The Market Hall on a Saturday night, by Anonymous

An original guidebook written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

This extract comes from a guidebook to a large manufacturing town, published in 1889.

No visitor should leave the town without seeing the Market Hall upon a Saturday night, between the hours of eight and eleven. The hall, which was opened in 1853, covers nearly two acres beneath a single roof of iron and glass, and contains above four hundred stalls, lit by more than six hundred gas jets.

At this hour the working people, having received their wages at noon, come to buy their provisions for the coming week. The butchers stand on boxes and cry their meat, the fish salesmen ring hand bells, and the fruit women call out the price of oranges in a kind of chant which the stranger will find quite impossible to understand. The poorer housewives come latest of all, towards half past ten, for at that hour the butchers and fishmongers, who cannot keep their goods fresh until Monday, sell off what remains at half the morning’s price.

The visitor is advised to keep his watch in an inside pocket and his hand upon his purse, and ladies are recommended to leave their reticules at the hotel. Refreshment may be had at the stall of Mrs Bostock, near the north door, whose pea soup at a penny a basin is famous throughout the district.

(a) How many stalls does the Market Hall contain? (b) Why do the poorer housewives come to the market latest of all? (c) What does the advice about watches and purses suggest about the market on a Saturday night?