Basics on pubs and publicans (Australia)
The tavern, inn or hotel - colloquially known as a "pub" - is an institution which has been both a significant source of employment and an important element in the social and historical development of Australia. Because they were regulated, pubs left a significant paper trail that can be helpful in tracing the movements and employment of those involved in their management, or indeed of anyone linked to a pub in correspondence or official records.
New South Wales
Attempts to regulate the sale of liquor were made from the early days of the colony but these were often unsuccessful. The first licence for the sale of alcoholic liquor in Australia was issued in 1792 to Captain Essex Henry Bond and First Officer Thomas Reibey of the Royal Admiral. This vessel had arrived on 7 October 1792 carrying convicts, a few free settlers and provisions for the settlement, along with goods and liquor brought by these two officers for private sale.
Regular licensing began in 1796 when ten licences were issued, but the earliest listings of licensees held by State Records relate to 1798 and 1799. A State Records Archives In Brief leaflet provides details of these and other holdings.
For those seeking in-depth information about policies governing the sale of liquor, the Mitchell Library has in manuscript form J Webster's History of Licensing Legislation in Australia from 1788 to 1930. SAG also holds material on liquor policy and studies of research resources prepared for its Diploma in Family Historical Studies. Amongst these are papers submitted in 1996 by Merle Kavanagh and Janet Booth.
Apart from those sources, information about early licensees and licensed premises is scattered and requires some 'digging' by researchers. Names of licensees and policy changes can be traced through the weekly Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, first published on 5 March 1803. Each of the nine facsimile volumes of this publication (covering the period to 1811) is well indexed. There is a card index up to 1827 available at Mitchell Library, and on film at SAG.
Sources such as those mentioned often do not give the sign names of the licensed premises and for those it may be necessary go to early directories, maps, local histories, memoirs, and articles in journals of historical societies. For Sydney there are good secondary sources such as Geoffrey Scott's Sydney's Highways of History (1958) or publications of Isadore Brodsky like The Streets of Sydney (1962) or The Heart of the Rocks of Old Sydney (1965). The Mitchell Library's manuscript copy of J M Forde's Register of hotels, inns, publicans, brewers etc. 1810 - 1850, with annotations by C H Bertie, is useful in identifying publicans and signs.
Publicans' Licence Butts from 1830 to 1861 (a broken run from June 1849 to June 1853) have been microfilmed and are available at many libraries, including SAG. An index to these butts has been compiled by Jean McNaught and published by the Richmond-Tweed Regional Library.
After about 1832 the publication of street directories, commercial directories, postal directories and almanacs makes it easier to check the precise location of licensed premises, but, even so, it is often difficult to establish a location at a particular time without undertaking time-consuming research.
For the post-1860 period State Records is probably the best repository of information. Sources include Government Gazettes and printed lists of licences. The entries in the Government Gazette 1832-1863 are well-indexed by AGCI, the Australasian Genealogical Computer Index, available from SAG on CD-ROM.