London; an Encyclopedia and Descriptive Gazetteer of London people, places, topics, and terms; a Library of marked-up texts rich in London toponyms; and a versioned edition of John Stow’s Survey of London. These four projects draw data from MoEML’s five databases: a Placeography of locations (e.g., streets, sites, playhouses, taverns, churches, wards, and topographical features); a Personography of early modern Londoners, both historical and literary; an Orgography of organizations (e.g., livery companies and other corporations); a Bibliography of primary and secondary sources; and a Glossary of terms relevant to early modern London. All of the files in our databases use a common TEI tagset that enables us to work with primary and secondary texts simultaneously. The Map allows users to visualize, overlay, combine, and query the information in the MoEML databases that populate the Encyclopedia, Library, and Stow editions.

OLD BAILEY COURT RECORDS 1674-1913
The Old Bailey website makes available a fully searchable, digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913, and of the Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts between 1676 and 1772. It allows access to over 197,000 trials and biographical details of approximately 2,500 men and women executed at Tyburn, free of charge for non-commercial use.
In addition to the text, accessible through both keyword and structured searching, this website provides digital images of all 190,000 original pages of the Proceedings, and over 4,000 pages of Ordinary’s Accounts.

PHOTOLONDON
PhotoLondon is a database of 19th-century photographers and associated trades in London between the period 1841 and 1901. It is a gateway to London’s public photograph collections. While the database is no longer being added to, there is still a vast collection of information on the website.

Happy researching!