Richard Vaughan hailed as hero for settling the problem of site for food market in Adelaide city east end from 1860s
The lineup of food growers' wagons along East Terrace, Adelaide city, became a feature of the era of markets at that end of the city.
After the South Australian government set out the rules in 1847 for setting up food markets, Adelaide Council provided space on Pirie Street in the city but produce traders found it too small and awkward.
The east end of Adelaide city as the site for fruit and vegetable trading grew from an informal agreement between green grocers and growers from around the 1850s to sell fruit and vegetables on East Terrace, opposite the Stag Inn on the Rundle Street corner, from daylight on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. East Terrace was favoured as most farmers and market gardeners lived in the Adelaide Hills to the east.
Local residents and other business owners weren’t pleased with East Terrace being blocked by wagons and, as the Adelaide Observer reported, “near the Stag Inn... is to be found the carcasses of dead cats and dogs, rotting in the sunshine, and decayed vegetable matter of every description, helping to form the gas so fatal to human life. The stench reeking up from this foul bed resembles that of a charnal (sic) house.”
In response, Adelaide Council passed a 1859 bylaw requiring the sale of fruit and vegetables to made in Victoria Square but it installed no more than poles for tying the traders’ horses. Sellers resented having to travel into the city centre rather than just the eastern edge and other residents complained at public land being used for private business.
Sixty market gardeners meeting in the Plough and Harrow Hotel on Rundle Street asked for a proper marketplace with shelter for their horses. Until this demand was met, they concluded, the bylaw restricting produced sale to Victoria Square would be flouted. In 1860, the South Australian Register said it was a disgrace that Adelaide lacked a proper marketplace – an essential marker of civilisation.
Easing some of the pressure on East Terrace, with up to 100 vehicles converged on it each market day in a mess of buying and selling, their trading moved behind the Stag Inn and a shop owned by Richard Vaughan.
By 1864, Vaughan was considered the “self-constituted clerk of the East End Market” who was dominant enough to set prices for goods. Vaughan brought all the land fronting East Terrace from Rundle Street to North Terrace and that fronting the northern site of Rundle Street from the East Terrace to the Exeter Hotel. In 1866, he built Adelaide’s first market sheds to protect the growers and traders from the elements and clear East Terrace. This was considered the founding of the East End Market.
Vaughan was hailed by Adelaide citizens as a visionary and philanthropist, creating an essential public good when the Adelaide Council was unable or unwilling to do the same.
