A charitable indulgence: street stalls and the transformation of public space in Melbourne,c. 1850–1920

Abstract

The automobile is often misconstrued as being exclusively responsible for the decline of traditional street culture. This paper argues that the marginalisation of street vendors may also be related to developing definitions of the street as the locus of respectability, unobstructed circulation, nationalism and civic pride. Street entrepreneurs of the 1850s became urban nuisances by the 1900s, associated more with obstruction and underservedness as with convenience and enterprise. Licensing records of bootblacks and coffee-stall keepers as objects of municipal benevolence reveal their economic and social roles in the micro-geography of the city. While nostalgia can distort the realities of historical and contemporary public spaces, the street evacuated of social density and diversity is one of the great losses of modern urban life.

Transport: Disciplining the Body that Travels

“…Numerous writers have commented on the shift in the pre-dominant use of street spaces through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (eg, Jacobs, 1961; Gutman, 1978; De Jong, 1986; Rabinow, 1989; Sennett, 1994; Brown-May, 1995; Fyfe, 1998). Like Paris, London, Amsterdam and Melbourne, the streets of Adelaide have undergone significant changes (Bonham, 2000).…”

“…Like Paris, London, Amsterdam and Melbourne, the streets of Adelaide have undergone significant changes (Bonham, 2000). Andrew Brown-May argues that while changes witnessed in Melbourne have been attributed to the automobile they are related to broader processes of the spatialization of social relations that characterize modernism (Brown-May, 1995: 3). Richard Sennett locates the spatialization of social relations within the specialization of activities that occurs through the development of the capitalist city (Sennett, 1994: 263–5).…”

“…Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the division and regulation of street spaces in Amsterdam, Paris and London were debated in relation to the health, safety, morality, and economic well-being of the population (De Jong, 1986; Rabinow, 1989; Sennett, 1994). These debates were brought into the Australian colonies of Melbourne and Adelaide as they were founded in the early 1800s (Brown-May, 1995; Bonham, 2000). The discussions carried on in Adelaide's newspapers, parliament, and local council focused upon the conditions of and activities upon the streets rather than the conduct of traffic.…”

Permeable Boundaries: Negotiation, Resistance, and Transgression of Street Space in Saint-Henri, Quebec, 1875-1905

“…5 Drawing principally from municipal archival records and visual representations, Andrew BrownMay's treatment of public space derives from the nature of the street as a human thoroughfare, both as a consumer space and as a "journey and right of presence." 6 In Melbourne, street stalls and vendors were particularly subject to regulation and social control insofar as the informal economy impinged on the formal business economy. Class interests were reflected in the contradictory attitudes held by the elite toward street-sellers: they were a nuisance with a reputation of attracting crime, they inhibited the flow of pedestrian traffic, and they were perceived to rival regular stores, but they simultaneously attracted extra trade to some stores.…”