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27. 19th century Melbourne directories

Chosen by:
Professor Graeme Davison,
School of Historical Studies, Faculty of Arts

Sands & McDougall's Melbourne and suburban directory. (Melbourne : Sands & McDougall, 1863-1901) 39 v. On display is the issue for 1885.

Continues: Sands & Kenny's commercial and general Melbourne directory (1857-1859) ; Sands, Kenny & Co.’s commercial and general Melbourne directory (1860-1861) ;  Sands & McDougall's commercial and general Melbourne directory (1862); continued by: Sands & McDougall's Melbourne, suburban and country directory (1902-1911) ; Sands & McDougall’s directory of Victoria (1912-1974)

19th century Melbourne directories

In an age before telephones, when mail was often delivered twice or even three times a day, the Post office directory was an essential tool of urban living. The first Melbourne directories appeared almost as soon as the town itself, but in the turbulent 1850s, an era of high immigration when people were constantly on the move, several Melbourne companies competed for this lucrative business.  By the 1860s the Sydney publisher and stationer John Sands and his Melbourne manager and partner Dugald McDougall had emerged as the leader, a position that the company for over a century. 

The directory was divided into four main sections. In the first, householders were listed within each municipality by their street and street number. In the second they appeared alphabetically by name for the entire metropolis. The third section listed the members of the various trades and professions. And the fourth gave the office-holders of societies and institutions, ecclesiastical officials, legal and municipal officers. These sections were bound together with advertisements like this handsomely illustrated brochure for the Universal Building Society.

To historians and genealogists, the city directory is an invaluable source. Unlike the telephone directory, which lists subscribers only alphabetically, it offers a picture of the social composition of neighbourhoods. In Melbourne, householders’ occupations were usually listed only when they were in business on their own account, unlike the Adelaide directories in which the occupation of virtually every householder is given, down to labourers and washerwomen.

In the era before the telephone became almost universal, Sands and McDougall was as well known as Melways is today. By the 1960s, however, the days of the city directory were numbered. After the company finally ceased publication in 1974, one of the last generation of McDougall owners told me that the competition of the telephone directory, the cost of employing canvassers to obtain information from householders (a visit every three years was the norm), and the high production costs of a volume now weighing several pounds had finally sunk the long-lived enterprise.

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