ABSTRACT
Bazaars were novelties first proposed just after the Napoleonic wars. In the spring of 1816 established shopkeepers presented Parliament with ‘a petition, signed by 1,600 housekeepers and tradesmen, against the new markets opened called Bazaars.’ The women of shopping bazaars, customers and stall keepers, bought and sold status-oriented products designed for a female market. The first bazaar in England was an amalgam of two types later becoming separate forms—the commercial and the charity bazaar. Bazaars seemed to many to serve not as a functional area of trade, but more as a pleasure ground for a dissipated and leisured upper class, emphasizing the shopping experience over the actual goods purchased. The attraction of the bazaar was as much the display of goods and the display of pleasurable entertainments as it was the purchase of the fancy goods and fripperies usually sold there. The concentration on female employment was one facet of what made bazaars a unique retail development.
