These certificates of death are original and give details of 47 deaths from July 1853 to February 1855 with the deaths mostly from the Villiers district in the Parish or Township of Warrnambool. The deaths have been registered by John Martin Ardlie and the doctors’ signatures include those of Isaac Corney and Berkeley Hutchinson. This booklet is of high significance as many of the deaths recorded herein are not registered anywhere else and some were buried in the Warrnambool Cemetery before official records began. The Warrnambool Cemetery was gazetted in June 1854. The certificates were found in a private house in Warrnambool.This is a bound booklet with a black linen cover and containing 40 pages. The pages are designed to have the information written twice with one section called the Counterpart and the second called the Original Certificate of Death (Schedule B). The counterpart section was meant to be kept in the booklet and the second section was to be cut out and sent or put elsewhere. The first seven pages have the one Counterpart section and the rest are complete with the two sections. The pages are blue with printed headings for the Registrar of Deaths to fill in. The information on 12 of the pages are incomplete and the entries are handwritten in ink. Front cover: Original Certificate of Death, Bwarrnambool cemetery, early warrnambool death records 1853-1854, john martin ardlie, warrnambool history, isaac corney, berkeley hutchinson

This book has been given to John Ardlie by Lewis Gilles in 1866. John Martin Ardlie came to Warrnambool in 1852 as the Clerk of Courts and remained in this position until 1868. He died in 1872. He was a leading figure in community affairs for twenty years and Ardlie Street in Warrnambool is named after him. His family home was Wyton, site of the old convent at Emmanuel College today. Lewis Gilles, important in the early history of Tasmania as a bank owner and breeder of cattle, came to Warrnambool in 1854 as the first resident Police Magistrate. He remained until 1866 when he went to England (the occasion of his presentation of this book to John Ardlie). He died in 1884 in South Australia. Gilles Street in Warrnambool is named after him.This book is of high significance because of its connection to two very important early residents of Warrnambool – John Ardlie and Lewis Gilles. This is a hard cover book of 336 pages. The cover is brown with gold ornamentation and lettering on the front cover and spine. The pages are gilt-edged. The first letter of each hymn is ornamented and there is an illustration covered with tissue paper on the first page. One page shows silverfish damage and the cover is partly detached from the binding. The cover is frayed in places and a little stained. The inscription is handwritten in black ink. ‘Presented to J. M. Ardlie by his friend and comrade L.W. Gilles 1864 Worthing Sussex on departing from Warrnambool 4 May 1866’. john ardlie, lewis gilles, history of warrambool