Working documents: ballpoint pen marginalia, 1930s police files and security intelligence practices

Abstract

On 12 July 1933, John Hayes, an Auckland detective, attended a meeting at the Auckland Town Hall protesting unemployment policy. The next day he typed a report about that meeting and signed his name. Seventy-eight years later that report was released to Archives New Zealand. In that time, 17 additional marks were made on the report: other people signed it, names were ticked, the page was numbered and file markers were added (figure 1).1 Hayes’ report was a working document for decades, the many notations demonstrating how much the document had been used. Careful study of these notations over the life of such documents can shed light on political surveillance practice and policy.