Adelaide - Streets
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The Streets of Adelaide
Early Reports
Hazards for pedestrians are described in the Adelaide Chronicle, 2 September 1840, page 3b:
-
The dangerous and unprotected state in which wells, cellars and foundations,
are suffered to remain. A servant of mine... fell last night headlong into
a deep cellar at the corner of King William Street, the property of Mr Stuckey
the confectioner... At the bottom of Grenfell Street there is... a large
deep hole close to the roadside without a fence of the slightest description
to prevent an accident...
Also see Water Supply
The Register of 5 August 1843 at page 3a says:
-
The streets are getting worse every day. Mr B. Neales, the auctioneer, and
Mr Payne, of the Auction Mart Tavern, laid a causeway last week across King
William Street, but it has nearly disappeared... The Corporation can do nothing;
the Surveyor-General will do nothing; but the public must do something...
(Also see Register, 9 and 16 August 1843, pages 2c and 3a.)
As to the [country] roads, the unfortunate horses and bullock drivers must,
I fear, be left to their inevitable fate; but, surely, pauperised as we too
generally are, we can yet find money and labour... to put the causeways,
at least on one side of the streets, into good condition.
(Register,
6 April 1844, page 3c; also see
4, 8 and 11 May 1844, pages 3b, 3b and 3b,
12 June 1844, page 3b.)
We have almost daily complaints of the stray cattle, goats, pigs and dogs,
which infest the streets of Adelaide, destroy gardens, frighten women and
children, and occasionally even teach a man the value of his heels...
(South Australian,
16 May 1848, page 3b; also see
19 December 1848, page 4a.)
All horse and bullock drivers must take care not to enter Rosina Street
or Gawler Place after dusk, for if they do, there are ten chances to one
that they break their own limbs, or those of the brutes under their charge,
in the numberless holes and quagmires with which those localities so notoriously
abound.
(Adelaide Times, 27 November 1848, page 4b.)
Numerous riders... as well as foot passengers are continually meeting with
accidents, especially after dark, from the stumps of trees still projecting,
even within the street lines of this rising city...
(Register, 24 February 1849, page 4a.)
The back lanes become more and more obnoxious every day... To the rear
of some lodging houses in Gawler Place... filth is heaped as it were for
the formation of manure... The consequent exhalations on warm days are intolerable
in the extreme, and may be expected shortly, if not removed, to engender
destructive malaria in that thronged neighbourhood.
(Adelaide Times, 9 April 1849, page 3d.)
Already the muddy abysses have become the graves of animals and if the
dangers are not obviated we shall have to bewail children sacrificed; if
not the loss of some of our adult population. On Wednesday last a bullock
was smothered to death in Weymouth [sic] Street... It is a perfect "Slough
of Despair".
(Register, 11 August 1849, page 2e.)
We are glad to find that the Government has sent a few cart loads of rubbish
to fill up the hole in Waymouth Street in which the poor bullock was smothered
a few days since.
(South Australian, 17 August 1849, page 3f.)
It is a matter of very serious danger and difficulty to make way at all
through the slush and filth which cover the footways of the city, and a fearful
catalogue of colds, bruises and damaged boots is already registered for the
sole benefit of the medical profession and the leather trade. It may be all
very well for the undertakers, but we did not come out to this province to
be drowned in the streets. (South Australian,
6 July 1849, page 2c; also see
10 July 1849, page 2c)
Travellers in lonesome places on dark nights ought to be well armed with
a life "preserver" or a good cudgel... Light Square has become notorious
in this respect... Some strong gangs of thieves and burglars... carry on
their villainies now with impunity...
(Adelaide Times, 3 July 1850, page 3c.)
At present it is quite unsafe for a man to venture outside his own door
after night sets in... there are gangs to be met with at every corner...
(Adelaide Times, 12 July 1851, page 6f.)
