Little Lon district

In the nineteenth century the area consisted of timber and brick cottages, shops and small factories and was home to an ethnically diverse and generally poor population.

[3]In 1891, Melbourne city's back slums were described by evangelist Henry Varley as "a loathsome centre in which crime, gambling hells, opium dens and degraded Chinese abound, and where hundred of licentious and horribly debased men and women are herded like swine".

"[4] Fergus Hume's immensely popular The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, written in 1887, described life in a slum in the nearby lanes behind Little Bourke Street, as exposed by its middle class heroes.

[6] "Madam Brussels", facing Lonsdale Street, attracted a wealthy class of clientele, and consequently also greater notoriety, although prostitution itself was not illegal in 19th century Victoria.

In 1878 a Select Committee Report on the Prevention of Contagious Diseases included the following evidence about Madam Brussel's brothel at 32-34 Lonsdale Street, from Sergeant James Dalton: Q.

In 1867 Police Commissioner Standish introduced the visiting Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, to a brothel run in Stephen Street by Sarah Fraser.

[10][11] The connection between Victoria's politicians and the brothels of Little Lon was reinforced when Chief Secretary Sir Samuel Gillott was revealed to have had ongoing financial dealings with Madam Brussels.

[12] Recent writers have emphasized the vibrancy and complexity of Little Lon's population of migrants and itinerant workers, and challenged the stereotype of the area as a miserable slum.

[13][14] This also seems to have been born out by the major archaeological studies conducted in the area in 1988 and 2002, which discovered a wide variety of objects from abandoned cesspits and rubbish dumps.

[17] Newspapers had increasingly demanded a cleanup of the area, John Norton's The Truth being particularly vocal in its attacks, especially on Madam Brussels, the "queen of harlotry."