"The Circular Orders of 1863" (107 handwritten foolscap pages plus sundry blank pages) mainly in manuscript form and listing the notices and orders which were distributed during the year to the Police Stations in the State.

Various issues and events held police attention and these documents provide first hand insight into these matters: “Lunatics” and, more specifically, “Female Lunatics” are a focus, as well as “Aboriginal Prisoners” and “Paupers Funerals”. In short, how the marginalised groups of colonial society—women, the indigenous, the mentally ill, the poor—were to be dealt with.

The “Burke and Wills funeral—the attendance of officers at—” similarly reflects how Victorian colonial society operated. Alfred Howitt, who had found and buried the explorers at Cooper’s Creek in Queensland, was sent back there to retrieve them. On his return journey Howitt was met in almost every township and village he passed through by crowds paying homage to the bones of Burke and Wills. In Melbourne the remains lay in state in the hall of the Royal Society on La Trobe Street for two weeks in January 1863, where they were viewed by more than 100,000 people, out of a total city population of 120,000.

The burial of Burke and Wills was Australia's first state funeral. Held on 21 January 1863, the procession stretched for four city blocks and drew the largest crowd ever seen in Melbourne. Even the explorers' final journey was marked by jostling for position. There were many claims for places of honour in the procession, and keen rivalry for the plum job of bearing the coffins. Attendance by police members would thus have similarly been a sought-after social ticket. Other subjects include "Medical Contracts", "Expenses of conveying Debtors to Prison", "Prisoners Rations", "False Troy Weights - Are they in use?", ", etc.

An important and unique record of policing in early Victoria.