Life in Little Lon - what we know from objects

Did you know that there was have been major projects undertaken in Little Lonsdale Street that shed light on day-to-day life in the city centre in the nineteenth century?

The area is bordered by Lonsdale, Spring, Exhibition and Little Lonsdale Streets and was known as a slum area that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century. The block was home to the city's red light district as well as criminals and was often the subject of concerned interventions by church and government officials.

It was transformed into an industrial area in the early twentieth century and was compulsorily acquired by the Commonwealth Goverment in 1948. Archaeologists have excavated the area five times since 1988 and the Melbourne Museum holds over 500 000 artefacts found during the excavations.

These artefacts tell us so much more about the lives of Little Lon's occupants than newspaper stories or memoirs can. Children's have been found, as well as medicine bottles and toiletries. We know that the residents ate more meat than might have been expected and that sometimes they - or their clients - drank French champagne.

For more information you can visit the Melbourne Museum website or you can read more about it in Susan Lawrence and Peter Davies' 2018 article ‘Melbourne: The Archaeology of a World City’, International journal of historical archaeology, 22(1), pp. 117–130.

Bone die found in Little Lon, courtesy of Melbourne Museum.