Footscray Historical Society Research
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Industrial History

Extract from a Footscray correspondent, Williamstown Chronicle,
17 December 1870. Cited in History of Footscray, John Lack, 1991, p. 86.
"There are few suburbs going on faster than Footscray. Property, land, or houses quote 30per cent advance; tall chimneys keep rising; factory artisans throng the stations and the streets; every place that can by nails, by saw and hammer be tortured into a house is let, and many go to the near city. Here are troops of bullocks, there a mob of sheep, en route for England, passage paid in tin cans, by the first ship. This is a load of bones which in no time will be manure...no offence worth mentioning has yet been felt...Nor that Footscray air gets purer. Oh no! But sir...that is better, some say, than empty pockets, empty houses, and no employment."

Factory, 1899 (From the Independent newspaper)
Note: In recent times many of Footscray's industrial sites have been reclaimed as residential estates.

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