The Real Property Act 1858 replaced the private chain of deeds with a state-guaranteed register: the entry in the register, not the paper history behind it, constitutes the title. Registration is conclusive, transfer is by short memorandum rather than reconveyance, and the state indemnifies anyone who loses out through registry error. Drafted for a colony with fresh survey and no medieval title chains, it was adopted across Australia and New Zealand and then in Canadian provinces, several US states, Ireland, Malaya, Singapore and much of British Africa and Asia.
Cheap, certain, quickly transferable title is the precondition of the mortgage market, the speculative subdivision and the suburban land boom — Torrens registration industrialised the conveyance of urban land. Its export also imposed a grid of individual European title on societies holding land collectively, dispossessing customary owners in the process.
See it on the timeline →