Hawkers' Centre

March 1952

Back when packets of tissue paper were used to clean hands rather than reserve a table, hawkers were footloose and fancy free. With no food courts then, street hawkers proliferated to feed a migrant population.

They offered not just cheap, cooked food, but everything from fruit to shoe repair services. But they also posed a menace - cholera and typhoid were common, not to mention refuse thrown indiscriminately in the streets. The Singapore City Council sought to legalise hawking, but in the early 1950s, only a quarter to a third of hawkers were licensed. The photo shows a crowd of hawkers waiting to complete the paperwork at the Havelock Road Licensing Centre in March 1952. It was a long and arduous process with frequent clashes between hawkers and the authorities. But by the early 1980s, all hawkers had been resettled, so now we can enjoy a bowl of laksa without worrying about it coming with a side of cholera.