This paper locates the rise of the discerning adolescent consumer over half a century before the discovery of the Australian teenager. Assessing often overlooked sites such as Melbourne’s Eastern Market and episodes including the shop assistant ‘riots’ of 1886, I chart young people’s demands for the leisure franchise and adult concerns surrounding youthful spending. Pecuniary transactions are also linked with emotional exchanges through consideration of the practices of public courtship. While ‘The Block’ is celebrated as a principal setting for coy engagements and flirtatious discourse in this period, there were other emergent spaces across Melbourne playing host to similar encounters. Underscored by factors of class and gender, the public manifestations of youthful affection likewise attracted the attention of anxious city father.

Simon Sleight is Lecturer in Australian History at King’s College London. His work explores the processes of making place, historical youth cultures and the Australian presence in Britain. His book, Young People and the Shaping of Public Space in Melbourne, 1870–1914 (Ashgate Studies in Childhood) is published in June 2013. He has also written recently on the depiction of working childhood in museums in Australia, Britain and the United States, and on the influence of Colin Ward, author of The Child in the City.