Black and white photo of the Marché aux Puces (Flea Market) in Montreuil, Paris, 1928. In the foreground a woman sits in a stall selling used clothing while a man glances at her wares. Other vendors’ stalls and customers milling about the street are in the background.
30 September 2022
A flea market is an open-air market for the sale of second-hand products. The phrase appears to be a calque, or literal translation, of the French marché aux puces, the name given to just such a market in Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris. The market was so-called because the products sold there had a reputation, deserved or not, for being infested with the pests. The Montreuil market opened its stalls in 1860 and continued operation well into the twentieth century. But while this French market is the most likely source, the English phrase may not have been borrowed directly from French.
The reason to question the direct French origin is the earliest known use of flea market in English, which was uncovered by Pascal Tréguer. That use appears in reference to just such a market in Copenhagen that was mentioned in the New York Sun on 29 May 1887:
From a Copenhagen Letter.
Yesterday was the last day of the flea market. The fifty-two old women who have sat haggling over their uncanny wares in the square by the Government pawn shop until the queer band had become part of the familiar physiognomy of the city, [sic] had been told that their time was up at 3 P.M. sharp, and that the flea market would then be a thing of the past. They had appealed in vain to the Mayor, to the Minister of the Interior, and, as a last resort, by deputation to the King, praying that in consideration of their great age they might keep their stands or move them elsewhere until they could drop out together, as it were. They were told that there was no room for sentiment in in their case. Perhaps the fleas had killed it. Their mixed stock of second-hand clothes, old rags, felt shoes, and crockery certainly harbored a fair share. But, then, it was a very cheap market—so cheap that that others than the poor sought it for bargains. No matter; they must all go together. Customers had come from far and near to the closing sale until the square was black. So brisk a trade the flea market had never known. In spite of it more than one aged face was wet with bitter tears as the hands of the old tower clock pointed to 3 and the word to move on was given. There was very little left to move that was worth it; nothing more worn or shaky than the old market women themselves. As they flied [sic] out with their bundles, casting stolen glances behind them, one of the characteristic traditions of this old city when out with them and became a thing of the past.
This article bears the marks of being a translation from the Danish by someone who did not have mastery of English idiom; note until they could drop out together, as it were and until the square was black, which are unusual constructions in English. The flea market here may be a calque of the Danish loppemarked, loppe (flea) + marked (market). The Danish word may itself be a calque of the French; it may come from the German flohmarkt; or the compound may have arisen within Danish. If this use of flea market is indeed a calque of the Danish by a Dane, then the phrase flea market may not have yet had currency in English in 1887.
But the Paris marché aux puces was without a doubt the most famous of the flea markets and it is most likely the source for these other European terms. In English, with the exception of this reference to the Copenhagen market, all the early references to flea markets are to the Parisian one. Flea market appears again in English-language newspapers in a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 28 July 1891:
Paris, July 27.—At the place near the Barriere de Montreuil, at the extreme east end of Paris, popularly known as the “Flea Market,” Madame Packard, an aged woman, bought yesterday an ancient, dilapidated mattress. Upon cutting it open she discovered a leather bag containing fourteen thousand francs in gold. As the bedding had passed through a number of hands it was useless to attempt to find an owner, hence the national Treasury claims the property.
This story was widely reprinted in many papers over the next year or so, making the French market known to large numbers of English speakers. Depending on which version you read, the woman’s name is variously given as Packard, Pacaud, or Pacard, and in some versions she gets to keep the cash.
And there is one that appeared in London’s Daily Telegraph on 20 September 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I that was also reprinted in American papers:
A few housewives whose “hommes” have a weakness for the “green devil” bought packets at the price of one penny. An old man, with a long white beard of patriarchal length, posed as an infallible pedicure. He was willing to remove the corns of any one for half a franc, and even less, but for a Prussian he would charge double. There were the usual crowds at the historic “Marché aux Puces,” or “Flea Market.” Here customers and vendors ignored the fact that the German armies were still within striking distance of Paris.
It isn’t until after World War I that, with the exception of the Copenhagen letter, we start to see flea market used as a generic term for such second-hand markets. It seems likely that the repeated references to the Montreuil market, plus probable visits to the place by numerous British and American soldiers during the war, cemented the phrase in English. Also militating against the idea that flea market had currency as a generic term prior to World War I is that the two words often appear co-located in reference to the market for fleas for use in flea circuses, which was evidently a thriving, if niche, business at the time.
The first such generic use of flea market that I’m aware of is in Juliet Bredon’s 1920 Peking: A Historical and Intimate Description of Its Chief Places of Interest:
It is strange that all these luxuries lie within a stone’s throw of the worst slums of the capital. Long before the haunts of prosperity open their doors, the side, sewery lanes a little to the east of them are filled to overflowing with a poverty more pitiful for its proximity to luxury. Before dawn the Thieves’ Market is held here by torchlight. The Flea Market opens a little later. Wares are spread on the street itself, but they are generally of such a character that dirt and indiscriminate handling can do them no harm. Old bottles, broken door-knobs, bent nails lie side by side with frayed foreign collars, dilapidated tennis rackets, rusty corsets or even threadbare evening slippers that have been thrown into the waste basket of some European house and gathered up by the assiduous rag pickers who classify the refuse of Peking for this fair.
And there is this that appeared in the Atlanta Journal on 27 April 1924 in reference to a flea market in Algiers:
From the cemetery, we went to the Arabian flea market, which marks the entrance to the famous Kasba or Arab quarter. The flea market, more deserving of its name than you people at home can realize, is an open, sunny place crowded with dirty natives. Squatting on their heels and staring vacantly before them they crouch untiringly, their old broken and worn-out wares spread around them on the ground. Cracked bits of china, old brass, fragments of rugs, carved wormy wood, worn-out shoes and garments, kitchen utensils and all the endless odds and ends.
This Algerian use also lends some strength to the French origin as Algeria was a French colony at the time.
It is probable that the French marché aux puces is the source for all these flea markets, but we cannot be sure of that. And as for the English phrase, we cannot pin down with any certainty which European language it is borrowed from, and the fact that calques appear in a number of European languages hints that it may be borrowed from more than one. But it is certain that it was the Parisian Marché aux Puces that inspired the term’s widespread use.
Sources:
“A Fortune in an Old Mattress.” Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 July 1891, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Bredon, Juliet. Peking: A Historical and Intimate Description of Its Chief Places of Interest. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1920, 405. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Last Day of the Flea Market.” The Sun (New York), 29 May 1887, 9. Library of Congress: Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers.
Massengale, Margaret. “Atlanta Girl Sees Arabian Flea Market.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 27 April 1924, Magazine 11. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. flea, n.
“Parisians and the Great War.” Daily Telegraph (London), 20 September 1914, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Telegraph Historical Archive.
Tréguer, Pascal. “Origin of ‘Flea Market’: French ‘Marché aux Puces.’” Wordhistories.net. 17 April 2017.
Photo credit: Agnece de presse Meurisse, 1928; Gallica, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Public domain image.