Australian snooker

[Cue crafty]

Photographs of books and newspaper sheets from past centuries? It never crossed my mind I bought a good book scanner and a licence for OCR software. I still need to buy two or more hands, one head and a few eyes and work longer than 25 hours a day

I'm joking, of course.

Lolz, thanks for that! I come from a data back up kind of background work wise so I'll sleep better tonight now.

Good work BTW, Its admirable what you are doing to conserve the history of billiard games etc.

[Archivist]

I'm in Australia, and have never heard of that, or seen such rules.

There is a very good website run by the National Library that lets you search all kinds of archives
https://trove.nla.gov.au

A quick search of that showed a couple of articles from the early 20thC, but not overly helpful. However, if you do an advanced search and dig around you may find something

There is also "Ask a Librarian" where they do the work for you. It is free, and when I have used this in the past they have given me some good leads to follow up. I would maybe start with trove, and if you can't find it there, go to ask a librarian, and tell them what you have already done
https://www.nla.gov.au/using-library.../ask-librarian

I got a reply from the Australian National Library, but I don't think they read my enquiry properly:

As it was part of the Commonwealth, as with many other sports, Australia probably would of taken its snooker rules directly from the British. It may be worth contacting the British Library who may be able to help locate a rulebook from this time.

You may also be interested in this online site that has a significant amount of information of interest about the history of Snooker. I believe this is a Snooker and Billiards museum located in Liverpool, U.K. They look like they may have an original copy of the early rules of the game.
https://snookerheritage.co.uk/
https://snookerheritage.co.uk/articl...ns-of-snooker/
You could also contact the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) who may be able to offer further information. https://wpbsa.com/about-us/history/

[Archivist]

I've managed to track down the rules that were used in 1903 at a local snooker tournament in Sydney, Australia. Clause three of the rules says you can play a single coloured ball as many times as you like after a red, until you decide to play red again. I'd like to thank Mr J. H. F., who kept his grandfather's family archives and kindly agreed to let us publish the text of the rules. The quality of the scans is poor (over a hundred years have passed and the papers were stored in an ordinary folder rather than in a special vault) but 90% of the text can be read with confidence. Once digitised and verified, the text of the rules will be published.

UPD. I'm not going to mention the owner of the archive by name, as he's asked me not to. I'm sorry for publishing his name and violating his confidentiality without his permission. I've bought the original document, and once I receive it by post (how long does it take from Australia to Europe?), I'll be the owner of the document. For now, I only have a scan.