" T h e n all at once on Yarra's banks Yast numbers rushed with beams and planks, A n d cauldrons, boilers, tubs, and tanks Were piled on heaps promiscuously. "And now on Yarra's bank a scene O f fearful carnage m a y be seen, A n d bloodier work than e'er has been At Linden, Prague, or Waterloo. " Prostrate beneath those awful sheds, Ten thousand lie on gory beds ; Hide, butchers, your diminished heads In blaze of our establishments."
What a curious contrast is presented in the specifics prescribed for righting the meat markets of 1844 and 1888 ! T h e n it was thawing, n o w it is freezing. For years after the foundation of Melbourne no vehicles plied for hire, for the inhabited limits of the township did not extend beyond the area bounded by King, Lonsdale, Russell, and Flinders Streets; and as for suburbs, there were only Newtown (Collingwood), Richmond, half-a-dozen tenements at St. Kilda, and some half as many at Sandridge. Liardet, the mail contractor between the Bay and Melbourne, put on a cart, and afterwards a two-horse vehicle, and, in 1844, a queerish kind of 'bus was ventured between Melbourne and St. Kilda, but was soon laid up through a dearth of custom. T h e first approach to a cab was an ingenious contrivance, worked by one Peter Jackson, a shelved coach-builder, who, in some mysterious manner, annexed an invalided Dublin "jingle," imported by some " well-in" immigrant; but the roughness of old colonial ways soon taught him otherwise, and the " Shandradan" was disrated and sent adrift to shift for itself. It was not until after the gold discoveries that covered cabs made their appearance. Li 1847-8 a brougham and a cab appeared in Collins Street, and the following year some half-a-dozen of both found precarious employment. In October, 1849, it was announced in the newspapers that M r . Howard, the proprietor of the Royal Llotel, at St. Kilda, " had started a new omnibus, built after the latest London fashion." It made two trips per day between St. Kilda and Melbourne; fare, is. At the same time a 'bus m a d e one daily trip between Brighton and Melbourne, starting from the former place at 8.30 a.m., and on its return at 4.30 p.m.; fares, 2 s. each way. Mr. T. C. Riddell and Dr. Palmer were the first to provide public baths. Swimming baths were opened for gentlemen in January, 1844, over the river, opposite the Custom House. They were sixty feet long, and the ferryman sold tickets—i.e., red 6d., black 3d. T h e sixpenny tokens admitted to what might be termed, though a solecism, the dress circle ; the others to the pit, a division of the pool less select. In February, 1845, Liardet, an hotelkeeper, established a swimming concern at Sandridge. The occasional glut of fat cattle and sheep benefited the public in the same way as the contentions of the bakers, and meat was often to be got for something amounting to little more than a song. In February, 1844, the following rates were advertised in the Melbourne newspapers :—Best beef and mutton, id. per lb.; lamb (not to be surpassed), is. per quarter; and rounds of prime beef, 1 J^d. per lb. Times were very bad and money scarce in 1844, yet somehow or other the ladies contrived to keep up their supplies of pin-money—at least, such must have been so, if one is to credit the published fact that during thefirstfivedays of February the sum of ,£1250 was taken over the counter at the shop of Mr. Spence, a draper in Elizabeth Street. Mr. Spence retired from business without reaping a golden harvest. The public nuisance of street preaching set in as early as 1839, and one of that fraternity used to advertise himself as " C. A. Robertson, Israelite Missionary." H e was a loud-voiced and an unmealy-mouthed MMM
