ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the reader with a comprehensive panorama of street economic life in early modern Europe and its evolutions between circa 1450 and 1800. It highlights the fact that early modern streets were full of working people, not only during the day but also at night, and it offers an overview of petty street workers. The chaoter investigates the street as a place of economic activities for women, from food hawking to prostitution, and show how these activities contributed both to the household economy and to the construction of female identity and independence. It also examines the consequences of urban rationalisation and civic regulation on street workers in the eighteenth century. Urban police played in fact an important role in controlling street economies while, at the same time and somewhat ironically, adding to the number of people working on the street. Cleaning up the streets and reconfiguring markets were part of the urban ‘improvement’ which took place in Europe.
