ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a guide to conducting research into the history of crime in Australia, illustrated with examples from a project on the disappearance of the three Beaumont children in Adelaide in 1966. The ubiquity of crime and its copious documentation by law enforcement agencies and the media make this a very fruitful area for original research by beginning historians. The importance of placing a project within the secondary literature is demonstrated, before a discussion of the types of primary evidence, with emphasis how its increasing accessibility because of large-scale digitisation in the past decade. Readers are encouraged to take advantage of the published material available to put their own topics into context, showing them that they can make a genuine contribution to scholarship on the history of crime.
