Outside the Eastern Market at night, ‘lung testers’, ‘electricians’ and ‘street astronomers’ jostled for trade. The electrician literally gave you a ‘shock’, while the astronomer showed you Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons for the price of a glass of gin. These are some of the ways people earned a living on Melbourne’s streets.
The hawker
Hawkers and street stalls were a common sight from the 1850s, touting everything from oysters to water, potatoes to paintbrushes, and flowers to flathead. With no rent or rates, hawking, or ‘itinerant trading’, was a viable occupation for the unskilled, immigrants, the infirm and the elderly –
