The Lord Howe island Museum holds a great collection of documents, maps, books and photographs on the Island’s cultural and natural history. This collection is made available to visiting researchers undertaking various projects.
Visiting researcher Susan Johnson provided this piece after her visit to the Museum in October 2025.
Shining a light on a little understood aspect of Island, and Australian, history.
Recently I had the pleasure of spending a week at the Lord Howe Island Museum reviewing documents in the Museum collection as part of a project on the interactions between Islanders and the Visiting Magistrates appointed to Lord Howe between 1882 and 1913.
The work of Australian magistrates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is poorly understood. The few studies that do exist describe this period as one where a ‘modern magistracy’, focussed purely on administering the law, rather than trying to shape society, emerged. Lord Howe Island’s Visiting Magistrates do not fit that narrative.
Instead, in differing ways, the Visiting Magistrates attempted to intervene in Island affairs, sometimes in partnership with the community, sometimes with the intent of imposing the Magistrates’ own views on the Islanders.
As might be expected, Lord Howe Island residents, who for many decades had largely governed themselves, also actively sought to manage the role and impact of the Magistrates.
The interplay between the Sydney-based Visiting Magistrates, and Lord Howe Islanders, is a fascinating story with broader implications for our existing understanding of how magistrates worked during this time. The interactions between the two groups can also shed light on government approaches to consultation with remote, relatively independent, communities during this period.
In addition to examining many primary source documents very thoughtfully collated by Museum Curator Ian Hutton, I also had the opportunity during my visit to meet with a number of Islanders and to hear the stories passed down to them about the Visiting Magistrates, and earlier self-government on Lord Howe.
Lord Howe Island has a rich cultural and human history in addition to its obvious natural and environmental values. Hopefully my project will help to foreground one aspect of this history, for the benefit of both Islanders and visitors alike. I’ll be providing regular updates on the project until its expected completion in 2028.
Susan Johnson
Industry Professor
University of Queensland
PhD Candidate
University of New England
