Barrow boys were moved by police from Bond St. and Gardner St. to Upper Gardner Street
Click on the black & white picture from Who was Harry Cowley? to go to the QueenSpark Books site.
Brighton's early barrow boys (itinerant traders) used to deal mainly in fruit and vegetables, which they got very cheaply from the town's wholesale fruit and vegetable market. The used to pitch in various places in the town, though not often outside greengrocers' shops; they could undercut shop prices by over 50% and were very useful to people on low incomes as a source of cheap food.
In the 1890s, The barrow boys' favourite pitches in central Brighton would be in Bond Street and especially in Gardner Street. However, policemen would be lurking in these streets to fine them or to move them on. The police and Brighton Borough Council finally became tired of the nuisance the barrow boys were causing to shopkeepers and made Upper Gardner Street available on Saturday mornings for barrow boys and stallholders.
At first, stallholders had to fight for a pitch in Upper Gardner Street, but a bowler-hatted gentlemen called Harry Cowley (born in 1890), supported by vigilantes whom he had recruited from among Brighton's unemployed, mounted a campaign to force the Council to give fixed pitches to the stallholders in Upper Gardner Street.
From the 1920s, Harry Cowley and his supporters kept order in Upper Gardner Street, but also mounted a campaign for sites for barrow boys in the part of Brighton now bounded by the London Road shopping centre and the Level. The Cowley Café on London Road was named after him, as is a Brighton & Hove double-decker bus.
I am grateful to Neil Griffiths, a post-graduate history student, who died of cancer in July 1977 at the age of 28. Neil (together with members of QueenSpark books) is the author of SHOPS BOOK Brighton 1900 - 1930 QueenSpark Book 6 (no longer in print). It was Neil who suggested that an entire book should be written about Harry Cowley.
Who was Harry Cowley? was written by members of the QueenSpark books local history group and originally published in 1984. The revised addition, QueenSpark book 42, was published in 2003. I am grateful to Jane Reid of QueenSpark books for kindly sending me copies of the relevant pages on the market while the book was out of print.
A tidy summary of the market's history is also given in Timothy Carder's excellent The Encylopaedia of Brighton ISBN: 086 147 3159, published by East Sussex County Libraries in 1990.